23 “Then if anyone says to you, `Look, here is the Christ!’ or `There!’ do not believe it.
24 “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
25 “See, I have told you beforehand.
26 “Therefore if they say to you, `Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or `Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it.
27 “For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be (Matt. 24:23-27 NKJ) See also Mark 13:22; Matt. 24:4-5-3; Mark 13:5-6; Luke 21:8
Christians disagree whether the False Christ and Antichrist[1] can be the same person. The final false Christ comes “in My name, saying, `I am He” (Mk. 13:6) but the Antichrist denies Christ’s Name denying both Father and Son (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7).
However, if there are two phases of the Antichrist, first coming as the “Man of Sin” False Christ who after 3 ½ years morphs into the Antichrist “Son of Destruction” denying both Father and Son, there is no conflict.
Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,
4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. (2 Thess. 2:3-4 NKJ)
Paul’s words imply these two phases. The “falling away of the Church” would be irrelevant to a destroyer of Christianity, but necessary to a false Christ wanting the Church to believe “I am he”. A progression is implied, the apostate Church accepts the Lawless One as Christ who leads it into further apostasy, and then he and his followers cast off all pretense of Christianity denying both Father and Son. That happens in the “last hour” John saw so well:
18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
…
22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.
23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. (1 Jn. 2:18-24 NKJ)
This clarifies how many on Judgment Day plead they once intimately knew Christ having done wonders in His name, but He denies their claim testifying His Spirit NEVER knew them, fully documented by their practicing “lawlessness” (Mt. 7:15-20):
21 “Not everyone who says to Me,` Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
22 “Many will say to Me in that day, `Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
23 “And then I will declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt. 7:21-23 NKJ)
This fits Daniel’s prediction the “prince who is to come” (Dan. 9:26) is friendly to religion, but then is its enemy 3 ½ years later:
Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.” (Dan. 9:27 NKJ)
The symbolism of Revelation 13:1-5 also implies the Beast has two stages. At first he speaks with a “lion’s mouth” in parody to Christ, but then after 3 ½ years the Beast is given a new mouth, one that speaks blasphemies against God:
1 Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name.
2 Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.
4 So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”
5 And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months.
6 Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven.
7 It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. (Rev. 13:1-7 NKJ)
Moreover, this is consistent with Antiochus IV Epiphanes[2] being a type of Antichrist. During the approximate seven years he dealt with Israel, he first sought to corrupt it with lawlessness peaceably Hellenizing Judaism and Jews (Dan. 11:28). About three years later he returns to Jerusalem with an army slaughtering Jews and seeking to destroy Judaism entirely (Dan. 11:30-31).
Now the contrast Paul made is clear: Antichrists deceived by the energia of Satan “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Th. 2:7) who loved not God’s truth the Bible, versus Christians inspired by the “mystery of Godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16) sanctified by the Holy Spirit to believe God’s truth and remain faithful to apostolic tradition:
9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working (1753 ἐνέργεια energeia) of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders,
10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,
12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.13 But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,
14 to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. (2 Thess. 2:9-15 NKJ)
The lying wonders false Christ and his followers do corrupt the church to accept lawlessness, paralleling Antiochus IV Hellenizing Judea to accept homosexuality, transgenderism and prostitution for the first half of the end time week:
22 “Many will say to Me in that day,`Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
23 “And then I will declare to them,`I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt. 7:22-23 NKJ)
After 3 ½ years False Christ discards Christianity all together, seating himself in the Church the Temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21) as God, denying the Father and the Son. His former charismaniac followers remain loyal accepting the mark of the beast, leaving the church for good:
18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. (1 Jn. 2:18-19 NKJ)
These Antichrists rise from the TARES sown among the WHEAT, they always were children of the devil disguised as children of God:
24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field;
25 “but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.
26 “But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.
27 “So the servants of the owner came and said to him, `Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’
28 “He said to them, `An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, `Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
29 “But he said, `No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.
30 `Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘”
…
34 All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them,
35 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: “I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.
36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”
37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.
38 “The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.
39 “The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.
40 “Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.
41 “The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness,
42 “and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! (Matt. 13:24-30, 34-43 NKJ)
Always False prophesying, filled with greed and lust they are not afraid to speak evil of Satan and demons, so they disrespect God’s authority who gave them permission to separate wheat from the chaff (2 Pet. 2:10-12):
4 For certain men [3] have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.
9 Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves.
11 Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
12 These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots;
13 raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,
15 “to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
16 These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. (Jude 1:4-16 NKJ)
9 then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,
10 and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries,
11 whereas angels, who are greater in power and might, do not bring a reviling accusation against them before the Lord.
12 But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption,
13 and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you,
14 having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children.
15 They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
16 but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet.
17 These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
18 For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error.
19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.
20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.
21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.
22 But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” (2 Pet. 2:9-22 NKJ)
Energized by Satan like the magicians Jannes and Jambres, they deny the power of God to live righteously:
1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:
2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,
4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts,
7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith;
9 but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was. (2 Tim. 3:1-9 NKJ)
ENDNOTE
[1]
ANTICHRIST
antichristos (ἀντίχριστος, 500) can mean either “against Christ” or “instead of Christ,” or perhaps, combining the two, “one who, assuming the guise of Christ, opposes Christ”-Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Vol. 2, p. 30). T. Nelson.
