With the uprise in the Middle East, will we see the rise of the AntiChrist?

It just struck me this morning as I was reading headlines regarding uprisings all across the Middle East. Some of those are for solidarity with Libyans, but some are independent of Libya and are for problems in their own countries.

From what I know about the AntiChrist (if you believe that it is one person), he is a peacemaker with signs and wonders to follow.

en.wikipedia.org...

The "Man of Sin" is referenced not so much in The Book of Revelation as much as he is in The Book of John 1 and 2 and 2 Thessalonians.

www.biblegateway.com...

The Man of Lawlessness 1 Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness[a] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Will we see a peacemaker come up in the Middle East to settle all the people and proclaim himself the Christ?

Thoughts?

If you believe in such fictional fairy tales, Then you might believe the AntiChrist will rise.. ( no offense to the op)..Check out this Thread..You might have missed this one, You may find it of interest.

reply to post by TechVampyre


No offense taken. Everyone has to pick and choose their own fairy tales. It's the spice of life!

I saw that thread. Honestly, I didn't think much of it. Looked like an optical illusion to me.

No offense intended to your well-thought out post, but wouldn't this fit better in the religion forum? Other than that, OP, good post.

Here is a little cross-reference from the Book of Revelations that is attributed to the same AntiChrist.

www.biblegateway.com...

He would be the Beast and the Dragon would be Satan (I believe).

3I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his (K)fatal wound was healed And the whole earth (L)was amazed and followed after the beast; 4they worshiped the (M)dragon because he (N)gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, "(O)Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?" 5There was given to him a mouth (P)speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for (Q)forty-two months was given to him. 6And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, (R)those who dwell in heaven. 7It was also given to him to (S)make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority over (T)every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him.

reply to post by TheSparrowSings


I had to make a choice. It's not really a "Conspiracy in Religion" and it's also not really Off-Topic either. If the mods want to move it, I, for one, welcome them to do so.

Every thing has a reason and a place and time, patience is wiser than ignorance, Those lost from the light is a seed that bear's no fruit, they will overflow the hole of hades, as they are many, A fruitful seed will root and use the nurishment of what is giving and drive deep roots not easy blown away or washed away from the storms at foot and dark days, which makes them stronger.

Dropping my personal agnostic beliefs for a moment...

Here's a question for you...given how many times the Bible has been editted over the years, what is the Anti-Christ?

A review of religions shows that GOD has sent 3 prophets. The message of the first two was so badly distorted that the third, Mohammad, made the decree that the Qu'ran had to be memorized by followers to ensure that no changes could be made to the texts.

Sadly, the counter to that has been interpretation instead of re-writting.

My point here is this; Christ had a message of peace and harmony, forgivness and love. Since at this point in history we have bastardized that message through those edits, as well as the message from the other two, is it not possible that the Anti-Christ will come to enforce GOD's version of baseball's 3 strikes, your out?

Remember, the old testiment is not a warm and friendly document. The Anti-Christ may not be the supreme embodiment of human evil that we are told...He may in fact be the fourth representative of GOD, only this time he's not coming to teach.

He's coming to kick some ass.

The lies and deception attributed to him will not be done out of evil, but a manipulation of how our world exists with what seems like the overwhelming acceptance and support of the masses.

...his actions no different then those of the leaders we now follow.

When the smoke clears, the FIFTH representative will appear and again try and teach humanity how to be moral and ethical beings.

Just a thought.

reply to post by CIGGSofWAR


Thank you for your response. I'm still trying to decode it, however.

Hmm...

Originally posted by WickettheRabbit
reply to post by TechVampyre

 

No offense taken. Everyone has to pick and choose their own fairy tales. It's the spice of life!

I saw that thread. Honestly, I didn't think much of it.

Looked like an optical illusion to me.

Same here, .. I'm not a very religious guy, If you couldn't tell.. But I do see the link with the AntiChrist.. That's the thing with religion, People can draw there own conclusions to just about any scenario..It's been going on forever now..

reply to post by [davinci]


That's actually a fine thought. Thanks for posting it.

I would guess that there were many who though of Muhammad as "the Beast" at some time. I'd never considered it before now.

I'll keep pondering.

This is where things get tricky. A person, more likely a group of people with a designated figurehead, will have to, at some point, attempt to bring waves of peace to the Middle East. Whether it's a month or 10 years, who knows....but logically, at some point, an attempt at region-wide peace in that area will have to made. This goes beyond the Israel - Palestine peace deal.

