THE ANTICHRIST
September 13 2015
The Republican Party in the USA, or perhaps more correctly, its mostly Christian component, believes that President Obama is the forerunner of the Antichrist, just as John the Baptizer was the forerunner of Jesus Christ.
Why do I so suddenly choose to write about this mysterious figure?
Two reasons.
(1). I just finished translating a book dealing with the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of John. In the last chapters the matter of the Antichrist is mentioned, an unavoidable subject because the Bible is quite clear on that score. He is portrayed there as the beast, an apt description. Bavinck writes that the end of the world- and we are fast approaching this point – will culminate in the appearing of the Antichrist who will rule the entire world. He sees this is the last frantic effort of the Satan to assert his power over the earth. John, on several occasions, both in the Gospel with his name and in his first letter calls the Satan “The Ruler of this world” (See John 12: 31; 14: 30; 16: 11) and in his letter in 1John 5: 19 John unambiguously states that “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” So forget that Christ is in control at this point. The Satan offers Jesus the entire world if he would only worship him. Jesus does not dispute that claim, but also refuses to bow before the Evil one. We usually in the church sing and preach that Christ is the King of this world, and that is ultimately true, but in the meantime not he but the Satan calls the shots here in our world.
That we now live in a world dominated by the evil one is becoming more and more evident by the day, certainly quite visible in the march of the millions, escaping from chaotic countries to more orderly ones. Part of this global confusion is due to climate change – itself a sign of the last days. Both Daniel and Jesus in Matthew 24 mention that the last days bring the “great desolation” of which Climate Change is a sure sign. Another part of the new condition in which we live is the post-imperial, post-colonial and, soon, I believe, post-authoritarian world, in which no one will be able to control the disorderly regions. The Middle East regions with their arbitrary boundaries – all relics of World War I- used to be ruled with an iron fist by characters such as Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, but the USA thought it best to intervene, confirming again that “the law of unintended consequences” is still in effect. That is one reason for the emerging of the Antichrist: utter chaos that needs a harsh tyrant.
(2) The second is the rise of the Anti-Party symptom. For this I have to thank David Brooks of the New York Times.
He calls the rise of the Anti-Party men, such as Trump, Carson and Sanders in the USA and Corbyn in the UK signs of disorientation.
Here’s what David Brooks wrote in the New York Times:
“Political parties are civic institutions. They are broad coalitions built for the purpose of creating a governing majority that can be used to win elections and pass agendas. This summer three American politicians have risen to the fore, and they all sit outside or at the margin of the party they are trying to lead.
Donald Trump didn’t even swear allegiance to his party’s eventual nominee until last week. He is a lone individual whose main cause and argument is Himself.
Ben Carson has no history in politics and a short history in the Republican Party. He is a politically unattached figure whose primary lifetime loyalty has been to the field of medicine.
Bernie Sanders is a socialist independent, who in the Senate caucuses with the Democrats.
And yet, these anti-party figures are surging in the party races for the presidential nominations.
This phenomenon is even more extreme in Britain. The British Labour Party suffered a crushing election defeat in May because people did not think its leader was strong enough, and because they thought its policy agenda was too far left.
And yet at the moment the next leader of the British Labour Party is Jeremy Corbyn. Mr. Corbyn has existed for decades on the leftward fringe of the Labour Party, tolerated as sort of a nice but dotty uncle.
He spent much of his career at the edge of the parliamentary party, writing columns for The Morning Star, a communist-founded newspaper. He’s a pacifist who called for British withdrawal from NATO. He’s spent his career consorting with the usual litany of anti-Western figures, including his friends in Hamas and Hezbollah. Until about three months ago he was considered the most outside of the outsiders — until a cult of personality developed around him, rocketing him to the top of the polls.
These four anti-party men have little experience in the profession of governing. They have no plausible path toward winning 50.1 percent of the vote in any national election. They have no prospect of forming a majority coalition that can enact their policies.
These sudden stars are not really about governing. They are tools for their supporters’ self-expression. They allow supporters to make a statement, demand respect or express anger or resentment. Sarah Palin was a pioneer in seeing politics not as a path to governance but as an expression of her followers’ id.
Why has this type risen so suddenly?
First, political parties, like institutions across society, are accorded less respect than in decades past. But we’re also seeing the political effects of a broader culture shift, the rise of what sociologists call expressive individualism.”
