Question: Matt. 12:43, Who is it that walketh through dry places seeking rest and finding none—the unclean spirit or the man? If it is the man how do we find the spirit coming back to the empty tenement, and, with his companions, making his abode there? J. G.
Answer: It is the unclean spirit of idolatry which having, since the Babylonish captivity, departed from the Jewish nation, for “many days” (Hos. 3:4) still running their course, will at the close of this present period of grace, return in an aggravated form. For the Jews having rejected the Lord Jesus who came in His Father’s name, will receive another who shall come in his own name (John 5:43)—the lawless one whose coming or presence will be according to the working of Satan, with every kind of power and signs and wonders of a lie. The Lord Himself gives the interpretation, of the passage, “Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation” (cf. Psa. 12:7; Matt. 24:34), thus showing “the man” to be representative of the Jews once “possessed,” then delivered, and finally in their last stage of continued unbelief, re-possessed with the spirit of idolatry in its most egregious form—the reception and worship of the false Messiah, the antichrist!