Excessive Righteousness 8: The Antichrist(s)

 

 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. … Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:18-23 NKJV)

 

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

(1 John 4:2-3 NKJV)

 

For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. (2 John 7 NKJV)

 

 

 

Are you expecting the “Antichrist” to come to the world soon? Some well-meaning Christians are surprised to learn that the term “Antichrist” occurs only in these few passages and that these passages are ONLY from the first two epistles of John. The term “Antichrist” does NOT appear in Revelation. It does NOT appear in any of the gospels, Acts, or the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, or Hebrews, yet attempts to interject this term into end-time predictions in all of the above sources are myriad. Furthermore, some well-meaning Christians overlook the obvious indication in these passages that the term “antichrist” is primarily a PLURAL entity, not a SINGULAR entity. You may be wondering why we consider the “Antichrist(s)” in the context of “Excessive Righteousness.” We’ll get to that, in a moment.

 

NOT the Man of Lawlessness.

It is not because the “Antichrist(s)” refers to the same individual(s) as the “Man of Lawlessness,” although one would think that ANYONE who followed some of the Law of Moses would possess righteousness that would exceed the righteousness of the Man of Lawlessness. Christianity.com (and many others) are wrong when they say: “In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul refers to [the “Antichrist”] as the Man of Lawlessness.” Here are a few reasons that the two are not the same:

1.      The “Antichrist(s),” according to 1 John 2:19 (NKJV), “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.” In other words, the “Antichrist(s)” fellowshipped with the Church (and were even assumed to be Christians) for a while before going “out from” the Church. By contrast, the Man of Lawlessness is never mentioned in 2 Thessalonians as having once affiliated with the Church.

2.      The “Antichrist(s)” is never spoken of as “sit[ting] as God in the temple of God,” as is the Man of Lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 (NKJV).

3.      The “Antichrist(s),” according to 1 John 2:18-23, is never spoken of as “exalt[ing] himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped,” as is the Man of Lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 (NKJV).

4.      The “Antichrist(s),” according to 1 John 2:18-23, is never spoken of as “coming … according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders,” as is the Man of Lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 (NKJV). There is no indication that the “Antichrist(s)” possessed any miraculous powers.

5.      True, the “Antichrist(s),” according to 1 John 2:18-23 (NKJV), is a “liar … who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” While 2 Thessalonians 2:4-5 (NKJV) states that the Man of Lawlessness comes “with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,” Paul does not say that the specific lie he breathes is that he “denies that Jesus is the Christ.” According to Brittanica.com, the Book of Daniel “foretold the coming of a final persecutor who would ‘speak great words against the most High … and think to change times and laws’” (7:25).” Antiochus IV Epiphanes has been suggested as the reference in Daniel, but “Early Christians applied it to the Roman emperors who persecuted the church, in particular Nero (reigned [AD] 54–68).” Nevertheless, neither Daniel nor Paul states that the Man of Lawlessness “persecutes the Church,” or is opposed to Christ, in particular—just that he speaks against the “most High God,” according to Daniel. 2 Thessalonians 2:4 says that he “exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” According to J.A.T. Robinson, in Redating the New Testament, Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians in AD 50-51 (p. 352), three or four years before Nero even became Emperor, and well before he began persecuting Christians (AD 67) and even before he sent his troops to wage war with the Jews (AD 66). A better candidate for Paul’s Man of Lawlessness is the emperor Caligula, who died just one decade before Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. I write in my book Revelation: The Human Drama (p. 82): “There is evidence that Caligula … shocked the whole Jewish world by commanding that his statue be set up in the Temple at Jerusalem in A.D. 40.  Perhaps John's discussion of the image of the beast alludes to this command.  The statue was never constructed, however.  Caligula's untimely assassination was the only thing that prevented his command from being carried out.” I continue on page 88: “It is highly probable that John, with his term ‘image [of the beast],’ is making allusion to the proposed statue of Caligula that would have been placed in the temple in A.D. 40, had Caligula not been assassinated.  If, as Wellhausen claims, ‘[t]he eikôn [image] is the alter ego of the empire just as Jesus was called the eikôn of God’ (cf. II Corinthians 4:4 and Colossians 1:15), then a living human being serves as the ‘image’ of the beast, just as the human, Jesus, serves as the ‘image’ of God.” Caligula is the best fit for Paul’s statement that the Man of Lawlessness “exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” Paul seems to suggest that this “mystery” of a Man of Lawlessness, sitting in the temple of God, had already begun before he wrote: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.” Paul clearly knew, writing in 50-51, that Caligula had not actually sat “as God in the temple of God,” since he was assassinated a decade earlier, but knew that such a scenario (mystery) of lawlessness was on its way. John, in Revelation, then interprets this principle of a Man of Lawlessness sitting in the temple in AD 69 as the Jewish High Priest, the image of the Beast (Rome), requiring all Jewish patrons of the temple to worship the Roman Emperor Nero. I continue on pages 89-90 of Revelation: “The high priestly party could easily have been understood to be the talking ‘image’ of the beast who compelled people to worship Rome.  Zeitlin observes:

