WHO IS THE ANTICHRIST? (PART I)

The concept of the Antichrist has been a major discussion point since the times of the early church. For people like me, it is not surprising that the word Antichrist does not appear even once in the whole Bible except the 1st and 2nd letters of John the Revelator. Even in the most apocalyptic books like Daniel and Revelation, the word does not appear anywhere. The word Antichrist appears only five times in the entire Bible.

• 1 John 2:18-22 – He is Antichrist that denies Jesus is Christ.
• 1 John 4:1-3 – Test the Spirits. Every spirit that denies that Jesus came in the flesh is the spirit of Antichrist.
• 2 John 1-11 – Those that deny Jesus came in the flesh are a deceiver and Antichrist.

While the theme of the letter of John specifically addresses the Theology of Gnosticism (those who essentially taught the body was evil and therefore Jesus could have dressed it), he (John) also addresses the bigger picture of this entire concept of the Antichrist.

To John, there is an Antichrist who is about to officially reveal himself, but also those (Gnosticists) carrying on his cause are Antichrists Children as well. it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. (1John 2:18 RSV).

These false teachers were once Christians (1John 2:19) who observed how evil the body (flesh) was and how holy and pure God was, and they concluded that the Body was evil. In fact, they were right in what they believed (for sure the body is evil) but they were wrong in what they denied (God became that flesh and dwelt among us John 1:1-3, 14).

The substantial teaching of these heretics then was that Jesus of Nazareth was either not in the body and he was squarely a spirit, or he wasn’t at all the CHRIST (the anointed one). Apostle John called them Antichrists, not because these individuals were antichrists in nature but they were antichrists in nurture (belief system).

Now, an Antichrist is not one by nurture, these heretics were not the antichrist but they represented the antichrist teachings. You can simply understand it by this: a sinner is not Satan but one who exercises satanic ideologies.

This brings me to the true definition of the term; ‘ANTICHRIST’. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary;

“an Antichrist is one who denies or opposes Christ; specifically: a great antagonist expected to fill the world with wickedness but to be conquered forever by Christ at his second coming”

Since our vernacular New Testament Bibles are translations of the Greek, we need to dig into the Greek and find out what it (Greek) means in contrast to our translations.

The word “antichrist” is a Greek translation of the word: αντίxριστός which is a combination of a preposition: αντί (anti) and a noun Χριστός (Kristos). In a sense then, ‘Antichrist’ in Greek is not a compound word but what we call a ‘prepositional Phrase’.

A prepositional Phrase is where by, a preposition is attached to a word and it looks like one word. In each prepositional phrase, there is an object of the preposition. For instance, if I said: ‘he was sitting on the table’, the preposition is ‘on’ but the object of that preposition is ‘the table’. So in the prepositional phrase ‘Antichrist’, the preposition is ‘anti’ and the object in target is ‘Christ’.

‘Anti’ is a preposition or in simpler terms, a prefix on a word that does not merely change its meaning but one that practically and conceptually initiates a different meaning altogether that is absolutely opposed to the original concept.  So, an antichrist is one who is “against” Christ or an absolute “opposite of who Christ is” It is from this Greek preposition ‘anti’ that we get our modern words like: anticlimax, antithesis, antisocial, antipathy, antidote, antiseptic, antibiotics, etc.

We all know, for instance, that antibiotics’ are medicines that are in nature not friendly with the infectious bacteria in the body. So if we grammatically understand what the Antichrist is, it becomes easy for us to Theologically understand who the antichrist is. The Greek preposition ‘anti’ communicates that: If you know who Christ is, there is an antichrist.

1. He (the antichrist) is in nature and by all standards not what Christ is and in him (antichrist) is no potential whatsoever to be for Christ or what Christ stands for. An antichrist is not an opposition to Christ on merit (correcting what he-Christ has messed) or for the sake of opposition (checks and balances), but a rather a force that fights to supplant him (Christ) as creator, Lord and savior. (Ephesians 6:12)

Is this all? No it isn’t. There is way too much on this topic than I can mention/write.

