Seven Antichrist Myths To Not Fall For

If your life depended on knowing who the Antichrist is when the time comes, would you be safe? Do you know already what to look for? Should you look for a "seven year peace treaty" signer, a Jew, an Arab, or a Muslim? Or is it impossible identify to him before the rapture at all? Find out how to consider the Antichrist question without anxiety.

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Myth #1: “The Antichrist” is What the Bible Calls Him

This future world-rescuer is referred to as “The Antichrist” by Christians. That moniker is itself the first myth to talk about. It turns out that the Bible never actually uses the term antichrist in any prophecy of the coming end time king of the world. (John's letters use the term to refer to a “spirit of antichrist” that was already present in those who opposed or denied Christ). The Bible instead uses such titles as the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, the Lawless One (2The 2:1-8), the Little Horn (Dan 7:8), the Coming Prince (Dan 9:26), the (Willful) King of the North (Dan 11:36) and the Beast (Rev 13:1-10), among others.

Who is this man and why is he given such unflattering names? Basically, he will be the head of a new one world government that enslaves the whole world for a short time. This headship is the same ruling position that Satan offered to Jesus when he tempted him (Lk 4:5-7). But back then God was not allowing a one world government to take over quite yet. For the last the last 3½ years of this age God will allow Satan to take authority over all nations and give it to the Antichrist (Rev 13:7, 2).

The “Antichrist” will begin his reign by hunting down every person including believers (Rev 12:13). He will torture everyone into taking the Mark of the Beast without which they will not be able to do business on earth (Rev 9:1-12=Rev 13:16-18). He will also go to war with the nations that resist his rule. More than one third of the world population will be killed in the war with Asia that results (Dan 8:24=Dan 11:44=Rev 9:13-21). Given this total control and subjugation, his iron rule will indeed bring a manner of peace and prosperity. Jesus and Paul predicted this deceptive peace would be in place right before great destruction from God comes and brings the end of the Antichrist' reign (Mt 24:38-39; 1The 5:3).

Myth #2: He Comes to Power By Counterfeiting Jesus' Second Coming

Although the Antichrist obviously will use force to take over part of the world, the question needs to be asked as to how he gets the rest, the majority, to submit? Most Christians would say he does it through the deception of presenting himself as the returning Jesus. They expect he will somehow fulfill the prophecies of the Second Coming. However, this is not what the Bible says.

Most simply, the Bible says the Antichrist comes not pretending to be Jesus, the Son of God. He goes for a much bigger lie, namely that he is Jesus' father, God himself:

2 Thessalonians 2:4 (HCSB) — He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s sanctuary, publicizing that he himself is God.

This appears to be the “strong delusion” that Paul refers to later in that same chapter:

2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 (HCSB) — and with every unrighteous deception among those who are perishing. ⌊They perish⌋ because they did not accept the love of the truth in order to be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a strong delusion so that they will believe what is false

To prove you are God through the miracles of a powerful false prophet is an unprecedented trick. However, bear in mind that even that is not going to be enough to get the allegiance of most.

There are, of course, those who simply do not want God to be real and around to tell them what to do. That will never change. These people therefore need a special motivation to listen and submit. The Mark of the Beast specifically mentions that nobody will be able to buy or sell unless they agree to worship the Antichrist. And we know what they will be most needing to buy first: food!

You see, the rise of the Antichrist is found at the 5^th Trumpet (Rev 9). Naturally, this would be right after the 4^th trumpet (Rev 8:12) which describes the last of the calamitous effects of the star Wormwood (named in Rev 8:10). This Wormwood is the next event described in Revelation that has not been fulfilled yet. The destruction caused by Wormwood begins at the 6^th Seal with eclipses, shooting stars, and a global earthquake so great that every mountain and island is dislocated (Rev 6:12-17). It goes on with the first four trumpets bringing meteorite showers, as asteroid strike in the ocean, tsunamis, poisoned fresh waters and a hazy “nuclear winter” style sky (from all the ash and debris thrown up into the stratosphere).

