Broad meadows

If you were a general waging war and the battle was ongoing, would you step into the fray or would you continue to direct from a distance? The apostle John, the author of the book of Revelation writes in an earlier epistle, “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.” 1 John 2:18. What’s odd is that though he is the only one to use this term in the epistles, he never uses that word in the book of Revelation. It’s not that he doesn’t appear at all there, it’s just hard to know as to exactly when or how this person appears.

The apostle’s warning about the church fixating on the person of antichrist rather than the spirit of antichrist is appropriate for the church today. The battle to be fought for the church is to battle against those ideologies with the truth of the gospel. The answer to the above question is clear that the general only appears on the battlefield when the battle is either won or lost. The apostle writes in verse 22, “Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.” As large as the Church has become, that’s still a lot of people.

By mislabeling the first rider on the white horse, the emphasis of the church shifts to trying to identifying the antichrist. If not now, then when? I think that moment occurs in Revelation 20:7-10 where it’s written, “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth —Gog and Magog —and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” So when? After the thousand years are ended. Not before the millennial reign, but after. That’s when a general steps on the field.