20 Sermon Illustrations on Antichrist

Absalom a type of. Gathers army against Christ, the greater David (Rev. 19:19), meeting his defeat in the brightness of Christ's coming. See ch. 18

[A little strong for the tiny tykes, but some interesting points about the secularizing, and trivializing, of God in our culture.]

Santa Claus is a false, fake substitute the world puts forth instead of the true message at Christmas. Do you remember these words?

"You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout,

I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town.

He's making a list and he's checking it twice; gonna find out whose

naughty and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town.

He sees you when you're sleeping; he knows when you're awake.

He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sakes.

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout,

I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town."

This is a very threatening song that is intended to scare children. When we teach a child to sing this song, we are teaching him a false theology. We are teaching him a false set of doctrine. Let me see if I can explain it to you.

First, that song teaches that Santa is a transcendent being. He lives on a higher plane. He lives on another level. He transcends time and space. He has powers equal to whom? God! Not only that, he knows everything. He's omniscient. "He knows when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you're naughty. He knows when you're nice." He knows everything.

Not only that, he's everywhere. "He sees you when you're sleeping." He's not only omniscient, he's omnipresent. And he is watching to see whether you have been good or bad. And not only that, but he bestows favors. Now on what basis does Santa give his favors? What must I do to receive good things from this transcendent being, called Santa? Well, it is very simple: I have to be what? Good. I can "earn" Santa's favor. If I am good, Santa will give me gifts. After all, he's making a list and he is checking it twice to make sure that we've been either naughty of nice. And on the basis on how we've been, he'll deal with us. No grace, just works.

[A humorous commentary on the dangers of trying to identify the Antichrist]

Here’s the latest on Barney! Start with the given:

1. CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR

2. Change all the U’s to V’s (which is proper Latin anyway)

CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR

3. Extract all the Roman Numerals

CV V L DI V

4. Convert these to Arabic values.

100+5 +5+50+500+1 +5

5. Add them up. Total = 666

There you have it! Proof that Barney is the Antichrist. Please pass this on to every prophecy student you know. It is imperative that the truth gets out before it is too late!

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When Ed McAteer watches current events unfold in the Middle East, he sees the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

These things must come to pass, he believes, in order for Jesus to return and bring world history to its end. That's why he was saddened but not surprised when the United Nations recently voted against Israel, in his opinion, on a resolution on the Middle East conflict.

"When the nations gather against Israel, I believe at that time the Scriptures will be fulfilled," said the retired sales executive who now devotes himself full time to conservative Christian causes.

McAteer is a leader among evangelical Christians in support for Israel. He hosts an annual prayer breakfast for Israel attended by both Jewish and evangelical Christian leaders. He recently chaired an international committee that created sufficient public pressure to stop the construction of a mosque near Christian holy sites in Nazareth.

From his Memphis, Tennessee, home, McAteer frequently speaks by phone with key Israeli leaders who seek his counsel or support.

Ed McAteer loves Israel, because he believes the Bible tells him to. He often cites God's promise to Abraham, "I will bless them who bless you and curse them who curse you."

From the perspective of this Baptist layman, the mandate to support Israel without equivocation runs all the way from Genesis to Revelation.

Although more articulate and passionate about the subject than most other American evangelicals, McAteer represents a stream of theological and political thought that has driven United States policy toward Israel for more than 50 years.

"No one in the U.S. outdoes fundamentalists in their support of Israel, not even American Jews," said Tim Weber, a Christian historian and dean at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Illinois.

"Since Menachem Begin, all Israeli leaders have seen American fundamentalists as important shapers of American foreign policy toward Israel. What many people do not understand is that most fundamentalists support Israel because they believe it will play a key role in events leading up to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ."

While this theological view of the end-times -- known as premillennial dispensationalism -- is not the majority view among Christians worldwide or even nationwide, it strongly shapes Americans' views of Israel, Weber said. "The influence of such ideas extends way beyond the tight community that nurtures and studies them.

"The dispensationalist scenario is imbedded in the fundamentalist subculture, has much greater influence in the more expansive world of American evangelicalism and even reaches into the larger secular population. These ideas matter, and not just for those who believe and understand them."

