"Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5)
At some point, I bet you learned about pyrite.
Maybe it was your eighth-grade geology class, or chemistry in high school. Maybe you were one of those kids who had a rock collection or who got a science lab kit for Christmas one year. Maybe you spotted some of the stuff out in the real world somewhere and thought you had struck it rich--only to discover that in actuality, you had fallen for fool's gold.
That's the more common name for pyrite, the mineral also known as iron sulfide. The presence of sulfur (yep, literal brimstone) makes it shine with a yellowish metallic luster, and plenty of people over the ages have been duped by its appearance into believing they have real gold, when in truth they have a much less valuable rock. If your only criteria are, "Is it shiny and yellow?" you are setting yourself up to be disappointed. There is a reason that Shakespeare gave us the line, "All that glitters is not gold." The Bard knew in his day what is still true today: it is easy to fall for counterfeits and to be fooled by fakes. And it requires a sharper, keener kind of vision to be able to know whether you are looking at the genuine article or a ginned up fraud.
Believe it or not, the early church wrestled with a similar concern when it came to the coming of Christ. As we saw in yesterday's devotion, reflecting on a passage which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, there was some worry among the church in Thessalonica that maybe they had missed Christ's coming in glory. And the response in this letter was, "You didn't miss him! Don't let anybody make you worry that you missed out on Christ's coming or the Day of the Lord--you won't be able to miss them!" Well, that must have been something of a sigh of relief for that congregation... but there's more to be said. The apostle continues, warning that they do still need to keep their eyes open for counterfeits, frauds, and fakers who will try and convince the world that they are the Real McCoy, but are in fact pretenders.
In particular, these verses describe a figure referred to as "the lawless one," who "opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God." Now, on the one hand, that sounds like some pretty exceptional idolatry, the sort of thing that would stand out in unique ways. But really, over the centuries prior to the New Testament era, there had been a whole host of empires, kings, and regimes that put themselves in the place of God or demanded worship as divine. In ancient Israel's own history, there were the Assyrians and Babylonians who had conquered the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and whose kings claimed divine status and demanded worship of their own likenesses in statue form. Then there were the Greeks, including a particularly nasty ruler named Antiochus IV, who called himself "Epiphanes," which meant something like "the god made manifest" and who set up a shrine to the Greek god Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple, on which he sacrificed a pig (an unclean animal by the Torah's commandments, making this an especially egregious act). And by the time of the Roman Empire, you had Caesar Augustus calling himself both divine and "savior" and the beginnings of a tradition of emperors demanding worship and incense to be burned as an act of devotion in their honor. In other words, by the time the letter we call Second Thessalonians was written, there had already been a long line of rulers and demagogues who put themselves in the place of God (or gods) and claiming to be divine. This notion was old hat.
So when the writer of 2 Thessalonians warns of a "lawless one" doing this same thing, I don't think it's meant like some esoteric Nostradamus-type prediction of a single specific person who is fated to come on the scene as some wholly new and original malevolent force. I think it is a warning that this same pattern, in which evil tries to pass itself off as good like a cheap knock-off, will keep repeating itself until Christ's coming, and the Christian community needs to be prepared to spot a fake whenever it appears and to call it out as a fraud when that happens. In other words, we are called to be able to tell the difference between the real precious metal and the fool's gold of pyrite, and not to fall for the frauds.
This is important for us to be clear about, for starters, because sometimes Christians have gotten particularly hung up on identifying a singularly diabolical figure, sometimes given the title "Antichrist," to be on the lookout for, as though there's only one dangerous counterfeit out there. Sometimes that line of thought has led Christians to focus so exclusively on an expected super-wicked evil figure that we fail to speak up against ordinary evils or dismiss lesser frauds as unimportant just because they're not "The Big Bad," so to speak. You end up with church folk debating whether the antichrist is Hitler or Stalin, or whether to look for a charismatic but insidious leader in Europe or in Asia or in America, rather than being able to speak up against any and all instances where popular leaders invite people to worship them unquestioningly. We forget that the one place in the Bible that uses the word "antichrist" (the letter we call First John) actually refers to "many antichrists" who had "already come" by the time it was written (see 1 John 2:18) in the first century!
In other words, the New Testament isn't trying to narrow our focus to just a singular evil leader on the world stage (even though an awful lot of religious fiction has made it seem like that's all we need to worry about), but rather to keep our eyes open to recognize the pyrite pretenders who want to put themselves in the place of God wherever they might turn up. The Scriptures are teaching us to spot the counterfeits so we don't fall for them, whether they come wearing Caesar's diadem marching in an imperial parade or a suit and tie shouting from a podium, and so that we continue to give our allegiance solely to our true Lord, the One whose throne is a cross and whose crown is made of thorns.
Taking these verses from Second Thessalonians seriously, then, will mean that we are prepared to call "Baloney!" on any figure, from political leaders to cultural icons to tycoons of business and technology, who calls for our unquestioned devotion or casts themselves as savior. It's not just that we are supposed to be on the lookout for one bad actor who will turn out to be "The Antichrist," but rather than we be courageous enough to speak up against any powerful voices that run counter to the way of Christ--the way of enemy-love, the way of mercy and justice, the way of lifting up the lowly, the way of serving and self-giving love, and the way of the cross. Any voice--past, present, or future--who tries to get us to shout "Me and My Group First" or to value money and power over love of neighbor is speaking contrary to the way of Jesus; that is to say, such voices are anti-Christ. We are called to recognize them as counterfeits that might be shiny, but are not genuine gold.
The best way, of course, to get better at recognizing a fake is to become more familiar with the genuine article. You learn how to recognize fool's gold by knowing how it is different from real gold, just like bankers learn to spot counterfeit bills by knowing what real money is supposed to look like. So we are called to get to know Jesus more deeply, then, in order that we will know how to spot the frauds from a mile away and we will know not to listen to them when they try to get our attention. Today, how can we be listening more closely to the voice of Jesus so that we will know its sound and cadence over the din of all the others?
Lord Jesus, help us to recognize your way and your voice today.
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