When I was younger my mom would watch a game show called, To Tell the Truth. The show features a panel of four celebrities attempting to correctly identify a described contestant who has an unusual occupation or experience. The real person was flanked by at least two impostors who would pretend the be the real contestant. The celebrity panelists would ask questions seeking to draw out the impostors.  The impostors can do whatever it takes to pretend to be the one they are looking for, even lying.  However, the real contestant is sworn to tell the truth. After questioning, the panel attempts to identify which of the three challengers is telling the truth which leads to the central character being revealed.  At the end the pronouncment is made, “Would the real _________ please stand up.”

Over the years, well meaning (and some not so well meaning) Christians have sought to figure out who the real Anti-Christ is.  Joe Carter has outlined 7 of the most popular contenders over the years as being Anti-Christ as follows:

1. The Pope

The all-time most popular contender for the title of Antichrist was not any individual but an office—the Roman Catholic Papacy. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Cotton Mather, William Tyndale, and a long list of other Protestants have considered the office of the papacy to be the Antichrist. But that has not stopped some Protestants from assuming that a particular Pope—from Pope Leo X to Pope Benedict XVI—is the Antichrist.

2. Nicolae Jetty Carpathia

Carpathia is the fictional antagonist in the Left Behind book series written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. While no one thinks Carpathia is the actual Antichrist, he is the archetype for what many believe the Antichrist would be like: a charismatic European leader who becomes the head of a global organization (usually the United Nations). Although the sixteen Left Behind novels have done the most to sear the archetype in the public’s imagination, the template was created in the 1970s. In their mega-best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson proposed that the Antichrist would rule over a ten-member or ten-nation European confederacy (similar to the European Union, before it expanded to 27-member states).

3. Nero Caesar

Many Biblical scholars believe that the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18 is a numerical reference to Emperor Nero, whose name in Greek when transliterated into Hebrew, retains the value of 666, whereas his Latin name transliterated into Hebrew, is 616. Even though the label does not appear in the Book of Revelation, Nero has frequently been considered the first—though the first of many—Antichrists.

4. Hitler

For obvious reasons.

5. (Tie) Henry Kissinger / Mikhail Gorbachev

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Secretary of State for the Nixon and Ford Administrations topped the “Most Likely to Be the Antichrist” lists. But Kissinger was bumped in the mid-1980s when the Russian apparatchik Mikhail Gorbachev arrived on the world stage. As a Soviet leader he filled many of the criteria on the Antichrist template (including high poll numbers!), though the strange birthmark was considered an an obvious sign that Gorbachev wore the “mark of the beast.”

6. Napoleon

Tsar Alexander of Russia called Napoleon the “Anti Christ and the enemy of God” because he liberated the Jews. But it was his improbable rise to power, anti-Catholic policies, and unquenchable hunger for conquest that earned the French Emperor his place on the list. For those who believe that Nostradamus predicted the rise of three Antichrists, Napoleon is often considered the obvious candidate to fill the first slot (with Hitler as the obvious #2).

7. (Tie) The American President

Every American president since George Washington has likely been suspected of being the one to usher in the end times. But Gerald Burton Winrod, a pro-Nazi evangelist from Kansas, deserves credit for the modern president-as-Antichrist trend. Winrod believed FDR was a “devil” linked with the Jewish-Communist conspiracy and that Hitler would save Europe from Communism.

Since Winrod’s day, almost every president has landed on the Antichrist suspect list. FDR, JFK, Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have all been named be various individuals and organizations. The one exception to the rule may be Gerald Ford. Despite being a world leader during the height of the 1970s End Times craze, it’s unlikely anyone ever considered Ford a serious contender for the title of Antichrist.

Summary

As Christians let us remember that the idea of a coming Anti-Christ is not to inspire us to find out who this archenemy of Jesus is, but to find our hope in Jesus alone.  This world has nothing for us.  We are sojourners.  We are strangers in a strange land awaiting our promised land.  Let us learn the lessons of past distractions and seek the Kingdom of God through enjoying and obeying Jesus by making disciples of all nations.