Need proof? Look at book publishers' bestseller lists, where the "Left Behind" series has held sway for months.

To date, the nine-book series has sold more than 50 million copies. In 2001, the latest installment, "Desecration," beat out John Grisham for top annual sales of hardback fiction, with 2.9 million copies sold.

The eighth book in the Left Behind series, "The Mark," was the No. 2 bestseller in 2000, and the seventh book, "Assassins," was No. 3 in 1999.

These books are fictionalized accounts built out of a dispensationalist view of the end times. And more significantly than most people realize, this worldview influences American thought on Israel, Weber contends.

Dispensationalism, articulated as a distinct theology by John Nelson Darby about 1830, teaches that shortly before the return of Christ, the nations will gather for war in the Middle East against a restored Jewish state.

Weber explains: "Dispensationalists patch together prophecies in Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation and predict that a northern confederacy made up of Russia and her allies will join forces with kings of the South, usually identified as an Arab/Muslim coalition, to launch a sneak attack to annihilate Israel once and for all. Though Israel's doom seems certain, God intervenes and destroys the invaders."

But that's still not the end. "Relieved but still shaky, the Jews then make a security pact with the charismatic, peace-promising leader of a 10-nation European confederation, a revived Roman Empire. After securing the peace of Jerusalem for three and a half years, this leader suddenly reveals himself to be the Anti-Christ. Working closely with a demonic false prophet, Anti-Christ enters the restored Jewish temple in Israel, demands to be worshipped as God and then launches a genocidal war against all who refuse to acknowledge him. In response, the kings of the East send a 200-million-man army to fight Anti-Christ's forces on the plains of Megiddo, northwest of Jerusalem. This is the battle of Armageddon.

"Before the armies can annihilate each other, Jesus Christ breaks out of the clouds with his warrior saints and destroys the assembled armies. The surviving Jews then acknowledge him as their Messiah, and King Jesus restores David's throne in Jerusalem, near the purified Jewish temple where priests perform the ancient blood sacrifices. Jesus reigns in peace and justice for a thousand years."

All this, however, hinges on restoring and preserving a Jewish state in Palestine.

McAteer agrees that the existence of Israel as a nation is "very important" to his view of Christian theology. "Jesus said when these things come to pass, lift up your head, your redemption draweth nigh."

In the early days of dispensationalism, Christians were content to wait for the prophesied events to unfold on God's own timetable. But since the late 19th century, some evangelicals have attempted to speed up the clock by ensuring certain things come to pass -- specifically the restoration of a Jewish state.

One of the first advocates of this brand of Zionism was William Blackstone, an Illinois businessman who wrote the bestseller "Jesus is Coming" in 1878. "Blackstone did not want to wait around for a new Jewish state," Weber explained. "He did what he could to make it happen."

When the modern state of Israel finally was created in 1948, "dispensationalists hailed its founding as the most significant prophetic fulfillment of the age, the undeniable proof that they had read the Bible correctly," Weber said.

Since 1948, dispensational theology has pushed for expansion of Israel's borders on prophetic grounds.

"Dispensationalists understood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not in terms of international law or the rights of self-determination, but as a modern expression of the ancient biblical rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael for their father Abraham's birthright and blessing," Weber said. "Thus dispensationalists did not see any way to reconcile the two warring parties.

"The divine die was cast. Jews win; Palestinians lose."

Indicative of this view, McAteer believes there's "no such thing as the land of Palestine. That's something that's been manufactured. That piece of geography was given by God to Israel."

Where should the Palestinians go, then? Anywhere else in the Middle East, McAteer said, so long as they leave the Jewish nation alone. "The Arabs have 485 times as much land as do the Jews."

This is where McAteer and others who are consistent in applying their theological beliefs to politics find discomfort with some of the Republican leaders they have helped elect.

When President George W. Bush indicates that perhaps Israel should give up some of its land and be more conciliatory toward the Palestinians, McAteer and company are not pleased.

"I'm not in lockstep with a number of my religious Christian brethren, even those in the Southern Baptist Convention, in their endorsing and wrapping their arms around everything George W. Bush says about the Middle East," McAteer said. "One day, he says one thing; the next day, he says another."

