People are worried about, and we are being warned of, a man who will rule in the last seven years of Earth’s history - this man is called the antichrist. What does the Bible say about such a man?
There are several things we need to look at when studying Scripture. One thing is for sure, the most important things to God are mentioned over and over throughout Scripture. So, we really do need to look at space. What I mean by that is, what is the author concentrating on, what is he spending more time on, this would be what is important to him. While end day prophecy was written by many men, the visions were given by God. Therefore, we need to look at the space of prophecy as a whole to determine how important this man is in end day prophecy.
In talking end day prophecy, I hear about this antichrist more than any other symbol of prophecy - I’m sure you would agree. Besides some small mentions in various books, we know that most of Daniel, some of Isaiah, two chapters of Matthew, a small portion of Luke, and all of Revelation are based on end day prophecy. Yet, out of all those prophecies, this man may have been mentioned about six times. Now, with all the talk, you’d think he’s all through Scripture but with only about six mentions, we have to believe that he is not all that important.
Before we continue to look at antichrist, let’s look at another point on the proper way to study Scripture.
There is a hard notion that we have trouble breaking free of and I’m going to let you reveal this truth to yourself.
If I were to ask you, “Who wrote the book of Romans?” You would answer, “Paul”. If I were to ask you, “Who did Paul write Romans to?” You would answer, “the church in Rome.” And, in this, you reveal the truth about the Bible. The Bible was not written TO us. It was preserved FOR us, but not written TO us. God chose to reveal His truths to a people in a different culture and time, and He chose to preserve His truths for all cultures and time. What we must do, is figure out how to make the truth come from their culture and time to our culture and time while preserving the truth.
Context is key because we can take any verse in the Bible and make it mean anything we want it to mean. We must remember that each and every book, in the Bible, was written to a specific people, in a specific time, with a specific culture, for a specific purpose, having specific problems, by a specific author or narrator, in a specific situation, addressing specific issues.
So, how do we come to a man in the end days called anti-christ? It may surprise you that, though it’s one of the most used terms in end days prophecy, the term antichrist does not appear ANYWHERE in end day prophecies - Nowhere.
We’ve already discovered that people are making a big deal out of something that God obviously did not see much importance in. They’ve also taken a couple sentences from a letter written to a specific church, of a specific culture, for specific reasons, to address specific problems in that church, and ripped them from the middle of the context of this letter and applied them to this non-important, supposed, man in the end. Where does the term antichrist come from?
The books of 1, 2, and 3 John were letters written to the Johannine church.
The reason John wrote his first letter was so that the joy of his audience would "be full" (John 1:4) and that they would "not practice sin" (2:1) and that "you who believe in the name of the Son of God... may know that you have eternal life" (John 5:13). John was concerned about heretical teachers that had been influencing churches under his care. Such teachers were considered antichrists (John 2:18–19) who had once been church leaders but whose teaching were straying from the truth of the Gospel. It appears that these teachers taught a form of docetism in which Y’shua came to earth as a spirit without a real body of flesh (John 4:2) that his death on the cross was not as a true atonement for sins (John 1:7). It appears that John might have also been rebuking a proto-Gnostic teaching to which claims were made denying the true humanity of Christ (John 2:22). Wikipedia
Johns purpose (1:1–4) is to declare the Word of Life to those to whom he writes, in order that they might be united in fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. He shows that the means of union with God are, (1) on the part of Christ, his atoning work (1:7; 2:2; 3:5; 4:10, 14; 5:11, 12) and his advocacy (2:1); and (2), on the part of man, holiness (1:6), obedience (2:3), purity (3:3), faith (3:23; 4:3; 5:5), and love (2:7, 8; 3:14; 4:7; 5:1).
The second letter from John was a followup from his first.
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
(2 John 1:7 NKJV)
Notice the verbs in the verse. “For many deceivers have GONE out”. This is a past tense verb, which is talking about something that has already been happening; and to which he’s addressing. “who DO NOT CONFESS Jesus Christ” is a present tense statement - remember, that’s present tense to the letter of John. “This IS a deceiver and an antichrist” which is a present tense verb to the time of John. Notice the statement “This is a deceiver and AN antichrist”. Notice it does not say THE but AN. An is the form of the indefinite article - it’s more than one and of a non-numerical amount.
These passages do jump across time and culture and what they tell us is that because the coming of Christ brought in the time of the end, there will be people who do not believe in Christ or who will teach false teachings of Christ, and these people are called antichrists by John. That is a lot of people. So, what does this tell us in relation to end day prophecy? It tells us that these “antichrists” has no relation to a man who is going to sit in the temple of God, or a man who is supposed to rule the world in the end, or a man whose name adds up to 666.
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