Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.—2 Thessalonians 2:3
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.—2 Thessalonians 2:11–12
Many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.—Matthew 24:11–12
There were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.—2 Peter 2:1–3
Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.—1 Corinthians 11:17–19
The prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.—Deuteronomy 18:20–22
Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place. Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart. Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them.—Jeremiah 14:13–16
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.—1 John 2:18–22
I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.—Revelation 2:9
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.—Revelation 3:9
Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.—Revelation 11:8
Introduction
All the passages cited above have to do with apostasy. Scripture speaks of that reality of apostasy so frequently that many more passages could be added to those above.
Apostasy is a sign of Christ’s coming. The church often loses sight of that fact in the moment as she faces apostasy and in the aftermath of apostasy in church splits, the departure of family members, and the loss of friends. But what the church of the new dispensation must realize is that the history of the new-dispensational church in the development of the truth is intertwined with the history of apostasy and the development of the lie. The lie originated in the garden of Eden when Satan promised Adam and Eve that they would be God. That lie will culminate and have its final manifestation in the antichristian world kingdom with the personal antichrist himself at the head of that kingdom, sitting in the temple of God and showing himself that he is God.
Seldom has the church held the truth in purity for very long before apostasy manifests itself. Peter wrote to the churches that there were false prophets among Israel as there will be false teachers in the churches. Already at the time of the apostles, the church faced much apostasy from the truth. The existence of apostasy from the truth is not only a new-dispensational phenomenon but also was a reality in Israel in the old dispensation. The difference in the old dispensation was that the church could not be formed anew with the appearance of apostasy, but the nation of Israel had to be turned time and again from its apostasy, and at last that nation was destroyed, first in the northern ten tribes through the Assyrians; yet again with the Babylonian captivity; and finally with the appearance of Jesus Christ, the axe was laid to the root of the tree that was national Israel. Apostasy must also explain the rapid development in wickedness by the world prior to the flood in the period from Adam to Noah, when the sons of God married the daughters of men.
Of comfort to the church in the face of that appalling and often painful apostasy is that at the center of that apostasy and controlling that apostasy is Jesus Christ. That apostasy is created by and serves the coming of Jesus Christ.
Definition of Apostasy
What is apostasy?
The English word apostasy is a transliteration of the Greek word apostasia. The Greek word refers to a defection or a revolt. The word is translated in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 as “a falling away”: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” The translation “falling away” obscures the fact that the word apostasy itself is active. A man could fall off a ladder because he slips or loses his grip, or that same man could jump from the ladder in a deliberate act of folly. The latter is the sense of apostasy. Apostasy is an active, deliberate departure from the truth and a defection and revolt from that truth and the God of that truth by those who do not believe the truth. Integral to the idea of apostasy is that those who so revolt from the truth appeared and confessed at one time to hold to the truth. Perhaps they were baptized into the church. Perhaps they were converts to the truth. But at some time they revolt against the truth and forsake it.
This active sense of the word apostasy is how the Holy Spirit describes also the apostasy of the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2:4: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” Ephesus did not lose her first love, but she “left” it. She walked away from that first love.
In the Old Testament this active sense of apostasy in Israel is described as Israel’s forsaking God, for instance, Rehoboam and Israel: “It came to pass, when Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and had strengthened himself, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him” (2 Chron. 12:1).
Apostasy is one of the most terrible sins that a human being can commit. The seriousness of that apostasy is described by the writer to the Hebrews:
4. It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5. And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6. If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
7. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:
8. But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. (Heb. 6:4–8)
This is not simply a description of some of those who fall away. This is the description of the apostate always. The apostate comes near to the truth, so near that the apostle says he tastes the heavenly gift, is made a partaker of the Holy Ghost, and tastes the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. That is the spiritual reality of what happens when one comes under the preaching of the truth. That truth by the work of the Holy Spirit is quick and powerful, and that word has an operation on those who come under it. Such is that operation that it appears for all the world that they believe it and rejoice in it for a time. And they fall away. The truth does not keep them. That is not the fault of the truth but the result of the will of God. He did not will their salvation, though he willed, for the manifestation of who they are, that they come into the closest contact with the truth. The sin of the apostate is that he crucifies the Son of God afresh and puts him to an open shame. With an allusion to the parable of the sower and different types of ground, the writer to the Hebrews traces this effect to the will of God. God did not bless the word unto them; rather when they bring forth such thorns and briars as forsaking the truth, it shows that they are rejected and nigh unto cursing.
