One of the
other arguments used to show that John is referring to some future world leader
is the use “anti” on the front of Antichrist. “Anti” is a preposition, which
can mean in the place or against. Usually what happens is that someone takes
“anti” to mean someone who seeks to replace Christ. Then they are able to find the
Antichrist in all sorts of places he is not mentioned, such as II Thessalonians
2:3-4 and the beast in Revelation 13. Here is long quote from Pastor MacArthur
where he does this exact thing:
“Now
without needing to go into all of the rest of what's in this wonderful section,
we can sort of focus, to begin with, on this matter of Antichrist, a term that
has become very familiar to Christians in this generation, as I'm sure in many
other generations. The word Antichrist is well known to us. It occurs in the
New Testament only in John's letters. It occurs in 1 John several times, and
then it occurs in the seventh verse of 2 John. And though it is limited as a
term to John's epistles, it expresses a
widely known reality that is dealt with in other portions of the Bible, not
only in the New Testament but even in the Old Testament as well. The term
"Antichrist" which John uses is antichristos in the Greek. Christos
obviously means Christ, anti can have two possible
meanings. It is a Greek preposition that can mean either against or in the
place of...against or in the place of. Antichrist can then mean either someone
who is against Christ, or someone who seeks to replace Christ. Someone who is an adversary of Christ, or
someone who is a false representation of Christ. We can take it then to
mean the one who opposes Christ. In that case, the opposition is clear, it is
plain. Or we can take it to mean one who seeks to be put in the place of Christ
and then the opposition becomes more subtle and more disguised. And antichrist
can mean either of those, or both. We don't need to choose between them.
Clearly antichrist is one on some fronts who is openly and overtly against
Christ. That is to say they speak lies concerning Christ, such as in verse 22
that I just read. They deny that Jesus is the Christ, a denial of the nature
and identity and work of Jesus Christ. This is clearly an antichrist perspective.”
D.A. Carson warns against what he calls the “root word” fallacy.[1] This is where the root of a word is used to determine its meaning instead of the context. This is what has happened here. Because “anti” can mean “seeks to replace,” and the person in II Thessalonians seeks to replace God then it must be the Antichrist. However, just because a word can mean something does not mean that it does. The context of I and II John must determine the meaning of antichrist, not the various uses of “anti.” I and II John are clear on the character traits of antichrists. They are false teachers, who have left the Apostles, gone out into the world, so that they might deceive churches by teaching that Jesus did not come in the flesh and that he is not the Christ. Of course, Pastor MacArthur will agree with these points, but by using “anti” he can drag in another point, that Antichrist is the beast and man of lawlessness, which is foreign to I and II John.
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