Tag: antiChrist

Following Jesus?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I recently heard someone I have known for a long time declare that ‘so and so loved Jesus’ in spite of the reality that the person they referred to often spoke hate of others. I am not able to make a judgement on this person’s life or another’s as the ‘judgement seat of Christ’ will not be vacated on that day for me to sit there. Such statements as ‘she / he loved Jesus’ is deeply complex as we can be in relationship with a Jesus of our own making – a Jesus in our image.

In the OT within the ten words we are warned against making an image of God and for sure we can continue to make many diverse images of God. I recently read of a book that explained the political vote for someone by Christians as being that they were the most God-like character – and by saying that they did not mean ‘the most loving’ nor ‘the most holy’ but the candidate was the best equipped to crush his opponents. Just like God????

The claim of the NT that is consistently expressed is that Jesus reveals who God is (the Jesus’ path is not a path to lead us to ‘god’, but to lead us to know the true God and who s/he is). ‘To the Father’ was the promise of those who travelled the Jesus’ path. Jesus is the express image of God. Most theologies start with ‘the doctrine of God’ and this assumes we know who this God is, from there Christology, Pneumatology etc is defined. I think Jesus turned that upside down – start with Jesus and you can get to God from him. The witness of the Gospels is to testify of Jesus. This is why they are so vital.

Paul captures this ongoing journey to know Jesus with the words uttered close to the end of his life ‘that I might know him’. No tick box, but an ongoing adventure… and ultimately the future experience for us is that ‘we will see him as he is’.

I love the Jesus I have read about; I love the Jesus that I have created from what I have read. Is my Jesus close to the one that is witnessed to by the Gospels? I love the Jesus I have encountered, but even there I am not ‘safe’. Jesus meets me where I am at. My mistake can be that therefore I assume that every encounter meets full approval. Israel asks for a king – Samuel has the inside take on this with the knowledge that they were not rejecting him but they were rejecting God. The people though saw God anoint the king – I wonder if they assumed the move to appoint a king was a good one, one approved of by God. Likewise with the building of the Temple.

I am not appointed to be judge and jury and for sure any inclusion is based on mercy and grace. Although I see no reason to believe in a future ‘antiChrist’ as John says there are many who embody that spirit (‘anti’ can mean ‘against / in opposition to’ or ‘alternative to / replacing’); I can certainly act in an antiChrist way, and perhaps others who totally claim to love Christ and to be ‘saved’ can do so too.

Even if it is deemed that I love Jesus there is no guarantee that all my actions and words are therefore covered by that. We do need to call out ‘hate speech’ and the like when it manifests among us.

From the first commandment to have no other God we come to the command not to make an image of God, and from there to not to bear (carry / display) the name of God in vain. Loving God, not creating an image of God and not reflecting a false image of God. All pretty central and why we need Jesus as the lens for Scripture, for humanity and for God. Otherwise we will not see clearly – even when we quote Scripture to defend ourselves.

The flotilla on the way to Gaza… if I put the Jesus lens there do I see God? I think I do. The true human went to Jerusalem to die for humanity, at some level the flotilla is on the same path. A mixed bunch of people on board for sure. Why this final paragraph on the flotilla? To see God we have to see Jesus, and to see Jesus we sometimes have to look to events in our world, some of which disturbs the status quo of what we consider we know from our Christian world. A living parable in our day.

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Not a good guy

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Leadership is male when it comes to the predictions of the big bad antiChrist…

Some of you will join me tonight on a Zoom as we push into what (I think) is the final area of foundations – getting the direction right and losing the Hellenistic obsession with going somewhere when I die. Although I lean heavily toward I do go somewhere, the hope of Scripture is of the completion of this world – creation reaching an eschaton.

I am not sure what I will pick up next – maybe I will switch from eschatology to something else or maybe I will have a go at what do we understand about the big bad antiChrist. Anyway a few thoughts here to push in that direction.

Surprise, surprise there is so little in the Bible about antiChrist – four verses in total and all in two books that we assume are from the same pen (1 John 2:18, 22, 4:3, and 2 John 7). Verses can be added (forced to fit) that draw in other aspects – one of the beasts of Revelation for example (beasts in biblical literature and particularly in apocalyptic literature speak of powers such as nations that are untameable). I think we have to look at Revelation separately and let it be the awesome exposure of Imperial power – Rome in that context… and for us?

There is the ‘man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2, but there we have a Pauline warning about what was to come… and for me it has already come – in the Jewish Wars of 66-70. Future for the original readers, past for us.

The Johannine Scriptures then are the core.

Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us, for if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us (1 John 2:18-19).

Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also (1 John 2:22-23). 

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world (1 John 4:2,3).

Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist! (2 John 7).

