Are Recognizable Attributes Of the Coming World Leader Spelled Out In the Bible In Its Heroes or Anti-Heroes So We'll Know Them When We See Them??

     The Bible is a great history book among other things and it has a great number of historically important Israelite figures, as well as important foreign persons who loomed large in Israelite history.  Their deeds and personality profiles just might be, in aggregate, a purposely placed collection of clues telling us what the Coming World Leader / anti-Christ will be like...how to identify him...when he arrives on the scene.  Based on the recorded character traits and mentioned distinguishing personality quirks and various life actions or accomplishments of the 'part good guy-part bad guy' major characters in the Bible, anti-heroes of sorts, the anti-Christ may have:

     1.)  Golden hair or some golden topping or crown.  (Nebuchadnezzar's colossus had a 'head of gold'.)

     2.)  Some sort of fancy, perhaps metal-threaded or metal shirt or upper garment that they wear during at least part of their time on the world stage, perhaps silver, perhaps gold, perhaps both.  It will probably be somewhat religious or royal in appearance.  (Gideon used Midianite gold to have a fancy ephod (sacred upper garment) made.  Much later, after Jesus' crucifixion, Herod Agrippa I was acclaimed as a god by the people of a coastal city while wearing a fancy silver shirt that shone resplendently in the sun.  God killed him for accepting that praise without objection, and it was an exceptionally ugly sort of death...the rotting of his intestines and private parts.  The anti-Christ shall have no regard for the gods of his fathers nor for the 'desire of women'.  Some people translate that to mean that he will be gay, but others say that he doesn't worship or believe in his father's gods nor in some god that is the 'desire of women'.  That could make sense, as there have been false gods that were concerned with the 'desire of women'...'love gods', so to speak.  But this Coming World Leader will magnify himself above all such gods.  He will apparently want to be worshiped almost as if he were a god.  Very big ego!  And a very profane desire for a man to want the worship rightly accorded to God, or even to false gods.  Pharaoh's thought of themselves this way, and some leaders of the ancient Romans, and certain other kings and leaders have.  But it is a profane and evil wish.  Even good angels, who are beings much greater than any human, will not allow themselves to be worshiped.  They quickly stop whoever tries and correct them.       

     3.)  They may have great physical strength (Samson did!) and of course they will have great political might.  He may win the hearts of the people of his time by saying that he wishes he were in charge so that he could make sure people received true justice (Absalom said these sorts of things to people who had traveled far to receive a hearing from Absalom's father, King David, but were long in waiting and frustrated by the delay apparently!)  The scripture tells us that just about everyone (though not the followers of Jesus) will end up wanting to follow this leader.

     4.)  He may be a life-long abstainer from alcohol.  (Samson was.)  They may have something unusual about his hair...as with Samson.  As with Absalom.  Samson's had never been cut and was formed into 7 braids.  The rebel prince Absalom cut off 5 pounds - 200 shekels - of hair from his head each year!  It actually says 200 shekels, and the number 200 is how many myriads - a unit 10,000 strong - of bad angels engaged in a rebellion in heaven against God, choosing to follow Satan, according to the Slovenic version of 2 Enoch.  And the anti-Christ truly will have an early symbolic connection to Satan and a later actual physical connection!  When he is the human known as the Coming World Leader, he will have a moment of great conceit and pride during which the spirit of Satan will enter him and take over his body.)  Abstemious long haired guys, especially blond ones or ones with some sort of 'gold' connected to their head area could be top suspects!  Perhaps a strong or robust man physically.  

     5.)  He may have an association with the number 50 or with 50 men or with men who have some association with the number 50, or 'the 50th' something, maybe as their enforcers or their 'posse'.  The rebels (at different times) who were half-brothers, Absalom and then Adonijah, both of whom were egotistical, very handsome,  power hungry princes and sons of David, both had 50 men who ran before their chariots, in their day in the flower of their young manhood, where ever they went, to enhance their status and herald their might and importance to their people, prior to the time they declared open rebellion against their father's crown and tried to take it for their own.  Both Absalom and Adonijah are people that the rightful king (David in their case) ought to have been able to trust, but they were scheming betrayers to their own trusting father.  In the United States we have the 50 states, and from another angle, the 50th state is Hawaii, so as a US citizen I wonder about that possibility, but the anti-Christ might show up anywhere, or might be an immigrant from anywhere, so far as I know.  There is also the year 1950 A.D. or 2050 A.D., or the 50 year Jewish jubilee periods that might somehow fit into the puzzle.   

     6.)  Both Aaron, Moses brother, and the rebel Jeroboam, who at a much later time rebelled against king Solomon's son and successor Rehoboam, oversaw the casting and manufacture of a golden calf idol to focus people's religious fervor upon, so that the people of God did not focus upon the things of God, but rather on something whose worship was more carnal and more exciting to the lusts of the flesh. This might allow that the Coming World Leader has some connection to a golden calf idol (like the wall street bull?  Or its imitator in Shanghai, China?) or that he facilitates and institutes some form of false worship that takes the attention of his followers away from the truths of God. 

