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Sunday school from March 19th, 2023
Let's pray and then we're gonna get started. We're gonna start with something really kind of controversial. At least that's how we're gonna start.
Let's pray.
We see everyone, but we don't actually see the.
Oh, I gotta switch that. Okay, hold on a second.
Hang on.
Now I have to blur that.
All right, bye everybody. All right, there we go. Okay, how's that?
Okay, there we go, finally.
All right, we pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask that your Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there, so again, that we may believe, confess, and do according to your Holy Word, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, we, let's see here. I'm gonna do one more thing.
I'm gonna mute.
I'm gonna mute everybody in the online. Hang on a second here. Everybody is now muted. There we go. And yeah, so I cut people off mid-sentence and stuff. Alas, there is no easy way for me to do this.
I just have to be that rude professor who just like does his thing. So, all right, we've been looking at the book of Daniel, chapter 11, and we've noted last week that there's a big change in the subject in verse 36.
It goes from Antiochus Epiphanes to the end times king who is really the stand-in, who is really legitimately prophesying here about the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness. Now, there was, Melina says she can't hear a thing.
Hold on a second here. We're fixing this, hold on. There we go, they should be able to hear now. All right, there we go. People online can hear, there we go.
I muted everyone?
Oh, I shouldn't have muted Kongsvinger.
Sorry, my apologies. I misstepped. We're still learning the ins and outs of this new setup. All right, so to review the review again, we are in the book of Daniel, chapter 11, and we've noted in verse 36, there's a big change of subject from Antiochus Epiphanes to the end times man of lawlessness, the Antichrist as some people refer to him as.
Actually, scripture does refer to him at some point regarding that, and calls him the Antichrist. And there was something I kind of left off the table because I had no idea how controversial this was until I decided to check the commentaries and see how this all plays out.
But there is a belief, if you would, that the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, and I'm not making this up, that there is reason to believe because of how you could potentially translate Hebrews 11, 37, that he may be a homosexual.
Here's the issue. The Hebrew can be translated a few different ways. It's not clear. So let me explain to you the phrase in question, and we'll look at the ESV to start, and then we'll look at the King James Version.
But we will look at the Septuagint and how the Septuagint translates it. Because I think that's actually somewhat, at least it's interesting. And I can say, after having kind of slogged through the debates on this, that I can't say with certainty which translation is correct.
If you are in my Greek class, you'll note that there are some times a sentence will come up, and the person will translate it, and I say, great, that's one translation, now give me another. And then I'll say, that's great, that's a good second translation, now give me a third.
And then give me a fourth. Because there are some times you can actually translate it multiple ways because of the way the language works. The Hebrew here is similar to that. I can't say it's exactly like that, but it does create a problem.
So again, talking about the Antichrist, verse 37, he shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women. That's a legitimate translation of the Hebrew here. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all.
Now watch what happens when I bring King James into play, which is one of the oldest English translations, and let's take a look at how the King James translates this. Neither shall he regard the god of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god, for he shall magnify himself above all.
Now that also can work in the Hebrew, but let's take a look at how the Septuagint translates this. So I happen to have a good translation of the Septuagint handy. This is the Septuagint and the verse in question.
I don't think I'm there. Hang on a second here. Verse 37 is the verse in question. Yeah, and he will not have a desire, for, he will not have the desire, here it is, for women he will not have a desire, is what the text says.
But again, that's kind of interesting, but let's take a look at how Lexham actually translates that particular verse, and watch this. So when we get to verse 37, and the way the Septuagint translates it, and you have to understand what the Septuagint is.
The Septuagint at its core is an interpretation of the Old Testament, because it is a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, and this was conducted during the intertestamental period. There were 70 rabbis, famously, who worked on this.
That's why it's called the Septuagint, because of the 70. But here's what it says. And he will have no concern for the gods of his fathers, and he will have no care with any desire of a woman. Yeah, asexual or homosexual, it's, and this is a raging debate.
I have the easiest solution. A man of lawlessness is just a woman.
The man of lawlessness is depicted in the type and shadows as a woman, that's for sure. Okay, Athaliah and Jezebel are stand-ins for the man of lawlessness, for sure. But it's, the thing is, is that it's not clear.
