Fifth. Inasmuch as God’s children will outlast the passing away of all worldliness, they will also outlast and overcome all antichristian elements in this World. For “antichrist” is not an all-powerful person yet to come. To the contrary, it is merely an evil influence — working through many persons.
Indeed, “antichrist” — viz. the influence or the “spirit of antichrist” — was at work even in John’s own day. For, as the Apostle then wrote: “Even now there are many antichrists.”5549 Consequently, there is no such a person as “The Antichrist.”
For “antichrist” is not a modern and still less a yetfuture entity. Far from being a personal international dictator wrongly expected soon to crush Christ’s Church — and also far from being even just the “worldly World” only at the very end of man’s history — “antichrist” is merely