Apostasy from the truth has two basic forms. There is the apostasy of the individual. There are individuals in the church who appear to adhere to Christ for a time, and then they depart from Christ, from the true church, and from the truth. Such is the description above in Hebrews 6. Paul also speaks of this with regard to some of those who at first followed the truth he had preached:
19. Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:
20. Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Tim. 1:19–20)
There is also the apostasy of whole churches and denominations. True churches become false churches. This is especially what threatened the church of Laodicea and what was the threat of the Lord against the church at Ephesus when Christ said that he would come and remove her candlestick.
The true church is known by her three marks, and when a church that at one time held to and preached the pure doctrine of the gospel turns and departs from the truth and begins to teach and promote the lie, then that church has apostatized from the truth and has become false. It is this false church that is called in scripture the synagogue of Satan, the great whore, and that which is spiritually Sodom and Egypt where our Lord was crucified. Outwardly she appears as church. She confesses that she is the true church. But the spiritual reality of that institution is that she is under the sway of Satan, exists to promote and defend the lie, and is the enemy of the truth and of the true church.
Apostasy and False Teachers
Apostasy is promoted by false teachers. The reality of false teachers is as frequently mentioned in scripture as the reality of apostasy. These two realities go together hand in glove. There were in Israel of the old dispensation many false prophets, and it appears that there were many more false prophets than true prophets. So also in the new dispensation there are false teachers and many more of them than there are true ministers of the word.
Who is the false teacher? The false teacher is an unbelieving instrument of Satan who comes promoting the lie. Jude describes the false teacher: “There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4).
In verse 14 Jude says that Enoch in the Old Testament had prophesied about these kinds of men. When Jude says that Enoch prophesied of them, he means that Enoch spoke against the false teachers of his own day. There were men who crept in unawares into Adam’s church, where Enoch was the preacher, and they brought in their damnable heresies. That same reality happened also in Jude’s day.
Specifically, Jude says that these false teachers turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. You must not understand that to mean that Jude is preaching against a certain class or form of heresy. He is teaching what all false doctrine does. No matter its form, the purpose of false doctrine is to take the grace of God and to turn it to the service of man’s lusts and desires. If the form is Pharisaism and legalism, that false doctrine justifies its legalistic doctrines and commandments of men with the grace of God. If the form is a hedonistic libertinism, then that false doctrine justifies its wicked course of life with the liberty of the grace of God.
Jude also says that these false teachers denied the only God and the Lord Jesus Christ. That is also what all false doctrine does, no matter its form. False doctrine is an ultimate denial of God and Christ. The false teacher is not a mistaken and benighted soul, but he is a wicked person who was foreordained to that condemnation.
Peter likewise describes the false teacher:
1. There were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
3. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
(2 Pet. 2:1, 3)
Here Peter describes the false teacher as privily bringing in a damnable heresy. The word “privily” means secretly and craftily to introduce something. The false teacher does not come in and announce before the world that he is a false teacher, but he works quietly, behind the scenes, and he crafts his false doctrine to be as deceptive as possible.
Peter also characterizes these false teachers as “denying the Lord that bought them.” When Peter says that, he does not mean that Christ actually died for them, but Peter describes their deception. They confess that the Lord bought them and that they are Christ’s, but their false doctrine denies Christ. The word that Peter uses and that is translated as “denying” means to renounce something. By their false doctrine they repudiate and renounce Jesus Christ, all the while confessing to teach Christ.
Peter also points out that the false teacher is motivated by covetousness, which is the love of the world, the service of mammon, and pleasure in unrighteousness. Through his covetousness the false teacher with feigned words makes merchandise of the church. Feigned words are those that are molded and shaped for a purpose. They are not genuine and candid words but words that serve the false teacher’s purpose to use the church for his own ends. The false teacher is an ecclesiastical businessman who views the church as his business; he is a church manager, and he uses the church and the people of the church to satisfy his own lusts.
Apostasy always is accompanied by licentiousness of life. Jesus warned about that in Matthew 24:12: “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” “Iniquity” is a reference to ungodliness both in the world generally and in the hearts of men. That iniquity abounds. Men love unrighteousness. Because of this abounding iniquity, the love of many shall wax cold. The love that is spoken about is the love of the truth and love for the church. The text does not teach that some who actually loved the truth and loved the church grow cold in their love. Rather the text teaches that through abounding iniquity, it becomes evident that the professed love of many for the truth is nothing but a cold and heartless confession.
