Is the devil a "man?" The Scriptures refer to Satan, the devil, as "he,"
or "him." Job 2:1; Matt. 12:26; Mrk. 3:26; Luke 11:18; Luke 22:31; and many more verses refer to Satan in the masculine gender. So at least we know that Satan is not female. In John 8:14, The Lord Jesus Christ said that he was the father of the wicked men in Israel, and also the father of lies.

John 8:44 "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

So, if the Bible can say that Satan is the father of certain people, and we understand that it's all metaphoric, is it so difficult to imagine that the Bible can also refer to him as a "man of sin," even though we all know that he is angelic in nature?

In 2 Thes. 2:4, it says that this "man of sin" exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped: so the he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
Now, this so-called Antichrist, as described by dispensational futurists, is supposed to be the handywork of Satan. He is his his protege, his "right-hand man," and so forth. The one thing a subordinate dare not do is upstage his master, if his master is Satan. "Sitting in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God," is something Satan himself tried; I doubt if he would let any of his flunkies get by with it.

It could be that Paul was not telling us what this "man of sin" was going to do in the future, he might have been merely telling us who this "man of sin" really was by describing some of his past history:

Isaiah 14:12-14 "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."

You insist that he is a man, but it is interesting that no less an authority than J.Dwight Pentecost lists one of this Antichrist's names as "Angel of the Bottomless Pit." (Things To Come, p 334). This supposedly human being was locked up in the "bottonless pit," a metaphor for the imprisonment of spiritual beings.

cpmac
www.tribulationhoax.com