March 27, 2024 • 64 mins
What is the nature of good and evil? For some, it’s a matter of shifting perspective. For others, there are absolutes – clearly defined right and wrongs, good guys and bad. In tonight's episode, the guys explore one of history’s most extreme symbols of evil: the opposite of divinity, a dark oppositional messiah – the eternal enemy of God and Jesus; known, for millennia, as the Antichrist. What exactly is this? Where did it come from, and how does its story continue to evolve in the modern day?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you
are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know, Fellow conspiracy realists. Before
we get started this evening, we want to make sure
everyone tunes in to our exclusive interview with Arkasha Stevenson,
(00:50):
director of The First Omen. You can catch it only
in theaters April fifth. It's a question humanity has quarreled
with since before the dawn of the written age. What
is the nature of good? What is the nature of evil?
For some folks, it's a matter of shifting perspectives, a
(01:11):
long spectrum of gradients. For others, there are absolutes, clearly
defined rights and wrongs, clear good guys, clear bad guys.
And with that in mind, tonight we are exploring one
of history's most extreme symbols of evil, the opposite of divinity,
a dark, oppositional Messiah, the eternal enemy of God, and
(01:32):
Jesus Christ, known for millennia as the anti Christ. Here
are the facts. The Antichrist has done a lot for fiction.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Well, yeah, I mean, and I've always kind of struggled with, like,
is the Antichrist in service of Satan? Is the Antichrist?
Like Satan incarnates like in the way that Jesus is
God on earth? You know, Like, what's that relationship? Is
it the Sun of the Devil? It is in some fiction, right,
very much so.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
In some well, it's weird to think of it as
between nonfiction and fiction.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Because again, Rosemary's Baby, just in terms of Son of
the Devil is like the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
No, You're absolutely right, it's just in my mind even
when I'm trying to separate the fictional depictions of what
we would consider an Antichrist versus like letters that were written,
you know, nine hundred and fifty a d That are
concerning and Antichrist based on you know, scriptures that that
person takes to becomingly fact.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
This individual literal interpretation. And I'm glad we're bringing that
point up at the top, because, as we always want
to say, when we explore concepts like this bit of
a spiritual disclaimer. Your beliefs are your own. We're not
here to tell anyone what they should or should not believe.
But we do find a fascinating, surprising bevy of conspiracies
(02:53):
in Tales of the Antichrist. I mean, I think it's
fair to say that, even if you don't consider yourself
Christ in particular or religious in general, you have heard
about the concept of the Antichrist in clear like in
clear seminal works of fiction, some of the best horror films,
some of the best horror novels on the planet, some
(03:15):
of the best art. In fact, if we're getting pretentious,
it's about the Antichrist.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, Christ Superstar and Marilyn Manson.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Again, that guy sucks, but that was like he kind
of peaked, you know. In terms of the concept album
with Antichrist Superstar.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
There is one I'm glad you mentioned music to there
because there is one line that stood out to me.
I returned to it with the sex Pistols where they
say they don't say I am the Antichrist, they say
I am an Antichrist, which will be interesting later. So anyway, Yeah,
the question is, oh, and also in real life over millennia,
(03:52):
there have been numerous people who at various times claimed
that they themselves were the Antichrist, you know, and maybe
that's what Marilyn Manson's picking up on there.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, and let's point this out. I think we've talked
about this before, but biblically, from passages of the Bible,
there's very specific ones that paint anybody who is who
does not follow Jesus, believes that Jesus is the son
of God and says that out loud to people is
Antichrist or is in It's weird because it's the term.
(04:26):
The is what you end up like trying to like
quarreling over, and is what historians end up talking about.
Is that passage talking about the Antichrist or and Antichrist
or just of the Antichrist Christ.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, So the best way to explain it is like
there's an individual and then there's a vibe, and then
there are opening acts. So if your vibe is off,
you are being not ann or thee, but you're being
anti Christ and Christian.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
But then in Thessalonians it goes on to talking about
basically being a minister of the Antichrist. Or you know,
a worker of the Antichrist. So it's it's really interesting
because in some of those places there doesn't require to
be an individual at all. It is just an act
or as you said, a vibe.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, so the anti Christ to get polar opposite of
Jesus Christ according to Christian tradition. So everything Jesus Christ represents,
the anti Christ is super against. He thinks it's all
a terrible idea if it's the individual, the main anti Christ.
And this guy has a grift, he has a grand conspiracy.
(05:37):
He's going to take over the world, reign over the
earthly world in the time before the last judgment. And
in Christian theology, the last judgment is when Jesus and
a divide army and the angels returned the dead or resurrected.
So comes God to judge the living and the dead.
And I like the point where we're talking about the
(06:00):
complexity of the concept. Jesus Christ is the son of God.
The Antichrist is often at least the singular like final boss.
Antichrist is the son of Satan in a dark parody
of the nature of God and Jesus. So there's a
(06:21):
lot of misogyny in here, and also a lot of
anti semitism.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Oh yeah, is the concept of the Antichrist as the
son of Satan specifically addressed in scripture?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Man, I'm glad. So there are specific interpretations of scripture
that would say that. So, like, it's strange because for
a guy, and it's almost always typified as a guy,
for a guy who plays such a big role in
the grand climactic events of reality and the universe. It
(06:59):
might spry some of us to learn that there are
only a scant number of passages, like three passages in
the New Testament that specifically mentioned the Antichrist in a
singular sense, like there is a guy, he is evil.
They all come from the letters of John.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, they're they're interesting. Should we read some of them?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I just here's here is first John, Chapter two, verse
eighteen and nineteen. Dear children, this is the last hour.
And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming.
Even now, many Antichrists have come. This is how we
know it is the last hour. They went out from us,
but they did not really belong to us, For if
(07:42):
they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.
But they're going showed that none of them belonged to us.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
This really feels just like being anti referring to a
lot of people that are maybe following someone who is
preaching speaking out against Jesus and the message of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Again, I keep going back to, and I don't mean
to be crass. I keep going back to the idea
of escalating spiritual arms races, or even more basically an
opening act before of a genre of music, before the
big headliner, which is the anti Christ. So we say,
there are a lot of things. It's very cold war,
it's very them versus us paranoia.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh yeah, let me give you one more passage here,
this first John, chapter four, because I think it speaks
to exactly that First John four, verse two. This is
how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit
that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh
is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge
Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of
(08:44):
the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even
now is already in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
So like a lovecrafting monster or some kind of spiritual contagion,
this thing's decay. It's a possible, he spreads, and I
want to go to just to round it out right
to John seven, I think the other notable passage talking
about Antichrist stuff says expounds on this and says, for
(09:14):
many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who
will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Such a one is the deceiver and the anti Christ.
