I am come in my
Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name,
him ye will receive. – John 5:43
In his
first epistle St. John reminded his readers that they had “heard that
antichrist shall come.” (1 John 2:18).
He then said that “even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know
that it is the last time.” He identified
the “many antichrists” who were even then present as false teachers who had
abandoned the Apostolic Church (1 Jn. 2:19) and whose false doctrine consists
of the denial of the most basic truths of the Christian message. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus
is the Christ? He is an antichrist, that
denieth the Father and the Son.” (1 Jn. 2:22)
“And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist whereof ye have
heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” (1 Jn.
4:3). “For many deceivers are entered
into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” (2 Jn.
7)
The last
two verses quoted suggest that St. John had false teachers of the type that
history knows as Gnostics in mind.
Gnosticism was not a single heresy but a group of heresies that had a
number of common traits, among them the belief that the material world is
irredeemably evil and a prison from which the human spirit must be
liberated. The idea of the Incarnation
was repugnant to them and so they preferred heresies like Docetism, which
taught that Jesus had an appearance but no material substance, or a kind of
proto-Nestorianism in which the human Jesus and the divine Christ were two
rather than one. St. Justin Marty and
St. Irenaeus of Lyon identify Simon Magus – the Simon from Acts 8 who tried to
buy the Apostolic power of laying on of hands from St. Peter – as the first of
these so they would have been around already when St. John wrote his
epistles.
1 John
2:22, however, shows that the error that the Apostle had in mind is even more
basic than this, although the Gnostics certainly qualify to be included. Antichrist is “he that denieth that Jesus is
the Christ.” That would also include
those to whom Jesus was speaking in when He told them they, rejecting Him,
would receive another who comes in his own name. Which brings us to the Antichrist with a big
A. The implication of St. John’ saying
“even now are there many antichrists” is that his readers had received teaching
regarding a singular Antichrist. While
St. John is the only Scriptural writer to use the word “antichrist”, St. Paul
mentions a figure in 2 Thessalonians that has been equated with the singular
Antichrist throughout the history of Christian Scriptural exegesis. This figure is the “man of sin” and “son of
perdition” (2 Thess. 2:2) and “that Wicked” (2. Thess. 2:8) and discussion of
him occupies most of the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians. This is one of the earliest of St. Paul’s
epistles. The two epistles to the
Thessalonians were written back to back shortly after St. Paul’s flight from
Thessalonica to Berea (Acts 17:10).
False teachers had taken advantage of the brevity of St. Paul’s time
with the Church in Thessalonica to forge a letter (2 Thess. 2:2) to confuse and
trouble the Church with their doctrine which resembled that which in the
present day is called preterism.
The “man of
sin” or “son of perdition”, according to St. Paul, is someone who will be
revealed after a “falling away” and who “opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the
temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thess. 2:4) His coming “is after the working of Satan
with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of
unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the
truth, that they might be saved.” (2 Thess. 2:9-10) St. John of Damascus wrote the following
about this figure in his Exposition of
the Orthodox Faith:
It should be known that
the Antichrist is bound to come. Every one, therefore, who confesses
not that the Son of God came in the flesh and is perfect God and
became perfect man, after being God,
is Antichrist. 1 John 2:22 But in a peculiar and
special sense he who comes at the consummation of the age is
called Antichrist. First, then, it is requisite that
the Gospel should be preached among all nations, as the Lord
said Matthew 24:14, and then he will come to refute the
impious Jews. For the Lord said to them: I have come in My Father's name and you receive Me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him you will receive. John 5:43 And
the apostle says, Because they
received not the love of the truth that they might be
saved, for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion that they
should believe a lie: that they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
The Jews accordingly did not receive the Lord Jesus
Christ who was the Son of God and God, but receive