McAteer especially bristles at Bush taking a hard-line stance against terrorists attacking the United States but not against Palestinians, who he believes are terrorists attacking Israel.

"Find me one time in all this that Israel has initiated a conflict with the Palestinians," he said. "I'm not saying everything Israel has done has been right, but they have not initiated the conflicts."

But even so, the bottom line for him remains the Bible, not politics.

"I believe without any reservation whatsoever that every grain of sand on that piece of property called Israel belongs to the Jewish people. It's not because I happen to think that. It's not because history gives a picture of them being in and out of there. It's because God gave it to them."

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TESTING THE FAITH

Antichrist billboard to get competition?

Catholic League looks to post own sign blasting ad company

By Joe Kovacs

c 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Representatives of a group seeking a billboard response to an Oregon sign proclaiming, "The pope is the Antichrist," are blasting a perceived double standard, saying they are being ignored by the company whose billboard displays the message.

In the wake of WorldNetDaily's story about the controversial advertisement, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights says it's been trying to contact Outdoor Media Dimensions to post a rebuttal, but has yet to receive a call back.

"The Catholic League is prepared to pay for a billboard along Interstate 5 near Medford that reads, 'Outdoor Media Dimensions Sponsors Anti-Catholicism,'" writes Catholic League President William Donohue on the group's website. "If free speech is their god, they'll go for it. But the fact that they won't even entertain our offer tells us everything."

The billboard sparking the dispute reads, "The POPE Is The ANTICHRIST, Free Proof," and provides a website address for more information. Its display has resulted in some people taking offense, others supporting the statement and still others debating the limits of the First Amendment.

"Nobody here believes that [about the pope]," said Steve Croft, a salesman for Outdoor Media Dimensions. "Just because we have an ad for George W. Bush for president doesn't mean we endorse him."

Croft told WorldNetDaily an ironclad, year-long contract requires display of the pope billboard until next May, but he's unsure if any decision had been reached regarding future renewal.

The message is sponsored by Larry Weathers, a 50-year-old barber from Talent, Ore., who has no intentions of taking down the sign despite a rash of recent death threats. The publication Catholic Sentinel and the Archdiocese of Portland have urged him to remove the message.

"I don't believe there's anything they can do to hinder this work," said Weathers, whose site has been inundated since WND's original report. "This is not my fight; this is God's battle - it began 6,000 years ago."

Patrick Scully, director of communications for the Catholic League, feels Croft is being evasive by not responding to his group's request for a competing billboard and is censoring the group by not returning at least a week's worth of calls.

"He didn't have the guts to come to the phone. I was told, 'There's no need to slander,'" Scully said, describing how a woman taking office messages hung up on him after he mentioned the alternative message he's seeking to display.

The New York-based Catholic League represents approximately 350,000 members of the Roman Catholic Church.

When asked about the League's request for a rebuttal billboard, Croft told WorldNetDaily his company doesn't just post sourceless accusations. The only way he thinks ownership may approve of it would be to include a reference to the sign's sponsor, just as the current billboard has a website address.

"It's like a commercial disclaimer on the radio or an infomercial on TV," said Croft, who mentioned the company's owners have sole discretion on which signs are approved.

He says there are still two spaces available for new messages in southern Oregon, pending ownership approval.

Company attorney Alan Herson would not disclose the names of the company's owners, but he did say the chief executive officer is Alex Kim of Seattle.

The Catholic League is willing to display its name and logo on any message it posts, according to Scully, who chastises OMD for its handling of the matter.

"They claim they're for free speech," Scully told WND, "but as the media is putting heat on them, these free-speech champions are only for it when their best interests are involved."

Scully again called OMD yesterday to reiterate the offer - including any needed disclaimer - and was told Croft wasn't available. Croft says he returned the call, but Scully was already gone for the day.

Meantime, the original billboard is gaining the attention of national TV networks. "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox News Channel is preparing an upcoming segment on the controversy.

Matters of free speech and alleged bigotry are likely to be discussed on the program, says Weathers, who insists he's acting out of concern for Catholics and is not trying to spread hate or bigotry.

Weathers is part of a small group of 40 people calling itself The Rogue Valley Historic Seventh-day Adventists (a splinter group of the Seventh-day Adventist Church), and he insists identifying the pope as the Antichrist is not a new concept.