Even though John clearly thinks there's more than one.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
And last one, this one is, I think speaks to
again that other perspective, cause we're seeing kind of versions
of this that can be easily interpreted as that Leviathan coming,
you know, this actual force. And then there's ones like
this that almost feel a little more political.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Who is the.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Liar, But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ,
this is the ampti Christ. He who denies the Father
and the son. No one denies the son has the father.
He who confesses the son has the Father. Also, this
to me is just about like adhering to doctrine and like,
you know, kind of othering people who are not in
that that particular religious clique, you.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Know, And it sounds like we may have given you
four quotes, but again, these all we're clipping out, yes,
the passages that we mentioned here, And you can see
the confusion because already we're reading this in modern American English,
and it's been translated so many times before it got.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Here exactly the ones I new international version, by the way,
which is like the more easily translated to other languages,
which is why that version was created.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, I mean, what, you know, mess with the King James.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I will? I mean I dig at King James every
once in a while. It's kind of fun. But yeah,
there's so many versions of the Bible, and the one.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
I read was from First John, chapter two, verse twenty
two and twenty three, a quick mention of the Antichrist.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
There again, it's scant in its specificity, and early Christians
agreed with us, so they would do this. They would
pour over other parts of the Bible as it evolved
through different translations and interpretations, and they would interpret different
passages as referring to this villain. Uh think of things
(11:11):
like the Letters of Paul and Paul they don't specifically
say the Antichrist, but they say the man of lawlessness,
the son of pradition, you know, what I mean. It's
kind of like saying a certain Russian president.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know, the exactly the first oh subtweet. Yeah, the
first time I heard son of Perdition, I always think
about Road to Perdition.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I don't know why Western too. I picture of the
man in black from the Gunslinger.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, totally. But son of Perdition.
I didn't know that term. I didn't understand it, and
I've found that it's the letter the Letter on the
Origin Time of the Antichrist for a Medoso of Montirander,
where he talks about the Son of Perdition, but specififically
(12:01):
as that title, basically, the man of lawlessness, of like
of sin Oh tradition is bad, the eternal damnation.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah yeah, and ad so we'll get to is very
good at cementing the idea of the Antichrist for the public.
I mean, it's also weird that the Christian concept of
the Antichrist comes from beliefs that predate the concept of
Christianity itself. If you go back to Jewish traditions, the
(12:32):
Book of Daniel that was written like one sixty seven
BCE loosely, then the author there predicts that there will
be what they call a final persecutor, a rising, a
villain who will quote speak great words against the most
high and wear out the saints of the most High
and think to change time and laws. That's a seven.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Is this end of days type situation?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Like yeah, like big, big third act energy and right,
and as we will see later then as now, a
lot of people were absolutely certain we're making a base
assumption that the world would end in their lifetime. That
nobody wants to feel like you were in one of
(13:20):
the you know, one of the less good seasons of
the human experience. You want to be there with something
climactic occurred.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
One of the spinoffs that went straight to DVD, right, right,
nobody wants to be in those.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So, I mean, if you look at the political context
of the time in which the Book of Daniel was written,
this is interesting because it appears the author is referring
to a specific human individual, a real pill to be fair,
named Antiochus for epiphanies, and Antiochus rules Palestine during the
(13:55):
Hellenistic period, and these super mean the Jewish can communities
persecuting the massacring them, trying to root them out of Palestine.
But When Daniel writes this, it is a sneak diss
It's what we would call a subtweet today, because the
author never mentions Antiochus by name, And this establishes a
(14:17):
pattern that we could argue continues today. New threats, tyrants, villains,
other generally unpleasant people come on the stage of Barack Obama.
Thanks Obama, right, every president actually since FDR, except for
weirdly enough, Gerald Ford, which I still don't understand, means
the one who didn't get called the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Wasn't Gerald Ford, the president who had two assassination attempts
on his life by women who have like, is that wrong?
I thought that was it?
Speaker 5 (14:47):
Mea rock?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
He was also put us during the height of one
of the cyclical anti christ panics in the nineteen seventies. Anyway,
So because this pattern has been established, when you are
living your life and you're reading this as a member
of the faithful, then you will see your own story
written in these things. You will tend to interpret these
(15:11):
ancient passages in ways that center yourself and your own
life experience. So it makes sense that someone would read
John or you know, read parts Daniel and hear about
it and think, oh, that makes sense. It is going
to be the end of the world while I'm alive
and I do know the guy who's the Antichrist. In
the days of early Christianity, they would say, it's insert
(15:34):
Roman emperor here.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Oh yeah, that's convenient.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
I mean it's like witchcrafts, you know, it's like a
witch hunt kind of situation.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Well, yeah, And he got more and more specific, and
that Adso a Dso person that we mentioned before the month,
the Benedictine Monk, he got real specific with it, even
saying what that this Antichrist is going to come from Babylon,
like definitely going to be born in Babylon, you know,
the tribe of Dan exactly because the whole pagan thing.
(16:02):
And and also he's real specific about the Roman Empire
as you're talking about, basically in this letter from nine
to fifty eight, saying, uh, this this time when the
Antichrist arises and all this stufft the end of days,
the last days, it's not gonna happen until all of
the peoples and countries that were once ruled by Rome
(16:23):
are no longer ruled by Rome. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And he was also super anti Semitic, he was like,
first things first, the Antichrist is definitely Jewish.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well yeah, but that's it's super specific, right.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
From the tribe of Dan born in Babylon, taught raised
in the ways of wizards and magicians.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Yeah, is what's depicted in Revelation concerning the Antichrist, like
with the Horror of Babylon and all of the great
beasts of the Abyites, great beasts, Yeah, I mean all
the stuff where people sixty six to six comes from.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
Is there like any association or those.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Unrelated Often, yeah, there's often an association or again an
interpretation because after seeing specific mentions of Antichrist vibes or
a specific Antichrist, people are reading into this. So they'll
find a villainous force that seems vague in the text,
and then they'll say, boom, that is the Antichrist, And
(17:21):
depending on where they're living, what their life is like
at the time, they will often, as we'll see, have
a specific person who is alive at the same time
that they think is the Antichrist. This is not cynical
propaganda for the most part, which is so weird. It's
not made in bad faith. People making these claims. A
vast majority until pretty recently in history. Genuine like they
(17:44):
interpreted the Bible literally and they genuinely believe the person
they were calling the Antichrist was a supervillain, did have superpowers,
was supernatural, and was the main antagonist of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Man, did you see the thread running through a lot
of these things, Some of these writings where the Antichrist,
at least to a secular world in society, the Antichrist
will be seen as a very positive force, at least
at first as this person emerges, which is something that
(18:21):
also talks about, like he will be of the world
right and the world will love him.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
He'll be accepted as first a secular power, and then
he will be gradually accepted as a messiotic power. So like,
first you become the king of Jerusalem, right, Adso starts this.
