After spending some months in another Christian forum, I kept trying to find more effective ways to crack open an eye or two. I did another version of the term antichrist while challenging them to review their own view. It began as before (and I'm going to keep editing this version). As always feel free to copy and paste it into a forum to save yourself a lot of time composing the same:
There are only four verses in Scripture that contain the term antichrist.
1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. 23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: [(but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also].
1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
2 John 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
It is pretty difficult to recognize any of those four verses in the King James or Textus Receptus Greek interlinear, as suggesting an individual. Indeed when we see how the term is selectively capitalized from one verse to the next in modern bible versions and a 19th century minority Greek text, it illustrates how they were influenced by doctrine, since there was no upper or lower case in the Koine Greek.
From the verses above we can confidently conclude that antichrist is a spirit. We learn that any spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God, but is the spirit of antichrist. We also learn that any person that denies that Jesus is the Christ or denies the Father and the Son is antichrist - is an antichrist (though the mystery regarding blindness to the Gospel of some Jews may be a separate issue). Since there are billions of antichrists - and no shortage from John's day forward - we can only confidently state that an individual antichrist would only be just another antichrist.
The following is the only verse that is generally construed as suggesting an individual past or future "The" "Antichrist" - even though six words later it informs us that there were already many antichrists even back in the first century!
1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
Let's develop our understanding through an adjacent hermeneutic by studying another verse that also uses the term antichrist in the singular:
1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
We can see the singular "that", "spirit", "it" in this sentence and singular "antichrist", just like the singular "antichrist" in 1 John 2:18. The translators gave us a little extra push in 1 John 4:3 by inserting the word [spirit] a second time, to confirm the obvious conclusion that the spirit of antichrist, is this singular entity. Now look at how this makes the "little children" verse make perfect sense if, we consider the first use of term antichrist to be a reference to THE SPIRIT OF antichrist:
John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that {the spirit of} antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
Which makes the verse make perfect sense! That insertion didn't change the verse at all, but instead only illustrated a way of understanding the term antichrist in that spot, that is consistent with every other use of the term as is undeniably clear, as a spirit! Finally look at the further clarification that the two parallel verse snippets provide:
"ye have heard that antichrist shall come"
"ye have heard that it should come"
So why do folks remove the literal term "antichrist" from the literal context in which it is found in 1st and 2nd John, to transplant the term to displace the term "beast" in the context of the figurative language of John's prophetic vision in Revelation 13? How many of us would have ever done that if we hadn't been taught to?
For those new to disciplined study I'll quote Wikipedia: "Hermeneutics (/hÉœrməˈnjuËtɪks/), broadly, is the art and science of text interpretation. Traditional hermeneutics is the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law. A type of traditional hermeneutic is biblical hermeneutics which concerns the study of the interpretation of the Bible."
Scholars study everything from literature to poetry to legal documents through hermeneutics, and nothing demands more rigorous study while employing all the tools available to us than exegesis of scripture, that was revealed over a period of about 1600 years!
When we want to learn more about a word or term we employ an "adjacent hermeneutic", to search for an additional use of our term, in an ever widening area. In scripture we look first to the surrounding verses, then in the same chapter, then the same book, followed by the whole testament, and then the whole bible. When we discover a repeat of the term we consider in what context we find it, and investigate anything additional we may discover about it. Let's bring some of these good sound study practices into play, to see what the scriptures themselves, might reveal about Rev 13:
Revelation 13:2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as [the feet] of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
Since John's singular "beast" is described "like unto a leopard", "bear" and "lion", it's a cinch we won't be able to study a composite animal like that at the zoo, so it's incumbent upon us to break out our concordance and see if we can find clues as to their meaning elsewhere in scripture. Through an adjacent hermeneutic for the terms lion, bear and leopard we find another place where all of these figures are not only mentioned all together in the same chapter of the book of Daniel, but we even find them in the same context of the figurative language of John's prophetic vision - in the figurative language of Daniel's prophetic dream! Even more blessedly Daniel even defines the term "beast" for us within this same context!
Daniel 7:23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth...
So in the context of the figurative language of Daniel's prophetic dream we find that the term "beast" indicates a kingdom! Since there is broad agreement in the church (as well as agreement among Jews) that Daniel's lion, bear and leopard describe the ancient kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece, I won't devote space to that. Simply Yahoo those names together in quotes and you will find an abundance of Christian sites that explain it.
In Revelation 13 we find that John's kingdom "beast" is described as a composite leopard-bear-lion. The reason the order is reversed in John's prophetic vision, from that in Daniel's dream, may be because while Daniel's prophecy was forward looking to those kingdoms that would unfold in succession in his future, John's prophetic vision would be looking back through time after the fulfillment of those three kingdoms.
