Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know, Fellow conspiracy realists. Before
Speaker 3: we get started this evening, we want to make sure
Speaker 3: everyone tunes in to our exclusive interview with Arkasha Stevenson,
Speaker 3: director of The First Omen. You can catch it only
Speaker 3: in theaters April fifth. It's a question humanity has quarreled
Speaker 3: with since before the dawn of the written age. What
Speaker 3: is the nature of good? What is the nature of evil?
Speaker 3: For some folks, it's a matter of shifting perspectives, a
Speaker 3: long spectrum of gradients. For others, there are absolutes, clearly
Speaker 3: defined rights and wrongs, clear good guys, clear bad guys.
Speaker 3: And with that in mind, tonight we are exploring one
Speaker 3: of history's most extreme symbols of evil, the opposite of divinity,
Speaker 3: a dark, oppositional Messiah, the eternal enemy of God, and
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, known for millennia as the anti Christ. Here
Speaker 3: are the facts. The Antichrist has done a lot for fiction.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean, and I've always kind of struggled with, like,
Speaker 4: is the Antichrist in service of Satan? Is the Antichrist?
Speaker 4: Like Satan incarnates like in the way that Jesus is
Speaker 4: God on earth? You know, Like, what's that relationship? Is
Speaker 4: it the Sun of the Devil? It is in some fiction, right,
Speaker 4: very much so.
Speaker 2: In some well, it's weird to think of it as
Speaker 2: between nonfiction and fiction.
Speaker 4: Because again, Rosemary's Baby, just in terms of Son of
Speaker 4: the Devil is like the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: No, You're absolutely right, it's just in my mind even
Speaker 2: when I'm trying to separate the fictional depictions of what
Speaker 2: we would consider an Antichrist versus like letters that were written,
Speaker 2: you know, nine hundred and fifty a d That are
Speaker 2: concerning and Antichrist based on you know, scriptures that that
Speaker 2: person takes to becomingly fact.
Speaker 3: This individual literal interpretation. And I'm glad we're bringing that
Speaker 3: point up at the top, because, as we always want
Speaker 3: to say, when we explore concepts like this bit of
Speaker 3: a spiritual disclaimer. Your beliefs are your own. We're not
Speaker 3: here to tell anyone what they should or should not believe.
Speaker 3: But we do find a fascinating, surprising bevy of conspiracies
Speaker 3: in Tales of the Antichrist. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say that, even if you don't consider yourself
Speaker 3: Christ in particular or religious in general, you have heard
Speaker 3: about the concept of the Antichrist in clear like in
Speaker 3: clear seminal works of fiction, some of the best horror films,
Speaker 3: some of the best horror novels on the planet, some
Speaker 3: of the best art. In fact, if we're getting pretentious,
Speaker 3: it's about the Antichrist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Christ Superstar and Marilyn Manson.
Speaker 4: Again, that guy sucks, but that was like he kind
Speaker 4: of peaked, you know. In terms of the concept album
Speaker 4: with Antichrist Superstar.
Speaker 3: There is one I'm glad you mentioned music to there
Speaker 3: because there is one line that stood out to me.
Speaker 3: I returned to it with the sex Pistols where they
Speaker 3: say they don't say I am the Antichrist, they say
Speaker 3: I am an Antichrist, which will be interesting later. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the question is, oh, and also in real life over millennia,
Speaker 3: there have been numerous people who at various times claimed
Speaker 3: that they themselves were the Antichrist, you know, and maybe
Speaker 3: that's what Marilyn Manson's picking up on there.
Speaker 2: Well, and let's point this out. I think we've talked
Speaker 2: about this before, but biblically, from passages of the Bible,
Speaker 2: there's very specific ones that paint anybody who is who
Speaker 2: does not follow Jesus, believes that Jesus is the son
Speaker 2: of God and says that out loud to people is
Speaker 2: Antichrist or is in It's weird because it's the term.
Speaker 2: The is what you end up like trying to like
Speaker 2: quarreling over, and is what historians end up talking about.
Speaker 2: Is that passage talking about the Antichrist or and Antichrist
Speaker 2: or just of the Antichrist Christ.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the best way to explain it is like
Speaker 3: there's an individual and then there's a vibe, and then
Speaker 3: there are opening acts. So if your vibe is off,
Speaker 3: you are being not ann or thee, but you're being
Speaker 3: anti Christ and Christian.
Speaker 2: But then in Thessalonians it goes on to talking about
Speaker 2: basically being a minister of the Antichrist. Or you know,
Speaker 2: a worker of the Antichrist. So it's it's really interesting
Speaker 2: because in some of those places there doesn't require to
Speaker 2: be an individual at all. It is just an act
Speaker 2: or as you said, a vibe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the anti Christ to get polar opposite of
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ according to Christian tradition. So everything Jesus Christ represents,
Speaker 3: the anti Christ is super against. He thinks it's all
Speaker 3: a terrible idea if it's the individual, the main anti Christ.
Speaker 3: And this guy has a grift, he has a grand conspiracy.
Speaker 3: He's going to take over the world, reign over the
Speaker 3: earthly world in the time before the last judgment. And
Speaker 3: in Christian theology, the last judgment is when Jesus and
Speaker 3: a divide army and the angels returned the dead or resurrected.
Speaker 3: So comes God to judge the living and the dead.
Speaker 3: And I like the point where we're talking about the
Speaker 3: complexity of the concept. Jesus Christ is the son of God.
Speaker 3: The Antichrist is often at least the singular like final boss.
Speaker 3: Antichrist is the son of Satan in a dark parody
Speaker 3: of the nature of God and Jesus. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot of misogyny in here, and also a lot of
Speaker 3: anti semitism.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, is the concept of the Antichrist as the
Speaker 4: son of Satan specifically addressed in scripture?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Man, I'm glad. So there are specific interpretations of scripture
Speaker 3: that would say that. So, like, it's strange because for
Speaker 3: a guy, and it's almost always typified as a guy,
Speaker 3: for a guy who plays such a big role in
Speaker 3: the grand climactic events of reality and the universe. It
Speaker 3: might spry some of us to learn that there are
Speaker 3: only a scant number of passages, like three passages in
Speaker 3: the New Testament that specifically mentioned the Antichrist in a
Speaker 3: singular sense, like there is a guy, he is evil.
Speaker 3: They all come from the letters of John.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're interesting. Should we read some of them?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I just here's here is first John, Chapter two, verse
Speaker 2: eighteen and nineteen. Dear children, this is the last hour.
Speaker 2: And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming.
Speaker 2: Even now, many Antichrists have come. This is how we
Speaker 2: know it is the last hour. They went out from us,
Speaker 2: but they did not really belong to us, For if
Speaker 2: they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.
Speaker 2: But they're going showed that none of them belonged to us.
Speaker 4: This really feels just like being anti referring to a
Speaker 4: lot of people that are maybe following someone who is
Speaker 4: preaching speaking out against Jesus and the message of Christianity.
Speaker 3: Again, I keep going back to, and I don't mean
Speaker 3: to be crass. I keep going back to the idea
Speaker 3: of escalating spiritual arms races, or even more basically an
Speaker 3: opening act before of a genre of music, before the
Speaker 3: big headliner, which is the anti Christ. So we say,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of things. It's very cold war,
Speaker 3: it's very them versus us paranoia.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let me give you one more passage here,
Speaker 2: this first John, chapter four, because I think it speaks
Speaker 2: to exactly that First John four, verse two. This is
Speaker 2: how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit
Speaker 2: that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh
Speaker 2: is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge
Speaker 2: Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of
Speaker 2: the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even
Speaker 2: now is already in the world.