The more the violence increases, the more this scenario becomes likely. The youth in the Middle East, at least seemingly, are not willing to tolerate living in chaos with the constant threat of violence as much as the older generation. The older generation is probably more tolerant since it is all they have ever known and did not have access to viewpoints outside their area which led them to believe that this is simply how life is lived. These are merely my opinions since I do not claim to know how life there "really" is. However, this is where the Internet now plays its part and why the youth are banding together in my opinion.

Now for the tricky part.

When this group, with their named figurehead, becomes known, the religious group is instantly going to declare this to be the Antichrist. The non-religious folks are simply going to say that this was the most logical progression given the deteriorating conditions. We are again left with: who's right? Not even the most religious folks that I know can agree on exactly what "signs" would be enough to "prove" the existence of an Antichrist.

reply to post by lpowell0627


Thanks for the well thought out response.

Do you think that the extreme religious right have declared the Antichrist so many times that we have a "Boy that cried wolf" thing going on?

I'm not sure the general population of moderate Christians would feel comfortable declaring to their friends and family that "Mr. Unknown" is the Antichrist that the Bible talks about.

Originally posted by [davinci]
My point here is this; Christ had a message of peace and harmony, forgivness and love. Since at this point in history we have bastardized that message through those edits

To the contrary, said message is still present, clear and simple, in the Bible. Christ is specifically asked what one must do to attain everlasting life, which one assumes mean that they are right with God, and he replies that we are to love God, and love each other as ourselves. Pure and simple. If one believes in the words of Christ, it's right there, in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Though few seem to be aware of it, the New Testament canon, which is pretty much what it is now, can be traced back to the later half of the second century. There were a couple of additions and deletions of books, but the crux of it -- Gospels, Epistles and Revelation, were defined as authoritative long before the Church was even much of a church.

Have there been minor changes in the text since then? Obviously, there have been, as a result of translation or transcription error, and perhaps some things that were intentionally changed. But, viewed as a holistic text, there is too much consistency between Paul's letters, the Gospels, and the Old Testament (which is Jewish, not Christian) which letters and Gospels point back to, to claim major revision that would be inconsistent with the central message of Christ.

Although a response to a member, this post was off topic and removed by the author.


reply to post by adjensen


Wrong place for this discussion.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by [davinci]
we are to love God, and love each other as ourselves. Pure and simple.

Sorry, but no it's not. I've run across quite a few people in my day who simply did not love themselves. It was self evident in the way they lived, talked, acted and the way they treated other people.

Like crap.

These are the people that everyone considers bad seeds and the vast majority end up in prison because they cannot function in society. The same society that reads the Bible, quotes the verses and then commences to judge other people based on those verses as if they speak for God himself, when in fact the words that come out of their mouth sound......

Like crap

But according to that verse, word for word, these people will still get into heaven because they are, after all, treating and loving other people they way they treat and love themselves;

Like crap

You know, according to that verse, it's almost as if what you do isn't as important as doing something that is true to your nature. "Bad" people treat other people bad, therefore they will go to heaven because they are true to themselves, therefore true to others. While "good" people will go to hell because while they treat themselves good, they cannot afford the same courtesy to others by virtue of sitting there and judging them by way of a 2,000 year old book that still pretends to be relevant. I don't know about you, but that sounds.......

Like crap.

I'm not saying that all "good" people are like that, because they're not. Some are actually true to themselves. But you have to admit that most "bad" are true to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't be labeled as bad. You can call this circular logic all you want, but it works.

edit on 26-2-2011 by Taupin Desciple because: Clarity

Have there been minor changes in the text since then? Obviously, there have been, as a result of translation or transcription error, and perhaps some things that were intentionally changed.

If you read the New Living translation, problems like these do not exist. It was transcribed directly from the dead sea scrolls.

Anyways, at the op: Hard to say, but I wouldn't put money on it. Truth is that the bible teaches a lot of things about who the antichrist will be. I think it's pretty safe to assume that we aren't that far off from the rapture/gog&magog war/rise of the antichrist, but again, nobody knows for sure. The rapture could occur tonight and set the world into a tailspin of economic turmoil and national distrust that spawns the war of gog and magog, and after God intervenes in a direct and obvious way to smite Israel's enemies, the Antichrist rises out of the debris and strikes peace. We've witnessed all the big things that need to come to pass before the rapture occurs, as was prophesied... now it's a waiting game before it goes down. But that could last decades or centuries for all we know.