Who Will be the Anti-Christ ? Is Anti-Christ a Person? What Kind
of a Character Will He Be? By J. CHARLETON STEEN, London
NCIENT rabbis held that he was a monster of iniquity who should appear on the scene in “ the latter days,” immediately before the Messianic Kingdom, so they called him Ante-Messiah. Early and later students, who believed that he would be a raised man, became proph ets and said who he would be. Some held that he would be the Devil, others thought he would be a hybrid of Satan. Jerome believed that he would be Satan incarnate. Others again believed that he would be a raised man, a Jew of the tribe of Dan; many concluded that he would be “ Judas Iscariot.” Of course any name that may be named can only at its strongest be a suggestion. I favor Judas Iscariot. Why Judas? In naming Judas I would like to make it plain that I only suggest this. At the same time I feel free to give the following reasons for the sugges tion. 1. In the first Messianic prophecy found in Genesis 3:15 we read, “ And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.” Here we are all agreed that the Seed of the woman can only be the Christ of God, an expression which clearly foretells the virgin birth. If the woman’s seed is a person, and that person Christ, then the serpent’s seed must also be a person, and that person Antichrist. This promise had a partial fulfilment in His first advent, but, like many other
Messianic prophecies, it awaits its com plete fulfilment in His second advent. In our Lord’s first advent the seed of the serpent was there in the person of Judas, as Antichrist— against Christ. When our Lord speaks of him he says he is “ diabolos” (John 6:70). It is true that this word in its feminine plural is twice used in the New Testa ment of persons, but never do you find it in its masculine singular ever used of any creature but Satan and Judas. “ The Son of Perdition.” 2. This appellation, only found twice in the New Testament, is used of Ju das (John 17:12) by the Lord, and of the man of sin by Paul (2 Thess. 2 :3). In both Scriptures the definite article is in the original not simply a son of perdition, but the son of perdition, thus identifying the one person with its two usages. “ The Pseudos” (Lie). 3. We read of the man of sin as “ the lie” (see 2 Thess. 2:11). “ That they should believe the lie.” When speaking of the Devil in John 8:44 the Lord says, “When he speaketh the lie (the pseudos) he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it,” referring, as I believe it does, to the seed of the serpent of Genesis 3:15, “ the man of sin” of 2 Thess. 2:11. Not simply a lie, but as God’s Christ is the Truth, truth in its essence, the embodi ment of all truth; so Satan’s Christ is the lie. “His Own Place.” 4. Then again it is said of Judas what is never said of another man, “ He
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