John seems to be writing in the main about people who have been associated / around these Christian communities, those who went out from them. [A little aside… the Reformers put forward that the pope was the antiChrist… Catholics have just a little issue with that – there view is that the Reformers / Protestants went out from them, thus the likes of you and me are more likely to be suspects!!!!] Those John wrote to had heard that antiChrist was to come, and it could well be that he held that belief also, though it is possible he is correcting what they believed with ‘You have heard… but…’ And in his second letter we read that John identifies any person who denies the humanity of Jesus as the deceiver and the antiChrist.

Not so clear… so of course once I come to write on it I will make all things so clear (or not) but here for now is my conclusions.

John, in line with the rest of Scripture, pushes us away from speculation and warns us that we need to place Jesus central (anti- can carry the meaning of ‘against / opposed to’ or ‘replacing’). I do not believe the Bible predicts a final one-world ruler… could there be one? The way we are going, quite likely, but not inevitable. Eschatology is not about a series of events, this + that, but about the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sadly some eschatology when pushed too far pushes Jesus off the map… that is pretty much anti-Christ!

I just do not see our Scriptures as being history set out in advance so that we know future events. The centre of all of Scripture is Jesus… let’s not replace Jesus with knowledge nor with speculation,

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We need… a one world government?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Jesus is coming back, will come to Jerusalem and install a one-world government. The hope of all those who hope they have backed the ‘winner’.

The antiChrist will soon appear and we will be in trouble (unless of course some theory drummed up around 1830 is correct that we are all whoosed out of here just in time), we will not be allowed to buy and sell, as a one-world government is installed. The nightmare ahead of us all.

Both the above of course are dependent on a certain way of reading the Scriptures and both are pretty deterministic. The first includes a very big part of ‘who God really is’ and therefore he rules in this way, the real ‘top down model’; the latter… well ‘drummed up’ and with a movement within it that flies in the face of the direction of movements in Scripture, which are consistently heaven to earth. So (‘perspectives’ remember) let’s push for an alternative one-world government scenario.

[Preamble: I read the Bible as wonderfully incomplete. The future is open; Revelation was for then and therefore is highly relevant for now – but is not predicting now, or the immediate future; the Fall of Jerusalem is such a pivotal point in history, and the point of Matt. 24 and parallels, blah blah blah…]

Not allowed to buy and to sell? Buying and selling describes transactional dealings, and of course is representative of how economies tick. But what if there was an alternative economy? One based on ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’, one that valued where I gave myself (my time) rather than rewarded me for perpetuating inequalities. Idealistic? Probably so, but then the nature of apocalyptic writings was to personify, concretify realities in extreme form (kind of the opposite of ‘idealify’). Are we likely to move toward a chip that allows a buying of goods in our local supermarket? Probably. Will that be a sign of the beast? Yes… in the same way that most economies have been marked by the beast for centuries. I would not worry too much about such a chip, as it is simply moving it from a card that is carried that is an extension of our bodies and placing it in our bodies. That is not a big jump, and in reality I think we need a much bigger jump in reverse direction any way! We are already complicit, and if that is a knowing compromise that we hold lightly and act differently to we really don’t have too much of an issue.

Global reparations. Boris Johnson (remember him?) recently said that no country can afford to make reparations for the issues of slavery and of climate destruction that have been made, hence Britain should not even be asked to go down that route. Maybe we could say, surely we are not our brother’s keeper. Responsible for others, other ethnicities? Surely not!

I actually am a bit of a globalist. We need some global responses to the problems we have created together (the word created there is something of an oxymoron as God said of creation ‘it is good’, maybe it should read ‘the problems we have destroyed together’… but that too does not read right!)

We actually need some form of one-world government. Not a rule from Jerusalem over the nations; certainly not a rule that oppresses – a Babylon / tower of babel. And probably / certainly not something with a headquarters somewhere. Maybe this is what Paul had in mind about phase 2 beyond ‘ekklesia in Jesus Christ in every context’. What if through stance (we see a new creation) a consistent revolution begins that pushes back against every self-centred / ethnic-centred / geo-political-centred stance, such as ‘Make xxx great again’, restore our sovereign borders and keep the others out (but let us live where we want cos we are not immigrants, but ‘ex-pats’). A revolution that changes the atmosphere, and brings on board some ready to risk it Asiarchs who see beyond their privileges to also seeing ‘new creation’.

Maybe that could be ekklesia 2.0? All kinds of people together, new economies, new ecologies, new…

Yes something not too pure, but within it and flowing into it those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

Not a ‘we’ll tell you what to do’ one-world government of antiChrist, nor that of the dream of Christians who backed the winner! Yeast in the bread. Could this be why Jesus prayed ‘don’t take them out of here’?

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No, not future, and yet of course maybe

There could be one, but!

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I do not believe the Bible prophesies that there will be a future antiChrist. Interestingly, for example, Hal Lindsey has a chapter on the antiChrist in his book ‘Late Great Planet Earth’, but nowhere does he quote the verses (all in 1 John) that actually use the term ‘antiChrist’ in that chapter! The teaching of a future antiChrist has to put together ‘man of lalwlessness’ and ‘false prophet’ alongside each other and then suggest somehow that is what John was referring to.

