You fail to acknowledge Satan has been acting as a man who has guided the Greeks, then the Romans,
I did not include the rest of your sentence above, but I
do acknowledge that Satan as the "Prince of this world" was definitely operating behind the scenes in the history of world empires - just not as a "man". Different species of created beings entirely.
Satan's influence on the world's empires in the past is part of the history of the former "divine council" of the angelic "Watchers" program that God set up over the nations after the flood in the OT days of Peleg. Righteous angels of this "divine council" who were charged with bringing God's plans for the nations into fruition were opposed by unrighteous angels. Satan as an angelic being wanted to disrupt those plans for mankind's future.
But this threat from unrighteous angels working behind the scenes is not something that you and I need worry about anymore. God through Paul told the believers in Romans 16:20 that He was going to crush Satan under their feet "shortly". The "divine council" was also disbanded as an institution back in AD 70, because Hebrews 2:5 said that "unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak." The world coming in the near future for the Hebrews believers was not going to be under the supervision and oversight of the angelic "divine council" anymore. Instead of
celestial beings, God had designed for
believers in the New Covenant Ages, as His ambassadors, to carry the Holy Spirit within them to every nation themselves, and multiply the kingdom of God by
humanity influenced by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The image is going to be the beast that you all are claiming as an AC
I have never stated that any of the three different Beasts were the single individual man who was the Anti-christ. That single Anti-christ individual operated at the same time as those different Beasts were in existence, but it was not the same as those different characters in this drama.
And you propose that the False Prophet entity will be operating independently in our future, when scripture specifically says that it would perform those signs "
in the sight of the Beast" - (
enopion, which meant
in the very presence and eyesight of that Sea Beast. They were contemporaries operating in
direct visual contact with each other.)
It appears that during their time there were individuals or an individual claiming that the day of the Lord has already come, meaning, they claimed to be Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Yes, this was the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who were teaching that Christ's coming and the resurrection had already occurred. They were partly right in one respect, because the many Matthew 27:52-53 resurrected saints who were "seen of many" were undoubtedly examples of physical resurrection still among them at that time. This was so astounding an event that these two teachers were mistakenly presuming that it was the only resurrection that would ever happen.
But this is different from those who would be claiming to be the Messiah.
PLEASE NOTE: They would
not claim that they were
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as you have proposed above. They would claim to be the "
MESSIAH", or "
THE CHRIST": i.e., the "
Messiah the Prince" prophesied by Daniel 9:25 that should come at the beginning of the 70th week of Daniel's prophecy. This anchors that prophecy of the "Anti-christ" to
the first-century days - as close to the prophesied AD 30 date as possible. This was in order for their deception to fool those who were looking for the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy for Messiah the Prince's coming to Israel at that very specific year on the calendar. This removes the fulfillment of the Anti-christ individual from times in OUR future. That would be WAAAAAY too far removed from Daniel's prophesied appearance of Christ the Messiah's first coming to His people in AD 30.