Could The Antichrist be American?

Disclaimer: This is NOT in any way me trying to defend the Barack Obama as the Antichrist nonsense.  Quite the contrary what has largely inspired this post is my suspicion that the Antichrist will probably come from the political right (and America is still the most conservative western nation).  That he'll convince many Evangelicals he's one of us, or at least be the kind of politician too many of us tend to be too easily suckered in by.  Obama is horrible, but not in my view Antichrist material.

This post is kind of a follow up to The Lost Tribes and Bible Prophecy.  Which was itself a follow up to earlier posts of this blog.  Thing is, if The Antichrist is the head of a western nation that comes to Israel's aid (being her ally at first but turning on her later) like Chris White and I in different ways suspect.  Right now it seems the United States of America is the by far the most likely nation to do that.  That doesn't prove anything because circumstances could change, but it's worth looking at.

Objections to the idea of The Antichrist being a United States President, or American in anyway, that are actually Biblical, tend to come purely down to passages taken as proving he does come from somewhere else.

I agree with Chris White's arguments against the Assyrian Antichrist. but not with his arguments against a Roman Antichrist.  However America does have a Roman legacy as much as Europe.  I think it's possible that the Little Horn in Daniel 7 isn't just the individual of The Antichrist, but also an 11th Nation.  The U.S. as that 11th Nation could work quite well.

Chris White also insists Daniel 8 proves The Antichrist must come from the region of the nations conquered by Alexander The Great.  But as I've argued elsewhere I believe that connection is genealogical not geographical.  (Though it is interesting the exiled Royal Family of modern Greece is living in New York, the youngest members of it including the current second in line to the throne were born here and thus under the 14th Amendment have American citizenship.  But at this point I see no solid reason to accuse any of them, it seems unlikely any would seek to run for an American political office.)

So I see no solid reason to limit where he could come from.

In terms of the potential relationship to the Hersey that Western Nations are the inheritors of the Northern Kingdom.  Britam (drawing on earlier ideas) affiliates the U.S. with Manasseh and the U.K. with Ephraim.  It's interesting that the Continental United States is divided between east and west by a major river (Mississippi) just as the lands allotted to Manasseh were by the Jordan.

But a stronger thematic connection is that Gideon (the greatest hero of the Tribe of Manasseh) can be compared to George Washington.  Both men after being the military leaders of successful rebellions were offered Kingship but turned it down.  And also both later became symbolically affiliated with a Tree.

It's interesting then to return to the role both White and I feel the false Psalm 83 War belief could play.  Psalm 83 makes an allusion to the narrative of Gideon, which leads to a desire to affiliate that Psalm with a call for a "New Gideon", which plays into the Messiah Ben-Joseph concept quite well.

(Update: I've done another post on the Manasseh connection.)

In the Edom=Rome study I talk about how the Eagle was a major Symbol of Rome and became a major Western Symbol from that.  I also talked about how UnBiblical the idea of the Eagle being linked to Dan is, and pointed to passages linking it to Edom.  There is however one interesting Bible Prophecy that can justify linking the Eagle to the Northern Kingdom.  Micah chapter 1 is a Prophecy mainly against Samaria.  At the end in verse 16 it says.

"Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee."

The Eagle as I said has been a symbol of The West for centuries.  But the sub-species known as the Bald Eagle is indigenous to the New World, which is why it was chosen to be a specific symbol of the United States of America.   Yet we have here Samaria being represented as a bald eagle in a time long before Columbus.

So I'm not saying The Antichrist certainly will be American, but I think Believers need to be more open to the possibility that he could be.

Satan I believe has been laying the groundwork for every possible option.  And that American politically conservative Christians tend to marry their Faith and their Patriotism is something I consider a major problem.  I call it Patriotic Idolatry, and definitely a form of the Sin of Pergamos.

And while Evangelicals love to preach against Mormon Hersey, they are very surprisingly willing to jump into bed with Mormons politically, when it comes to "Family Values" and other things.  Mormons meanwhile have their Prophecy of a Rider on a White Horse, who'll become both President of the U.S. and Prophet of the Mormon Church at the same time, and "Save" the Constitution when it "hangs by a thread" by creating a Mormon Theocracy.  Regardless of those concerns Evangelicals got behind Mitt Romney in 2012 and I fear may again in 2016.  The Mormons also in-cooperate seeing America as Manasseh into their doctrine, and have even used the Messiah Ben-Joseph concept in their own weird way.

