Appendix G: The Beast, the Antichrist, and the Man of Lawlessness --- One Figure or Many?

One of the most contested questions in eschatology is whether these three biblical designations describe the same end-time figure or distinct entities. This appendix maps the identifications across Daniel, 2 Thessalonians, 1-2 John, and Revelation to examine the evidence.

The Biblical Terms

The New Testament uses several distinct terms for the end-time adversary of Christ:

Term	Greek	Frequency	Key Passages
Antichrist	antichristos (ἀντίχριστος)	1 John 2:18 (twice), 22; 4:3; 2 John 7	5 occurrences in 4 verses — nowhere else in the NT
Man of Sin	anthrōpos tēs hamartias (ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἁμαρτίας)	2 Thessalonians 2:3	Received Text (KJV) reading
Man of Lawlessness	anthrōpos tēs anomias (ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας)	2 Thessalonians 2:3	Critical-text reading (NA28/SBLGNT)
The Wicked	ho anomos (ὁ ἄνομος)	2 Thessalonians 2:8	The revealer
The Beast	to thērion (τὸ θηρίον)	Revelation 11:7; 13:1-10; 14:9; 15:2; 16:2, 10, 13; 17:3-17; 19:19; 20:4, 10	36+ occurrences in Revelation
The Little Horn	qeren… zəʿêrāh (קֶרֶן… זְעֵירָה)	Daniel 7:8, 20-25	”Eyes like man, mouth speaking great things”
False Prophet	pseudoprophētēs (ψευδοπροφήτης)	Revelation 16:13; 19:20; 20:10	Distinct from beast
Babylon	Babylōn (Βαβυλών)	Revelation 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2, 10, 21	The city/system

The Case for Identification (Same Figure)

The traditional interpretation holds that antichrist, man of sin, and the beast all describe a single end-time individual.

1. Shared Attributes

All three figures share these characteristics:

Attribute	Man of Sin (2 Thess 2)	Antichrist (1-2 John)	Beast (Revelation 13)
Exalts self above God	”exalteth himself above all that is called God"	"denieth the Father and the Son"	"made war with the saints”
Deceptive signs	”with all power and signs and lying wonders"	"many false prophets"	"two-horned beast… does great signs”
Destruction at Christ’s return	”whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth”	N/A	”thrown alive into lake of fire” (19:20)
Temple/sacrilege	”sitteth in the temple of God”	N/A	”opened his mouth unto blasphemies”

2. Literary Continuity

The authors of these texts were aware of each other’s terminology:

John wrote after Paul; his use of “antichrist” may build on Paul’s “man of sin”
The beast “from the sea” (13:1) echoes Daniel’s beasts “from the great sea” (Daniel 7:3)
The description of the beast receiving “his power, and his seat, and great authority” (13:2) parallels the “throne” language of Daniel 7

3. The Sequence Argument

If these are the same figure, the eschatological sequence is coherent:

The man of sin is “revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)
He “opposes” and “exalts himself” above God
The beast makes war against the saints (Revelation 13:7)
Christ returns and the Lord “shall consume with the spirit of his mouth” (2 Thessalonians 2:8)
The beast is thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20)

This produces a single adversarial figure whose career spans the tribulation and ends at Christ’s return.

The Case for Distinction (Different Figures)

A growing number of scholars argue these terms describe different entities.

1. Daniel’s Beasts Are Kingdoms, Not Individuals

In Daniel 7, the four beasts clearly represent kingdoms, not individuals:

“These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.” (Daniel 7:17)

“Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth…” (Daniel 7:23)

If the beast of Revelation 13 inherits this imagery from Daniel, it likely represents a political kingdom/empire rather than a single person.

2. “Many Antichrists” in John’s Epistles

John writes:

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” (1 John 2:18)

The plural “many antichrists” suggests the term has broader application than a single end-time figure. The antichrist spirit is already active in false teachers; the singular “antichrist” may be a future culmination of this spirit.

