In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ's place before the Second Coming.[1] The term Antichrist (including one plural form)[2] is found four times in the New Testament, solely in the First and Second Epistle of John.[2] The Antichrist is announced as the one "who denies the Father and the Son."[2]
The similar term pseudokhristos or "false Christ" is also found in the Gospels.[3] In Matthew (chapter 24) and Mark (chapter 13), Jesus alerts his disciples not to be deceived by the false prophets, who will claim themselves to be the Christ, performing "great signs and wonders".[4][5][6] Three other images often associated with the Antichrist are the "little horn" in Daniel's final vision, the "man of sin" in Paul the Apostle's Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, and the Beast of the Sea in the Book of Revelation.[7][8][9]
Antichrist is translated from the combination of two ancient Greek words ἀντί + Χριστός (anti + Christos). In Greek, Χριστός means "anointed one" and the word Christ derives from it.[10] "Ἀντί" means not only anti in the sense of "against" and "opposite of", but also "in place of".[11][12]
Whether the New Testament contains an individual Antichrist is disputed. The Greek term antikhristos originates in 1 John.[13] The similar term pseudokhristos ("False Messiah") is also first found in the New Testament, but never used by Josephus in his accounts of various false messiahs.[14] The concept of an antikhristos is not found in Jewish writings in the period 500 BC–50 AD.[15] However, Bernard McGinn conjectures that the concept may have been generated by the frustration of Jews subject to often-capricious Seleucid or Roman rule, who found the nebulous Jewish idea of a Satan who is more of an opposing angel of God in the heavenly court insufficiently humanised and personalised to be a satisfactory incarnation of evil and threat.[16][unreliable source?]
The five uses of the term "antichrist" or "antichrists" in the Johannine epistles do not clearly present a single latter-day individual Antichrist. The articles "the deceiver" or "the antichrist" are usually seen as marking out a certain category of persons, rather than an individual.[17]
Little children, it is the last hour: and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last hour.