A Supra, Pre-Trib, Pre-Mill Friend of the SB

In your editorials, “The Kingdom has Come” (Feb. 1 and 15, 1993), your system of doctrine seems to be your final authority, not the Bible. Enclosed is a book by Tim LaHaye, No Fear of the Storm. I challenge you to read it thoughtfully and objectively.

I like the Standard Bearer very much, and some articles in it are outstanding. I am a supralapsarian, pre-trib, and pre-mill believer in my Lord and Savior Jesus the Son of God, the Christ. I agree with the five points of John Calvin. I read his Institutes. He was a great man of God even if he was amillennial.

In II Thessalonians 2:3, the word apostasia in the Greek is translated “falling away” by the KJV. The Bibles prior to the KJV translated the word as “departure” or “withdrawal,” referring to the rapture. I believe that the Antichrist will not be revealed by God prior to the departure of the church from this earth to meet the Lord in the air.

I will remain a fundamentalist – one who believes that the Word of God, literally interpreted, is fundamental to Christian life and doctrine.

John E. Saari

Jackson, TN

Response:

The word apostasia occurs twice in the Greek New Testament: Acts 21:21 and II Thessalonians 2:3. Both times it clearly refers to a spiritual departing from doctrine or truth. The English Bible that was the great predecessor of the KJV was the Geneva Bible of 1560. In II Thessalonians 2:3, the Geneva Bible reads: “… for that day shall not come, except there come a departing first, and that that man of sin be disclosed, even the son of perdition.” In the notes alongside the text, the translators of the Geneva Bible explained what is meant by the “departing”: “A wonderful (that is, astonishing – DJE) departing of the most part from the faith.”

– DJE

The Coming of Antichrist

I notice that some of our readers have taken exception to your editorials, “A.D. 1993: The Lord is Coming” (Jan. 1 and 15, 1993). I should like to add a little to this present discussion, which I know is being conducted in the spirit of Christian friendship and fellowship. I am in agreement with the Editor’s response. However, may I make the following observations?

The Day of Christ shall not come except there be a falling away first (“he apostasia proton,” Greek). This indicates that there is to be a great departure from the true faith as revealed in Holy Scripture. Now, I would tentatively submit that such apostasy has already commenced, indeed, has been with us for some time, and is daily increasing in its terrible consequences for the professing church in the world. How far into this apostasy God has decreed we should go is not for us to speculate, but one thing is certain, and that is that we are in the midst of this foretold and foreordained departure from the Protestant and Reformed religion.

Secondly, we are informed by the Holy Spirit that the Day of Christ cannot come until “the man of sin” (“ho anthropos tes harmartias, u Greek) be revealed. The apostle John indicated to us that “as you heard antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen” (I John 2:18) and further that “this is the antichrist which you heard is coming and now already is in the world” (I John 4:3). [Quotations from Greek-English Interlinear T.R.] Therefore, antichrist is already with us and has been throughout the time between the Advents, and that the religious aspect of antichrist has been and is fulfilled in the Pope of Rome who is Antichrist as our confessions teach. The only remaining thing to be fulfilled, as I see it, is the final manifestation of antichrist who shall be the Antichrist, the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition “whom the Lord shall . . . destroy with the brightness of his coming.”

We await then only the revelation of the final Man of Sin whom the present writer firmly believes shall be the last occupant of the Vatican.

Steven Watters

Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland

Clear Teaching on Total Depravity

Thank you for the recent series in the Standard Bearer on Macleod’s book and the clear teaching you gave on total depravity (Aug. 1-Dec. 15, 1992, “The Death of Confessional Calvinism in Scottish Presbyterianism”).

John Robert Olson

Charleston, SC