"For the last 15 decades, it's been the message of countless millions of Seventh-day Adventists," Weathers claims. "[The papal office has been] a worldwide deception for roughly 1,700 years - a fraud on every generation."

The national leadership of Seventh-day Adventists has backed off anti-papal rhetoric in recent years, and Weathers attributes that to a global ecumenical movement involving the Catholic Church.

"Anti-Catholic bigotry has been around for years," stated Scully. "We don't expect it to go away."

Weathers says he's also gotten wind of a possible slander suit in the works regarding the Antichrist message, but he's not about to flinch.

"The highlight of my life would be to prove this in court," he said.

Villa Baviera is a religious cult and colony of Germans in Chile. They came there in the 1960s following Paul Schaefer, a charismatic World War II German army nurse, who cult members thought was God on earth and who preached an unnamed religion that said harsh discipline would draw them closer to the Supreme Being. The cult lived frozen in time, the 280 members singing German folk songs and working the fields wearing 1930s Bavarian peasant garb.

The apocalyptic cult barred itself behind a perimeter fence guarded by cameras and motion detectors, and once even taunted police with Nazi salutes. Beatings to enforce discipline were widespread, and some members were forced to take drugs to quell sexual desires. A judge is probing reports it provided torture chambers for the secret police during Chile's 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

Schaefer, now believed to be 81, banned television and telephones and blotted references to love and sex out of the Bible. Over the years, defectors reported the cult split babies from their parents at birth and banned normal contact between family members. Young men and women were not allowed to date.

After a while the prohibition against marriage broke down. One couple now regrets that they sacrificed child-bearing years to Schaefer's vision. His prohibitions on contact worked so well that almost no babies were born there for 25 years. Control was so pervasive, “We didn't even know what each other thought,” one member said in reference to her husband.

In 1997 Schaeffer disappeared but the colony continued functioning under the rule of loyal elders. It turned out Shaeffer had come to Chile to flee sex abuse charges in Germany. Decades later, some two dozen children who went to the cult's free clinic and school reported sexual abuse and the authorities began a long and intensive investigation.

“Everyone saw him as a celestial being and no one dared doubt him. People were blind here. It was a huge shock to discover the truth,” said Michael Mueller, a 47-year-old member.

Sermon in Book of Daniel series, #10 Daniel 11

THE ULTIMATE PROPHECY

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I. Rubbing the crystal ball.

A. How well can God predict?

B. The most precise prophecy in the entire Bible.

II. I can spare you most of the details.

A. Literally dozens of kings and events are predicted.

B. The essense of this chapter is a struggle between two kingdoms.

III. The rise of an especially evil king. 11:21

A. The ultimate king of the north - Antiochus IV (Epiphanes).

B. Beyond Antiochus?

C. Fact or fiction? The argument of literary genre.

D. The Antichrist is a key figure in Bible prophecy.

IV. Features of the antichrist in Daniel 11.

A. He strives to be personally autonomous. 11:36

B. He blasphemes God and is cruel to people. 11:36

C. He believes might makes right. 11:38

V. He is defeated spiritually rather than militarily.

In 1897, a fifty-year-old Irish business manager of a London theater created one of the most iconic figures in all of fiction, Dracula. Bram Stoker’s creation wasn’t the first vampire — there’d been at least two novels featuring vampires published previously — but his Count created the template that has been used countless times since.

“Countless” isn’t merely a figure of speech. Search for “vampire” at Amazon and you’ll get more than forty thousand results in books alone, and that number’s climbing. A similar search involving movies and television yields about 3,600 results.

It helps to understand the role Christianity plays in the novel. By this, I don’t mean that Stoker set out to write a specifically Christian tale or that he thought of himself as a Christian writer or even as a Christian. But what I do mean is that its imagery and story are indebted to Christianity, and do not make sense without it.

For starters, in Bram Stoker’s version, Dracula, whose name means “son of the Dragon,” i.e., the Devil, is literally an anti-Christ. Jesus shed his blood to bring men eternal life — Dracula takes other’s blood to give himself eternal life.

