If John wrote 666 and knew the person who fulfilled it, and it was in his own era, then why did he not just say, "It was so and so."
Then we wouldn't have all these Christians of his era and that immediately afterwards going around wondering who the Anti-Christ WOULD BE WHEN he got around to showing up some day in the future."
Because he was writing stuff that he knew would get copied and read widely. Anyone having that stuff in his possession that says, "Nero is the Beast of Revelation" would potentially get in a lot of trouble. And you wouldn't want any trouble from Nero.
Nero liked to do things like dip Christians in oil, impale them on stakes and then set them on fire to be human torches to light up his orgies and wild parties. He eventually went completely insane because the Christians weren't screaming out in pain and that upset him greatly. The man was sick and twisted beyond imagination, hence his nickname "The Beast".
Aside from relying on the interpretation of 666, it's not too hard to trace the prophecies from the OT to figure this out, either. The timeline of Daniel's 70 weeks starts with the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem. It lays out exactly what happens all the way through the "weeks" of Jesus' sacrifice and the subsequent tribulation and destruction of the Temple. The blood ran in the streets during the Tribulation just as prophesied, the End of the Age (not the End of the World) took place, etc., etc. There is no precedent in OT or NT Scripture for the "prophecy clock" to stop as Lindsey and LaHaye teach. If you ignore their idea of clock stopping and look at the timeline as a continuous entity then it becomes clear what was prophesied and what took place exactly as prophesied.
The stopped "prophecy clock" is a distinctive feature of dispensationalism, not just limited to the pop dispies authors. In fact, Lindsey and his pop dispie brethren have been taken to task for prematurely starting the prophecy clock again, ala the predicions of Jesus' return in the 1980s based on the establishment of the secular state of Israel in 1948.
The purist (aka classic) dispensationalists believe that only the rapture can restart the clock, and that there are no definite signs that this is about to happen anytime soon. Indeed, the very nature of the rapture is that no one will know. According to purist dispensationalists, all the "signs" in places like Matt 24 are tribulation signs that happen after the rapture, not before. See Tommy Ice. Purists dispensationalists do not place any prophetic significance on the events of 1948 and following.
I have repeatedly asked dispensationalists how it is that Lindsey and Chuck Smith got it wrong. I'm surprised no one offer the simple answer that they are not real dispensationalists wrt to the pretrib rapture issue. I suspect that part of the reason is that there are so few purists dispensationalists around today. The pop dispie "1948 Israel is a definite sign" group have taken over.
Not even approaching an answer.
Nero died in about 68.
John lived until the turn of the century, perhaps as late as 103 AD according to one source.
He had 30 some years to clarify the identity of the antichrist, he spent years as bishop of the area, he put pastors in churches, he preached, he visited, he wrote.
And in his 1 John epistle which was written AFTER his gospel which came late in his life, he HIMSELF says that the antichrist STILL is future.