the impostor who calls himself God. For that he will assume the name
of God, the angel teaches Daniel, saying these words, Neither shall he regard the God of
his fathers. Daniel 11:37 And the apostle says: Let no man deceive you by any means: for
that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man
of sin be revealed, the son of perdition: who opposes and exalts
himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits in
the temple of God 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, showing himself that he is God; in
the temple of God he said; not our temple, but the old Jewish temple. For he
will come not to us but to the Jews: not for Christ or the things of
Christ: wherefore he is called Antichrist. [1]
The
Damascene’s account of the Antichrist is fairly representative of Patristic
teaching on the subject. St. Cyril of
Jerusalem included an extended discussion of the Antichrist in the fifteenth of
his Catechetical Lectures.[2] One of the earliest treatises extant on the
subject was On Christ and Antichrist
by St. Hippolytus of Rome who lived in the 2nd and 3rd
centuries. St. Hippolytus stressed that
the Antichrist would be a Satanic counterfeit of the true Christ:
Now, as our Lord Jesus
Christ, who is also God, was prophesied of under the figure of a lion, on
account of His royalty and glory, in the same way have
the Scriptures also aforetime spoken of Antichrist as a
lion, on account of his tyranny and violence. For the deceiver seeks to
liken himself in all things to the Son of God. Christ is a lion, so Antichrist is
also a lion; Christ is a king, John 18:37 so Antichrist is also
a king. The Saviour was manifested as a lamb; John 1:29 so he too, in
like manner, will appear as a lamb, though within he is a wolf. The Saviour
came into the World in the circumcision, and he will come in the same
manner. The Lord sent apostles among all the nations, and he in
like manner will send false apostles. The Saviour gathered together the
sheep that were scattered abroad, and he in like manner will bring together a
people that is scattered abroad. The Lord gave a seal to those
who believed on Him, and he will give one like manner. The Saviour
appeared in the form of man, and he too will come in the form of
a man. The Saviour raised up and showed His holy flesh like a temple, John
2:19 and he will raise a temple of stone in Jerusalem. And his seductive
arts we shall exhibit in what follows.[3]
St.
Hippolytus was a student of St. Ireneaus, the second century Bishop of Lyon, a
spiritual grandson of sorts to St. John the Apostle, in that he had grown up in
the Church of Smyrna under the teaching of its bishop, St. Polycarp, who had
been a disciple of St. John. St.
Ireneaus discussed the Antichrist in the fifth book of his Against Heresies. Drawing
primarily on the book of Daniel and 2 Thessalonians, St. Irenaeus depicted the
Antichrist as a tyrannical ruler who would arise at the end of history, putting
away idols to make himself the one idol, who will rule for three and a half
years and set up himself to be worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem.[4]
On this
last point, St. Irenaeus, like St. Hippolytus and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, held
that the Temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt so that St. Paul’s prophecy could
be literally fulfilled. Other Fathers
interpreted the passage less literally.
There is no Patristic consensus on this point. Where the Fathers are far more united is in
their assertion that before the Second Coming of Christ, at the very end of
history, this final and ultimate figure of evil will arise. References to this figure appear in most of
the Apostolic Fathers, the earliest Patristic writers whose lives partially
overlapped those of the Apostles.[5]
Since the
Man of Sin will be destroyed by Jesus Christ at His Second Coming (2 Tess. 2:8)
it is reasonable to understand him to be one of the beasts of Revelation 13
which are depicted as being cast into the Lake of Fire by Jesus Christ at His
Second Coming in Revelation 19. This is
indirectly acknowledged by the Fathers, who generally preferred to make
reference to the Old Testament antecedent of the beasts of Revelation, the
beasts and “Little Horn” of the book of Daniel when discussing the
Antichrist. The canonical status of the
book of Revelation may have something to do with this – it was the last book of
the New Testament to be written and the last book to gain universal
acknowledgement as canon. It also raised
some interpretative difficulties. There
are after all, two beasts mentioned in Revelation 13. Which of the two is to be understood to be
the Man of Sin? This problem does not
arise with Daniel because although there are four beasts mentioned there rather
than two, it is clearly the “little horn” of the fourth beast who is to be
identified with the Man of Sin.