While most people know about Dracula’s aversion to crucifixes, that’s only one of the many Christian symbols and rites Van Helsing and company employ against the powers of darkness. As he tells his charges, they are “ministers of God’s own wish,” striving so “the world, and men for whom His Son died, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him.”

No doubt a major strategy devised by the enemy of the souls of men is to attack the heart of a free and biblically based nation — its schools.

Such a strategy would target our young, because that is the major place where minds are formed in today’s world. Abraham Lincoln profoundly observed that the philosophy of the classroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next.

In my previous message, I shared that Fisher Ames, the actual writer of the final version of the First Amendment, wrote that the Bible must be kept as the number one textbook. He said that the Bible was the source of morality and behavior in America. At the time, biblical principles permeated public life.

Little did he or the other Constitutional framers know what would happen beginning in the mid-20th century. That is when the judicial branch of the government would begin judicial activism, legislating, usurping the power of Congress, evolving from Constitutional law to sociological law, negating the original intent of the Founding Fathers.

Speaking of the intent of our founders and Constitution, I highly recommend David Barton’s excellent book, “Original Intent” and his other materials (Wallbuilders Press, Aledo, TX, 1-817-441-6044). David’s research and documentation are outstanding. Also, the book, “Red Sky in the Morning,” by John Damoose and myself, is full of similar, well-researched information (NewLife Publications, 1998).

Most Americans are increasingly grieved at the spiritual desert our schools and colleges have become. In the early United States, Christianity and education were inseparable. At the college level, for example, over 100 of the first 119 colleges founded in the United States were Christian, dedicated to the truth that God is the basis of all knowledge. Harvard, founded by Puritans, incorporated in its college laws that each student should consider “the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ… and therefore lay Christ on the bottom as the only foundation for all sound knowledge and learning.” Yale, Columbia and Princeton had similar Christian roots.

Since the Bible has been outlawed from our schools, most high school and college graduates today are biblically illiterate, and thus can be considered uneducated. How can one consider himself educated and know nothing of the revealed eternal truths of his Creator and His guidelines for life?

This is more evidence of the great need for spiritual awakening and revival in our land. More about that later.

In June 2016, I organized a meeting, under the banner of the local council of churches, to discuss issues relating to the forthcoming EU [European Union] referendum. The meeting was intended to provide an opportunity for airing Christian views on the subject. It was well attended and drew in participants from across the wide denominational spectrum of churches.

A rather surprising meeting – or not!

The evening was lively. Many of my friends (regardless of whether they were Leave or Remain) expressed astonishment afterwards at the way the discussion developed.

They had expected the topics to include debates over things like: sovereignty and parliamentary accountability; jobs and economic prosperity; continent-wide cooperation in order to meet global challenges; peace and security in Europe.

What they got was: whether the EU parliament building in Strasbourg was modelled on the Tower of Babel; the accusation that the statue of ‘Europa and the Bull’ in the European district of Brussels reveals the pagan origins of the EU; the allegation that the seat 666 is kept empty in the European Parliament chamber in both Brussels and Strasbourg (it isn’t); discussion over whether the EU represents the final political structure arising from the four beasts/kingdoms prophesied in Daniel, and also referred to as the “beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads” in Revelation; and whether it was a political tool of the Antichrist in advance of the second coming of Christ.

My friends were astonished at this. I wasn’t. During the previous month I had contributed a guest blog for a Christian news platform. It had been entitled: “I Believe in Prophecy. But the EU Is Not Babylon the Great.” During that month it had become, from my calculations, one of the most visited blogs on this website.

It can still be read online but, unfortunately, the huge string of comments and conversations under it can no longer be accessed. That is a pity because they would have provided interesting source material for future students of theology and the sociology of religion. Like the meeting I organized later, in June of that year, the online discussion got lively. In fact, it got very lively indeed! Some might say ‘heated.’

However, when it comes to end-times speculation I ‘have a past, as they say.

A bit of backstory

In 1975, as an impressionable 16-year-old, I avidly devoured the book ‘The Late, Great Planet Earth,’ written by Hal Lindsey, with Carole C. Carlson. It had been published in 1970, but took five years to cross my radar. Guided by Lindsey and Carlson, I explored chapters of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation that I had never read before; and had certainly never heard addressed by a preacher in my church.