Speaker 3: So like a lovecrafting monster or some kind of spiritual contagion,
Speaker 3: this thing's decay. It's a possible, he spreads, and I
Speaker 3: want to go to just to round it out right
Speaker 3: to John seven, I think the other notable passage talking
Speaker 3: about Antichrist stuff says expounds on this and says, for
Speaker 3: many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who
Speaker 3: will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Speaker 3: Such a one is the deceiver and the anti Christ.
Speaker 3: Even though John clearly thinks there's more than one.
Speaker 4: And last one, this one is, I think speaks to
Speaker 4: again that other perspective, cause we're seeing kind of versions
Speaker 4: of this that can be easily interpreted as that Leviathan coming,
Speaker 4: you know, this actual force. And then there's ones like
Speaker 4: this that almost feel a little more political.
Speaker 3: Who is the.
Speaker 4: Liar, But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ,
Speaker 4: this is the ampti Christ. He who denies the Father
Speaker 4: and the son. No one denies the son has the father.
Speaker 4: He who confesses the son has the Father. Also, this
Speaker 4: to me is just about like adhering to doctrine and like,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of othering people who are not in
Speaker 4: that that particular religious clique, you.
Speaker 3: Know, And it sounds like we may have given you
Speaker 3: four quotes, but again, these all we're clipping out, yes,
Speaker 3: the passages that we mentioned here, And you can see
Speaker 3: the confusion because already we're reading this in modern American English,
Speaker 3: and it's been translated so many times before it got.
Speaker 2: Here exactly the ones I new international version, by the way,
Speaker 2: which is like the more easily translated to other languages,
Speaker 2: which is why that version was created.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what, you know, mess with the King James.
Speaker 2: I will? I mean I dig at King James every
Speaker 2: once in a while. It's kind of fun. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so many versions of the Bible, and the one.
Speaker 4: I read was from First John, chapter two, verse twenty
Speaker 4: two and twenty three, a quick mention of the Antichrist.
Speaker 3: There again, it's scant in its specificity, and early Christians
Speaker 3: agreed with us, so they would do this. They would
Speaker 3: pour over other parts of the Bible as it evolved
Speaker 3: through different translations and interpretations, and they would interpret different
Speaker 3: passages as referring to this villain. Uh think of things
Speaker 3: like the Letters of Paul and Paul they don't specifically
Speaker 3: say the Antichrist, but they say the man of lawlessness,
Speaker 3: the son of pradition, you know, what I mean. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like saying a certain Russian president.
Speaker 2: You know, the exactly the first oh subtweet. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: first time I heard son of Perdition, I always think
Speaker 2: about Road to Perdition.
Speaker 4: I don't know why Western too. I picture of the
Speaker 4: man in black from the Gunslinger.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, totally. But son of Perdition.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that term. I didn't understand it, and
Speaker 2: I've found that it's the letter the Letter on the
Speaker 2: Origin Time of the Antichrist for a Medoso of Montirander,
Speaker 2: where he talks about the Son of Perdition, but specififically
Speaker 2: as that title, basically, the man of lawlessness, of like
Speaker 2: of sin Oh tradition is bad, the eternal damnation.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and ad so we'll get to is very
Speaker 3: good at cementing the idea of the Antichrist for the public.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's also weird that the Christian concept of
Speaker 3: the Antichrist comes from beliefs that predate the concept of
Speaker 3: Christianity itself. If you go back to Jewish traditions, the
Speaker 3: Book of Daniel that was written like one sixty seven
Speaker 3: BCE loosely, then the author there predicts that there will
Speaker 3: be what they call a final persecutor, a rising, a
Speaker 3: villain who will quote speak great words against the most
Speaker 3: high and wear out the saints of the most High
Speaker 3: and think to change time and laws. That's a seven.
Speaker 5: Is this end of days type situation?
Speaker 3: Like yeah, like big, big third act energy and right,
Speaker 3: and as we will see later then as now, a
Speaker 3: lot of people were absolutely certain we're making a base
Speaker 3: assumption that the world would end in their lifetime. That
Speaker 3: nobody wants to feel like you were in one of
Speaker 3: the you know, one of the less good seasons of
Speaker 3: the human experience. You want to be there with something
Speaker 3: climactic occurred.
Speaker 4: One of the spinoffs that went straight to DVD, right, right,
Speaker 4: nobody wants to be in those.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, if you look at the political context
Speaker 3: of the time in which the Book of Daniel was written,
Speaker 3: this is interesting because it appears the author is referring
Speaker 3: to a specific human individual, a real pill to be fair,
Speaker 3: named Antiochus for epiphanies, and Antiochus rules Palestine during the
Speaker 3: Hellenistic period, and these super mean the Jewish can communities
Speaker 3: persecuting the massacring them, trying to root them out of Palestine.
Speaker 3: But When Daniel writes this, it is a sneak diss
Speaker 3: It's what we would call a subtweet today, because the
Speaker 3: author never mentions Antiochus by name, And this establishes a
Speaker 3: pattern that we could argue continues today. New threats, tyrants, villains,
Speaker 3: other generally unpleasant people come on the stage of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: Thanks Obama, right, every president actually since FDR, except for
Speaker 3: weirdly enough, Gerald Ford, which I still don't understand, means
Speaker 3: the one who didn't get called the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: Wasn't Gerald Ford, the president who had two assassination attempts
Speaker 2: on his life by women who have like, is that wrong?
Speaker 2: I thought that was it?
Speaker 5: Mea rock?
Speaker 3: He was also put us during the height of one
Speaker 3: of the cyclical anti christ panics in the nineteen seventies. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So because this pattern has been established, when you are
Speaker 3: living your life and you're reading this as a member
Speaker 3: of the faithful, then you will see your own story
Speaker 3: written in these things. You will tend to interpret these
Speaker 3: ancient passages in ways that center yourself and your own
Speaker 3: life experience. So it makes sense that someone would read
Speaker 3: John or you know, read parts Daniel and hear about
Speaker 3: it and think, oh, that makes sense. It is going
Speaker 3: to be the end of the world while I'm alive
Speaker 3: and I do know the guy who's the Antichrist. In
Speaker 3: the days of early Christianity, they would say, it's insert
Speaker 3: Roman emperor here.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's convenient.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like witchcrafts, you know, it's like a
Speaker 4: witch hunt kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, And he got more and more specific, and
Speaker 2: that Adso a Dso person that we mentioned before the month,
Speaker 2: the Benedictine Monk, he got real specific with it, even
Speaker 2: saying what that this Antichrist is going to come from Babylon,
Speaker 2: like definitely going to be born in Babylon, you know,
Speaker 2: the tribe of Dan exactly because the whole pagan thing.
Speaker 2: And and also he's real specific about the Roman Empire
Speaker 2: as you're talking about, basically in this letter from nine
Speaker 2: to fifty eight, saying, uh, this this time when the
Speaker 2: Antichrist arises and all this stufft the end of days,
Speaker 2: the last days, it's not gonna happen until all of
Speaker 2: the peoples and countries that were once ruled by Rome
Speaker 2: are no longer ruled by Rome. It's weird.
Speaker 3: And he was also super anti Semitic, he was like,
Speaker 3: first things first, the Antichrist is definitely Jewish.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but that's it's super specific, right.
Speaker 3: From the tribe of Dan born in Babylon, taught raised
Speaker 3: in the ways of wizards and magicians.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is what's depicted in Revelation concerning the Antichrist, like
Speaker 4: with the Horror of Babylon and all of the great
Speaker 4: beasts of the Abyites, great beasts, Yeah, I mean all
Speaker 4: the stuff where people sixty six to six comes from.