In fact,
the book of Daniel should remove the dilemma with regards to the two beasts of
Revelation. The fourth beast has ten
horns, just like the first beast in Revelation 13. This suggests that the first beast of
Revelation 13 is the Man of Sin, a fact further supported by the fact that the
function of the second beast is to make the world worship the first beast and
his image (Rev. 13:12-15), which would make the first beast the one who sets
himself up to be worshipped. Moreover,
the beasts of Revelation 13, along with the dragon of Revelation 12, make up a
triumvirate of evil that is clearly supposed to be a Satanic counterfeit of the
Trinity. When they are spoken of this
way, the first beast is in the second position after the dragon (Satan), and before
the second beast who is called the false prophet. This is where we would expect to find the
counterfeit of the real Christ, because the real Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the
Son of God, is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
The first
beast of Revelation 13 is not just the Man of Sin, however, but his empire as
well. In Daniel, the four beasts of
Daniel 7 are the same empires depicted as parts of a giant image in Daniel 2. The empires would rise in succession to each
other. Daniel lived most of his life
under the first of these, the Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar. He lived to see this empire overthrown in the
days of Belshazzar by Cyrus the Great’s Persian Achaemenid Empire. The third was the Macedonian Empire of Philip
and Alexander. The fourth, of course, was
the Roman Empire and the Roman Empire is easily recognizable in the first beast
of Revelation, not only by the ten horns equating it with the fourth beast of
Daniel, but by the seven heads, identified as seven hills upon which a great
city that rules over all the world sits (Rev. 17:9, 18).
The
identification of the beast of Revelation with both the Roman Empire and the
Man of Sin has raised a number of interesting questions. How can the Roman Empire be around to be
destroyed at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ when it long ago converted to
Christianity, broke up into a Western and Eastern Empire, the first of which
disappeared in the first millennium, the second of which after a further half
millennium of war with the Islamic world, fell to the Ottomans on the eve of
the Reformation? How can an individual
be someone who will deceive the world in general and the Jews who rejected the
true Messiah in particular into worshipping him and at the same time the ruler
of the Roman Empire?
Revelation
actually provides the answer to the first question. Revelation 17:8 reads:
The beast that thou
sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into
perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not
written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold
the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
The beast,
remember, refers both to the Roman Empire and to the tyrant who will rule it at
the end of history. When trying to
understand passages about the beast it is not a simple matter of determining
which of two is in view, for verses often about him often – perhaps always –
have a double meaning, one which applies to the empire, the other to its ruler
the Antichrist. This verse, applied to
the man rather than the empire, would indicate a Satanic counterfeit of the
events of the Gospel. The events of the
Gospel, of course, are the death, burial, and resurrection of the true Christ.[6] Revelation had already indicated that there
would be a Satanic counterfeit of this shortly after introducing the beast in
the thirteenth chapter and we will return to that shortly. As applied to the empire this verse explains how
a long defunct empire will be around to be ruled by the Antichrist at the end
of history. In some way this empire will
cease to be and will return.
The
Protestant Reformers, in an interpretation born out of the battle over
ecclesiastical reform in the Western Church in the sixteenth century, took the
position that the presence of the Roman Empire at the end of time is to be
explained by the Imperium having passed to the Pontificate so that the Roman
Empire survived in the Roman Catholic Church.
By this interpretation the Pope – not a particular pope, but the office
– is the Antichrist. Judged by its
fruit, however, which include the false understanding of Church history that
the heretical sects of the last four hundred years have used to justify departing
from Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, this interpretation is a bad tree. The error of the papacy is not the denial of
Christ – Rome affirms the orthodox Creeds – but the error of continuing to do
what the disciples were doing in Luke 9:46, and ignoring what Jesus had to say
about it in the verses that immediately follow.
