(_a_) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word “Satan” means “adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term “devil” signifies “slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the “man of sin” as “he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.” _Job 1:6_—Satan appears among “_the sons of God_”; _Zech. 3:1_—“_Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary_”; _Mat. 13:39_—“_the enemy that sowed them is the devil_”; _1 Pet. 5:8_—“_your adversary the devil._” Satan slanders God to men, in _Gen. 3:1, 4_—“_Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die_”; men to God, in _Job 1:9, 11_—“_Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face_”; _2:4, 5_—“_Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face_”; _Rev. 12:10_—“_the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day._” Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God’s cause with man and man’s cause with God: _John 16:8_—“_he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment_”; _Rom. 8:26_—“_the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered._” Hence Balaam can say: _Num. 23:21_, “_He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel_”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua: “_Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee_” (_Zech. 3:2_). “Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them” (C. H. M.). For the description of the “_man of sin_,” see _2 Thess. 2:3, 4_—“_he that opposeth_”; _cf._ _verse 9_—“_whose coming is according to the working of Satan._” On the “_man of sin_,” see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As in _Daniel 11:36_, the great enemy of the faith, he who “_shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God_”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in _2 Thess. 2:3, 4_ was “the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.” This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.