Of Reading and Home Teaching

There is a conversation going on over here between a number of biblical authors. I couldn’t be more excited! I especially love that the author of Hebrews is still trying to figure out their own identity along with the rest of us mortals.

As far as New Testament experts go, I’m not one. But that being said, I have spent a little time looking into the issue of an antichrist in the book of Revelation, and when this paragraph came into my email box as a part of a rant against Barak Obama, I couldn’t not at least respond a little.

Here is the paragraph:

“According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal….the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??”

Maybe I developed this particular response from some of my college professors, but if anyone ever refers to the book as Revelations (plural) I immediately suspect erroneous interpretations. I was certainly justified in doing so in this case.

Revelation has no specific reference to an antichrist. That is the first major problem with this statement. The term antichrist is used only in the Johannine Epistles in the New Testament, not in Revelation. When the term is used (in 1 and 2 John), John is referring to a contemporary figure/group/presence, not a figure who would come in the distant future.

Revelation does refer to figures who would come in the last days and wreak havoc on the saints of God; it could be one of these figures that the author of the paragraph is referring to, but I think a brief examination of the characteristics of these figures from the actual text of Revelation will demonstrate that the paragraph is, to be kind, ridiculous.

I know some have equated the dragon of Revelation 12 with antichrist. However, v 9 makes it clear that the dragon is Satan (I grant that calling Satan antichrist makes sense), not a person.

Revelation 13 speaks of two beasts, one that comes from the sea and another that comes from the earth. The beast that comes from the sea appears to be an entity (whether person, organization, ideal, etc.) that’s whole purpose is to blaspheme God and cause those who will not worship God to worship it. The beast that comes from the earth is another entity bent on turning individuals from the worship of God to worship of the first beast.

Just a comment about Senator Obama. I don’t care whether you agree with his politics or not, personally I like some of his positions and disagree with him on others, but I don’t see how he personifies any of the above characteristics of either beast.

Now to address some of the claims of the quoted paragraph from the email.

“A man in his 40’s of Muslim decent” Are you kidding me? I cannot think of any Biblical prophecy that contains such specific information about an individual. The remark about his age would be a little plausible, if such a thing existed in the prophecies (it doesn’t). But the part about Muslim decent is an outrageous anachronism and deserves no consideration except to mention that Islam did not exist until centuries after the writing of the book of Revelation.

“who will deceive the nations with persuasive language”  One of the beasts in Revelation is said to deceive the inhabitants of the earth with mighty miracles like calling fire down from heaven (see Rev 13:13 –14). It is because of these miracles that he is able to persuade the people to worship the first beast.

“and have a MASSIVE Christlike appeal” Nope. No mention of that. In fact, it’s pretty clear that the beasts in Revelation are unequivocally opposed to Christ.

“people will flock to him, and he will promise false hope and world peace” The beasts in Revelation tend to like war, not peace, kind of like their leader the dragon.

“when he is in power, [he] will destroy everything” Actually, the beasts are said to control economic markets and cause a lot of problems, but total destruction? Not so much.

“Is it Obama?” Let me just say this. No.