What's interesting is, the culture at the time of the translation didn't have a concept. Like, we tend to read our modern cultural biases back in the scripture if we're unconscious of them. But the idea of a homosexual is about 150 years old.
Before then, everyone was just some version of sinner, and some people included dudes in that.
Or ladies, depending on which passage you wanna look at,.
Because Romans is very egalitarian in that one. But, so, yeah, I can see where that's a big deal for modern commentators, but I think we're putting, we're risking putting a less than 200-year-old concept into the culture of the translators who didn't exist.
And in fact, particularly with the translation of the Septuagint, this is early, Septuagint's translated early in the Greek kingdoms after Alexander the Great, and in Alexandrian Greece, influenced by Plato, viewed homosexual activity as a sign of hyper-masculinity.
You were so masculine that you couldn't be bothered to deal with those weak, inferior, ew, gross girl germs.
Cooties.
But that's just, with Plato and Aristotle,.
They're blatant about that. And this is kind of the culture in which they're translating. So the idea that this is some kind of like, I mean, it may be accurate, but I think we gotta be careful.
Not to eisegi our modern.
I completely agree. That's why I said that this is not clear.
I did say I wasn't gonna be good today.
Yeah, no, that's okay. Bruce Burns is in the house, by the way, which explains what's going on. We will not be having a Bible study today. But the idea here is that the language is ambiguous. It is not clear, and pulling it into English from the Hebrew is not clear, and I would note that when you read the commentaries on this, there are battle lines set up.
And all I can say is that it's within the realm of possibility that this person not having any desire of women may, in fact, hint at a sexual orientation that is different than heterosexual.
What if, say, what if the man of Lawlessness really doesn't care about the opinions of women, and in fact, people like Catherine Frick and whatnot get kicked to the curb when he shows up.
That would be hilarious.
Now, in this particular case, it legitimately is talking about the desire of women, okay? Now, Barb first, then Marilyn.
Okay, question. Is the man of Lawlessness the one who's going to forbid marriage?
Yes.
Okay, that's what I thought.
Okay, so as we get closer to the end times, the forbidding of marriage is on the table as one of the signs of the end times, and you can kind of see where the general culture is heading in that direction with all the weird, gender-bizarre ideology of this day.
Now, Marilyn, you had a question.
Okay.
He's a big sinner.
The answer to the question is, it makes a difference in the sense that the Scriptures reveal something here, and the question is, what is it revealing?
Okay?
And so, I can legitimately say, I'm not sure. Having studied all this out, kind of wrestled with the Subtuagent, wrestled with the Hebrew, I don't know. This is a nut that I have not been able to say that one side has compelled me to join it, and the other side hasn't.
And so, I've kind of looked at this, and looked at this, and looked at this, and said, I don't know. I just think it's important that as we're studying this out, that you recognize that there is a raging debate on how to understand what is being revealed here in this passage as it relates to the man of lawlessness, and there are battle lines set up.
One group saying, it absolutely has to be this thing, and the other group saying, no, it may or may not be that thing at all. And all I can say is, I legitimately don't know. I, this one has me stumped.
All right, now, Neah has her hand up. Let's see if we can get Neah to, I'm gonna ask to unmute you, Neah. You have your hand up. Make sure your audio is on your laptop.
I have my audio on my laptop on.
Can you guys hear Neah?
I can't hear her.
Check out what your speaker settings are in there.
All right, hang on. Checking my speaker settings, hold on. Oh, wait, I have to unmute myself.
Hold on.
All right, Neah, go ahead and say something. MacBook Pro speakers.
No, I can't hear her. Nope, I don't hear Neah.
Can anyone else, you know, I have no idea if anyone else can hear. Neah.
That's the problem?
That's the problem. Yeah, now try it.
All right, try it now, Neah. Try it now. There we go. Hold on. Sounds like we're in an evil fun house, and it's not fun. Hold on, hold on. We haven't considered this inevitability. We're still working out how the settings are going to,.
All right, Neah, try it now.
I can't hear you now.
