Who Is the Antichrist?

Who is the Antichrist—a sinister future world leader, an ancient heresy, or something else? In this gripping episode, Jimmy Akin dives deep into Scripture, the Catechism, and Church teaching to unravel the mystery. He explores John’s “many antichrists,” the Man of Lawlessness, prophecy debates, and whether a final villain awaits before Christ’s return. Thrilling biblical insights and surprising clarifications await—don’t miss it!

 

TRANSCRIPT: 

Coming Up

The antichrist is a sinister and mysterious figure. One of the most famous depictions of the antichrist is in a fresco by the Italian painter Luca Signorelli.

The fresco was painted between the years 1500 and 1504, and it’s on the wall of a side chapel in the cathedral of Orvieto, Italy, which I recently visited.

I’d seen copies of the painting many times, but I didn’t realize it was in Orvieto, so I was shocked when I looked up and saw it on the wall in front of me, and I was quick to take pictures of it with my phone.

The fresco shows the devil whispering in the ear of a man who looks kind of like Jesus, but sinister. That’s the antichrist, who is standing on a pedestal and preaching his lies to deceive the people.

That’s why the fresco is titled The Preaching of the Antichrist.

This image reflects a common understanding of the antichrist, but how does the New Testament understand him—and what does the Church teach about the antichrist?

Let’s get into it!

* * *

Howdy, folks!

You can help me keep making this podcast—and you can get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast

 

Introduction

A correspondent named Adam writes:

Hi, Jimmy. I have a question on the topic of eschatology. I am a Protestant but have been drawing to the Church. I started reading the Catechism, and I got to a part where it discusses the antichrist. I know the Catholic Church believes in partial preterism?

I don’t understand the reference to the antichrist in the Catechism. As far as I can tell when I read the Bible the references to antichrist have been established to be the Docetists/Gnostics.

I don’t understand this idea of an actual antichrist. I don’t see anywhere that it [speaks] of a future antichrist. Especially because all the references in the books of John give a significant time statement. (“We know it is the last hour.”) I’ve heard the man of lawlessness was an actual man named John Levi around the year A.D. 70 but have never been able to confirm this.

I know nobody holds to full preterism but, all the verses in the bible sound like they have been fulfilled and that they were more talking about the destruction of the Jewish temple and age in A.D. 70.

Sometimes it seems the only reason we hold to the second coming in the future is because of councils but, many of the references they use we can see were actually talking about the end of the Jewish age and not the end of the world.

I know we all believe the devil is still around, but in Isaiah 27 it says that the devil will be destroyed when the altar is made chalkstone, which happened when the temple was destroyed.

I know Peter says the devil roams like a roaring lion but Peter wrote that before A.D. 70, as we know Peter died before the temple was destroyed. Is it possible the devil has been totally destroyed?

Any help on this matter would be great. Thank you

Sure! I’ll be happy to do what I can to help. Adam raises quite a number of issues, so we’ll go through his message a piece at a time.

 

Preterism?

First, he writes: I know the Catholic Church believes in partial preterism? [“question mark”]

I should clarify this for those who may not be familiar with this term. There are a number of different schools of thought about how much biblical prophecy—and particularly the prophetic material from the New Testament, like in the book of Revelation—has been fulfilled.

1. Futurism holds that almost all this material is still in our future and has yet to be fulfilled.
2. Historicism holds that you can use the book of Revelation as kind of a roadmap of the entire Christian age.
3. Idealism holds that Revelation predicts the kinds of things that will happen in the Christian age, but not in a way that lets you build a specific road map.
4. Preterism holds that most of the material was fulfilled early in Christian history, but there are still a few events—like the Second Coming of Christ—that are still in our future.
5. And Pantelism holds that absolutely all biblical prophecy—including the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead—has already been fulfilled.

Sometimes these last two views are called Partial Preterism and Full Preterism. However, I prefer to refer to the latter position as Pantelism—from Greek roots meaning = all (pan) is ended (telos)—to make it clear that it’s a different position.

There is, after all, a big difference between saying that all prophecies have been fulfilled and some have not been fulfilled.