Speaker 5: Is there like any association or those.
Speaker 3: Unrelated Often, yeah, there's often an association or again an
Speaker 3: interpretation because after seeing specific mentions of Antichrist vibes or
Speaker 3: a specific Antichrist, people are reading into this. So they'll
Speaker 3: find a villainous force that seems vague in the text,
Speaker 3: and then they'll say, boom, that is the Antichrist, And
Speaker 3: depending on where they're living, what their life is like
Speaker 3: at the time, they will often, as we'll see, have
Speaker 3: a specific person who is alive at the same time
Speaker 3: that they think is the Antichrist. This is not cynical
Speaker 3: propaganda for the most part, which is so weird. It's
Speaker 3: not made in bad faith. People making these claims. A
Speaker 3: vast majority until pretty recently in history. Genuine like they
Speaker 3: interpreted the Bible literally and they genuinely believe the person
Speaker 3: they were calling the Antichrist was a supervillain, did have superpowers,
Speaker 3: was supernatural, and was the main antagonist of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Man, did you see the thread running through a lot
Speaker 2: of these things, Some of these writings where the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: at least to a secular world in society, the Antichrist
Speaker 2: will be seen as a very positive force, at least
Speaker 2: at first as this person emerges, which is something that
Speaker 2: also talks about, like he will be of the world
Speaker 2: right and the world will love him.
Speaker 3: He'll be accepted as first a secular power, and then
Speaker 3: he will be gradually accepted as a messiotic power. So like,
Speaker 3: first you become the king of Jerusalem, right, Adso starts this.
Speaker 3: He's the one who says the Antichrist will rule over Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: and then he will, by hook or by crook, become
Speaker 3: a spiritual leader, ultimately declaring himself divinity.
Speaker 4: But the idea is that with all of this, it's
Speaker 4: sort of like a frog and boiling water situation of
Speaker 4: being corrupted, right, Like the public is being swayed by
Speaker 4: this individual and turned unto godless ways, but like a
Speaker 4: little at a time where they barely notice.
Speaker 3: Is that kind of the the idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but just going back to what you had
Speaker 2: talked about earlier in Noel, Uh, I add so in
Speaker 2: his letter here, I'm just going to read a part
Speaker 2: of this because it goes back to how is this
Speaker 2: thing created, this Antichrist?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Is it like Jesus was, you know, born with the
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit going into marry Uh? He says he will
Speaker 2: be born from the union of a mother and father
Speaker 2: like other men, not as some say, from a virgin alone.
Speaker 2: Still he will be conceived holy in sin, will be
Speaker 2: generated in sin, and will be born in sin. But
Speaker 2: at the very beginning of his conception, the devil will
Speaker 2: enter his mother's womb at the same moment. So it says,
Speaker 2: though it's like, you know, the way the baby is
Speaker 2: created migration, the human way, but there's a third party there.
Speaker 4: It just pops in, you know, last minute ivf infernal
Speaker 4: vitro fertilization. But he's not saying that the devil had
Speaker 4: intercourse with the mortal woman either.
Speaker 3: It depends on this. So Adso is like, okay, this
Speaker 3: is in a way and we're not we're not making
Speaker 3: any religious judgments. But the way this story grows, it's
Speaker 3: helpful to look at the way folklore evolves, right, or
Speaker 3: oral storytelling, because again, the written documentation in the beginning
Speaker 3: is very, very scant, adso creates one of the big
Speaker 3: resurgences of this He's like when Coca Cola cements the
Speaker 3: image of Santa Claus. He provides the hard ground rules
Speaker 3: for how the West and indeed other parts of the
Speaker 3: world envisioned this idea of the Antichrist. He puts in
Speaker 3: this seven year rule. He says, all right, either the
Speaker 3: angel Gabriel or the return Jesus Christ. He is going
Speaker 3: to defeat this guy. And then the final judgment is
Speaker 3: happening as soon as you know, all those Roman countries
Speaker 3: are gone.
Speaker 5: Well, show us your notes, guy, where's all this coming from.
Speaker 2: There's citing there, there's a really great oh gosh, was
Speaker 2: it on and was it NPR. No, it's an old
Speaker 2: PBS website that you can find right now where the
Speaker 2: entire letter is written out, and there are places where
Speaker 2: it's cited, like Psalms fifty seven is cited when it
Speaker 2: says that this Antichrist will be conceived holy in sin
Speaker 2: and then John nine thirty four is sited and there's like,
Speaker 2: there's biblical, but.
Speaker 5: It's a leap though. I mean the guy's editorializing, to
Speaker 5: say the least.
Speaker 3: Again, it's interpretation. Yeah, I want to say, with this,
Speaker 3: with Ozso's interpretation again Odso Montie. And there with this
Speaker 3: this one letter. By the way, we see immensely high
Speaker 3: stake stuff. At a time whens on, these stories grow deeper,
Speaker 3: people are taking notes from each other. It takes off
Speaker 3: in another cycle of resurgence during the Middle Ages of
Speaker 3: Western Europe, and it resounds still in the modern day
Speaker 3: and indeed to the future. So with all that context, folks,
Speaker 3: before we go to our ad break, let's ask you this.
Speaker 3: Who is the anti Christ? We'll be right back. Here's
Speaker 3: where it gets crazy. Who is the Antichrist? Single question,
Speaker 3: simple question. It is conjured a library of Alexandria's worth
Speaker 3: of conspiracies.
Speaker 4: And I mean it also, as may have been indicated
Speaker 4: by some of that we're talking about earlier, has been
Speaker 4: used as a political tool, like depending on what side
Speaker 4: of the al you're on as to who your Antichrist
Speaker 4: might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really quickly, you guys, want to rattle off some
Speaker 2: of the movies that deal with the Antichrist before we
Speaker 2: get into like who it could actually be. Just rattle
Speaker 2: them off, because I I did. I forgot that that
Speaker 2: Arnold Swarzenegger movie End of Days and directly with the
Speaker 2: anti Christ.
Speaker 3: Warlock is the absolute banger.
Speaker 5: Uh there, am remember that the least.
Speaker 3: Remember the Devil's Advocate, Devil's First Off, that's the best one.
Speaker 3: I can't say that. I can't say it. It's my
Speaker 3: favorite though, Yeah yeah, who you're carrying all those bricks
Speaker 3: for Kevin God Godlaw. I'm a humanist, maybe the last humanist?
Speaker 3: Sorry I did that monologue.
Speaker 5: My favorites well, well, but again baby, the.
Speaker 2: Left Behind series, Paul was mentioning that before we even
Speaker 2: started rolling.
Speaker 3: We'll talk, isn't that?
Speaker 5: And like the Leftovers?
Speaker 2: You know, but Antichrist is heavily involved in there?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Uh well in the OMEN series is something I was
Speaker 2: really thinking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and also shout out to Angel Heart, so
Speaker 3: angel Heart's great. Otherwise, emails that egg scene makes me
Speaker 3: so uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: Still, you know, it's it's it's wild and the Omen.
Speaker 4: I recently rewatched the seventies Omen the o g One,
Speaker 4: you know, Damien, and uh, it really holds up. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's that era of like horror movies with
Speaker 4: Rosemary's Baby, and you know that that was just a
Speaker 4: very kind of almost cinema verite approach to to horror.
Speaker 4: A lot of stuff happening in your head. They don't
Speaker 4: show you too much, you know, but it really gets
Speaker 4: under your skin.