Furthermore,
Revelation 17:8 indicates a return – “is not; and shall ascend out of the
bottomless pit” – rather than a survival through transfer of power to a
different institution. Bible prophecy
interpreters of the last century frequently spoke of a “revived Roman Empire”
and while these teachers generally interpreted Biblical prophecy through the
lens of dispensationalism, a false system of theology based on the errors of a)
ignoring St. Paul’s identification of the seed of Abraham in Galatians 3, b)
reversing St. Paul’s identification of the period of Law as a temporary measure
within God’s program of Grace and claiming the present Age of Grace to be a
“parenthesis” in the period of Law, and
c) denying the obvious implication of continuity between Israel and the Church
in the olive tree metaphor of Romans 11 and positing a two peoples of God
theory, the term aptly describes what has to happen for the Patristic
explanations of the Antichrist to be correct.
The most
well-known Bible prophecy interpreter of the last century was Hal Lindsey. Lindsey, who passed away last November just
two days after his 95th birthday[7]
was the author, with the help of C. C. Carlson, of The Late Great Planet Earth.
Published in 1970 by Zondervan, the largest of the evangelical
publishing houses based in Grand Rapids, Michigan[8] this
became the bestselling nonfiction book of the decade. Lindsey believed the European Economic
Community or Common Market, founded by the Treaty of Rome in 1958, and an early
stage in the development of what is today the European Union, would develop
into a “United States of Europe” that would become the revived Roman Empire.[9] Although Lindsey proved to be correct in his
prediction that the Common Market would evolve into a political confederation
there is a better contender for the status of revived Roman Empire. The fact that the European Union occupies
much of the same territory as the old Roman Empire should not be regarded as a
decisive identifying factor. The city of
“Babylon” in Revelation 17, after all, was not located on the Euphrates River.
In the
eighteenth century, when the leaders of the Thirteen Colonies decided they
wanted to leave the British Empire, they evoked the actions of Lucius Junius Brutus
and his confederates who drove the last king, Tarquinus Superbus out and
established the Roman Republic. The
comparison was not a good one. The house
of Tarquin had provoked this action with the rape of Lucretia, the wife of one
of Brutus’s colleague’s and the daughter of another, by Tarquin’s son
Sextus. The actions of the British
government to which America’s fathers took offense were not remotely
comparable, and the elected Parliament was responsible for them rather than the
king against whom the rhetoric of America’s founding propaganda was for the
most part directed. Nevertheless, the
comparison became deeply embedded in the American identity. When they had won their independence, they
established a republic in the Roman sense of the word (kingless government),
borrowing Roman constitutional and legal principles, terminology (Senate), and
symbolism (the eagle). They consciously
evoked the architecture of ancient Rome in designing the capital city of their
new republic, and Congress meets in a building called the Capitol on Capitol
Hill, which names are borrowed from the Capitoline,[10]
one of the seven hills of Rome, the one that was home to the temple of Jupiter. Note that it was pagan Rome, not Christian
Rome, the earliest form of Christendom or Christian civilization, to which
America’s Founding Fathers looked for inspiration. The United States, while it has historically
been a Christian nation, in the sense
that Christianity was the majority religion of its people, was not founded as a
Christian country, but as a liberal,
secular, country.
As did the
Roman republic, so the United States, the New Rome, has grown into an empire. She signaled her intention to do just that
very early on. In the nineteenth century
her imperialism was one of literal territorial expansion. Her attempt to conquer, or in her diseased
mind “liberate” British North America (Canada) in the War of 1812 failed, but
she was much more successful at expanding to her south and west. A huge step in her growth into an empire was
her internecine war in the 1860s. In the
misleading, simplified, version of this story, it was a war over the abolition
of slavery. In reality, it was the
culmination of a clash between two different cultures in the United
States. The “Yankee” culture of the
American north-east had grown out of the Puritanism of the Plymouth Rock
colony. The Mayflower Pilgrims,
rejecting European Christendom, had come to North America, believing they were
called to establish a purer Christian society in accordance with Puritan
ideals, a “city on a shining hill.” They
retained this attitude, even after their Christianity evaporated, and developed
a kind of secular Puritanism, in which liberal, capitalist, democratic values
took the place that strict Calvinist had once held. The culture of the American South had grown
out of the slightly older Jamestown colony, which had been settled by
Christians who were more orthodox and less Puritan, and this culture was less
inclined to cut ties with European Christendom and retained more of the older
set of values of Christian civilization.
