The Anti-Christ: Make yourself at home
As people start seeing lots of war and strife and difficult national and international issues, a lot of folks begin asking questions about the end times. Are they here? Are they around the corner?
I have already written a brief article on this topic, but I never really got to the root of the anti-Christ issue and I think it is a valuable topic to discuss in light of the fact that a lot of people are going to become ‘targets’ for fundamentalist groups of all sorts – some with a cultic persuasion will rally behind someone who they believe is going to rise to power and become the ultimate force in the known world. Others who are paranoid will lash out against any sort of person or situation that seems to mimic (intentionally or not) the progression of events played out in Revelation or their respective characters.
I want to introduce the idea of ‘types’ in this article. A ‘type’ within the scriptural framework is probably one of the oldest manifestations of wisdom literature that you can find. It assumes the rules of the wisdom literature framework.
Why did wisdom literature work for so long?
The wisdom literature methodology, if you want to call it that, relies on a commonly held set of assumptions about the world. Without these assumptions, the entire enterprise of gathering and labeling sound knowledge is futile and pointless. The assumptions are:
- The world as a created structure possesses a sustained and consistent order between cause and effect.
What’s more, this structure speaks directly to a simple moral assertion – that life is good. Furthermore, the sustenance of life is good. The preservation and protection of life is a universal duty. The donation of life to help one who is lacking is noble. These progressive transactions of life – paths moving from those who have it to those who need it – form a circumstantial lattice of persistent nourishment and growth. Death itself is a legitimate end within this process – it is not strictly a negative end – in fact, it is neutral. How one spends their life, or receives it, is the key criterion that one used when evaluating whether they lived a good life or a poor one. The ‘book of life’ is, in essence, a collection of how humanity embodied wisdom – it is a record of the ‘tree of life,’ how it grew out, who was grafted in, who was cut off, etc.
- As part of their nature, human beings are persistently given ‘crises’ or opportunities to weigh which course of action they will take.
The ideal purpose behind the construction of a corpus of wisdom literature is to collect and catalog knowledge that points to the paths that give the most abundant life possible. In other words, the aim of wisdom is living life. In contrast, the aim of foolishness is anything else. Squandering it, wasting it, giving to those who don’t need it or who will squander it.
So for those who ask, “Do we have free will or is everything predestined?” the answer yielded by the near eastern wisdom tradition has always been ‘both.’ It is not possible for anyone to change the paths or their destinations. However, it is mandatory that every human being choose their path at every stage of life. At the end of the day, you are responsible for the life that you are given – where you put it, where you wasted it, where you find yourself at the end. You cannot change the rules, but you can choose which rules you follow.
- God is the source of life and wisdom.
That is to say, the system does not assume that there is an impersonal gumball machine of life that pops out a new one every day as the turn of an automated crank. Creation itself is an unintelligent structure – left to its own internal devices for support, it would crumble under the weight of the chaotic elements that it is made of. It is a throne – a seat of God’s power. It is a medal of honor – proof of God’s remarkable creative accomplishment. Perhaps God’s biggest mistake was creating humans in his image, but He did it with a distinct and incredible intelligent purpose. It is very difficult to maintain all of the things that need maintaining in creation – it is a big place – just the part that we are aware of! So the question is how could God ever ‘rest’ with all of this needing consistent maintenance. Enter the human being – the divine proxy: God gives the human being life, and the ability to look and act like God. As long as the human does what God says, the odds of chaos succeeding in overcoming creation just got a whole lot worse. NOW imagine what would happen if God could create a self-replicating proxy! A whole TON of God-like beings that passed on life given to them and patched things up as God would do. With this system in place, God is able to rest. This is the meaning of the Sabbath. As it was originally designed, God’s creation – the glorious Garden of Eden, would become exponentially secure as the human population grew. “Wisdom,” then, is a piece of this path – this way. By collecting it, human beings sought to attain their destiny – to become God-like and fulfill their vocation, while restoring the created world to its idyllic state. God provided the structure (wisdom) and the material (life) for creation to remain as good as it could possibly be.
So within this wisdom tradition we develop ‘types’ – rules that are exemplified by one example but are applicable to a wide variety of circumstances. Here’s a good modern example: A person on the sea coast watches a buoy bobbing up and down. If he tries to draw the path of the buoy, he notices something cyclical and repeatable. Someone on a high hill observes an earthquake – watching the land roll and grumble. By putting together these observations, one can start to develop predictable rules of wave mechanics. Perhaps if their observations are acute enough, they can anticipate tidal waves or other disasters. Once they have developed a method that saves a town or someone’s life, they write it down and pass it on to the next generation. Sometimes these correlations are false, but function within limited settings.
The comparison of these kinds of observations were not always about impersonal natural phenomena, but were often about high-profile individuals. Wisdom literature absorbed a certain amount of tabloid culture as in many ways the transmission of news from one nation to the next indicated trends on societal and religious development. If a kingdom falls and their gods are destroyed, all the rules pertaining to the nation may be re-examined – perhaps even rewritten. They have to be in order to maintain the integrity of the collection. No one hangs on to advice if it has caused someone to die – untimely death suggests that bad advice was followed – and you can be sure that everyone wanted to know what happened because no one wants to ‘follow in the footsteps’ of a dead person.
