Revelation 11:1-19

In the passages of the Revelation which we are now about to approach we will on many occasions meet the figure of Antichrist. This figure has exercised a strange fascination over the minds of men and many have been the speculations and theories about him. It will, therefore, be convenient to collect the material about Antichrist at this stage and to try to piece it into a connected whole.

We may lay it down as a general principle that Antichrist stands for the power in the universe which is against God. Just as the Christ is the Holy One and the Anointed King of God, so Antichrist is the Unholy One and the King of all evil. Just as the Christ is the incarnation of God and goodness, so Antichrist is the incarnation of the Devil and of evil.

The idea of a force opposed to God was not new. Antichrist had his predecessors long before the days of the New Testament; and it will help if we look first at some of the older pictures, for they left their mark on the New Testament picture.

(i) The Babylonians had a myth in regard to the creation of the world which they shared with all the Semitic peoples and with which the Jews must have come into contact. This myth painted the picture of creation in terms of a struggle between Marduk the creator and Tiamat the dragon, who stands for primaeval chaos. There was a further belief that this struggle between God and chaos would be repeated before the world came to an end.

This old belief in the struggle between the creating God and the dragon of chaos found its way into the Old Testament and is the explanation of certain obscure passages there. Isaiah tells of the day when God will slay the leviathan and the crooked serpent and the dragon that is in the sea ( Isaiah 27:1 ). In Jewish thought this ancient dragon of chaos came to be known as Rahab. Isaiah says: "Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon?" ( Isaiah 51:9 ). When the Psalmist is recounting the triumphs of God, he says: "I will mention Rahab" ( Psalms 87:4 ). "Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass," he says ( Psalms 89:10 ). Here is one of the ancestors of the Antichrist idea and that is one of the reasons why the dragon idea reappears in the Revelation ( Revelation 12:9 ).

(ii) There is the Belial--or, as it is sometimes called, Beliar--idea. The word Belial frequently occurs in the Old Testament as a synonym for evil. An evil man or woman is called a son or daughter of Belial. Eli's wicked sons are sons of Belial ( 1 Samuel 2:12 ). When Hannah was silently praying for a child in the Temple, Eli thought that she was drunk but Hannah says that she is not a daughter of Belial ( 1 Samuel 1:16 ). The wicked Nabal is called a son of Belial ( 1 Samuel 25:17 ; 1 Samuel 25:25 ). One of Shimei's insults was to call David a son of Belial ( 2 Samuel 16:7 ). The false witnesses produced by Jezebel against Naboth are sons of Belial ( 1 Kings 21:10 ; 1 Kings 21:13 ), as are Jeroboam's revolutionary followers ( 2 Chronicles 13:7 ). The exact meaning of the word is in doubt. It has been taken to mean prince of the air, hopeless ruin, worthlessness. Between the Testaments Belial came to be regarded as the chief of the demons. In the New Testament the word occurs only once: "What accord has Christ with Belial?" ( 2 Corinthians 6:15 ). There it is used as the antithesis of Christ. It may well be that this idea came in part at least from the Persian religion with which the Jews came into contact. Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, conceived of the whole universe as the battleground in which the struggle was fought out between Ormuzd, the god of light, and Ahriman, the god of darkness. Here again we have the conception of a force in the world opposed to God and fighting against him.

(iii) There is a sense in which the obvious Antichrist is Satan, the Devil. Sometimes Satan is identified with Lucifer, the son of the morning, the angel who in heaven rebelled against God and was cast down to hell. "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!" ( Isaiah 14:12 ). It is easy to find instances in which Satan--the very name means the Adversary--acted in such a way as to overturn the purpose of God, for it is his very nature to do so. Such an instance was when Satan persuaded David to number the people in direct contravention of the command of God ( 1 Chronicles 21:1 ). But though Satan is the direct opponent of God, he remains an angel, whereas Antichrist is a visible figure upon earth in which the very essence of evil has become incarnate.

(iv) There is a sense in which the development of the idea of the Messiah made the development of the idea of Antichrist inevitable. The Messiah, God's Anointed One, is bound to meet with opposition; and that opposition is entirely likely to crystallize into one supreme figure of evil. We must remember that Messiah and Christ mean the same thing, being the Hebrew and the Greek respectively for The Anointed One. Where there is the Christ, there will of necessity be the Antichrist, for so long as there is sin there will be opposition to God.

(v) In the Old Testament there is more than one picture of the divine battle with the assembled opposition to God. We find such a picture in the struggle with Gog and Magog ( Ezekiel 38:1-23 ), and in the destruction of the destroyers of Jerusalem ( Zechariah 14:1-21 ).

But, so far as the later Jews were concerned, the peak of the manifestation of evil was connected with one terrible episode in their history. This is commemorated in Daniel's picture of the little horn, which waxed great even against heaven, which stopped the daily sacrifice, which cast down the sanctuary ( Daniel 8:9-12 ). The little horn stands for Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria. He determined to introduce Greek ways, language and Greek worship into Palestine, for he regarded himself as the missionary of Greek culture. The Jews resisted. Antiochus Epiphanes invaded Palestine and captured Jerusalem. It was said that eighty thousand Jews were either slaughtered or sold into slavery. To circumcise a child or to possess a copy of the Law was a crime punishable by death. History has seldom, or never, seen so deliberate an attempt to wipe out the religion of a whole people. He desecrated the Temple. He erected an altar to Olympian Zeus in the Holy Place and on it sacrificed swine's flesh; and he turned the rooms of the Temple into public brothels. In the end the gallantry of the Maccabees restored the Temple and conquered Antiochus; but to the Jews Antiochus was the incarnation of all evil.