      7.)  The Coming World Leader / anti-Christ may honor or help build or renovate a Jewish temple that is still in the future as I write this in April 2024; he may seem a friend at first to the Jewish nation of Israel.  But once he goes Satanic he may forcefully desecrate that same temple, doing sacrilegious things there in that Holy space, perhaps even fostering worship of himself there, or of some false god he favors.  Herod did this.  The Syrian based Seleucid king named Antiochus Epiphanes earlier did this in 167 A.D. when Israel was a client state of the Seleucid Empire.  He invaded Jerusalem and set up an image of himself and an image and alter for Jupiter Olympiad and he slaughtered a hog on that alter, defiling the temple's holiness on purpose.  And in the book of Revelation it essentially reveals that the coming anti-Christ will do a similar thing, halting Jewish sacrifices meant to be holy 3 1/2 years after first being in favor of them.  So, we might look for a world leader that in the early going seems to be a trustworthy friend or ally of Israel.

     8.)  Nimrod was a 'mighty hunter before the Lord' the Bible says, so if he's a type for the anti-Christ it opens up possibilities for someone who likes hunting, or from a hunting background, or for someone whose first or last name is or means means Hunter in some language.  More on Babylonians candidates:  in the 6th century Nebuchadnezzar II built a beautiful garden that hung off the side of a structure.  It was to help his wife deal with home sickness.  That's not mentioned in the Bible, but it's famously one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.  Perhaps something similar for the Coming World Leader?  Nebuchadnezzar was also thrust away from his position of importance and from the favor of his people for seven years, and spent the time eating grass like an animal a d living in banishment outdoors until his hair grew like an eagle's feathers.  But then he finally looked up from where he was on his hands and knees and acknowledged God's sovereignty, and his sanity and his high political position was restored.  So in this part of Nebuchadnezzar's life we have a 7 year period of disfavor, a likening to an eagle or an eagle's appearance, we have a tendency to spend time out in the grass while he was banished, and to live like a beast, and to make a come back through humbling himself before god.  Could some of this apply to the anti-Christ?          

(More coming!) 

      We know that we are in strange, strange times.  Long delayed Bible prophecies are coming true or looking to soon come true, and some already have come true.  May 14, 1948 Israel was restored to nation status.  Even in the early 1900's there were highly regarded theologians using that prophecy, that Israel would one day be regathered, as proof that you had to realize that certain prophecies were merely metaphors.  Israel will obviously never be regathered into the land that once comprised ancient Israel they taught.  That's just not how the world worked, they explained. But then, suddenly in 1948 it happened.  The next day this newly minted Israel's Arab neighbors attack...Libya, Iraq' Egypt, and Syria, 4 long standing nations with trained and developed militaries,  attack a one day old nation...and yet Israel survives and wins the war?  No way!?!  Yes way!  This year there appears to be a plan to begin building their Jewish temple in Jerusalem, on the temple mount.  But they need 'perfect red heifers' to sacrifice.  They can have no offending black or brown or white hairs, these heifers.  Where are you going to find that?  Umm, well...in Texas.  Texas had some, way over in the USA, and now they are in Israel about old enough to sacrifice.  No way!?!  Yes way!  The temple is not going to fix their misunderstanding, which is that Jesus really was their Messiah, and He already did come way back when.  But now almost 2,000 years later they believe that they can rebuild this temple and then their Messiah can come.  It's a big deal to them.  And it looks set to happen.  And there are also other completed prophecies in recent times!

     But what about the prophesied Coming World Leader who becomes the anti-Christ?  Is he real then also?  He is described as a 'coming world leader' who will catch the imagination of a huge fraction of humanity.  The people will 'go after him'...the masses will look up to him.  He will be a good friend to this newly restored Israel it sounds like, and a patron to their temple once it is built; at least at first, for a while he will be.  But in the end he will betray their trust and become their great enemy.  This person, this great world leader', will be physically entered and possessed by the spirit of Satan, and then he will become a whole new being personality-wise.  He will become the anti-Christ.  And as Christian's have done for so long, we like to guess who he will be...guess if he is already on the scene...we wonder if we already know his name, perhaps.  And in past decades and centuries there have been a great number of times that Christians thought they had identified the person, but in those cases they were wrong.  They guessed many different world figures (Nero, Napolean, Hitler, and a host of others) and they sometimes had long and detailed explanations as to how they knew they were right.  Yet, each time they were dead wrong!  Those people are dead, and they turned out to not be the anti-Christ.  What did those Christians do wrong?  Perhaps they needed to look more closely at what the Bible openly said about the anti-Christ/coming-world-leader, and perhaps also they should have looked at those major Bible figures that were similar to the anti-Christ in nature.  Perhaps God placed clues, when describing those figures, which would help us recognize the Coming World Leader when he arrives.  Perhaps, in composite, in aggregate, those sort of Biblical figures will point the way.  Let's look a little, using the Bible as our guide.  What are the literally prophesied characteristics of the anti-Christ, and who are the Bible figures who might be 'prophetic types or prefigurements', as it were, of the Coming World Leader?  What are some of those figures' unique characteristics?  Who, in the Bible, started out being friends or servants for Israel or for God, but ended up being more of an enemy, a betrayer, a double-crosser?  Who wanted to be an important, perhaps even loved leader, but did more harm than good before it was all over?

