No end times’ sermon is complete without a reference to that eschatological bogeyman, the antichrist. For those who came in late, the antichrist is evil incarnate. He’s in league with the devil, and he is your worst nightmare. According to some, he will be responsible for the deaths of two out of every three people in these terrifying last days.
Who is he? The antichrist is widely believed to be a charismatic figure who will take control of the one world government before persecuting Christians in a great tribulation.
When I was a kid, everybody knew the antichrist was Henry Kissinger, or maybe it was President Reagan Reagan? No. I remember it changed it was definitely Gorbachev, everyone knew it was Mikhail Gorbachev who had arrived on the world stage. As a Soviet leader he filled many of the criteria on the Antichrist template (including high poll numbers!), though the strange birthmark was considered an an obvious sign that Gorbachev wore the “mark of the beast.” These rumors change often, when one leader didn’t work out we just found another sign. I remember hearing people talk about Obama in 2012 or the Pope.
You do not have to worry though, you won’t miss the signs because we were never short of snake oil salesmen peddling their dispensational poison with books like, “The Late Great Planet Earth,” by Hal Lindsey. And who can forget, “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Happen in 1988,” by former NASA rocket engineer Edgar Whisenant. And the best selling “Left Behind” series of Tim LaHaye that was read and understood as theology although really more a work of sci-fi writing with no real scriptural basis. The list keeps growing because we keep moving from one candidate to another as more and more failed predictions pile up.
At some point you would think people would start to wonder, “Is what Im believing legit and why do I believe it?” Many would say because it’s in the Bible. Is it? Or is it just found in a new way of scripture interpretation called dispensationalism? Do we really know what we believe or do we just believe what some sincere but sincerely wrong person told us? We need to go back to the Bible and see what it really says without additions or “futuristic” complications.
First, we must find a biblical definition of antichrist. The word “antichrist” appears only in John’s epistles (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7). “What is taught in these passages constitutes the whole New Testament doctrine of Antichrist.
John’s description of antichrist is altogether different from the modern image portrayed by the “end time” hysteria peddlers. John says:
"Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour" (I John 2:18).
"Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22).
"And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world" (I John 4:3)
"For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist" (II John 7).
What can we learn from the author and His first century audience to whom he is writing:
According to the Bible there were many antichrists, not just one.
Those antichrists already existed in John's day.
These antichrists were false teachers trying to infiltrate the infant church, not political a dictator, or a singular person.
Anyone that denies that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the son of God, and/or that he came in the flesh can rightly be called “antichrist”.
John’s antichrist doctrine is a theological concept related to an apostasy that was fomenting in his day. John did not have a particular individual in mind but rather individuals who taught that Jesus Christ is not who the Bible says He is:
In one word, “Antichrist” meant for John just denial of what we should call the doctrine, or let us rather say the fact, of the Incarnation. By whatever process it had been brought about, “Christ” had come to denote for John the Divine Nature of our Lord, and so far to be synonymous with “Son of God.” To deny that Jesus is the Christ was not to him therefore merely to deny that he is the Messiah, but to deny that he is the Son of God; and was equivalent therefore to “denying the Father and the Son”—that is to say, in our modern mode of speech, the doctrine—in fact—of the Trinity, which is the implicate of the Incarnation. To deny that Jesus is Christ come—or is the Christ coming—in flesh, was again just to refuse to recognize in Jesus Incarnate God. Whosoever, says John, takes up this attitude toward Jesus is Antichrrist.
From Johns writing, Antichrist is not seen as a person but as a spirit that influenced teachers to come against the doctrine of incarnation. The apostasy about which John wrote was operating in his day. Paul also had to counter a “different gospel” that was “contrary” to what he had preached (Gal. 1:6–9). He had to battle “false brethren” (2:4, 11–21; 3:1–3; 5:1–12).
The early church had to face its fair share of heretical ideas and teachings. Many people prior to Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70 questioned and disputed basic Christian doctrines like the resurrection (2 Tim. 2:18); some even claimed that the resurrection was an impossibility (1 Cor. 15:12). Some “Christians” prohibited marriage (1 Tim. 4:1–3). Others denied the validity of God’s good creation (Col. 2:8, 18–23). The apostles found themselves defending the faith against numerous false teachers and “false apostles” (Rom. 16:17–18; 2 Cor. 11:3–4, 12:15; Phil. 3:18–19; 1 Tim. 1:3–7; 2 Tim. 4:2–5). John here is no different. He is defending the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ not promoting some idea of a future one world leader.
As Chilton writes, ““One of the last letters of the New Testament, the Book of Hebrews, was written to an entire Christian community on the very brink of wholesale abandonment of Christianity. The Christian church of the first generation was not only characterized by faith and miracles; it was also characterized by increasing lawlessness, rebellion, and heresy from within the Christian community—just as Jesus foretold in Matthew 24."
What we can see the far is that Antichrist is simply any belief system that disputes the fundamental teachings of Christianity, beginning with the person of Christ. These antichrists are “religious” figures. The antichrist, contrary to much present day speculation, is not a political figure, no matter how anti- (against) Christ he might be. These were teachers, influencers in the first century who were infiltrating the church.
Demar also helps bring clarity as he writes:
“They had heard that “the spirit of antichrist” was coming. For them, “now it is already in the world” (1 John 4:3). Antichrists had arrived. It is inappropriate to look for a contemporary rising political leader and describe him as the antichrist. Such a designation cannot be supported from Scripture. Does this mean that the spirit of antichrist cannot be present in our day? Not at all. It does mean, however, that a figure called the antichrist cannot be alive somewhere in the world today. Having said this, we still must conclude that John had the time prior to Jerusalem’s destruction in mind when he described the theological climate surrounding the concept of the antichrist.”
Again, I go back to context and why John was writing, the timing of his writing. “During the time of the first-century Church, there was a cult system called Gnosticism. They taught that the spirit was good and the physical/emotional realms were evil, therefore Jesus could not have come to earth in an actual physical body.
With this understanding, we can discern the true meaning of John’s letter. John said, “As you have heard that antichrist is coming....” The important question is, when had the readers of John’s letter heard this message? Considering that the term antichrist refers to Gnosticism (false teachers), it makes sense that John would be referencing what Jesus warned in Matthew 24—the coming of false teachers. The Gnosticism that John addressed in First and Second John was the false teaching that Jesus predicted would come before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70.
Simply, we make a Biblical mistake to assign this title to a single person when the Bible does not. An antichrist, therefore, is simply anyone who “denies that Jesus is the Christ,” anyone who “denies the Father and the Son,” “every spirit that does not confess Jesus…this is the spirit of antichrist.” To understand this even better it would benefit a student to search out and study about the first century Gnostics whose teachings were coming against John and early church. It also here I would like to note that the author, John, who coined this phrase, “Antichrist,” and gave us the working definition and understanding never used this word in the book of Revelation. That’s right, it is no where in there although many try and do something the original author never did.
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