A similar thought is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:12: “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Unbelief in the truth finds its explanation in their pleasure in unrighteousness.
Such also is Christ’s explanation in the parable of the sower of the apostasy of many: “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matt. 13:22).
Together, apostasy and the false teacher who is driving that apostasy are detected by the truth and only by the truth. Apostasy cannot be determined by any other standard. The standard is not how agreeable or friendly the false teacher is. The standard is not how long the false teacher has lived in the church or what prominent place he may have in the church. The standard for whether a man is a false teacher and whether there is apostasy from the truth is the truth itself. That truth as it is understood by the church through the teaching and leading of the Holy Spirit and as the truth is applied to a man and his doctrine exposes the false teacher.
Explanation of Apostasy
What is the explanation of apostasy?
First, the ultimate explanation of all apostasy is the truth of reprobation. This is the apostle’s explanation of apostasy in 2 Thessalonians 2:10–12:
10. With all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
God does not give to men the love of the truth that they might be saved, and the reason is that they might be damned. That act of God not to give them the love of the truth is according to God’s eternal purpose that they might be damned. This stands in contrast to what the apostle says later in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 regarding the Thessalonians’ belief and love of the truth: “We are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” The explanation of the Thessalonians’ belief of the truth is that they were from the beginning chosen to salvation.
Second, apostasy is explained by the fact that the lines of election and reprobation run through the sphere of the covenant, the outward manifestation of the kingdom of God, and thus that in the true church there are always the husk and the kernel, the wheat and the tares, the true people of God and hypocrites among the people of God. This is the principle expressed by the apostle in Romans 9:6–8:
6. Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
7. Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.
8. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
Third, apostasy is explained by the truth that the curse of God operates in the house of God, the church of the Lord. That operating curse works a separation of the true people of God and the reprobate shell, so that what is spiritual Egypt and Sodom in the church is made manifest and carried away into the world by the working of the mystery of iniquity and by its inner impulses to sin and by the power of the lusts of the flesh. This is the meaning of the powerful vision that Zechariah saw and that is explained in the meditation in this issue.
Purpose of Apostasy
What is the purpose of apostasy? God’s purpose with apostasy is that there be a false church that opposes and persecutes the true church, that supports the coming of antichrist, and that finally worships him. It is this connection between apostasy and antichrist that John explains in 1 John 2:18–22:
18. Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
19. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
20. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.
21. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
22. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
The multiplication of antichrists already in the apostle John’s day was the indication that it was already the last time. Antichrist as the false teacher was already a reality in the time of the apostles. The antichrist is a liar, and an antichrist denies that Jesus is the Christ. Central in the Christian faith is that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed of God, and thus the chief prophet, priest, and king of his people, whom his people hear and to whom they submit by his Holy Spirit. Antichrist denies that.
That may seem like a rather broad test of an antichrist. But in the context of 1 John 2, it is a powerful test of the antichrist as a spirit of apostasy from Jesus Christ. In verse 22 to deny is to abjure and to renounce. To leave a true church of Jesus Christ, where Jesus Christ is present in the preaching of the truth and the administration of the sacraments, is not only an act of apostatizing from the truth as it is in Jesus Christ but also an act of apostatizing from Jesus Christ himself. It is a denial of the Christ whom one professed to know, promised to cleave and to submit to, and a manifestation of the spirit of antichrist that now works, the spirit that works a great apostasy in the churches of Jesus Christ.
This connection between apostasy and antichrist is also taught in 1 John 4:3: “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”
The spirit of antichrist denies that Jesus Christ comes in the flesh. The spirit of antichrist denies that through a false teacher and his false doctrine. Again we would be tempted to say that that is a rather general description of antichrist. How many are known who actually deny the incarnation, except an out-and-out theological liberal? But the point of the apostle is that false doctrine, all false doctrine at its root and all false religion, ultimately yields this fruit: It does not confess and indeed denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. Either Jesus was just a man, or he is the eternal Son of God in the flesh. If Jesus is just a man, then the Christian religion is hero worship, like any other religion of the world. If Jesus is the Son of God, then he is the only way of salvation. And false doctrine and every false religion always assault this principal fact of the Christian faith and say, “Jesus Christ is not come in the flesh.”
The fruit of this apostasy is the personal antichrist who declares that he himself is God. Attached to that final culmination of antichrist is antichrist as a world kingdom and antichrist as the false unity of all false Christianity and all the world religions.
Next time, the Lord willing, I will take up the truth of the final antichrist.
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