He's the one who says the Antichrist will rule over Jerusalem,
and then he will, by hook or by crook, become
(18:49):
a spiritual leader, ultimately declaring himself divinity.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
But the idea is that with all of this, it's
sort of like a frog and boiling water situation of
being corrupted, right, Like the public is being swayed by
this individual and turned unto godless ways, but like a
little at a time where they barely notice.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Is that kind of the the idea?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, but just going back to what you had
talked about earlier in Noel, Uh, I add so in
his letter here, I'm just going to read a part
of this because it goes back to how is this
thing created, this Antichrist?
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Is it like Jesus was, you know, born with the
Holy Spirit going into marry Uh? He says he will
be born from the union of a mother and father
like other men, not as some say, from a virgin alone.
Still he will be conceived holy in sin, will be
generated in sin, and will be born in sin. But
(19:47):
at the very beginning of his conception, the devil will
enter his mother's womb at the same moment. So it says,
though it's like, you know, the way the baby is
created migration, the human way, but there's a third party there.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
It just pops in, you know, last minute ivf infernal
vitro fertilization. But he's not saying that the devil had
intercourse with the mortal woman either.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It depends on this. So Adso is like, okay, this
is in a way and we're not we're not making
any religious judgments. But the way this story grows, it's
helpful to look at the way folklore evolves, right, or
oral storytelling, because again, the written documentation in the beginning
(20:33):
is very, very scant, adso creates one of the big
resurgences of this He's like when Coca Cola cements the
image of Santa Claus. He provides the hard ground rules
for how the West and indeed other parts of the
world envisioned this idea of the Antichrist. He puts in
this seven year rule. He says, all right, either the
(20:57):
angel Gabriel or the return Jesus Christ. He is going
to defeat this guy. And then the final judgment is
happening as soon as you know, all those Roman countries
are gone.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Well, show us your notes, guy, where's all this coming from.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There's citing there, there's a really great oh gosh, was
it on and was it NPR. No, it's an old
PBS website that you can find right now where the
entire letter is written out, and there are places where
it's cited, like Psalms fifty seven is cited when it
says that this Antichrist will be conceived holy in sin
(21:32):
and then John nine thirty four is sited and there's like,
there's biblical, but.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
It's a leap though. I mean the guy's editorializing, to
say the least.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Again, it's interpretation. Yeah, I want to say, with this,
with Ozso's interpretation again Odso Montie. And there with this
this one letter. By the way, we see immensely high
stake stuff. At a time whens on, these stories grow deeper,
people are taking notes from each other. It takes off
(22:03):
in another cycle of resurgence during the Middle Ages of
Western Europe, and it resounds still in the modern day
and indeed to the future. So with all that context, folks,
before we go to our ad break, let's ask you this.
Who is the anti Christ? We'll be right back. Here's
(22:28):
where it gets crazy. Who is the Antichrist? Single question,
simple question. It is conjured a library of Alexandria's worth
of conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
And I mean it also, as may have been indicated
by some of that we're talking about earlier, has been
used as a political tool, like depending on what side
of the al you're on as to who your Antichrist
might be.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, really quickly, you guys, want to rattle off some
of the movies that deal with the Antichrist before we
get into like who it could actually be. Just rattle
them off, because I I did. I forgot that that
Arnold Swarzenegger movie End of Days and directly with the
anti Christ.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Warlock is the absolute banger.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Uh there, am remember that the least.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Remember the Devil's Advocate, Devil's First Off, that's the best one.
I can't say that. I can't say it. It's my
favorite though, Yeah yeah, who you're carrying all those bricks
for Kevin God Godlaw. I'm a humanist, maybe the last humanist?
(23:37):
Sorry I did that monologue.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
My favorites well, well, but again baby, the.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Left Behind series, Paul was mentioning that before we even
started rolling.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
We'll talk, isn't that?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
And like the Leftovers?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
You know, but Antichrist is heavily involved in there?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Uh well in the OMEN series is something I was
really thinking about.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah yeah, and also shout out to Angel Heart, so
angel Heart's great. Otherwise, emails that egg scene makes me
so uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Still, you know, it's it's it's wild and the Omen.
I recently rewatched the seventies Omen the o g One,
you know, Damien, and uh, it really holds up. I mean,
it's just it's that era of like horror movies with
Rosemary's Baby, and you know that that was just a
very kind of almost cinema verite approach to to horror.
A lot of stuff happening in your head. They don't
show you too much, you know, but it really gets
(24:35):
under your skin.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Well, I forgot that. That series takes you from like
the Birth of the Anti Christ into the second movie,
then becomes to the President. Well no, the second movie,
he's a kid like at a military school and things
get real dark, and then he becomes a man in
the third movie and just breaks havoc. But man, that's
just crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, And so this resounds through the world of fi
and through the world of art. As we said earlier,
when we ask that single question that we came back on,
who is the Antichrist, we have to point out the
Antichrist is tons of people. Depending on who you ask,
there could be multiple Antichrist. And at this point you
might think, ah, here we go, and everybody's got a
(25:17):
multiverse these days. But this is different because Biblical sources
again differentiate between a main Antichrist and other you know,
anti junior varsity Antichrist, some of whom are already in
the world, and that I think that distinction kind of
explains the later and present practice of labeling folks as
(25:39):
and Antichrist. You might not be the Great Beast, but
you're super down with them, and you're not fooling us.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This is the idea, but I mean, you know, to
your point, it is such a depending on where you
stand and what your belief systems are, there are obvious
candidates that kind of emerge, you know, throughout history, throughout
the world in terms of folks that follow that kind
of trajectory, right that we were talking about, the sort
(26:06):
of ascending as a man of a person of the
people and then being lifted up by you know, society,
and then then affecting great change and then gradually plummeting
the world into darkness. But that part we haven't exactly
necessarily seen that happen yet.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So in a way, you know, these folks get portrayed
as sort of the infernal answer to the divine armies
of Christ and God. They're like officers in an enemy
army of damnation, and a lot of.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Our ministers, right, basically going out and preaching the anti Christ.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Message proselytizers, Yeah, of evangelicals, and so an early example
of this comes from the Middle Ages. This was a
great time for anti Christ promotion. There's a collaborate monk
named yo kim Or Yokim of Feor, and he pitches
(26:59):
the idea of a series you call them opening Acts
anti Christ for the Big Antichrist Show. And he says, look,
what we're looking at is a cavalcade of people, an escalation.
