(Ver 1.1)  This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on Understanding the Coming Anti-Christ revealed to us in the Bible.  This will probably be a very different lesson than most things that you have heard about this coming individual, but I will give you Bible verses for everything that I say so that you can go and look them up and study them all for yourself.  I will warn you that I will say some things that you may have never heard before, but that does not make them wrong, it just makes them something new to learn.  Some of the things that I will write about today, I believe that God spoke into my spirit and revealed them to me.  I then spent the time looking into the Bible to see if they were actually true.  I have always found that whatever the Spirit of God says to me, the Bible will agree with, for these two are one and they always are in agreement.   So, if you have an open mind and a heart that wants to learn from the Bible, then I would say continue reading, otherwise you will not offend me if you go read somebody else’s blog today.  Today’s Bible lesson about the anti-Christ is not a theological doctrine or even a dominant Christian teaching that your salvation hinges upon.   Therefore, if you do not agree with everything that I say today, it’s literally OK, it really is not that important.  I do not believe that anything I say today will affect your salvation even in a minor way so it is not that critical to believe in.  However, this knowledge found in the Bible must have been important for someone to know otherwise God would not have recorded it for us to find.  Here is one of my foundational verses:

1Jn 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.

According to God we are living in age of the “last time”.  This is a time period designated by God of predetermined duration with a designed set ending.  In other words God keeps a calendar of set events and has appointed the appropriate time for some things to occur.  This would be like if I set up a birthday party for a friend and invited some people to show up at a specific place, day and time.  This is what God has done on the earth for the coming of Christ.  The only difference is that the Bible says only God know the exact day and hour of this event.  God has established a set party in heaven and invited everyone to come by sending out a Book of invitations without giving us the set time.  God simply says be ready for it, for it is coming.  So we must all be ready to go when this time arrives.  However, there will be many who reject this magnanimous offer and will be very sorry that they did.  In this verse in 1 John God describes a coming individual called the “antichrist”.  This word is comprised of two Greek words, one being “Christ” or the “anointed” and the other meaning the “opposite”.  In other words God is saying that this coming individual will be the opposite of the Real or True Christ who was Jesus.  This antichrist will be a person who is diametrically opposed to everythting the Real Christ represents!  So in reading and studying the Bible you need to discover all you can about the Real Christ and then you will be able to better understand the negative qualities of this coming false-Christ.  Every postive qualitie of Jesus Christ has a direct antithesis of revealed antichrist truth.  Hopefully if you are already a Christian you already know the real Christ intimately so I will not spend much time talking about the real man Christ Jesus in this lesson but I will give you some valuable clues to the coming fake.  It is also noteworthy that even in John’s day back when he wrote this letter to the church, he informed us that there were already some antichrists in the world.  However, these false Christ’s were certainly different than the coming antichrist being spoken of in this verse.  Being like the coming antichrist is by far different than being the named antichrist.  I hope you understand that.  We will see why I say that as we continue on through the Bible.

Almost every major religion in the world today is looking for a coming “messiah” or “savior”.  You can find this in Judaism, Islam and even Buddhism.  Therefore, when the antichrist comes there are already countless numbers of people in the world who will buy into the deception being presented with eager hearts!  Satan has set this up on purpose to deceive people when this False Christ suddenly appears on the earth.  What I will do is start by giving you some basics about what the Bible says about this coming individual:

1Jn 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.

We can clearly see that this antichrist will come to deny that God has sent His son into the world.  He will deny that God is a Father.  He will deny that God had a Son!  He will deny that there is a way of salvation.  This clearly means that he will deny the Bible, Jesus and every Christian claim for Him being the way to salvation.  Why is it so important for the antichrist not to admit what God has already done through His son Jesus?  For one thing it seals your fate in not being saved and then he thinks that it helps him not to be thrown into hell for what he has done.  Satan is in denial of the works of Christ in the earth because what He accomplished was so detrimental to his long term kingdom plans establishing himself to be god.

1Jn 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.

Again we see another verse that says the coming antichrist will deny Jesus came in the flesh.  Jesus Christ was God incarnate meaning the God who took upon Himself the human nature of created flesh so that He could die and pay the price for our sins with His shed blood.  Do you realize why Satan is denying God came in the flesh as a man?  He is in effect saying this was a stupid and foolish act of God and it was not even possible for God to do something so crazy.  He is placing doubts in the minds of people so that they will not believe in the truth.  By discrediting one thing found in the Bible Satan in effect is attempting to discredit every other truth in the Bible.  Pretty soon you will see some more reasons why I believe Satan will do this.  In this verse it is important to note that spirit beings are behind this teaching and that it does not come from men on the earth.  However, these spirit beings deceive men into teaching these things and these were the antichrists that were present back when the Bible was written.