Now you understand how the Antichrist is able to get everyone, even the godless rebels, to submit. People will be cold, starving, and shell-shocked after Wormwood passes. They will need a bailout with all the basic necessities of life, much like New Orleans needed after Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, when a catastrophe is global and complete, there is no place on earth that can send aid. It must come from God himself, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The Antichrist will appear as God and have the powers to bring security and sustenance to what's left of the world population.

But we must not forget that as bad as this Wormwood catastrophe sounds, it will apparently be tame in comparison to what the Antichrist will do. This seems to be what is intended by how his rise is called the first of three woes on the earth.

Revelation 8:13 (HCSB) — I looked again and heard an eagle flying high overhead, crying out in a loud voice, “Woe! Woe! Woe to those who live on the earth, because of the remaining trumpet blasts that the three angels are about to sound!”

Myth #3: The Antichrist Will Sign a Public Peace Treaty With Israel

A top persistent myth about the Antichrist is that before Satan is kicked out of heaven and begins his great wrath with the Abomination of Desolation, the Antichrist must make a peace treaty with Israel. This comes from a misinterpretation of what Daniel said about the Antichrist making a seven year pact:

Daniel 9:27 (HCSB) — He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering. And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple, until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator.”

Notice that the verse does not say “covenant with Israel.” It only says “covenant with many,” whatever that means. You can look from Genesis to Revelation and you will not find a single verse that says the many is Israel or Israel makes a treaty with the Antichrist. Consequently, it is quite amazing that this theory has become as popular as it has, lacking a single shred of evidence.

Worse, it ignores and contradicts the plain evidence we do have for who the “many” are. If you look in Revelation 17, you will find another mention of the Antichrist making a trade or deal with many, and this time it tells you how many there are and who they are:

Revelation 17:12-13, 16-17 (HCSB) 12 The 10 horns you saw are 10 kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they will receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. 13 These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast. 16 The 10 horns you saw, and the beast, will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to carry out His plan by having one purpose and to give their kingdom to the beast until God’s words are accomplished.

“The many” are rulers, but not the kind you think of. They are not figureheads or puppets up front like presidents or prime ministers. Instead, they are the power players who pull the strings behind the scenes. What the Bible says here about them I think matches and supports the rumors of the “Illuminati” who supposedly run a shadow government and plan to establish a very non-shadow New World Order.

Illuminati or not, Revelation 17 says ten powerful “kings without kingdoms” are going to be instrumental for the Antichrist taking power. The deal they make with the Antichrist is to use their power to get the Antichrist into power in exchange for finally getting public authority as kings in his new global kingdom. In addition, they must use their power beforehand to get rid of the prostitute (Mystery Babylon the Great) who is riding the Beast (preventing him from doing what he wants).

Another error is the assumed public nature of this coming seven-year pact. Nowhere does it say that it is public. It is unlikely the ten rulers are going to publicize their plan with the Antichrist to take out the most powerful nation on earth who stands in their way. Or their plan to afterward take over the world and make the Antichrist world king.

No, the Antichrist's seven-year pact with Israel or anyone is not a sign to rely on seeing before the Antichrist comes.

Myth #4: The Antichrist Cannot Be Identified Before the Rapture

This myth is partly based on the assumption that the rapture comes before the Great Tribulation. The thinking is that we will be out of here before the Antichrist even makes his “peace treaty with Israel” (the myth mentioned above). The public peace treaty is the way most Christians expect to identify the Antichrist. So if they will not be here anymore when it happens, they naturally assume they cannot identify the Antichrist if he were already alive in person today.

Moreover, when you think you are gone in a secret rapture by chapter four of Revelation as pretrib-rapturists do, it's hard to get yourself to study and understand the chapters after that. It just seems like they don't apply to you, so why struggle with the thick impenetrable symbol-laden verbiage?

One of these difficult later chapters is Revelation 13. Therein we have the primary description of the Antichrist, albeit in the form of some mysterious riddles. One of them is a picture or calling card of the Beast that has turned out to be surprisingly literal (a beast like that exists today as the heraldry of the world's most prominent prince).

The other riddle is the infamous Number of the Beast or 666. When you put all the verses mentioning it together, the picture emerges that this “666” is the “number of the name” of “a man” that you must “count” or “calculate” from “his name.” The text even gives the number 666 as three letters, not three numbers. The letters are chi, xi, stigma and they have the values or Gematria of 600, 60 and 6.

Using “wisdom” (Rev 13:18) which Daniel was told would be available in the end times (Dan 12:10), we can understand 666 and use it to identify who might be the Beast. As you can imagine, not many names are going to work out (without forcing or contrivance) to exactly that sum. Of course, we tend to deceive ourselves in these matters judging from all the Antichrists candidates that have been named in history. So it is best to leave anyone we identify using the 666 formula as only a “potential candidate” and not be dogmatic about it until a prophet comes to confirm it. The coming of 144,000 prophets is indeed prophesied before Wormwood, before the Great Tribulation and way before the rapture. (If you never thought of the 144,000 before as prophets, what would you call people who meet Jesus, are filled with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, sealed with protection to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and other messages they receive from three angels (Rev 7; 14:1-13)?)

Myth #5: The Antichrist Will Be A Jew

This myth goes along with the previous one about the Antichrist making a treaty with Israel that brings peace and allows them to build the Third Temple. He must be Jewish to be sympathetic to the Jews, no? They also base it on when Jesus said, "I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me; if another shall come in his own name, you will receive him" (John 5:43). Because Jesus said the Jews will accept the Antichrist, people wonder how that could happen with a Gentile. The Jews ought to know the Messiah must be Jewish, right?

That is assuming the Jews think the Antichrist is Messiah. As we already covered, the Antichrist won't bother trying to convince people using Bible prophecy that they should accept him. He will come in his own name (whatever name it will be adding up to 666) as our God, not the Messiah of the Jews. The Jews will accept him for the same reason everyone else will: hunger. Once they do, they will be under the Mark of the Beast and deluded into believing God is already here to the point that they would fight to defend his kingdom. There is even a prophecy showing that Judah will be part of the Beast's armies and fight against their real Messiah at his return:

Zechariah 14:14 (ESV) — Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance.

The Bible does not say Antichrist will be Jewish nor does he have to be a Jewish to accomplish anything he will is prophesied to do.

Myth #6: The Antichrist Will Be Arab/Syrian

If the Antichrist is not of the Jews, maybe then he is Arab?

This is a more recent theory that I first heard of just a few years ago. As a Christian you may not have encountered it unless you rub elbows with Messianic Jewish/Hebraic believers. I became aware of it through a Messianic teacher on a radio interview. He claimed to have thousands of hours of study of Middle East history from which he concluded that the Bible teaches that the Antichrist will come from Syria. He taught that the Antichrist is alive today in the personage of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

The troubling thing is that even after hearing two separate radio show interviews by him, never did he address how Bashar fulfills the identification requirements of Revelation 13, the most important passage on the Antichrist in the Bible. He instead focused on other prophetic chapters from Isaiah (10, 14, 30, 31) and Daniel (11). While interesting and provocative, his theory almost exists only in a vacuum from Revelation. Not surprisingly, Bashar al Assad does not add up to 666. Very few names do.

The other big problem with this theory is that Daniel says that the Antichrist is of “the people...who will destroy the city and sanctuary” (Dan 9:26). History shows that the Roman Empire were the “people” who did this. Daniel says the prince comes from this same people. In other words, he's European, just like his chief type Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a Greek, was (despite revisionist history to the contrary claiming he was Syrian).