3. The “Restrainer” Problem

In 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, Paul writes about something/someone “that restraineth” (to katechon). If the man of sin cannot be revealed until the restrainer is “taken out of the way,” this suggests a specific historical moment. Some argue this points to the Roman Empire as an institution, not an individual.

4. The Two Beasts of Revelation 13

Revelation describes two beasts:

The beast “from the sea” (13:1-10) --- receives authority from the dragon
The beast “from the earth” with two horns (13:11-18) --- the false prophet

If the antichrist = the first beast, who is the second? This dual structure suggests complexity beyond a single figure.

5. Different Spheres of Activity

The figures may operate in different domains:

Antichrist: Religious deception (denies incarnation, “cometh in his own name”)
Beast: Political/military power (wars against saints, rules over nations)
Man of Sin: Legal/moral rebellion (“sitteth in the temple of God”)

The Old Testament Background

Daniel 7: The Four Beasts

Daniel’s vision establishes the symbolic framework:

“After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.” (Daniel 7:7)

The ten horns represent ten kings who will arise (7:24). This is explicitly a kingdom, not an individual.

Daniel 11: The King Who Exalts Himself

The “king” of Daniel 11 who “shall magnify himself above every god” bears similarities to the man of sin:

“And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.” (Daniel 11:21)

“Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.” (Daniel 11:37)

Many identify this with the antichrist. But Daniel’s king is part of a historical sequence (the Ptolemies and Seleucids), creating ambiguity about whether the final fulfillment is historical or future.

Daniel 7:8, 20-25 — The Little Horn

The “little horn” of Daniel 7 is perhaps the most specific Old Testament description of the antichrist figure:

“I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” (Daniel 7:8)

“I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” (Daniel 7:21-22)

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:25)

Key characteristics of the little horn:

Rises from the ten horns (ten kings/kingdoms)
Plucks up three horns (overcomes three kings)
Eyes like a man — intelligence, cunning
Mouth speaking great things — blasphemous claims
Makes war with the saints — persecutes believers
Thinks to change times and law — opposes God’s law
“A time, and times, and a dividing of time” — 3.5 years

The little horn is distinct from the fourth beast itself (the Roman Empire) — it arises from among the ten horns. This has led many interpreters to identify the little horn as a future individual antichrist figure who emerges from a revived Roman empire (the ten kingdoms).

Connection to Revelation: The “beast” of Revelation 13 has “seven heads and ten horns” (13:1), directly echoing Daniel 7. The little horn concept transfers to the antichrist figure in the New Testament.

The Critical Point: After the Little Horn, No More Kingdoms

The little horn is the final adversarial figure in Daniel’s sequence. There is no fifth kingdom after it. The structure of Daniel 7 is:

Four beasts = four kingdoms (lion/Babylon, bear/Persia, leopard/Greece, dread beast/Rome)
Ten horns = ten kings/kingdoms arising from the fourth beast
Little horn = the final adversary, arising from among the ten
Judgment = the Ancient of Days sits, the books are opened
The kingdom = “the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High” (Daniel 7:27)

After the little horn comes judgment and the kingdom — not another kingdom. This is crucial because it means:

The little horn/antichrist is the final adversarial figure before Christ’s return
There is no intermediate kingdom or figure between antichrist and the establishment of Christ’s eternal kingdom
The sequence is: antichrist (persecutes saints for 3.5 years) → judgment → Christ returns in glory → kingdom given to the saints

This matches the flow of 2 Thessalonians 2: antichrist is revealed → “then shall that Wicked be revealed” → “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth” → then the gathering.

Ezekiel 38-39: Gog and Magog

The Gog/Magog invasion is distinct from the antichrist in most interpretations:

Gog is a ruler “of the north” who attacks Israel after restoration (Ezekiel 38:8)
Most evangelicals identify this as a future invasion, not the antichrist himself
Some historicists conflate Gog with the antichrist; premillennialists typically separate them

The Patristic Understanding

Early Church: One Figure

The earliest fathers understood these as a single figure:

Irenaeus (c. 180 AD), Against Heresies 5.25:

“The man of sin… sitting in the temple of God”

Irenaeus expected a single antichrist who would persecute the church and be destroyed at Christ’s return.