Adam is under the impression that the Catholic Church believes in preterism—or partial preterism, as he calls it—but he’s not 100% sure, so he adds a question mark. (“I know the Catholic Church believes in partial preterism?”)

The answer is that the Church does not teach preterism, though it is open to it, and there are many Catholics—including myself—who support preterism.

However, I believe it’s important to distinguish between what the Church teaches and what one’s own opinion is. That’s why I try to consistently point out the range of different views that are permitted under Church teaching and only mention my own preference among them afterwards.

So when it comes to the possible views on prophecy, the Church is, okay with Futurism, it’s okay with Historicism, it’s okay with Idealism, and it’s okay with Preterism.

The only one it’s not okay with is Pantelism, because the Church definitely teaches that there will be a future Second Coming.

Having said that, I think that there is significant biblical and historical evidence favoring preterism, and there is at least one passage in the Catechism that is at least suggestive of preterism.

Paragraph 2113 discusses the sin of idolatry and then states:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2113

Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast” refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.

As a footnote in the Catechism makes clear, the Beast referred to here is the one mentioned in Revelation 13, so this would suggest that the reality of the Beast was present early in Christian history, during the age of martyrs.

That’s at least suggestive of preterism, but I wouldn’t say that the Catechism is formally teaching it.

First, because the idea that the reality of the Beast was present early in Church history—during the age of martyrs—is also consistent with idealism, and so the passage is not narrowing down the options to just preterism.

And second, because the point that the passage is teaching is about idolatry—not the book of Revelation—and so this is an illustrative remark made in passing rather than a formal teaching.

In any event, I would say that the Church is open to preterism, though it does not require it of Catholics as a matter of belief, and preterism is my own view.

 

The Antichrist, the Beast, & the Man of Lawlessness

Adam continues by saying I don’t understand the reference to the antichrist in the Catechism.

We’ll get to what the Catechism has to say about the antichrist soon, but first I should explain the concept, because Adam is touching on a point that many people don’t realize.

The term antichrist appears in only four passages in the Bible, and they are all in the letters of John. The term is mentioned in

• 1 John 2:18
• 1 John 2:22
• 1 John 4:3
• And 2 John 7

That’s it! Just four verses!

But during the course of history, the term has come to be used more broadly—for concepts not mentioned in these four verses.

And—as I often point out—language changes with time, so it’s okay if a biblical term takes on a new meaning in theological usage—as long as we keep its biblical meaning and its theological meaning distinct, so that we don’t confuse the two.

This is something I’ve been pointing out a lot recently. To name just two examples, in Episode 27 of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, I pointed out how the biblical term gospel has taken on different meanings in different Christian communities, in Episode 40 I talked about how the term faith has multiple meanings, some of which are favored in different Christian communities, and in Episode 56 I talked about how the terms heresy and dogma have had different meanings over time.

Well, the same is true with the term antichrist. Today—across a wide range of Christian communities—it’s used more broadly than John uses it, and it’s often used to refer to concepts found in other books of the New Testament.

For example, St. Paul’s discussions of the Man of Lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2 is often linked to the antichrist.

Similarly, the Beast from the Sea  from Revelation 13 is also spoken of as the antichrist.

But—strictly speaking—the New Testament doesn’t apply the term antichrist to either of these figures.

 

The Biblical Antichrist

It’s okay if later Christians have used the term antichrist more broadly than it was used in the New Testament. We just need to be clear on what the term means in the Bible, so let’s look at the four verses where the term actually appears.

The first passage we need to look at reads:

1 John 2:18-19, ESV

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 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 it might become plain that they all are not of us.

Here John says that “antichrist is coming,” and what he means is a little ambiguous. He doesn’t say “the antichrist” is coming. The Definite Article or the Greek word for = “The” is not there in the Greek text.

John just says that “antichrist” is coming, which could mean that antichrist in this passage is envisioned as something abstract—like a spirit or movement—rather than a single individual.

And this understanding could be supported by the link John draws between the general antichrist and the specific antichrists he mentions. He says you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.

It’s like the antichrist that is coming manifests in the individual antichrists that have arrived, and he says that this is how we know that it is the last hour.

