The Bible prophesies an end-time figure who opposes Christ—the Antichrist—but the meaning of the term antichrists encompasses more than just the end time. This term literally means "against Christ" and is variously defined as "adversary of Christ" or "opponent of Christ" and as a title or proper name for a specific individual who opposes and claims to be Christ.

The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains by Louw and Nida offers a more comprehensive definition:

"The term . . . appears to have become increasingly equivalent to a proper name as the personification of all that was opposed to and contrary to the role and ministry of Christ."

According to the apostle John's writing, there is a spirit of antichrist, which is a spirit of opposition to the identity of Christ. Specifically, he was writing to warn of the dualistic heresy that denied that Christ lived as a physical human being (1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:7).

The Bible does not reveal specifically who the Antichrist is, speaking instead of his corrupt teachings. 

In the first century, most people of Jewish background anticipated a Messiah who would come to the earth as a conquering king to establish the Kingdom of God. But they failed to understand that He would first come as a man who would become the sacrifice for the sins of mankind, and they refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. (The word Messiah is the Hebrew counterpart to the Greek word Christ.) Their doctrine was an example of a spirit of antichrist.

Today, many members of mainstream Christianity make the opposite mistake from the one that the Jews made by accepting that Christ became the perfect sacrifice for sin but denying His coming to the earth as a conquering king. So ironically, even that traditional Christian doctrine can be classified as "antichrist."

End-time prophecies show that religious people—including professing Christians deceived into accepting a counterfeit Christianity—will oppose many of the teachings of Christ. In that real sense, even today, many professing Christians actually have been deceived by a spirit of antichrist.

The Bible does not reveal specifically who the Antichrist is, speaking instead of his corrupt teachings. In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul prophesied of a "man of sin," a liar and deceiver whose natural abilities Satan enhances by supernatural power in order to confuse people in the end time. In addition, Christ inspired John to write of a "false prophet" to come at the end time (Revelation 13:1-18; Revelation 16:13; Revelation 19:20).

Finally, note how the prophecy describes a great religious leader of the end time: "He had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon" (Revelation 13:11). That is to say, he takes on the image of (or imitates) Jesus Christ (the Lamb of God), but is empowered by Satan. Historically, a counterfeit version of Christianity fulfills the types we read of in the prophecies of Revelation.

Search ucg.org for more information about the Antichrist, False Prophet, "man of sin" and the prophesied false teachers at the end of the age.