2 Thessalonians 2:2 Commentary and Bible Study

The language is very vivid here, rather like a vessel being shaken about in a great storm at sea. Paul is concerned that their minds should be protected so that they are not tempest-tossed by somebody claiming to be speaking by the Holy Spirit. ‘Nor by word,’ that is someone saying, ‘I have heard the apostle say this or that.’ ‘Nor by letter,’ there were forged letters passing around from people who would claim to be from the apostles, claiming authority by them. ‘Nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand’ – either that it has come or that it is very imminent, that it is almost beginning to take place now. That cannot be so, the apostle tells them, because there are certain signs of the end that must come first, certain developments.It has been said that what follows in chapter two is largely original with the apostle Paul, that you do not find it anywhere else in the Bible, and cynics and doubters of divine inspiration say this is entirely different, entirely out of line with what any one may have expected up until this point – a new development, a new theory. Of course, people who say that kind of thing simply do not know their Bibles. We could turn for example to the book of Daniel and chapter seven and chapter eight where many things about the return, the final coming of Messiah are mentioned, end time characteristics. The very interesting thing is that the language of the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians in what we call chapter two, its language does not quote but it echoes very closely many of the things that you read in those seventh and eighth chapters of Daniel. It is in a sense a commentary on them, an explanation of them. It echoes and reflects those very words. As he frames his language the apostle does not exactly copy, but he follows very much the same ideas and the same thoughts. Of course, it is inspired by God, but you will remember that Daniel was told to seal it up till the end, as if to say, this cannot be understood until the last age; this will not be intelligible until the very end of time. Now by the Holy Spirit the end of time has arrived, the last age, the Gospel Age, the apostle Paul begins to open up the book of Daniel and the ancient prophecies to us. You could say, there is nothing original here, there is nothing that does not echo what has been said before in mysterious language in the prophets.