John then gives us some information about these individual antichrists. He says that they went out from us. That means that they were former Christians. They had once belonged to the Christian community, but they have separated from it. Either they’ve ceased to be Christians altogether or they’ve veered off into some kind of heretical doctrine.

Just a few verses later, we encounter the second passage we need to look at. John says:

1 John 2:22-23, ESV

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Here John does speak of the antichrist, and the definite article is there in the Greek. That could suggest a single individual, though it need not do so. John had just said who is the liar and that doesn’t mean he has one specific liar in mind.

It can be a way of just saying that anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ is a liar, and since he’s just been discussing many antichrists who went out from the Christian community, he may be characterizing them all as liars.

On the other hand, the passage could also envision a specific individual as the antichrist who is coming and who will also be the final deceiver or final liar who opposes God before the Second Coming.

So you can read this passage both ways.

We are, however, given a clue about the antichrist—whether it’s a movement or a person or both—and that is that antichrist involves the denial that Jesus is the Christ.

That would make sense of why this view is called Antichrist. In Greek, the preposition Anti has a variety of meanings, but one of them is = Against. So if you say that Jesus is not the Christ then you are setting yourself Against Christ or making yourself an = Antichrist.

That means that you’re denying a key fact about Jesus as the Son of God, and that means you’re also denying a key fact about God the Father, so you’re setting yourself against both of them.

You may not be denying that God exists, but John sees the Father and the Son as a package deal. Thus he says No one who denies the Son has the Father and Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

The third passage we need to look at comes in 1 John chapter 4, where we read:

1 John 4:1-3, ESV

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

This is a very interesting passage, and it involves Christians communicating with spirits. John says not to trust every spirit but to test them to see if they are from God.

He then gives a test his readers can apply. He says that every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and he contrasts that with spirits that do not confess Jesus. He then identifies the latter kind of spirit with the spirit of the antichrist.

So antichrist doesn’t just involve denying Jesus in the sense of saying that you don’t think he’s the Christ. Instead, it seems to involve a denial that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh—in other words, a denial of the incarnation of the Son of God as man.

What John means by the spirit of the antichrist is a little more ambiguous. He could mean that there is a specific evil spirit—a demon—that is denying the incarnation of Jesus.

Or he might mean that this is just the kind of thing that demons do, since he refers to every spirit that does not confess Jesus, meaning it’s a class of spirits doing this.

It’s also ambiguous whether he’s thinking of there being a single, human antichrist that this spirit misleads.

What is clear is that he holds that there is a movement of antichrists being misled, because he’s already referred to the many antichrists that have left the Christian community, but it’s an open question of whether this movement will one day gain a single leader—one great antichrist.

The passage doesn’t tell us that.

And so we come to the fourth and final passage we need to look at, which is the 7th verse in John’s second letter. That passage says:

2 John 7, ESV

Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

So John says that there are many deceivers in the world who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh—meaning that they deny the incarnation of the Son of God.

And he identifies these deceivers by saying that such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

This looks like John is again identifying the many deceivers or antichrists as those who deny the incarnation.

And that’s all the New Testament has to say about the antichrist—at least using that term.

It’s ambiguous whether there will be a single antichrist. That’s not ruled out by the texts we’ve looked at, but it’s also not clearly suggested by them.

Instead, the texts envision one or—more likely—multiple spirits denying the incarnation of Christ, and the result is that they have won many humans over to their view—the individual, human antichrists—and these have left the orthodox Christian community, which John takes as one of the signs that we are living in the last days.

 

The Antichrist in Later Thought

Based on this biblical background, let’s now look at how the concept of the antichrist evolved in later Christian thought.

Adam continues by saying,

I don’t understand the reference to the antichrist in the Catechism. As far as I can tell when I read the Bible the references to antichrist have been established to be the Docetists/Gnostics.

I don’t understand this idea of an actual antichrist. I don’t see anywhere that it [speaks] of a future antichrist. Especially because all the references in the books of John give a significant time statement. (“We know it is the last hour.”)

We’ll come back to the Catechism in a moment, but first I should explain a few of the things Adam references.

 

Docetism

First, he mentions two early groups of heretics. One was the Docetists.

Their name comes from the Greek word Dokein, which means = To Seem.

