You are reading your own presuppositions into the texts and coming to an arbitrary conclusion. That is a very dark form of wishful thinking, not to mention shoddy exegesis. The OT prophets foresaw the rising and falling of a number of world rulers; and they rose and fell just as the prophets foretold. To insist that some of these prophecies remain unfulfilled is to ignore the facts of history and denigrate the veracity of God's Word.vinsight4u said:
Many world rulers have risen and fallen throughout the centuries, and doubtless many more will rise and fall for as long as history endures. But the only One who will come at the end is Christ, to put an exclamation point on the victory he has already won through his death and resurrection.
In order to understand precisely what an "antichrist" is and what an "antichrist" does, you must rely upon those Scriptures in which the term is specifically used. According to John, an "antichrist" is someone who 1) denies that Jesus has come in the flesh (1 John 4:3); and 2) abandons the fellowship of the Church (1 John 2:19). Writing nearly 2,000 years ago, John said that "many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18) and "the spirit of the antichrist. . . now is in the world already" (1 John 4:3).
Evil, by its very nature, cannot be embodied in a single entity. Even the Greek word for "Devil" (diablos) means "double." Truth is singular and embodied in Christ. Falsehood is duplicitous and embodied in "many antichrists." The contrast, drawn by Scripture, could not be more clear: We must choose every day whether we will follow the One who embodies the Truth and leads us to life eternal (Christ); or the many who would deceive us with their lies and lead us to death and eternal torment (Antichrist). Put in its most simple terms, to deny yourself is Christ; to gratify yourself is Antichrist.
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