The Antichrist Isn’t Who You Think

0:00So the Antichrist, explain the Antichrist. He's a man. Some people think he's the devil incarnate in the same way that Christ is God incarnate. That's not the case. He is simply a man, but he is the instrument of the devil. He is somebody, you know, if we understand that the moral struggle of life is to what extent we orient our life toward God and to what extent we orient our life away from God and walk away from him and are basically you want to put it this way, consorting with the demons who tempt us and to sin, this is a man who is succumbed in every possible way to the will of the devil and completely, you know, go even beyond what we call possession. Somebody who is his mind and heart is with Satan in every possible respect. Okay. What is there are there any signs according to the dispensationalist versus, you know, for give us kind of both if you can. Any signs that the Antichrist is coming,

1:00like are there certain events that have to happen before the Antichrist shows up from the viewpoint of the Orthodox and the viewpoint of the dispensationalists? Christ gave indications that some of us could be considered general like, you know, wars and rumors of war earthquakes in various places, you know, pestilences, this thing and things like that. I think what you would tend to find from the traditional perspective is there are people they call Antichrist's plural with small A. Then I say there are four runners or what we call types of Antichrist. People who are like, like, like, like Nero or, you know, one of the big one was, was, uh, Antichus, Antichus Epiphanes who persecuted the Jews in Jerusalem. He was the Greek ruler of Syria back in Old Testament times who's written about in the book of Maccabees. There are these rulers who are sort of four runners or a picture of what Antichrist will be like. And as the governance of our world moves farther and farther away from God, then that is the preparation of the throne

2:03of Antichrist. There's a concept in the scripture called the Catechon in Greek, the Restrainer, when he that restrains is taken out of the way, then the last times will come. And of course in Christianity, that is often identified in terms of godly rulers that is say back when we had Christian kings who saw their job in part to have, you know, the righteousness of Christianity as part of the state system as, you know, there are no Christian kings to speak of. You have a few in Europe, but they're basically just, you know, republics and urban drag. I mean, they're not significantly Christian monarchies anymore. Obviously, or Orthodox Christians, it would be, have been associated with the East Roman Emperor or maybe with the Russian Emperor, the last one, of course, was killed. I was Nicholas II. Some Catholics would identify with the Holy Roman Emperor. In any case, the idea that there is the kingdom of God in civic affairs and in the form of civil governments that take their moral cues from the Bible and from Christianity, that is

3:11disappearing from our world. Rather, we're getting the whole rainbow spectrum and all the rest of it as ungodliness, but being put into the place of godliness, that is a very definite sign of this approach. But that could come on. That could last another 10,000 years. We really don't know. One thing we don't do is you're not going to, let me put it this way. Many people will be fooled by Antichrist, as I said. You're not going to recognize him because you've got the Bible in one hand, you're watching the news and the other. You will recognize him because of your period of heart, through prayer, fasting, doing good things, the things that bring you closer to Christ will allow you to discern the Antichrist what he appears. As most people will be fooled. Yeah. What is it that why do you think that dispensationalism has just taken such a strong hold? I mean, it's fairly new. 2000 years without this and then suddenly we see it and it's really shaped Christianity in a way that I would say is for the worse, but I don't know if I'm not a scholar of

4:22history, so I don't know if there were other periods of time where religion was really, there were the crusades and things. There were times where Christianity was used for violence. But certainly right now, I see a lot of evangelicals, excusing violence and the murder of children and the stealing of land and the, what I would think is extremely non-Christ-like and they're embracing it. It's hard to reconcile how they reconcile it in their minds. I think it's a manifestation of the progression I just described earlier. If you understand the direction of history, the mystery and equity is kind of the progressive withdrawal of grace from the world and from even from those who call themselves Christians as they get farther and farther away historically from authentic Christianity. At least as Orthodox, we would say that really kicked in the high gear with the great schism, with the split with Roman Catholicism,

5:26a thousand years ago, that even more so with the Reformation, you get to the point where people are so divorced from the authentic Christian apostolic teaching and from the life in Christ in the sacraments of the church where everything is just me and my Bible and whatever I think is right and whatever that guy over there, hey, whatever Reverend Billy Bob says is just as good as what the church fathers say and in fact I never heard of the church fathers that what you have people who are so ignorant and so lacking in the grace that is found in the church, they simply have no mental or moral or spiritual moorings. They're being set up to be deceived and to deceive themselves. When you talk to dispensationalists, to evangelicals and you tell them your traditional Orthodox viewpoint, what kind of pushback do they give you? You know, I don't, well, first off,

6:27there I go to is full of people who were that, so they're not that anymore, so you know, sometimes they don't push back. I mean, I teach by class, you know, I've got, you know, usually 20 people at a time and most of them come from some kind of Protestant background, some from Roman Catholic background, so more and more people are not pushing back. They realize they've been led into a dead end. There are others who simply, I'm treated to experience this, not just in this context, but also where people who know what they know very well even if it happens not to be true. They're simply stuck in an idea they can get out of their head. That's where I am, that's where I live. I know this is, I mean, you've talked to this and to people about this with regard to any number of things. We'll start in with, you know, support for Israel as a, as a defined mandate. I mean, you saw that, that tweet from Ted Cruz yesterday. I think it was where he basically says anybody who doesn't accept the, this, this, this Christian Zionist is essentially a bad American as well as a bad Christian. How, I don't, I, I don't think you can talk to people like that. I think some people when they have an