So the Docetists were people who said that Jesus was a heavenly being who didn’t really have a human nature, he just seemed to be a man.

You can see how that would go along with what John was condemning—the idea that Jesus Christ has not come in the flesh—so it’s plausible that that John was condemning such people as against Christ or antichrists.

The Docetists don’t seem to have been an organized sect, but there were people who held this idea.

We have evidence for them existing in the first century, as the letters of John illustrate, and we have evidence of them existing in the second century also.

While it’s easy to see how John would classify Docetists as antichrists, I don’t think we should limit the antichrist idea to Docetists.

They believed that Jesus was a heavenly spirit, they just didn’t like the idea he had been born in an earthly body.

But suppose someone didn’t like the idea of a heavenly Jesus. Suppose that they had a revelation from a spirit saying that Jesus didn’t come from heaven at all. He was just a man.

If you asked John, would he say that this spirit was also against Christ or antichrist? I think there’s a very good chance he would!

Both saying that Jesus was a spirit with no human body and saying he was just a man who did not come from heaven would attack John’s understanding of Christ, and so they could both be described as antichrist.

So I think we need to be careful about not linking the idea of antichrist with Docetism in particular.

 

Gnosticism

The second group of heretics that Adam mentions are the Gnostics.

Their name comes from the Greek word Gnosis, which means = Knowledge.

So the Gnostics were people who claimed to know the truth.

It’s important to be aware that the term Gnostic is a modern one. The term wasn’t coined until the 1600s, and it was used to refer to a group of people back in the second century who had a collection of different but related ideas.

The Gnostics did not call themselves Gnostics since this is a modern term, and they also weren’t an organized group.

There were actually several groups that scholars now refer to as Gnostics, and they had a variety of ideas.

Many had the idea that the physical world was bad, and you can see how that would lead them in the direction of Docetism, which would qualify them as antichrists under John’s definition.

However, we need to be careful here, too, because we don’t have clear evidence for Gnostics existing in the first century.

It has been proposed that some passages in the New Testament—including in John’s letters—may be interacting with proto-Gnostic ideas, meaning the kind of ideas that later gave rise to the Gnostic movements in the second century.

But we don’t have clear evidence for Gnostics before that time, so we should be careful about too closely identifying John’s antichrists with later Gnosticism.

The Gnostics likely would be classified as antichrists by John, but since he likely lived before them, he likely wasn’t thinking about them specifically when he wrote.

 

The Catechism

Adam is thus right when he says I don’t understand this idea of an actual antichrist. I don’t see anywhere that it [speaks] of a future antichrist.—meaning a single, future individual who is the final villain of world history.

To the extent that the passages in John’s letters refer to Docetists and Gnostics and other types of heretics as against Christ or antichrists, they are not talking about a final, single villain of world history.

John’s language is ambiguous enough that it does not clearly predict such a figure.

On the other hand, he doesn’t exclude the idea of such a figure, either.

And the Catechism seems to reflect this ambiguity. In paragraph 675, the Catechism states:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 675

Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

This passage identifies the Antichrist as a pseudo-messianism in which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

That leaves it open whether antichrist is a movement or whether it is a movement that is headed by a single man.

In paragraph 676, the Catechism continues:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 676

The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment.

Now, as I’ve often pointed out, the authors of the Catechism really missed one, here. I mean, come on! They have paragraph 676 talking about the antichrist? They should have simply adjusted the paragraph numbers by 10 so that it was paragraph 666 talking about the antichrist!

Setting that aside, I think that the Catechism—like the letters of John—is ambiguous about whether the antichrist will be a single man at the head of a larger movement or whether it will just be the movement itself.

Adam also notes that all the references in the books of John give a significant time statement. (“We know it is the last hour.”).

That’s true, but I don’t think that tells us much. The standard interpretation has been that the last hour has been going on throughout the Christian age, and so we couldn’t use this to narrow down the timeframe John is talking about for antichrists to an early period in Church history.

 

John Levi?

Adam then says:

I’ve heard the man of lawlessness was an actual man named John Levi around the year A.D. 70 but have never been able to confirm this.

When I first read this, I was surprised. I mean, who is “John Levi” supposed to be?