So to bring this back to the development of revelation and its ‘poetic’ nature, it reflects a pattern that is nothing new. In fact, there has already been one anti-Christ. Before I tell you who that was, we need to look at another interesting problem.
Within the context of social and religious paradigms in Judah, an argument rears its head with regard to where the people of Judah are on the course of their prophetically determined destiny.
They had been told through their covenants with God (through Moses, Levi and David) that they were to leave a land of great power and sophistication, traverse a chaotic causeway, lose a full generation of experience, emerge as a clean and renewed generation, enter a new land as rulers and live in an established kingdom that the Lord himself would prepare.
The covenant itself requires a custodian at all times – this was especially important at the beginning and ending stages. So the requirements and expectations of these individual get built up as the Judahite people face this ‘exodus’ paradigm over and over. As is common with wisdom literature, there is an expectation that God is consistent and will use the same paths and paradigms that He has used in the past. Likewise, the people have also learned that there are pitfalls inherent to the exodus paradigm that one would be wise to watch out for if they ‘know what’s good for them.’
This is the foundation of ‘messianic expectation’ – the expectation that a person is going to rise and fulfill a course that has been previously set and that this fulfillment will be surrounded by the accompanying rules and paradigms – the features – of a given scenario. A modern example is like this. A person gets out of Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. They are barely on the curb, trying to get eye contact and attract the attention of a cab. After a lot of failure, they remember what their cousin said about cabs in New York: “If you ever need to grab a cab in New York, walk fast, talk fast, go straight to the door and tell them who’s boss because they ain’t got time to wait around for ya.” The good advice of being assertive comes with a whole list of expected outcomes. Another excellent example is the practice of becoming a good shot. And experienced marksman knows how to adjust the bead for a moving target because he can recognize the animals movement and knows what to expect based on his experience. Messianic expectation is based on an aggregation of the same kind of knowledge.
The problem is, the ‘exodus’ paradigm is not an easy paradigm to read because it is symmetrical. It starts with a power kingdom and it ends with a powerful kingdom. The difference is that one kingdom is oppressive, while the other is righteous.
The challenge, then, is to try to determine where you are within the exodus paradigm – are you at the beginning or at the end?
If you are under the reign of a powerful kingdom and believe that you are oppressed, you are going to expect a prophet like Moses to come along, deliver you from the tyranny, yield the kingdom to destruction, and begin the long journey across the desert of purification. This character in the ‘exodus’ paradigm is ‘Messiah Alpha.’
If you are under the reign of a righteous leadership, have a temple and palace constructed to God’s specifications, are living in peace and are awaiting just one thing, that one thing is the powerful king – the true Son of God who embodies the outcome and expectations of the Davidic covenant. The entry of this king into the land represents for you the end of the painful journey through the desert – the last goodbye that you say to oppression and injustice for all time. This character in the ‘exodus’ paradigm is ‘Messiah Omega.’
Jeremiah expected a Messiah Alpha. Isaiah expected a Messiah Omega. Ezekiel expected a Messiah Omega and had a solid plan of bringing that about.
So in a society like Judea at the time of Christ, you have plenty of people who do not agree on the state of the land. This is where we encounter our first Anti-Christ – King Herod.
King Herod’s origins were questionable – even his Jewish lineage was suspect. This partially explains his fear of a legitimate Davidic heir – and the murder of the innocents. Yet he represented what some would consider an ideal civil servant. He maintained a balance of peace and order with Rome. He did renovation projects in an attempt to win favor among the people.
By the same token, John the Baptist was particular in showing that Herod’s lifestyle was a thinly veneered life of corruption. While the wealthy and powerful would like to have believed that Herod was the ‘Messiah Omega’ that everyone was waiting for, John the Baptist made a public point of showing everyone that this could not be the case. As a result, he knew that there was going to be an expectation of the “Messiah Alpha” who would lead the people of God out of Jerusalem. The entire baptismal ritual is in anticipation of having to cross the Jordan – this was why the Jordan was used – it was symbolic of the fact that while Joshua brought the people of God over the Jordan into their promised land, that land had now become a source of oppression and pain thanks to Herod’s failure to stand up to Rome and manifest an authentic God-fearing kingdom.
This is not the first time that such a transformation was suggested by either a prophet or the scriptures. The original exodus story begins with the oppression of the Hebrews by Egypt – however when read along with the Genesis prequel, we comes to understand that under Joseph, Egypt flourished and became a remarkable nation – delivering grain during the great famine and also serving as a peaceful home for Jacob and all of his descendents. Egypt actually serves as a prototype of the promised land – being a place where Jacob was told not to bring anything at all to enter – that all of the necessities of life would be provided. So Egypt wasn’t always bad – it become so once the nation no longer knew Joseph, nor the pharaohs of Joseph’s time. When knowledge of the Lord left Egypt, it transformed from a profitable and blessed nation to a cursed and oppressive one.