In the century since the American Revolution, the balance of power
between the two shifted, the Yankee culture came to dominate, the South decided
it wanted to secede from the United States as the United States had seceded
from the British empire, and the Yankee north-east went to war and brutally
crushed the South. Having suppressed
internal dissent to Yankee culture, with its delusion of American exceptionalism,
the United States entered into a new era of American imperialism on a global
scale.
Out of the
three Punic Wars of ancient times, Rome had emerged as master of the
Mediterranean world. This was the birth
of the Roman Empire, before there was a Caesar to rule it as emperor. At the end of the Modern Age, over the course
of which the liberalism that had given birth to the United States gradually
transformed Christendom into “Western Civilization”, the countries of “Western
Civilization” fought two major conflicts with each other, the two World Wars, out
of which two superpowers emerged, the United States and the Soviet Union. The countries of the former Christendom that
had not fallen under Soviet control behind the Iron Curtain quickly became
clients of the United States. When the
Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States as
the sole power, the then American president George H. W. Bush declared a “new
world order” in which a coalition led by the United States, would police the
world in the name of freedom, capitalism, and democracy. The Global American Empire was born. The revived Roman Empire.
Note that
in the book of Revelation, when Babylon, the woman who rides the beast is
destroyed, the merchants of the world are particularly said to mourn.[11] This aligns well with the GAE as the revived
Roman Empire since capitalism is not only the United States’ basic raison
d'être but the glue that holds
the GAE together as well. Note also,
that both the books of Daniel and Revelation say that the Antichrist will rule
for three and a half years.[12] That is half a year short of an American
presidential term. Jesus in the Olivet
Discourse said “And except those days should be shortened, there should
no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.”[13] This could refer either to the period leading
up to the destruction of the Temple, or to the period leading up to the Second
Coming, or to both since Jesus was addressing both events in this discourse. Applied to the period leading up to the
Second Coming, it would explain the difference between the rule of the
Antichrist and a presidential term, if the GAE is indeed the revived Roman
Empire, making the Antichrist an American president.
This makes it all the more interesting that a false christ
is currently the president of the United States.
Now, before I continue, let me make it clear that I am not
saying dogmatically that Donald the Orange is the Man of Sin. People have been saying that such-and-such is
the Antichrist for two millennia and getting it wrong. The safest time to say that you know for sure
that someone is the Antichrist is when Jesus Christ returns and throws him into
the Lake of Fire. That having been said,
eventually someone has to get it right and whether or not he is the actual ultimate
Antichrist someone who matches the description as closely as Donald the Orange
needs to be warned against.
That Donald the Orange is at the very least a false messiah is demonstrable. Jesus of Nazareth is the true Christ. He was born of a virgin, the sign God gave to
the house of David,[14] the legitimate heir of
David by two methods of reckoning recorded by the Evangelists while the records
were still available before the Temple was destroyed,[15] in Bethlehem where the
Messiah was to be born,[16] shewed Himself to
Jerusalem in the way it was prophesied that He would,[17] and underwent the
suffering the Old Testament predicted He would suffer,[18] at the very time it was
prophesied this would take place.[19] Then, unlike false messiahs who end badly and
whose movements die with them, He rose again from the dead, also in accordance
with prophecy[20]
as the ultimate proof of His identity.
