Posted on 10/25/2019 8:52:26 AM PDT by Salvation
There is much lore about the antichrist (especially among certain Evangelicals) that is out of proportion to the attention Scripture pays to the concept, and more importantly is at possible variance from what is certainly taught. It easily becomes fodder for movies and novels: the antichrist figure steps on the scene, deceiving many, and mesmerizing the whole world with apparent miracles and a message of false peace.
But is this really what or whom the Scriptures call the antichrist? I would argue not, for in order to create such a picture one would have to splice in images from the Book of Revelation and the Letter to the Thessalonians that do not likely apply to antichrists.
In fact, the use of the term antichrist occurs only in the Johannine epistles. It does not occur in the Book of Revelation at all, though many have the mistaken idea that it does. There are plenty of beasts, dragons, harlots, demons, and satanic legions in Revelation, but no mention of antichrists.
Many also stitch the teaching about antichrists together with St. Paul’s teaching on the “man of lawlessness” (also called “the lawless one”) who is to appear just before the end. The lawless one may well be the stuff of movies, but calling him the antichrist may be to borrow too much from a concept that is more specific. While it is not inauthentic to make a connection between them (some of the Church Fathers seem to), it is not necessarily correct to do so.
In this reflection I take the position that it is improbable that the antichrist and the man of lawlessness are one and the same. In order to explain why, let’s first look at the occurrences of the term antichrist in St. John’s Epistles.
Note two things about antichrists. First, St. John (writing in the first century) teaches that he has already appeared. In calling this the “last hour,” St. John and the Holy Spirit do not mean that the Second Coming will take place in the next sixty minutes or even in the next few years. Rather, the teaching is that we are in the Last Age, the Age of the Messiah (also called the Age of the Church), when God is sending out His angels to the four winds to gather all the elect from the ends of the earth (cf Mark 4:21). Sadly, St. John also teaches that the antichrist has already come as well.
Second, after saying that the antichrist has come, St. John immediately clarifies by saying that actually many antichrists have appeared.
Thus St. John does not seem to present the antichrist as a single figure who has come. Rather, he says that there are many antichrists.
And what do these antichrists do? They perpetrate heresy, error, and false teaching. St. John notes in particular that heretics who deny that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah) are antichrists. He also calls antichrists those who deny Christ having come in the flesh.
What does it mean to deny Christ having come in the flesh? It means reducing the saving work of God to mere appearances by claiming that Jesus did not actually take up a human nature but only appeared to do so. By extension, these same antichrists reduce the Christian moral and spiritual life to mere gnostic ideas rather than a true flesh-and-blood, body-and-soul change in our lives.
Many today extend these denials of the incarnation by undermining the historic authenticity of the Gospels, doubting or outright denying what Jesus actually said and did. Some of them say that Jesus’ resurrection was not a bodily one, but rather that His “ideas live on.” There can be no more fundamental heresy that to deny the bodily resurrection of Christ. As St. Paul says, And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain … if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins … [and] we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:14-17).
Thus St. John, along with all the early Church, emphatically upholds an incarnational faith. We could actually touch our God and He touched us by taking up our human nature. He suffered on the cross and died. And though His suffering was tied to His human nature (for His divine nature is impassible), Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, hypostatically united to His human nature, suffered and died for us. It was this same human nature that God raised from the dead, gloriously transformed.
John takes up this theme elsewhere when he says that Christ came in water and in blood, not in water alone (cf 1 John 5:6). A certain heretic of that time, Cerinthus, held that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity departed just before Jesus’ passion. John refutes this, insisting that just as at His baptism Jesus’ divine nature was affirmed (This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased), so also was it affirmed during the shedding of His blood on Calvary (the inspired word of God records the centurion, on seeing the manner of Jesus’ death, saying, Surely this was the Son of God (Mat 27:54)). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, though of two natures, is one person, and He did in fact die suffer and die for us.
