One of the problems of reading the Bible in different versions is that it becomes hard to remember a verse exactly. When I used to memorize Bible verses I used the King James version; now I remember a lot of verses in a version that nobody uses.
I remembered a quote from one verse in particular. It goes “… and destroy him by the splendor of his appearing….” It’s part of 2 Thessalonians 2:8. It’s basically the NIV version with a slightly different wording. The ESV goes like this:
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
It took me a while to find this verse, and I didn’t like this rendition. Looking at the Greek, it is indeed possible to translate the last phrase as “destroy him with the splendor of his appearance.”
Obviously the exact wording is not a big deal. But there is something compelling about the notion of the antichrist being destroyed just by the splendor of Jesus when he returns.
I’m reminded of the end of the book Lord of the Flies. The story is degenerating into a hell of savagery; things look as bad as they can be. But it is all changed by the appearance of the English sailors. Suddenly all the savagery is gone — not by force, but by the simple sight of the sailors.
I believe this is the way the return of Christ will affect the world. Every indication from Revelation is that the final “battle” (for example, in Revelation 19) will be literally no contest. The blowing of the last trumpet in chapter 11 is not accompanied by scenes of combat and devastation; the reign of Christ is simply announced as an accomplished fact. The return of Christ will be a lot like awakening from a bad dream.
This world order depends on the fact that people believe in it as it is. There doesn’t seem to be any alternative. But all of the complex mechanisms for enforcing the misery of humanity — economics and politics, culture and tradition, manipulation and religious guilt-trips — all of these and more will simply evaporate before the sheer splendor of the appearance of Christ.