Recently, it seems like it is all the rage to claim that the Antichrist will be a Muslim, or possess a middle eastern ethnicity. Even John MacArthur has recently jumped on the bandwagon. My concern is that Antichrist birthers who are absolutely confident that the Antichrist will be a Muslim fail to recognize the clarity of Scripture when Jesus and Paul taught that the Church will encounter the Antichrist, particularly those of a pretribulational position.
My comments here are not intended to interact with the merits or non-merits of the Muslim claim. My concern is that all-too-often prophecy minded believers seem to have a tendency to filter prophetic Scripture through a secondary issue or passage, not from key texts such as the Olivet Discourse or Paul’s Thessalonian letters.
For example, John MacArthur recently preached dogmatically that the Antichrist will be a Muslim. Yet he will brush off Jesus’ central eschatological teaching on the Olivet Discourse as not applicable to the Church. That is imbalance. That is selectivity that ignores proclaiming the whole counsel of God. That, in short, is Tradition.
How do we determine what is an important doctrine? One of those hermeneutic principles is quite simple: we determine what is important for us if it was important to the biblical authors. So we should ask ourselves, was the ethnic origin of the Antichrist ever important—or even mentioned—by Jesus or the apostle Paul? Nope. Not even a hint. Do we find in Jesus or Paul’s teaching any directive to determine the birth certificate of a claimant Antichrist to establish his legitimacy? No. Instead, we find consistently Jesus and Paul teaching us that we will know who Antichrist is through his actions. How so? Consider the words of Jesus:
“So when you see the abomination of desolation–spoken about by Daniel the prophet—standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),” (Matt 24:15)
Consider Paul’s teaching:
“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not arrive until the rebellion comes and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, and as a result he takes his seat in God’s temple, displaying himself as God.” (2 Thess 2:3–4)
Notice that for Paul and Jesus you will not have to know the ethnicity or the religion of the Antichrist to discern whether he is the real McCoy. You will be able to identify him with certainty by what he does, which is the abomination of the temple through his blasphemous claim to be God, followed by his unprecedented persecution of believers. To miss this point is to step on a dollar to pick up a dime. It is to miss the consistent teaching by Jesus and Paul.
Even our beloved Robert Van Kampen was too dogmatic on the identity of the Antichrist. Indeed, he got the essence of prewrath correct, but in my opinion his exposition on the identity of Antichrist was not necessary, even distracting to some newcomers to the prewrath position.
Could the Antichrist be a Muslim? Possibly. Is there evidence for it? There is some, but not to warrant dogmatism. And certainly not to warrant distraction from the central teaching of our Lord and the apostle Paul.
Let’s major on the majors, and minor in the minors. To write entire books and preach sermons on the identity of the Antichrist, yet miss this central teaching would be a shame.