Thus to St. John, the essence of the antichrist is denial that Jesus came in the flesh. An antichrist is one who would relegate Jesus’ presence among us to mere appearances or His teachings to mere abstractions or ideals rather than transformative realities.
By extension, it can be argued that the term antichrist refers to all deceivers, though only logically, not specifically in the text. St. John does not indicate that he means the term antichrist this broadly, but in a wider sense all heresy pertains to the antichrist because Jesus Christ is the truth. Jesus teaches through His apostles that to deny the truth is to deny Christ Himself; it is to deny truth itself and thus to be an antichrist.
So perhaps this is not fodder for movies and novels after all; sorry! And that’s a shame because the term antichrist is so catchy! This brings us to a discussion of the man of lawlessness (or the lawless one).
What or who is the man of lawlessness whom St. Paul mentions and how is he related to the antichrist? As I stated above, I do not think there is a connection. To see why, let’s consider what St. Paul teaches:
Note the following crucial differences between antichrists and the lawless one:
Jesus also speaks of those who will lead many astray, though He speaks of them in the plural and is likely referring to occurrences in the first century during the time leading up to the war with the Romans in 70 A.D: For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect (Matthew 24:24).
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts here as well as a lot of singulars and plurals to sort out and time frames to consider. Permit me the following conclusions:
All that said, I believe that equating this lawless one with one of the beasts of Revelation or with the antichrist may be too speculative, and possibly inaccurate.
I hope I haven’t toyed with your “movie script” too much, but Scripture is nuanced in these matters and we do well to avoid reducing its teachings to popular concepts and catchy notions.
Scripture does speak to us of the end times and of difficult times preceding them, but the information is often given in general, even cryptic, terms. It is as if Scripture wants to tell us to be ready and to let us know that we don’t need to (and shouldn’t want to) know all the details. Just be ready, and when those times set in remember that Christ has already won the battle. Viva Christo Rey!
Christine
Bad autocorrect
Christian
What is a "reformer's reformer?
I bet he's a product of this country's public school system.
Demons are cowards. They don't go near the strong of faith unless they see a real hole. Everyone has a lacuna in his life/faith. Then they tell Satan of that hole and he goes for the jugular.
“What is a “reformer’s reformer?”
During the Protestant Reformation reformers reformed the gospel. Now there are protestants telling other protestants they need to reform their gospel. A reformer of a reformer.
The only reason I passed typing in high school was that the teacher gave me a ‘D’ if I promised not to take typing 2.
Yes, I am still not comfortable with a keyboar, and that is even after years of my doing manual data input on a CNC mill.
THANK YOU.
Do these "other" Protestants think that their version of the gospel IS the gospel??
SOMEONE has to be right. Not all the 30,000+ different Protestant denominations can be right.
Yes, I am still not comfortable with a keyboar, and that is even after years of my doing manual data input on a CNC mill.
I took a typing class in my freshman year at college. THAT made me a whiz-kid at the keyboard. The keyboard hasn't changed much and it probably never will change much.
Actually, I suspect that the vast majority of these ‘prot’ denominations have one thing most essential in common: it is The Lord Jesus Christ Who is the Savior and believing and trusting in Him is the means of ‘born again’. Anything else add to the God Calculus is detritus to be ignored so long as we listen to the voice of His Spirit within us.
Actually in the Christian Scientist , Episcopalian, Mormonic , Scientologist , Swedenborgian , Unitarian, Watchtower society amalgam that is called "Protestantism" there are even some who believe there is no one gospel.
But within that big tent there are self-proclaimed "one true church" orgs who think their version of the gospel IS the gospel while being in conflict with each other, as well as divisions among their member. Thus the unity argument is fallacious.
SOMEONE has to be right.