And he says, folks like Nero, folks like the Muhammad,
the actual prophet Muhammed from Islam, Folks like Saladin, these
(27:20):
are all Antichrist leading up to the emergence of the
Big Bad. And like a lot of Middle Ages writers,
he believed the real Antichrist, the big One, would of
course come in his society during his lifetime.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, any major figure that pushes people away from a
what would what that person would consider a Christ's centered
life and the Word of God and how a human
should live in the things they should believe in. Right, So,
anybody that pushes that message and pushes you further away
from that is one of these ministers and then the
main one is eventually comes to power, right, But there's
(27:59):
an other theme here that it's power over the world,
not of a country.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
That's up to interpretation too, and again it's highly linked
to politics and geopolitics and all of these interlocking complex systems.
And also depending on where you are in the world,
what affiliation you have, it's also up to interpretation and
easily weaponized.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, Secularism rises in the stories. All early Christians agree
there's one great, big bad. As secularism rises, as people
go away from God lose their belief in God. This
individual swoops in opportunistically deceiving people with apparent miracles, taking
over positions of earthly power like all the New World
(28:44):
type stuff, and then spiritual power, and then finally claiming
to be God themselves. And I want to be very clear
here the idea of secularism rising or turning people from God,
that doesn't just mean saying atheism or there's no God.
That can mean very minor doctrinal disagreements.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I mean, just think the difference in the wars that
were started with the disagreement between Protestantism and Catholicism. A
lot of basic similarities there, but some very specific things
that cause people to murder each other.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Well, think about just listen to ourselves talking about this, guys.
You can see why someone who believes wholeheartedly in some
of the core beliefs here would see something like the
United Nations, right, or the World Health Organization, or anything
that's bringing the entire world together in some secular way.
How you could view those potentially as negative entities and organizations.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Sure, we'll get to that because we'll see another complex
fold in of conspiratorial folklore in this.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Well, I think it's the all or nothing nature of
religious belief and the fact that it inherently has this
adversarial quality with people of other religious beliefs who believe
their thing just as much as you believe your thing.
For we are not the same, and we must war.
If we can't convert you to our thing, then you
are our enemy. And so it's almost like the introduction
(30:08):
of secularism. Well today it feels a very innocuous thing,
but some I'm sure doesn't. Then was tantamount to heresy,
you know, the idea of secularism. Godlessness is what that
translates to.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Well, yeah, and this is again, like we said earlier,
this is in us versus them mentality, and we have
to understand, like as weird and literally apocalyptic as this
may so out during the later Middle Ages, if you're
the average person in many communities, you just accept as
fact that the Antichrist, the main one, is about to
(30:42):
reign on Earth in your lifetime. Pretty much any overly
successful political figure that you disagree with might be the Antichrist,
or they might the anti Christ might already be here.
The final judgment maybe nigh. It's a level of paranoia
resembling the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons.
Like people genuinely thought this was happening. It wasn't until
(31:05):
the sixteenth century that folks stopped thinking of this as
a present or coming imminent terrible individual and thought of
the Antichrist as a collective body of evil. And we
owe all of that to a guy named Martin Luther.
Pretty big deal to Protestantism. He's the guy. He did
(31:28):
a lot of stuff. He also said, look, folks, fight
the real enemy, said, the Antichrist is none of a
not a single pope, the institution of the papacy, this
organization is the anti Christ, and that's what's driving us
away from God. And the thing is, I mean, it
sounds weird today right to say like the Catholic Church,
(31:51):
which is responsible for Christianity, is also anti christ Like.
But once you get that paranoia in play, anyone can
be a villain.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I've heard several people pause it that the Vatican really
is the last remnant of the Roman Empire, and that
is how the Roman Empire continued on, and that's how
it still is able to exert a lot of power.
Maybe that's wrong. That does seem like it seems like
there's something to that that the Holy Roman Empire still exists,
(32:24):
but as the papacy.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
But even more so, it seems like there's definitely something
to how much these declarations by Martin Luther caused Catholics
and Protestants to truly despise each other. Like I've been
watching that show Showgun on FX, which is a remake
of like an older mini series based on a novel
about you know, invading forces into Japan. It was these Protestants,
(32:48):
you know, this Protestant ship who were going to, you know,
try to take over this part of Japan which is
being held by Catholic Portuguese monks and they have absolutely
hate each other and want to murder each other on site.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah again us versus them, ILG. I got a little
bit lost because I'm trying to remember one of the
best shows I saw. It was out on Netflix. There's
a TV series about addiction and possession and one of
the big plot lines. I guess it's okay to say
because I remember the name of this. One of the
(33:24):
big plot lines is active conspiracies within the Catholic Church, right,
the call is coming from inside the house, and people, Yeah,
people believe this, you know. And if you're a Protestant
and much of what you have witnessed in your life
experience seems to be corruption, right and sin on behalf
of the Catholic Church, then you are going to fall
(33:48):
into other ring, you know. And now look, now, the
Catholic Church as it exists is less inclined to identify
the anti Christ and Antichrist as a specific coming individual.
But there have been a lot of candidates. We mentioned
Barack Obama. I thought I found it interesting we're talking
(34:11):
about this a little bit off air. There was a
twenty thirteen poll that showed there's a great Guardian article
about this, it showed roughly one in four Americans believed
Obama might be the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Well, yeah, and I think a lot of that goes
back to how how he brought so many people together.
It seemed as though, right his message was very positive.
It was about helping each other out, working together, we
can do positive things, you know, as a collective of humanity.
(34:43):
They didn't see it maybe as very christ like or biblical.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Right, How was this guy so successful? Yeah, he can't
just be trying to do his best at his job.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
It's kind of postular, I think, so popular.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Why do people like it? I bet it's the devil?
And they said stuff like that about Napoleon, Benito, Mussolini,
Peter the Great, Thomson, Tom Hooks. You could kind of
name anybody like I'm sure there's someone right now. I
watched The Family Guy and thought it's Seth MacFarlane.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
You know, I've been accused of being the Antichrist three
times already this week.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Oh no, no, I'm joking.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
I'm not not high profile enough to be accused of
being the Antichrist. But it does Joe that this kind
of talk is being thrown around pretty fast and loose,
you know, when it comes to identifying the ultimate enemy
of a given group.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, it's often in the modern day in the West,
it's often leveraged by what we will call factions of
conservative Christianity. And these are you know, for everybody, everybody
tuning in practitioners of the Christian faith. When you hear that,
obviously we're talking about the people that you at your
(35:57):
church would call crazy, really far out there, folks. And
for a while again, except for except for Gerald Ford,
for some reason, for a while, every single president has
been accused by someone of being the anti Christ. John F. Kennedy,
Ronald Reagan, it knows no political ideology. Henry Kissinger had
(36:20):
the top slot for a long long time in the
seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
And then you supported that I did, I do?