So far David Brooks
I connect these Anti-Party men to the Anti-Christ. If these people appeal to the masses, can an Antichrist not do the same? Let’s face it: the church is rapidly disappearing. There is little respect for the church even though a man such as Pope Francis is generally admired, basically because he challenges the capitalistic system, and in that “the God of this Age.” America is supposedly a Christian nature but its religion has ceased to be Christian. Christians there, by and large, are gun-toting, bent on revenge, climate change denying people, having no notion that Jesus once proclaimed that those he use the sword will die by the sword.
Let me point out one thing that struck me while translating this book on Revelation. In Revelation, that last Bible book, nature is given priority over the church. Here’s a quote: “The four living creatures, as we have seen, represent nature in its fullest sense of the word. Nature itself is the background against which history is depicted, the history of all her high and low points, her bloody wars and glorious discoveries. In the song John hears, it is the existence of the four living creatures, the beings of nature that glorify God as the God who was, who is and who is to come.”
Later on Bavinck points to the silence in heaven that lasted for half an hour. He explains that this is due to the church neglecting its duty to tell the world about the coming of the New Creation, and the Eternal Future that awaits those who “first seek the Kingdom”.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks that same language. In his introduction to his book on “Creation and Fall”, he writes words that should be engraved above every church door: “The Church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”
By failing to do so the church has become by and large irrelevant because it has paid at most only lip service to the importance of this message. No wonder in the book of Revelation nature is seen as more important than the church. Think about that.
The rise of the anti-party men is to me a sign that all institutions are in danger and that a fast-talking fellow – an Antichrist figure – who appeals to the basic instinct of the people, pursuing greed, easy living, something for nothing, all which can easily seduce the masses.
Increasingly the world becomes ungovernable. Increasingly institutions are failing us. Hillary Clinton, however much I admire her, is essentially a status-quo woman, who will follow the will of the money men. If fellows like Donald Trump can generate such a following, then it seems to me that the days of the Antichrist are not far off.
Already the scene is set for global disorder. What we see today in Europe with millions on the march to a better life, is only the beginning. The world is radically splitting in two camps, the haves and the have nots.
The bible is quite explicit that we are in for disastrous times. There is that number 666. Bavinck does not mention it, because when he wrote the book – he died in 1965 – there was no logical explanation possible for this. If today you follow the financial news then you will have noticed that many important people connected to both big government and big banks are calling for the abolishing of cash. In Greece there is a lower VAT – Value Added Tax equivalent to the HST in Canada- for using a credit card to pay items, for the simple reason that they leave a record, so there is no cheating on tax there. In the next few years when governments everywhere will need the maximum tax revenue, the call for abolishing cash will become more pronounced. It will leave each citizen who buys or sells at the mercy of the big machines, which all operate via numbers. Then nobody will be able to buy or sell unless they use the government or bank sanctioned card. It will use either the hand, via finger prints, or the head, an eye scan, exactly as Revelation portrays it. With security measures increasing all the time whether there is reason for it or not, we will quickly lose all freedom. I am not paranoid, but I see that what the Bible now already mentions may soon become reality.
Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw the coming of the Antichrist. He wrote a book by that name. He foresaw the coming madness, now evident in Climate Change. He wrote that the loss of God entails madness, which has implications for a society which has lost God. A society that prefers a Trump and a Corbyn in the UK has become mad. Once they prefer to be led by such figures, the matter of choosing for the Antichrist is the next step.
The entire world has already become godless. When in the next few years the world economy falls apart due to excess of monetary and environmental debt, and severe hardship will be the result, the disasters so plainly stated in the book of Revelation of John, will not be far away.
Basically we are blind to all this. We prefer a willful blindness, generated by false optimism and a wishy-washy religion that fails to consider the implications of what it means to be a Christian. I repeat, it is the failure of the church to “seek first the Kingdom’, to strive first and foremost for the welfare of creation, and so be prepared for the New Creation to come that is at the heart of the problem. That’s why Christ died on Calvary. John 3: 16, says it all. This text is almost always abused be the church to read that “God so loved humanity etc.” No, it says “God so loved the cosmos” for which he gave his life. The cosmos includes all that lives and moves and has a being. In other words: “The Four Living Creatures” that feature so prominently in the book of the Revelation of John have to become central in our lives, because without them “The Kingdom” is not possible.
Be aware: the Antichrist in whatever form, as a person or as a spirit, will come. Soon.