It can be seen that the figure of Antichrist was taking shape already in the Old Testament; the incarnation of evil is an idea that is already there.

We now turn to the idea of Antichrist in the New Testament:

(i) There is very little mention of the Antichrist idea in the Synoptic Gospels. The only real occurrence is in the chapters which deal with the end and the signs of the end. There Jesus is represented as saying: "Then if any one says to you, 'Lo, here is the Christ!' or 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect" ( Matthew 24:23 ; Matthew 24:44 ; Mark 13:6 ; Mark 13:22 ; Luke 21:8 ). In the Fourth Gospel Jesus is represented as saying: "I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive" ( John 5:43 ). There the idea of Antichrist is rather that of false teaching, leading men away from true loyalty to Jesus Christ, a line of thought which, as we shall see, occurs again in the New Testament.

(ii) One of the main pictures of Antichrist is that of the Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 . Paul is reminding the Thessalonians of that which he had already taught them by word of mouth and of that which was an essential part of his teaching. He says: "Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this?" ( 2 Thessalonians 2:5 ). In this picture there is first to be a general falling away; then the man of sin will come who will exalt himself above God and claim the worship which belongs to God by right, and work lying signs and wonders which will deceive many. At the moment when Paul is writing there is something which restrains this final manifestation of evil ( 2 Thessalonians 2:7 ). In all probability Paul means the Roman Empire, seen by him as keeping the world from disintegrating into the chaos of the last time. Here Antichrist is concentrated into one person who is the very essence of evil. This rather connects itself with the Beliar idea of the Old Testament and with the conflict of light and darkness in the Persian world view.

(iii) The idea of Antichrist occurs in the Letters of John. It is, in fact, only there that the actual word occurs. In the last time Antichrist is to come; in the times in which John writes many Antichrists have come; therefore, says John, they know that they are living in the last time ( 1 John 2:18 ). He who denies the Father and the Son is Antichrist ( 1 John 2:22 ). In particular he who denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is Antichrist ( 1 John 4:3 ; 2 John 1:7 ). The supreme characteristic of Antichrist is the denial of the reality of the Incarnation.

Here again the main connection of Antichrist is with heresy. Antichrist is the spirit of falsehood which seduces men from the truth and leads them into mistaken ideas which are the ruin of the Christian faith.

(iv) It is in the Revelation that the fullest picture of Antichrist is painted and it occurs in more than one form.

(a) In Revelation 11:7 there is the picture of the beast from the abyss, who is to slay the two witnesses in Jerusalem and who is to reign for forty-two months. This gives us the picture of Antichrist as coming, as it were, from hell, to have a terrible and destructive, but limited, time of power. In this picture there is at least some connection with the Daniel picture of Antiochus Epiphanes as the little horn. That is certainly where the period of forty-two months comes from, for that was the period during which the terror of Antiochus and the desecration of the Temple lasted.

(b) In Revelation 12:1-17 there is the picture of the great red dragon, who persecutes the woman clothed with the sun, the woman who begets the man child. This dragon is ultimately defeated and cast out of heaven. The dragon is definitely identified with the old serpent the devil ( Revelation 12:9 ). This has clearly some kind of connection with the old myth of the dragon of chaos who was the enemy of God.

(c) In Revelation 13:1-18 there is the picture of the beast with the seven heads and the ten horns, which comes from the sea, and the other beast with the two horns, which comes from the land. There is no doubt that what is in John's mind is the terror and the savagery of Caesar worship; and in this case Antichrist is the great begetter of persecution of the Christian Church. Here the idea is of cruel, persecuting power, bent on the utter destruction of Christ and his Church.

(d) In Revelation 17:3 we have the picture of the scarlet coloured beast, with the seven heads and the ten horns, on which the woman called Babylon is seated. We are told that the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. In the Revelation Babylon symbolizes Rome and Rome was built on seven hills. Clearly this picture stands for Rome and Antichrist is Rome's persecuting power unleashed upon the Church.

It is of great interest to note the change here. As we have seen, to Paul, when he wrote Second Thessalonians, Rome was the one power which restrained the coming of Antichrist. In Romans 13:1-7 Paul writes of the state as divinely appointed and urges all Christians to be loyal citizens. In 1 Peter 2:13-17 the order to Christians is willingly to submit themselves to the government of the state, to fear God and to honour the king. In the Revelation there is a world of difference; times had changed; the full fury of persecution had broken out; and Rome had become to John the Antichrist.

(v) We note one last element in the picture of Antichrist. With the old Jewish idea of this anti-God power and with the Christian idea of a power who was the incarnation of evil, there combined an idea from the Graeco-Roman world. The worst of the Roman Emperors in the early days was Nero who was regarded as the supreme monster of iniquity, not only by the Christians, but also by the Romans themselves. Nero died by suicide in A.D. 68, and there went up a sigh of relief. But almost immediately there arose the belief that he was not dead and that he was waiting in Parthia to descend on the world with the terrible hordes of the Parthians to let loose destruction and terror. This idea is called the Nero redivivus, the Nero resurrected, myth. In the ancient world it was widespread more than twenty years after Nero was dead. To the Christians, Nero was a figure of concentrated evil. It was he who had put the blame of the great fire of Rome on to the Christians; it was he who had initiated persecution; it was he who had found the most savage methods of torture. Many Christians believed in the Nero redivivus myth; and frequently--as in certain parts of the Revelation--Nero redivivus and Antichrist were identified and the Christians thought of the coming of Antichrist in terms of the return of Nero.