A Tale of Two Evils: The Rise of the Antichrist and the False Prophet, Part 1
I understand that in these end times, our focus needs to be on our imminent departure at the rapture. I am all about that – if you have read any of my articles, you probably already
However, we are surrounded by a culture of misinformation and churches that have departed from
Thank God for Rapture
You probably feel the same
Things in the news seem to be on fast forward in severity and progression toward wickedness and evil glorification. We hear blasphemous things coming out of the mouths of world leaders; and we wonder, just possibly, if we might be looking at these twins of evil just before the Lord calls us upward in the rapture. I feel like we may be witnessing the rise of these personalities as they take center stage in the world before we depart. But maybe it’s only a glimpse, allowing believers to give a last-minute warning to the lost—before we Rapture from this earth.
And so, this article is forthcoming, as I am writing this with a great sense of urgency.
Here is a simple question that begs a simple answer: If God did not want us to identify these two, evil, end-time personalities, why does He give us the wisdom to do so, and clues in scripture to lead us to the answers?
I believe God
I will start here in part 1 with the person known as the Antichrist.
I hope you are ready to dive in—because we are going deep! You’d better grab a cup of coffee and a pastry ‘cause you are
Let’s start with
In the book of Revelation, the one who has “wisdom” is said to calculate the number of his name, or the
What I am about to share is very important and not to be missed. If this personality is the one and only Antichrist of the end times, he will fulfill all the criteria, have all the character attributes, and fulfill all scripture.
Scripture is filled with clues about this man. Let’s uncover these things today in this article.
Antichrist – a.k.a. –
So, he is the first beast we see rising up out of the sea. The sea represents the Gentile nations or non-Jewish nations.
“Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name” (Revelation 13:1).
See Daniel 7, verses 11 and 25. He is also referred to as the “man of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).
Forerunners: meaning we have seen his likeness on the earth before, prior to this point in time. They all possess attributes of the antichrist in both character and deed. Their names may or may not calculate to 666. I call them antichrist types. They are not the one and only antichrist the Bible has foretold will rise up in the end times. This group of evil men does give us clues, however, as to what type of person we should be looking for in these last days here upon the earth. Please note, all these forerunners are from
The forerunners are:
-Haman the Agagite, an Amalekite, was infuriated because Mordecai, a Jew, did not kneel and pay him homage. This enraged Haman. Haman plotted to have Mordecai killed, but not just him, all Jews in the land. King Ahasuerus was the Persian ruler at the time and was wed to Queen Esther, a Jewess. Queen Esther was also the niece of Mordecai. She exposes Haman to the King for who he really was, and his plan to execute all Jews on the gallows. Haman was hung on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai, along with his ten sons.
Under the influence of Queen Esther and Mordecai, the rest of the enemies of the Jews were killed and routed from the land.
Attributes: God complex, anger, demanded worship,
-Nero Claudius Caesar or (Neron Caesar, is the Greek translation of his name). Emperor of Rome, 54-68 AD. Responsible for killing his mother, his brother and both of his wives. He would light up Christians on stakes and put them in his gardens at night. He was said to have fiddled away as Rome was being burned. The first century church greatly feared him, and for good reason. His name calculated to 666 or 616. There are some discrepancies here in the
Attributes:
-Antiochus IV, also known as Antiochus Epiphanes, or “God Manifest.” The Jews referred to him as Antiochus Epimames, or “The Madman.” He was the Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire. His reign was from 175-164 BC. He fulfilled many of the antichrist characteristics, a nearly perfect personification of what the antichrist of the seven-year tribulation will be like, just not living in the end of days time slot.
He was full of Jew-hatred, brutal, thought he was God incarnate, desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar of the Jewish temple to the god Zeus. He killed and imprisoned many Jews. He decreed a law forbidding circumcision, penalized by death.
Attributes: blasphemous, God complex, brutal, pompous, arrogant, murderous, Jew-hatred. Ruled and lived in the Greek Empire. Gentile nation.
-General Titus, also a prince. He was the son of the Roman Emperor, Vespasian. Vespasian, by the way, was the architect for the Roman Coliseum. General Titus was responsible for the sacking and total destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, killing and setting to flight hundreds of thousands of Jews. This was the beginning of the diaspora. Many were killed or sold into slavery, as well as absorbed into other countries all over the earth.