On … the beginning of January 66, a great assembly … establish[ed] a government to carry out … the war. It chose as head of the government the High Priest Ananus, a Sadducee who inherently was for peace.  ... This government … played a double role.  It thought it would achieve its goal by shrewdness. Speaking openly for war, inwardly it was for peace. It wanted to disarm the extremists so that it should have all power concentrated in its hands and thus be allowed to make peace with Rome. It failed utterly.

6.      The Man of Lawlessness is NOT the Antichrist. Rather, the Man of Lawlessness is the Jewish High Priest(hood), the “image of the Beast,” who lied to the Jewish people. The High Priest actually “sat in the temple,” encouraging the Jews to worship the Beast (Rome), and the High Priest actually offered sacrifices in the temple on behalf of the emperor (who did persecute both the Christians and the Jews: Nero).

 

Who is/are the Antichrist/s?

If the Antichrist(s) is not the same individual(s) as the “Man of Lawlessness, who is he (or who are they)?

·         He and they ARE former Christians, at least in name. They “went out from us.”

·         In this respect, he and they are similar to those described in Hebrews 6:4-6 (NKJV): “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.”

·         He and they are similar to those in Hebrews 10:25-26 (NKJV) who were “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some … For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”

·         He and they are similar to those in Hebrews 12:25 (NKJV) who were cautioned: “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him.”

·         This “Antichrist” apostasy could be what I refer to (in Apocalyptic Apologetic, 100-1) where I mention J.A.T. Robinson (Redating, 207-8) reporting (regarding the Neronian persecution of Christians following the Roman Fire of AD 64):

[E]xceptional and dangerous circumstances, involving the betrayal of fellow-Christians … [in] the Neronian persecution in Rome. Describing it, Tacitus ... spoke of the “information” given by those who confessed which led to the conviction of their fellow-believers. Clement, reflecting on the same sad story from the Christian side, speaks of “a vast multitude of the elect, who through many indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy, set a brave example among [the Christians].” … [The Shepherd of] Hermas … pictures vividly the various sections under pressure: “As many … as were tortured and denied not, when brought before the magistracy, but suffered readily, these are the more glorious in the sight of the Lord; their faith is that which surpasseth. But as many as became cowards and were lost in uncertainty, and considered in their hearts whether they should deny or confess … that a servant should deny his own lord.”

Even in Asia Minor, where being a Christian might not have cost someone that person’s life in the Neronian persecution, it certainly might have cost one’s livelihood. So, in a move to protect their businesses and business interests, many “Christians” chose to put distance between themselves and the Church. Perhaps, as a show of good faith to Rome, these “Jewish Christians” even participated in pagan festivals. It was just good business. Robinson [Redating, 211-12] comments:

If we ask why now [the Jewish Christians] were … “staying away” from assembling with their fellow Christians ([Hebrews] 10:24f.), we may recall that in his description of the [Neronian]  persecutions, [the Shepherd of] Hermas speaks of those who “were mixed up in business and cleaved not to the saints;” they “stood aloof ... by reason of their business affairs ... from desire of gain they played the hypocrite .... Some of them ... are wealthy and others are entangled in many business affairs;” and the wealthy “unwillingly cleave to the servants of God, fearing lest they may be asked for something by them. ... [T]he Jewish community in Rome had a strong business sense, which was reflected in its Christian members. Their temptation was to allow racial and economic connections to outweigh the commitment of their Christian faith. … [T]hey sought to shelter under the ‘protective colouring’ of the religio licita [=legal religious status] of Judaism.”

