Hello, this is another thread exploring the beliefs of Christians, Last time I asked to know about your God And How you view your Savior, Now I want to know about this opposing force to your religion. Tell me the properties of the Anti-Christ, The enemy of Christ that Christians strongly dislike.
There is no official Christian teaching on the Antichrist. Some Christians, and some specific Christian denominations/groups may have established, official views on the subject; but on the whole there is no official Christian position.
The only explicit mention of "antichrist" in the Bible is found in the 1st and 2nd epistles of St. John,
"Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come." (1 John 2:18)
"Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:22)
"and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist, which you heard was coming, and now is in the world already." (1 John 4:3)
"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist." (2 John 1:7)
Those four passages are the only times the word "antichrist" is used in the Bible.
And based on these, and the contextual statements surrounding them, the implication is that what St. John is referring to is heresy. Specifically the heresy known as Docetism (and probably Cerinthianism as well).
Docetism and Cerenthianism were two closely related heresies in early Christian antiquity, often described as proto-Gnostic. Docetism, from the Greek word dokeo meaning "to seem" was that Jesus only seemed to be human. Docetists taught that Jesus was a purely divine, purely spiritual, non-material phantasm--a kind of divine apparition. Early Docetic texts describe Jesus as not leaving footprints when He walked on the sand, or of trying to touch Jesus and the hand passing right through Him as though He wasn't even there, or even of Jesus taking different forms and shapes. Cerinthianism was a distinct, but not altogether different heresy, named for Cerinthus an early heretic and in Christian tradition one of the foremost opponents of St. John where John ministered. Tradition says that this certain Cerinthus taught that Christ and Jesus were distinct; Christ was a purely spiritual entity that came from God that descended into the human named Jesus when Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized. Thus the human Jesus ceased to exist, but served only as a physical vessel for which Christ to inhabit. At the crucifixion, Christ abandoned Jesus on the cross, and the human Jesus was left to die alone and scared, completely confused.
Thus the term "antichrist" has historically been used to describe major heresy in Christianity. And more broadly "antichrist" has been used to describe anything that is fundamentally in opposition to Christ--that which is against Christ--the literal meaning of antichrist.
However there are other things the biblical writers say. For example, St. Paul speaks of a "man of lawlessness" a "son of perdition". Who is this "man of lawlessness" that Paul is talking about? Well, it's not exactly clear. But it has enticed the imagination of Christians for centuries, and so has often (though not universally) been understood as a possible reference to an antichrist figure of some kind. Perhaps a "The Antichrist". This, coupled also with the rather enigmatic statements by St. John of Patmos in the book of the Revelation about a "beast" who rises out of the sea, a man whose name has the numeric value of six hundred and sixty-six.
Because of the ambiguity of such statements, attempts by Christians to formulate a consistent, thorough idea of what these things means has, generally, never happened. Individual Christians have given their opinions over the centuries, but there simply has never been an official Christian position.
As such, to provide a Christian doctrinal position on The Antichrist isn't possible, there isn't one. All positions on the subject are subjective, and largely amount to interpretive opinion.
Will there be a big bad guy at the end of time? Who knows. None of the biblical writers come right out and say such a thing is going to happen. In early Christian literature, such as the writings of the Church Fathers, there is talk about antichrist, but not much. Popular ideas, however, have been that there have been many antichrists, but that one day there will be a final antichrist. That final antichrist will stand against the Christian Church, and try and encourage the rest of the world to join him--but ultimately his purposes won't amount to anything, because in the end Christ will return and set all things to rights. Beyond that, all kinds of endless speculation have occurred throughout history--speculation that has consistently been shown to not be true--speculation arising from whatever happens to be going on in the world at the time. In the 8th century there were speculations that antichrist might arise from the conquering Muslims, who were seizing territory from the Byzantines and a general fear of a grand war against Christendom remained part of Christian imagination throughout the middle ages. In the 20th century, we had Hitler and Stalin, both candidates for being antichrist. And for decades we haven't been able to go a day without a new antichrist being identified.
Which is why such predictions, such speculations, etc are--I consider--pretty worthless.
As such, any dogmatic-sounding positions about "The Antichrist" you hear will only be representative of the individual Christian's denominational/personal theological views. Unlike doctrinal matters about God, Jesus, etc, there is no formal, official, dogmatic and doctrinal standard in Christianity on this particular subject.
-CryptoLutheran
