Antichrist
ANTICHRIST
The term “antichrist” is found in only four verses in the entire Bible. All four of these instances are in the epistles of John. All four of these speak of antichrist as a present reality.
Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. (1 John 2:18). The first and most obvious thing we note from this passage is its references to that which is in the present. It is already said to be, not merely the last day, but the last hour. The suggestion is that John is making in his own day is that he and his readers have already been through the last days, through the last day, and are coming to the final hour.
Secondly, we note that he references a pre-existing teaching. He says that his readers already have knowledge that “antichrist is coming.” Was this merely an oral tradition or was it based on previous Scripture? We have no need to assume the former, even though the term “antichrist” has been previously absent from the Scriptures. There have been other descriptive terms that have been used in its place.
Daniel 7:20-21 described a “little horn” that would rise up and do battle with the saints of God.
Daniel 11:36 speaks of a king who would magnify himself above every god and who would speak monstrous things against the God of gods. While this saw fulfillment in the actions of Antiochus Epiphenes, Jesus referenced the “abomination of desolation spoken by Daniel the prophet” and said that it would take place in the future (Matthew 24:15).
Paul speaks of how “that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Where shall we look for the fulfillment of these prophecies? As we have already noted, some have at least a measure of fulfillment in the past. The events of Daniel 11:1-45 have been fulfilled so exactly that most critics of the Bible who reject supernatural revelation and its fulfillments of prophecy are forced to assume that Daniel must have been written after the Maccabean conflicts. On the other hand, Jesus referenced those same writings and looked for a future fulfillment.
Others have noted the manner in which at least some elements of these prophecies find fulfillment in the A.D. 70 fall of Jerusalem in which Titus, the son of Roman emperor Vespasian entered the temple and subsequently burned it to the ground. It is to this end that some have insisted in an early date for the book of Revelation, despite the fact that early church fathers consistently assigned its writing to the reign of Domitian (81-96). The idea that the antichrist was still to come in the future has an early tradition within the church. Irenaeus, writing from the second century, equates the antichrist with Paul's description in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 and looks to a future fulfillment of his coming: When the anti-christ shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for 3 years and 6 months, and sit in the temple in Jerusalem, and then shall the lord come from the heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him, into the lake of fire, but bringing for the righteous the times of the kingdom that is the rest the hallowed seventh day and restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance in which the kingdom of the lord declared that many coming from the east and from the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol 1, 560) The Reformers, for their part, identified the Roman Catholic pontiff as the antichrist and the popes seem to have been quite willing the return the favor. There is thus a longstanding tradition of seeking to identify the antichrist with this leader or that personage and none have passed the test of time. It is the better part of discretion to withhold such judgments.