In [Revelation’s] terminology, the synagogue of Satan, Jezebel, the Nicolaitans, and the Balaamites sold out their fellow Christians. Since the Jews were exempt from Nero’s persecution of the Christians—because Judaism was considered an “acceptable religion” (religio licita), many Jewish Christians became—like the high priesthood in Jerusalem—“harlots” who committed porneia with Roman authorities. Their garments were “defiled” because they chose to be in league with the Beast.

The Antichrist: a Judas Typology

In the Antichrist(s), we are not looking at the typology of Christians who are struggling with their faith, as may be the case with someone who cannot answer the arguments pressed upon him/her by an unbelieving academic world. To the contrary, like Judas, they know who Jesus is, yet they reject him anyway. Like Judas and those who are described in Hebrews 6:4-6 (NKJV), they were “once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” Like Judas and those who are described in Hebrews 6:4-6 (NKJV), they “crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.” An Antichrist is not an agnostic, unbeliever, or even an honest atheist. Indeed, the Antichrist knows who Jesus is! He “is a liar … who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either” (1 John 2:22 NKJV). One might well say to an Antichrist (just as one could say to Judas): “You know, don’t you!” Nevertheless, for financial gain (“thirty pieces of silver” or business purposes) or for social or academic acceptance, etc., the Antichrist will deny the Son (and, by extension, the Father). Like Judas, the Antichrist will hand Jesus over to be crucified again, all the while knowing the truth “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh [and] is of God” (1 John 4:2 NKJV).

 

Similar to the Unforgiveable Sin

Thus, we return to the Unforgiveable Sin. It was identified in my blogpost Excessive Righteousness 3: The Greatest Sin. There, I point out: “If ‘blasphemy’ consists of believing in the existence and power of another god in addition to the God of Israel, as the Pharisees in John 10:33-36 asserted … then they themselves are guilty of ‘blasphemy’ when they attribute the healing power of Jesus to the Canaanite god Beelzebub.” They knew that there is no actual god Beelzebub who had given Jesus the power to heal. It was the unforgiveable sin for a teacher of the Law, steeped in the monotheism of the Ten Commandments and the Shema, who certainly knew better to lie to and deceive those who believed in them, suggesting that Beelzebub actually existed.

Likewise, it is unforgiveable for Christians who were “once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come” and, therefore, certainly know better to lie to and deceive those who believe in them, denying that Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh.

 

How Does This Understanding Contribute to Excessive Righteousness?

The two great (unforgiveable) sins are:

1.      Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (knowing that there is no other God, yet claiming that a power like Beelzebub exists) and

2.      Antichrist behavior (knowing that Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh, yet denying that claim and, thereby, crucifying Him all over again).

Since God and Jesus are the only two in existence who can determine what righteousness is (i.e., the only ones who can issue moral commandments), political correctness, wokeness, DEI, Thomas Paine’s “human experience and rationality,” etc., are not the grounds for determining righteousness. If one’s righteousness will exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, one must begin by recognizing the exclusiveness of God’s Law and Christ’s commandments, and then seek to correctly interpret those laws and commandments.

John said that many Antichrists had already come when he wrote his epistles. Some want to speculate concerning the identity of some eschatological Antichrist. The clearest Antichrist known to the world is Judas, who knew who Jesus was and betrayed Him to be crucified anyway. Jesus said at His Last Supper: “The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24 NKJV). Whatever we do, we must certainly avoid being another Antichrist, ourselves!

Apocalyptic? #33: Armageddon V: False Prophets, Bridle-High Blood, and Jerusalem Burning: Josephus

 

Jesus’ Prediction of False Prophets  

Matthew 24:11 (NKJV) records the prediction by Jesus of False Prophets after they hear of “wars and rumors of war” (See also Mark 13): “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.” 

