«　WEEK 1　DAY 3　»

　　2 Thes. 2:8 And then the lawless one will be revealed (whom the Lord Jesus will slay by the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of His coming).

　　Dan. 2:34-35 …A stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the image at its feet of iron and clay and crushed them….And the stone…became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

　　Antichrist will…be the man of sin (2 Thes. 2:3-10)…. Paul's word concerning this in 2 Thessalonians 2 must refer to the book of Daniel. Antichrist will be a lawless person. The entire world today is heading in the direction of lawlessness. Lawlessness is everywhere. Because Antichrist will be the representative of lawlessness and even its totality, the Bible calls him "the lawless one" (2 Thes. 2:8).

　　Because he will be so sinful and lawless, he will become "the son of perdition" (v. 3), who will perish in an extraordinary way. He will be defeated by the Lamb, seized, and thrown alive into the lake of fire. (Life-study of Revelation, p. 495)

　　Europe, in the consummation of the fulfillment of the vision concerning the great human image in Daniel 2, is… more vitally crucial than any other country and race—the crushing of the two feet of the great human image will be the crushing of the entire human government (vv. 34-35)…. The periods of history signified by the head, the breast and the arms, the abdomen and the thighs, and the legs have been fulfilled. But the ten toes have not been fulfilled….When the Lord comes to crush human government, He will crush the feet with the ten toes. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 1, "The World Situation and the Direction of the Lord's Move," pp. 276-277)

　　As the stone,…Christ was not cut out with human hands (as indicated by "without hands" in Daniel 2:34, 45); He was cut by God through His crucifixion and resurrection. Through His crucifixion He was cut by being put to death (Acts 2:23), and in His resurrection He was cut out to be, first, the cornerstone for the building up of the church and the crushing stone to destroy the totality of human government (Acts 2:24; Matt. 21:42,44b).

　　At His appearing as the stone cut out not by human hands, Christ will crush the great image from the toes to the head. This means that He will strike the ten kings with Antichrist. Revelation 19 speaks of the war between Christ and Antichrist. With Christ there will be His newly married bride, composed of the overcomers, and with Antichrist there will be the ten kings with their armies. This war will be a fighting of the earth against the heavens, of man against God. Christ will defeat and destroy Antichrist and the ten kings.

　　According to Daniel 2, this will entail the crushing of the entire human image from the toes to the head. Verses 34 and 35a say, "A stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the image at its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at once, and they became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found." This signifies the complete destruction of all human government from Nimrod to Antichrist. Human government will therefore be terminated by Christ at His appearing as the God-cut stone.

　　The great human image will be replaced with a great mountain, signifying the eternal kingdom of God, which will fill the whole earth (2:35b, 44a). This means that after Christ comes to crush the aggregate of human government, He will usher in the eternal kingdom of God on earth. (Life-study of Daniel, pp. 16-18)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Revelation, msgs. 40-43; CWWL, 1990, vol. 3, "The Up-to-Date Presentation of the God-ordained Way and the Signs concerning the Coming of Christ," ch. 7