“Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, regarding the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, ² that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit, or a message, or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. ³ No one is to deceive you in any way! For it will not come unless the APOSTASY WILL HAVE COME FIRST, and the MAN OF LAWLESSNESS is brought to light, the son of destruction, ⁴ who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as if he were a god. ⁵ Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? ⁶ And you know what restrains him now, so that he will be revealed in his time. ⁷ For the MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is removed. ⁸ Then THAT LAWLESS ONE will be disclosed, whom the Lord will eliminate with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; ⁹ that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders, ¹⁰ and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not accept the love of the truth so as to be saved. ¹¹ For this reason God will send upon them a DELUDING INFLUENCE SO THAT THEY WILL BELIEVE WHAT IS FALSE, ¹² in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness”. [2Thes2:1-12]

I have come my own ideas about what and to whom the above prophecy pertains, but because (unlike Paul) the matter has not been revealed to me by God but is my own supposition, and the fact that it would unavoidably cause offence to many, I shall not spell out my interpretation in case I’m wrong. Verse 8 suggests I may be, for it implies the “man of lawlessness” will be living at the time of Christ’s second coming. However, Paul was an apostle, not a prophet, and in terms of timings many commentators would agree that his writings suggest he understood the Parousia to be very imminent – possibly occurring in the lifetime of those to whom he wrote (recent posts refer).

Instead, I will quote from my book a  reference to this matter in the context of the Lord’s own teaching, leaving it with those who have wisdom to reflect upon the matter, and like myself keep an open mind. I also link HERE a related post regarding an Enoch prophecy which, for those who can receive it, may clarify the issue further.

Preaching on the Mount of Olives, Jesus as a Prophet in his own right drew upon the prophecies of Daniel regarding a sacral atrocity which God had revealed to Him would take place at some point before His return. This event is expressed in terms of the Temple, but as a result of the restructured timeline to enable elect from every nation to be brought into the messianic fellowship, certain prophetic promises have been deferred, such as the removal of the wicked from the earth, global peace, security for the Holy Land and universal acknowledgement of Christ’s Kingship. These will instead be fulfilled after the Parousia. What was thwarted or not completed at the first coming would be repeated at the second, such as reconciling certain “parents and children”^{(Mal4:5-6; Lk1:17)} in time for the Lord to come to realize His Kingdom “to order it and establish it with judgement and justice”^Is9:7. That is what John the Baptist believed he was preparing for with respect to Israel. In His sermon Jesus had drawn His hearer’s attention to a prophecy in Daniel^Mt24:15 which foretold that a man and his supporters would come to “profane the sanctuary, abolish the perpetual sacrifice and appoint the appalling abomination”^Dan11:31. This was directly alluding to Antiochus Epiphanes, outlined in more detail in 1Maccabees1.

The deuterocanonical account, missing from Protestant Bibles, sets out how some renegade Jews collaborated with this evil prince, leading many others to abandon the Holy Covenant and live without the Law as Gentiles, effectively bringing about an apostasy. Antiochus and his men desecrated the Temple, removing the altar with its ornamental trimmings and libation vessels, and installed an idle (a statue of Zeus) in its place. But Jesus clearly had something else in mind, for Antiochus’s activities were some two hundred years before Jesus’ re-iteration of the prophecy concerning the abomination (or idol) that He said would in the future cause desolation by being appointed a place that was not intended for it (let the reader understand 😲)^note1 and would supplant the daily sacrifice^{cf. Dan12:11}. 

Jesus implied it related to an occurrence preceding the destruction of the temple but in view of Paul’s new revelation, it would refer to an event in the Church, affirmed by the fact that it is contextually linked with the global distress (tribulations) and the second coming. Jesus’ prophecy came very close to being realized in terms of the Temple in the early 40’s when self-styled deity Emperor Caligula planned to place statues of himself in the sanctuary and dispatched an army under Governor Petronius to implement his plan, but the Jewish people managed to persuade the governor to countermand his Emperor who was assassinated shortly afterwards.

Daniel’s depiction does not align with any sacral issues leading up to the Temple’s destruction in the 70AD siege of Jerusalem; apart from which, dreadful though the Jewish-Roman war was, it was eclipsed as recently as the last century by the Great War and Jewish Holocaust, and certainly did not threaten the continued existence of mankind. So, most commentators recognize that the Daniel 12 prophecy was not fulfilled in AD70. It is said to be a sealed prophecy, the meaning of which would be hidden until the time of the end (v4).

What we are also told in Daniel is this: “From the time of the turning aside of the perpetual sacrifice^note#2 and appointing the desolating abomination”^Dan12:11 up to the time when the “fragmentation of the authority of the holy people is over”^Dan12:7 will be a period of 1290 days (3.5 years or “times”).  Blessed will be those who persevere and attain a further 45 “days”^Dan12:12 up to the resurrection^Dan12:2. Let those with wisdom seek to interpret this in light of Church history, Paul’s teaching concerning the mystery of lawlessness^2Thes2:7, the unveiling of the Lawless One^2Thes2:8 and the popular defection^2Thes2:3 from the Church that must have occurred before the Day of Christ arrives. [Extract from The Little Book of Providence chapter one].

NOTE #1 – Mt24:15; Mk13:14: A unique reinforcement of a warning; usually Jesus would say, “He who has ears let him hear”. The comment is unlikely to have been added by the synoptic gospel writers to draw attention to their own text which itself would be an unparalleled occurrence within a gospel narrative. It was therefore Jesus’ warning, and He would appear to have had future readers of the Scriptures in mind.

NOTE  #2 – Daniel’s “perpetual sacrifice” as understood to be referring to the Holy Eucharist affirmed in Hippolytus’ “Fragment from Commentaries” “On Daniel”  2nd  fragment (para 22)