The Origins of the Antichrist

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Credits:
Executive Producers: Francesco Barravecchia, Robert Porchia
Producer: Audra Owens, Dhruv Singhal, Lyndsay Ballew
Writers: Chance Bonar, Andrew Henry
Editor: Mark Henry

00:00 Introduction
2:19 Antichrist in the NT
7:19 Irenaeus' Expansion of Antichrist
11:52 Tertullian and Hippolytus
14:00 Medieval Developments of Antichrist
16:11 Conclusion

[barkasz]

It seems to me like 80% of what people believe as ancient, unshakeable tenets of Christianity, are at best medieval fan fiction. The rest are older creations or borrowings and it all makes a beautiful literary tree where you can follow the evolution of literature, philosophy, mythology and the mixture of cultures step by step.

[benjaminsteenhoek]

When I heard “spoilers ahead”, I thought you were about to warn spoilers for the Bible… I think those kind of spoilers are ok by now!

[SuenteusPi]

I suppose if you named your daughter "Perdition" you didn't have high hopes for her, but finding out she got pregnant from eating a bad fish still sounds like a disappointment

[nokiaarabicringtone]

Calling a Romanian character "Nicolae Carpathia" is the same as calling an American character George Mississippi

[balobillybomba]

Coming from a majoritarily muslim culture, I must add that the notion of Antichrist ("Al Masih Al Dajjal", literally the deceptive messiah) also figures in Islam and plays a big role in Muslim eschatology as well. It is not however found in the Quran (leaving room for a probable christian influence over time), mostly assigned to the prophet's sayings

[rubikscubeearf]

“Both of them will be circumcised”

Well, there goes our only way of identifying good vs evil…

[sock]

I actually grew up being taught by my Christian parents that "anti-christ" was a generic category. I always wondered where the whole individual supervillain thing came from.

[carlcarlington]

Growing up stories of the rapture and the antichrist as a specific character was taken for granted as something that was as canon as Adam and Eve. Too see how much of this was really just speculation is insanely fascinating

[JustaguyIam]

The picture he shows of antichrist makes me think of “hey little Jesus, lemme whisper in ya ear”

[hatusnee]

When I was a child I was raised in an extremely evangelical environment and was taught almost everything at an extremely young age and as early as ten years old when anyone brought up the rapture I would spiral and have severe anxiety/panic attacks :)

[marshroanoke]

I just want to say that I grew up in the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses which was a closed, high control religion. That means growing up I didn't know much about other religions let alone other Christian denominations. I was pretty surprised when you talked about how the "Left Behind" evangelical book series features the United Nations as the tool Satan/the Antichrist uses to achieve his goals. This is a big part of the end times theology of Jehovah's Witnesses. Growing up I thought that the organization's leadership had some "special divine insight" as Jehovah's channel. Now I am realizing that this view is not so special at all - apparently it's a common view of many evangelical Christians!

[tommylakindasorta]

The story plays out like an ancient game of telephone. I can see why, since the idea of an antichrist as a Big Bad is way more compelling than the early description as being merely one among many nonbelievers.

[ScholarAngelicus]

So as a Catholic I feel that I can clarify. The Antichrist as referred to in the book of 1 John, is referring specifically to a group of heretical early Christians called the Docetists. The Docetists believe that Christ was not an actual human and only a spirit. Therefore the line “he who confesseth not that Christ came in the flesh is not human, but is that spirit of antichrist” is a dig at them from the actual church.

[yeshuk]

The thing we have to look at is the scripture he uses "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Yahusha Messiah is come in the flesh is of YHWH". The problem is that while this specifically states that "Messiah" will come in the flesh. The Church teaches that this is proclaiming that "God" came in the flesh. This is 'Incarnation'. This is Blasphemy seeing as Yahuah already stated:

Num 23:19
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

In this statement he verifies that he 'is not a man', signifying that men 'lie' and neither is he the 'son of man' that he should repent. While I know most of you Christians believe Jesus is God in the flesh lets really look at that word 'flesh' used in John.