Speaker 2: Well, I forgot that. That series takes you from like
Speaker 2: the Birth of the Anti Christ into the second movie,
Speaker 2: then becomes to the President. Well no, the second movie,
Speaker 2: he's a kid like at a military school and things
Speaker 2: get real dark, and then he becomes a man in
Speaker 2: the third movie and just breaks havoc. But man, that's
Speaker 2: just crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so this resounds through the world of fi
Speaker 3: and through the world of art. As we said earlier,
Speaker 3: when we ask that single question that we came back on,
Speaker 3: who is the Antichrist, we have to point out the
Speaker 3: Antichrist is tons of people. Depending on who you ask,
Speaker 3: there could be multiple Antichrist. And at this point you
Speaker 3: might think, ah, here we go, and everybody's got a
Speaker 3: multiverse these days. But this is different because Biblical sources
Speaker 3: again differentiate between a main Antichrist and other you know,
Speaker 3: anti junior varsity Antichrist, some of whom are already in
Speaker 3: the world, and that I think that distinction kind of
Speaker 3: explains the later and present practice of labeling folks as
Speaker 3: and Antichrist. You might not be the Great Beast, but
Speaker 3: you're super down with them, and you're not fooling us.
Speaker 4: This is the idea, but I mean, you know, to
Speaker 4: your point, it is such a depending on where you
Speaker 4: stand and what your belief systems are, there are obvious
Speaker 4: candidates that kind of emerge, you know, throughout history, throughout
Speaker 4: the world in terms of folks that follow that kind
Speaker 4: of trajectory, right that we were talking about, the sort
Speaker 4: of ascending as a man of a person of the
Speaker 4: people and then being lifted up by you know, society,
Speaker 4: and then then affecting great change and then gradually plummeting
Speaker 4: the world into darkness. But that part we haven't exactly
Speaker 4: necessarily seen that happen yet.
Speaker 3: So in a way, you know, these folks get portrayed
Speaker 3: as sort of the infernal answer to the divine armies
Speaker 3: of Christ and God. They're like officers in an enemy
Speaker 3: army of damnation, and a lot of.
Speaker 2: Our ministers, right, basically going out and preaching the anti Christ.
Speaker 3: Message proselytizers, Yeah, of evangelicals, and so an early example
Speaker 3: of this comes from the Middle Ages. This was a
Speaker 3: great time for anti Christ promotion. There's a collaborate monk
Speaker 3: named yo kim Or Yokim of Feor, and he pitches
Speaker 3: the idea of a series you call them opening Acts
Speaker 3: anti Christ for the Big Antichrist Show. And he says, look,
Speaker 3: what we're looking at is a cavalcade of people, an escalation.
Speaker 3: And he says, folks like Nero, folks like the Muhammad,
Speaker 3: the actual prophet Muhammed from Islam, Folks like Saladin, these
Speaker 3: are all Antichrist leading up to the emergence of the
Speaker 3: Big Bad. And like a lot of Middle Ages writers,
Speaker 3: he believed the real Antichrist, the big One, would of
Speaker 3: course come in his society during his lifetime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, any major figure that pushes people away from a
Speaker 2: what would what that person would consider a Christ's centered
Speaker 2: life and the Word of God and how a human
Speaker 2: should live in the things they should believe in. Right, So,
Speaker 2: anybody that pushes that message and pushes you further away
Speaker 2: from that is one of these ministers and then the
Speaker 2: main one is eventually comes to power, right, But there's
Speaker 2: an other theme here that it's power over the world,
Speaker 2: not of a country.
Speaker 4: That's up to interpretation too, and again it's highly linked
Speaker 4: to politics and geopolitics and all of these interlocking complex systems.
Speaker 4: And also depending on where you are in the world,
Speaker 4: what affiliation you have, it's also up to interpretation and
Speaker 4: easily weaponized.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Secularism rises in the stories. All early Christians agree
Speaker 3: there's one great, big bad. As secularism rises, as people
Speaker 3: go away from God lose their belief in God. This
Speaker 3: individual swoops in opportunistically deceiving people with apparent miracles, taking
Speaker 3: over positions of earthly power like all the New World
Speaker 3: type stuff, and then spiritual power, and then finally claiming
Speaker 3: to be God themselves. And I want to be very clear
Speaker 3: here the idea of secularism rising or turning people from God,
Speaker 3: that doesn't just mean saying atheism or there's no God.
Speaker 3: That can mean very minor doctrinal disagreements.
Speaker 4: I mean, just think the difference in the wars that
Speaker 4: were started with the disagreement between Protestantism and Catholicism. A
Speaker 4: lot of basic similarities there, but some very specific things
Speaker 4: that cause people to murder each other.
Speaker 2: Well, think about just listen to ourselves talking about this, guys.
Speaker 2: You can see why someone who believes wholeheartedly in some
Speaker 2: of the core beliefs here would see something like the
Speaker 2: United Nations, right, or the World Health Organization, or anything
Speaker 2: that's bringing the entire world together in some secular way.
Speaker 2: How you could view those potentially as negative entities and organizations.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Sure, we'll get to that because we'll see another complex
Speaker 3: fold in of conspiratorial folklore in this.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's the all or nothing nature of
Speaker 4: religious belief and the fact that it inherently has this
Speaker 4: adversarial quality with people of other religious beliefs who believe
Speaker 4: their thing just as much as you believe your thing.
Speaker 4: For we are not the same, and we must war.
Speaker 4: If we can't convert you to our thing, then you
Speaker 4: are our enemy. And so it's almost like the introduction
Speaker 4: of secularism. Well today it feels a very innocuous thing,
Speaker 4: but some I'm sure doesn't. Then was tantamount to heresy,
Speaker 4: you know, the idea of secularism. Godlessness is what that
Speaker 4: translates to.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and this is again, like we said earlier,
Speaker 3: this is in us versus them mentality, and we have
Speaker 3: to understand, like as weird and literally apocalyptic as this
Speaker 3: may so out during the later Middle Ages, if you're
Speaker 3: the average person in many communities, you just accept as
Speaker 3: fact that the Antichrist, the main one, is about to
Speaker 3: reign on Earth in your lifetime. Pretty much any overly
Speaker 3: successful political figure that you disagree with might be the Antichrist,
Speaker 3: or they might the anti Christ might already be here.
Speaker 3: The final judgment maybe nigh. It's a level of paranoia
Speaker 3: resembling the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: Like people genuinely thought this was happening. It wasn't until
Speaker 3: the sixteenth century that folks stopped thinking of this as
Speaker 3: a present or coming imminent terrible individual and thought of
Speaker 3: the Antichrist as a collective body of evil. And we
Speaker 3: owe all of that to a guy named Martin Luther.
Speaker 3: Pretty big deal to Protestantism. He's the guy. He did
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff. He also said, look, folks, fight
Speaker 3: the real enemy, said, the Antichrist is none of a
Speaker 3: not a single pope, the institution of the papacy, this
Speaker 3: organization is the anti Christ, and that's what's driving us
Speaker 3: away from God. And the thing is, I mean, it
Speaker 3: sounds weird today right to say like the Catholic Church,
Speaker 3: which is responsible for Christianity, is also anti christ Like.
Speaker 3: But once you get that paranoia in play, anyone can
Speaker 3: be a villain.
Speaker 2: I've heard several people pause it that the Vatican really
Speaker 2: is the last remnant of the Roman Empire, and that
Speaker 2: is how the Roman Empire continued on, and that's how
Speaker 2: it still is able to exert a lot of power.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's wrong. That does seem like it seems like
Speaker 2: there's something to that that the Holy Roman Empire still exists,
Speaker 2: but as the papacy.