“John Levi” is not even a plausible Jewish name since both John and Levi are Jewish proper names, and it’s unlikely that a Jewish person would have two completely different Jewish proper names.

It’s not like John Mark, where John is a Hebrew name and Mark—or Marcus—is a Latin name. Jews who interacted with non-Jews often had one Hebrew name and one Greek or Latin name, but not two Hebrew names.

However, I did some checking, and this resolved the mystery, because it turned out that I know “John Levi” under another name.

Scholars normally call him John of Gischala. His father’s name was Levi, so you could call him John bar Levi or John son of Levi, but he’s normally known as John of Gischala, and he was one of the leaders during the First Jewish War of A.D. 66 to 73.

After Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70, John was captured, sentenced to life imprisonment, taken to Rome, and paraded through the streets.

 

The Man of Lawlessness

But Adam has heard that John of Gischala was the man of lawlessness. So who is that?

The man of lawlessness is a figure mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2, where Paul says:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, ESV

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

So it sounds like Adam has encountered some literature that says that John of Gischala fulfilled this prophecy.

However, this seems very unlikely. John of Gischala was just one of three rebel leaders during the siege of Jerusalem, and I don’t have time in this video to discuss either John of Gischala or the interpretation of 2 Thessalonians in detail, but I will mention two points for now.

First, John of Gischala did not claim to be God, and one of the things Paul says the man of lawlessness will do is proclaim himself to be God.

Second, the idea of a political leader like the man of lawlessness opposing and exalting himself against every so-called god or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God is much more like what Paul would expect someone like a Roman emperor to do.

In fact, the emperor Caligula had done something very much like this before he was assassinated by his palace guard in A.D. 41, just a few years before Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians in A.D. 50.

And later Roman emperors also wanted to be worshipped as gods. That’s one of the key themes of the book of Revelation.

So John of Gischala is not a good candidate for the man of lawlessness.

The most likely interpretation of him is a future political leader who is like Caligula or Nero or the other Roman emperors.

And since emperors are single men, Christians have expected a future man of lawlessness to emerge at some point.

Over time, the term antichrist has expanded in meaning to include this final man of lawlessness, and so this is part of why many Christians expect a final, individual antichrist before the Second Coming.

 

The Role of 1-2 Thessalonians

Adam continues:

I know nobody holds to full preterism but, all the verses in the bible sound like they have been fulfilled and that they were more talking about the destruction of the Jewish temple and age in A.D. 70.

You’ll recall that what Adam calls Full Preterism and what I call = Pantelism claims that all of the prophecies in the Bible—including the Second Coming—have already been fulfilled.

Adam is right that basically nobody holds this view, although there are a few out there.

Adam is also right that there is a plausible case that many Biblical prophecies have been fulfilled, with many having their primary fulfillment in the first century, with the events surrounding the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.

However, many is not all, and I think that there are some that clearly have not been fulfilled.

The idea that they have been fulfilled and that the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him has already happened is one of the things St. Paul is combatting in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, so that is a particularly good place to look for material clarifying whether the day of the Lord has come and thus whether all prophecy has been fulfilled.

A few years ago, I wrote a commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Unfortunately, I haven’t published that commentary yet, but I concluded that the scenario Paul lays out in them has not yet been fulfilled.

 

The Role of Councils

Adam then says:

Sometimes it seems the only reason we hold to the second coming in the future is because of councils but, many of the references they use we can see were actually talking about the end of the Jewish age and not the end of the world.

I agree that many of the passages were talking about the end of an age—what I might call the end of the temple age, since Jewish people still have a place in God’s plan, something Paul talks about in Romans 11—and they have often been mistaken as talking about the end of the world.

However, I wouldn’t dismiss the role of councils.

When Jesus gave the Great Commission in Matthew 28, he said that All authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, so make disciples—or students—of all nations—teaching them to observe all that he had commanded us and assuring us that he will be with us to the end of the age.

I don’t think Jesus abandoned us in A.D. 70, so I think this is a promise that is good until the end of the world, just as Christians have always taken it.

Jesus also said in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit would guide the disciples into all the truth, so Christians have always understood that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are guiding his Church.

