According to some Christian interpretations of biblical prophecies, the “Antichrist” – as the name suggests – is the polar opposite and enemy of Christ and the church. The word itself rarely occurs in the Bible, although it is argued that the idea of an Antichrist who will appear towards the end of time is found in the book of Daniel. It is claimed that this Antichrist will be an individual with a great deal of power who will commit atrocities for 3 ½ years in persecuting Christians. I’ve heard some contemporary Christians argue that these prophecies speak specifically to our time and they attempt to identify the “antichrist” (sometimes it’s Barack Obama, or Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or the current Pope). In this post I want to answer two questions: where does the idea of an antichrist come from, and does it actually have its roots in the book of Daniel?
The word “antichrist” occurs only four times in the Bible, all of them in the first and second letters of John in the New Testament. However, John does not refer to an individual who will rise to power at the end of time. In fact, he claims that there are “many antichrists” and that they existed at the time of his writing:
Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.
1 John 2:18
While John associates the coming of antichrist with “the last hour” the fact that he can identify “many antichrists” in the world at his time is evidence to him that he was already living in this “last hour.” He went on to explain that these antichrists could be identified by their theological position on what we call Christology – the interaction of the divine and human aspects of Christ and his relationship with God.
Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.
Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world.
Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist!
1 John 2:22; 4:3; 2 John 7
From John’s perspective, anyone who denied that Jesus Christ had “come in the flesh” or that Jesus was “from God” was an antichrist. He did not think in terms of a single individual antichrist who would persecute the church, but as many individuals within the church who held views which he regarded as heretical or unorthodox. To John “antichrist” meant a doctrinal position about Christology – the human/divine nature of Christ – which was contrary to his own. However, he introduces these claims by saying “you have heard that antichrist is coming” which suggests there were ideas circulating at the time about the coming of an individual known as the “antichrist” even though he didn’t hold these ideas himself. So where did these ideas originate, and why did they persist even after John dismisses them?
There are two places in the New Testament which seem to speak about such an individual, even though they don’t use the term “antichrist.” It’s possible that these two works were already in circulation by the time John was writing (probably near the end of the first century CE), or at least the ideas behind them were well known. The first is in 2 Thessalonians, a letter attributed to the apostle Paul (although an increasing number of scholars doubt that it was written by Paul and argue instead that it was more likely to have been written by an unknown follower of Paul and modelled on Paul’s 1 Thessalonians to address a new situation in Macedonia). Here the writer refers to the (second) coming of Christ and “the day of the Lord” and says that event will be preceded by a rebellion and the coming of a “lawless one”:
Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
However, the writer provides only sketchy information about this “lawless one,” who he is, and what he will do. His description of him as “the one destined for destruction” (ὁ υἱὸς τῆς ἀπωλείας, literally the “son of destruction”) is identical to the description of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, in John 17:12. They are the only two places in the Bible where this phrase is used and the association with Judas may have been deliberate. The writer may have thought of him as someone, like Judas, who would initially appear to be a follower of Jesus but then betray the church, although we can’t be sure. Like John, who thought of the “many antichrists” as Christians who had abandoned orthodoxy, this writer may also have thought of the “lawless one” as an heretical Christian.
The second work which no doubt influenced the idea of a coming antichrist figure was the book of Revelation which contains visions of multi-headed beasts, dragons and war in heaven. Second Thessalonians shares some of this “apocalyptic” language and as Revelation is dependant on the book of Daniel for much of its imagery, symbolism and terminology, it’s possible that the writer of 2 Thessalonians also drew some of his ideas from Daniel. So where in Daniel is this “antichrist”? The short answer is that the antichrist simply isn’t there in Daniel. In fact, there is no “antichrist” (or anti-Messiah) figure anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. The closest we get to it in Daniel is the description of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who massacred Jews, abolished circumcision and other Jewish laws, and desecrated the Jerusalem Temple by erecting idols and sacrificing pigs on the altar. For the writer of Daniel Antiochus’ appearance came just before “the end” and while he may have thought of these events as coming just before the end of the world as he knew it, and the beginning of the new golden age which other prophets spoke of, the reality is that the dynasty which succeeded the Seleucids was almost as bad. The world didn’t end. Evil and destruction, desecration and slaughter continued, for centuries.
This seems to be a theme in apocalyptic literature: the world goes through cycles of sin and destruction, followed by redemption and rebuilding, slowly collapsing into further sin and destruction, followed again by redemption. So the book of Revelation picks up imagery about the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon and applies it to the destruction of Jerusalem again, this time by Rome. Similarly, the first century Jewish apocalypses known as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch also use the imagery of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and apply it to the Romans. It wouldn’t be surprising, then, that New Testament writers appropriated and re-applied the description of Antiochus IV and applied it to someone else, expecting that a similar figure would appear before “the end.” As they were writing either around the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE or in the decades following, they may have thought that the end of the Temple and Judaism as they knew it coupled with the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors Nero (64-68) and Domitian (89-96) as signs that the world was about to end.
