THE IDENTITY OF ANTICHRIST… REVEALED!

2007-12-28T13:34:00.001+02:00

Many scholars tried until today to reckon the cryptic meaning of “666” and reveal the real identity of the “Antichrist”. "Who is the Antichrist?" was their question.

Most of them tried to identify 666 with a VIP of their own times. Very few of them –if any– cared to check if “666” were a carefully coded marker for some person living when Apostle John wrote Revelation! This was very short-sighted, because all “signs” presented in Revelation are matched with amazing precision, if we turn our gaze towards the Roman Emperor who ruled Rome when Revelation was written.

This emperor is Titus Vespasian Augustus – and he was the Antichrist!

Titus matches so perfectly with “666”, we are forced to disregard Revelation as a prophetic text from now and on. With this in mind, it is clear that Revelation is nothing more than some kind of underground religious agitprop of its time!

Lets cut short to the facts…

First of all, Revelation portrays “Beast” as having “seven heads and ten horns and wearing ten crowns” (Revelation, 13.1). “Coincidentally", Titus was the seventh great emperor of the Roman Empire (after August, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudio, Nero and Vespasian), while three more "small emperors” tried to take over Rome's throne, after Nero's suicide. These three "small emperors" was Otho, Galba and Vitellius, and they “reigned” in the “Year of Four Emperors” (69AD). There are exactly 10 "Crowns", but only 7 great "Heads", in Roman Empire until Revelation was written.

In Revelation 13.3, we find that one of the heads of the “Beast” is mortally wounded by some unidentified blow. The Beast soon afterwards is cured and becomes even more powerful ("και είδον μίαν των κεφαλών αυτού ως πεπληγωμένην θανατηφόρως, και η θαναφόρος πληγή αυτού εθεραπεύθη και εθαύμασεν όλη η γη οπίσω του Θηρίου” in greek original text, meaning “and I saw one of the heads [of the Beast] mortally wounded. And his lethal wound was cured, and all of Earth behind of the Beast marveled”).

Once again, the “Beast” is the Roman Empire and its heads are its Emperors:
Christians, as other subordinates of the Roman Empire, always considered Roman Empire as a powerful entity no person could dare stand against. This entity sometimes claimed their lives, sometimes made them suffer and sometimes asked for their total, body and soul, obedience. But, Roman Empire was not always like this. Under the rule of honest Emperors like Vespasian, it became a very civilized and organized kingdom. It changed to a “Beast’ only when dangerous madmen like Nero were in its helm. Madmen who wanted to be worshiped like gods and who tried to suppress any mental or actual freedom of their people.

This powerful “Beast” lifted its ugly head when Nero was in power, but suffered a “deadly blow” when Nero committed suicide in 69 AD. And, since there was no heir to Nero’s throne, a very unstable political situation followed for the Empire.Three would-be emperors tried to take over the throne to the Empire, waging war on each other for about a year. During that year, many people believed that this could be the end of the Empire.

Vespasian, the Emperor who finally took over, restored Empire’s power but avoided Nero’s illusions of grandeur. He denied to be worshiped as a God. He was a sincere man who cared for the people. Even Jews regarded him highly. Vespasian served for a time as procurator for Judea; he is remembered by Jews as a fair and humane official, in contrast to the notorious Herod the Great! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespasian)

Soon after Vespasian’s death, Empire’s ugly head seemed to be raised again when his son, Titus, proclaimed himself as God. The “fatal wound” to the Roman Beast caused by Nero’s death was miraculously “cured” and another Emperor seemed to go down Nero’s crazy road again. (That was also the time when Revelation was written – a very interesting coincidence, don’t you agree?)

What will you think if this blasphemous Emperor, was the same one that stood in “Armageddon”?

In Revelation 16.16 we find that the “Final Battle” is going to occur to “Armageddon”. Ar-mageddon (“Har Megiddo”=“mountain of Megido”) is a hill somewhere outside Jerusalem, and a place of great historical significance to the Jews. Two important battles for Jewish history occurred there against the Egyptians, at 15th and 7th centuries BC.