In the book of Daniel the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BC) appears as a forerunner to the End Time Antichrist. That divine linkage implies Antiochus casts light on the rise of Antichrist. The Antichrist is from ancient Nineveh (Nah. 1:11) the ruins of which are in the outskirts of modern Mosul, Northern Iraq. Ancient Antioch, once the capital of the Seleucid Kingdom in modern Turkey, is the likely place for the rise of the miracle working Jewish Christian (2 Th. 2:2 cp. Jn. 17:12 “son of perdition”; Dan. 11:37-38 cf. “God of his fathers” Jewish idiom). John’s Asymmetric Janus Parallelism (Rev. 13:18), pivoting on the number 666 “Adonikam” is “of 666” (Ezra 2:13); is from a “count 667-1” Neh. 7:18) where father and son are both named Adonikam the name of the Beast.
Confirming Adonikam will be an Assyrian (Mic. 5:5-6; Isa. 14:25-27) rising from obscurity to become “Chancellor” of Grecian Empire (Rev. 13:2 from the remnants of East and West Roman Empire, both legs have five toes Dan. 2:41-42; 7:7; 8:9; cf. Ten Horns). He is the King of the North in Daniel 11:40. The Jewish historian Josephus reports an immense multitude of Israelites such as the Tribe of Dan still lived in the country of Babylon (Ant. 11:133) in his day. That is consistent with Antichrist being of the “tribe of Dan” (Gen. 49:17).
There are two phases to his revelation. The miracle working Adonikam rises in the apostate Church to become the “man of sin” false Christ Paul prophesied would come. His signs and wonders are “lying” as they sanction falsehood contrary to God’s Word the Bible (2 Th. 2:3, 9-11). False prophets in and outside of the church hail his arrival as “The Christ” (Mk. 13:6; Lk. 21:8; Mt. 24:5). At mid-week the ‘man who condones sin’ declares he actually is a hybrid human-Elohim, the “seed of Satan” (Gen. 3:15) “Son of Destruction” (2 Th. 2:3 cf. Rev. 9:11) claiming to be the next stage of evolution above all called Elohim. Thus he seeks to change times and law (Dan. 7:25 “divine right”) upon which human society is built. He opposes all Elohim exalting himself above them all, claiming to be alone God. He backs up his claims by working great signs and wonders Satan enabled him to do (2 Th. 2:4, 9-10; Rev. 13:4); not by his own power (Dan. 8:24; 11:38-39).
The two phases of Antichrist are implied by the changes in the Beast’s mouth. As False Christ he has a “mouth like a lion”, as “Son of Destruction” he is “given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies” (Revelation 13:2, 5-6 cf. Dan. 7:8, 11, 20, 25; 8:11-12; 11:36). The first half of the end time seven-year week he is friendly to the world’s religions, but at mid-week abrogates his agreement and ends all sacrifice and offering (other than to himself) world-wide (Dan. 9:27). That is when his supporters destroy the religious harlot Babylon the Great, her services no longer required (Rev. 17:16). When the political power she afforded the church is gone (Dan. 12:7), the great tribulation of the true Church begins (Dan. 7:21, 25; Rev. 13:7; 14:8-12).
When Michael casts Satan and his angels out of heaven, signifying intensity and certainty it is thrice repeated they were cast to the earth (Rev. 12:7-12). This cannot be symbolic language. The rise of UFO cults claiming contact with “Alien Designers” of life on earth who twist scripture, coupled with UFO spectacle in the skies that even the US Government does not deny, reveals immense Satanic effort to condition humanity accept the coming “aliens.” It is most unlikely Satan would expend all that energy and time on UFO deception if they played no role when he “deceives the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). Satan has great wrath against God and knows he has little time left (Rev. 12:12) to hurt God the only way he can, destroy as many humans as possible so God mourn their absence for all eternity.
The four demon riders of the apocalypse reveal Satan’s strategy. First False Christ preaching cooperation with the “aliens” conquers the earth. Mass media and UFO spectacle has conditioned mankind to accept the “aliens” as friendly (Rev. 16:13-14), as saviors of the human race. When they insist a New World Order be created through which they aid mankind the world will willingly oblige, the Grecian Roman Empire will rise from the sea of spiritism (Rev. 13:1-2). But rather than peace and security destruction comes upon the earth as Satan sends out three more riders who overwhelm the earth’s ability to cope with global calamities of civil unrest, wars, famines and pestilence. Fearing an extinction level event, the world’s governments will submit to the New World Order despite their concerns. The Anglo-American beast headed by the False Prophet will deceive the world into constructing the AI Network to manage the earth’s scarce resources, making everyone slaves to the Beast (Rev. 13:11-17). In real time, with quantum computing resources filtering unimportant events, the Beast will “see” and “hear” like God everywhere a device is connected.
Various clues identify these “certain men”. They are traveling prophets (“dreamers” Jude 1:8; Jer. 23:25; 27:9), ungodly Christians judging by their forerunner Israelites God “afterward destroyed” (Jude 1:5) and “angels who did not keep their proper domain” giving themselves over to lust (Jude 1:6-7; Gen. 6:2). Their lawlessness is how they denied God is Master (1203 δεσπότης despotes) and Christ Lord. Like miracle working TARES today, they rail against Satan even though much more powerful Michael the Archangel shows respect. Immorality and love for money characterized them, even as it does today.
The Two Phases of Antichrist: Man of Sin and Son of Destruction
The Little Horn in Daniel with the Big Mouth
Adonikam is the Name of the Beast having 666 meaning
Antichrist will sit in the Temple of God: Third Temple or the Church?
The Antichrist: His Names Titles and Descriptions
What did the apostle John reveal when he said: “It is the last hour”?