When He comes again, there will be no mistaking it, for He will come in
the same manner in which He departed earth.[21] Therefore, anyone who is not Jesus of
Nazareth, about whom serious messianic claims are made either by himself or by
his followers without his repudiation, is a false messiah.
In 2022 an author by the name of Helgard Müller published
a book entitled President Donald J. Trump,
The Son of Man – The Christ.[22] This book argues that there are two Christs,
the Son of God, Jesus, and the Son of Man, Trump. The year after that, someone publishing
anonymously and blasphemously as “Holy Ghost Writer,” published an e-book
entitled Donald J. Trump: The Second
Coming of Christ.[23] A book with an almost identical title to
this, Donald John Trump: The Second
Coming of Christ had previously been published in 2019 by Martin Orchard
Twig and Eleanor Orchard Twig.[24]
These books which literally say that Trump is Christ are by
anonymous or obscure Trump followers. Someone
might try to argue that Donald the Orange himself should not be held
responsible for what the wing-nuts of his movement say about him. One problem with this argument is that these
writers have merely taken to its ultimate extreme something that is mainstream
in the MAGA movement – comparing Trump to Christ, making an idol out of him,[25] and speaking about him in
messianic language as a saviour. Another
problem with the argument is that Trump is clearly the one who has created this
idolatrous cult around himself. Rather
than repudiating these blasphemous claims, he embraces them, redistributes
them, and makes them himself.
On August 21, 2019, Trump sent out a series of tweets which
contained a quote from Wayne Allan Root that Root had made during his live
call-in television show on Newsmax. Here
are the tweets, to which I have added italics to Root’s words to make it
clearer who is speaking:
‘Thank you to Wayne Allyn Root
for the very nice words. 'President Trump
is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world
not just America he is the best President for Israel in the history of the
world...and the Jewish people in Israel love him....
....like he's the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second
coming of God...But American Jews don't know him or like him. They don't even
know what they're doing or saying anymore. It makes no sense! But that's OK if
he keeps doing what he's doing he's good for.....
.....all Jews Blacks Gays everyone. And importantly he's good for everyone
in America who wants a job.' Wow! @newsmax @foxandfriends @OANN[26]
Now, while Root attributed the blasphemous view of Trump as
Christ (“King of Israel” “second coming of God”) to Israeli Jews, the attribution
is one of approval not condemnation, to which Trump gives his own
approval. According to Root, Trump after
sending out these tweets “walked outside of the
White House, in front of a mob of media, looked up at the sky and said, ‘I am
the chosen one.’”[27]
So no, there is no absolving
Trump of responsibility for these blasphemous claims about himself. Since he is not Jesus of Nazareth, returning
in the clouds to the Mount of Olives, he is therefore a false christ.
Now Jesus said that there
would be many false christs.[28] Is there any reason for thinking Donald the
Orange to be the ultimate one, the Antichrist, other than that he is a false
christ heading a revived Roman Empire?
The first time that the
possibility occurred to me was after his assassination attempt on July 13 of
last year. A sniper’s bullet grazed his
ear during a rally in Pennsylvania.
When I first heard the story and saw the footage of him with his bloody
ear rising up and raising his fist, I became fairly certain that he had just
been handed an election victory.
However, a verse from the Bible also immediately popped into my head: “And
I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was
healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.”[29] I quickly dismissed the thought because the
wound was hardly “deadly” and at the time I still had a fairly positive view of
Trump. He had entered American
presidential politics ten years ago, after all, as champion of those whom the
Left had been unjustly villainizing and scapegoating for decades, whom
mainstream “conservatives” had been afraid to defend, and who had been
constantly told that any attempt to speak out for their own interests
constituted one sort of unconscionable “ism” or “phobia” or another and while
skeptical that he would deliver, I set aside my disdain for demagogic populism
and cautiously cheered him on. He
delivered better than I thought he would. On the issue of abortion, for example, he
delivered an American Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, more than any of the previous presidential candidates
from his party who courted the American pro-life movement every election had
ever delivered. The people who were
against him were and are generally the people I am against. The increasingly cultish attitude of his
followers bothered me, but I was not aware at the time of just how far that
cult had gone in its idolatry of the man.