Most important of all, Armageddon was the place where the roman army gathered in 67 AD, just before the invasion of Jerusalem. There was the base of a Roman military campaign with the primary objective to quench a very powerful Jewish ”terrorist” uprising unfolding in Jerusalem. This operation led to the final destruction of the Great Temple of Solomon in 70 AD. Head of roman forces was General Titus.

(In this painting of Wilhelm von Kaulbach, we see the destruction of Jerusalem, a real Revelation for a lot of people of its time. Titus is the Roman General on horseback to the right.)

I think that it is now crystal clear that the “Beast”, with it’s “seven heads and ten horns and wearing ten crowns” is the Roman Empire. And its herald, the 666, is the Emperor who stood in Armageddon, Titus!

After his very successful campaign against the “Jewish terrorists”, that left more than one million people dead(!), Titus returned victorious to Rome. He became very popular and few years later, in 79 AD, he became Emperor of Rome. He was so popular that many Romans called him as «favorite man of the human race». Even Christians respected him and often cherished him, because he was reputable, good natured and –above all– he didn’t persecute them…

But Titus, soon after he became Emperor, dared something so blasphemous he reminded Christians of their most hated persecutor, Emperor Nero: Titus, as “Pontifex Maximus” (Arch Priest) of the Empire, asked to be worshiped as a God!

The facts doesn’t end here! Let’s see some more:

John says that Antichrist will remain in power only 3.5 years. Titus remained in power for 3 years, in 79-80-81 AD. He didn’t last longer, because in 81 AD died mysteriously. He was succeeded by his brother, Domitian, who proclaimed himself as a God, too, and prosecuted Christians like no other emperor.
Revelation refers several times to some“Scarlet Woman” (Revelation, 12.1, 17.3) and calls her also “Whore of Babylon”. She has, in Revelation, a special relationship with the “Beast”. Who would be that “Red Woman”? Once again Titus has an amazing match: His mistress was the very beautiful jewish princess Berenice, sister of Herod Agrippa! Several people of that times called Berenice “the New Cleopatra” and ”whore of Babylon”. She was very unpopular to Christians and Jews, and assuredly to Apostle John, who was both a jew and a Christian!
Amazingly, just one month after Titus came to power, the exact same time Revelation was allegedly written, the volcano of Vesuvius exploded. This explosion destroyed the cities of Pompeii, Heraklion, Stavies and Oplontis! It was a real “end of the world”, which shocked the Empire for many months!
Several numberologists calculated the name of Titus as equal to 666.
One more interesting detail: Titus looked a lot like Nero! Their resemblance was amazing! So, some people certainly saw in the face of Titus the return of Nero, Christendom’s most evil adversary…

(To the left we see Nero and to the right stands Titus. Their resemblance is also evident in roman coins etc.)

After all these "coincidences", can we really avoid the question: Is Revelation, just an Apostle John’s warning to Christians that they should not trust Titus?

We must also remember that Titus was the murderer of Jerusalem and the destroyer of the Temple of Solomon. The at least 80 years old Apostle John was always a Jew, so he had all the reasons to hate Titus.

Do you still believe that Tito was not the real Antichrist?

«Let he who have understanding reckon the number –name– of the Beast» asks John. How can someone reckon a name, if he is not the name of a real, historical and existing person?

Finally, we have to say that as far as the 8th century AD, Revelation wasn't accepted among the texts of Christian Canon, for a number of important reasons:

All Christian texts were optimistic and full of positive messages, except Revelation, which is full of slaughter, death and war.
Revelation shares many inelegant "similarities" with Daniel prophesies.
The spirit of Love and Forgiveness in not at all present in it.
It is not confirmed that "John" who wrote Revelation was the same with Apostle John...

