Why This Blog?

    This blog is designed to be a place where the mind can freely stretch. If you are accustomed to confining your mind to close quarters, then you will find this blog an uncomfortable place. It is entitled 'Methinks' because these are my musings. I am not setting forth new doctrines. Rather, I am allowing myself to ponder whether old truths have been forgotten or misunderstood, and whether we have developed our own liturgy the same way a horse cart wears a path in a quaint rural road.  
   Here, in this blog you are free to express. The only requirement is that contributions represent a true exchange of ideas, not biases, or emotional responses.
Andrew

Friday, May 30, 2008

666 and antichrist

I must say this is a little pet peeve of mine.  In the debate over '666' many people have accepted a false premise.  The false premise is that the beast represented by 666 is the antichrist.  probably most people would fight you to the death if you told them that the word antichrist doesn't appear in the book of revelation.  It only appears in 1st and 2nd John.  If we assume that the beast is the Catholic church, how can we possibly consider the antichrist to be the beast? consider John's description of the antichrist:

"1Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." - 1 Jn 2:22

"And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come" - 1 Jn 4:3

   Many criticisms I may have of the catholic church, but we certainly cannot convict them of denying the incarnation of Jesus, or Denying the existence of the Father! These were doctrines of the Gnostics, not the catholic church.  Revelation doesn't deal with the Gnostics, and so John does not use the word Antichrist there!

2 comments:

Ang said...

good points Andrew.

Earl Larson said...

I suppose you make a small point. But little good is done by acknowledging anyones existence if you just turn around and nullify it. So that is all the Catholic church is doing is saying that Jesus walked the earth, but what good does He do? The "priest" takes it upon himself to forgive sins. So what good does it do to acknowledge His existence?