Hidden In Him
Well-Known Member
I do my homework. :)
:) Again, I am going back to context here. You just inserted verse 1 back into verse 3 to change the immediate context. Look at it again without the inserted phrase:
3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Look at the thrust of these two verses. It is very clear. The focus is not on the rapture but on the coming of the Antichrist, and it continues on this way for several more verses; almost the rest of the Chapter. The rapture is not the theme here - the arrival of the Antichrist is - which makes the interpretation that the apostasy is referring to the rapture dubious at best, and completely out of context at worst.
He's basing this teaching off of Matthew 24, which includes the following:
9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. 10 And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 11 Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. 15 “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 16 “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. 18 And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. 19 But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! 20 And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
V. 10 is talking about believers betraying one another. And why will they betray each other? Because they have apostatized against the Lord and are now betraying other Christians to save their own lives.
Yes, words CAN morph, so the burden of proof falls on usage. I have demonstrated that apostatizing from Moses more likely means that they religiously apostatized from him, which is a stronger case than that they potentially just walked away from him to put physical distance between him and themselves, since Moses had long since passed on. The burden would fall on you to produce uses of the word where it simply means departure in the physical sense. In classical usage, apostasis is used of military revolts, and the noun apostates was used of political deserters. In the LXX, it is used of apostatizing from God, and thus developed its distinctly religious connotations, no longer referring simply to political or military apostasy but religious apostasy as well.
So I guess my response is, show me that a stronger case can be made for it meaning simple physical departure than religious or political apostasy.