Since we can come up with no hermeneutically sound reason to arbitrarily change Daniel's definition of "beast", it isn't hard to recognize the geographical location of the successive kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia and ancient Greece - the "seat" of John's leopard-bear-lion "beast" - is occupied today by the countries of Iraq, Iran and Syria-Lebanon. The dragon - Satan - not only gives this kingdom beast his seat, but also his power and great authority (Daniel also assigns the masculine gender to his kingdom "beasts"). Today those countries are composed almost entirely of antichrist followers of their antichrist false prophet Muhammad. For more I devoted a thread to the subject of the beast of Revelation 13, another to John's 8 kings/beasts (some even recognize the first 6 of those "beasts" as kingdoms and then switch over to a man!), and another thread devoted to considering the unique terms "antichrist" "man of sin" "beast" and "little horn" independently, rather than as if they were all the same.
There is certainly no shortage of partial-preterists and futurists who have been taught to exchange the term antichrist for the term beast in Revelation 13 as if the two terms were interchangeable (speaking as a former futurist), and then even turn around and switch it to being a man, but what would that man have to do with a lion, bear or leopard? We can believe any kind of fantasy about the future that we want to make up, but are we to expect that 1.5 billion Muslims - one fourth part of mankind - will all convert to some other future European false prophet's religion? And all within 3-1/2 years that took Muhammad 1400 years to accomplish? Really?
Matthew Henry: "Scripture prophecies will be expounded by the accomplishment of them; therefore they are given, and for that explication they are reserved. Therefore they are told us before, that, when they do come to pass, we may believe."
We can all cite early church fathers to find agreement with bits and pieces of our chosen doctrine (indeed most any view, within the vast array of contradictory opinion among the ECFs, to choose from) and both preterists and futurists in this forum do exactly that. However when we consider the three complete contexts of Christian eschatology (not counting 19th century "idealism"), we discover that Jews and Christians understand that Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled, not in 7 years nor in 37 years but steadily, throughout the period about which was prophesied. An example is Daniel's kingdom "beasts" that unfolded in a steady succession over hundreds of years in the prophet's future and into the Christian era. Thus throughout most of the Christian era the church had every reason to expect that New Testament prophecy would be, and indeed was being, fulfilled in the same fashion as confirmed by the reformers and many others throughout the Christian era.
We have all learned about individual antagonists in historical examples of men that have conquered kingdom after kingdom like Genghis Khan and Hitler, and the antagonist is as important to fictional literature, movies and nightly TV shows as it is to the success of the "Left Behind" series. The excitement of writing a villain into our scripts is ingrained in us, since he has been with us in various guises, from our earliest childhood memories. Though not even a scary movie, even 50 years after being introduced to her, the name Cruella de Vil just popped into my head as I was searching for a childhood antagonist! How about Bluto!
But what if the main antagonist of our time - of all time - instead of being an individual person, was actually an entire kingdom, all of the members of which were perfectly united by a single, specific, spiritual force imparted to them by mankind's number one antagonist of all time - Satan himself? How difficult would it be for us to come to see such a thing, through the fog of our lifelong expectations and indoctrination? After years of presenting a view within the traditional continuous-historic I can certainly attest as to how difficult it is to turn a head in the church.
All false doctrine is the work of the enemy. Yet partial-preterists and futurists much each believe the other to be virtually 100% in error of their understanding of the book of Revelation after chapter 3. Did pop-20th century eschatology prevent the church from understanding who THE false prophet is, and thus blind us to the monumental task before us, and as a result leave what has today become about 1.5 billion followers of the false prophet Muhammad hanging out to dry?
How many Christians know that the single most egregious - and only unforgivable sin ("shirk") - in Muhammad's antichrist cult would be committed, if a Muslim were to confess that Jesus is the Son of God, or even to pray in Jesus name? To a follower of Muhammad to do so would constitute a sin worse than raping a little girl or cold-blooded murder.
Sura 19:88 They say: "(Allah) Most Gracious has begotten a son!" 89 Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous!
Surah 4:157 That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him....
That's 1.5 billion people (1/4 of mankind) that are - each and every one - perfectly and unanimously united through the spirit of antichrist, as an article of their faith in the false prophet Muhammad. Who are also commanded by their false prophet to conquer and subjugate all non-Muslims to deny the Son of God and reject the crucifixion of Christ and blood that He shed for us all, while prostrating ourselves five times a day toward the Quraish pagan's black stone idol in Mecca and praying in the names of the pagan Arabian's deity "Allah" and his "messenger" Muhammad. This while declaring Muhammad to be a true "messenger" of God, even though he proclaimed the exact opposite of what our prophet Jesus Christ prophesied, and the whole subject of the Gospel.
Bukhari, V1 B2 #24 Narrated Ibn 'Umar: Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle....."
Instead of a church trying to help Muhammadans overcome THE false prophet Muhammad, we have the Pope out there kissing the Quran, another bowing and praying toward Mecca from inside a mosque, while the Pope and Vatican Council decree that Muslims "take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His [God's] inscrutable decrees"!
Talk about Satan's ultimate, and near universal, deception! This as the final act on the world stage draws to a close, I believe, just as prophesied.