Speaker 4 (36:27):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Mikhail Gorbachev was also a front runner for a time
because he was in charge of the USSR, and he
had a very unique and distinct earth mark of the beast,
mark of the beast.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Oh, there's only it's so funny. There's only one person
who could possibly right now be the Antichrist, and I
would fall for.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
It, oh boy, And I would fall for it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, that's yeah, Okay, there's two neil in his one.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Actually that's not true.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
That's not true. I really like Neils, say, follow him
like him.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I wouldn't the guy.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I wouldn't follow him. But it worries me that I
do see like John Stewart, sorry Jay stew but I
see him as a person. I see him as a
person that I would follow like kind of. I would
just be like, you know what, like, uh, Grimma Stewart,
I'm with you. Let's go that.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I'll email him, I'll be like, hey, man, are you
from the.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Tribe of dan Oh. I didn't even think about that
far oh j.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Anyway, your liberalism is showing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I know, I know, but like, but it's but it's
not about that, It's about growing up with somebody.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yes, trust.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, he's kind of a conscience of America, regardless again
of political ideology. There's a funny story. In twenty fourteen,
a US Republican politician Ryan z zinc Zinke accused Hillary
Clinton being the anti Christ. Is very public about it.
He's very serious. It was like I read the Bible,
(38:01):
I see the signs. Think about it. People, do your
own research. Hillary Clinton is the anti Christ.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
And that a bass song was about.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
That's what every as bass song is about.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
Even all that she wants is another baby.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I thought it was the sign.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
That's a different one you're talking about and.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Waving without God.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
Yes, but you're right, she wanted a baby. That's a
different song.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
That's ah that she wants the baby at.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
AULTI. Christ is very into babies, so for different reasons.
So this one story, you know, the political circus that
has replaced journalism and American discourse, they love stories like this,
and uh, it got so much press that during the
Trump inauguration, the inauguration, former President Donald Trump, uh, Hillary
(38:59):
Clinton made a big deal about specifically pointing out this
riot guy and reassuring everybody that she was not, in fact,
the scion of Satan sent to overthrow all that is
good in the universe.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
I don't think he believed her, Oh, because you know,
there's always that logic trap where you can say, well,
that's what any antichrist.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Would say, spider Man pointing at Spider Man exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yeah, I mean, and then you know there's all the hits.
Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden, who I still don't. I
just don't think he's a great guy and the person.
I don't think so. Yeah, but we did find a
we did find at least one explanation for the trend
of accusing a lot of people of presidents, in particular
(39:48):
being accused of being the Antichrist. We are going to
introduce you, folks to a guy named Gerald Burton win Rod.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
What a win Rod?
Speaker 3 (39:57):
What a win I do like that like a spit
on Nimro.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
It's like a windbag and a Nimrod combined.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Which was accurate. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
He's a pro Nazi, far right evangelical from Kansas who
is largely responsible for the modern president is the anti
Christ kind of rhetoric that we're sort of dancing around here.
Win Rod believed that FDR was a devil linked with
of course the Jewish Communist conspiracy, and of course the
(40:30):
Hitler was cool, and that he would save Europe from
the Communist horde.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
Yeah, wind Rod Man, that kind of sucks.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Yeah, and he's a heck of a trendsetter. Because again
after this, like people who hear these predictions often don't
or these accusations often don't know that it comes from
blood libel. You know, it comes from this strong background
of anti Semitism, and and that's where things like the
Mark of the Beast get folded in. But it's still
(41:04):
not it's still not quite I think the the strangest stuff.
Maybe we talked about the Mark of the Beast though,
because we've mentioned it a couple of times, it's often
called six sixty six.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
Right, oh, and really quickly before we get into that mark, Matt,
You're absolutely right. Gerald Ford had assassination attempted on his
life a couple of times, and one of them was
by a member of the Manson family, Squeaky Frome. He
tried to kill Gerald Ford in California. But you think
the Mansons would be pro Antichrist?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Well, maybe is a Squeaky from or from I can't remember,
I think, yeah, but I no, it's fine. I just dude.
There is an entire show that's going to be coming
out later this year called Rip Current that deals with
the two assassinations against Gerald Ford by Squeaky and there's
another woman that attempted an assassination on him.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
It's crazy, yeah, and he's survived both of them, perhaps
because he had the Mark of the beast, mark.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
The beast, demonic force field or something right, right, not.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Just secret security? Who are you really working for? Answer
the Department of the Treasury. People need to understand how
weird that is anyway, So the mark of the Beast
comes from Revelations Revelation chapter thirteen, which we briefly discussed earlier.
Then the whole you know, the horror of Babylon and
(42:30):
the you know, the beasts in the sort of Ends
of Times kind of situation. And the idea is that
the mark of the beast similar to the concept of
putting blood on your door in Egypt of old. The
mark of the Beast is kind of a parody of that,
and regular humans, the Jane's and John's and so ons
(42:54):
of the world, will have to have a mark of
the beast on them if they participate in the society
that the Antichrist runs. Over the years, as society is modernized,
that quote unquote mark has been interpreted as many things.
Is it, for instance, this is really popular a few
decades back. Is it your Social Security number? Is it
(43:17):
the UPC you know all that other stuff.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
Could it be the color of your skin perhaps.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, yeah, or you know a barcode or a chip maybe,
or something a vaccination.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
I say the thing I said as pointedly just because
that's one way it could be really disgustingly used to another,
you know race.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Oh yeah, well yeah, I mean it can be used, right,
the concept of it could be used in a lot
of ways. But there are strange technologies that again, like
imagine if you're talking about something that would be a
technology that allows you to exist in a society. Yeah,
if you don't have a some kind of bank card
or cash app, car card or something like that, you
(44:01):
really can't function in a lot of society today, right sure.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah, And in days of old you couldn't do it.
Like you might have to have a licensing system to
live in a certain community. And if you didn't vibe
with that, you would say, well, this is a mark
of the beast.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Well yeah, but most of it isn't an actual mark
or an actual thing that's attached to the human body. Rob,
What was that recent There's a company we just heard
from recently that is making a Star Trek thing that
goes on your shirt that you could touch and be like, hey, computer,
what's this.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Oh, there's a couple of different ones I've seen called rabbit,
and there is another one. Yeah, a little AI kind
of personal assistant kind.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Of but taking your phone technology basically or most of
your phone technology and putting it on you, right, rather
than a handheld device or something like that. And just
imagine that iteration or two ahead. And it could be
something that is like an implant, right, or something that
is a part of your body that becomes the mark.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Already, I mean that is statistically inevitable unless there is
an extinction event that affects humans immediately. Like that is
going to happen. The the meat and the metal will
continue to merge. It's just going to happen.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
The most illiterative sentence I've heard all day, and I
love it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It's still kind of early. We'll get we got some work,
but yeah, I love that point because we also, again
we see interpretation. What is meant by a mark?
