We turn now to Paul. Someone had written a letter to the Thessalonian church to the effect that the Day of the Lord was then present, forging Paul's name to the manuscript (2 Thessalonians 2:2). The best Greek texts read: "the Day of the Lord," not "the Day of Christ," as found in the Authorized Version. There is a distinction between the two days.
The Day of the Lord is a technical term used by the Old Testament prophets to designate a certain period with regard to Israel. The expression is used in Lamentations 2:22; Isaiah 2:12; 13:6; 9; 34:8; Jeremiah 46:10; Ezekiel 13:5; 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:1; 3:14; Amos 5:18; Obadiah 15; Zephaniah 1:7; 8, 18; 2:2-3; Zechariah 14:1; and Malachi 4:5. From a study of these passages, the following should be clear: 1) this day has to do with the nation of Israel, not the Church; 2) the period is still future; 3) the period is one of Judgment upon Israel; 4) it refers to the period of the Great Tribulation, since events that are predicted by the prophets are those that John predicts in the Revelation; and 5) it is the time of the coming of Messiah in judgment.
The day of Christ (Philipppians 1:6, 10) is a New Testament expression, used of the Church and the coming of the Lord Jesus for the Church. The Thessalonian saints thought they had missed the Rapture, and that the persecutions they were enduring were part of the Great Tribulation. Paul writes to assure them that such was not the case. He bases his proof upon the fact that a "falling away" must take place before the Great Tribulation starts.
The phrase "a falling away" is the Authorized Version rendering of apostasia. The verbal form aphistamia from which it comes is present middle of aphistemi, the root verb, which we will study. The simple verb histemi in its intransitive sense means "to stand," the prefixed preposition means "off, away from," and the compound verb, "to stand off from." The word does not mean "to fall." The Greeks had a word for that, pipto: Aphhistemi, in its various uses, is reported by Thayer as follows: "to make stand off, cause to withdraw, to stand off, stand aloof, to desert, to withdraw from one"; in contexts where a defection from the faith is in view, it means "to fall away, become faithless." The verb is rendered by the translators of the Authorized Version "to depart," in Luke 2:32; 4:13; 13:27; Acts 12:10; 15:38; 19:9; 22:29; 2 Corinthians 12:8; 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 2:19; Hebrews 3:12. In Luke 8:13 it is translated "fall away," in Acts 5:37, "drew away," and in Acts 5:38, "refrain." Had they translated the word here instead of interpreting it, they would have rendered it by the word "departure." The reader will observe that the predominant translation of the verbal from is "to depart," also, that where it is translated "fall way," the context adds the idea of "falling away" to the verb, which action is still a departure.
E. Schuyler English, to whom this present writer is deeply indebted for calling his attention to the word "departure" as the correct rendering of apostasia in this context; also informs us that the following translators understood the Greek work to mean "a departure" in this context: Tyndale (1534), Coverdale (1535), the Geneva Bible (1537), Cranmer (1539), and Beza (1565), and so used it in their translations. Apostasia is used once more in the New Testament and is translated "to forsake" (A.V.), signifying a departure. The neuter noun apostasion in Matthew 5:31; 19:7; and Mark 10:4 is rendered by the Authorized Version, "divorcement," which word also signifies a departure, here, from antecedent relations.
The writer is well aware of the fact that apostasia was used at times both in classical and koine Greek in the sense of a defection, a revolt in a religious sense, a rebellion against God, and of the act of apostasy. Liddell and Scott in their classical lexicon give the above as the first definition of the word. Moulton and Milligan quote a papyrus fragment where the word means "a rebel." But these are acquired meanings of the word gotten from the context in which it is used, not the original, basic, literal meaning, and should not be imposed upon the word when the context does not qualify the word by these meanings, as in the case of our Thessalonians passage, where the context in which apostasia is embedded does not refer to a defection from the truth, but to the Rapture of the Church. The fact that our word "apostasy" means a defection from the truth is entirely beside the point since we do not interpret Scripture upon the basis of a transliterated word to which a certain meaning has been given, but upon the basis of what the Greek work meant to the first century reader. The fact that Paul in 1 Timothy 4:1 uses this verb in the words "some shall depart from the faith" indicated that the word itself has no such connotation. The translators of the Authorized Version did not translate the word, but offered their interpret of it in its context.
With the translation of the word before us, the next step is to ascertain from the context that to which this departure refers. We note the presence of the Greek definite article before apostasia, of which the translation takes no notice. A Greek word is definite in itself, and when the article is used the exegete must pay particular attention to it. "The basal function of the article is to point out individual identity. It does more than mark 'the object as definitely conceived,' for a substantive in Greek is definite without the article" (Dana and Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 137). This departure, whatever it is, is a particular one, one differentiated from all others. Another function of the article is "to denote previous reference. Here the article points out an object the identity of which is defined by some previous reference made to it in the context" (ibid., p. 141). In 2 Thessalonians 2:1 Paul has just spoken about the coming Lord. This coming is defined by the words "our gathering together unto him," not as the Second Advent, but as the Rapture. The Greek word rendered "and" and the translated "even," and the translation reads, "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, even our gathering together unto him."
The article before apostasia defines that word by pointing to "the gathering together unto him" as that departure. This article determines the context that defines apostasia. The translators took the context of verses 10 - 12 as deciding the significance of the word, but they went too far afield, not grasping the function of the definite article preceding apostasia, which points back to the Rapture of verse 2, not ahead to the refusal to believe the truth of verses 10 - 12. The article is all-important here, as in many instances of its use in the Greek New Testament. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul had given these saints teaching on the Rapture, and the Greek article here points to that which was well known to both the reader and the writer, which is another use of the Greek definite article. Thus, the departure of the Church from earth to heaven must precede the Great Tribulation period.
And we have answered our questions again. It might be added that the reason Paul merely speaks of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture rather than a Pre-70th Week Rapture is that he is addressing himself to the needs of the Thessalonian saints and is not explaining the particular place of the Rapture in the prophetic program of God.
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