The Falling Away/The Apostasy
As with most Christians, we were taught that the “falling away” (apostasy) in II Thessalonians 2:3-12 was telling of a horrible time to come when the Church would turn away from the Truth and follow after an entity described as “that man of sin” and “son of perdition”. We were taught that this was the Antichrist or Satan. We accepted this as Truth until our Teacher, Jesus Christ, begin to reveal to us that we were misunderstanding His teaching on this subject.
To “fall”, in this teaching, means to be humbled as we are awakened to His Truth and to the realization that the beliefs that we have held in such righteous regard are wrong. It means to “fall away" from man’s doctrines, traditions and false teachings (no matter how well-intentioned they are) and hear the Truth from our Teacher. Imagine how Saul/Paul felt as he fell to the ground to realize that all his conviction and zealousness in what he thought was serving God was WRONG. That is what must happen to each and every one of us. We must realize that the “man of sin” and the “son of perdition” is within our own carnal hearts and minds and must be revealed to us so that we can repent and accept the coming of our Lord’s likeness being formed and purified within ourselves.
We, in our stiff-necked false religious beliefs, are the ones that “opposeth and exalteth” ourselves above all that is called God or is worshipped as God. We allow the part of us that is sinful and destined for spiritual perdition to sit in the temple of God (We are the temple of God and His Spirit dwells within us). It is the “Wicked” within US that our Lord will consume with the spirit of His mouth (fire, Truth) and destroy with His brightness (light, Truth) with His changing us from within to be His Temple.
It is sad for us to think that it takes a “fall” off of our self-righteous horse to teach us, but obviously, there is no better way for some of us to learn. When we are sitting up high on our horse (power and might, in this case self-made) we do not “look up” because we are busy “looking down” and pointing out everyone else’s sins. When we fall, and we allow things that we have created with false teachings to fall, then we will rejoice with all humility to be part of the glorious Temple of God as we are changed from glory to glory into our Savior’s likeness.
We must, above all, have the love of the Truth. Jesus is the Truth! We must seek and ask it from our Father and we must listen to our Teacher as He reveals Himself to us.