Who and What is the Anti-Christ?

The subject of the Anti-Christ tends to be pretty scary and sensational.  People imagine monsters and demons of all kinds, usually linking the discussion with the Book of Revelation.  Most imagine these things because that is what they have been told.  It is not, however, what we find in the Bible.  Let’s look at everything the Bible says about the Anti-Christ.

First of all, the word(s) Anti-Christ are not found in the Book of Revelation a single time.  That is not where we learn about the Anti-Christ.

Secondly, the word or prefix, anti, simply means “against.”  So, in one sense everyone who is against Christ could be called anti-Christ.  That is not, however, how the Bible uses the phrase.  Note the following scriptures where the term antichrist is used.  These are the only times the word is used in used in the Bible.

Please notice that John wrote these two letters in the first century.  The antichrists were  already a problem in the church.  John said (#3) the spirit of the antichrist was in the world already, then.  We should not think that this is a problem in our future.  It has been a problem since the early days of Christianity.

The antichrist is not a single individual, beast or demon.  There were many antichrists already at work in John’s day, just as there were many deceivers speaking in John’s day.  All of them were people.

An antichrist is someone against Christ.  Specifically, in these passages, he is a liar, denying that Jesus is the Christ – denying both the Father and the Son.  He also denies that Jesus came in the flesh or incarnate, as an actual human being.    In #3 every person who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh manifests the spirit of the antichrist.

John identified the time in which he lived as the last hour.  The only way for us to understand that is to assume that hour (time) continues today.  We should not, now, interpret it to mean that we are in a final count-down.  We know that this is (still) the last hour, the final segment of God’s revelation to mankind.

Let’s not be confused or frightened by the mystique in so much rhetoric surrounding the antichrist.  Rather let us understand the true nature of our spiritual enemy and certain victory of our faith.