But the reality is that the writer of Daniel didn’t “predict” the persecution of Christians by Roman emperors, or the rise of an “antichrist” more than two thousand years later. Even if he could see that far into the future by some supernatural prophetic ability, his revelations about things in the far distant future would have provided no hope or encouragement to his own people, the people to whom he was writing. He was writing about events which were happening right there and then, encouraging his readers to hold on because the end was near. Later writers, including the writers of 2 Thessalonians, Revelation, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, simply used the same language, ideas and imagery to offer hope to their generation because they thought the circumstances were similar. But for modern readers of the Bible to try to find Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden in the pages of Daniel is simply nonsense!
1 John 1 18 clearly says Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.
John is using the fact that as they have heard “the” antichrist is coming, so these other “antichrists” are of the same spirit.
It is obvious in daniel & revelation that a person sets themselves up as god in the temple in the last days. This is who people refer to as “the” antichrist, and they are correct in doing so.
The anti pope is the other candidate to run against the pope. The phrase anti christ is used in the same way. Someone who is setting themselves up to run for power.
You have skipped over “the” antichrist to prove your point which seems to state that there is no one antichrist.
Kinda like skipping over the bible to prove there’s no god.
Sorry, you’re not making sense to me.
But I guess I prefer to read the bible simply.
Don’t make too much about the definite article (“THE antichrist”) because in most of the manuscripts it isn’t there! The Jerusalem Bible reflects this with “AN antichrist” while other translations simple have “antichrist” without an article. But even so it doesn’t make much difference to the flow of John’s argument. He says “you have heard that antichrist is coming” and follows this with “but now …” In other words, ignore what you may have heard about what will supposedly happen in the future, I’m telling you that many antichrists have already come. He reinforces this by saying “this is how we know that it is the last hour.” John was convinced that the end was about to come, very soon. He wasn’t thinking about some far-off in the future event or someone who would come thousands of years down the track.
When you say “It is obvious in daniel & revelation that a person sets themselves up as god in the temple in the last days …” you should note that simply saying something is obvious doesn’t make it so. It’s not obvious (to me) at all! Daniel seems pretty clear that the end is about to come, that the person who desecrates the Temple was right there in the form of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. But he was convinced that this desecration would be short-lived. Again, this writer wasn’t thinking of events thousands of years in the future. He was offering hope and encouragement to his readers who were going through terrible turmoil. To tell them about something which would happen thousands of years away would have offered no hope or comfort.
I’m sorry it doesn’t make sense to you. I too like to read the Bible “simply” and to me the simplest reading is the one that understands the writers of the Bible to be making sense to the people who first read it.
The problem i have with your theory is all of the peripherial events described in revelation especially aren’t there.
If your timing is correct then the temple has been occupied by the son of perdition and the whole world has been caused to worship the image of the beast already. But that didn’t happen among many other things at the time you said it did.
Just cause someone went into the temple and threw a pig on the alter and sacrificed it doesnt describe the exact events that take place in revelation.
Because according to you, we are now just waiting for god to appear at any moment because all of these things have taken place?
You are missing major facts. But this is how the antichrist comes and decieves i guess. People blinded by theological over reasoning won’t even see it coming.
Let him who has an ear, hear, is said for a reason.
Good luck.
You seem to be confused about the events behind Daniel and Revelation:
“Just cause someone went into the temple and threw a pig on the alter and sacrificed it doesnt describe the exact events that take place in revelation.”
First, it wasn’t a matter of someone “throwing a pig on an altar.” Antiochus IV prohibited circumcision and the observance of biblical laws and murdered thousands of Jews who continued to practise their faith. Your comment seems to trivialise his atrocities.
Second, the events described in Revelation happened more than 200 years later, during the reign of Nero, as you noted yourself in your comment on my other post about the time periods in Daniel/Revelation. These two books are describing completely different events, as we would expect as they were written two centuries apart.
You should do some reading about the history of the times and get some background to Daniel and Revelation and then perhaps we can continue the conversation.
Thanks for this, Stephen. I agree that constantly looking out for which modern political or religious figure “is the Antichrist” is a misguided exercise. I regard the Antichrist as more of a concept that has manifested itself at various points in history than a literal eschatological figure. I wouldn’t rule out that there could be some definitive historical villain at the time of Christ’s Parousia, but trying to guess who it will be strikes me as a grand waste of time.
As you noted, some parts of the New Testament suggest the notion of plural Antichrist figures (notably, 1 John and the Olivet discourse of the Synoptic Gospels), while others suggest a singular figure (notably, 2 Thessalonians) or perhaps a double figure (‘the Beast’ and ‘the false prophet’ in Revelation). Within the timeframe of the later New Testament books, a singular eschatological archvillain also appears in other Christian literature such as the Didache and the Ascension of Isaiah. As Christian theologians began to systematise these earlier ideas about the Antichrist (notably Tertullian and Hippolytus in the late second/early third centuries), the singular figure came to dominate.
In a number of cases, especially Matthew and Revelation, dependence on Daniel is clear. Of course, as you rightly say, this does not imply that the writer of Daniel was consciously predicting an Antichrist from the Roman period or beyond. The New Testament writers’ interpretation of material in the Hebrew Bible/LXX moves beyond the authorially intended meaning more often than not! The theological question is whether they are justified in doing so.