Speaker 5 (45:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Is it just a like a signaling to the world.
Is it something that goes inside you as a person?
And then is it communicable? Will you be punished for
not participating the same way our pal ads so said
the Antichrist would torture and execute people.
Speaker 5 (45:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Maybe again, like, well, there are three ways, right, ASO said,
the first thing he's going to do is deceive people,
and those he can't deceive, he's going to use fear
to control. If he can't do that, then he's gonna
throw you in a kulog basically. But in a couple
other instances, the mark is a hidden thing and it
only is on the Antichrist. It's not a part of
(46:12):
followers or anything.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
The yeah, take it back to the Omens series, and
it is a hidden birthmark that has to be discovered.
But nobody on the outside, like no one looking at
this child would know that's the Antichrist. But if you
pull the hair back in a certain way, you can
see it.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
And then in other stories too, it's like a hidden sign, you.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Know, or on the hand there's like a six sixty
six in the hand somehow.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
And the idea of this serves the conspiracy theory aspect
or the folklore aspect, because in these stories one needs
if you're the good guys, right, then you needed the
ability to identify somehow, uh, the the opposition. That's a
huge part of it.
Speaker 5 (47:01):
The ops.
Speaker 4 (47:02):
You know, it's interesting too, how one reason that this
depiction of this kind of stuff in fiction and in
popular culture at the time or at a time like
maybe in the well as far back as it was
beginning to be written about, but even in the nineties
and stuff with like the Anti Christ Superstar record from
Marilyn Manson, this stuff was controversial, like people were still
freaked out by.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
This kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
So to like, you know, depict it, it felt a
little dangerous, like a little edgy, and it freaked out parents,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Yeah, I mean there is great power to that, right,
because what you're doing then is tapping into your leveraging
one of the oldest, most dynamic stories in all of
human culture, right, religion aside, just touching on that idea
of a very powerful force that has been around forever
(47:54):
and is fundamentally beat me here, Paul is fundamentally opposed
to you, you personally, unless you get the right mark,
unless you switch sides, I don't know. And there's like
you mentioned, the fiction and the music aspect. It's so
endlessly fascinating that the concern and interest in the Antichrist
(48:18):
story encounters cyclical popularity just like a Satanic panic, you know,
another mass hysteria outbreak like the Screaming Girls of Malaysia,
you know, one of the big resurgences in this I
would argue there are two variables. First, how stable is
the current world of which you live right, your current community,
(48:39):
et cetera. Do you feel safe secure access to resources? Second,
are there any particularly popular things in the world of
novels and film and art? Have any of them mentioned
the anti Christ? Because if they do, that's a cheat
code that gets people interested. Shout out to the fiction
(48:59):
series and later adaptations. Left Behind. It's a fantastic example
of how fiction feeds the factual interest told you alliteration.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Left By would also be considered of a certain niche
of cinema that is, you know, pretty religiously based or
so most movies in Hollywood stuff is pretty secular. Left
Behind series is very much has a message and is
sort of promoted by the Christian community.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and it's a big example, but there's a lot
of like in the world of Christian oriented fiction. There
are a lot of similar things, and they're leveraging the
story that everybody knows at least in pieces, and they're saying, well,
let's reevaluate it or recontextualize it through a more modern lens.
I mean, look, the book series Left Behind in the
(49:50):
first one comes out in two thousand and five, and
there are years of chaos that follow. In the two
thousands and more and more people begin to search for
an behind the pandemonium. What if? They ask, just like
those people centuries and centuries go, what if the end
times are coming? And what if they're happening while I'm alive.
(50:12):
I hate to say it, but I see the trend.
I kind of think a lot of people want to
be around at the end of the world.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
I think it's something that a lot of people feel
they need to be prepared for for some reason, which
again kind of like an apocalypse or you know, preparing
for the zombies or you know whatever. It is, thinking
about bunkers, thinking about survival buckets of food and all
that stuff. It is maybe in the back of a
lot of people's minds because you don't want to get
(50:43):
caught off guard by something like that. You want to
have the best chances of surviving, I guess, but it
is weird to think that it would be surviving and
maybe not really living for a lot for you know
what I mean, Like life would be very different after
whatever cataclysmic event or if we're hitting up on the
(51:04):
end times. I think it's an that inner thing where
you don't want to be a sucker, you don't want
to be caught off guard.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
But I see that. I do think there is there's
a lot of validity to that. I think maybe those
two impulses coexist in the same person, in the same communities.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
I've had a couple of conversations with people recently who
are convinced that this election coming up is like the
last chance to save humanity from the actual end times, which.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Like Christian theological end times.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
I think so, I think, I mean, I'm not really sure,
you know, like what these individuals believe in their personal
life about that kind of thing, like religiously, but something
about the politics side of it intersecting with their religious life.
It feels like they think the stakes are at the level.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Surely people have accused Taylor Swift of being the Antichrist
as for her part in all of this, remember the
whole conspiracy about Taylor and being able to sway the election,
and that it feels like the kind of rhetoric on
the right was Porterer lines She's the Antichrist, kind of talk.
Speaker 5 (52:17):
I feel you.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
I also I'm glad you bring that up because there
is a bit of a soapbox I want to get
on here. You know, it's rare for women or female
identifying individuals to be identified as the Antichrist, and I
think that is historically unfair. Everybody should get a chance
to be the big villain, so, you know, more equality
(52:39):
in anti Christ accusations.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
So if Taylor were to be accused of being the Antichrist,
that would be another big win historically for her.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Yeah, progress, yeah, yeah, yeah, added to the accolades, and
at least some of the success between the of these
modern fictional and interpretations, you know, like left Behind or
most notably the Omen. At least part of this success
comes from this combination of long standing Antichrist theory and
(53:12):
later conspiracies surrounding what we talked about earlier, modern institutions.
We love a global cabal. Modern anti Christ speculation folds
into this stuff because it's an easy red stream to connect.
