The language used in the Book of Revelation has connections to the Roman empire, which was the latest in a line of empires Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece that had been opposing the people of God.
It did so through political as well as religious pressure, asking for people to worship the Roman emperor. The connections to Rome does not mean that it was Rome itself, as there is a later reference to Babylon see Revelation 18 — which had been destroyed. In addition, the imagery of the first beast antichrist recalls the various animals that symbolized empires in the Book of Daniel; this beast seems to be the embodiment of them all and thus the culmination of them all. The language was to call the people reading Revelation to stay faithful as they faced these powers; this message continues throughout time as different empires rose up to oppose God.
From these discussions, it seems that there is an endtime figure who is preceded by various other figures who oppose the work of Jesus; there is a spirit of the antichrist at work that will culminate in a person at the end.
The warnings are less about identifying this figure and more about being on guard against the forces currently opposing God, recognizing that these could come from within the church and not just from authorities outside. That being said, we can recognize the workings of Satan opposing God in various realms politics, economics, and religious and need to stay true to the one true God who we know will defeat these forces of evil.
The main point of these writings is to remember that God wins in the end, allowing us to be faithful in the midst of our current sufferings. Read more: Fact over fiction on the 'apocalyptic' super blood moon. According to the Christian tradition, the Antichrist will finally be defeated by the armies of God under the leadership of Christ with the Kingdom of God on earth or in heaven to follow.
So, in spite of current appearances, Christianity holds firmly to the hope that evil will be finally overcome and that goodness will ultimately prevail. The core idea of the Antichrist — of evil at the depths of things — lays upon all of us the ethical imperative to take evil seriously.
Whether the end is nigh or not, we should work to minimise harm and maximise the good in the here and now. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Wikimedia Commons. Almond , The University of Queensland. Author Philip C. Here, then, are five things to know just in case: 1. He is the Son of Satan The Antichrist was the perfectly evil human being because he was completely opposite to the perfectly good human being, Jesus Christ. In Daniel another king is introduced which is identified by some as the same personage as the little horn of ch.
The challenges to his rule are mentioned in , apparently referring to a great final world war. Like the little horn ch. An alternate view is that he is a less important personage, a minor ruler of Pal. Antiochus Epiphanes, a king of Syria b. New Testament prophecies. In the NT, references are made by Christ to false Christs who shall arise at the end of the age Matt In addition, Christ constantly referred to Satan as the enemy of God, and in one sense antichrist.
This is seen in the temptation of Christ by the devil Matt ; Luke Also in the parable of the wheat and the tares, Christ identifies the sower of the tares as the devil Matt Because of the similarity between the activities and the final doom of this person at the Second Coming of Christ, many futurist interpreters identify this person with the little horn of Daniel 7 and the king of Daniel The most impressive NT passage relating to antichrist is the description given in Revelation 13 of two beasts, one rising out of the sea , and another beast arising out of the land Variations of interpretation are without number, but generally the first beast is identified by futurists as the final world ruler before the Second Coming of Christ, and the second beast is considered a religious leader working under the political authority.
Because of the similarity between the first beast bearing ten horns and seven heads to the little horn of Daniel , many have identified this personage and the government he heads as being the antichrist.
Others, considering Christ religiously rather than from the standpoint of supreme authority, identify the second beast as antichrist. Obviously both are antichrist in spirit. Explanations too numerous to mention have been offered to solve the riddle of this statement using the letter equivalents for the numbers in Lat.
Thus St. John does not seem to present the antichrist as a single figure who has come. Rather, he says that there are many antichrists. And what do these antichrists do? They perpetrate heresy, error, and false teaching. John notes in particular that heretics who deny that Jesus is the Christ the Messiah are antichrists. He also calls antichrists those who deny Christ having come in the flesh. What does it mean to deny Christ having come in the flesh?
It means reducing the saving work of God to mere appearances by claiming that Jesus did not actually take up a human nature but only appeared to do so. By extension, these same antichrists reduce the Christian moral and spiritual life to mere gnostic ideas rather than a true flesh-and-blood, body-and-soul change in our lives. Many today extend these denials of the incarnation by undermining the historic authenticity of the Gospels, doubting or outright denying what Jesus actually said and did.
As St. Paul says, And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain … if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins … [and] we are of all people most to be pitied 1 Cor John, along with all the early Church, emphatically upholds an incarnational faith.
We could actually touch our God and He touched us by taking up our human nature. He suffered on the cross and died. And though His suffering was tied to His human nature for His divine nature is impassible , Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, hypostatically united to His human nature, suffered and died for us.
It was this same human nature that God raised from the dead, gloriously transformed. John takes up this theme elsewhere when he says that Christ came in water and in blood, not in water alone cf 1 John Jesus Christ, the Son of God, though of two natures, is one person, and He did in fact die suffer and die for us.
Thus to St. John, the essence of the antichrist is denial that Jesus came in the flesh. By extension, it can be argued that the term antichrist refers to all deceivers , though only logically, not specifically in the text. John does not indicate that he means the term antichrist this broadly, but in a wider sense all heresy pertains to the antichrist because Jesus Christ is the truth.
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