Daniel 8 also points to a European Antichrist. It says the “Little Horn” will emerge from a land that it situated so that the Antichrist will have to move southeast in order to take the beautiful land, or Israel (Dan 8:9). Reversing that, it would mean he comes from a land northwest of Israel. If you draw a line northwest from Israel, you go through Greece (where Antiochus came from) and Western Europe, including, interestingly enough, Great Britain. Syria is north of Israel, so it does not fit. The Antichrist is not likely to be Syrian, but he could very well be a Brit.

Myth #7: The Antichrist Will Be Muslim

Related to the Assyrian Antichrist is yet another teaching on the source of the Antichrist. This time, oddly enough, it identifies the religion of the Antichrist. It's no wonder why this is popular now. Just as the early popular idea of who the Antichrist might be, Emperor Nero, was influenced heavily by current events, so is this one. Islam is on the rise and has many Bible believers, both in Judaism and Christianity, worried. We naturally look for the Antichrist in what we already consider the present evil. But that is not the right way to go about interpreting prophecy. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

As a result, some of the evidence for this theory can be downright laughable. One teacher suggests that word for “allah” in Arabic is found in a Greek manuscript of Revelation 13 where 666 is written. Yes, Arabic in the Greek. It's a bold claim that has persisted since it takes someone with access to and understanding of Greek NT manuscripts to debunk. To see the video teaching this claim or its sound debunking, visit this page http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/islamic-anti-christ-claim-revisited/

However, the main problem with this theory is in the fact already shown that the Antichrist is going to prop himself up as God (2Th 2:4). That's not very compatible with the belief of Muslims that Allah is God. If you want the best verse on the “religion” of the Antichrist, here it is:

Daniel 11:37 (HCSB) — He will not show regard for the gods of his fathers, the god longed for by women, or for any other god, because he will magnify himself above all.

He believes in nothing but himself. Notice this is the same same thing that Paul told the Thessalonians, he will magnify himself as God with complete disregard for all other gods (which would include Allah). Can you be Muslim and say you are God instead of Allah?

This Islamic Antichrist theory is very popular now so you will probably hear many convincing arguments for it, more than I can address in this article. Here are some further links of study to help you cope with this current Antichrist fad:

• http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/news/uk/the-islamic-antichrist
• http://www.thepropheticyears.com/wordpress/2009/01/10/debunking-a-muslim-beast-antichrist.html
• http://www.thepropheticyears.com/wordpress/2008/07/24/will-the-antichrist-and-his-beast-government-come-from-islam.html
• http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_islam4.php
• http://stevenmcollins.com/WordPress/?p=2435

Conclusion

It's no surprise that the Antichrist is the focus of so much interest and speculation among believers. Speculation always brings with it lots of misinformation and myths. I've addressed several popular ones here, but there are many others that may confuse you and take your peace.

Let me give you a word of comfort. God does not expect you to be a Bible scholar and to figure out who the Antichrist is and who he is not. You don't have to worry about sorting out all the myths. If he is alive today (which I think he is) then his future empowered nemeses, the coming Elijah of the time right before the Day of the LORD (Mal 4:5), the two witnesses (Rev 11:3-6) and the 144,000 (Rev 7; 14) are alive, too. God must send them all out in different ways to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom as a witness before the end can come (Mt 24:14). As delivered to them by the First Angel of Revelation 14, they will bring us this Gospel and also a warning of Wormwood coming:

Revelation 14:6-7 (HCSB) — Then I saw another angel flying high overhead, having the eternal gospel to announce to the inhabitants of the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people. 7 He spoke with a loud voice: “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come. Worship the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”

That warning will appear approximately one year before the Antichrist arrives. Upon hearing it you will be able to use the Bible to verify that what they say is consistent with God's word. You will prove that the instructions they give you in order to be safe are from God and trustworthy. If you have the faith to follow them (and not what your religion might tell you to do instead) you will find yourself safe from the Antichrist and everything else that the Bible says is coming in the final years of this age.

Oh, and if you worry that you lack faith or Biblical discernment, just confess that to God and start praying daily for help. Rest assured, God will bring the stimuli into your life that will develop both. He did it for me, or I could not have written this article =). Praise God.

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