Hippolytus (c. 200 AD), On Christ and Antichrist:

“He [Antichrist] is to spring from the tribe of Dan”

Hippolytus wrote the first dedicated treatise on the antichrist, treating it as a single individual.

A “unified reception” datapoint documented by 19th-century American scholarship. In Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, the entry on “Antichrist” — by Rev. Frederick Meyrick, whom Cowles’s article misprints as “Myrick”; the entry is signed “F. M.” and the volume’s contributor key identifies Meyrick (American edition, verified against archive.org) — states: “the individualist view was held unanimously in the church for upward of a thousand years” — that is, the reading that the “man of sin” of 2 Thess 2 is a single individual person (not an institution like the papacy, and not a succession of rulers) was the church’s unanimous position from the ante-Nicene period through the Middle Ages. Henry Cowles cites this claim approvingly in his 1872 Bibliotheca Sacra treatment (Cowles, “On ‘The Man of Sin,’ 2 Thess. 2:3-9,” BSac 29:116 [Oct 1872]: 649-50, citing Smith’s Dictionary), grouping the pre-Nicene chain as follows: “Justin Martyr describes him as the man of the apostasy; Irenaeus, as summing up the apostasy in himself; Origen, as the child of the devil and the counterpart of Christ; Jerome, as the son of the devil, sitting in the Church as though he were the Son of God.” All four are patristic voices — Justin, Irenaeus, and Origen from the ante-Nicene period, and Jerome from the immediate post-Nicene period — reading the “man of sin” as an individual person to come, a datum Trumpet’s own patristic apparatus in Appendix B confirms.

Augustine: Multiple Possibilities

Augustine (c. 426) was more cautious in City of God 20.19:

“Some think that the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman empire… He alluded to Nero, whose deeds already seemed to be as the deeds of Antichrist. And hence some suppose that he shall rise again and be Antichrist.”

Augustine notes three interpretations: the Roman Empire, Nero redivivus, or the wicked within the church. He himself declined to commit.

The Medieval Synthesis

The dominant medieval view (influenced by Adso’s De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi):

The antichrist is a single individual who will arise at the end
He will be a Jewish false Messiah who persecutes Christians
Enoch and Elijah will confront him (a tradition from Revelation 11)
Christ will destroy him at His return

Modern Interpretive Traditions

Historicism: The Papacy as Antichrist

The Protestant Reformers and their successors identified the antichrist with the papacy:

Luther: “the Pope is the very Antichrist”
Calvin: the “man of sin” is “accomplished in Popery”
Westminster Confession: “the Pope of Rome… is that Antichrist”

This made the antichrist an institution, not an individual --- though some later historicists returned to an individual expectation.

Dispensationalism: The Individual Antichrist

Dispensationalist premillennialism (post-1830s) developed the most detailed individual-antichrist theory:

The antichrist is a future individual, likely Jewish
He will confirm a seven-year covenant with Israel (the “tribulation”)
He will sit in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem
He will be destroyed at Christ’s return (the “second coming”)

Preterism: Past Fulfillment

Full preterists identify the antichrist with the Roman Emperor Nero (the “Nero redivivus” legend) or, in some versions, with the Jewish religious leadership of the AD 60s. The “beast” = Nero-era Rome or first-century Judea; the “fall of Babylon” = the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. (Note: some partial preterist writers extend the “Babylon” identification to include the later fall of Rome in AD 476, but this is not the full preterist position on the study’s own definition, where all major eschatological events are fulfilled by AD 70.)

Amillennialism: The Spirit of Antichrist

Amillennialists typically view the antichrist as a spirit of deception active in every age, with no single individual as “the” antichrist. The “beast” represents hostile world systems opposed to Christ.

Synthesis: What Can We Say with Confidence?

