The Antichrist is coming and is already here

Editor’s note: This article was first published on Feb. 11, 2025, and is republished here verbatim April 7, 2026.

 

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had 10 horns and seven heads, with 10 crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast — all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

Whoever has ears, let them hear.

“If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”

This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.

— Revelation 13:1–10

 

In The Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, L. Ann Jervis, a retired New Testament professor and Anglican priest, explains the term “antichrist” appears only in 1 John and 2 John. She notes while the term is used sparingly in the Bible, it is part of a sprawling group of images showing the power of evil and its opposition to God’s kingdom through the way of Jesus.

The Hebrew Bible uses the picture of a great sea-serpent-dragon-monster (תַּנִּין, Hebrew tannin), which is used in both literal and mythological senses to describe political rulers and the cosmology of the Ancient Near East. The Tannin represents the watery chaos of the primeval creation before God’s creation activity through God’s Word (John 1:1; Genesis 1:1-2). Jervis notes the figure also represents earthly powers that oppose God, like Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 51:34) and Pharaoh (Ezekiel 32:2).

The most vivid description of this evil monster is in Daniel 7. There, it rises against the Ancient of Days and the mysterious Son of Man in all-out spiritual rebellion, plunging the world into chaos. The figure does not appear again until the close of the biblical canon with Christ’s revelation to the Apostle John. In fulfillment of Jesus’ words, even the elect are deceived there as the world worships the Beast.

As our world continues to plunge into chaos and “the love of many grow cold” (Matthew 24:12), it is high time Christian people everywhere heed John’s sobering warning: The Antichrist is coming and, indeed, already is here (1 John 2:18).

Technocracy and social disintegration

Before his untimely death, evangelical theologian and author John Stott wrote in his classic Why I Am a Christian of the growing dangers he foresaw of our “technocratic” society. Stott warned of “social disintegration” from the uncritical appropriation of power wedded to technological advance and the Enlightenment myth of “progress.”

Although Stott has departed this life, our volatile political and global landscape has vindicated him.

Today, as startling advances in technology have been wedded to the growth of global authoritarianism from China to Russia and the outright assault on civil liberties and the rule of law underway by the current administration, global members of the Christian church (and especially my evangelical kinfolk) are in need of biblical discernment as the spirit of the Antichrist manifests more now than ever.

Technology, Tim LaHaye and the Mark of the Beast

Let me be clear: I am not a dispensationalist. I do not subscribe to the comic book Chick Tract theology of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth or Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind. This caveat notwithstanding, I find it incredibly odd that those who do have uncritically wedded themselves to what may only be described as a political and religious cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump and his new enforcer, Elon Musk.

Coincidentally, Robert Jeffress once remarked of President Barack Obama in the 2010s that the first African American president was “paving the way for the Antichrist.” Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church of Plano, Texas, served on Trump’s first spiritual advisory council.

I suppose the irony is lost on both Jeffress and Graham.

Take, for example, Musk’s recent Neuralink project, which recently gave the very first human being in history an implanted brain chip. Startingly, the patient is a professed evangelical who named his chip “Eve,” joking he feared they would curse the human race as the first human couple did.

Musk is not only creating brain-machine hybrids. He also has touted the goal of turning the company formerly known as Twitter into an “everything app,” recently partnering with Visa to begin developing an X-payment system. Is it any accident that Musk and his acolytes have unilaterally and unconstitutionally seized access to the federal government’s payment system and started to feed data, including from Medicare and Medicaid, into an AI algorithm?

“If I were a dispensationalist, I would immediately begin thinking of Revelation 13:16–17.”

If I were a dispensationalist, I would immediately begin thinking of Revelation 13:16–17, where the world is forced to take the Beast’s Mark on the threat of being unable to buy or sell any goods. Others also have pointed toward the infamous red “MAGA” hat as an example of the biblical forehead designation of fealty to earthly political power.

