I’ve had several people e-mail me and ask if I believe that Humanism will be the driving element behind the coming Antichrist / Harlot religion. I want to very briefly explain why I do not believe that it is.

Let me start with a parable of sorts. I have a friend who was once involved in the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation TM) cult. Few people know that this cult is actually headquartered up in a small town up in Iowa. A good portion of the people who live in this small town are adherents to this New Age / Hindu cult. There are some good churches and believers there, but the predominant spirit and population is the TM bunch. Now, imagine if you will that a young believer grows up in this town. Imagine that as he grows up, he sees some of his friends deeply affected by the spirit and influence of this cult in the town. Through constant contact with these cultists, many of the true believers in the town are affected in such a way that many fall away. As a young believer, this fellow observes and discerns the effects of this demonic spirit all around him. Then he turns to the Bible and begins to study all that it has so say about the End Times and the Antichrist. As he reads the many passages about these things, he begins to notice many similarities between what he reads and what he observes all around him. As such, over time, he begins to conclude that in fact, the Transcendental Meditation cult is the religion of the Antichrist.

Now, if he came to this conclusion, what would his error have been? While this conclusion that he reached may have made complete sense to him, in his own immediate context, his error would have been to read his own particular very limited worldview into the pages of the Bible. He would in essence be reading small-town Iowa into an ancient Eastern book called the Bible. This isn’t to say that many of his conclusions are not accurate and that much of the things that he discerned are wrong. In fact, I would even say that TM indeed does possess a significant measure of the Antichrist spirit. However, it is not THE Antichrist religion. It is simply AN Antichrist religion. And yes, there is a big difference.

I shared this small parable to function as a example of the same error that many Westerners make, but in a much smaller microcosm. This parable is a picture of the how many of us read Humanism into the pages of the Bible as THE Antichrist / Harlot religion.

We here in the West grow up in an atmosphere that is increasingly turning away from its Christian heritage and increasingly toward various forms of Humanism. Whether it be New Age religion, Lets-all-get-along-ism, Universalism, Intellectual Agnosticism, Religious Pluralism, the New Atheism, etc., we who live here in the West are fairly familiar with these various corrosive Antichrist belief systems. As we grow up and go to school, we see many of our Christian friends increasingly being affected by these belief systems, and some fall away and even adopt these beliefs. Some of our Humanist teachers at University mock us for our faith. Perhaps we ourselves are even affected by these things. These belief systems indeed represent the premiere Zeitgeist / Spirit Of The Age in our midst. We even see these things increasingly infiltrating the Church in movements such as the Emergent Church /Emergent Village etc. And so many of us, as we begin to read the Bible, make the same mistake as our imaginary believer friend up in Iowa made. We begin to read our world view INTO the pages of the Bible – a very Eastern book. But in doing so, we fail to remember the fact that we are reading the Bible through the lens of a Westerner, who sees the whole world through a Western lens. Most Americans are hopelessly Amer0-centric in our world view. Without really realizing it, we sometimes think that the Bible was written to Americans. The truth is far from this however. We must not fail to remember the geographical context of the Bible. It is and always has been a thoroughly Israel and Middle Eastern-centric Book. And if one is sitting this day in Jerusalem or Mecca, or Amman, or Baghdad, humanism is almost a negligible reality. Instead, Islam is the spirit that pervades every inch of the Middle East. Islam is the premiere Antichrist – Antisemitic force in the Middle East, which is the primary context of the Bible. At least today (and certainly for the next century) it is in my opinion, the only real contender for THE Antichrist religion.

And of course, we need to remember that in the many passages found throughout the prophets that describe the return of Christ, he is seen doing battle with Muslim nations. It names them by name. Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Somolia, Jordan, Arabia, Yemen, Palestinian Territories, etc etc etc. Do we really believe that humanism will overwhelm and even dominate the Islamic world so as to convert them to this new humanistic “faith” in the next several years? I am not betting on this. Not within the next hundred years anyway. The demographics simply do not support this notion. Instead, it will be Europe and the West that will become Islamic, not the other way around.

So in summary, I clearly see the demonic trend in the West toward a false humanistic spirituality. I believe that this is the forerunner demonic spirit that will weaken the faith of many and prepare the way for the real Antichrist religion that is barreling down the alley toward all of us. But when we say THE Antichrist religion, I am confident that it is Islam. But as always, God knows best.

Bless you,

Joel