A word appearing only in Christian contexts, and in the NT only in 1 John 2:18 , 22 ; 4:3 ; 2 John 7 ; hence probably coined by the author of these Epistles. In these passages the term has a historical application to false teachers, especially Gnostics ( cf. 1 John 4:2 , 3 ), in the churches of Asia Minor in the last part of the first century, who appear to have taught the Docetic doctrine that Christ was only an appearance and not truly human. However, the theme of an antichrist is much broader, and the term has been used to refer to powers that set themselves in opposition to the plan of salvation ( cf. Ellen G. White, in SDACom 7:950). The figure of a great antagonist of God appears elsewhere, for example in 2 Thess. 2:1–4 and in the prophecies of Revelation. Repeatedly Christ is portrayed as victor over this power at His second coming ( 2 Thess. 2:8 ; Rev. 17:14 ; 19:19 , 20 ).
The concept of a supernatural and primeval antagonist of Yahweh is found in the OT in figures such as leviathan, Rahab, and the multiheaded dragon (as in Isa. 27:1 ). This antagonist is both primeval and eschatological, and is symbolic of Satan (see SDADic 278, 649, 901). Similar figures are carried on into Jewish apocalyptic; thus in the Dead Sea scrolls two personalities appear oriented against God-the Evil Priest and the Man of the Lie (oldest evidence probably in 4Q Test ). Possibly these parallel, negatively, the two messianic figures also found in that literature, the messiahs of Aaron and Israel, and thus may have been a kind of “anti-messiah” or “antichrist.”
In Christian history the epithet “antichrist” has been applied to a variety of historical personages and institutions, for example, to Nero, to various popes and emperors, and to vague figures expected to arise in the East. Not infrequently he has been anticipated as a Jew from the tribe of Dan. The identification with the papacy goes back at least to Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg (1200–1246), during the controversy between Frederick II and Gregory IX. A similar point of view was popular among the spiritual Franciscans, influenced by the prophetic interpretations of Joachim of Floris (who expected the antichrist to be a false, heretical pope). John Wycliffe and Jan Hus adopted this interpretation, which appears also among the Waldenses. With the Reformation the idea that the papacy was the antichrist became a general Protestant tenet. Luther wrote it into the Articles of Schmalkald (1537). It remained a characteristic article of Protestant prophetic interpretation from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Seventh-day Adventists similarly have applied the word “antichrist” to the papacy (for example, J. N. Andrews, in Signs of the Times 7:463, Oct. 13, 1881). They call “spiritualism” the “manifestation of antichrist” ( PP 686). They regard Satan, the author of rebellion in heaven, as the antichrist par excellence ( 9T 229, 230), and identify him as the “mystery of iniquity” ( TM 365; cf. 2 Thess. 2:7 ), who will claim to be God and deceive people by his miracles ( 5T 698; 6T 14; 8T 27, 28; 9T 16; TM 62, 364, 365; GC 624; SDACom 7:975).