The individual Antichrist doctrine is a Marcionite Heresy

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 quotation 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 the vast majority of 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 that will end and He'll go all "Old Testament" again. 

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 is aided by The New Testament being shorter in total, especially in terms of actual narrative content.  Popular Culture focuses 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 an idiom 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.  This is recorded by Tertullian in Book 3 of his Against Maricon starting in Chapter 6. 

As Gentile Christians among the “Proto-Orthodox” slowly started to become hostile to Judaism 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.  I suspect part of the reason the innate Antisemitism of Marcionism gets white washed so easily is because of how often the Proto-Orthodox refutations of him we have are not exactly philosemitic, instead it's Antisemitic Christians fighting over whether Judaism was always a false religion or only became false.  

While modern Futurists are usually depicting The Antichrist as more of a Globalist False 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.  Even in the Left Behind books/films there is a plotline that involved trying to claim Nicolae Carpathia somehow fulfills Hebrew Bible Prophecies. 

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" likely quoting Revelation 12 in reference to 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 Barabbas. 

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 or perhaps during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.  Being way up north they were quickly 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 Prophecieslike The Assyrian.  But the same can be done to the popular "Antichrist" prophecies he bases his view on as well.

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. 

https://bibleprophecytalk.com/daniel-2-31-49-nephilm-toes-or-the-end-of-rome-nebuchadnezzars-dream-2/

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. 

Ezekiel 37 is about The Bodily Resurrection of The Dead

As I said before I happen to be a Zionist for Secular reasons but no longer hold the Bible Prophecy expectations associated with “Christian Zionism”, especially not its Futurist Premillennial Dispensationalist forms.

I'm not inherently hostile to the idea that Modern Israel could have a role to play in the few Bible Prophecies I view as not already fulfilled yet.  But I don’t expect a Third Temple or some revival where they all convert to Christianity prior to The Parousia. When it happens The Parousia will affect every nation, so if you are in Israel when it happens you will have an arguably special front row seat view of it, but every eye will see Him. 

Conservative Evangelicals have a tendency to side with the Revisionist Maximalists in terms of what the borders of Israel should be, but I’ve debunked that reasoning on my other blog.

What really bugs me about the Eschatology of many Christian Zionists is how they twist Ezekiel 37 in order to make it about 1948.

While contemporary Christian Zionism is viewed as mostly the domain of Pre-Trib Dispensationalism, it began among Puritans with a predominantly Historicist Eschatology.  However the most consistently hostile to Zionism is Full Preterism.  All forms of Christian Zionism exist in frameworks that are supposed to be built on stressing a literal physical bodily view of the General Resurrection of The Dead. 

And yet they wind up taking one of the most graphically explicit Hebrew Bible visuals of that literal bodily Resurrection, and allegorizing it the same way many Full Preterists do. Full Preterists agree with the Dry Bones of Ezekiel 37 being a picture of a rebirth of the Nation of Israel, however as Supersessionists they view that rebirth as the birth of The Church.

The core fallacy here is a refusal to accept that a Prophecy can be multiple things at once.  

Yes Ezekiel 37 is putting a focus on how this will be a rebirth and reunification for Israel as a Nation.  But it is a renewal happening because all these dead Israelites of past generations are alive again.  Including David specifically singled out for reference, which Christian commentators keep saying simply represents Jesus here but I disagree, it is David himself Risen, Jesus in this chapter is YHWH, the one breathing the Breath of Life into them like back in Genesis 2. 

Because Pre-Trib is the most well known form of Futurism currently, Full Preterists love to cling to how they technically interpret Ezekiel 37 the same way and point out the absurdity of separating that Resurrection Prophecy from all the others.

The Resurrection is not a metaphor for national revival, it is the cause of it. 

Update January 9th 2026: The Word of The LORD.

I have long been of the view every time in a Prophetic Book we read "the Word of The LORD came unto me saying" or a variant of that, it means a new Prophecy is starting.  But I failed to factor that into this analysis of Ezekiel 37. 

The Dry Bones Vision is part of a Prophecy that begins in Ezekiel 36:16 and ends in 37:14. David is mentioned by name in properly different Prophecy that is Ezekiel 37:15-28. 

The latter more then half of Ezekiel 36 does sound like it could be about modern Israeli history, but it could also be something else.  Either way the Dry Bones Vision happens further forward into the future.

The last part of Ezekiel 37 could till also be about event contemporary with or following the General Resurrection, in fact it sounds a lot like Revelation 21-22. So I think does happen to follow the Dry Bones, but it doesn't textually have to.