After his first of many threats
of Anschluss against my country opened my eyes regarding him I reflected
further on what I had too quickly dismissed.
It occurred to me that while the literal head wound he received was not
mortal, his political life could be described as having received a mortal wound
in the election of 2020 and its aftermath from which it recovered largely
through the means of the literal wound.
Prophecies about the beast, remember, have many layers.
It then occurred to me just how much of what Revelation 13
says about the beast fits Donald the Orange.
The verse immediately after the one about the head wound says
that the world will worship the dragon (Satan) and the beast, “saying, Who is
like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?”[30] Trump’s followers have long been convinced
that he is invincible and will inevitably get his way on everything, an
attitude that seems to be increasingly shared by others who are not his
followers per se.
Then the verse following that says “And there was given unto
him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him
to continue forty and two months.”[31] Forty two months is three and a half years
which we have already discussed. The
first part of the verse is most interesting.
Again “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies.” This alludes back to the
prophecy of the little horn in Daniel that had eyes “and a mouth that
spake very great things.”[32] This detail is repeated a few verses later in
the explanation of the little horn “And he shall speak great words against the
most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change
times and laws:”[33] Trump has definitely been given a mouth. He uses it, alternately to talk about the
greatness of this, that, and the other thing, and to trash talk. Changing laws is a large part of his agenda,
he seems to think that he has the authority to change any law he likes with his
pen, and while he hasn’t gotten around to changing times yet, after renaming
the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” can renaming the days and months to
things like “Americauary” and “Trumpday” be far off?
Verses 11-15 of Revelation 13 describe the second beast, who
in the rest of the book is called the False Prophet. This beast exercises the power of the first
beast and causes all to worship the first beast.[34] He is a miracle worker
who brings fire down from heaven.[35] He makes an image of the first beast,[36] which he is able to bring
to life.[37] The day after his second inauguration, Trump
declared a $500 billion investment in AI (Artificial Intelligence) infrastructure.[38] More recently, he posted an AI-generated
video depicting his plan to turn the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle
East” featuring a giant gold statue of himself.[39] The video also includes a scene in which Elon
Musk walks through a crowd of Gazans as money rains down from the sky on
everyone. Musk, the tech wizard behind
Tesla, while he has expressed concerns about AI in the past these have not prevented
him from making use of it, and if Trump proves to be the final Antichrist, is
the obvious contender for the role of False Prophet.
The last three verses of Revelation 13 contain the part of
the prophecy of the Antichrist that is most familiar to people, the famous Mark
of the Beast, in which all are made to receive a mark on their right hand or
forehead, without which they cannot buy or sell, which mark is the number of
the beast, six hundred and sixty-six.[40] The Mark of the Beast is a brand, indicating
that the person who receives it belongs to the Antichrist, a Satanic
counterfeit of someone being marked as belonging to Christ with the sign of the
cross in baptism. Note how the
Antichrist uses economic threats to force people to take his mark. Now consider Donald Trump’s tariff
policy. Trump’s tariff policy is not
that of protectionism or economic nationalism the way these have traditionally
worked. Trump uses tariffs as weapons,
to force other countries to do his bidding. He uses tariffs on countries, the
way the Antichrist uses his mark on individuals. As for the mark, take note of where Trump’s
followers wear their sign of allegiance to him and his movement. In those red
hats, on their foreheads.
