You know. it amazes me that you have not seen the correlation between your quote mines yet. There are two types of beliefs within these quotes. All quotes coming after the reformation refer directly to the papacy and the Roman church while all quotes coming from before the reformation refer to the secular Roman empire which fell in the west in 476 ad. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Oigen, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others refer to the secular Roman empire not to the church of Rome. Chrysostom even refers to Nero. Gill, Henry, Wesley, and Barnes wrote during the post-reformation years and equated the secular Roman empire to the church of Rome. This only reveal their bias toward the church of Rome which is understandable given the hatred between the protestants and catholics during those years.
You are using the bias of a generation to attempt to prove an unprovable point. You are encapsulating your "proof" to a certain period and ignoring what you don't agree with. Your research is faulty and incomplete.
The research is quite complete if you will please re-read what was presented... about who the "let" is, not who the AntiChristos is. There is a clear difference, please let us not confound the two...
Early stated basically, "Pagan Rome [4th Iron Kingdom] was the "let" [hindrance] to the coming of Anti-Christ...":
http://www.christianforums.com/t7766317-2/#post63948599
Reformers stated basically, "Pagan Rome [4th Iron Kingdom] was the "let" [hindrance] to the coming of Anti-Christ, even as those before us clearly stated...":
http://www.christianforums.com/t7766317-6/#post63955185
You will find that the Early then diverge widely on who the Anti-Christ was to be after Pagan Rome colapsed/fragmented... but you will find absolute unanimity upon the point in the Reformers [Papal Rome is the AntiChrist, and numerous may be cited for it], having the eyes of present [then] understanding and hindsight of past events, where as the early had not yet come to the point, but yet looked for Pagan Romes demise in the future...
...hence Jesus words were fulfilled, "Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am [he]." John 13:19, see also John 14:29, and you may also see OT passages Isaiah 46:9-10.
For the Early, the "let" [Pagan Rome] was still in place. For the Reformers, the "let" [Pagan Rome] was long since removed...
...the study is quite accurate in detailing who the "let" was - Pagan Rome. This is historically proven. The voices of each are again in total harmony.
But you are yet to defend your definition of apostasy....
Hello Brother Hentenza,
Let us look at this word "apostasia" from the Bible itself:
The word uses in
2 Thessalonians 2:3, "falling away" is the Greek, αποστασια [apostasia], and is also found in
Acts 21:21, for
"forsake" [Moses, that is the writings/teachings of Moses], "αποστασιαν" [apostasian]. To the Pharisaical Jew, they did not declare Paul to be heathen, but rather that Paul was still claiming to be a Jew, but not in harmony with what Moses wrote. In this instance it did not mean that they believed Paul to suddenly be a gentile/heathen. The word is used the same way in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, where in the "falling away" is not meaning these who were called by the name of Christ [christians] were suddenly casting away the name of Christ, but rather that while they were still claiming to be Christians, that they worshipped in a way that was not actually Christian, but a false/wrong way.
We can find this same example in the time of Moses at the base of the mountain. Those which made the golden calf, did not do it unto a pagan God, but unto the YHVH, as it were a representation of YHVH, for notice - "And he received [them] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said,
These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Exodus 32:4
The Hebrew for "gods" is
'elohiym, and it is made lowercase, since it could not ever be a true representation of the Ever-Living God. Notice Aaron, still a follower of the true YHVH [though in apostacy, even if perhaps vacillating here], says that it was to be a "feast unto the LORD [YHVH]".
And when Aaron saw [it], he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said,
To morrow [is] a feast to the LORD. Exodus 32:5
That is what is meant by Pauls' 'Apostacy', a rebellion wrapped in the cloak of claiming to serve God, a falling away from the Truth and accepting the lie in the place of Truth and proclaiming it as Truth. Claiming to follow the true God, but in practice denying Him. There are many such examples of Israel in their wanderings and throughout their national status that this occurred again and again. The Christians are no different, for we are the branches of the root and stock.