He went on to succeed his father on the throne as emperor from 79-81 AD. Between Titus and his father Vespasian, a massive amount of Jews and Christians died under their rule. Countless Christians were martyred in the coliseum, being fed to the wild beasts.
Attributes: fierce, brutal, idolater, ordered genocide, destroyed the Jewish temple, godless, merciless. Ruled and lived in the Roman Empire. Gentile nation.
-Hadrian, Emperor of Rome from 117-138 AD. He is known as the final destroyer of the Jews. There was a remnant of Jews and their ancestors living in Judea under Roman rule that had not been killed or dispersed in 70 AD along with the destruction of the temple. They were the last “holdout” and resisting Roman rule and tyranny in Judea. They locked their homes and took their keys, fleeing to the desert to hide in caves near the Dead Sea, hoping to return after the revolt was over.
They were non-military men with women and children among them, hoping to wait out the revolt in the desert for a while, and then return to Judea. Hadrian’s armies either chased them down and killed them or kept them from getting food and water so that they starved to death in the desert. Many years later, in 1960, the skeletal remains were discovered and excavated; the house keys were also found in their
Hadrian also had homosexual relations, although he was married. Antinous was Hadrian’s lover, a very young, Greek male. Source: Hadrian, en.m.wikipedia.org.
Attributes: Jew hatred,
-Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945. Of all the above, I probably know the most about this bad man. He had just about every characteristic of the Antichrist as well. He came to power very quickly from nothing really. Amazingly, he was not impressive or even German born! He very much embraced the anti-Semitism of Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, at an earlier age. He was actually born in Austria. He was very involved in the occult. He did cast a spell over most of the German people, who followed him like he was God.
He did not just speak publicly, he screamed. This man, along with Nazi Germany, did the most damage to the Jewish nation and to Europe, extending it to the world. Six million Jews annihilated, fifty to eighty million died in WW2, including those from disease and famine caused by the war. His hatred for Jews was infectious and spread like gangrene throughout Germany and Europe. There was no end to what he would do.
His name calculates to 660 in English
Attributes: a fierce countenance, a mouth that boasted blasphemy, shrewd, always plotting evil, Jew-hatred, a God complex, demanded worship,
He stole, bribed and confiscated tons of possessions and property that did not belong to him. He planned to completely annihilate Jews from Europe in his “Final Solution.” Hitler’s Nazis invaded and occupied eleven European countries until Germany surrendered May 8, 1945 – a week after Hitler committed suicide.
Germany is not from the original Roman
Also, known as the little horn from the book of Daniel, “a
This gives him even more human characteristics. This man will be a human being (eyes of a man) and have a big, arrogant, pompous mouth filled with blasphemy against our God and Christ. Do not be fooled into thinking he is any robot or someone Satan raised from the dead. Satan does not have the power to raise someone from the dead. He can possess people and will possess and rule this man. Satan has the same
Alright, now you have a good understanding of what the Antichrist will look like, act like, talk like, and hail from, in the most descriptive terms. We see his likeness personified in these forerunners very clearly. They just lived in the wrong time period. They were an Antichrist type.
Let’s highlight now the important things scripture says about the Antichrist that we will see coming upon the world stage in the latter days, and that will distinguish him from all the others.
These telltale characteristics are:
-He will live during the “appointed time of the end,” or the “latter times” as stated in the book of Daniel.
“I am making known to you what will happen in the latter time of the indignation, for at the appointed time the end shall be” (Daniel 8:19).
-He changes set times and laws.
“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: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time” (Daniel 7:25).
-The Gentiles will be running amok in the holy land of Israel, specifically in Jerusalem in the latter days.
“And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features, who understands sinister schemes” (Daniel 8:23).
This is happening right now. You can see it! This will be coming to a head when he rises to power. It will get worse, I believe, after
Today, as I am writing this article, in the Wall Street Journal, the headlines read, “Palestinian Demonstrations Along Israeli Border Turn Violent,” and also on the front page, “Breaking Point: At least 15 Palestinians died in clashes with
-He will rise along with the False Prophet at the same time.
The False Prophet is the second beast rising from the earth in Revelation 13:11. I will expound
-His authority is given to Him by God. He is the rider of the white horse of the apocalypse.
