The Antichrist

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How are we to understand this concept of an Antichrist?

Some Catholic scholars appear to say that the Antichrist was the emperor Nero. But of course popular belief suggests that the Antichrist will be the devil made flesh at the end of the world, et cetera.

What is the greater consensus with Catholic Biblical Scholarship? What have the Popes, Cardinals and Bishops of recent times said?

Throughout our Church’s history, what has the Church believed regarding Revelation? Did they think it was a foretelling of the future deception of the devil? Or did they always understand it as Nero’s persecution?

It seems to me that the belief in the Antichrist as the devil incarnate is just something that popped up with American Fundamentalists’ poor understanding of Scripture, taking everything literally, just as they created friction between Genesis and science. I personally don’t think there is any friction between the two, because it was understood from the beginning that Genesis isn’t literal anyway. Is the case with Revelations similar, having fallen as prey to extremely flawed interpretation?
 
copland said:
This question requires some work because it is a hundred dollar question that should not get a 2 dollar answer. Here is the best insight on the Antichrist. It is from John Henry Cardinal Newman. conventhill.com/endtimes/newman.htm
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Cardinal Newman in your article seems to think that the restrainer is the Roman Empire. He says this was almost unaninmous in the ECFs? Well, I thought St. Augustine said it’s the Holy Spirit. I personaly think Augustine is more on track here. For what restrains iniquity except the Redemption, which is accomplished by the Holy Spirit? Only when man rejects God’s Redemption in a manner that can no longer be healed can we say that there is nothing left to restrain iniquity. Or am I missing something. Also, I think Newman is interpreting the beast more like a fundamentalist, as though it is directly addressing geography. I’d say the beast is more about a psychological and spiritual blue print for the successive sinful stages of resistance to the Redemption that span all of salvatoin history. Sin, and the fallen nature of man, as well its countering force, grace, are what lie at the heart of history, not geography.

Toward that end, you might consider reading these from my blogs and sites:

The Restrainer and the Beast

for a longer explanation, maybe this:
The Beast and Historicism
 
umm…
the Antichrist is not mentioned in the book of Revelation.:o
 
2nd thesalonians 2:3-5

“For the day of the Lord will not come unless the apostacy comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition who opposes and is exalted above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he sits in the temple and gives himself out as if he were God. Do you not remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things.”
 
runandsew said:
umm…
the Antichrist is not mentioned in the book of Revelation.:o
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John is the only gospel that references the Antichrist:

1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.

1 John 4:3 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.

2 John 1:7 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.
 
CRW said:
John is the only gospel that references the Antichrist:

1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.

1 John 4:3 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.

2 John 1:7 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.
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those are John’s LETTERS, not his Gospel, but your point is still valid. 😃 👍
 
RCCDefender said:
The beast whose mark is 666 in Revelation, that is Nero.
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yeah, but 666 can, in addition, have spiritual meaning, like God is Three Persons in One Nature, man’s number is 6, so three sixes in one number is man making himself god, which is what sin is ultimately in any great age of salvation history, not just during the times of pagan Rome. For does not modern man make himself his own god with atheistic materialism or relativistic materialism?
 
The only way that Jesus could in the present tense when 2John4:3 was written be spoken of as “IS COME” in the flesh would be in the Eucharist!

You could certainly say that HE CAME in the flesh years before the verse was written.

You also could say that He will COME in the flesh at the last judgement.

The only way He “IS COME” in the flesh when the passage was written was IN the Eucharist!

Jesus is in the Eucharist and we eat His flesh.

Anyone who is opposed to that IS ANTICHRIST!

If you check different Bible translations you will see that the tense was changed in translations AFTER both the Douay Rheims AND the KJV.

Protestants had to change the tense of the verb to avoid being condemned as antichrists.

The tense of the verb matters!

The passage could also be aimed at Gnostics who didn’t believe that Jesus came to Earth in the flesh–if you thought that way you wouldn’t believe that He was in the flesh in the Eucharist, either!