I became familiar with kingdoms with four phases and a beast with ten horns and seven heads. I learned of the role of the communist USSR (and China) in end-times events; and I discovered tribes called Gog, Magog, Meshech, and Tubal and their invasion of Israel in the last days and how they represented the (then-communist) Warsaw Pact states. I was introduced to a future end-times battle at a place called Armageddon and its geographical location in northern Israel. The book alleged that the EEC/EU was the prophesied successor to the fourth kingdom of Daniel 7, and also represented the ten-horned beast of Revelation 13. It was not an isolated publication.

In 1976, I caused waves in my comprehensive school when I led a school assembly and shared my views of the world and the nearness of the apocalypse. The only reason I was allowed to do any other assemblies after that was because I was a senior prefect, a national champion 400m runner, and a speedy winger in the First Fifteen rugby team. All of which helped my teachers overlook my (then) rather-radicalized millenarian views. Plus, they could not get any other senior students to volunteer to lead assemblies.

For me personally, what challenged the mindset that the 1970s literature had fostered was experience and historical study. The EEC/EU grew to its tenth member, yet the Antichrist did not appear. A further challenge to my earlier views arose from one of my degree special subjects at Bristol University: religion and politics. In 1980, I completed my dissertation on radical millenarians of the 17th century. They were also convinced that they were living in the last days.

I realized we had been here before. This accompanied the realization that, despite clear scriptural injunctions not to indulge in speculation regarding the timing of the second coming of Christ, this theme had occurred again and again over two thousand years, with only the targets changing. It also became increasingly clear that the way in which end-times prophecies were used often revealed more about the contemporary political and cultural preoccupations of some Christians than they did about eschatological events.

In my 35-year career as a secondary school teacher I developed an interest in early medieval history and came upon the same familiar end-times viewpoints. However, this time it was not the EU, or the papacy, or Oliver Cromwell, but the Viking hordes of the tenth century who presaged the last days. Other contemporary chroniclers saw signs of it in the Magyar invasions of the same period.

Prophetic foundations

Christianity inherited from Judaism a deeply ingrained belief in prophecy. While one can argue that this more often involved ‘forth-telling’ than ‘fore-telling,’ it is clear that this also included the profound belief that history is moving towards a divinely-decided future date when God will judge the world, his rule will be established on earth, and the present created order will be transformed and renewed.

Jesus spoke of this future event and it was clearly an integral part of his message. His preferred self-identifier was ‘Son of Man,’ which was clearly based on Daniel chapter 7 and the idea of cosmic transformation. Eschatology (end times) belief is hard-wired into the gospels. There is, though, huge debate among modern biblical experts concerning what Jesus believed about this and its imminence. This is explored in the book.

Early Christians believed that Jesus would come again. The belief in the second coming informs key parts of the gospels, the letters and (in complex and dramatic form) the book of Revelation. In Revelation, this became closely associated with the idea of the ‘millennium’ –

Christ would establish a thousand-year reign on earth before the final judgement and the creation of a new heaven and earth. Much ink would later be spilled over whether Christ would come at the start or end of the millennium, and debates also occurred in the early Church, and continue to divide Christians, over how much of Revelation was aimed at historic first-century events and how much at future end-times actions; or whether it had multiple meanings (something often considered in the study of prophetic texts).

We also see increasing reflection on the role of the Antichrist (the personification of opposition to Christ). It should be noted that the actual term “antichrist” (usually uncapitalised) is found in the New Testament five times in 1 John and 2 John, once in plural form and four times in the singular. The wording of these particular references means that they can be interpreted as marking out a certain category of persons, rather than an individual.

Later belief in an individual Antichrist figure, also draws on 2 Thessalonians. Here the term “antichrist” is not actually used and the terms found here are “the lawless one” and “the one destined for destruction” (2 Thess. 2:3 and 8). This person was later conflated with a singular ‘Antichrist’ and the fourth beast of Daniel 7.

The composite figure of the (singular) Antichrist has been, and is, often combined by Christian writers with figures found in the book of Revelation, such as one of the beasts of Revelation 13. The enigmatic number of the beast is given in Revelation 13:18 as six hundred and sixty-six (666). Consequently, the ideas of Antichrist, the blasphemous beasts, and the number 666 have become inextricably mixed.