Points of Broad Agreement

Some form of end-time deception is expected. Whether called antichrist, false Christ, or beast, Scripture warns of deceptive figures who will lead many astray.
The adversarial figure appears before Christ’s return. Every major view places the antichrist/beast before the gathering, not after.
Christ destroys the adversarial figure at His return. Whether by “the breath of His mouth” (2 Thessalonians 2:8) or by being “thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 19:20), the end is destruction.
Believers face persecution from this figure. The consistent witness: the saints will be tested, and some will be martyred.

Points of Ongoing Debate

Number of figures: Is it one figure or multiple (antichrist + beast + false prophet)?
Identity: Is the antichrist an individual, an institution (papacy), a system (secular humanism), or a spirit of deception?
Timing: Is the antichrist a future figure or a past/present reality?
Relationship to Israel: Does the antichrist specifically persecute Israel, or the church, or both?

The Ordering Question

Regardless of how one answers the identification question, almost every major view places the antichrist before the gathering of believers — with pre-tribulationism as the single explicit exception:

Historicists: antichrist (papacy) already present; Christ’s return gathers the elect
Amillennialists: antichrist spirit active; Christ’s return brings the end and gathers the elect
Preterists: antichrist (Nero/Rome) already judged; Christ’s “coming” was in 70 AD and the future gathering follows
Post-tribulationists: antichrist revealed and reigns; church endures; Christ’s return gathers the elect at the end
Mid-tribulationists / pre-wrath: antichrist revealed at or before the midpoint; the church is gathered before God’s final wrath — antichrist appears first, gathering second
Pre-tribulationists: the gathering (rapture) occurs first, then the antichrist is revealed after the church has been removed — this is the sole ordering exception within the major camps and is the origin question Chapter 4’s pre-trib section and Appendix F both treat at length

The distinctive ordering claim of pre-tribulationism — gathering before antichrist — is the specific claim Chapter 3’s Antiquity survey finds absent from the pre-Nicene and medieval record and Appendix F traces to the Irvingite-dispensational movement of the 1830s (Baxter 1833) and its later crystallization in Darby’s mature nineteenth-century systematization (~1849-1850).

Key Sources

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.25-30 (ANF, Vol. 1)
Hippolytus, On Christ and Antichrist (ANF, Vol. 5)
Augustine, City of God 20.19 (NPNF, Series 1, Vol. 2)
Adso of Montier-en-Der, De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi (c. 950)
Martin Luther, Smalcald Articles II.IV (1537)
John Calvin, Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2:3
Robert H. Gundry, The Church and the Tribulation (Zondervan, 1973)
Craig R. Koester, Revelation (Anchor Yale Bible, 2014)
George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (1972)
Craig A. Evans, “Antichrist” in Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus (2008)

Summary Table

View	Antichrist = Beast = Man of Sin?	Antichrist Appears…	Gathering Occurs…
Historicist (Reformation)	Yes (institution: papacy)	Already present	At Christ’s return
Historicist (Dan. 7 little horn)	Yes (individual from 10 kingdoms)	Future	At Christ’s return
Dispensationalist (pre-trib)	Yes (individual)	After rapture	Before antichrist
Dispensationalist (mid-trib)	Yes (individual)	At midpoint	At midpoint (before God’s final wrath)
Dispensationalist (post-trib)	Yes (individual)	Before	At Christ’s return
Amillennialist	Spirit of deception	Always active	At Christ’s return
Full Preterist	Nero/Rome	1st century (fulfilled)	1st century (fulfilled)

The Little Horn in Eschatological Calculation

The “little horn” of Daniel 7 has been pivotal in eschatological calculation:

Three-and-a-half years (“a time, and times, and a dividing of time,” Daniel 7:25) = 42 months = 1,260 days (cf. Revelation 11:2; 13:5)
The same period appears in Revelation as the “tribulation”
This became the basis for the “seven-year tribulation” schema in dispensationalism (2 × 3.5 years)