2Jn 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.

We again have a third witness that says the antichrist will deny that Christ has come in the flesh.  Therefore, this must be a pretty important revelation to understand.  It is also very important to note that any antichrist is also called a deceiver.  Deception is a complex lesson that I have written on before.  Not all deception is a sin, but most of it is if it is intended for evil to cause harm or hurt to someone else.  It is fairly clear that this is Satan’s motivation, he wants to cause as much havoc and destruction as possible.  It appears to me that Satan has decided that if he is going down, he is going to take as many as he can with him.  Satan does this by using deception and lies that are intentionally designed to trick and cause you to fall.

The coming antichrist:

1. Is a Liar with Evil Intent and Motives
2. Will Deny Christ Has Come in the Flesh
3. Will Deceive many to believe his Lies
4. Is always a spirit being behind the message

Wow, so far no great controversial information, which is just amazing for me isn’t it?  I guess it is about to change and here are the new things that I warned you about that we need to learn.  I can remember a while back I was thinking on the Word of God and the Spirit of God spoke to me and told me that Satan would come to the earth in the same way that God came to the earth.  So I thought about this and started to ask some more questions and began to search my Bible for the answers.  You see what is Satan’s greatest weakness in the earth today?  If you did not realize it, Satan is a spirit being and it is illegal for a spirit being to be here in a natural world to tempt you.  The Bible says there has no temptation overtaken you except which is common (natural) to man (1 Cor 10:13).  What this verse means is it is illegal for Satan to tempt or test you supernaturally.  Therefore, Satan is forced to uses people in the world to overcome this limitation.  Have you ever thought of this before, why doesn’t Satan just kill you if he wants you dead so bad?  Did you know he can’t kill you, unless he talks you into killing yourself?  Satan can enter into the body of a man on the earth and cause them to say and do great evil to others, but Satan’s hands are tied because he cannot do it himself.  We can clearly see this in anyone who has committed mass murder of the human race, like an Adolf Hitler.  You can clearly see that a man has potential to do great harm to many others.  You can also see this in the Gospels when Satan entered into Judas and caused him to betray Christ to the leaders of the Jews (Luke 22:3).  So from Adam until now Satan has always entered into people and used these people to hurt and deceive other people.  So how does Satan overcome this severe limitation?  How did God overcome this limitation?  God became flesh and walked among us (John 1:14).  Is it possible for Satan to do the same?  Before you answer that question you better read the rest of this lesson and see what else I teach you today.

Let’s examine a familiar parable that Jesus taught us.  I have talked about this before, but God woke me up last night and related this lesson to the antichrist.  I’m talking about the parable of the wheat and the tares, do you remember this parable and it’s interpretations from studying about seeds?  God had a garden and planted good seeds of wheat.  While God was away from the garden, Jesus said an enemy came and sowed tares in the same field.  God said let them grow together until harvest time and I will send the angels to reap my crop of wheat and then to burn the tares of the enemy.  In this parable the wheat represents righteous saved people, the tares represents wicked lost people.  This is not a highly complex parable to understand; but let’s think about something new today from what we have been discussing.  Using this parable as a reference, God Himself became a grain of wheat when He took on the flesh of a man. This is the amazing fact that the coming antichrist will vehemently deny.  God becoming a man, why is it so important for Satan to deny this ever happened?  You really need to see how important that question is. Here again is the very difficult question that I o presented you with a few sentences ago and that is “If it is possible for God to be born into the world as a natural symbolic grain of wheat, can Satan do the same as a symbolic tare?”  Wow, you should really think about that before you answer.  I had one reader say that Satan has no creative power or any supernatural ability and they obviously ignored a lot of what the Bible says about Satan in order to make that statement.  How did God get Mary pregnant?  The Bible says God spoke words to her and said you will conceive after the Spirit comes upon you.  Is Satan a spirit?  Does Satan also speak words?  Wow, your religious minds are probably spinning right about now and that is probably not very good.  Nevertheless I am convinced from the Bible and what the Spirit of God said to me that it teaches us that the coming antichrist will be Satan incarnate the opposite or antithesis of God incarnate.  Satan the antichrist will be the personification of hate and evil while God in Jesus was the personification of love and good.  What I will do is show you some Bible verses now that while they do not spell it out completely there is enough information to derive some logical conclusions to support what God told me.  Here is the first verse that I want to examine carefully:

2Th 2:3  Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

There are many ignorant people in the world that can’t read or can’t see what this verse says, I guess?  If you look at the context God is clearly talking about the coming of Jesus and the gathering together of the church in verse 1.  Then in verse 2 you can see God’s comforting words to us (the church) not to be troubled or worried about the coming “Day of Christ” that it is soon approaching or eminently at hand.  Of course when this was written it was much further away than it is today.  Nevertheless, in verse 3 God says that this “Day of Christ” will not come except 2 things happen first.  The first thing is said to be a “falling away” and I will not comment on that event in this blog.  The next thing that will occur is the revealing of the “man of sin”.  To me it is very clear that this is the coming antichrist.  However, the Greek word translated as “man” in this verse means “man faced” or a literal “human being”.  This is the definition for me and this is also you today in the world.  However, this verse says that this is someone who will be revealed.  The word “revealed” here means “to take off the covers”.  In other words this word means to make seen something that was hidden.  What was hidden that will be seen in the coming time of tribulation?  This is so critical that you think about this carefully before you answer that question.  God is clearly informing us that this time will be uniquely different than the times before.  Let me help you by asking you another question, has anyone ever seen Satan in the physical realm?  Could this be what is revealed that was previously hidden?  I believe that it could very well be that.

To reveal something clearly means to uncover that which was kept secret and hidden so that it can now be literally and plainly seen.  That is what we are talking about here, right?  Doesn’t this describe what God did when He came into the earth in the form of the man Jesus who was born of the natural woman named Mary?  Jesus, who was the eternal hidden God, became the visible incarnate God so that we could witness Him in person and so that He could give His life for us.  God took off the hidden spiritual covers from Himself and revealed to us the Savior Messiah in the flesh.  This is why I believe that these verses are saying that Satan who was the hidden spiritual enemy of God will also be uncovered so that people on the earth can see him visibly for the first time.  However, this man will not be here to save you; this man will be here to kill you.  This verse says very clearly that the “man of sin” will be revealed to us.  What is sin and where did it come from?  Did God create sin?  That is of course a deep theological question that I cannot get into today.  But, according to the Bible, sin originated from Satan if you do not know that you should go and read it in your Bible (Ezekiel 28:15).  So according to the Bible, Satan was the originator of the first sin in the Bible and is the one that I believe will be called the “man of sin” in the near future.  This is a human title for clearly a spiritual being, which I will refer to as Satan incarnate.  The next set of key words to examine in this verse is the man is called “the son of perdition”.  The word “son” is simple enough because it simply means one (a child) born from a father and a mother’s conception.  Jesus clearly called Himself both the Son of God and the Son of Man.  So Jesus clearly exemplified the demonstrated and established definition of the union of a spirit being and a natural being.  Therefore, God establishes this fact as being a viable reality and not a fantasy proposition of your imagination.  However, this verse is not speaking of the Son of God, here; the term “perdition” means “destruction”.  Who is responsible for destruction in the world?  If you associate John 10:10 with this verse and see what Jesus said about Satan you can see who this description fits.  In John 10:10 Jesus said “The thief (Satan) comes not but to kill, steal and to destroy”.  So Satan is responsible for the destruction on the earth.  So we now can see that the revealed man of sin can be related to being the son of the spiritual being Satan, the destroyer.   The Bible is complicate like that; you have to dig to find the hidden truths that are in it.  Sometimes it is obvious and other times like today it is more difficult to see, especially at first.

From this one verse we can conclude several new things about the antichrist and these are:

1. The antichrist is a physical man
2. The antichrist is a natural son from a woman
3. The antichrist comes from Satan
4. The antichrist is Satan incarnate
5. Every man always has a spirit within him and he will be Satan

Continuing to read in this chapter of the 2 Thessalonians we learn some more information and some further confirmation of what I have just said:

2Th 2:4  Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

Here God starts to tell us what this antichrist will begin to do in the earth.  He is said to be directly opposed to the real God, the Bible, the church and everything that they represent.  He will exalt himself as being greater than all of these.  You see if you use your brain and think you will know that this is only possible if Satan is here in the flesh.  Otherwise he cannot fulfill this specific prophecy.  The next statement says ‘he as God sits in the temple of God”.  I have heard many preachers try to teach that Israel will rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and reestablish the sacrifice before Christ’s return.  I could not disagree with them more than to say; can’t you see what the Bible says?  Where is the temple of God today?  Because many men think naturally they focus on the wrong things and they look at what God did in the past is what they expect or want God to do over in the future.  However, God is not this way and rarely repeats Himself.  What we can see from the O.T. is the fact that what God did in the natural realm was a pattern for what He was going to do in the spirit realm.  The Bible says very clearly that God does dwell in the buildings made by the hands of men (Acts 17:24).  So even if Israel did build a new temple in the city of Jerusalem, God would not be there to dwell in it.  Do you get it?  So the question needs to be changed from where is temple of God to who is the temple of God.  The Bible says “Now we are the temple of God” (1 Cor 3:16).  Uh oh?  This definition changes everything, doesn’t it?  The human body is now the spiritual temple of God today.  That is ME!  That is YOU!  If you are a Christian then you are now the temple of God. This is the temple made without the hands of men.  So this verse in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 fits with the revelation that Satan is an incarnate man of sin.  If the antichrist is Satan incarnate, then this man will have a body which was originally designed by God to be the temple of God, but this man will have the spirit of Satan in him and will proclaim himself to be God in this human temple.  Wow, I hope that you understand what I just said.  What we see is Satan’s attempts to duplicate what God has done so that he can be like the Most High God.  This verse makes no sense if this is not speaking of an incarnate Satan.  Satan cannot manifest himself spiritually in the earth and proclaim himself to be God unless he becomes a man like God became a man.  Only as a physical man can Satan look like one of us and set himself up to deceive so many people in the world.  When people see the antichrist on TV walking, speaking and acting like the one with all of the answers to the world’s problems, many will fall for his deception because the world will be in chaos and they will all be looking for the quick and easy answers to their problems.

2Th 2:6  And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.

God said that this man will be revealed at the right time.  I believe the right time is very close at hand, since God told me to write this Bible lesson to tell the world he is coming soon.  To be revealed or uncovered requires that he be physically born and grow to be a man just like Jesus did for 30 years before He did anything spectacular.  So no doubt the antichrist is already in the earth somewhere right now waiting for the opportunity to seize control.  That of course was my opinion, but I believe it is certainly self-evident that the time is very short.

2Th 2:9  Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

This whole chapter does not say anything good for the people who are left in the world during this time of deception of this antichrist.  God gives a strong warning in these verses for people to learn now before it is too late.  As you can see in this verse, it is not a great translation; the translators added two words at the beginning and these really only cause confusion.  If you take the words out, it says “who comes after the work of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders”.  In other words, this is further confirmation that this man is Satan incarnate.  This man will have smooth words that will deceive the minds of the simple.  This man will have the ability to do signs and lying wonders.  Kind of sounds like Jesus doesn’t it, except these will be the opposite of what Jesus did.  When Jesus walked the face of the earth, He did many positive signs and wonders by healing the sick and raising the dead (Acts 10:38).  This is not what Satan will be doing.  Satan’s signs and wonders are intentionally designed to deceive people and cause them to buy into his ways of deception.  He will come doing many miraculous, spectacular and amazing feats that only a powerful spiritual being can accomplish.  It is also interesting to note that Jesus only did miracles after He was 30 years old.  I believe that this is a pattern of what Satan will mimic also.  Satan has to appear as a man with some level of authority and experience.  No one will follow after a teenager to be easily deceived.  If Jesus would have started ministering at the age of 12, very few would have followed him, if any.  But as man of 30, He got the attention of enough to start a church that would grow.

Christ vs. antichrist, this was the lesson for today.  God vs. Satan, one good and one is evil. One became a grain of wheat and the other a tare. While Satan has been effective at deceiving people in the world using humans, when Satan shows up in the flesh, he will be no match for the simple minded people left on the earth.  They will buy into the lies in droves not knowing what they are doing nor knowing who they are doing it with.  You should go back and read the entire chapter of 2 Thessalonians and see if you can see what God is saying about this coming “man of sin” also called the “son of destruction”.  Maybe you can help someone with this information and save them from this future deception.  I believe it is worth a try.  So I hope you enjoyed this Bible study on the antichrist and have learned something.  Remember that the antichrist is a man like you and me who will wield great power to deceive many.  He will be opposed to everything that Christ stood for.  He will deny that Christ ever came in the flesh so that he can deny that he is Satan in the flesh.  After all if he is just a miracle working man, it will be much easier to deceive the people.  Perhaps in my next lesson on this subject I will give you some more perspectives on this individual from other parts of the Bible.  God Bless you in your attempts to learn the truth!

If you would like to continue reading in this series please go to “Part 2” now.