However, in the New Testament, the actual matter is much more complex and it is far from clear whether these distinct figures were regarded as being aspects of one end-times enemy of Christ and his elect. It is a reminder of how prophecy is complex but interpretation tends towards combination and simplification; at times it can, arguably, even be a distortion of what was originally intended to be understood.

Early Christians thought these dramatic events would happen soon and began to get anxious when it did not occur within the first generation of the Church. We find answers to these anxieties in some of the letters of the New Testament.

What is clear is that there was and is what one might call a creative-tension between the Christian hope in the second coming and scriptural warnings that nobody knows the time it will occur (for example: Matthew 24:36, Acts 1:7). This should have given pause for thought among believers then and since. But it hasn’t. I have even come across (rather rogue) commentators who read “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36) and suggested that this made it ok to speculate about the year!

History at a glance

It is not possible to do justice to the dramatic and extraordinary history of Christian eschatology over 2,000 years in a short article, but I will give it a try! The book, of course, explores the matter in more detail.

An outlook developed over the first four centuries of the Christian era, which can broadly be described by the terms ‘covenant theology,’ ‘supersessionism,’ and ‘replacement theology.’ This held that the new covenant, based on faith in Jesus, replaced (or superseded) the old covenant, between God and the Jews. According to this understanding, the Christian Church replaced the Jews as the people of God and inherited what was promised to them. As well as meaning that Jews were no longer regarded as having a role within salvation history, it also accompanied the reading of prophetic scripture as symbolic and allegorical. By the end of the Roman Empire in the West, the end-times mood (as represented in official statements) had changed significantly. Literal and predictive interpretation of prophecy – once the dominant orthodoxy in the Church – increasingly became associated with fringe movements, even with heresy.

This did not stop people from speculating. Commentators named barbarian invaders as representing those foretold in prophecy; most notably the Magyars and the Vikings. End-times excitement and anxiety mounted as the Year 1,000 approached (despite the fact that an error in calculating the dating system meant it was not actually 1,000 years since the birth of Jesus). This accelerated during the crusades, when the armies of Islam were confidently identified as end-times actors. Some crusaders gave vent to their eschatological beliefs by butchering Jews in Rhineland cities, whom they claimed to be ‘enemies of Christ’ in this end-times conflict. Some indulged in forced conversions which, they said, fulfilled prophecy.

During the Middle Ages, rival popes and anti-popes, kings and emperors quarried prophetic scripture for accusations to throw at each other (usually the accusation of being the Antichrist). The background to the famous novel, ‘The Name of the Rose,’ is a bitter conflict between some renegade Franciscans and the papacy over end-times beliefs that led the former to armed rebellions against those regarded as agents of the Antichrist.

During the Reformation, Protestants overturned the established Catholic view of prophecy as allegorical and were sure they lived in the ‘last days’ – with the pope being the Antichrist. Violent Anabaptist groups established ‘New Jerusalems’ in anticipation of the second coming. Many thousands died in these bloody insurrections. As Britain spiralled into civil wars in the 1640s, eschatological excitement was intense. Cromwell addressed parliament in 1653 with the words: “You are at the edge of promises and prophecies.” He also believed that the conversion of the Jews would precede the second coming and allowed the first presence of Jews in England since their expulsion in 1290.

One revolutionary group in England chose the year 1657 as the date of the second coming as it was three-and-a-half literal years since the start of the Protectorate (linked to 1,260 days found in Revelation and a similar number in Daniel). This identification labelled Cromwell as “the beast” (of Revelation) or the “little horn” (of Daniel), since clearly this could no longer be applied to the defeated (and executed) Charles I. Calculations arbitrarily switched between literal and symbolic readings of scriptural time-periods.

Things went rather quiet, when Puritan hopes collapsed at the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. However, in North America the Puritan eschatological outlook encouraged eighteenth-century patriots to see George III as “the great Whore of Babylon,” riding the “great red dragon” upon America (references to Revelation).