Josephus’s Confirmation Prior to the War:  Before the Jewish-Roman War began, Josephus reports, “another body of wicked men . . . deceived and deluded the people under pretense of divine inspiration . . . prevailed with the multitude to act like mad men . . . pretending that God would” help them defeat the Romans.  An “Egyptian false prophet . . . got together thirty thousand men . . . [and] led [them] . . .  to the . . . Mount of Olives, and was ready to break into Jerusalem by force” (Wars II.XIII.4-5).

Josephus’s Confirmation During the War:  Why did the Jews not, at some point, surrender and cut their losses?  Jesus had prophesied this horrible end, but they believed, instead, the False Prophets.  After the Romans had taken the temple, during which 6000 Jews were being slaughtered and burned in Jerusalem, Josephus tells us:

A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city, that very day, that God commanded them to get up upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.  Now, there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants [Simon and John] to impose upon the people . . . that they should wait for deliverance from God . . . Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers (Wars VI.V.2-3).

 

Bridle-High Blood Like from a Winepress  

     After describing sharp sickles that would be used by angels to “harvest” the “land” (do not translate as “earth,” rather:  as the “land” of Israel), Revelation 14:20 (NKJV) states: “Then the [wine]press was trampled outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press up to the horses’ bridles for about 180 miles.”  These 180 miles would extend outside of the city (of Jerusalem).  While the state of Israel, today, is approximately 290 miles long from north to south, at the time Revelation was written, it was roughly 180 miles long from north to south; John is writing about the blood that flowed throughout all of the “land” of Israel.  By contrast, Alexandria, Egypt is roughly 300 miles from Jerusalem and Ephesus in Asia Minor (the closest of the seven churches) is at least 600 miles from Jerusalem.  We know that Jewish blood flowed exceedingly as far away as Alexandria at the first of the war and that Christians were slain in Asia Minor, as well as Rome (over 1400 miles from Jerusalem), after Nero blamed the Christians for the Roman Fire, so the extent of flowing blood was well beyond the 180 miles described by John.  The depth of the river of blood (bridle-high) is hyperbolic, but it is also described hyperbolically by Josephus when he describes places “overflowing with blood,” “bloody seas,” “bloody lakes,” “blood standing in lakes,” and burning houses being “quenched with blood.”  Certainly, houses full of dead bodies would be higher than horses’ bridles, as would thousands of bodies being dumped at the city gates and bodies floating in bloody rivers that couldn’t be crossed.

 

Alexandria just after the war started: “[T]he Jews . . . were destroyed unmercifully . . . some being caught in the open field and others forced into their houses . . . which houses were . . . set on fire by the Romans; wherein no mercy was shown to the infants, and no regard had to the aged; but they went on in the slaughter of persons of every age, till all the place was overflowed with blood, and fifty thousand of them lay dead upon heaps” (Wars II.XVIII.8).

Joppa just after Vespasian entered the war: “[T]he sea was bloody a long way, and the maritime parts were full of dead bodies; for the Romans . . . destroyed them; and the number of the bodies that were thus thrown out of the sea was four thousand and two hundred” (Wars III.IX.3).

Taricheae on the Sea of Galilee vs. Vespasian: “[O]ne might then see the lake ALL BLOODY, and full of dead bodies, for not one of them escaped.  . . . This was the upshot of the sea-fight.  The number of the slain, including those that were killed in the city before, was six thousand and five hundred (Wars III.X.9).

 

The Civil War in Jerusalem:  In the civil war battle for the temple in which Ananus the High Priest was killed, Josephus writes: “And now the outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood, and that day as it came on, saw eight thousand five hundred dead bodies there” (Wars IV.V.1).  “[T]he dead bodies of strangers were mingled together with those of those of their own country, and those of profane persons with those of the priests, and the blood of all sorts of dead carcases stood in lakes in the holy courts themselves” (Wars V.I.3).

The Roman Attack on the Temple in Jerusalem: “While the [temple] was on fire . . . ten thousand of those that were caught were slain . . . any age . . . children . . . old men . . . the blood was larger in quantity than the fire . . . the ground did nowhere appear visible, for the dead bodies that lay on it . . . heaps of these bodies” (Wars VI.V.1).

