Most people who think of an Antichrist think of the servant of the beast in the Book of Revelation who is yet to come, but in truth, history has been full of anti-Christs. The Apostle John, the Revelator who wrote of the antichrist to come later wrote in his first general epistle:
Little children, . . . ye have heard the antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists . . .. (1 John 1: 1
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is an antichrist: and this is the spirit of antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is in the world. (1 John 4:3)
There is no better place to study the philosophies of antichrist than the Book of Mormon. President Ezra Taft Benson once wrote that the Book of Mormon led people to Christ in two ways: first, it is another testimony that Jesus is the Son of God and who is our Savior; and second, by exposing the enemies of Christ. One particular antichrist is described in the Book of Alma. His name was Korihor and he lived about 75 years before the coming of Jesus Christ to the earth.
Prophets have testified of the coming of a Messiah since the days of Adam. As Children of Israel, the Nephites had records of many of those prophecies. But Korihor was Anti-Christ, for he began to preach unto the people against the prophecies which had been spoken by the prophets, concerning the coming of Christ. (Alma 30:6)
In the land of Zarahemla, the people had freedom of religion and could believe (and even teach) anything they wanted so long as it was what they honestly believed. Thus protected under the law, Korihor began to preach against the coming of a Savior. Here are a few of this philosophies of the day. See if any of them sound familiar today:
- No man can know the future. Therefore prophecies of a coming Messiah were false.
- People who believed such falsehoods were foolish and misguided. (Let's insult your intelligence.)
- You can't know anything that you cannot see or touch or experience through the physical senses. (Radical empiricism)
- You look to a Savior for a remission of your sins, but you have been led by the traditions of your fathers to believe in false hope. Anyone who so believes is coming from a frenzied mind. Such people are deranged. (OK, now let's question your sanity.)
- You don't need remission from your sins because there is no sin. Anything a man chooses to do is all right. ("If it feels good, do it!?)
- Anything a man gets in this life is through his own efforts. (Secular humanism.)
- The people who teach of Christ just want to limit individual freedoms and keep people enslaved to meaningless traditions. So let's push the moral envelope as far as we can.)
Korihor was finally confronted by the chief judge. In his defense, he claimed that if there were a god, he'd believe in Him but since there is no god, he does not believe. Finally after some debate, Korihor tells Alma (for that is the judge's name) that he would be willing to believe if he could have some sort of sign.
Asking God for a sign is not a good practice! Korihor was struck dumb. It was such a powerful experience for him, that he wrote that he knew there was a god because only God could have done this thing to him. He then admitted that he had always known there was a god and that Satan had appeared to him as an angel of light and taught him what to say!
Someone once said that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes, to you, a truth.
Korihor lost his popular appeal and died in poverty. But his negative influence on the Nephite people lived after him. (Adapted from Alma chapter 30 in the Book of Mormon.)
Did you recognize antichrist philosophies that mirror what we are experiencing today. I certainly did. Who are our antichrists today? I recognize many; do you?
Pray for our nation. We, who know Christ and seek to follow Him as true disciples, are this country's (and the world's) only hope.
© Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson, December 2019
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