Yay, we can hear you. She said she can't hear us now. I have to turn my mic on on. Zoom?
All right.
All right, Neah, can you hear me?
Yes. All right.
Can you hear me?
Yes, and we're not getting the fun house echo.
So, while you were talking about the man of lawlessness and all of that, I remember that a pastor some years ago, and he's a very, very sound and very good pastor. He said that some people have said that it's possible that the man of lawlessness might be someone like pretending to be Judas resurrected or something like that.
I have no biblical text to help me on that one, okay.
Yeah, I know, but it's something that always stuck in my head, and I was like, maybe, because of that passage that called Judas the son of perdition.
Okay, yeah.
And then, I think it's Paul that also calls, or is it John, that also calls the Antichrist the son of perdition. So, some people say that it would be someone like, well, like Judas or something like that, or maybe pretending to be Judas resurrected or something like that.
Hadn't really, I don't think that would be the implications, personally. I think the implications more are along the line of that, you know, just as that Judas betrayed Christ and was opposed to him, that you can say that the Antichrist is opposed to Christ.
But to kind of speculate and say that that means that when he shows up, he's gonna claim to be Judas resurrected, I don't have any other text that would kind of hint at that. So, I think that's going too far into the realm of speculation, and I would need clearer passages to be able to justify that kind of a teaching.
Okay, thank you.
All right, you're welcome. Okay, hold on. All right, I just turned my mic off over here. Turn my speakers off. There we go. Okay, speakers are off, and yes, Don.
Yes, uh-huh, I'm bound to it.
So, the question was, by the way, those of you online, if you didn't hear it, the Lutheran confessions legitimately say that the office of the papacy is the office of Antichrist. How bound am I to it?
100 bound, and the idea then is that we're not saying that a particular pope is the Antichrist, but that the office that the Roman church has set up, in particular, is the office of Antichrist, specifically due to the fact that it exalts itself above Christ within his own church.
And so, that's the sense in which we're talking, and we'll note that the scriptures are very clear when you rightly handle them, that the man of lawlessness emerges as a Christian churchman. That's, you know, that he's not, I'm not looking for the prime minister of Turkey to be the Antichrist, because last time I checked, he's not a Christian, okay?
The person, so the idea here is that the person who emerges as the Antichrist is primarily religious, then political. That's kind of how that works, okay? So, primary religious, then political, and then, you know, that would rule out Nancy Reagan and people like that, as well.
Just saying, you know, because, again, the question was asked from you back in the 80s, if that was the case. So, yeah, you get the idea. Now, hang on a second here, I'm gonna do that. All right, now, let's, let me, last week I touched on it briefly.
I think, for our sake, it might be a good idea to spend a little bit of time in the excursus written by Dr. Steinman as it relates to how the Lutheran confessions deal with the Antichrist itself. We talked about the functions of Antichrist last week, kind of talking about four, and that's in Steinman's essay, in his commentary, that I think is super helpful, but, okay, but that being the case, let me find it real quick here, because there's an actual excursus in Lutheran confessions regarding the Antichrist.
I think this is helpful, and you'll note, as we've been working our way through this tough section, I have been heavily relying on this commentary because kind of remembering where things are and what's going on, it's a little challenging.
So, in this regard, then, kind of building off of Don's question, here's what this commentary writes regarding the Antichrist. So, the Antichrist is depicted in Daniel as the little horn in chapter seven, as the evil eschatological king of the north in 11, 36 through 45.
The Antichrist is foreshadowed by Antiochus the fourth, and he's also known as Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who fiercely persecuted the Jewish people in the second century B .C. Antiochus the fourth is depicted as the little horn in Daniel eight, and as the king of the north in 11, 21 through 35.
He has some similarities to the Antichrist, but also significant differences, and so he should not be equated or confused with the Antichrist. In Daniel seven, the prophet sees the Antichrist as the little horn on the fourth beast.
This horn speaks great things against the most high, wages war against the saints, and wears them out and seeks to change times and law, that is, God's word and the means of grace in the divine worship.