The Roman Attack on the Rest of Jerusalem: “[The Romans] went in numbers into the lanes of the city with their swords drawn, they slew whom they overtook without mercy, and set fire to the houses . . . and burnt every soul in them . . . for those that were still alive . . . they ran everyone through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood” (Wars VI.VIII.5).

Jerusalem Burning 

     Revelation 17:16 (NKJV) promises: “And the ten horns [the ten kings of the land] which you saw on the beast [Rome], these will hate the harlot [Jerusalem], make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire.”  Revelation 18:8 (NKJV) confirms: “Therefore her plagues will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her.”

     Titus began his taking of Jerusalem by giving “his soldiers leave to set the suburbs on fire, and . . . bring timber . . . and raise banks against the city . . . So the trees were now cut down immediately, and the suburbs left naked” (Wars V.VI.2). 

     When Titus had eventually reached the temple, his first inclination was to leave the temple standing, but since the Jews continued to fight from inside the temple, killing “his soldiers . . . he gave orders to set the gates on fire” (Wars VI.IV.1).  Then, due to the conductivity of silver, with which the gates were adorned, “the soldiers had already put fire to the gates, and the silver that was over them quickly carried the flames to the wood that was within it, whence it spread itself all on the sudden, and caught hold of the cloisters.”  The Jews inside made no “haste . . . to quench the fire . . . they did not grieve at the loss of what was now burning . . . .  This fire prevailed during that day and the next also” (Wars VI.IV.2).  Titus ordered his soldiers to quench the fire, but in the process, one soldier disobeyed orders.  “[He] snatched . . . out of the materials that were on fire, and . . . set fire to a golden window . . . to the rooms that were round about, on the north side” (Wars VI.IV.4).  With Titus still ordering that the fires be quenched, other soldiers approaching the temple “made as if they did not hear Caesar’s orders . . . but they encouraged those that were before them to set it on fire” (Wars VI.IV.6).  Josephus continues:

And now the Romans, judging that it was in vain to spare what was round about the holy house, burnt all those places, as also the remains of the cloisters and the gates . . . .  They also burnt down the treasury chambers . . . the cloisters that were in the outer [court of the temple] . . . whither the women and children [and others] fled . . . about six thousand . . . the soldiers . . . set the cloister on fire . . . some of these were destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burnt in the cloisters themselves.  Nor did any one of these escape with his life (Wars VI.V.2).

 

After burning down the temple and its associated buildings, Titus turned his attention to the rest of the city:

[H]e gave orders to the soldiers, both to burn and to plunder the city . . . on the next day they set fire to the repository of the archives, to Acra, to the council-house, and to the place called Ophlas [Ophel]; at which time the fire proceeded as far as the palace of Queen Helena . . . the lanes also were burnt down as were also those houses that were full of the dead bodies of such as were destroyed by famine (Wars VI.VI.3).

Josephus concludes: “Accordingly, as the people were now slain, the holy house was burnt down, and the city was on fire, there was nothing further left for the enemy to do.  [M]any . . . deserters were caught . . . and were all slain” (Wars VI.VII.2).  After the Romans finally caught John of Gischala and Simon son of Giora hiding in underground caverns, “the Romans set fire to the extreme parts of the city, and burnt them down, and entirely demolished its walls” (Wars VI.IX.4).

The End of the Battle of Armageddon

     With this post, I conclude my discussion of the Battle of Armageddon.  In popular parlance, many believe that the end of this battle signifies the end of the world.  Not so.  There is still the Parousia (a.k.a., the Second Coming or Rapture of the Church), the Millennium with the Binding of the Dragon for 1000 years, the Release of the Dragon from the Abyss at least 1000 years later, the Gathering of Gog and Magog from the four corners of the land, the Final Battle, the End of the old Heavens and Earth, the Creation of the New Heavens and Earth, populated by the New Jerusalem, etc.  The end of the Battle of Armageddon is not even the end of the Jewish Roman War.  It is only the end of the first half of Daniel’s final Week of Years.  It took 3 ½ years for Rome to desolate Jerusalem, but there remains another 3 ½ years before the end of the war.  John has less to say about this period, so our progress should be considerably faster.  We turn in the next post to “After Armageddon.”