The Antichrist

In this section, we will talk about the Antichrist.

Those people who believe in a rapture also believe that during the time they have been ‘whist off to heaven”, the Antichrist will appear and rule as a dictator of a one-world government. He will be tyrannical, and evil and cause wars, famines, large-scale devastation, destruction and death. When Jesus returns to the earth the antichrist will be defeated and “cast in the lake of fire” (Rev 20:10). But is this literal or allegorical? Well, let’s look at what the Bible says about the Antichrist.

The Bible only mentions the word ‘Antichrist’ in four places in the Gospels, in 1 John and 2 John. The word Antichrist means someone who is against Christ. Therefore, a non-believer, an atheist, or a person from another religion would be considered to be an ‘antichrist’. John, in 1 John 2, warns his listeners/readers that there were many antichrists around at that time, i.e. unbelievers in Jesus and that one antichrist was coming soon. Believers in a rapture/antichrist ‘combo’ often use this passage to claim there is still an antichrist to come.

Many bible scholars put the time of John’s writings to be somewhere between 60AD and 100AD. How logical does it seem to you, the reader, that Johns’s mention of ‘an antichrist still to come’ was referring to a time approximately 1924 years away in the future? John was warning the people about the antichrists who were around at that time. So, what relevance to anyone alive at that moment was an event involving the ‘one antichrist’ almost 2000 years in the future?

Since the time of Jesus, there have been various people who were called ‘The Antichrist.’

In 1517, a devout catholic monk named Martin Luther ‘nailed’ 95 of his theses on the door of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg Germany. The Catholic Church was the predominant ruling religion throughout much of the medieval years and the church had a tremendous amount of power and control over the majority of the population in Europe.

Luther had observed many misuses of power and saw a large amount of corruption in the Catholic church. He believed their model of operation was one of greed and excess, additionally, he was adamantly against their belief that salvation could be purchased. This was contrary to his belief that we are saved only by having faith in Jesus and his finished work on the cross. This caused a massive split in the church as many others agreed with Luther. Their ‘protests’ brought about the ‘Protestant’ movement, which still exists today.

Popes as the Antichrist

Many popes in the Middle Ages called themselves the Vicar of God and they esteemed themselves higher than kings and often saw themselves as being ‘God on Earth.’ There was a lot of indulgences, a lot of graft, and greed. Also, there was a lot of persecution against anyone whose views differed from those of the Catholic Church.

During this time a growing number of Protestants who saw this persecution and corruption in the Catholic Church started to call the pope the Antichrist. Several popes were considered to be the antichrist depending upon how their actions were perceived at the time. Protestants believed that Jesus was the Lord and hence head of his church whereas Catholics were told, by the pope, that he, the pope, was the head of the church.

One of Luther’s main issues with the Pope and the Catholic Church was their belief in a place called ‘Purgatory’. The Catholic Church ‘claimed’ that when a sinner died, if they were ‘really good’ they would go straight to Heaven. If they were ‘really bad’ then they went straight to Hell. However, if they were somewhere ‘in-between’ they went to Purgatory. They still had their ‘sins’ and thus they needed to be ‘cleansed’ or ‘purged’ of them before they were clean enough to enter heaven. Hence, they spent time in Purgatory being ‘cleaned’ and waiting for the day they could enter heaven.

In 1517 Pope Leo X introduced a money-making scheme known as ‘Forgiveness of Sins’ as he needed money to rebuild St Peters Basilica in Rome. The procedure was. for a fee, the bereaved relatives could get a deceased loved one out of purgatory and thus they would be able to enter heaven. The church even had a ’scale’ of fees, whereby a person could pay for their relatives ‘sins’ to be cleansed or ‘part cleansed’ such that they would then be able to go to Heaven. People could even ‘pay upfront’ for the day they died to ensure they went straight to heaven, and thus bypassed having to go to purgatory! This form of greed and misinformation caused the protests against the Catholic Church to grow stronger and more widespread. As a consequence, Protestantism expanded throughout Europe.

As there was so much opposition to the popes, the Catholic Church began to lose some of its power in terms of authority and control. So, they decided that it needed to remedy the situation of the Pope’s being labeled as the ‘Antichrist’. A Jesuit priest by the name of Ignatius Loyola, along with other Jesuit priests, came up with the futurist view of Revelation. This view is that what is described in the book of Revelation was ‘way off’ in the future, hence the antichrist was in the future and therefore the pope could not be the antichrist.

The Jesuits also developed another competing view of Revelation which was that the events described in the book had occurred during the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70AD. They labeled Nero as the antichrist thus the ‘current popes could not be ‘The Antichrist’ They hoped to dispel the Protestant’s claims about the pope being the antichrist by ‘confusing’ the people with alternate views.

Other Antichrists in history

One of the main characteristics of the antichrist is that he’s usually a man who has power and control over a large group of people. He rules ruthlessly and controls the population by fear. If we look at world history, we can find many instances where this type of person was present. The more obvious recent one was Adolf Hitler who was often referred to as the antichrist who was going to lead the world into the apocalypse.

Others such as Roman emperors like Nero and Caligula were called the antichrist. Various Popes such as Leo X and Pope John Paul II; along with some military leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Genghis Khan were also referred to as the Antichrist
Several secular leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates III have also been referred to as the coming ‘Antichrist’.

We still have antichrists in our world

If you recall I mentioned above that John said that there were many antichrists about during his time and one was about to come.

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.(1 John 2:18)

Note that this scripture indicates that the ‘New Antichrist’ arrival is imminent, he is ‘coming’, and we know it is the ‘last hour’. Therefore, it is likely that John was referring to Nero, which would indicate that the Book of Revelation was referring to the ‘fall of Jerusalem’ and the ‘end of the old covenant’.

So, there are still many antichrists around in our world today. Anyone who disbelieves that Jesus is the risen son of God and is the savior of the world can be called ‘an antichrist’.