“Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition…”

and the man of sin is revealed,

The second sign of the Day of the Lord is the revelation of the man of sin. A wide-ranging apostasy will take on its rise from the emergence of the man of sin. One day he will put in an appearance. No one knows who he is now.

The man of sin will come on the scene at a decisive moment in time (vv. 6,8). He will come out of hiding, and the whole world will acclaim him. He is Satan’s key agent in leading the world in rebellion against God.

The word “sin” should be lawlessness because better manuscripts so indicate. The literal meaning is without law, for the word “lawlessness” is a Greek word that combines the negative “without” and the word “law.” The usual translation is “iniquity.” This man of lawlessness will fly in the face of God’s authority. His essential characteristic is lawlessness. He operates with complete disregard for God’s operating principles. He lives without regard to law (Acts 2:23).

the son of perdition

Paul describes the “man of lawlessness” as “the son of perdition.” The word “perdition” indicates a loss of wellbeing, not of being. This “man of sin” is here the son of eternal perdition. He is the son of eternal ruin, not annihilation. This is his proper destiny (Romans 9:22; Philippians 1:28; 3:19; Hebrews 10:39; 2 Peter 2:1,3; 3:7,16; Revelation 17:8,11). He is a man doomed to eternal damnation. It is the opposite of a saved person.

The “son of perdition” has complete disregard for God and His values. He will remove the restraint against lawlessness. He will lead a rebellion against God in the professing church (1 Timothy 4:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:1-5; 4:3-4; James 5:1-8; 2 Peter 2; 2 Pe 3:3-6; Jude). Saddam Hussein said that he would fight the “mother of all wars.” The idea of “mother” in his statement is equivalent to our word “son.” This antichrist is the essence of one who is not a Christian, who represents a person damned to hell.

The son of perdition will make a covenant with Israel at the beginning of the 70th week of Daniel, but he will break the covenant three years later (Daniel 9:27). This person is in other places called “the antichrist.”

“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18).

Daniel’s other names for this person are the “little horn” (Daniel 7:8), the “prince that shall come” (Daniel 9:26), and the “willful king” (Daniel 11:36). The book of Revelation calls him the “beast out of the sea” (Revelation 13:1-10).

Principle:

People not properly established in God’s Word tend to be susceptible to false teaching.

Application:

Faulty doctrine leads to weak faith. People who do not have the maturity of mind formed from the understanding of the principles of God’s Word and the application of those principles to their lives will be vulnerable to deception. Faulty doctrine will lead to a weakened faith. People with a weakened faith fall prey to further false teaching even to the point of joining the final apostasy.

We live in a day when Christians minimize the Word of God. They do this to their ultimate harm. They make themselves vulnerable to apostasy.

“These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

Evangelicals today are bankrupt in knowledge of Scripture. Unless we get back to learning solid Bible exposition and applying its principles to our lives, we will be vulnerable to apostasy and spiritually bankrupt.