The antichrist will have all the answers and will appear to fill all the needs of the troubled world. He will be the world leader that everyone is looking for right now. If he came on the political scene as what he will morph into, no one would be deceived by him. We don't know who he will be, but to my knowledge, Tony Blair is the first person ever to have ALL of the characteristics spoken of in God's word
Really? He spoke at a prayer breakfast in America the other day. That must be a first; the antichrist speaking about prayer.
I've been thinking a little about this since this thread was first made. I don't understand how and why people have taken verses from Daniel and Revelation and are teaching that they mean certain things which is being fulfilled in a certain way in the world today. People have been doing this for years, maybe centuries, and have pointed to the antichrist being the Pope, or an American President, (and check out the threads on these forums which say that it is Obama.) Even Revelation77, who argued so strongly that Blair was the antichrist, is now saying on his own website that it's probably Sarkozy. Next month it will probably be someone else.
IS the antichrist going to be a political figure who will fulfill all the needs of the troubled world?
What is an an antichrist?
Scripture says that the antichrist is someone who denies both God and Christ. In fact, John says that
anyone who does this is an antichrist and there have already been several of them in the world.
2 Thessalonians talks about "the man of lawlessness". It says that this man will set himself against God and all that God stands for, that he will declare himself to be God, and that he will be able to perform miracles to deceive people. Is the man of lawlessness the same as the antichrist?
Revelation 13, which has been often quoted in this thread, talks about two beasts and a dragon. It does not mention the word "antichrist". Is the dragon the same as the antichrist, or are we supposed to deduce that the antichrist is one of the beasts, even though it doesn't say so?
It seems to me that what we need is wisdom and some solid teaching about how to interpret the book of Revelation.
One last thing, if people
really believe that the antichrist is one particular human being, why don't they kill him and do the whole world a favour? Tony Blair, Obama, Sarkozy and anyone else who is up for this dubious honour, are ONLY human beings. If you cut them, they would bleed. If you killed them they would not rise again (not in this world anyway). And no one worships them as God - they are real human beings with real faults.
I can't help feeling that somewhere along the line, we've got this "I'll spot the antichrist before you" stuff all wrong. We should be proclaiming God, his Gospel and his kingdom, and not giving Satan, the evil one or the powers of darkness so much attention.