1Jo 4:2
By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Yahusha Messiah has come in the flesh is of YHWH,
1Jo 4:3
and every spirit that does not confess that[fn] Yahusha Messiah has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

Now, let's look at that word 'flesh' in the Vines expository dictionary from 'BlueletterBible.com'.

flesh = sarx (Key)
feminine noun
flesh (the soft substance of the living body, which covers the bones and is permeated with blood) of both man and beasts
the body
the body of a man
used of natural or physical origin, generation or relationship
born of natural generation
the sensuous nature of man, "the animal nature"
without any suggestion of depravity
the animal nature with cravings which incite to sin
the physical nature of man as subject to suffering
a living creature (because possessed of a body of flesh) whether man or beast
the flesh, denotes mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God

The last entry sinches it... Yahushuah is a man and not a god. As Num 23 shows, this man, the son of man, which he and others were called, has to repent. Yes Yahushuah Messiah had to repent of his own sin and the sin of the people:

Heb 7:27
who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

Notice it says 'this he did once for all....'. That 'all' includes himself. Next we see that the 'Branch' as he is called is shown here to have had to have been 'cleansed' of his own iniquity by Yahuah before he can become the Branch fulfilling Heb 7:27.

Zec 3:3
Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel.
Zec 3:4
Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”

Please do read the whole of Zec 3 for the full story. Furthermore, YHWH makes this statement about him in the law:

Deu 18:15
Moses continued, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.

Jesus is not God... he is our brother, the firstborn of the resurrection. His Godly status does not come until after his resurrection:

Rom 1:4
And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

Before this he is called 'the son of man' always. This is how he terms himself. At no time does he ever say to worship or pray to him, but that YHWH is the only 'one' God and to him you worship and him only.

When we look at John 4:2 - 3 it's telling us that for those that deny Yahusha is a human just like us and worships him as god in the flesh are of the spirit of the 'anti-messiah'.

Yahusha ben David is the Messiah, Jesus Christ is the 'image of the beast'. Look at revelations 13 and trace that number '666' to it's origin and it will show that the Greek word or 'christogram' was actually

666 = chxϚ
χξϛ chx stigma, khee xee stig'-ma; the 22nd, 14th and an obsolete letter (G4742 as a cross) of the Greek alphabet (intermediate between the 5th and 6th), used as numbers; denoting respectively 600, 60 and 6; 666 as a numeral:—six hundred threescore and six.

Here you will see all the ancient paintings of Jesus Christ with the χξϛ all over them. Where the christogram is missing his hand symbol he is making is that christogram. Also Rev 13 states that the symbol is an 'image' of a man. Jesus Christ isn't even a real person and never was.

[JarlJimbo]

My man at 2:39 caked up for real. lol Who's painting these big ole booties?

[winterthemuteson]

Interesting. I was raised catholic so i grew up accustomed to the idea that sources outside of the bible could have scriptural levels of truth. Since evangelicals are the ones most concerned with the idea of the antichrist, how do they reconcile the majority of the antichrist ideas being outside of the bible with the protestant belief that the bible is the only source of scripture?

[Alex_Barbosa]

Left Behind legit made a large part of my family paranoid and anxiety inducing. It also straight up traumatized me. I hate those books and movies. They've brought so much evil and xenophobia into the world.

[samwill]

Unfortunatley, in relation to all of this fascinating historical and theological learning offered here is that the antichrist is often used as a term of pejorative mudslinging against any people that a certain kind of christian doesn't like. Don't do that. Treat your fellow people like people, even if you don't agree with them religiously or politically. The bible is not your ammunition to be a terror.

[thegoldenfret]

i suppose the anti-christ is the friends we made along the way

[LiquorWithJazz]

Sometime in my family just sent me a text about the rapture. I came back to rewatch this video because of it. Cheers, Dr. Andrew.