The apostle having brought these two mysteries upon the stage, and shown them to us standing face to face, goes on to trace the parallel between the two. This parallel is distinctly discernible in every stage of their career. The apostle traces it first in their rise; second, in their coming; and third, in their full and completed development. Let us follow the parallelism, step by step and stage by stage.
In their rise, “for the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” It was already in existence, its energies were all astir, but it worked in secret, and was inaudible to the world. It worked as leaven doth in the meal, which keeps silently fermenting in the mass till the whole has been leavened. It worked as the seed does in the soil, which, germinating in the darkness, pierces the clod, bursts into the light, and receiving an accession of strength from the sun and air, shoots up in the stem and at last culminates in flower and fruit.
The mystery of iniquity worked as treason works. The conspirators meet in secret conclave, they concert their plans unknown to the world, they speak in whispers, but their schemes at length ripen, and now they come abroad into the light of day, and proclaim in the house-tops what they had hatched in darkness. So did the “mystery of iniquity” work.
So, too, did the “mystery of godliness” work. Even at this initial stage of the two mysteries we trace a resemblance between them. Let us think how long the Gospel worked before it issued in the incarnation of the Son of God. For ages and for generations Christianity was a hidden mystery. The redemption of men by means of the incarnation of the Son of God was a secret profoundly hidden in the councils of God in eternity, and even after time had begun its course it long remained a secret unknown to the world. Bit by bit this mystery revealed itself. First, the idea of incarnation was dimly made known. In the first promise, mention was made of the “seed of the woman,” and on this obscure intimation was built the hope of a Deliverer, and that hope descended the ages with the race. The idea of expiation was next revealed in the appointment of sacrifice, which also, with the hope which is expressed and sustained, came down the stream of time. Next a complete system of ceremonial worship was instituted, to reveal the coming redemption in the amplitude of its blessings. Still the veil was upon it. It stood before the world in type. There arose an illustrious series of august personages, who were forerunners or types of Christ. They exhibited to the church the offices which her incarnate Saviour was to fill, and the work He was to execute. There stood up an order of prophetical men who prefigured him as the Great Teacher; there stood up an order of sacrificial men who prefigured him as the One Priest. There stood up an order of kingly men who prefigured him as a Monarch, and a Monarch who was to be higher and mightier than any of the monarchs of earth. The Kings of the House of Judah foreshadowed him as sprung of a royal stock, and the heir of a throne which all nations should serve, and before which all kings should bow.
Thus did the “mystery of godliness” work, unfolding and still unfolding itself as the ages passed on –the type growing ever the clearer, and the prophecy ever the fuller – till at last the “mystery” stepped out from behind the veil, and stood before the world, perfected, finished, and fully revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ – “God manifest in the flesh;” and centering in his person, and flowing out from it, through his life and ministry and death, as rays from the sun, were all the glorious doctrines of the Gospel.
In like a manner the "mystery of iniquity" kept travelling, by the same stages, towards the day of its final revelation. It was not the production of one but many ages. The fashion of the world changed: great empires which had filled the earth with their glory and burdened it with their oppression, went down into the grave. Worships arose with their powerful hierarchies and grand ceremonials, and when their day was over passed away, leaving only ruined fanes and deserted altars to tell that they had ever been. But the "mystery of iniquity" as if deathless, like the being which inspired it, refused to succumb to these shocks. It kept on its course, over broken thrones and desecrated altars, ever reaching forth to that high goal where it should show itself to the nations and be the wonder of all that dwell upon the earth.
Silently and stealthily this “mystery” pursued its course. For ages and for generations it too was a hidden mystery. Paul tells us that it was working in his day. This warrants us to say that Antichrist was then born, and was making trial of his infantile powers. The world did not hear his working, but Paul, by the spirit of prophecy did so, and sounded an alarm to the church. The Gnostics and other teachers of error that had gone forth into the world so early as Paul’s day, were Antichrists, and those in especial who propagated the delusion that it was a phantom which the Jews seized, and crucified on Calvary. They seemed to admit the mission of Christ, yet they subverted the great end of his coming by denying his incarnation, and, by consequence, the whole work of redemption. But, though these teachers were anti-Christian, they were not the Antichrist. After them, Paul gave warning there should come one far mightier than they, “the latchet of whose shoes they were not worthy to loose.” They were misgrown and misshapen Antichrists; their system of error was immature, and their power of attack contemptible, compared with that full-grown anti-Christianism which would stand up on after days, and say to the world, “I am Christ,” and under that colour make war upon the true Christ.
Nay, even before the apostle’s day the “mystery of iniquity” has begun to work. From the beginning Satan had made the line of error to run parallel with the line of truth. He had been a close observer of God’s plan from the first, and he made it the model on which to form his own. Never was the Divine plan advanced a stage without Satan making a corresponding advance in his plan, as like to the other as it was possible to make it, in all outward respects, but essentially antagonistic to it in principle and spirit. Satan has been a counterfeit from the beginning. Even in the times of Paganism he never showed himself as an avowed adversary, or waged open war. He nowhere established a system of Atheism. He permitted the great idea of a God to be received in the Pagan world; but he took care to intercept the influence of that great truth in the heart and life by seducing men to the worship of “many gods,” and these gods in man’s own likeness. He set up altar against altar, priesthood against priesthood, and sacrifice against sacrifice; and he enlarged and beautified his ritual in the heathen world till it seemed no unworthy rival of the divinely instituted ceremonial on Mount Moriah.
Moreover, he sent forth pioneers to keep alive expectation in the pagan world of some Great One yet to come. He showed to the world a colossal picture of the Antichrist while yet he was at a distance. For what were the Caesars, king and priest of the Roman world, but types of that more terrible power, temporal and spiritual, that was to centre in the chair of the Popes? That colossal image he kept full in the world’s view, till the “fullness of the time” for Antichrist’s appearance had arrived, and then he withdrew the image, and brought forward the great reality, the “Man of Sin” now come to his full birth, though not as yet to his full stature, and he found for him a seat and throne on the Seven Hills.