Speaker 4: But even more so, it seems like there's definitely something
Speaker 4: to how much these declarations by Martin Luther caused Catholics
Speaker 4: and Protestants to truly despise each other. Like I've been
Speaker 4: watching that show Showgun on FX, which is a remake
Speaker 4: of like an older mini series based on a novel
Speaker 4: about you know, invading forces into Japan. It was these Protestants,
Speaker 4: you know, this Protestant ship who were going to, you know,
Speaker 4: try to take over this part of Japan which is
Speaker 4: being held by Catholic Portuguese monks and they have absolutely
Speaker 4: hate each other and want to murder each other on site.
Speaker 3: Yeah again us versus them, ILG. I got a little
Speaker 3: bit lost because I'm trying to remember one of the
Speaker 3: best shows I saw. It was out on Netflix. There's
Speaker 3: a TV series about addiction and possession and one of
Speaker 3: the big plot lines. I guess it's okay to say
Speaker 3: because I remember the name of this. One of the
Speaker 3: big plot lines is active conspiracies within the Catholic Church, right,
Speaker 3: the call is coming from inside the house, and people, Yeah,
Speaker 3: people believe this, you know. And if you're a Protestant
Speaker 3: and much of what you have witnessed in your life
Speaker 3: experience seems to be corruption, right and sin on behalf
Speaker 3: of the Catholic Church, then you are going to fall
Speaker 3: into other ring, you know. And now look, now, the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church as it exists is less inclined to identify
Speaker 3: the anti Christ and Antichrist as a specific coming individual.
Speaker 3: But there have been a lot of candidates. We mentioned
Speaker 3: Barack Obama. I thought I found it interesting we're talking
Speaker 3: about this a little bit off air. There was a
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen poll that showed there's a great Guardian article
Speaker 3: about this, it showed roughly one in four Americans believed
Speaker 3: Obama might be the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and I think a lot of that goes
Speaker 2: back to how how he brought so many people together.
Speaker 2: It seemed as though, right his message was very positive.
Speaker 2: It was about helping each other out, working together, we
Speaker 2: can do positive things, you know, as a collective of humanity.
Speaker 2: They didn't see it maybe as very christ like or biblical.
Speaker 3: Right, How was this guy so successful? Yeah, he can't
Speaker 3: just be trying to do his best at his job.
Speaker 2: It's kind of postular, I think, so popular.
Speaker 3: Why do people like it? I bet it's the devil?
Speaker 3: And they said stuff like that about Napoleon, Benito, Mussolini,
Speaker 3: Peter the Great, Thomson, Tom Hooks. You could kind of
Speaker 3: name anybody like I'm sure there's someone right now. I
Speaker 3: watched The Family Guy and thought it's Seth MacFarlane.
Speaker 4: You know, I've been accused of being the Antichrist three
Speaker 4: times already this week.
Speaker 5: Oh no, no, I'm joking.
Speaker 4: I'm not not high profile enough to be accused of
Speaker 4: being the Antichrist. But it does Joe that this kind
Speaker 4: of talk is being thrown around pretty fast and loose,
Speaker 4: you know, when it comes to identifying the ultimate enemy
Speaker 4: of a given group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's often in the modern day in the West,
Speaker 3: it's often leveraged by what we will call factions of
Speaker 3: conservative Christianity. And these are you know, for everybody, everybody
Speaker 3: tuning in practitioners of the Christian faith. When you hear that,
Speaker 3: obviously we're talking about the people that you at your
Speaker 3: church would call crazy, really far out there, folks. And
Speaker 3: for a while again, except for except for Gerald Ford,
Speaker 3: for some reason, for a while, every single president has
Speaker 3: been accused by someone of being the anti Christ. John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan, it knows no political ideology. Henry Kissinger had
Speaker 3: the top slot for a long long time in the
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5: And then you supported that I did, I do?
Speaker 4: And uh.
Speaker 3: Mikhail Gorbachev was also a front runner for a time
Speaker 3: because he was in charge of the USSR, and he
Speaker 3: had a very unique and distinct earth mark of the beast,
Speaker 3: mark of the beast.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's only it's so funny. There's only one person
Speaker 2: who could possibly right now be the Antichrist, and I
Speaker 2: would fall for.
Speaker 5: It, oh boy, And I would fall for it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's yeah, Okay, there's two neil in his one.
Speaker 5: Actually that's not true.
Speaker 2: That's not true. I really like Neils, say, follow him
Speaker 2: like him.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't the guy.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't follow him. But it worries me that I
Speaker 2: do see like John Stewart, sorry Jay stew but I
Speaker 2: see him as a person. I see him as a
Speaker 2: person that I would follow like kind of. I would
Speaker 2: just be like, you know what, like, uh, Grimma Stewart,
Speaker 2: I'm with you. Let's go that.
Speaker 3: I'll email him, I'll be like, hey, man, are you
Speaker 3: from the.
Speaker 2: Tribe of dan Oh. I didn't even think about that
Speaker 2: far oh j.
Speaker 4: Anyway, your liberalism is showing.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, but like, but it's but it's
Speaker 2: not about that, It's about growing up with somebody.
Speaker 3: Yes, trust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's kind of a conscience of America, regardless again
Speaker 3: of political ideology. There's a funny story. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: a US Republican politician Ryan z zinc Zinke accused Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton being the anti Christ. Is very public about it.
Speaker 3: He's very serious. It was like I read the Bible,
Speaker 3: I see the signs. Think about it. People, do your
Speaker 3: own research. Hillary Clinton is the anti Christ.
Speaker 5: And that a bass song was about.
Speaker 3: That's what every as bass song is about.
Speaker 5: Even all that she wants is another baby.
Speaker 2: I thought it was the sign.
Speaker 5: That's a different one you're talking about and.
Speaker 3: Waving without God.
Speaker 5: Yes, but you're right, she wanted a baby. That's a
Speaker 5: different song.
Speaker 4: That's ah that she wants the baby at.
Speaker 3: AULTI. Christ is very into babies, so for different reasons.
Speaker 3: So this one story, you know, the political circus that
Speaker 3: has replaced journalism and American discourse, they love stories like this,
Speaker 3: and uh, it got so much press that during the
Speaker 3: Trump inauguration, the inauguration, former President Donald Trump, uh, Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton made a big deal about specifically pointing out this
Speaker 3: riot guy and reassuring everybody that she was not, in fact,
Speaker 3: the scion of Satan sent to overthrow all that is
Speaker 3: good in the universe.
Speaker 2: Thank goodness.
Speaker 3: I don't think he believed her, Oh, because you know,
Speaker 3: there's always that logic trap where you can say, well,
Speaker 3: that's what any antichrist.
Speaker 5: Would say, spider Man pointing at Spider Man exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and then you know there's all the hits.
Speaker 3: Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden, who I still don't. I
Speaker 3: just don't think he's a great guy and the person.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Yeah, but we did find a
Speaker 3: we did find at least one explanation for the trend
Speaker 3: of accusing a lot of people of presidents, in particular
Speaker 3: being accused of being the Antichrist. We are going to
Speaker 3: introduce you, folks to a guy named Gerald Burton win Rod.
Speaker 5: What a win Rod?
Speaker 3: What a win I do like that like a spit
Speaker 3: on Nimro.
Speaker 5: It's like a windbag and a Nimrod combined.
Speaker 3: Which was accurate. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4: He's a pro Nazi, far right evangelical from Kansas who
Speaker 4: is largely responsible for the modern president is the anti
Speaker 4: Christ kind of rhetoric that we're sort of dancing around here.
Speaker 4: Win Rod believed that FDR was a devil linked with
Speaker 4: of course the Jewish Communist conspiracy, and of course the
Speaker 4: Hitler was cool, and that he would save Europe from
Speaker 4: the Communist horde.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wind Rod Man, that kind of sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's a heck of a trendsetter. Because again
Speaker 3: after this, like people who hear these predictions often don't
Speaker 3: or these accusations often don't know that it comes from
Speaker 3: blood libel. You know, it comes from this strong background
Speaker 3: of anti Semitism, and and that's where things like the
Speaker 3: Mark of the Beast get folded in. But it's still
Speaker 3: not it's still not quite I think the the strangest stuff.
Speaker 3: Maybe we talked about the Mark of the Beast though,
Speaker 3: because we've mentioned it a couple of times, it's often
Speaker 3: called six sixty six.
Speaker 4: Right, oh, and really quickly before we get into that mark, Matt,
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right. Gerald Ford had assassination attempted on his
Speaker 4: life a couple of times, and one of them was
Speaker 4: by a member of the Manson family, Squeaky Frome. He
Speaker 4: tried to kill Gerald Ford in California. But you think
Speaker 4: the Mansons would be pro Antichrist?
Speaker 2: Well, maybe is a Squeaky from or from I can't remember,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, but I no, it's fine. I just dude.
Speaker 2: There is an entire show that's going to be coming
Speaker 2: out later this year called Rip Current that deals with
Speaker 2: the two assassinations against Gerald Ford by Squeaky and there's
Speaker 2: another woman that attempted an assassination on him.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, yeah, and he's survived both of them, perhaps
Speaker 3: because he had the Mark of the beast, mark.
Speaker 5: The beast, demonic force field or something right, right, not.
Speaker 3: Just secret security? Who are you really working for? Answer
Speaker 3: the Department of the Treasury. People need to understand how
Speaker 3: weird that is anyway, So the mark of the Beast
Speaker 3: comes from Revelations Revelation chapter thirteen, which we briefly discussed earlier.
Speaker 3: Then the whole you know, the horror of Babylon and
Speaker 3: the you know, the beasts in the sort of Ends
Speaker 3: of Times kind of situation. And the idea is that
Speaker 3: the mark of the beast similar to the concept of
Speaker 3: putting blood on your door in Egypt of old. The
Speaker 3: mark of the Beast is kind of a parody of that,
Speaker 3: and regular humans, the Jane's and John's and so ons
Speaker 3: of the world, will have to have a mark of
Speaker 3: the beast on them if they participate in the society
Speaker 3: that the Antichrist runs. Over the years, as society is modernized,
Speaker 3: that quote unquote mark has been interpreted as many things.
Speaker 3: Is it, for instance, this is really popular a few
Speaker 3: decades back. Is it your Social Security number? Is it
Speaker 3: the UPC you know all that other stuff.
Speaker 5: Could it be the color of your skin perhaps.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, or you know a barcode or a chip maybe,
Speaker 2: or something a vaccination.
Speaker 4: I say the thing I said as pointedly just because
Speaker 4: that's one way it could be really disgustingly used to another,
Speaker 4: you know race.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well yeah, I mean it can be used, right,
Speaker 2: the concept of it could be used in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways. But there are strange technologies that again, like
Speaker 2: imagine if you're talking about something that would be a
Speaker 2: technology that allows you to exist in a society. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you don't have a some kind of bank card
Speaker 2: or cash app, car card or something like that, you
Speaker 2: really can't function in a lot of society today, right sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in days of old you couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Like you might have to have a licensing system to
Speaker 3: live in a certain community. And if you didn't vibe
Speaker 3: with that, you would say, well, this is a mark
Speaker 3: of the beast.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but most of it isn't an actual mark
Speaker 2: or an actual thing that's attached to the human body. Rob,
Speaker 2: What was that recent There's a company we just heard
Speaker 2: from recently that is making a Star Trek thing that
Speaker 2: goes on your shirt that you could touch and be like, hey, computer,
Speaker 2: what's this.
Speaker 4: Oh, there's a couple of different ones I've seen called rabbit,
Speaker 4: and there is another one. Yeah, a little AI kind
Speaker 4: of personal assistant kind.
Speaker 2: Of but taking your phone technology basically or most of
Speaker 2: your phone technology and putting it on you, right, rather
Speaker 2: than a handheld device or something like that. And just
Speaker 2: imagine that iteration or two ahead. And it could be
Speaker 2: something that is like an implant, right, or something that
Speaker 2: is a part of your body that becomes the mark.
Speaker 3: Already, I mean that is statistically inevitable unless there is
Speaker 3: an extinction event that affects humans immediately. Like that is
Speaker 3: going to happen. The the meat and the metal will
Speaker 3: continue to merge. It's just going to happen.
Speaker 4: The most illiterative sentence I've heard all day, and I
Speaker 4: love it.
Speaker 3: It's still kind of early. We'll get we got some work,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I love that point because we also, again
Speaker 3: we see interpretation. What is meant by a mark?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Is it just a like a signaling to the world.
Speaker 3: Is it something that goes inside you as a person?
Speaker 3: And then is it communicable? Will you be punished for
Speaker 3: not participating the same way our pal ads so said
Speaker 3: the Antichrist would torture and execute people.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Maybe again, like, well, there are three ways, right, ASO said,
Speaker 2: the first thing he's going to do is deceive people,
Speaker 2: and those he can't deceive, he's going to use fear
Speaker 2: to control. If he can't do that, then he's gonna
Speaker 2: throw you in a kulog basically. But in a couple
Speaker 2: other instances, the mark is a hidden thing and it
Speaker 2: only is on the Antichrist. It's not a part of
Speaker 2: followers or anything.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: The yeah, take it back to the Omens series, and
Speaker 2: it is a hidden birthmark that has to be discovered.
Speaker 2: But nobody on the outside, like no one looking at
Speaker 2: this child would know that's the Antichrist. But if you
Speaker 2: pull the hair back in a certain way, you can
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 3: And then in other stories too, it's like a hidden sign, you.
Speaker 2: Know, or on the hand there's like a six sixty
Speaker 2: six in the hand somehow.
Speaker 3: And the idea of this serves the conspiracy theory aspect
Speaker 3: or the folklore aspect, because in these stories one needs
Speaker 3: if you're the good guys, right, then you needed the
Speaker 3: ability to identify somehow, uh, the the opposition. That's a
Speaker 3: huge part of it.
Speaker 5: The ops.
Speaker 4: You know, it's interesting too, how one reason that this
Speaker 4: depiction of this kind of stuff in fiction and in
Speaker 4: popular culture at the time or at a time like
Speaker 4: maybe in the well as far back as it was
Speaker 4: beginning to be written about, but even in the nineties
Speaker 4: and stuff with like the Anti Christ Superstar record from
Speaker 4: Marilyn Manson, this stuff was controversial, like people were still
Speaker 4: freaked out by.