     The Bible's first villain is the serpent, and it is bad for God's people but never really good, prior to that.  There does not immediately seem to be much to work with there.  He knows that God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil off limits...Adam and Eve cannot eat its fruit God has declared.  So the evil serpent talks Eve into eating it, selling its benefits to her and casting suspicion on the reasons God gave for telling the humans not to eat from it.  Genesis 3:  ⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  End quote.  Bad sneaky manipulative serpent!  But it worked.  Maybe the anti-Christ will try to convince us not to obey God by claiming that God has underhanded reasons for giving us rules and that if we knew what was best for us we would want to break those rules.

     The second villain is Eve.  Well, sort of a villain.  Sort of an honored ancestor also.  She sinned, but probably not as much as me by far, and there are probably other people that can say the same.  But she was maybe the first great human sinner named in the Bible, so for that reason I will include her.  She was the serpent's misguided victim, but she was Adam's villain, and caused him to eat from the forbidden tree's fruit.  Bad woman...instigator...enabler!  But it worked.  Adam had free will and chose to eat also.  He also knew that eating the fruit was forbidden.  So, if the anti-Christ is to be like Eve then maybe the anti-Christ will be aware that he is in great trouble before the eyes of the Lord and he will want to drag others into the mess he's made for himself to get them to be as guilty as he is.  

     Third villain:  Adam!  He may have been a victim of the serpent in a way, and Eve certainly did him no favors, but...Adam knew better.  He knew God's rule about the tree.  Yet he ate the forbidden fruit anyway, betraying the God who made him.  Bad Adam.  Weak Adam.  Disloyal Adam.  But we would have probably done the same thing, and even sooner.  After all, Adam wasn't long-practiced in sin like we are in this evil day.  We probably have fewer internal guard rails against sinning than Adam had.  Or Eve.  The anti-Christ may claim that he's putting himself into harm's way out of concern for us. 

     Cain killed his brother Abel.  Cain  was angry, resentful, and jealous because God had accepted Abel's offering of a fine animal from his flock, but rejected Cain's offering of some vegetables from his farming efforts.   Old extra-Biblical books like the Book of Jasher say that Abel gave one of his best animals as an offering to God, but Cain picked out inferior vegetables to offer to God.  The Bible doesn't clarify the reason.  So, jealous Cain killed Abel.  Then he lied to God about doing it.  Then he went off with a wife, banished yet marked with a God-given sign demanding he not be harmed, and built the first city.  Maybe the anti-Christ will be someone who feels jealous that some sort of brother or equal was shown preference by receiving more of God's favor.  Perhaps he will be a builder of cities or structures that also wants to separate and start their own thing.  Perhaps he will be quite jealous and resentful that he is not receiving the favor of God, and desirous to kill those who do have it.

     How about Gideon?  In his day the Israelites had settled in the promised land, but had become wicked and unfaithful to their God, so for 7 years the Lord had allowed a numerous, camel riding enemy people to their east, a people known to Israel as the Midianites, to conquer and oppress Israel for a long time.  But Gideon, a yound Israelite, was visited by the Angel of the Lord and told he would help his people throw off the yoke of Midianite oppression.  Gideon led his people against the Midianites and their allies, a vast horde, and God was with them.  In fact, in order that Israelites would understand that this victory was from God's hand and not their own strength, God only allowed Gideon to have 300 warriors in his initial attack of the vast Midianite led horde of easterner soldiers.   The Midianites were routed, and as they ran away other Israelite tribes came to help finish them off as they fled. 