The nineteenth century saw hugely important developments in the study of prophecy which shifted the contemporary interpretation of prophecy from ‘postmillennialism’ (Christ will appear after the prophesied millennium) to ‘premillennialism’ (Christ will first appear and then instigate the millennium). This was closely related to the belief in the ‘pre-tribulation rapture’ and belief in the related, but different, ‘dispensations’ of the Jews and the Church. This envisaged the supernatural removal of the Church (and the end of the ‘Church Dispensation’) before the ‘Great Tribulation’ and the re-starting of the ‘Jewish Dispensation’ (suspended at the beginning of the ‘Church Age’) which would eventually lead to the conversion of the Jews.

Despite much that is said to the contrary, the idea of the ‘pre-tribulation rapture’ was, arguably, a radical departure from what had been believed for centuries about the second coming. However, this innovation is now mainstream. These ideas became closely associated with the writings of John Nelson Darby and were popularised (especially in the US) by the publication of the ‘Scofield Reference Bible’ in 1909. The recent ‘Left Behind’ series of novels embody this interpretation. They were produced by the writing team of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins and have sold somewhere in the region of eighty million copies!

In the twentieth century, the establishment of the State of Israel and the Cold War galvanized prophetic study, with many Christians identifying Israel as a fulfilment of end-times prophecy, while seeing the USSR and its allies as representing the tribal enemies of Israel in apocalyptic Old Testament prophecies.

For some, this outlook justified opposition to nuclear disarmament, since these weapons were seen as fulfilling predictions concerning widespread destruction, fire and sickness.

The collapse of the USSR shook one of these pillars of belief. However, belief in Israel as an end-times state remains a major part of modern evangelical eschatological thinking. Polling in the US in 2017 revealed that 80% of evangelicals believe that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfilment of biblical prophecy that will bring about Christ’s second coming. President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and to support Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019 was designed, not to appeal to American Jews, but to American evangelical Christians.

Continued attacks on the EU as a ‘revived Roman Empire’ and fulfilment of prophecy found in Daniel, seem to have overlooked how a 10-nation empire can be represented by a 27-nation body. As in the past, a lot of eschatological speculation seems as much grounded in contemporary political outlook and ideology as in biblical exegesis.

Since 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to claims that it has eschatological significance. It should be noted that the same thing was said about the fourteenth-century Black Death. Anti-vaxxers and those unhappy with mask-wearing have included some who loudly identify these as aspects of an emerging Antichrist international order. This has resonated with – and been amplified by – conspiracy theory culture and the effects of social media algorithms.

The ‘end times’ are very much ‘now times’ across large areas of the Christian Church.

Where should we go from here?

Since I firmly believe in the second coming of Christ, but also believe that the Church record of getting it wrong is demonstrably alarming, how should we approach this subject to try to avoid the errors of the past? Here are my personal thoughts.

First, leave the timing to God and focus on kingdom-building. We may, or may not, be living in the end times. But we are always living in the time of evangelism for Christ. That is the priority.

Second, be confident in the hope of a new heaven and earth, while being active on the earth we currently have. Eschatology is not a reason for passivity or pessimism.

Third, a current crisis does not necessarily signal the end times.

Fourth, because something is prophesied does not remove it from the scrutiny of gospel standards. The return of Israel to ‘the land’ certainly appears to be fulfilment of prophecy. However, Christian support for Israel should never become unquestioning. Gospel standards apply to every nation. The Old Testament prophets never offered unquestioning support to the nation of their day. Real friends of Israel will lovingly point out when it gets things wrong.

Fifth, eschatology is not the preserve of any one part of the political spectrum. Today it is often associated with right-wing ideology and Christian nationalism. I believe that these ideologies are distorting it. However, the belief started with a marginalised and powerless group of radicals, who put their hope in God for transformation.

Sixth, admit when we get things wrong. The track record of large areas of the Church has been to follow up errors by doing more of the same. That is not a great strategy.

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Martyn Whittock is an evangelical and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. As an historian and author, or co-author, of fifty-three books, his work covers a wide range of historical and theological themes. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he has written for a number of print and online news platforms; has been interviewed on radio shows exploring the interaction of faith and politics; and appeared on Sky News discussing political events in the USA. Her recently-published exploration of 2000 years of end-times thinking is: The End Times, Again? 2000 Years of the Use and Misuse of Biblical Prophecy (published by Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon, USA, 2021).