At the coming of the son of man, the second advent of Christ, this beast with its horn suffers a fiery judgment and is destroyed forever. This visionary depiction of the little horn is in harmony with the New Testament passages about the Antichrist.
He was present already in the apostolic age, and note here we're not talking about a particular person. You can almost say like the spirit of Antichrist was already present at the time of the apostolic age.
The apostle John writes about him, that Antichrist is coming and already there are Antichrists, right? So that being the case, hang on a second here, this visionary depiction of the little horn is in harmony, we saw that.
He was present already in the apostolic age and remains active throughout the church age, and intensifies his warfare against the church as the time of the end draws near and is then destroyed at the return of Christ.
So you'll note that the life of a Christian is constant, nonstop warfare. Lovely stuff, by the way, if you're tired, that's kind of the whole point, right? Then we get worn out. So in 1136 through 45, the divine man, that's Christ, describes Daniel the Antichrist, describes to Daniel the Antichrist as the eschatological king of the north who considers himself to be divine.
He will exalt himself and magnify himself over every god. Similar to the little horn, he will speak wonderful things that are polemical against the god of gods. He will prohibit marriage and not favor desire of women.
So Steinman here, you'll note that he is weighing in on this and he puts cards on the table that he favors the possibility that that phrase is pointing at some, that he has no desire of women. Now, whether that means he's asexual or whatever, women aren't, he's not gonna have a wife.
Let's just put it that way. He's not gonna have a girlfriend, okay? That's kind of how Steinman might put it, okay?
Scripture interpreting scripture.
Am I guessing correctly that the other side of this interpretive debate looks at the curse of women desiring to rule over men and then, and also in Ephesians 5, how Christ loves the church and how women husbands are to focus on, and that he is the antithesis of Christ's example in love for the church and the antithesis of how a husband is to care for, revere, and consider his wife?
You're not wrong. I would note, and that's actually part of the discussion we had last week, is that when you look at what the antichrist does, Paul prophesying that marriage itself would be outlawed, okay, the idea, the question that came up last week, why?
Why would he outlaw marriage? Answer, because marriage is the beautiful depiction of the mystery of God's love for the church, Christ's love for his bride, the church, and so every single healthy Christian marriage upsets the devil because it reminds him of Jesus and his love for his bride, the church, okay?
So that is absolutely a part of this, and I would note then that if you were to kind of think of it in kind of a wider term, the current growing threat to Christianity in the ideology of the alphabet community and their insistence that you not only affirm them but that you celebrate them and that you also participate in their sin with them, because that's kind of, that's the push where this is going, and you're the heretic if you don't buy into their ideology that where this is going is exactly what Scripture prophesies, the actual outlawing of marriage as we know it.
But when I was first, you've got kind of the setup phrase, he does not, then you've got these two clauses, he does not submit to God and he doesn't listen to women, and then they tie them back together.
The final phrase, but he exalts himself. It doesn't mean there's no gods,.
Doesn't mean there's no women, it means he's not listening,.
Nobody but him, I'm the boss, nobody, you know.
Yes, and that's the other part of this. When you look at the Hebrew phrase itself, this is why the modern translations depart from the subduagent as well as the King James, is because they see that setup clause and then how the other clauses work as pointing to something different, that's the argument.
But Steinman also notes here that there's something to be said about how this is phrased in the Hebrew that it leaves it open to that the subduagent may have understood it better than we do, right?
Yeah.
And when did it change?
The church early on used the same interpretation as the subduagent, but you've got to remember the way we talk about homosexuality today, that's not how the ancient church talked about it. Okay, they had a different way of speaking and when we talk about homosexuality, we are translating our understanding over their language.
Okay, so that's something we have to be careful about, but it's absolutely true. But coming back here then, so looking at the list of things, he will prohibit marriage and not favor desire of women. Again, what that means, I don't know, Marilyn, yeah.
Yes, that is another possibility in this. So you'll note that the Roman priesthood, they are forbidden to be married and the Roman pontiffs for a long, long time have also been celibate. So that is another, and you'll note that the Lutheran reformers have understood it in light of the celibacy of the priesthood, okay?
