The Man of Lawlessness

(2Th 2:3, 4) Let no one seduce you in any manner, because it will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction. He is set in opposition and lifts himself up over everyone who is called "god" or an object of reverence, so that he sits down in the temple of The God, publicly showing himself to be a god.

Where he sits

Paul doesn't put the man of lawlessness out in the world. He puts him in the temple of God, and in the Christian scriptures that temple is the congregation. So he rises from within, after an apostasy, and he exercises authority over God's people as if he were speaking for God. Jesus foretold the same thing in his illustration of the wheat and the weeds, sown together in one field, and Paul told the Ephesian elders that "from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things" (Acts 20:30).

His signs

(2Th 2:9, 10) But the lawless one's presence is according to the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and portents and with every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing.

Lying signs are interpretations dressed up as proof. Take historical events, force them into prophecy to produce dates, treat those dates as evidence of divine appointment, and you have a sign that lies. The studies on this site examine one such system in detail: a beast from the abyss that rises in 1918 and again in 1945, a seventh head wounded before it had formed, and an eighth king in power before the seventh. Interpretations that contradict each other can't come from the spirit of truth.

His oldest claim

The first thing Paul warns about in that chapter is being told "that the day of Jehovah is here" (2 Thessalonians 2:2). Announcing Christ's presence too early is the signature move, because it puts people at ease about a day that hasn't arrived, and it seats whoever made the announcement in the place of authority. That's why this site treats 1914 as a false parousia, and the appointment of a faithful and discreet slave on the strength of it as premature.

How it divides people

(1Co 11:19) For there must also be sects among you, that the persons approved may also become manifest among you.

But the revealing of the man of lawlessness isn't the end of God's people. It's how the approved ones become visible. Those who see the lies and hold to the text are being separated from those who defend the structure no matter what, exactly as Paul said would happen.