The name Antichrist, it is true, does not occur in this prophecy. It is not needed. John had given the name. Paul presents us with his portrait. He says the Antichrist with a power, a truth, an accuracy and a fullness which have left nothing for the eighteen centuries which have since rolled past to supplement, much less to correct or amend. The strokes with which this portrait is drawn are few, but each is a lightning-flash, and every member and feature of the terrible Colossus stands revealed. Paul did not paint this portrait and leave it as a riddle to perplex and baffle future ages. With history in our hands, there is no room for a moment’s doubt about it.
Since Paul wrote, there has been only one system to which this portrait can apply. It applies to it in every particular, as the photograph agrees in every lineament with the living face from which it was taken; but it will agree with no other system that now is or ever was on the earth, even as the photograph will not agree with any countenance but that which stamped itself upon the plate of the artist. So clearly did the spirit of prophecy foresee the coming of Antichrist, and so truthfully did he enable Paul to depict him.
The key of this prophecy is in the seventh verse, “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work!” “The mystery of iniquity!” The phrase is a striking one. It is not simply iniquity, it is the “mystery of iniquity.” Since the time when the first transgression in Eden opened the door for the its entrance, iniquity had never been absent from the earth. History is little else than a sorrowful recital of iniquities. But now a new epoch was to be opened in the career of evil. A hitherto unexampled and unthought-of organization of iniquity was about to appear. The phrase “mystery of iniquity” suggests a secret and terrible conspiracy to sin, amongst beings of various ranks and faculties, and perhaps also of various natures. Not a mere series of isolated acts, but a skillfully-constructed system, the several parts nicely adjusted to one another, and their joint working educing a product of tremendous evil character, surpassing what any former age had witnessed. That “mystery” was as yet undivulged, but it was even now, when Paul wrote, travelling towards the light, and would be revealed in due time.
The Mystery of Iniquity
This is our true standpoint, whence we may look around over the whole passage. When surveyed from this position, Paul’s prophecy will be seen to have an amplitude of meaning and a depth of import as profound as its range is vast. We venture to think that the height and depth of this prophecy have not yet been very accurately measured, or its meaning fully fathomed.What is the “mystery of iniquity?” The phrase suggests another –the “mystery of godliness.” Paul writing to Timothy says (1 Timothy 2:16): -“Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.” These two phrases stand alone in the Bible. We read but once of the “mystery of godliness,” and but once of the “mystery of iniquity.” They are the two pre-eminently grand mysteries of Revelation. They stand over against each other: the “mystery of iniquity,” fashioning its outward character and semblance upon the “mystery of godliness,” making it its pattern, till at last the “mystery of iniquity” presents itself to the world a perfect imitation and counterfeit of the “mystery of godliness.”
Seeing the two mysteries stand so related to each other, the one mystery interprets the other. We must give the same height and depth, the same length and breath, to the one as to the other, so far as the diverse origin and character of the two will permit.
We ask, then, what is the precise idea of the Holy Spirit in the phrase the “mystery of godliness?” Does the phrase denote simply that system of spiritual truth which God has been developing during the successive ages of the world, which now at last stands fully manifested in the Gospel? No doubt this is part of the “mystery of godliness,” but it is not the whole, nor indeed is it the principle part of it. The “mystery of godliness” is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person. So does the apostle define it. “Without controversy,” says he, “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” It was the gradual development of certain great and supernatural principles and truths through symbols, prophecies and typical persons, till at last they attained their completed development and full manifestation in the person of the Son of God.
The “mystery of iniquity,” which stands over against the “mystery of godliness” as its parallel and counterfeit, must be like it –like it in having its source outside the world, like it in its slow and gradual development, and like it in its final culmination. Of it, too, we must say it is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person. It is the gathering together of all the principles of evil, and the marshalling of them into one organization or host, and their embodiment at last in a representative person or head –Antichrist. He was to be the grand outcome of the apostasy; not its mere ornamental head, but its executive. He was to guide its counsels, inspire its policy, execute its decrees; in short, he was to be the organ through which it terrible powers were to be put forth.
This we take to be the ruling idea in the passage. Just as the “mystery of godliness” is not merely the manifestation of the system of godliness, but the manifestation of God Himself, so the “mystery of iniquity” is not merely the manifestation of the system of iniquity, but the manifestation of the person or author of iniquity. The prophecy brings before us two mysteries, the one the counterfeit in all points of the other. We have an invisible agent, even God, beneath the one; we have an invisible agent, even Satan, beneath the other. We have the one mystery culminating at last in an incarnation, “God manifest in the flesh.” We see the other in like manner culminating in an incarnation, in a loose sense; for all its principles concentrate themselves in and show themselves to the world through its living head on earth, Antichrist. We may go even farther and say that there is as real an incarnation of the spirit and mind of Satan in the “mystery of iniquity,” as there is of the spirit and mind of God in the “mystery of godliness.” And as in Christ God and man meet; so in Antichrist, his counterfeit and rival, the human and the superhuman meet and act together –earth-born man and arch-angel fallen.