• What Was Nailed to the Cross?
• Hook's Points
• The Physical Made Spiritual
• The Papacy in the Church
• Ceremonies of Baptism
• In Defense of the Apostles' "Power Dispute"
• What I Hear From You

Is Pope John Paul in the Church of Christ? I don't think many (any!) of our congregations would accept him "as is" if he requested to "place membership."

The Reformers generally agreed that the "man of sin" (2 Thes. 2:1f) was/is the papacy. That belief was a part of my earliest indoctrination which I continued to believe and teach most of my career.

The man of sin was to "take his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God." The bodies of individual disciples are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and collectively the church, those saved, is God's temple (1 Cor. 3:16-17). That temple is we in our Restoration congregations, according to what I was taught and what is still taught widely. The temple, we agreed, is the Church of Christ, the universal church, as we thought of ourselves. So, when the man of sin was seated in the temple of God, he was in the Church of Christ (or church of Christ, if you prefer)!

Unwittingly, I had put the popes in the churches of Christ, while strongly denying that he was ever added by the Lord to his church!

The text does not indicate that the man of lawlessness would seat himself in the supposed temple, corrupted temple, or apostate temple. He would be in the real temple, but not among the redeemed ones added by the Lord. That temple was the center of Jewish worship in Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, and it was not the church!

Can there be such a thing as an apostate church? The church is the saved collectively. Does the Lord have an apostate saved group to which he adds persons? An existing group of saved persons may depart from the faith, thus losing their identity with God's assembly, but is the next generation of any apostate group added to the church? If an apostate group perpetuates itself, it is not a church by Scriptural definition even though it is a Christian community. Therefore, historically the papacy could not be in the church.

Now, let me soften my dogmatism a bit. Although I am convinced that the papal system with its hierarchy and dogma are not what Jesus established, I will not usurp Jesus' place in order to judge the sincere efforts of its adherents. He is not ruled by my convictions in dispensing his grace.

So, Pope John Paul has occupied no seat with us. Neither does the man of sin sit in the temple in Jerusalem, for it was destroyed shortly after Paul wrote his epistle. Actually, our reform movement which we call the Church of Christ has not even existed during most of the history of the papacy.

A "falling away" or "rebellion" would develop before the coming of the Lord that the Thessalonians were concerned about. Influenced by general assumptions, I always thought the falling away was to be within the church. However, now I am convinced that it is speaking of the rebellion of the Jews against the Roman rule which brought the destruction of their temple, city, and nation. Later translations use the word "rebellion." This rebellion was in process, though restrained, when Paul wrote the epistle. Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived at the time, tells of the development of the rebellion. He names men who were involved, even the man who set himself up in the Temple in defiance of God and of Roman rule. Through this situation the Lord came in his judgment and vengeance upon his disobedient people. But that is an involved account which we will not pursue at this time.

This nationalistic Jewish zealot, rather than the popes, was the man of sin who desecrated the Jewish temple and instigated a rebellion against Roman rule which brought the downfall of the nation of Israel. []

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