Today, there are many religions that have picked the apocalyptic interpretation of the reformers whole sale and built a hypothesis that pins the Pope as an individual, and the Papacy as a system, as the Antichrist.  But when you ask the Catholic Church who the Antichrist is, they point you back to Antiochus Epiphanies as the type of the Antichrist alluded to in all the Jewish apocalypse, both in the book of Daniel and in Revelation.

This controversy has been due to a branch of Theology known as Eschatology (study of last things). Scholars developed four Christian eschatological interpretive models of the books of Revelation and Daniel (the rest are modifications of these) Allow me to briefly mention each here and its major criticism:

1. The Historicism Model: In this understanding of the books of Daniel and Revelation, the events described therein refer to actual events from the beginning of the church until the time of the interpreter. Thus, the reformers could say that the Roman papacy was the Antichrist, entrenched in its false doctrine and deception. The historicists will calculate dates and apply excessive symbolism where everything means something. George Eldon Ladd, in his book ‘A Theology of the New Testament’ says: “Such an interpretive framework for the book leads to endless speculation and subjectivity in its interpretation. It is simply very difficult to arrive at a consensus in the identification of referents in history for the symbols in the text”. This is how we have ended up with every individual Pope being the Antichrist and every American President being the Beast.
2. The Preterist Model: Majors in the English language will tell you that: the preterite is the past tense. Therefore, under the preterist view, Revelation is not about a futuristic fulfillment, but about historical, past events (with the exception of Jesus’ final return in Revelation 21-22). So the Preterist school of thought holds that the events of Revelation were fulfilled in the first century. This is what the Catholic Church is comfortable with and that is how it got stuck with Antiochus Epiphanes response. According to Alan Johnson (Revelation in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary): “the system first appeared in connection with a Spanish Jesuit named Alcasar (ca. 1614) who initially developed some of its particulars. It is held by a great number of scholars today, including those from a more liberal perspective.” Greg Herrick says: “The benefit of this view is that it interprets the book in its primary historical setting first. This is to be commended and maintained. But, one of the most significant problems with the view however, is that none of what was supposed to happen, happened. Rome was not overthrown by God and the saints certainly did not share in any such victory.” We cannot assume that God is not involved in the affairs of this world and that he has said nothing about the details as this school of thought wants us to believe.
3. The Futuristic Model: This school of thought is emphatic that all the events alluded to in the book of Daniel and illustrated in the book of Revelation are future events we await to occur and unfold either in our time or in the days to come. While John no doubt uses first century imagery to explain his future predictions, this does not indicate that the entire book should be seen as fulfilled in the first century. For instance, John writes, “Just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour” ( 2:18). While many of the images of the Antichrist can be seen throughout history, there is still a future Antichrist that will come at the end of human history. The futurist model holds that apart from the first five chapters of Revelation, the rest from 6-22 are packed with events we await. Problem with this view is that its advocates get stuck when they realize that there is overwhelming evidence that some prophecy in chapters 6-22 has been historically realized. And this is why this school of thought has evolved to develop another school known as the moderate futurist view. This edits out what has been fulfilled and sticks to what, in their view, has not.
4. The Idealist Model: Scholars in this school of thought say: the book of Revelation should be taken as a purely symbolic explanation of our battle between good and evil. Osborne (Osborne, Grant. Revelation. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) explains, “The seals, trumpets, and bowls depict God’s judgments on sinners at all times, and the beast refers to all the anti-Christian empires and rulers in history. Thus the book describes the victory of Christ and his people down through history.” Under this view, we are simply supposed to understand that God will win over the powers of evil, and as believers, we are on the winning side. We may be tortured or killed in the name of Christ, but in the end, Christ will get the last word. According to Herrick: “The primary benefit of this view is that it renders the apocalypse quite understandable at a basic level. It is simply a book that was written to encourage suffering saints in the knowledge that God will someday conquer all evil and make things right”

Am personally closely related to this approach and here is why. In Idealism, all the apocalypse is a product of the then situation of the writers, the dreamers and the witnesses. We have had prophets since the time of Samuel and the prophetic office was functioning with ordinary symbols and language until the exilic and post-exilic times when it took a squarely different shape, form and praxis.

