"The Antichrist" Myth
Entry posted by WilliamL
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“The Antichrist” Myth
The Antichrist – a term broadly used throughout the Church to describe a single man who will come to rule the whole world – is a myth based upon an old rumor.
This rumor has its first and only biblical reference in 1 John 1:18 –
1 John 2:18 Little children, it is a last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is a last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us…
John never acknowledges any truth to this “as you have heard” rumor. Quite the contrary, John later provides a significantly different doctrine of antichrist:
1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but the one [i.e. each one: see 2:18 above] denying that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one denying the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either… 4:3 And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the* [spirit] of the antichrist, that you have heard is coming, and now already it is in the world. * The Greek article to = “the” is neuter, agreeing with pneuma/spirit.
So – John clearly defines the term antichrist to be a spiritual belief, being the doctrine of one powerful collective spirit. It is not, nor will be, a single man; rather, this belief had infested, and will infest, “many” spirits and men. The one-man The Antichrist doctrine is never taught by John, and only John uses the word antichrist. Therefore, the one-man The Antichrist doctrine is not biblical.
This is a classic case of the Church being led astray once again by a false doctrine based upon a single biblical verse or phrase. Christians deride Mormons because they have built a major doctrine upon the single phrase from 1 Cor. 15:29 : “…what will they [not, we] do who are baptized for the dead…” But the doctrinal false presumptions about The Antichrist are even more extensive:
The Antichrist is the “coming prince” of Dan. 9:26-27;
who becomes possessed by Satan to become the Son of Perdition of 2 Thes. 2;
who sets himself up as God in a Third Temple (of which templeʼs pre-Millennial construction no scripture testifies);
which he later destroys, along with Jerusalem, before Messiahʼs return;
and he is also the Beast who ascends from the sea and the Abyss;
who is head-wounded unto death;
descends into the Abyss, but is given life again by Satan (where in Hell does that come from?);
who is also, somehow, the “little horn” of Dan. 7 and the Mouth of the Beast of Rev. 13;
…and so on, with a whole list of other labels attributed to one single man.
This whole mythological stew only brings confusion within the Body of Christ. The old “you have heard” rumor has become ʻfact,ʼ and opinion has become unquestioned doctrine. Many of the disagreements between and within the pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib and pre-wrath camps derive from the eating and regurgitation of this Antichrist-doctrine stew. It is an old and rancid stew, full of incompatible ingredients, and potentially toxic to the eater.
To sum up: there is no The (one-man) Antichrist. Rather, there are a number of End Times antichrists, including 1) the Son of Perdition/Lawless One, 2) the Beast, 3) the False Prophet, 4) the Mouth of the Beast = Little Horn, and 5) Gog. Thus there are at minimum five major end times antichrists, without even mentioning the greatest antichrist of them all, Satan. They are all anti/against Christ, according to Johnʼs definition: ones that deny and oppose the exclusivity of Jesus being the only Christ/Messiah of God.
[If you want to understand why the Son of Perdition is AN antichrist but not The Antichrist (there is no such man), nor the Beast, read my blog “The Son of Perdition is a Patsy.”]
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