Prologue

Summary

The Prologue defines the Antichrist as the archetypal evil human being who is to come at the end of the world before being finally defeated by the army of Christ. The aim of this book is to tell the story of the Antichrist from its beginnings in the New Testament period up to the present time. It shows that the complex idea of the Antichrist was the result of an array of tensions within the concept of the Antichrist that developed over the first twelve centuries of the Common Era. It also shows how the story of the Antichrist absorbed a significant number of biblical figures – Gog and Magog, Behemoth and Leviathan, the beasts from the earth and the sea, the mark of the beast and his number, the false prophet and the destroyer, along with a number of other legends – Alexander the Great, Simon Magus, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor Nero. It indicates that the story was enriched as it spread from Christianity into Judaism and Islam.