The language of the prophets in the post-wilderness religion and monarchical period, is plain language but the language of the prophets in exile and post-exilic period is encoded in extreme symbols that needed to be decoded and some to be left encrypted (Daniel 12:4, Revelation 22:10).  Now this becomes very uncharacteristic of who God is and quite controversial to the form of revelation that we know God uses.

In fact, we are specifically told in 2 Peter 1:20 “…that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” God’s word does not instruct us to make ridiculous wild guesses, or any guesses for that matter, as to what we think Bible prophecy says or who we think the Antichrist is or might be.

The Jews used this encrypted language in exile and post exile because they had to communicate in a manner that their political heathen oppressors could not decipher. Daniel was in Babylon when he wrote the book, and John the Revelator was at the hostile island of Patmos when he wrote the book both to his kinsmen and the other Christians who cared to know.

Otherwise God keeps no secrets and he has nothing to fear that what he is doing or about to do will be known by anyone, the devil inclusive. God is light and puts everything in light, he has no exclusive reports and neither does he entertain highly classified documents. Amos said: “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7 RSV).

God has been in the business of supplying information ever since the times of Genesis 2:16-17, and he has done this by informing us in the most simplistic way possible. This is why Jesus used many parables in his teachings and all the parables used what we know to tell us we didn’t know.

The problem with the apocalypse, however, is a process of beginning with what we don’t know (speaking beasts and horns) to help us understand what we wish to know. To me this is a mess, courtesy of ignorance. And this why God laments in Hosea 4:6 that: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”.

The Jews believed that God wanted to inform them and them alone, and that is why they invented the apocalyptic encrypted language whose interpretation was exclusive to them. Our generation knows that God wants to inform every living human being and before all are informed of the Gospel truth, there will be no end. The word of God is specific on this issue in Mathew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.”

So, friends, I find no better way to define who the Antichrist is and remain coherent with the entire theology of the bible than using this verse in John 8:44: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

The devil is the Antichrist. Satan is the Antichrist. Let me explain why. John the Revelator, in the book of Revelation chapter 13, rehearsed the content of Daniel chapter 7 in an effort to explain the power of the Antichrist, and here it is:

ANTICHRIST POWER: DANIEL 7	ANTICHRIST POWER: REVELATION 13
Four Beasts from the Sea. vs. 3	Four Beasts in one from the Sea vs. 1, 2
Lion vs. 4	Lion vs. 2
Bear vs. 5	Bear vs. 2
Leopard vs. 6	Leopard vs. 2
Ten Horned Beast vs. 7	Ten Horned Beast vs. 1
Mouth Speaking great things vs. 8	Mouth Speaking great things vs. 5
Makes war with the Saints vs. 21	Makes war with the Saints vs. 7
Power for 3.5 years = 42 Months. vs.25	Power for 3.5 years = 42 Months. vs. 5

Apart from the hyperbolic language that modern prophecy preachers use, and the hysteria in the lives of people today, scripture teaches that the antichrist is Satan himself. Although the only places in scripture the name Antichrist is used are I and II John (1John 2:18, 22, 4:3, 2John 7), the Bible is replete with instruction regarding the reality we call Antichrist. The key passages are Daniel 7, 8, 11; Matthew 24; 2Thessalonians 2; and Revelation 13, 17 and 18.

Throughout these books, Satan is referred to as the antichrist, a beast, a little horn, a false Christ, false prophet, the abomination of desolation, the lawlessness and son of perdition. Many read these chapters in the Bible about the topic of the antichrist and mix-up issues depending on which school of thought they use.

But allow me to tell you that the ANTICHRIST is a BEING that manifests itself in a SYSTEM of operation.

God bless you, I invoke TRUTH, REASON, and FAITH

Am Pr. I.T.WHITE

The Gospel Hawker