In John the use of the term is of a spirit that ‘denies the Father and the Son’. If there was some early expectation of ‘an antiChrist’ we also have the very real issue that anything future in the NT we would have to show is still future for us – cf. the man of lawlessness was future for Paul’s readers in Thessalonians, one of his early letters, but is fulfilled in the entry to the Temple in Jerusalem in AD70… the sacrilege that brings desolation (from Daniel referring to Antiochus Epiphanes, and to AD70 that Luke helps decipher the biblical language with ‘armies surrounding Jerusalem).

Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also (1 John 2:18-23).
And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world (1 John 4:3).

Could there be a future ‘one-world-ruler’? Yes, there could. Could we quote many Scriptures to show what kind of person that was, once he (and more likely to be a ‘he’ than a ‘she’) was visible? Yes indeed… in the same way that Judas Iscariot was a example of a friend who betrayed and the OT Scripture was quoted to show what was going, an OT Scripture that did not prophesy Judas’ existence.

A one-world-government. OH yes. That is / and was always the conflict we are caught up in. The do-not-eat of that tree set up the conflict; it set powers in place that have always been pushing for a full manifestation of such a scenario. The tower of Babel is another wonderful story that illustrates so much that gives us hope – God had to come down to see this big tower that was reaching into heaven (the irony is not to be missed) and the unimpressive project remained unfinished. Add to that the day of Pentecost and the reversal of the God-set boundary and we should really not have too much to be worried about. Pentecost was to release the imagination of a new world, one shaped from heaven and manifesting on the earth… seems we have been keen to reverse that with the fear of a big ever-getting-badder world with our only hope to escape. (Now what was that prayer of Jesus? The prayer connected to glory? I think it might be something like ‘I pray you do not take them out of the world’?)

Loads to imagine and yet! We as body of Christ have not really got hold of living counter-culture to the world. Where there is active persecution (thankfully) the church has sought to be true in their allegiance and suffered enormously. None of that goes unnoticed and is certainly ‘adding to the afflictions of Christ’; but in the more comfortable West we have so often retreated to ‘we’ve lost our privileges (Christendom) and want them back so we can rule (have our way)’. That does not add to the afflictions of Christ, but rather inflicts suffering on those we are here to bless… Christ-like or antiChrist-like? To deny the Father and the Son probably has some element of not acknowledging their true core identity: not surprising as the ‘fall’ was a desire to be like the god they imagined, not living out their true humanity, that is truly God-like.

We really should have a critical eye open to the mark of the beast, not as some implant or tattoo but as an ever-present reality. I guess if we could have transported someone from the first Century to our day and explained to them how our economic system works they would freak out with thoughts of 666 flashing in neon lights through their heads. Part of the freak might be simply the inability to come to terms with the huge change in the past 2 millennia, but part of the freak I suspect might be justifiable biblically. Just as Babylon is always present, and is always incomplete, we should not totally freak out ourselves, but we do need our eyes open. Following Jesus does not start with a set of private beliefs with no impact on our lives; indeed for a certain rich young ruler it was to begin with a change to his bank account!

Conscience, yours is not mine; convictions, yours are not mine; honest assessment, honest over where I am compromising, and then honestly asking if it is in order to move today closer to tomorrow (redemptive) or is my compromise submitting tomorrow to that one-world-government reality.

I am so glad that (as I see it) AD70 sets such a wonderful ceiling to the vast majority of the NT, saving me from speculation, fearfully trying to avoid the world to stay clean, but anchoring me in the questions of ‘OK Martin so how are you going to live then’ – much more relevant that a future antiChrist, are the questions of whether I am more Christ-like or antiChrist-like. I am not called to avoid antiChrst as a person; I think I am instructed to avoid imbibing of antiChrist at all levels.

Maybe I should add I do see one book that goes beyond the AD70 scene; the ‘cartoon’ book of Revelation, probably the best critique of power that has ever been, after all it is an unveiling, taking away the facade, the mask. Written to minority groups within the huge matrix system of the day, the only time a Babylon has been manifest to that level, truly one that was the machine that enabled that era to be labelled as ‘the fullness of times’ giving all the oikoumene (inhabited, civilised world) into the hands of the ‘devil’. Thank God that in Jesus the offer of taking that over was refused. His kingdom is not of this world(-system / -order). Never was, never is, and never will be – the will be bit is a challenge to a lot of eschatology. Years ago I read the Reconstructionist writings. Turn the other cheek was explained as simply a response that was necessary now, but then… there will be another response. That teaching (by non-charismatics) influenced so much of charismatic theology in the decades post-80s. Jesus, ‘the Coming King’, but not king as you know it.

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