So, the first official acceptance of Revelation as an canonical text came only after 419AD, after Synod of Carthage. The debate around its acceptance lasted as long as the 8th century AD.

Maybe the early Christians knew the true propagandist nature of Revelation, and that's why they hesitated so long to accept it as a true Christian text.

Today, a very big part of Christian Mythos -and of Church's intimidation of the faithful- is based in Revelation, so this dark and gory virus-tale have superseded all other texts of Christianity and haunts with its grizzly visions that formely full of hope christian mind...
Maybe it's time its reign to end?

John's Revelation: Just some age-old superhero comics?

2007-11-17T23:38:00.000+02:00

Recently, I was guest in a greek TV show where the subject matter was two greek books that argue that “Antichrist”, whose coming is prophesied in Saint John’s Revelation, will appear in 2012 and the “End of the World” will soon follow. The writers of those books (Theodosios Efstathiou and Father Maximos) are strong believers in Holy Scripture’s infallibility, and their views are based on it.

In that TV show were also 6 or 7 theologians along some other people, all of them “strong believers”.

I was the only non believer among them; so whenever I tried to raise any objection, I was interrupted with hostile manner. So, I had to become aggressive. At some point I came to say that the whole issue of “Antichrist” and of the “End of the World” –since it was based solely on the Christian mythology (Scripture) and there wasn’t any observable ties of this with reality– has the same degree of seriousness as super-hero comics have.

You know how it goes: “Antichrist” seems to be the arch-villain who wants to destroy the world and “Christ” is Superman who comes to fight him! Only difference is that today we pay US dollars to read comics by ourselves, yesterday we had to submit fully to some priest to preach his stories to us.

I hadn’t the time needed to argue that today’s comics are as well-written as the Holy Scriptures. Also, I couldn’t show that some comics, such as Marvel’s and DC’s, have fully developed theologies and they introduce powerful and well-thought deities –i.e. “Celestials” or “Galactus”- leading complex hierarchies of super-beings, reminiscing Angels.

All I wanted to say was if comics are discovered after thousands of years by some future archaeologist, I am fully certain he will think that today’s people have superpowers, can fly, and they are in daily contact with aliens and other “higher entities”!

I am very sure that if this future archaeologist will be prone to believe everything he reads, like a lot of today’s people, he would accept Superman and Spiderman as real existing persons who are some kind of supernatural saints!

So, what is there to argue we don’t make the same mistake with Bible?

What is there to believe Revelation isn’t some age-old sort of superhero comics?

It is very easy to make a theology similar to these of the three monotheistic religions (which some people consider to be “theopnefstes” – “given from God”). Sufficient proof to this is that some today’s corporations created their own theologies, with holy persons and saints so inspired and loved as Superman, Batman and Spiderman...

A final observation from this comparison of comics and John’s Revelation: Any comic company that comes through a period of bad sales tries to set up a Big Event, some cataclysmic and “ultimate” showdown of the mega-forces of their universes that will catch reader imagination and boost their sales.

I cannot avoid thinking Revelation as that Big comic Event, written in a period that there were a lot of internal problems in the new-founded Christian Church (that’s why John starts Revelation with some warnings to the seven Churches of his time), a time when the promise of Jesus’ Second Coming also started to seem improbable (Jesus said will return while most of his original 12 Apostles were still alive - clearly he didn’t keep that promise) and some roman Emperors like Nero expressed openly and brutally their hatred against Christian followers…

So, just like “Captain America” beat the hell out of Hitler in 1940’s comics, Jesus also beats the hell out of some amazing beasts with many heads and world-ending powers and their armies of evil henchmen in Revelation.

And you don’t have to be a very wise to think that “Beast” and “Babylon” were just metaphors for the Roman Emperor and Rome itself, metaphors that some holy comics company CEOs thought better be forgotten…

Virus Mind

THE IDENTITY OF ANTICHRIST… REVEALED!

John's Revelation: Just some age-old superhero comics?