What Would an Antichrist Look Like Today?

 

Setting the parameters of discussion

All Bible verses are NKJV taken from biblegateway.com unless otherwise noted.

First, the term antichrist is a biblical construct, so only the Bible can define it. It’s actually a Judeo-Christian meme, rooted deeply in the Old Testament as well the New. The fact that the title of Christ is in the word does not prevent us from searching out similar spiritual themes in the Hebrew Bible in which spiritual and cultural forces are horrifically anti-God.

In the second half of the twentieth century there were many predictions about the immanent rise of the antichrist, but it came from people who were partly or totally into channeling spirits. The situations that I know of and have blogged about are Jeane Dixon, Ruth Montgomery, Vance David, and an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Bayside, New York. The NT does encourage gifts of the Holy Spirit like prophecy and word of knowledge in which God speaks to those imbued with the gift, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t chat with us or speak through Ouija boards or dead people. Anyone who traffics in spirit communication or messages from aliens knows that revelations of great disasters are common. Often there is a date involved, and as the day passes, the event does not happen. All the above predictions of the antichrist are contradictory, meaning that some or all of them are inaccurate.

I have often wondered why Hitler wasn’t THE antichrist, which would suggest that the return of Christ should already have happened, but then in our own era, it dawns on me that perhaps every generation has its own antichrist, unleashing a chaotic, apocalyptic time where the stakes are so high for society that no one can avoid choosing a side.

Lastly, an antichrist is more than a typical narcissistic dictator like so many I’ve seen in my lifetime. An antichrist specifically opposes God’s Judeo-Christian believers, either by persecuting them or subverting them…turning them away from God’s word and will with honey smooth religious statements that point to something just off to the side of what God wants. And then off to the side of that.

An antichrist will be a slick speaker and disinformation specialist

Did you see the movie The King’s Speech? When older brother Edward abdicates the throne of England to marry American Wallis Simpson, younger brother Bertie inherited the crown to be George VI. Bertie had a profound speech impediment, so an Australian speech expert coaches him to be able to make his coronation speech. I recall the lines when Prince Charlie and his royal father are watching Hitler make a fiery speech on TV. Charlie asks, “What is he saying?” Bertie answers, “I don’t know, but he’s saying it rather well.” That is so on brand with God.

We can look to Genesis 3 for our first antichrist. Long ago I saw a Frank and Ernest cartoon in which they were in a museum looking at an old pair of sneakers on a pedestal. One said to the other, “Belonged to the first snake.” Fairly insightful humor. An interdimensional humanoid serpent with full ability to communicate with an adult human appears on the scene and questions Yahweh-Elohim’s motives by sly inuendo. “Hey, he really told you two to not eat of the tree?” Like, gee, why would any reasonable deity do that? Eve responds, “Yeah we can eat of any tree in the garden but we can’t touch this one or we die.”

(How many Pentecostal pastors of yore have defended patriarchy by using Eve’s addition, “we mustn’t touch it?”) Odds are Y-E didn’t mean that Adam and Eve would die physically, because if they are the only humans--in the narrative, which may be metaphorical rather than literal and historical--and they don’t know the difference between right and wrong, their free will and immortality aren’t much use. They are like toddlers in understanding and they can’t leave the garden to test what choices they would make; so the tree is a theological metaphor of humans becoming self-aware and capable of higher reasoning. The serpent has a point. They didn’t die physically, but they did make a quantum leap in cognizance. They could now leave the garden and fulfill all the potential of their brains and bodies. They could multiply and fill the earth, they could rule over the environment, and they could make choices…good ones and bad ones.

The fly in that soup, however, was that the first two-party system was born with the accompanying disinformation program. Adam and Eve would have to use their brains to figure out which voice to listen to. According to the narrative, mankind and religion entered the world together. So similar at first, but one path would lead to violence and spiritual death whereas the other would lead to actual immortality, protection in a dangerous world, and ultimate blessing. One path would be broad, the other narrow.

An antichrist may dabble in the occult and be encouraged by prophecy

The Israelites were about at the end of their wanderings in the wilderness. After 40 years, they were at the edge of the Promised Land--of inheritance, of rest, of identity as a coherent people to be reckoned with. Balak son of Zippor, King of the Moabites, stood between the wanderers and their goal, and he was terrified of them because he had seen what they can do in war. He wasn’t a bloody dictator. As far as we know, he was a typical politician, perhaps like half our US congress, but he was determined to block what God had clearly set in motion, and he was going to use magic rather than weapons to do it. The expert he called upon for support was not a warlord but a sorcerer/prophet.