So the thing is, the phrase here is expansive and vague enough that it could have some greater meaning to it and that's the big question right now is the best way I can put it. And having read all the sides, wow, are some sides really dogmatic about their interpretation.
But that does kind of whistle really rapidly past Matthew 19 in all fairness.
I agree, the Cluniac reforms of 950, you know, of the 950s were absolutely too far when they mandated celibacy. But to say that the Catholic Church's reverence for celibacy is based on antichrist as opposed to the church's reverence.
That would be too far, right?
Yeah, too far. And you'll note that very early on in Christian history, there was an absolute pious reverence for celibacy. And it was not based upon, let's say, the mandatory regulations of what came in the 950s.
Instead, there were a lot of people who piously valued it, especially in light of the turmoils of what was going on in the Roman church, in the Roman Empire in the early times. There were many people, many young kids who, they foregoed marriage for the purpose of serving in the church because they figured the time was short.
That was a lot of their impetus. And the church legitimately held those people in high honor and esteem. And that wasn't something that was sinful or weird, but it kind of goes, it points to the fact that Rome has this tendency to dogmatize things that were good and pious and then turn them into something that binds people's consciences.
You know, so when you do the study, why is it that Roman Catholics during Lent on Fridays only eat fish? Answer, because when you look at the church's practices very early on and their view of Leviathan, Leviathan was the serpentine, was the dragon of the seas that represented the chaos of the world and things like this and demonic influences of chaos.
And so they thought it would be a great idea during Lent, let's have on Fridays, let's have fish to celebrate Christ's victory over Leviathan. It's a simple thing, right? A pious thing. But now if you don't have fish on Friday, you're going to hell, okay?
If you eat a cheeseburger on a Friday and you're a Roman Catholic, that's not a venial sin, it's a mortal sin.
Are they trying to tell me not to have a cow?
Save the past jokes for the past.
No, I had to throw it back at him. He tortures us.
That was pretty good. That was, I gotta admit, that was pretty, I'm somewhat jealous of that one.
The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.
That's right, that's right.
It was spiked into the ground.
All right, let's come back here. So coming back to the list of things that we know scripture's revealing regarding the Antichrist. Instead of honoring God in scriptural truth, he will value temporal power, honor a god of fortresses, whatever that means, and he will carry out this quest for temporal power by means of great wealth, with gold, silver, precious stones, and highly prized things, and those who obey him, he will give great honor and make them rule over many.
He will set himself up in the church, represented by the beautiful land and the beautiful holy mountain, yet at the return of Christ, he will come to his end and there will be no one to help him. The history of interpretation of these and other Old Testament texts about the Antichrist begins in the intertestamental period.
Already in the medieval period, some Roman Catholics interpreted the Antichrist as the papacy. That's legitimately true. The Lutherans did not invent that. That is not a polemic that we came up with, okay?
So the Lutheran confessors agree with this view, which was over 300 years old by the time of the Reformation. So the Lutheran confessions speak several times that the Antichrist, with the most of the references clustered in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the small called articles, and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.
The confessions include references and connections to Daniel's prophecy. We might have expected that they would refer to the depiction of the Antichrist as the little horn in 7, 8, 11, 20 through 21, 24 through 25, but they include no citations of the little horn.
This may be due to Luther's explanation of the little horn as Muhammad or the Turk. The confessions instead focus on 11, 36 through 45 and refer specifically to 11, 36 through 39. And in 11, 38, they probably also allude to 11, 38, 43.
However, most biblical interpreters have understood that there is a close connection between the little horn in Daniel 7 and the king described in 11, 36 through 45. The confessors may have been aware of that connection even though they did not explicitly cite the little horn.
Another likely reason why the confessions concentrate on Daniel 11 rather than Daniel 7 is that the little horn actively is described in more general terms in Daniel 7, whereas in 11, it is much more specific in its description of the eschatological king.
The Lutheran confessions recognize that the New Testament speaks of one particular man of lawlessness. This is true, okay? Who opposes God, whom the confessions often call the Antichrist, and that the New Testament also speaks of multiple Antichrists.
It's both, okay? When, this is one of the things that drives me nuts is that, you know, when I have Lutheran confessional brothers who will pick one or the other. The answer is yes, it's both, okay?