That rant doesn't mean I think it must be a Mormon who becomes an American Antichrist.  That's just one option.

Back during the period just before and after 2000 there was a popular trend of making many independently produced Christian movies depicting the End Times (almost all with Pre-Trib suppositions), and with them were also books.  These works also reflected this dangerous marrying of faith and patriotism, which I've already complained about.  By having the U.S. be one of the few countries who manages to rebel against The Antichrist.

Two of those films go so far as to feature a President of the United States as a Hero standing up against The Antichrist.

First is Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, (a Sequel to the first movie only in having the same actor as it's Antichrist).  That movie even makes it's hero the Antichrist's brother.  Somehow one brother becomes President of the E.U. and the other President of the U.S.

In Left Behind: World At War (based on left over plot-lines of the second book), the President is African American, which I give them credit for.  But also this time he does in fact die in his battle with The Antichrist.

Reason this is significant is that I think there will be a decoy Antichrist (maybe more then one) who will have an adversarial relationship with the real one.  He's The Terrible of The Nations in Ezekiel.  And I argued in my Four Horseman study that I think this individual could be who gives The Antichrist his mortal wound.

I know these authors might hate to think their own works may unwittingly help The Antichrist.  But I'm afraid that may very well happen.

Being Pre-Trib is frankly the least of Left Behind's problems

With the new Left Behind movie about to come out a lot of bloggers and websites are complaining.  Within the Church the negative comments about it mostly come from people who are irritated with Pre-Tribulationisim.  But as someone who's also not Pre-Trib, I don't even find that it's most annoying trait.  Same with other Pre-Trib based End Times fiction.  I haven't read all of it of course, but still I get the gist of what it's world is like.

None of these works of fiction about the Pre-Trib Rapture actually acknowledge the whole dispensational point of the uniqueness of The Church that lies behind it, and any view but Post-Trib or Preterisim/Amillennialisim.  There is no exploration of the fact that these post-Rapture believers lack certain promises that we of The Church have.  The problem is that these writers are probably all Cessationists, so to them The Church lost most of it's unique promises in the 1st Century.  I believe during the era just before The Rapture the 144,000 will be surpassing what the earliest Christians did just after Pentecost.

The simple fact that it's always obvious who The Antichrist is right from the start of The 70th Week is a problem to me.  Paul makes a point that the Abomination of Desolation incident is what identifies him.  And I believe there is good reason to expect there to be Decoy Antichrists during the first half of the 70th Week, among them The Terrible of The Nations.  So even from a writing perspective, why not have a few possible Antichrist and let readers argue over who it'll be.

They also tend to reflect how American Evangelicals have married their Faith to their Patriotism and political Conservatism way to much.  Of course The Antichrist is always the ultimate European Liberal (the End Times movie fad ended before the Mahdi thing really took off).

I'll be posting in the future on why I think End Times fiction that makes the President of the United States a hero who opposes The Antichrist and then gets killed by him is in fact potentially dangerous.

Along with that having an Antichrist who's Russian(ish), having video conferences with East Asian leaders as he destroys the U.S.  It's like they don't know the Cold War ended, and was only a fraud propped up by the Military Industrial Complex to begin with.

Also like a lot of Christian fiction it seems to come off unintentionally Calvinist.  Simply because the people who will or won't be saved are predestined by the writer.

There is a limit to how sinful they allow the characters who will latter become saved and members of the "Tribulation Force" to get.  The Airplane pilot stops short of actually committing adultery with the sexy stewardess.  I'd like to see a character analogous to Paul, who was a full blown enemy of The Gospel before being saved.

And then there is how they treat Homosexuality.  That they depict it as a Sin is sadly of course expected, but no Gay character ever becomes saved either, they're just there to be a problem for our protagonists until they suffer a horrible "deserved" death.  As if the writers agree with the insane position of some Baptists that being engaged in Homosexual activity is evidence of being no longer eligible for Salvation.

Both Christian writers and Secular Hollywood writers have trouble understanding the people who disagree with them.  But in all honesty it seems to me like the Left tends to make a better effort to at least try.