Antichrist? Series

Some believe that there is coming a world ruler, a personal Antichrist, who will appear shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. Agreement about the who, what, when, where, and how is in short supply. You will get different answers depending on who is preaching, teaching, or selling what their latest dream or scheme.

Down through the centuries several people have been identified as the Antichrist. Included in the notorious list are Adolf Hitler, the Pope, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Osama Ben Laden, and Barrack Obama. Does it make sense to you that God should keep changing His mind about the Antichrist? Or are we spending too much time trying to read the newspaper into the Bible instead of looking to the Bible for what it says.

If you wanted to find the word “antichrist” in the Bible so you would know what the Bible says about antichrist, where would you look? In the Gospels? No, Jesus never spoke of an antichrist! Revelation? You’d be close, but almost only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and water balloons! The word, “antichrist”, is not in the book of Revelation! The writer of the Revelation, John the Apostle, used the word, “antichrist”, four times and today we will look at all four to see what the Bible says. Be careful…you could become “antichrist”!

John, the Apostle is the only writer who even uses the word, “antichrist”. It is interesting to note that every time the word, “antichrist” is used in the Bible, it uses small letters, indicating a non-specific reference. In other words, John was not thinking of a specific individual. Two of those references do not even use a definite article and the other two talk about the spirit of antichrist. None of these references about “antichrist” say anything about the future!

Antichrist = one who denies Christ

1 John 2:18-23

1 John 2:18-23

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.

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.

21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

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: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

When John is writing, he is trying to address a group of people in his day who were called, “Gnostics”, who believed that Jesus was only human, born in the natural way, but NOT DIVINE, not the Son of God! A leading teacher of that group was named Cerinthus who even said that Jesus was empowered by God at His Baptism, performed miracles and brought words from God, but on the cross, the Spirit of God left Jesus so that it was the human Jesus Who suffered, not he Divine Christ. Cerinthus believed that Christ would establish a 1,000-year earthly kingdom, filled with sensual pleasure, prior to the general resurrection . The disciple of the Apostle John, Polycarp, told the story that John the Apostle, in particular, is said to have so detested Cerinthus that he once fled a bathhouse when he found out Cerinthus was inside, yelling "Let us flee, lest the building fall down; for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside!" John is writing to warn us against the teaching of Cerinthus and those like him.

Where does antichrist come from?

From among us!

1 John 2:19; Romans 1:21-25

1 John 2:19

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

How easy it is to be deceived when we don’t believe the truth! When I took the eye test at school, I always passed. Not because I could see, but because I could strain my eyes until they watered. So the Gym teacher administering the test and didn’t really care to be doing it anyway would pass me along. When it got so bad that I could not read a blackboard less than 6 feet away and trees had no leaves, just fuzz, and road signs were to be guessed at, I broke down and got glasses! But until that point, I believed that everyone only saw fuzzy trees. My belief deceived me! I believed a lie!