BIBLICAL BRIEFS 85
No. These prophecies do not correspond with the Biblical truth and are therefore false (John 17:17). Firstly: In Gal. 4:25 Paul spells out “the present Jerusalem … she is in slavery with her children.” The Bride of Christ is presently the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21: 2 & 10), and symbolically the believers came to “Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). It is an unbiblical tradition that the present Jerusalem is of any importance with regard to the so-called end time (John 4: 20-24). Secondly, in some translations, the word ‘antichrist’ is proposed as a proper name, which gives the impression that it is a single person, but it is not so. The Message states this correct/right: “You heard that Antichrist is coming. Well, they’re all over the place, antichrists everywhere you look.” From this verse, 1Joh. 2:18, it is clearly stated that the antichrist is a corporate entity which stands against Christ, also a corporate entity. In analogy, the symbolic city of Babylon is opposing the symbolic city of New Jerusalem, which is the symbolic representation of the Bride of Christ. Babylon (= finance, politics and religion) forms the corporation of the false bride. In addition, we know that the spirit of the antichrist is not as much against Christ, but presents itself as in the place of Christ. Thus, the spirit of the Antichrist is the initiatory factor against all who confess that Christ has come in the flesh (that is, not only in Jesus, but also in the Christ), as 2Joh. 1:7 spells out: “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” God came in the flesh in the form of Jesus (we refer to this as the incarnation -” the mystery of godliness … God is revealed in the flesh”- 1Tim. 3:16); but God Himself was also incarnated in Jesus in every believer who is in Christ. 1Joh. 4:3 explicitly says the so-called antichrist is a spirit (not a person) who denies that God came in the flesh of Jesus (like the Jews argued, for example), but also those who deny that Jesus Christ, who is God, is incarnated and manifested and revealed in the flesh of his multiple body, the Bride. The word ‘antichrist’ does not appear once in the book of Revelation (just in the epistles of John, the very same author of Revelation).
Dr Tom Gouws