So you can imagine that a lot of poor, powerless people sided with John, seeking the one whom God would send to deliver them from the oppression that they felt on all sides –negligent Judean rulers, insensitive Roman systems, etc.
At the same time, you had people who knew that Herod was a poor leader, but also expected a true Son of David to show up, and so this describes the brief glorification that Christ receives when the people welcome him to Jerusalem with palms and praise – they hope that Jesus is the ‘Messiah Omega’ who will depose the false messiah Herod and deliver them from Roman rule.
But consider that those who were in power sided with Herod and ultimately with Rome. Even the Pharisees who are sympathetic with Jesus are not able to comprehend how they can possibly live in a renewed nation with him as a proper ‘Messiah Omega.’ He had no army, no powerful followers, etc. For the sake of stability, these Pharisees had to compromise and believe that Herod was the true messiah, that Christ was false, and that if Christ persisted in claiming to be the Son of God (the true king) without qualification (as a carpenter from Nazareth) he would have to die for the sake of the peace of the nation.
As a paradigm, Herod tells us all that we need to know about who the anti-Christ ultimately is:
- The anti-Christ shifts the mind and expectations of the people of God away from their ultimate destiny.
- The anti-Christ does what is necessary to eliminate the ‘Messiah Alpha’ and anyone expecting him.
- The anti-Christ acts in the name of maintaining comfort, peace and order – in particular, the anti-Christ encourages or commands the people of God to stay when they really must go.
If you have ever wondered why Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan!” to Peter, now you understand the answer – he was an anti-Christ too… if only for a moment.
So in terms of the ideas behind Revelation – the culture is one of tolerance, comfort and convenience. Universal marks on the head and right hand are symbolic of national security and trust – the mark is symbolic of the protection of the emperor, and it is required to buy and sell because it is a sign that the empire would guarantee every transaction against fraud. This was probably where Roman currency and commerce were going – it would have been the most logical step in determining citizenship in a vastly and infinitely growing empire. In other words, the kingdom of the anti-Christ in particular is one that is probably very efficient, well-organized, clean, perhaps even idyllic. The point of all of this being that he will represent the Messiah Omega ideal at a time when the entire world should still be waiting for Jesus to return in order to lead God’s people to their ultimate home.
Paul doesn’t even need a personal anti-Christ to recognize the dangers of comfort to those who are seeking to enter into the kingdom of God. Anyone whose lives revolve around the pursuit of earthly pleasure will never enter the kingdom of God. All of this goes back to the ‘exodus’ paradigm:
- If you can eat well in the desert, you will never leave it.
- If you love the riches and wealth of Egypt, you’ll never leave it – even when it is in ruin you will lay in the ruins and mourn them.
- If you test God in the desert, you may find yourself wandering the desert for a long time.
- If you worship any other God in the desert, you will never leave.
The anti-Christ is a special application of what is otherwise a true paradigm to look for – it is not that he is going to try to look like Christ but will be fooling everyone. It is that the person will be a ‘Messiah Omega’ when you should be looking for ‘Messiah Alpha.’
This is why those who accept Messiah Omega will not enter the kingdom of God – they will not want to leave the world that the Messiah Omega has established for them on earth. And yet Revelation suggests that when Christ returns to complete the ultimate ‘exodus’ cycle from the world of sin and death into the resurrection and the new kingdom, he will destroy the old earth and manifest himself as the true Messiah Omega who rules the Kingdom of God for eternity.
So the simple way to recognize the anti-Christ in this life (as there are many) is to watch for those special words – ‘Make yourself at home’ when the scriptures and your discernment tell you ‘It’s time to go.’
As an aside, an interesting reversal of this activity appears in Jeremiah, where the people challenge his authority as a prophet of God on the basis of his recommendation that instead of leaving Jerusalem, they stay under their Babylonian landlords. Jeremiah sees, however, that the reason that the people leave is not because it is their destiny to leave, but because they sought comfort in Egypt. Thus in Jeremiah’s scenario, it isn’t about staying or leaving a physical location – it is about pursuing comfort at the expense of God’s leadership and wisdom. The uncomfortable thing for them was to stay in Jerusalem – it is also the thing that would encourage them to pursue their destiny as a people who find their comfort in God’s leadership, rather than in the comforts temporarily offered to them by a predatory nation.
All of this comes back to a very sophisticated paradigm in Genesis – that of the sojourner. Christ himself states that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head – reflecting on his own journey towards his own divine destiny. A sojourner will never be taken in by the anti-Christ, but they still must have faith in God and they must know, as Abraham did, when to settle. On some level, the end times are the place where Abraham and the Messiah Omega meet finally. Those who sojourn in this life, as Abraham was called to do from the beginning, will ultimately be the ones who will successfully navigate their way through tumultuous times and into the presence of Christ as Pantocrator – but to enter this union one must bypass all of the trials posed by hollow comforts.
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© 2007 Jacob Gorny