The United States, as the self-proclaimed “shining light on the hill,” has always seen itself through apocalyptic eyes. Most Christians prior to the Civil War were postmillennialists, believing in a thousand years of peace before Christ returns. The only thing preventing this golden age ushering Christ’s second coming was the obscene sin of slavery.

Listen carefully to the words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and you will hear this postmillennialist religious fervor.

The bloody carnage of the Civil War decimated the optimism of postmillennialism. Human nature’s capacity for depravity, illustrated on the battlefields, made any illusion of establishing a golden age of peace unachievable.

Historian George Marsden notes that during this post-Civil War era, the theory of dispensationalism with its premillennialist bent (the thousand-year golden age of peace after Christ returns) gained popularity.

Dispensationalism was a bizarre 1870s invention of John Nelson Darby, who divided human history into seven dispensations. Evangelists like D. L. Moody and C. I. Scofield adopted this dispensationalist dogma to create a unique manifestation of Christianity, which was fundamentalist, conservative and very white. Converts were suspicious of any Christianity that emphasized justice or humanitarian initiatives (i.e., the social gospel).

To challenge xenophobia, classism or racism was an attempt to create the thousand-year golden age of peace without Christ.

Because we are saved by grace, not works, lest anyone boast, seeking social justice or emphasizing socialist ideals was akin to embracing some satanic version of Christianity. The good news preached on the Sermon of the Mount was for when we get to heaven, not now. Any attempt to make it a reality on earth was perceived as apostasy.

The concept of an antichrist was one of the contributions created by this new, very white dispensationalist Christian discourse. This was a belief that an actual human would arise in the last days to challenge Christ’s return.

Popular author Hal Lindsey, with his 1970 national best-seller “The Late Great Planet Earth,” erroneously matched the current events of his time with dispensationalist biblical prophecy, predicting the rise of the antichrist and Christ’s return to occur around 1988. Our understanding of the antichrist today has more to do with Lindsey’s fanciable imagination than anything found in the Bible.

When Christ failed to return, an update in theology was needed. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote an extremely popular twelve-book series, “Left Behind,” which made its début in 1995. The third book of the series, “Nicolae: The Rise of the Antichrist,” provided a necessary update. To many, Jenkins’ and LeHaye’s fiction became biblical truth.

The description of the antichrist in the book of Revelation (13:1–10) was never meant to be some oracle for biblical charlatans to make millions of dollars two thousand years later by deciphering its predictions. The writer of Revelation provided a word of comfort to a suffering church facing persecution under the then emperor of Rome – Nero – who personified the concept of one who would be anti (against) Christ.

Using coded language, the writer from Patmos discreetly concealed Nero’s identity, avoiding a more direct approach that could tempt imperial retribution. Readers, however, had no difficulty decrypting the coded language.

To treat the author of Revelation as some Nostradamus, writing conundrums and planting clues about events to occur millennia later, is ill-informed biblical scholarship. Those following this methodology have had to continuously reinterpret arbitrary events to fit their apocalyptic dispensationalists narrative.

Such foretelling of the future would have been useless to a persecuted church in desperate need of a pastoral word for the “now” they were experiencing.

Revelation is a book intended to meet the needs of that ancient church. And yet, the text does have lessons for future generations of believers, not as a predictor of what will happen, but as a warning of the dangers faced by good people in every age who seek peace and justice.

There will always be those who oppose Christ’s message of peace and justice. Every era has political leaders who rise, claiming divinity and engaging in battle with those who sought to implement the teachings of Christ in their lives.

Revelation may have been speaking about one antichrist — Nero — but also warns that many like him will also arise throughout history. Nero was neither the first to be the antithesis of Christ’s message, nor would he be last. Every generation has its Nero, its antichrist.

We will always have antichrists.

When we think of political leaders like Hitler on the extreme right or Stalin at the extreme left, we can think of the antichrists of the previous generation joining the thousands throughout history who fit the description. They did not usher in the Second Coming with an apocalyptic bang and seeing them as filling this role is shortsighted.

They did, nevertheless, usher death, destruction and devastation.

So yes, we have antichrists walking among us today— deceivers claiming anointing from God, carrying big Bibles and wrapping themselves in nationalism. They are hailed by the multitude— mainly those claiming to be Christians— because these believers think they will be safer and more prosperous under the rule of these deceivers.

They blindly follow these antichrists because they have a shared hate for all the same people. And like followers of the antichrists of the past, they too become drunken by the blood of saints, denying the very message of the God they claim to believe and follow.