So Nancy Reagan's back on the table.
No, I'm not saying that Nancy Reagan is back on the table. She doesn't qualify, okay? Although she was definitely not, she was not attracted to women.
Sorry.
I just did that to pain you and it worked, okay.
The apology then defines these Antichrists as false teachers, and here's what we gotta note this out. When we talk about Antichrists in the plural, we can include in the mix, then we can specifically talk about specific popes, or we could talk about Kenneth Copeland, or Benny Hinn, or Bill Johnson, people like this of our day.
We can refer to them as Antichrist. However, that in itself does not adequately explain either the confession's use of Daniel 11 or their identification of the Antichrist as the office of the papacy. That's a whole other discussion, by the way, Don.
To understand these, we must first understand what the Confessions view as the primary characteristics of the Antichrist as set forth in Scripture. These are set forth by Philip Melanchthon in the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.
So the marks of the Antichrist, this is the treatise, paragraphs 39 to 40. The Antichrist promotes false doctrine that conflicts with the gospel of Christ, especially the central article of the true faith, justification for Christ's sake by grace alone through faith alone.
He claims the right to change doctrine established by Christ. So somebody who refuses to abide by the faith once for all delivered to the saints and is changing doctrines, they're doing the work of Antichrist.
Right, okay.
So the question is, okay, that there's a big focus on, especially in the Confessions and our Confessions as it relates to the Roman Catholic Church, and clearly there are Antichrists in evangelicalism, the NAR and stuff like this.
What if they all, as the Beatles once famously sung, come together right now. Over me, right? Anyway, that being the case, what would happen? That would be big Twinkie bad kind of stuff. Yeah, but here's the thing.
So when you kind of read what Revelation then adds to the mix here, because obviously we're studying the Book of Daniel. When you add in the other elements from the Book of Revelation, it legitimately strongly suggests that when the final man of lawlessness shows up, Rome's gonna go for it.
The evangelical NAR is gonna go for it. They're all gonna join together in the worship of this thing, fellow whatever he is. And the weird bit is Islam's gonna go for it too. Okay, that's the weird bit, is that the only people who will be able to and who will stand against him are those who know the Bible and actually believe it correctly.
Everybody else, it's like the whole world's gonna come together. Muslims and Buddhists and people from India are no longer gonna fight about religion and stuff like that. They're all gonna gather around the campfire and sing, I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. That's what they're gonna do, all right? So, was that 80s or was it 70s? It was 80s?
It was 80s.
60s.
Well, that was a debate as to which decade that was released. I'm showing my age.
The 84th of March.
Yeah, yeah, okay, all right. So, the answer to your question is that yeah, there's a very strong, strong undercurrent in scripture that basically says that when this guy shows up and exalts himself above every other god, that all the world religions are gonna go for it.
Okay, TBN is going to go wall to wall and say, it's Jesus, oh! And all the mascara will start running and it'll just be weird.
It's just on Kurt Cameron.
Yeah, right, just on Kurt Cameron, right. All right, number two, the Antichrist institutes forms of worship that conflict with the gospel.
That's not a big step.
I know, but if you think about it.
It's already happened.
Yeah, this has been happening for a long time. The Antichrist rules in the church. He assumes the supreme right to forgive or retain sins in this life and even claims jurisdiction over the fate of souls after this life.
He is primarily a ruler in the church, although he claims to exercise temporal power as well. And the Antichrist makes himself out to be God by usurping the authority and prerogatives of God himself. He's unwilling to be judged by the church or anyone else and fiercely persecutes any who dissent.
I can think of megachurches right now that fit every single one of these. And I'm not talking about in Rome. I'm talking about in evangelicalism, in the NAR and other places.
Now, next week, I have to end here. Next week, we will pick up with this continued discussion on the excursus of the Antichrist in the Lutheran confessions. Because again, I think it's helpful here so that you guys don't end up watching the omen on television and think that Damien is the guy.
That's just this weird stuff. But anyway, all right. Peace to you, brothers and sisters. Lord willing, we'll see you guys next time.