Speaker 5: This kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So to like, you know, depict it, it felt a
Speaker 4: little dangerous, like a little edgy, and it freaked out parents,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there is great power to that, right,
Speaker 3: because what you're doing then is tapping into your leveraging
Speaker 3: one of the oldest, most dynamic stories in all of
Speaker 3: human culture, right, religion aside, just touching on that idea
Speaker 3: of a very powerful force that has been around forever
Speaker 3: and is fundamentally beat me here, Paul is fundamentally opposed
Speaker 3: to you, you personally, unless you get the right mark,
Speaker 3: unless you switch sides, I don't know. And there's like
Speaker 3: you mentioned, the fiction and the music aspect. It's so
Speaker 3: endlessly fascinating that the concern and interest in the Antichrist
Speaker 3: story encounters cyclical popularity just like a Satanic panic, you know,
Speaker 3: another mass hysteria outbreak like the Screaming Girls of Malaysia,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the big resurgences in this I
Speaker 3: would argue there are two variables. First, how stable is
Speaker 3: the current world of which you live right, your current community,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Do you feel safe secure access to resources? Second,
Speaker 3: are there any particularly popular things in the world of
Speaker 3: novels and film and art? Have any of them mentioned
Speaker 3: the anti Christ? Because if they do, that's a cheat
Speaker 3: code that gets people interested. Shout out to the fiction
Speaker 3: series and later adaptations. Left Behind. It's a fantastic example
Speaker 3: of how fiction feeds the factual interest told you alliteration.
Speaker 4: Left By would also be considered of a certain niche
Speaker 4: of cinema that is, you know, pretty religiously based or
Speaker 4: so most movies in Hollywood stuff is pretty secular. Left
Speaker 4: Behind series is very much has a message and is
Speaker 4: sort of promoted by the Christian community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a big example, but there's a lot
Speaker 3: of like in the world of Christian oriented fiction. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of similar things, and they're leveraging the
Speaker 3: story that everybody knows at least in pieces, and they're saying, well,
Speaker 3: let's reevaluate it or recontextualize it through a more modern lens.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, the book series Left Behind in the
Speaker 3: first one comes out in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 3: there are years of chaos that follow. In the two
Speaker 3: thousands and more and more people begin to search for
Speaker 3: an behind the pandemonium. What if? They ask, just like
Speaker 3: those people centuries and centuries go, what if the end
Speaker 3: times are coming? And what if they're happening while I'm alive.
Speaker 3: I hate to say it, but I see the trend.
Speaker 3: I kind of think a lot of people want to
Speaker 3: be around at the end of the world.
Speaker 2: I think it's something that a lot of people feel
Speaker 2: they need to be prepared for for some reason, which
Speaker 2: again kind of like an apocalypse or you know, preparing
Speaker 2: for the zombies or you know whatever. It is, thinking
Speaker 2: about bunkers, thinking about survival buckets of food and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. It is maybe in the back of a
Speaker 2: lot of people's minds because you don't want to get
Speaker 2: caught off guard by something like that. You want to
Speaker 2: have the best chances of surviving, I guess, but it
Speaker 2: is weird to think that it would be surviving and
Speaker 2: maybe not really living for a lot for you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like life would be very different after
Speaker 2: whatever cataclysmic event or if we're hitting up on the
Speaker 2: end times. I think it's an that inner thing where
Speaker 2: you don't want to be a sucker, you don't want
Speaker 2: to be caught off guard.
Speaker 3: But I see that. I do think there is there's
Speaker 3: a lot of validity to that. I think maybe those
Speaker 3: two impulses coexist in the same person, in the same communities.
Speaker 2: I've had a couple of conversations with people recently who
Speaker 2: are convinced that this election coming up is like the
Speaker 2: last chance to save humanity from the actual end times, which.
Speaker 3: Like Christian theological end times.
Speaker 2: I think so, I think, I mean, I'm not really sure,
Speaker 2: you know, like what these individuals believe in their personal
Speaker 2: life about that kind of thing, like religiously, but something
Speaker 2: about the politics side of it intersecting with their religious life.
Speaker 2: It feels like they think the stakes are at the level.
Speaker 4: Surely people have accused Taylor Swift of being the Antichrist
Speaker 4: as for her part in all of this, remember the
Speaker 4: whole conspiracy about Taylor and being able to sway the election,
Speaker 4: and that it feels like the kind of rhetoric on
Speaker 4: the right was Porterer lines She's the Antichrist, kind of talk.
Speaker 5: I feel you.
Speaker 3: I also I'm glad you bring that up because there
Speaker 3: is a bit of a soapbox I want to get
Speaker 3: on here. You know, it's rare for women or female
Speaker 3: identifying individuals to be identified as the Antichrist, and I
Speaker 3: think that is historically unfair. Everybody should get a chance
Speaker 3: to be the big villain, so, you know, more equality
Speaker 3: in anti Christ accusations.
Speaker 4: So if Taylor were to be accused of being the Antichrist,
Speaker 4: that would be another big win historically for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, progress, yeah, yeah, yeah, added to the accolades, and
Speaker 3: at least some of the success between the of these
Speaker 3: modern fictional and interpretations, you know, like left Behind or
Speaker 3: most notably the Omen. At least part of this success
Speaker 3: comes from this combination of long standing Antichrist theory and
Speaker 3: later conspiracies surrounding what we talked about earlier, modern institutions.
Speaker 3: We love a global cabal. Modern anti Christ speculation folds
Speaker 3: into this stuff because it's an easy red stream to connect.
Speaker 4: I guess we haven't talked a whole lot about the
Speaker 4: idea that there are forces at work working to make
Speaker 4: sure the Antichrist is born and brought forth like in
Speaker 4: Good Omens the Terry Practett and Neil Gaiman series that
Speaker 4: is also a really delightful TV series as well. The
Speaker 4: book rather came first, But that is all about these
Speaker 4: secret sects within I believe, even the Vatican and with
Speaker 4: them that are like working to make sure the Antichrist
Speaker 4: is born, and maybe even to a lesser degree in
Speaker 4: like Kevin Smith Dogma, but very much that's part of
Speaker 4: the story. Is there's like, you know, again, like in
Speaker 4: Rosemary's Baby, there's members of this kind of unnamed cult
Speaker 4: no spoilers, well spoilers for a forty year old movie
Speaker 4: that are like working to make sure that Rosemary gets
Speaker 4: impregnated with the seed of Satan and then they're going
Speaker 4: to raise the baby and all of that, you know.
Speaker 3: And there are things like Hereditary, which takes the same
Speaker 3: sort of plot line, just isn't specifically Satan. It makes
Speaker 3: sense when you when you think about the fear that
Speaker 3: people inherently encounter living in a globally connected world, you
Speaker 3: can see where these the origin the provenance of these things.
Speaker 3: The United Nations is an insane idea. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you went back in time and you explained it, people
Speaker 3: would tell you that's devilment, you know, and if you
Speaker 3: like the builder Burgers, any global banking institution, conspira corporations
Speaker 3: past a certain threshold, all of them have been accused
Speaker 3: of various shenani and stuff like this, some of it
Speaker 3: with validity, to be fair, But they those cabal conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: they inherited other earlier stories. They carry with the burden
Speaker 3: of prejudice us versus them, ideologies anti Semitism. So like,
Speaker 3: whenever you hear these things, we have to put on
Speaker 3: our thinking caps and remember the lesson from all that
Speaker 3: old wind rod stories are another kind of technology, That's
Speaker 3: all they are. And like any other kind of technology,
Speaker 3: they can be weaponized for great and sometimes horrific effect.
Speaker 5: No doubt about it.
Speaker 4: And last thought to leave us with for this evening's episode,
Speaker 4: What's Next? We talked a little bit about Taylor Swift
Speaker 4: and what's going on and all of the chatter around
Speaker 4: this political cycle. But like, what's the true future of
Speaker 4: antichrist rhetoric? Is it even maybe becoming a little obsolete
Speaker 4: as the world does get a little more secular, or at
Speaker 4: least this country, But I don't know on the religion's
Speaker 4: going anywhere.
