In 1 John and 2 John the only use of the word Antichrist that seems to have the idea of an expected future individual in mind is 1 John 2:18.
“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”
For what I'm arguing here the key part of that verse is “ye have heard”, elsewhere in The New Testament expressions like “ye have heard” sometimes (but not always) refer to oral traditions that are in fact wrong, like Matthew 5:43. And when it does seem to be used of an actual quotations of Scripture the implication is still that it was being misused or misunderstood, for example “Eye for an Eye” was always meant to be an expression of restraint not a mandate.
The doctrine of an individual Antichrist does pop up very early in Church history, a fact I stressed back when I was a Futurist. But even as early as the second century wrong ideas were popping up, indeed some of what’s in The Epistles is dealing with bad ideas already popping up.
Marcionism is the Heresy of Marcion of Sinope that the “Old Testament” God is not a benevolent God and has nothing to do with Jesus or The Father that Paul spoke of. What is obviously wrong with that doctrine was quickly deemed Heresy by most Christians including those academics call the “Proto-Orthodox” and is still deemed Heretical to this day by all Chalcedonian, Miaphysite and “Nestorian” Churches as well as even the most rebellious of Low Church Protestants.
However he did manage to be influential, perhaps one of the first Heretics whose real influence came in how even those debunking him conceded to him more ground then they should have.
While literally separating the Old and New Testament Gods is recognized as obvious heresy, a lot of casual discussions of The Bible still maintains a perception that God seems different in The Hebrew Bible. People will talk about it as if He mellowed out or something, and Dispensationalists argue God is operating differently now during the “Church Age” but eventually it will end and we’ll be back in the Old Testament.
The truth is much of what the New Testament has to say about God’s Mercy and Forgiveness and Unconditional Love has its roots in The Hebrew Bible, like in the Psalms and much of Isaiah. The ugliest stuff in the Hebrew Bible still leads to a Happy Ending, it’s Hebrew Prophets who said God’s Punishments are for Correction and His fire a purging fire. And God’s Wrath is by no means absent from the New Testament or even specifically from Paul.
This perception largely comes from The New Testament being shorter in total, especially in terms of actual narrative content. Pop culture focus on stories where God’s Wrath is apparent often purely for entertainment, but in The New Testament we run out of that content quicker not because it’s a smaller percentage of the whole but simply because it’s smaller.
But I also think it’s in some cases made worse by mistakes in how The Hebrew Bible is translated relative to The New Testament. In the Hebrew you are a lot less likely to be confused about “Eye for an Eye” being a law of restraint rather than a mandate.
Back to the topic at hand.
Marcion did in fact have an Eschatology, alongside arguing that Jesus has nothing to do with the Jewish God he also argued that the Jewish God was indeed going to send a conquering Jewish Messiah who will be antithetical to Jesus.
As Gentile Christians among the “Proto-Orthodox” were starting to become Anti-Semitic for their own reasons, it was attractive to adapt what Marcion said into an expectation of a False Messiah who will be antithetical to Jesus.
While modern Futurists are usually depicting The Antichrist as more of a Globalist Savior, with the Islamic Antichrist claiming to be the Mahdi theory being the second most popular model. Some degree of remembering the false Jewish Messiah idea remains.
Christ White wrote a book called “False Christ: Will the Antichrist claim to be the Jewish Messiah” back in the 2010s going all in on that as his main model for understanding the Antichrist (abandoning an earlier interest he had in thinking he’d be a New Age Maitreya figure) and does convincingly argue that all the earliest extra-Biblical Church writings on the subject were focused on a False Jewish Messiah model. Yet those still include no one older than the time of Marcion. The only Non-Biblical Christian Writing with any Eschatology in it that could be older than Marcion is the Didache which on the subject of villains for its End Time scenario refers only to “The World Deceiver" like quoting Revelation 12 in reference to Satan The Dragon.
Christ White’s Biblical argument is largely built on Daniel 11:36-45 which I’ve demonstrated is about ancient BC Rome not a future conqueror. And John 5:43 “another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive”, which I view as fulfilled later in that same Gospel when the Jewish Priests say “We have no King but Caesar” and/or when they called for the freeing of Barabas.
These early fathers liked to see what Jesus said about Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum in Matthew 11:21-24 and Luke 10:13-15 as relevant, I think it's self evident those verses are not about a villain coming from there and are probably fulfilled by these cities being destroyed in the First Jewish-Roman War. Being way up north they were clearly being tied into the whole Dan fixation which is why Chris White doesn’t use those verses in his own argument. I have a prior post on the Tribe of Dan including how prophecies about Dan may have also been fulfilled in the first Jewish-Roman War.
Much of what Chris White does in this book or in Islamic Antichrist Debunked is to correctly argue against the Antichrist relevance of many other popular Prophecies to connect to that topic. But as I just showed the same can be done to the ones he bases his view on.
I’ve already argued on this blog that the Abomination of Desolation Jesus foretold is Hadrian’s statue, and that the Man of Sin in II Thessalonians 2 is all Christian Monarchy and Episcopal Polity.
I have posts on how The Little Horn of Daniel 8 is the Seleucid Dynasty focused on Antiochus Epiphanes and The Little Horn of Daniel 7 is the Byzantine Empire focused on Justinian. And Chris White himself has argued for the final part of Daniel 2 being about events in the Fifth Century though that might be one of his old arguments he’s since reversed.
And I've shown that the 70th Week is entirely 30-37 AD.
In the last verse of Revelation 13, "Number of a man" can arguably be instead translated "number of men" or "number of Man" as in Mankind which is why it's often thought to be thematically linked to Adam being created on the 6th Day. That fits well with my argument that 666=Iapetos given what Iapetos is in Greek Mythology.
In developing my current Eschatology, I have considered a few individual Emperors as candidates for The Beast. But the gist of my Baptism of The Beast thesis is that The Beast is Rome as a collective entity, whose long ongoing Baptism began with the Milvian Bridge and is still in progress right now.
It is what I think about the Beast out of The Earth I’m still working on.
