To the elders of Ephesus, Paul made this prophecy:
“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
“Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
“Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:29–31; italics added.)
With the wolf metaphor, Paul was probably not describing physical attack or external persecution as much as he was foreseeing the rise of evil forces within the church and their gaining power over the Saints.
2 Thessalonians 2:1–12
In the second Thessalonian letter, Paul taught that the day of Christ’s coming would not take place until the “falling away” and the revelation of the “man of sin,” “the son of perdition.” (2 Thes. 2:3.)
The term “falling away” may give the incorrect impression of a process of drifting or gradually losing ground. The original Greek term, apostasía (from which we have the English word “apostasy”), means something much more drastic. Ancient sources use the term to describe political rebellion and revolution. 5 In verses 3 and 4, Paul asserted that the rebellion would supplant God from his position in the Church. The chief feature of this time of rebellion would be the triumph of the “man of sin … who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thes. 2:3–4.) 6
The “man of sin,” generally equated with Satan, 7 would exalt himself over all that is divine and assume the place of God in the Church. Of historical and theological significance is the fact that in Paul’s prophecy the church structure survives. But God is not at its head, making that church—following the appearance in it of Satan—no longer the church of God.
To say that Satan sits in the place of God in Christianity after the time of the Apostles is not to say that all that is in it is satanic. Indeed, Latter-day Saints should rejoice—as the heavens undoubtedly do—at the great works of righteousness and faith, and the leavening influence on the world, of those whose lives are touched in any degree by Him whose gospel the Saints enjoy in its fulness. Still, “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16) is absent from all but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which the Lord himself has proclaimed to be “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (D&C 1:30). Satan’s goal of hindering many of God’s children from returning to their Father’s glory is thus realized. How appropriate, therefore, is Paul’s description of him sitting in the place of God in the church of the apostasía.
1 Timothy 4:1–3
In Paul’s first letter to Timothy, he prophesied concerning the departure of some of the Saints from the faith:
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” (1 Tim. 4:1.) 8
A few decades after Paul foretold the departure of some from the faith in the “latter times,” Jude wrote of “certain men [who had] crept in unawares” (Jude 1:4), reminding readers that the Apostles had warned earlier that “there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.” (Jude 1:17–19.) Similarly, John expressed to the readers of his first letter the certainty of the fact that they themselves were in “the last time” (eschátê hôra—see 1 Jn. 2:18–19). Clearly John and Jude knew that they were not in the final era of the world, but their words reveal the fact that they knew that they were in the final day of the Christian church, when the night of apostasy was beginning. 9 While many of the signs of apostasy they spoke of apply readily to the “latter days” preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, it appears that their primary focus was on the apostasy in process in the first century A.D.
As we have seen in other prophecies examined so far, the departure from the faith would be a defection from true principles of doctrine. What Paul saw was not an abandonment of religion but a shifting of loyalties from the true faith to a false faith.
2 Timothy 4:3–4
Paul’s final prophecy of the abandonment of true religion is found in the last chapter of 2 Timothy, where he talks about men replacing “sound doctrine” with “fables.” Again, Paul saw a willful rejection of true doctrine and its replacement by doctrines that were untrue but more to the liking of the hearers. Notice that the people involved, although unwilling to put up with correct teachings, desired teachings nonetheless. Having “itching ears”—a desire to hear religion—they would acquire teachers whose doctrines were acceptable to them. [2 Tim. 2:3–4]
2 Peter 2:1–3
Paul was not alone among the Apostles in prophesying doom for early Christianity. In 2 Peter, the chief Apostle foretold the introduction of false teachers into the Church:
“But there were false prophets also among the people [of old], even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily [i.e., secretly] shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
“And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.” (2 Pet. 2:1–2.)
Revelation 13:1–9
In Revelation 13 we read John’s vision of the victory of the forces of Satan over the Saints of the Lord. In his vision, John saw the appearance of a beast, which was an agent of the devil. “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Rev. 13:7, italics added.)
The Prophet Joseph Smith said that this beast was “in the likeness of the kingdoms of the earth.” (JST, Rev. 13:1.) Kingdom, in a scriptural context, can mean any kind of institution, movement, force, or power—religious, political, or otherwise. In viewing John’s beast in the light of its context in Revelation 13 and other prophetic statements concerning the fall of the Church, we can identify it as the institutions or forces that prevailed over (or, more accurately, corrupted) true Christianity, leaving an apostate Christianity in its place.