The same antichrist spirit is in the Gnostics and the deniers of Jesus being present in the flesh in the Eucharist!
 
spauline said:
yeah, but 666 can, in addition, have spiritual meaning, like God is Three Persons in One Nature, man’s number is 6, so three sixes in one number is man making himself god, which is what sin is ultimately in any great age of salvation history, not just during the times of pagan Rome. For does not modern man make himself his own god with atheistic materialism or relativistic materialism?
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666 also refers to the Antichrist.
 
CRW said:
John is the only gospel that references the Antichrist:

1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.

1 John 4:3 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.

2 John 1:7 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.
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The only address that contains 666-John 6:66.
 
Rebecca_New said:
The only address that contains 666-John 6:66.
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yeah, but you cannot call Protestants FULLY antichrist, for they at least have two sacraments, two “fish”, Baptism and Marriage. What they lack is the five “loaves”, the five Sacraments that require the solid “earth” of the episcopate. I would reserve “beast imagery” for those who are utter children of the devil, like atheists, or relativistic hedonists.
 
spauline said:
yeah, but you cannot call Protestants FULLY antichrist, for they at least have two sacraments, two “fish”, Baptism and Marriage. What they lack is the five “loaves”, the five Sacraments that require the solid “earth” of the episcopate. I would reserve “beast imagery” for those who are utter children of the devil, like atheists, or relativistic hedonists.
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I read some statements by early Protestant reformers saying that the Mass is a sacrilege. Of course that’s what the Antichrist will say. The Beast imagery is reference to those who have imperfection in them. Cause that’s what 666 literally means. Imperfection. That is to say, children who seperated themselves from God.
 
bones_IV said:
I read some statements by early Protestant reformers saying that the Mass is a sacrilege. Of course that’s what the Antichrist will say. The Beast imagery is reference to those who have imperfection in them. Cause that’s what 666 literally means. Imperfection. That is to say, children who seperated themselves from God.
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I think 666 doesn’t mean simply SOME imperfection. I think it means the TOTAL antithesis of goodness, both in the arena of intellect and will.

For that reason, I don’t think that the modern Catholic Church would ever call Protestants as a whole children of the devil. For most of the devout ones are probably only material heretics, and so consequently can presumably possess the state of grace, seeing as they have Baptism and Marriage in validity usually.

I think the Catechism addresses all the major intermediate religious conditions between full Catholic and full apostate, and it recognizes, leaving aside the Jews, the following primary categories:

The Muslims
The Schismatics (mainly the Orthodox)
The Heretics (mainly Protestants)
The Enlightenment Children (historical reductionists, general infidelity of deists and rationalists)

Of these intermediate groups, the Church recognizes the possibility of salvation for all of them except the bottom “Enlightenment” category, seeing as the reduction of religion to the mere NATURAL level, denying its SUPERnatural essence, is implicitly opposed to the Gospel, seeing as a person must believe he needs assistance in his will (against deists) and of his intellect (against rationalists) from God in order to be saved.

But even the “enlighten.” is not UTTERLY depraved, for it at least (usually) recognizes some Supreme Being and the necessity to at least strive for natural virtue, and to feel regret to the degree that one fails in this.

Only when we get to the state of TOTAL apostasy would I say we have the “beast”, and this category is essentially filled by the secular messianists (which the CCC condemns in an apocalyptic manner), the primary brunt of which are the atheistic materialists and the relativistic materialists, two ideologies that govern most of the East and West, respectively.

I believe this is actually prefigured in the apoc in the trumpets, which work basically from the “Seal of God” in chapter 7 (which I see as Catholicism) toward the "“mark of the beast” in chapter 13 (which I see again as the modern full apostates).

In this analysis, I correlate the Protestants with the first great woe, the fifth trumpet, and the “Enlightenment” with the second great woe, that is, the sixth trumpet.

I can give you a link to my essay if you’d like.
 
Hey, let’s not forget the North and the South as well.

In regards to 666, I’ve dreaded that number myself, for it’s TRULY the sign of the devil, a part of the evil Diabolical trinity, in the form of the devil, the antichrist and the false prophet, as opposed to the glorious holy trinity; someone once said, for everything holy there is something unholy. Also, for all we know, Osama may be the antichrist. BEWARE!!:eek:
 
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