    But, tragically, in his moment as an Israelite national hero Gideon allowed the admiring Israelite soldiers that he had just led to give him gold earrings from the dead Midianites and their allies, and gold ornaments from the camels of the Midianites.  He took the gold tribute, and instead of honoring God with it he allowed it to be formed into a fancy type of priestly garment called an ephod to put up for display and give reverence to, a sort of a false idol.  It had about 40 pounds of gold woven into it.  Thus, Gideon was instrumental in freeing the Israelites from one problem only to be a hand that ensnared them in another problem:  a false gold idol of sorts (apparently a very beautiful, gold covered priestly garment, since that is what an ephod typically is) that at least some of the people would travel to Gideon's town and give their worship to this ephod.  Perhaps 'worshiping' this priestly garment constructed of gold in Gideon's home town of Orphah wrongly rerouted worship away from God's tabernacle, the only God-approved place of worship in Israel.  After all, Gideon was from the Israelite tribe of Manasseh and his people were not authorized by the Laws of Moses to wear or even possess any model of a Holy Priestly Garment.  That was for priests of the Tribe of Levi, and only in the appropriate places at the appropriate times did they wear their God-approved sacred garments.

     A sacred looking shirt or upper garment that was not approved by God...but which seemed to be trying to portray some sort of god-like significance or dignity in the minds of the people?  It wasn't just Gideon who transgressed in this rather particular sort of sin, but oddly another great Bible villain did the same...Herod Agrippa, who had been placed in charge of Judea by Rome, as described in Acts chapter 12, but also the incident where Herod wore a fancy shirt made of silver and allowed a crowd to pay tribute to him as if he were a god standing among them.  The incident is in the Bible but also is expanded upon by the historian Josephus, as translated below:

 

     Now when Agrippa had reigned three years over all Judea, he came to the city Caesarea, which was formerly called Strato’s Tower; and there he exhibited shows in honor of Caesar, upon his being informed that there was a certain festival celebrated to make vows for his safety. At which festival a great multitude was gotten together of the principal persons, and such as were of dignity through his province. On the second day of which shows he put on a garment made wholly of silver, and of a contexture truly wonderful, and came into the theater early in the morning; at which time the silver of his garment being illuminated by the fresh reflection of the sun’s rays upon it, shone out after a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon him; and presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place, and another from another, [though not for his good,] that he was a god; and they added, “Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.” Upon this the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery. But as he presently afterward looked up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings to him; and fell into the deepest sorrow. A severe pain also arose in his belly, and began in a most violent manner. He therefore looked upon his friends, and said, “I, whom you call a god, am commanded presently to depart this life; while Providence thus reproves the lying words you just now said to me; and I, who was by you called immortal, am immediately to be hurried away by death. But I am bound to accept of what Providence allots, as it pleases God; for we have by no means lived ill, but in a splendid and happy manner.” When he said this, his pain was become violent. Accordingly he was carried into the palace, and the rumor went abroad every where, that he would certainly die in a little time. But the multitude presently sat in sackcloth, with their wives and children, after the law of their country, and besought God for the king’s recovery. All places were also full of mourning and lamentation. Now the king rested in a high chamber, and as he saw them below lying prostrate on the ground, he could not himself forbear weeping. And when he had been quite worn out by the pain in his belly for five days, he departed this life, being in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and in the seventh year of his reign…. (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIX, chapter 8, section 2. Translation by William Whiston, available at Project Gutenberg and many other places.)

This is pretty fascinating stuff, yes?

  So maybe this will be a type of sin we will see associated with the anti-Christ:  some sort of visually catchy, supposedly 'sacred' upper garment with a fraudulent pedigree.         

     What about Nebuchadnezzar, head of the great Babylonian Empire?  He was God's chosen instrument to punish a backslidden and idolatrous Jewish Jerusalem starting in about 606 B.C.  But, though he was God's chosen punisher of God's chosen people Israel, once he had destroyed Jerusalem and God's temple he took many of the Israelites as slaves back to Babylon.  And he had some of their best and brightest trained up as court advisors, the prophet Daniel being one of those.  And one day King Nebudie a certain horrible death while receiving the tribute of 'a god!'.chadnezzar h.  ad a dream of a huge metallic human shaped colossus which terrified him.  It was gold on the head and shoulders, silver lower, bronze below that, then iron starting at about the hips on down to the feet, but at the feet it was clay bound by the iron, though not blended with iron.  Clay entrapped, you could say.  Daniel interprets the nightmare for the troubled King through God's allowance.  Part of the interpretation is that Nebuchadnezzar is that head of gold...it is his kingdom Babylon that makes up the golden top portion of the terrifying colossus in the dream.  So maybe the head of the anti-Christ will have something to do with gold, or perhaps his hair will be blonde, or perhaps he will wear a gold crown or at least be entitled to one.  Since the bottom of this colossus represents the end of time, perhaps the clay entrapped in iron represents humans trapped in something stronger than them...men are likened to clay vessels in the Bible sometimes.  So perhaps the Coming World Leader will appear in a time when iron (mechanical structures?...military structures?...) hold people hostage in some almost inescapable way. 

     At another juncture in Nebuchadnezzar's life as king he became too proud of his great construction accomplishments, the magnificent buildings in Babylon that he had brought to reality, and God was put off and decided to humble him.  Here from Daniel chapter 4 are Nebuchadnezzar's later recounting of the experience: