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by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Jul 1951

Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3.15 what the house of God is; it is "the pillar and ground of the truth." It is a pillar of witness, and a stay or firm support of the truth. The original word for ground is derived from hedra, a seat, and it conveys the idea of what is settled, firm and steady. In connexion with what is pillar and stay of the truth, we have befitting conduct, which is fully displayed m the great Mystery of godliness, the Lord Himself, who was manifested in the flesh. Behaviour and testimony are ever joined together in God's word.

In contrast to what Paul says about the witness of the house of God to the truth, he says,

"But the Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils (demons), through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies" (1 Timothy 4.1, 2).

At the close of the first century and in the centuries that followed there was a serious falling away from the faith on the part of many, and heresies of one sort and another swept over scenes where the truth once shone, brilliant and clear. Churches of God were swept away in the disasters of those days, and those that stood were hard pressed to maintain the truth of God and the conduct worthy thereof. We cannot fail to see such things coming in the apostolic prophecies, such as in Paul's to the elders of Ephesus (Acts 20.29, 30), that after his departing grievous wolves would gain a place amongst the elders, with all the damaging effect that this would have on the flock; and from amongst the elders who were present with Paul men would arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. The second epistle of Peter, that of Jude, that to the Hebrews, John's epistles, and the book of Revelation, not to speak of Paul's epistles to Timothy, all bear united testimony to the seriousness of the menace of false teaching.

The cause of all this calamitous state of things is traced by Paul to its source, to seducing spirits and to demons. These, the lying minions of the father of lies, insinuated their lies into the minds of men, who in turn, by hypocrisy and lying, spread their lies abroad. Such liars professed a higher spirituality, in that they forbade marriage and the eating of certain meats. They went in for, as they thought, a higher standard of fleshly purity, an elevating of a bodily condition higher than God commanded, which at the same time destroyed the plain commands of God relative to marriage, "Let marriage be had in honour among all" (Hebrews 13. 4), and the fact that the Lord made all meats clean in this' dispensation (see Mark 7.18, 19; Acts 10.14, 15). They were like the Pharisees of an earlier time who made void the word of God by their teaching (Matthew 15. 6); they too claimed a higher standard of godliness than God enjoined in the law.

In our day we are faced with the same kind of thing, not only in the monastic laws of the Roman church, but in the tongues movement, in which after much prayer men profess to reach a higher standard of spiritual life and to be baptized by the Holy Spirit What a deception is this babbling in tongues and all the associated deception of professed faith healing! Those in this system with its professed higher spiritual attainments (alas, only professedly so, as any spiritually minded person perceives who comes into contact with these shallow-minded people) destroy for themselves the plain teaching of 1 Corinthians 12.18, that all believers are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Evidently false prophets abounded in the early days, through whom evil spirits wrought, and these false teachers and evil spirits taught that Christ had not come in the flesh and in consequence was not in the flesh now (see 1 John 4.1-3). Such is the spirit of antichrist, and of such was Mrs. Mary Eddy, and of such are all her followers of the Christian Science movement They too profess higher spiritual attainment than ordinary Christian folk.

Who is Antichrist? he the first or the second beast of Revelation 13? Some have alleged with no clarity of argument, that apostate Jews would not accept a Gentile messiah, and because of such an argument they have pinned up their views upon the second beast being a Jew, and therefore he is the Antichrist. But both the premise of their argument, that apostate Jews would not accept a Gentile messiah, and that the second beast, who is undoubtedly the false prophet of Revelation 16.18 and 19.20, is a Jew, are without warrant and certainly the latter is without scriptural support. The first beast is first of all a composite beast, having ten horns and seven heads, which, we are told in chapter 17, are ten kings and seven kings. This beast bears a resemblance to three of the beasts in Daniel 7.4-6, the first being like a lion (Babylon), the second like a bear (Medo-Persia), the third like a leopard (Greece), having the mouth of a lion, the feet of a bear, and being like a leopard. The fourth beast of Daniel 7. is left undescribed, save that it was great and terrible (Roman). In Revelation 13.8 the beast passes from the last phases of Gentile dominion as a system to a man, even one of the heads of the beast. This head is the person of the beast, who is referred to in Revelation 13.12: "And he (the false prophet) excercised all the authority of the first beast in his sight. And he maketh the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose death-stroke was healed."

This head or king was slain. "I saw one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto death" (verse 3). "Smitten," which is wrongly rendered "wounded" in the A.V., means "slain," see marginal reading of both R.V. and A.V. This king who is smitten and dies goes down to the abyss. "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go unto perdition" (Revelation 17.8). He is called in 2 Thessalonians 2.8, "the man of sin," "the son of perdition." This man with his confederate the false prophet will be cast into the lake of fire, which is unending perdition (Revelation 19.20).

The first beast and the man of sin are identical, for the man of sin sits in the temple of God in Jerusalem, opposing and exalting himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped (2 Thessalonians 2.4). He claims the worship of mankind, and the second beast shall make men worship the first beast (Revelation 13.4, 12), and besides they will make an image of the beast which also shall become an object of worship (Revelation 13.15). Such as worship the beast or his image shall receive a mark on their forehead or on their right hand, and all such as receive this mark are doomed to the torment of fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their torment shall ascend for ever and ever. Those who refuse to worship the beast will be hilled (Revelation 13.15-18; 14.9.12). We have identified the first beast as being the man of sin, but is the first beast the Antichrist? Ezekiel 21.25 may supply the answer to this

"And thou, 0 deadly wounded wicked one, the prince of Israel, whose day is come, in the time of the iniquity of the end."

When is "the time of the iniquity of the end," or as the A.V. puts it-" when iniquity shall have an end"? That is when the Lord shall descend from heaven in flaming fire, when He comes as the Son of Man in judgement. Then He shall take the beast that was slain unto death, whose death-stroke was healed, the deadly wounded one, the prince of Israel, and cast him and the false prophet without death into the lake of fire. If the Antichrist is a Jew by nature (and who can say?) he sits upon a Gentile throne, for the kingdom of the beast or Antichrist is the last form of Gentile government Here ends the times of the Gentiles (Luke 21.24) (the fulness of the Gentiles, in this dispensation of grace, ends with the Lord coming to the air for the Church), which began with Nebuchadnezzar, in the doom which shall overtake the first beast, who is the man of sin, and also the Antichrist.

J. Miller | Jul 1951
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