A defection from the tenets of some religious community. In Ac 21:21 it describes the charge brought against St. Paul by the Jews, viz., that he taught that the Jews should abandon Mosaism. In 2Th 2:3 it describes the defection of Christians which was to accompany the 'man of lawlessness'; i.e. the Antichrist. This expectation is an illustration of what seems to have been a common belief

Though the word 'apostasy' does not occur in the A.V., the Greek word occurs from which the English word is derived. In Ac 21:21 Paul was told that he was accused of teaching the Jews who were among the Gentiles to apostatise from Moses. Paul taught freedom from the law by the death of the Christ and this would appear to a strict Jew as apostasy. The same word is used in 2Th 2:3, where it is taught that the day of the Lord could not come until there came 'the apostasy,' or the falling from Christianity in connection with the manifestation of the man of sin. See ANTICHRIST.

Though the general apostasy there spoken of cannot come till after the saints are taken to heaven, yet there may be, as there has been, individual falling away. See, for instance, Heb 3:12; 10:26,28, and the epistle of Jude. There are solemn warnings also that show that such apostasy will be more and more general as the close of the present dispensation approaches. 1Ti 4:1-3. Now a falling away necessarily implies a position which can be fallen from, a profession has been made which has been deliberately given up. This is, as scripture says, like the dog returning to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire. It is not a Christian falling into some sin, from which grace can recover him; but a definite relinquishing of Christianity. Scripture holds out no hope in a case of deliberate apostasy, though nothing is too hard for the Lord.

APOSTASY, a deserting or abandoning of the true religion. The word is borrowed from the Latin apostatare, or apostare, to despise or violate any thing. Hence apostatare leges anciently signified to transgress the laws. The Latin apostatare, again, comes from ???, from, and ??????, I stand. Among the Romanists, apostasy only signifies the forsaking of a religious order, whereof a man had made profession, without a lawful dispensation. The ancients distinguished three kinds of apostasy: the first, a supererogatione, is committed by a priest, or religious, who abandons his profession, and returns to his lay state; the second, a mandatis Dei, by a person of any condition, who abandons the commands of God, though he retains his faith; the third, a fide, by him who not only abandons his works, but also the faith. There is this difference between an apostate and a heretic; that the latter only abandons a part of the faith, whereas the former renounces the whole. The primitive Christian church distinguished several kinds of apostasy. The first was that of those who relapsed from Christianity into Judaism; the second, that of those who blended Judaism and Christianity together; and the third was that of those who, after having been Christians, voluntarily relapsed into Paganism.