Balaam is summoned from the north, but he was warned by an angel to speak only what Yahweh would tell him, (Num. 22:20 NKJV). Balak took Balaam to the top of a mountain where they made 7 altars and offered bulls and rams. Balaam met with God and delivered this, “Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number one-fourth of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his!” (23:10) Balak tried again on a different mountain, and again Balaam received a message from Yahweh. “He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen wickedness in Israel. The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a King is among them.” (23:21) What? A king? Things are not going well.

Balak would not be thwarted. Another mountain was climbed, more bulls sacrificed. Another command to curse, but the blessings become more profound. “He shall pour water from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters. His king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.” (24:7)

Oh, no, but it got worse. The blessings kept flowing, “I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; a Star shall come out of Jacob; a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult.” (24:17)

So the magic of a petty politician backfired. What came forth instead was a flood of love and protection along with a prediction of a near Messianic figure who would rule in power over the region. Israel would be great. But right afterwards, Israel fell on its face. What brought them down? What almost crashed the program? Moabite women! Where weapons of war and the strongest curses failed, women, feasting, and sex got the morally spineless men worshiping the god of the Moabites. They still entered the Land, but not before a plague of judgement thinned their ranks.

An antichrist will be boastful and have great political power.

Every Christian and Jew should be conversant with the Messianic personage in Daniel 7 because it depicts an antichrist literally, and the Christ to come, with victory given to the Messianic Son of Man who comes before the Ancient of Days. God is sitting on a throne with wheels of fire. A fiery river flows out from beneath the throne.

Daniel 7:1-8 describes a prophetic dream that Daniel had. He saw four great beasts rising out of the sea (of humanity). The consensus is that they represent the kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The fourth beast has 10 horns, probably expressing the vastness of the Roman Empire. Verse 7:8:

“I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words.”

My opinion is that this person represents Herod the Great, who died shortly after the birth of Jesus Christ. I copied the paragraphs below from a recent article on Herod in Bible History Daily, Biblical Archaeology Review:

 “King Herod the Great ruled Judea from 37 B.C.E. until his death in 4 B.C.E. Outside of Judea, the Greeks and Romans found his charm (and his extravagant benefactions) irresistible. He generously endowed the Greek Olympic Games, sponsored building projects in prestigious cities such as Athens and Rhodes, and erected public buildings, palaces, and even entire cities, some of which still astonish visitors.

 “At home, however, King Herod was despised for his ruthless oppression and cruelty. His many endeavors came at a considerable cost to his Jewish subjects through heavy taxes. He executed his wife, Miriamme, because he suspected her of adultery. And he may be most well-known by biblical scholars for his order to kill all children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem shortly after the birth of Jesus.” 

He wanted to be King of the Jews, but rumor swept Judea that a child had been born who would be their king. Herod’s solution was to have all the infants slain that could possibly be that child. It seems that for all his charm Herod was a classic sociopath, a narcissist, a man you don’t cross. Of course, the child escaped to Egypt, then returned after Herod died. We can see in the following verses of Daniel 7 who this child turned out to be. 7:13-14:

"I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed."

This passage is why Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man. Herod not only died soon after he ordered the babies to be slain, he died a horrible death, screaming in pain because his genitals were being eaten by maggots. 

An actual antichrist will have no respect for the law.

But wait, there’s more. There is one described in Paul’s letters that caused the Christian community to wonder if this Roman emperor or that one would be the personage preceding Christ’s return. John wrote that anyone who would not acknowledge the divinity of Jesus was an antichrist and there were already plenty of those. The Christians, however, were expecting one man who would persecute God’s people and set himself up in the Jewish Temple as a god. That interpretation fell into problems when the Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 AD. The Apostle Paul had a different method of recognizing the antichrist:

“Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him: We ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed (Grk: anomia), the son of destruction. 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.” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 NKJV)

Conclusion

So what can we say about an antichrist who might appear in our day?

• He’ll be a great speaker with an appealing voice. Someone easy to listen to.
• He’ll be a braggart. Arrogant.
• He will be good looking and charming, but utterly selfish.
• He’ll weasel himself into positions of immense political power, but it won’t last.
• He’ll be a master deceiver, a skilled liar, a con artist, and a sociopath with no care for his effect on the world.
• He’ll be antisemitic. He’ll either persecute Christians or he’ll subvert them with promises of power and favor. He’ll have power to deceive the very elect.
• He will either openly or deviously allow people to think he’s a god or a Savior of some kind.
• He’ll be religious, but not sincerely. He’ll be open to help from the occult.
• He’ll have an anointing to spread his wickedness like cancer. 

Like I wrote at the beginning, perhaps there isn’t just one. If the men that I would label antichrist aren’t IT, and there’s still The Big Guy yet to come, holy heaven help us. 

I have posted a 4-part series about New Age predictions of the antichrist. You can read Part 1 here. 

This series can also be found at What Would an AntiChrist Look Like Today? | by Janet Katherine Smith | Oct, 2023 | Medium