Speaker 2: Well, well, it's tough because the some of the recent
Speaker 2: episodes we've done and historically do point us to small
Speaker 2: groups of people who do work in secret against humanity
Speaker 2: by selling goods that give us cancer, by you know,
Speaker 2: by circumventing yeah, well, by building weapons and then finding
Speaker 2: ways that those weapons need to be sold, or at
Speaker 2: least pushing right for the need for those weapons to
Speaker 2: be sold.
Speaker 3: Starting off, starting work.
Speaker 2: But again, like for me, it goes back to consumerism
Speaker 2: and some of the globalization, that there are groups of
Speaker 2: people that are all about profit and they don't care
Speaker 2: if they're actually hurting people. And that goes to the
Speaker 2: individual level, but also two individuals working together for profits
Speaker 2: and shareholders and all that other stuff. So I can
Speaker 2: see why this would continue on guys like I can
Speaker 2: see antichrist concepts and people fingers being pointed at people
Speaker 2: saying you are the Antichrist. I think it's going to increase.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to continue. I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: very it's a story that resonates with people because people
Speaker 3: do conspire against one another and do attempt to for
Speaker 3: good or for ill. They attempt to paint folks they
Speaker 3: don't like as villains because you don't want to have
Speaker 3: someone you don't care for be thought of as the
Speaker 3: good guy. You're the hero of your story, and that's
Speaker 3: that's part of the Like even back to the early
Speaker 3: days of tribal warfare, religious ideology is a often irrationalization
Speaker 3: to say, here's why I should have the resources and
Speaker 3: you should not, and what.
Speaker 2: But we also don't want people causing mass harm, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, and I think that in a weird way.
Speaker 2: I don't think that has anything to do with being
Speaker 2: the hero or not. I think that has to do
Speaker 2: with being able to look out in the world and
Speaker 2: say that person or that group is hurting us or others.
Speaker 4: You know, this is such an easy constant to wrap
Speaker 4: your head around to the anti us. You know, it's
Speaker 4: the it's the ultimate them.
Speaker 3: It's like my kid.
Speaker 4: I guess a lot of the kids are using the
Speaker 4: term the ops, and at first I thought it was
Speaker 4: just referring to cops. But it means my enemy, the opposition,
Speaker 4: someone who is is the opposite of me, and that's
Speaker 4: what the Antichrist represents. It's easy to wrap your head
Speaker 4: around the idea of hating that which is different than you,
Speaker 4: or that which threatens you.
Speaker 3: Right, because you deserve the resources, not these, not these nabops.
Speaker 3: I'm bringing back the nabob. I love it is.
Speaker 5: That was that ever a thing? I love it.
Speaker 3: I just heard it in Apocalypse now which stop but anyways,
Speaker 3: an acronym maybe it is. Let's learn the etymology that
Speaker 3: in a future episode. The idea of mass harm though,
Speaker 3: is we have to remember the same people doing mass
Speaker 3: harm or often rationalizing their actions. So from their point,
Speaker 3: from their perspective, they are also the good guys. It
Speaker 3: just depends on what what you see good. As you know,
Speaker 3: it goes back to our original question nature of good
Speaker 3: and evil. I mean, it's exciting, I think to explore
Speaker 3: the idea of the anti Christ evolving in the future.
Speaker 3: We know it's been happening, it's still happening, and there
Speaker 3: are a lot of changes on the horizon space exploration,
Speaker 3: cloning corporations, so called artificial intelligence, space antichrist AI antique Christ.
Speaker 5: Now, when are people going to start accusing artificial intelligence
Speaker 5: of being the end?
Speaker 3: That's what I say?
Speaker 5: No, I love that.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be the perfect anti Christ. It's completely of
Speaker 2: man of the world, and it shows us progress.
Speaker 4: It's progress, guys. You know, it's helping us, it's a tool.
Speaker 5: And then it eats all of our lunches.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a I've been working on a related
Speaker 3: story with something like that. It's interesting. We'll see if
Speaker 3: it works to hear it. Oh yeah, long, I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's good, but I'll send it along. So
Speaker 3: I wonder, then, like, can we now that we know
Speaker 3: these texts are reinterpreted, recontextualized, and they respond socially right
Speaker 3: to the pressures of the day, then I agree with you, guys.
Speaker 3: I think humans will see new threats and fears emerge,
Speaker 3: and then they'll see them through the shadow of that
Speaker 3: ancient story, and so the Antichrist as a concept will
Speaker 3: evolve and it will assume a shape that personifies the
Speaker 3: fears of that modern age. AI Antichrist, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, dude.
Speaker 2: I can see a clear picture.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 2: It's a huge warehouse, and you have six hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty six supercomputers. They are in a they are laid
Speaker 2: out in a pentagram.
Speaker 4: They eventually sprout robot tentacles and start through the city.
Speaker 3: And it takes a while. You get like thirty minutes
Speaker 3: into the film until someone figures out that they move
Speaker 3: along lay lines, so and we have the influence opposition. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so I don't know. It makes sense in times of
Speaker 3: mass uncertainty, of fear and privation. People wonder if you
Speaker 3: know this is the moment where the House of cards collapses,
Speaker 3: whether with a bang or a whimper. Shout out to
Speaker 3: s Eliot. All good stories have a villain. Humans need
Speaker 3: and explanation for why bad things happen to good people.
Speaker 3: It's a question that hasn't been answered yet. And so
Speaker 3: the Antichrist fits the bill on all of those things.
Speaker 3: Whatever shape these new stories take, the people telling them
Speaker 3: are going to do one thing for sure. They're going
Speaker 3: to assure you the story they're telling you is true,
Speaker 3: and it's the stuff the devil doesn't want you to know.
Speaker 5: The end the or is it.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to the tentacled supercomputer Antichrist.
Speaker 3: It's so metal. I will do your bidding.
Speaker 5: I will follow you into the dark.
Speaker 4: And hey, this episode was brought to you by the
Speaker 4: First Omen. Please don't forget to catch it in theaters
Speaker 4: on April fifth.
Speaker 3: We're super excited to see it.
Speaker 4: We talked about a lot of anti Christ fiction and
Speaker 4: film in this episode, and I'm thinking this is going
Speaker 4: to be a pretty good addition to that canon.
Speaker 2: And if you want to see the movie, remember this
Speaker 2: is only in theaters April fifth.
Speaker 3: I can't wait. I can't wait to go see this
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 3: I love this kind of stuff and we hope that
Speaker 3: you enjoy it too. We want to hear your thoughts,
Speaker 3: especially if you have a conspiratorial take on the idea
Speaker 3: of the Antichrist that you think your fellow listeners either
Speaker 3: will enjoy or need to know. We try to be
Speaker 3: easy to find online.
Speaker 5: Boy do we ever.
Speaker 4: You can find us at the handle Spiracy Stuff on
Speaker 4: x FKA Twitter, on Facebook we have our Facebook group
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy. And on YouTube, where you
Speaker 4: can see Ben dressed up as George Washington or is
Speaker 4: it the actual George Washington time travel You can also
Speaker 4: hear Matt sing about existential dread experience by said a
Speaker 4: presidential time traveler.
Speaker 3: It's a banger of a song, folks, It's.
Speaker 5: Been in my head all week.
Speaker 4: Or if you want to find us on TikTok and Instagram,
Speaker 4: we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3: Oh and before we move on, just a quick shout
Speaker 3: out to everybody. Thank you for tuning into that stuff.
Speaker 3: We're hoping it's a series new spoilers. And yes, someone
Speaker 3: reach out to Brad Neely. You are you are a
Speaker 3: guiding light, my friend.
Speaker 5: Yeah man.
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