Donald Trump is one who has come in his own name. Because the Antichrist will be received by
the Jews who reject Christ, it has long been thought that he would be Jewish, a
reasonable assumption in that it seemed unthinkable that the Jew would accept a
non-Jewish messiah claimant. Some of the
Church Fathers were more specific and argued that the Antichrist would come
from the tribe of Dan, on the grounds of Jacob’s final words about Dan[41] and the tribe’s omission
from the list of tribes in Revelation.[42] This was a less reasonable assumption in that
it is rather clear in the Old Testament that the Christ comes from Judah – the term
“Messiah” or “Christ” refers to his being the Anointed King of Israel, Son of
David – so why would the Jews accept a claimant from another tribe? While this
would seem to rule the nominal Presbyterian Trump out, in his first term as
American president, he was more popular in Israel than in his own country. By the end of that term the only country in
the world where he was more popular than in Israel was the Philippines,[43] and Israel was the only
country with majority support for his non-domestic policies.[44] He remains extremely popular in Israel to
this day.[45] He has come in his own name, and has been
received in at least a sense by those who have rejected the true Christ,
although I suspect that Wayne Allyn Root’s claim that they literally view him
in messianic terms is in large part a projection of his own views of the
man. Daniel 9:27, “And he shall confirm
the covenant with many for one week” has been interpreted as meaning that the
Antichrist will make a seven year peace
treaty with Israel that he will later break.[46] While not exactly a seven year treaty, the
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the latest round of their ongoing
co-operative effort to raise funds from their gullible sponsors by fighting
each other, went into effect the day before Trump’s second inauguration with
him, of course, taking the credit for it.[47] He has since been at the centre of the
ongoing talks, and this Gaza plan of his is about equal parts his own
self-aggrandizement and securing peace for Israel. It would be entirely in keeping with his
character for him to build a Third Temple then erect a gaudy statue of himself
in it.
Ultimately, of course, the question of whether this false
christ presiding over the revived Roman Empire is the final Antichrist will be
decided by whether his downfall coincides with the Second Coming of Jesus
Christ. If he is the Man of Sin, before
that he will make “war on the saints”[48] Although the new White House Faith Office he
has established is supposed to do the opposite of that, an agency of that
nature can easily become the instrument of persecution. At any rate, whether the ultimate Antichrist
or merely the latest in a long line of forerunners, this false christ presently
enjoys overwhelming support among America’s Christians. The eyes of the truly faithful will
eventually be opened. May you be found
among those loyal to the true Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, rather than any
imposter.
[1] St. John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans. E. W. Watson and L.
Pullan in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
Second Series, Volume 9, edited by Phillip Schaff and Henry Wace, 4.26.1.
[2] St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second
Series, Volume 7, 15.9, 12-18.
[3] St. Hippolytus of Rome, On Christ and Antichrist, trans. J. H.
MacMahon in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.
5, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe, 6.
[4] St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, 5.27.1-5.
[5] For example, Epistle of Barnabas, 4, and St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 110.
[6] 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.
[7] Interestingly, in a trivial rather than a
relevant or significant way, his birthday is also the anniversary of the JFK
assassination.
[8] Since 1988 Zondervan has been owned by
HarperCollins, a branch of the Murdoch media empire.
[9] Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), 88-97.
[10] The city in which it the Capitol is located, Washington D.C., is the capital city of the United States.
Capital is not derived from Capitoline, but from caput, capitis, the Latin word for “head”, although Capitoline
itself likely comes from this word (by ancient tradition the hill was named
after the temple which was so called because of a skull uncovered when digging
the foundation for it). Thus, while the
two words come ultimately from the same source (caput), it is through entirely
different paths, and by a strange coincidence they ended up denoting, the one a
building and the other the city in which it is located.
[12] Dan. 7:25, Rev. 13:5.
[18] Psalm 22, Isaiah 53.
[19] Daniel 9:24-26.
The years in the weeks of years are Chaldean lunar years of 360
days. The commandment to restore and
build Jerusalem took place in 445 BC according to our reckoning of years. After all the adjustments are made from the
one way of calculating years to the other, this prophecy has the Messiah being
“cut off”, i.e., killed, in the early 30s AD.
[26] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
documents/tweets-august-21-2019
[46] Lindsey and Carlson, 56-57.