We can even go to the
Septuagint LXX [see confirmed in Thayer's Lexicon], and see the word used there also, for instance:
ὁ θεὸς θεός ἐστιν κύριος καὶ ὁ θεὸς θεὸς κύριος αὐτὸς οἶδεν καὶ Ισραηλ αὐτὸς γνώσεται εἰ ἐν
ἀποστασίᾳ ἐπλημμελήσαμεν ἔναντι τοῦ κυρίου μὴ ῥύσαιτο ἡμᾶς ἐν ταύτῃ
Joshua 22:22
Adam Clarke's translation, "“Let God the Judge cause us to perish this day, if
in principle or practice we have knowingly departed from him.”". Persons such as these can be claiming to still follow the True God, yet in practice/principle have departed from the right way, ie perverting the ways of the Lord. In fact the Samaritans were the descendants of those which claimed to worship the True God [like the woman at the well,
John 4:20], yet not at the Temple, but rather in the north country, and had set up alternate places of worship [supposedly to the True God YHVH] at Bethel and Dan
[1 Kings 12:29; 2 Kings 10:29]. Further examples can be seen in the nations of Edom [chidlrens of Esau], Ammon and Moab [both childrens of Lot], which also claimed to worship the True God, yet had all kinds of pagan practices intermingled... and they even fought agains the Israelites, and would not let them [their distant kin] to travel through their territory into the Promised Land [we see an extension of that relaity, used in prophecy of
Daniel 11, where it tells of the greater endtime events, false protestants, etc doing the same again unto God's people... all three nations sought to war against the Israelites, but they turned on one another in a miniature armageddon... Read
Jeremiah, Ezekiel].
King Solomon is yet another example of such Apostasy. Apostasy leads unto total rejection...
Seek after Korah's [Dathan and Abiram's] rebellion in the time of Moses, claiming to be as Sanctified [set apart by God for Holy purpose] as the Levites and Aaron... and that they too were good enough to serve in the Priestly services...
καὶ πάντα τὰ σκεύη ἃ ἐμίανεν Αχαζ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ
ἀποστασίᾳ αὐτοῦ ἡτοιμάκαμεν καὶ ἡγνίκαμεν ἰδού ἐστιν ἐναντίον τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου κυρίου
2 Chronicles 29:19
Here is what the Baptist John Gill has to say on the 2 Chronicles 29:19 passage,
"2 Chronicles 29:19 Moreover, all the vessels which King Ahaz in his reign did cast away in his transgression,.... Not that he threw them away, being valuable, as made of gold and silver; but, as Kimchi interprets it, he removed them, and converted them to idolatrous uses; or, as the Targum, he defiled or profaned them, and made them abominable by strange idols:
have we prepared and sanctified, and, behold, they are before the altar of the Lord; they had cleaned them, and fitted them for service, and had put them where they were ready for use; though the Targum is,"we have laid them aside, and hid them, and prepared others in their room,''as unfit for divine service; and which is the sense of other Jewish writers (o).
(o) T. Bab. Avodah Zarah, fol. 54. 2." [John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible, LXX, 2 Chronicles 29:19]
Again we see it is through a false system of worship, called syncretism, trying to comingle truth with error and presenting it as truth.
καὶ ἦλθον οἱ παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως οἱ καταναγκάζοντες τὴν
ἀποστασίαν εἰς Μωδεϊν τὴν πόλιν ἵνα θυσιάσωσιν
[Apocrypha, 1 Maccabees 2:15]
Means a "departure", a "leaving", in this use as of leaving/departing a city.
παιδεύσει σε ἡ
ἀποστασία σου καὶ ἡ κακία σου ἐλέγξει σε καὶ γνῶθι καὶ ἰδὲ ὅτι πικρόν σοι τὸ καταλιπεῖν σε ἐμέ λέγει κύριος ὁ θεός σου καὶ οὐκ εὐδόκησα ἐπὶ σοί λέγει κύριος ὁ θεός σου
Jeremiah 2:19
The Geneva Translation renders it thus:
Thy own wickedness shall (e) correct thee, and thy
backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that [it is] an evil [thing] and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear [is] not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts. Jeremiah 2:19
It is generally [though not always] by slow divorces and departures from the right ways of the Lord, slowly backsliding, slowly edging away from God in Spirit and in Truth that one edges closer and closer toward the precipice, and so fall over and into the abyss...
...Judas, was an internal betrayer, a
"son of perdition", who betrayed the Son of Man not with an open dagger, but with an "kiss" of an intimate "friend", and he said, "Hail Rabbi [Master]" [Matthew 26:49]. He still claimed to follow Christ, even though he wanted it his way...