Indeed, and Truth is exclusive by nature, and while comprehensive doctrinal unity has never been realized, unity in at least essential salvific Scriptural Truths is what should be. Yet while those who testify to most strongly esteeming Scripture as literally being the word of God also testify to being the most unified major religious group in core beliefs, the strongest unity in degree and scope is found among cults
For there are three basic means of obtaining unity: one is by enforced required faith-submission to leadership which proclaims it is worthy of faith, under the premise that their living office is incapable of salvific error. Scripture, Tradition and History (and past magisterial teaching) only authoritatively mean what (are to be understood) they currently say, and the basic duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.
Which is the model for unity in Catholicism, Mormonism, the Watchtower Society and other groups, except that this is hardly enforced in Catholicism, thus resulting in her members disagreeing with their church more so than most others it seems, with liberal abortion and sodomy promoting public figures being manifestly considered members by current leradrship, along with conservative RCs, though the traditionalist sect are the class mostly likely to be excommed.
The second means of unity is akin to the first but is by faith-submission to past magisterial teaching, in which Scripture, Tradition and History only authoritatively mean what they said, which leads to rejection of the current magisterial teaching is they see it as being in conflict with the past. This is in principal a Protestant means of unity, except that instead of making the veracity of church teaching subject to examination by Scripture, (Acts 17:11) it is subject to the understanding of what past magisterial teaching said.
However, this model of commitment to static teaching manifests far more unity than their modernist counterparts, despite having often acerbic contentions within that Traditionalist class, and being more censored by the current leadership, and which they deny as being valid (or selectively reject teachings from).
The third and Scriptural means of unity is thru Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, "not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God." (2 Corinthians 4:2)
But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, (2 Corinthians 6:4-7)
The preaching of such was subject to testing by the establshed word of god, the Scriptures, and is how the NT church began, in dissent from magisterial authority but not as averse to it (likewise the American Revolution), and the lack of such purity, power and probity is both a judgment and a cause of modern disunity in word and in spirit.
However, that simply does not justify the faith-submission to magisterial authority model that marks cults any more than the disunity among Americans justifies Communist-type control. Nor the liberal "big tent" fluid diversity that is its counterpart. But as Biblical unity is by qualified assent and commitment to established Scriptural (not necessarily magisterial) Truth, the however more difficult this is, then that must be the means and the goal(and which is not opposed to central - but not assuredly infallible - magisterial authority and conditional submission to it).
And as with cults, distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, especially Acts thru Revelation. which best shows the NT church understood the OT and gospels).
Not all the 30,000+ different Protestant denominations can be right.
Nor can your specious parroted figure , which even Catholic apologists (such as Dave Armstrong) have abandoned. Yet comparing one particular church with whatever is lumped together as being outside of it is a invalid comparison, which also ignores the divisions among various "one true churches" and divisions within them.
Thanks for your feedback.
The fifteenth chapter of Acts and the first great Council of the Ekklesia tells us what we ought do as Gentile believers. I don’t see any Catholic sacraments of praying to dead people in the letter the Holy Spirit though good to send to the believers.
I do see in that letter specific things to avoid, one or two of which are hallmarks of Catholic sacramental ‘worship’.
LOL, 1 Cor 2:14 was written just for folks like you! You are addressed by the Bible! Aren’t you special ...
Hah! ... Sorry to disappoint you, but I won’t be here when that starts. I’m leaving in the great departure. Take your own advice though ...
We don't PRAY to dead people but we DO speak with them through prayers. We might say: Pray for me, please, Uncle Ralph.
We pray to God. We also pray to saints, but that is when we are asking for their intersession, etc.
https://www.yourcatholicguide.com/teachings-theologies/seven-sacraments/what-is-the-difference-between-sacraments-of-the-dead-and-the-sacraments-of-the-living.html
I'm not sure that I understand your statement.
We worship God and God alone.
We pray to Him but we also pray to our dead family and friends.
We also pray to our patron saints or the saints who are particular in thing: St. Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of lost things. I HAVE prayed to him when something I lost was VERY important.
I don't ask that often but when I did he never let me down...and he helped me immediately.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal.
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