People have been trying to identify a
particular antichrist for centuries. Christopher Hill’s book on the subject
just deals with antichrist in seventeenth-century England. (There were many
more through the centuries and in other countries.) The candidates included
Protestants, the Pope, radical sects, bishops, the Crown, the “‘Establishment’ generally,”
the universities, and “the Turk,” an early designation for Muslims:
Richard Montagu proposed the Turk
rather than the Pope as Antichrist. This thesis may have been given fresh
currency by a Balliol [College] man, Christopher Angelos, a Greek who had suffered
at the hands of the Turks and had it revealed to him in a vision that Mahomet
was Antichrist.1
As history and the Bible attest, they
were all wrong. Bernard McGinn2 and Francis X. Gumerlock3 cover 2000 years of the topic, so
other’s foray into the debate isn’t anything new. Like in ages past,
today’s antichrist candidates are manufactured from current events rather than
from Scripture……….
(Full text at link below.)
I realize that there are many
end-time advocates who are engaged in the culture. At the same time, I know
that people who have no interest in prophetic speculation are equally
disengaged (mostly two-kingdom amillennialists). Still, ideas have
consequences. In the case of the prophetic speculators, it breeds worldview
schizophrenia. In time, the activists throw up their hands and follow the path
of prophetic logic: If all the signs point to the near return of Jesus, and all
sorts of bad things are going to happen, including an economic meltdown like
the one described by prophecy writers John Hagee (Financial Armageddon)
and David Jeremiah (The Coming Economic Armageddon), then why spend my
time and resources trying to fight something that is inevitable?
The collapse of humanism is an
opportunity for Christians to prepare for what might come and to offer hope and
solutions to those who have not prepared. There won’t be a rapture to rescue
any of us. Deal with it. The sooner the better.
Full text at: Why Bother
if the End is Near?