At the Holy Spirit’s prompting (Galatians 2:2), the apostles then set an example of how to resolve disputes about doctrine with the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, and so Christians have periodically held ecumenical councils to meet on important issues.

Two of these were the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 and the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.

Together, they hammered out what we call the Nicene Creed, and in it, we confess that Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

We also say, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead.

So the Creed—and thus these councils—identify two prophecies that have not yet been fulfilled: Jesus’ return in glory to judge the living and the dead and the resurrection of the dead.

But this identification isn’t based on the Bible alone. It’s based on Jesus’ promise to guide his Church until the end of the world, his promise that the Holy Spirit would guide the disciples into all truth, and the example set by the apostles of holding councils.

Furthermore, these councils were held in the fourth century, which was the same time that the Holy Spirit was leading the Church into a recognition of which books belong in the New Testament.

Writing in the early fourth century, the historian Eusebius of Caesarea summarized the common opinion of orthodox Christians on the canon of the New Testament, and he divided the books into three classes:

• The accepted books that were accepted by all orthodox Christians.
• The rejected books that were rejected by all orthodox Christians.
• And the disputed books that orthodox Christians had different opinions about. Many of the books in this category are now in the New Testament, but not all of them are.

But by the late fourth century and the early fifth century, a series of popes and local councils had officially taught that all the books we now have in the New Testament are canonical.

So it was in the fourth century—the same time that the Councils met that infallibly defined Christ’s future return and the resurrection of the dead—that the Holy Spirit was also leading the Church do identify which books belong in the Bible.

So why should one trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Church into recognizing which books belong in the New Testament—something that you need to learn about the Second Coming to begin with—and yet not trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Church to correctly recognize simple facts like the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead have not happened yet?

 

Isaiah 27:1, 9

At the end of his message, Adam deals with one final matter, which concerns the current status of the devil. He writes:

I know we all believe the devil is still around, but in Isaiah 27 it says that the devil will be destroyed when the altar is made chalkstone, which happened when the temple was destroyed.

I know Peter says the devil roams like a roaring lion [1 Peter 5:8] but Peter wrote that before A.D. 70, as we know Peter died before the temple was destroyed. Is it possible the devil has been totally destroyed?

Any help on this matter would be great. Thank you

Thanks, and I hope this episode is helpful!

On this matter, I would say a few things.

First, Adam refers to Isaiah 27 as prophesying that the devil will be destroyed when the altar of the Jerusalem temple is made chalkstone and that this happened when the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70.

I would have to say that I would disagree with this interpretation. If you look at Isaiah 27, we find it beginning this way:

Isaiah 27:1, LEB

On that day, Yahweh will punish with his cruel, great and strong sword Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, and Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will kill the sea monster that is in the sea.

So here we have a reference to God punishing Leviathan, who is a sea monster, not the devil.

Leviathan is a snake-like creature that Isaiah refers to as the fleeing serpent and the twisting serpent, but just because something is serpent-like doesn’t make it the devil.

The seraphim mentioned in Isaiah 6 are also like snakes—that’s something I discussed in Episode 273 of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, on flying snakes—but that doesn’t make them devils. They’re guarding God’s throne!

So just because you have something that looks like a snake—whether it’s a seraphim or a sea monster—doesn’t mean you can automatically take it as a reference to the devil.

It may or may not be the devil, but in this case we have another clue that tells us when the prophecy was fulfilled, and it isn’t after the time of Christ.

There’s the part about the altar, where Isaiah says:

Isaiah 27:9, LEB

Therefore by this he [God] will make atonement for the guilt of Jacob,
and this will be all of the fruit of the removal of his [Jacob’s] sin:
when he makes all the stones of the altar like crushed stones of chalk,
no poles of Asherah worship or incense altars will stand.

So this is a prediction of a time when God will remove Jacob or Israel’s guilt by removing his sin.

So what kind of altar are we talking about here?

Well, it’s got to be one at which people were sinning (“the removal of his [Jacob’s] sin”), and it’s associated with using poles of Asherah worship and incense altars.

Asherah was a pagan goddess that some Israelites worshipped in the centuries before the time of Christ, and at various Israelite high places and shrines, you’d find altars of sacrifice, Asherah poles, and incense altars, so that’s what this passage is discussing.