“Now, I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a loud voice like thunder, come and see. And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer” (Revelation 6:1-2).
-He will be given his power from Satan. Just like Christianity has God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, this end time duo is really a threesome: Satan, or also described as the Dragon, the Antichrist and the False Prophet. An unholy trinity. All of hell will work together until the very end.
“And I saw the unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to
-He will be from the revived Roman Empire, or now known as the European Union. During the tribulation, the EU will be a pared-down version of what it is right now.
“Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his ten horns, ten crowns, on his heads, a blasphemous name. Now, the beast that I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like a mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his
This is a description of where this beast, the Antichrist, and his empire came from and the empires before him. The leopard represents the Greek Empire, the bear represents the Medo-Persian Empire, and the lion, the Babylonian Empire. The Roman Empire will revive here, as well, in the end times, symbolic of the 10 nations ruled by the 10 kings – or seen here as 10 horns and 10 crowns. This has dual meaning, as the Roman Empire is represented as the seventh and eight heads of the beast, as well as it symbolizes the beast himself and his place of origin—the Roman Empire.
“Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition” (Revelation 17:9-11).
Rome is known as having seven mountains or hills that it is situated upon.
-He will be from the revived Roman Empire, a Gentile, but has Jewish bloodlines, specifically, a descendant of King David. I have entered a piece of my opinion here, and this is why. In order for him to be received by the Jews as their long-awaited Messiah, it will involve trickery. However, scripture does say in Daniel that he does not regard the God of his fathers (Daniel 11:37).
We have seen this
I found some more interesting tidbits in my research.
My other hobby, besides eschatology, is ancestry. As crazy as it might seem, there are eighty million people living on the earth right now who are from the bloodline of King David. I know; I looked at the number five times to make sure my eyes were not blurring.
“Chaim Luria estimates there are 80 million people who are related to King David today. These include the royal families of England and Europe who claim descendants of the Jewish king of Narbonne, who are said to have intermarried with Europe’s aristocracy, infusing the nobility of France, Flanders, Scotland and England with Davidic blood.” Source: Epstein, Nadine, King David’s Genes, March 5, 2014, momentmag.com
So, to sum up this thought, there is a huge chance he could actually have something authentic about his pedigree. With the above stats, he stands a good chance of being from the Davidic bloodline. It will help him fool the Jewish nation and give him persuasive powers. Give that some thought!
-His name will calculate to 666 in English
“Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number of a man: His number is 666” (Revelation 13:18).
-To buy or sell, a person must show allegiance and worship him by having his mark or number of his name
“He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark
-He is a brutal military leader and worships a god of fortresses.
“But in their place he shall honor a god of fortresses; and a god which his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and pleasant things” (Daniel 11:38).
-He does not have natural affections or the desire of a woman. We see this in spades in all the forerunners. They were all
“He shall regard neither the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god, for he shall exalt himself above them all” (Daniel 11:37).
-He will suffer a mortal blow early on in the tribulation, and through smoke and mirrors brought to the world by way of the False Prophet, he supposedly rises from the dead! Wow, just like Jesus? Not! But they fool the whole world, and they worship him and follow in blind devotion—to their destruction.
“And I saw one of the heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed after the beast. So they worshipped the dragon who gave authority to the
Remember, Satan cannot or never will have the power to raise
-He confirms a peace covenant with Israel. A peace treaty that was already in place beforehand and possibly not fully implemented is implied here. He then breaks it at the halfway point of the tribulation, three and a half years into it.
“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate” (Daniel 9:27).
-At the same halfway point, he desecrates the third Jewish Temple; he is the abomination of desolation, and goes after the Jewish remnant with a vengeance.
“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:15-21).
-During the last part of the tribulation, known more accurately as the great tribulation, he
“But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:16-17).
-Then he proceeds to persecute all those who have not taken his mark and who are now tribulation saints.
-He kills and overcomes many in his wrath, leading him to fight with Jesus Christ himself at His Second Coming.
I will leave off here, as Part 2 will shed light on the False Prophet and how he will work alongside the Antichrist to accomplish the will of Satan in the final
A Tale of Two Evils: The Rise of the Antichrist and False Prophet, Part 2, coming soon!
Sally Law