This alarming trend toward technocratic autocracy is too apparent. Why the dispensationalists of the world do not see this connection and, indeed, have given Trump even more support, may only be explained, in my judgment, by demonic deception.

In short, if I were a dispensationalist, Trump and Musk would be my prime candidates for the Antichrist as the church awaits the forthcoming seven-year tribulation.

This is not hyperbole. I agree with my editor that Trump and Musk are indeed operating in the spirit of the Antichrist and have deceived many. Although I cannot explicitly identify either of them as the “Man of Sin” (see 2 Thessalonians 2), I do, however, want to argue the Bible’s Antichrist language offers us a helpful analytical lenses for our current moment.

Who is like the Beast?

While there are too many examples to name, I need only mention the fawning adoration of Trump from evangelical influencer and right-wing agitator Eric Metaxas, who, following Trump’s recovery from COVID in 2020, tweeted, “Is there anyone liken unto him?”

While I would suggest perhaps Metaxas was oblivious of the whole meaning of this statement of worship taken directly from the world’s acclamation of the Antichrist in John’s apocalyptic vision in Revelation 13:4, I find such a coincidence unlikely given his knowledge of the biblical canon.

Revelation 13 further describes the head of the Beast as being fatally wounded. Afterward, in a Satanic parody of Christ’s Resurrection, the Beast undergoes a seemingly miraculous mock “resurrection.” In the dispensationalist schema, this resurrection will result in global adulation, worship of the figure as divine and a complete tight-fisted control of the world. He thus utters “proud words” and “blasphemies.”

Trump has undergone several mock resurrections. He has survived innumerable sexual scandals, including being found liable for sexual abuse, boasting of his sexual exploits, numerous criminal trials and, perhaps most stunningly, an attempt on his life at the hand of an assassin, which culminated in his declaration at the 2024 Republican National Convention that God had spared his life so that he could save our nation.

With scary biblical accuracy, Trump’s base has only increased in their indefatigable fealty to their “little-l” lord. They have even made idols of him.

After his political resurrection, Trump was subsequently named TIME’s Person of the Year. It seems he is, indeed, the King of the Comeback. I find few explanations for his inexplicable survival instincts save animation by the powers that oppose God and his Christ.

And they made war against the saints

Revelation 13:7 speaks of the Beast making war on the saints.

Musk and Trump have not yet begun a direct persecution of Christians. Indeed, Trump recently established a task force to dismantle what he and his allies have dubbed an anti-Christian bias in government. Without intending exaggeration, this sounds exactly like what an Antichrist figure would do to curry favor with the deceived elect spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24:24.

The Antichrist will say all the right words. Still, meanwhile, he and his enforcer will exercise their evil power to make war on the way of Jesus and his followers.

Arguably, such already has begun. Musk recently attacked Christian churches for allegedly misspending funds in the work of Lutheran and Catholic groups to minister to, feed, water and shelter migrants and refugees. This war against the saints and God’s holy people coincides with Trump and Musk obliterating USAID, which provides life-saving humanitarian support to millions of people around the globe.

Trump’s recent recission of the protections Christian churches formerly had against ICE raids also bears mentioning, as well as his evil proposed program of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip.

This calls for endurance

The Antichrist, as presented in Scripture, represents the incredibly dangerous risk associated with the unchecked authority of powerful figures who wield influence in the economic, technological and political realms. These figures diminish Jesus’ glory and seek to displace him with their own perverted mythos and vision of the world where might makes right.

As such, it is high time evangelicals and other Christians of all stripes perform a self-soul audit: Are we following the way of Jesus, or are we being swept along with the demonic spirit of the age as we yield or conflate devotion to Jesus with devotion to the mocking Beast?

 

David Bumgardner is a graduate of Southwestern Seminary’s Texas Baptist College and a former BNG Clemons Fellow. He resides in North Texas and is currently a graduate theology student at Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio, and a postgraduate student at Edinburgh Theological Seminary.

 

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