It’s not talking about the altar in Jerusalem being smashed. It’s talking generically about the altar you find at a high place where Asherah worship goes on.

So the passage is predicting a time when God will remove Israel’s guilt from worshipping other gods, when the pagan altars, Asherah poles, and incense altars will be smashed.

That happened centuries before Christ, and so I don’t think this passage is talking about the fall of the devil after the time of Christ at all.

 

1 Peter 5:8

The second passage Adam mentions is 1 Peter 5:8, where Peter writes:

1 Peter 5:8, ESV

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Adam points out that Peter wrote this before the time when the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and questions what it tells us about the status of the devil today.

Well, I think that it’s true that the devil is still active in the world today.

People are still tempted to sin today. In fact, people still sometimes get possessed and need to be exorcized.

If you want to argue that there has been a shift in demonic activity since A.D. 70, I’m fine with that, but I think that the devil is still active in the world.

 

The Current Status of the Devil

So I would agree with Adam that, yes, the devil still exists and is still active ( “I know we all believe the devil is still around”), but I would say that his activity is currently restrained.

Revelation 20:1-3, ESV

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

What I am about to say is my view rather than something mandated by the teaching of the Catholic Church, but Revelation 20 predicts a period in which Satan is bound (“bound him”) in such a way that he can no longer deceive the nations.

This period is said to last for a thousand years, which is a symbolic number meaning a very long period of time, and after this period he must be released for a little while.

Like most Christians throughout history, I identify this period with the bulk of the Christian age, whether you chart its official beginning with the death and resurrection of Christ or the destruction of the temple or the end of the age of persecutions.

The devil has been bound in such a way that he can no longer deceive the nations by stopping the proclamation of the gospel.

Old Testament prophets like Isaiah had predicted that

Isaiah 11:9, ESV

The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Back when Isaiah prophesied that, the world was swallowed in pagan darkness, almost nobody was a monotheist, and the nations were most definitely deceived. The vast majority of people hadn’t even heard of the God of Abraham.

But today, a third of the human race is Christian, half of the human race worships the God of Abraham, and the rest of the global population has heard of him.

So—by comparison to Isaiah’s day—the knowledge of the Lord does cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

But the devil will one day be released for a little while before the Second Coming, and there will be a new persecution of the Christian community.

This is the time of the antichrist that the Catechism speaks of, and it is possible that there will be a final villain—who some call the antichrist, though Paul calls him the man of lawlessness—who will be active at this time.

 

Conclusion

I thus conclude that we need to be careful because of the shifts in how Christian communities use different terms.

In the New Testament, there are only four passages—all in the letters of John—that use the term antichrist, and they do not clearly predict a great, final villain of world history.

However, other passages—like 2 Thessalonians and its man of sin—do predict one.

In later Christian ages, the term antichrist broadened to include the final villain of world history.

The Catechism seems to be deliberately cautious on this point, neither saying that there will for sure be a single man at the head of the devil’s efforts just before the Second Coming nor that there only be an antichrist movement at the time.

There will be an antichrist movement, the only question being whether it will have a single man as its leader.

Personally, I think that there will be.

When it comes to Adam’s final question, “Is it possible the devil has been totally destroyed?,” I would say no.

The devil is still active in the world today, but he has had his power limited so that he can’t presently deceive the nations by stopping the proclamation of the gospel.

There will come a day, however, in which this limit will be removed, and there will be another massive, global persecution of Christians.

We may even be getting near the time when that will happen.

But one thing that I am very confident of is the fact that—even though many prophetic passages in the New Testament have plausible primary fulfillments early in Church history—there are still some prophecies that have not been fulfilled.

As the Nicene Creed indicates, two of these are the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

I think that both of these are clearly taught in the New Testament, and attempts to interpret them as having already happened are not convincing.

The understanding of them as still future is further confirmed by the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church when the councils infallibly defined these points—and by the fact that this was the same time the Holy Spirit was guiding the Church into recognizing which books belong in the New Testament, on which all these prophetic issues hang in the first place.

I thus confess that Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that I look forward to the resurrection of the dead.

I hope this helps!

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