7:28e-day fix in their mind that is simply not going to, they're not necessarily hostile. They just sort of dismiss what you have to say because it doesn't fit into their, their, their, their, their, it's, I guess it's cognitive dissonance in a sense. And so they really believe that they can bring about the return of Jesus. That's what they're aiming for. That's what they're trying to do. Yes, yes. Yeah. And by through their actions, that's why you have Christian Zionist helping with this. What is the temple mount organization with the bread heifer and all that kind of stuff? Because they think through their actions, they can help make it happen. It's almost like, you know, communist saying we can, we can bring about communism through the class conflict, class conflict or something like that. They can, they can become the midwife of history and make things happen by themselves. And so they think that Jesus will come back and sing them pray, like will, uh, will, I guess, congratulate them or tell them that they were good soldiers after they've killed a bunch of kids. Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, first they have to get raptured. We remember,

8:32they have to get raptured before they make something. They're going to get raptured if they're killing kids. I mean, that, but okay. So what is the rapture? Remember, too, they believe, I'll believe an instant salvation. I mean, again, this is something utterly untraditional in Christianity. The idea that you just say the sinner's prayer, Jesus, I'm sorry. I'm a sinner. I know you died for my sins. I, you know, I believe in you and beam. I'm eternally eternal security. So no matter what I do after that, I cannot lose my salvation. So that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, and that's very prevalent in the evangelism, even apart from dispensationalism. I'm sorry, I interrupted your question. What was it? No, I mean, well, I, that, um, just the, well, go ahead. I forgot my question. No, I forgot my answer. Okay. Well, then let's just move on. Okay. So I get, you know, I, I think a good question. I think the big question that many of us

9:38that are kind of watching this on the sidelines and seeing these Evangelicals cheer on wars. I mean, that's what they're doing. They're cheering on wars, cheering on genocides. And they're saying like anything is real once anything because Jesus is going to come back and I'm going to be saved, I guess. I mean, I don't know what the thinking is there. But I guess any of us sitting on the sidelines are wondering, how do we break free of this? Like how do we stop them from believing this? And that's the thing that's really challenging because it's a belief. Yeah. This isn't like something you can rationalize with people. It's, when it's a belief, it's extra dangerous. And that is why I think, you know, it's, it's interesting that a lot of Christians will point out at the Islamic world and say, well, you know, they're so dangerous because of their religious views and we can't change their religious views. And it's like, well, look in the mirror. I mean, you're doing the same thing. You're just, you just think your religion is right and not theirs. And so that's why you're getting away with, you know, you think you can get away with the same sort of atrocities. And so, but that's been the challenge in the Islamic world.

10:39It's a challenge in the evangelical world, which is, how do we get these minds to shift so that they stop committing these atrocities in the name of God? Yeah. Well, we can talk about Islam too, because I think that sometimes there's a mental trap that people fall into and say, well, X is bad. Therefore, why must be good? You know, Hitler was bad. Stalin must be good. No, Stalin was bad. No, no, Hitler must be good. I mean, I don't think that dichotomy worked. And I think there's a lot about people, that a lot of times when people are critical of Israel, or sometimes the, you know, the influence of big Jewish money and running our country with their Zionist, Christian foot soldiers into the voting booth and say, you know, that, okay, that's all bad. But that means, must mean that, you know, all the Muslims search us warm and cuddly teddy bears and they're not. I mean, again, looking at the history of Islam for 1400 years, it has not been a pretty picture. So we, we can discuss that too. But in terms of what we can do about it, short answer is, I don't think we probably can. They're not a lot of people will never

11:45change their minds. And this is where we get to another form of corruption that exists in our country. We like to live, believe we live in a constitutional republic. We live in a democracy where the opinions and values and interests of the people matter. You know, newsflash, they don't that people run this country. The, you know, the Epstein class have their own agendas. It's not just one agenda. It's several agendas that maybe dovetail in a certain way. And that is the establishment that runs our country. That's the oligarchy that runs our country. Yeah, we, hey, look, I voted for the peace president. Look what it got made, right? You know, no matter who you vote for, you're going to get John McCain. And that's the way it is in our country today. And I think a lot of people just so we don't want to admit that, well, if we can just convince people, we can just, you know, you know, yeah, we'll get on, you know, podcasts and convince a lot of people. And then, yeah, even if you convince the majority of the population that we're going down the wrong track, I don't think it's going to change anything at least not in terms until it

12:48brings us to some sort of a crack up. And I don't know what that crack up looks, but I think we're getting close to it. Thanks for watching this clip from the full Kim I recent show, which you can catch Monday through Friday, 2 p.m. Pacific 5 p.m. Eastern for free at Kim I recent show dot com. See you there.