Speaker 4 (53:26):
I guess we haven't talked a whole lot about the
idea that there are forces at work working to make
sure the Antichrist is born and brought forth like in
Good Omens the Terry Practett and Neil Gaiman series that
is also a really delightful TV series as well. The
book rather came first, But that is all about these
secret sects within I believe, even the Vatican and with
(53:50):
them that are like working to make sure the Antichrist
is born, and maybe even to a lesser degree in
like Kevin Smith Dogma, but very much that's part of
the story. Is there's like, you know, again, like in
Rosemary's Baby, there's members of this kind of unnamed cult
no spoilers, well spoilers for a forty year old movie
that are like working to make sure that Rosemary gets
(54:12):
impregnated with the seed of Satan and then they're going
to raise the baby and all of that, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:17):
And there are things like Hereditary, which takes the same
sort of plot line, just isn't specifically Satan. It makes
sense when you when you think about the fear that
people inherently encounter living in a globally connected world, you
can see where these the origin the provenance of these things.
The United Nations is an insane idea. I mean, if
(54:41):
you went back in time and you explained it, people
would tell you that's devilment, you know, and if you
like the builder Burgers, any global banking institution, conspira corporations
past a certain threshold, all of them have been accused
of various shenani and stuff like this, some of it
(55:01):
with validity, to be fair, But they those cabal conspiracy theories,
they inherited other earlier stories. They carry with the burden
of prejudice us versus them, ideologies anti Semitism. So like,
whenever you hear these things, we have to put on
our thinking caps and remember the lesson from all that
(55:24):
old wind rod stories are another kind of technology, That's
all they are. And like any other kind of technology,
they can be weaponized for great and sometimes horrific effect.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
No doubt about it.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
And last thought to leave us with for this evening's episode,
What's Next? We talked a little bit about Taylor Swift
and what's going on and all of the chatter around
this political cycle. But like, what's the true future of
antichrist rhetoric? Is it even maybe becoming a little obsolete
as the world does get a little more secular, or at
least this country, But I don't know on the religion's
(55:59):
going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Well, well, it's tough because the some of the recent
episodes we've done and historically do point us to small
groups of people who do work in secret against humanity
by selling goods that give us cancer, by you know,
by circumventing yeah, well, by building weapons and then finding
(56:23):
ways that those weapons need to be sold, or at
least pushing right for the need for those weapons to
be sold.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
Starting off, starting work.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
But again, like for me, it goes back to consumerism
and some of the globalization, that there are groups of
people that are all about profit and they don't care
if they're actually hurting people. And that goes to the
individual level, but also two individuals working together for profits
and shareholders and all that other stuff. So I can
see why this would continue on guys like I can
(56:54):
see antichrist concepts and people fingers being pointed at people
saying you are the Antichrist. I think it's going to increase.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
I think it's going to continue. I mean, it's a
very it's a story that resonates with people because people
do conspire against one another and do attempt to for
good or for ill. They attempt to paint folks they
don't like as villains because you don't want to have
someone you don't care for be thought of as the
(57:23):
good guy. You're the hero of your story, and that's
that's part of the Like even back to the early
days of tribal warfare, religious ideology is a often irrationalization
to say, here's why I should have the resources and
you should not, and what.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
But we also don't want people causing mass harm, right, yeah,
I mean, and I think that in a weird way.
I don't think that has anything to do with being
the hero or not. I think that has to do
with being able to look out in the world and
say that person or that group is hurting us or others.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
You know, this is such an easy constant to wrap
your head around to the anti us. You know, it's
the it's the ultimate them.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
It's like my kid.
Speaker 4 (58:06):
I guess a lot of the kids are using the
term the ops, and at first I thought it was
just referring to cops. But it means my enemy, the opposition,
someone who is is the opposite of me, and that's
what the Antichrist represents. It's easy to wrap your head
around the idea of hating that which is different than you,
or that which threatens you.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Right, because you deserve the resources, not these, not these nabops.
I'm bringing back the nabob. I love it is.
Speaker 5 (58:31):
That was that ever a thing? I love it.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I just heard it in Apocalypse now which stop but anyways,
an acronym maybe it is. Let's learn the etymology that
in a future episode. The idea of mass harm though,
is we have to remember the same people doing mass
harm or often rationalizing their actions. So from their point,
from their perspective, they are also the good guys. It
(58:56):
just depends on what what you see good. As you know,
it goes back to our original question nature of good
and evil. I mean, it's exciting, I think to explore
the idea of the anti Christ evolving in the future.
We know it's been happening, it's still happening, and there
are a lot of changes on the horizon space exploration,
(59:18):
cloning corporations, so called artificial intelligence, space antichrist AI antique Christ.
Speaker 5 (59:27):
Now, when are people going to start accusing artificial intelligence
of being the end?
Speaker 3 (59:31):
That's what I say?
Speaker 5 (59:32):
No, I love that.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
Wouldn't it be the perfect anti Christ. It's completely of
man of the world, and it shows us progress.
Speaker 4 (59:44):
It's progress, guys. You know, it's helping us, it's a tool.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
And then it eats all of our lunches.
Speaker 3 (59:50):
It's kind of a I've been working on a related
story with something like that. It's interesting. We'll see if
it works to hear it. Oh yeah, long, I don't
know if it's good, but I'll send it along. So
I wonder, then, like, can we now that we know
(01:00:11):
these texts are reinterpreted, recontextualized, and they respond socially right
to the pressures of the day, then I agree with you, guys.
I think humans will see new threats and fears emerge,
and then they'll see them through the shadow of that
ancient story, and so the Antichrist as a concept will
evolve and it will assume a shape that personifies the
(01:00:34):
fears of that modern age. AI Antichrist, you know what
I mean, dude.
Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
I can see a clear picture.
Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
It's a huge warehouse, and you have six hundred and
sixty six supercomputers. They are in a they are laid
out in a pentagram.
Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
They eventually sprout robot tentacles and start through the city.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
And it takes a while. You get like thirty minutes
into the film until someone figures out that they move
along lay lines, so and we have the influence opposition. Yeah, yeah,
so I don't know. It makes sense in times of
mass uncertainty, of fear and privation. People wonder if you
(01:01:22):
know this is the moment where the House of cards collapses,
whether with a bang or a whimper. Shout out to
s Eliot. All good stories have a villain. Humans need
and explanation for why bad things happen to good people.
It's a question that hasn't been answered yet. And so
the Antichrist fits the bill on all of those things.
(01:01:42):
Whatever shape these new stories take, the people telling them
are going to do one thing for sure. They're going
to assure you the story they're telling you is true,
and it's the stuff the devil doesn't want you to know.
Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
The end the or is it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
I'm looking forward to the tentacled supercomputer Antichrist.
Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
It's so metal. I will do your bidding.
Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
I will follow you into the dark.
Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
And hey, this episode was brought to you by the
First Omen. Please don't forget to catch it in theaters
on April fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
We're super excited to see it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
We talked about a lot of anti Christ fiction and
film in this episode, and I'm thinking this is going
to be a pretty good addition to that canon.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
And if you want to see the movie, remember this
is only in theaters April fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
I can't wait. I can't wait to go see this
with you.
Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
I love this kind of stuff and we hope that
you enjoy it too. We want to hear your thoughts,
especially if you have a conspiratorial take on the idea
of the Antichrist that you think your fellow listeners either
will enjoy or need to know. We try to be
easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
Boy do we ever.
Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
You can find us at the handle Spiracy Stuff on
x FKA Twitter, on Facebook we have our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy. And on YouTube, where you
can see Ben dressed up as George Washington or is
it the actual George Washington time travel You can also
hear Matt sing about existential dread experience by said a
presidential time traveler.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
It's a banger of a song, folks, It's.
Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
Been in my head all week.
Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Or if you want to find us on TikTok and Instagram,
we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Oh and before we move on, just a quick shout
out to everybody. Thank you for tuning into that stuff.
We're hoping it's a series new spoilers. And yes, someone
reach out to Brad Neely. You are you are a
guiding light, my friend.
Speaker 5 (01:03:41):
Yeah man.
Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
And for somehow the whitest kids, you know, it's it's still.
They always come up whenever there's an American President sketch.
For me, it's it's every time. It's the butt still
every time. Hey, we have a phone number. It's one
eight to three three. Styk. When you call in, you've
(01:04:02):
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But if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you
are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know, Fellow conspiracy realists. Before
we get started this evening, we want to make sure
everyone tunes in to our exclusive interview with Arkasha Stevenson,
(00:50):
director of The First Omen. You can catch it only
in theaters April fifth. It's a question humanity has quarreled
with since before the dawn of the written age. What
is the nature of good? What is the nature of evil?
For some folks, it's a matter of shifting perspectives, a
(01:11):
long spectrum of gradients. For others, there are absolutes, clearly
defined rights and wrongs, clear good guys, clear bad guys.
And with that in mind, tonight we are exploring one
of history's most extreme symbols of evil, the opposite of divinity,
a dark, oppositional Messiah, the eternal enemy of God, and
(01:32):
Jesus Christ, known for millennia as the anti Christ. Here
are the facts. The Antichrist has done a lot for fiction.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Well, yeah, I mean, and I've always kind of struggled with, like,
is the Antichrist in service of Satan? Is the Antichrist?
Like Satan incarnates like in the way that Jesus is
God on earth? You know, Like, what's that relationship? Is
it the Sun of the Devil? It is in some fiction, right,
very much so.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
In some well, it's weird to think of it as
between nonfiction and fiction.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Because again, Rosemary's Baby, just in terms of Son of
the Devil is like the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
No, You're absolutely right, it's just in my mind even
when I'm trying to separate the fictional depictions of what
we would consider an Antichrist versus like letters that were written,
you know, nine hundred and fifty a d That are
concerning and Antichrist based on you know, scriptures that that
person takes to becomingly fact.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
This individual literal interpretation. And I'm glad we're bringing that
point up at the top, because, as we always want
to say, when we explore concepts like this bit of
a spiritual disclaimer. Your beliefs are your own. We're not
here to tell anyone what they should or should not believe.
But we do find a fascinating, surprising bevy of conspiracies
(02:53):
in Tales of the Antichrist. I mean, I think it's
fair to say that, even if you don't consider yourself
Christ in particular or religious in general, you have heard
about the concept of the Antichrist in clear like in
clear seminal works of fiction, some of the best horror films,
some of the best horror novels on the planet, some
(03:15):
of the best art. In fact, if we're getting pretentious,
it's about the Antichrist.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, Christ Superstar and Marilyn Manson.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Again, that guy sucks, but that was like he kind
of peaked, you know. In terms of the concept album
with Antichrist Superstar.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
There is one I'm glad you mentioned music to there
because there is one line that stood out to me.
I returned to it with the sex Pistols where they
say they don't say I am the Antichrist, they say
I am an Antichrist, which will be interesting later. So anyway, Yeah,
the question is, oh, and also in real life over millennia,
(03:52):
there have been numerous people who at various times claimed
that they themselves were the Antichrist, you know, and maybe
that's what Marilyn Manson's picking up on there.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, and let's point this out. I think we've talked
about this before, but biblically, from passages of the Bible,
there's very specific ones that paint anybody who is who
does not follow Jesus, believes that Jesus is the son
of God and says that out loud to people is
Antichrist or is in It's weird because it's the term.
(04:26):
The is what you end up like trying to like
quarreling over, and is what historians end up talking about.
Is that passage talking about the Antichrist or and Antichrist
or just of the Antichrist Christ.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, So the best way to explain it is like
there's an individual and then there's a vibe, and then
there are opening acts. So if your vibe is off,
you are being not ann or thee, but you're being
anti Christ and Christian.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
But then in Thessalonians it goes on to talking about
basically being a minister of the Antichrist. Or you know,
a worker of the Antichrist. So it's it's really interesting
because in some of those places there doesn't require to
be an individual at all. It is just an act
or as you said, a vibe.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, so the anti Christ to get polar opposite of
Jesus Christ according to Christian tradition. So everything Jesus Christ represents,
the anti Christ is super against. He thinks it's all
a terrible idea if it's the individual, the main anti Christ.
And this guy has a grift, he has a grand conspiracy.
(05:37):
He's going to take over the world, reign over the
earthly world in the time before the last judgment. And
in Christian theology, the last judgment is when Jesus and
a divide army and the angels returned the dead or resurrected.
So comes God to judge the living and the dead.
And I like the point where we're talking about the
(06:00):
complexity of the concept. Jesus Christ is the son of God.
The Antichrist is often at least the singular like final boss.
Antichrist is the son of Satan in a dark parody
of the nature of God and Jesus. So there's a
(06:21):
lot of misogyny in here, and also a lot of
anti semitism.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Oh yeah, is the concept of the Antichrist as the
son of Satan specifically addressed in scripture?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Man, I'm glad. So there are specific interpretations of scripture
that would say that. So, like, it's strange because for
a guy, and it's almost always typified as a guy,
for a guy who plays such a big role in
the grand climactic events of reality and the universe. It
(06:59):
might spry some of us to learn that there are
only a scant number of passages, like three passages in
the New Testament that specifically mentioned the Antichrist in a
singular sense, like there is a guy, he is evil.
They all come from the letters of John.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, they're they're interesting. Should we read some of them?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I just here's here is first John, Chapter two, verse
eighteen and nineteen. Dear children, this is the last hour.
And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming.
Even now, many Antichrists have come. This is how we
know it is the last hour. They went out from us,
but they did not really belong to us, For if
(07:42):
they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.
But they're going showed that none of them belonged to us.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
This really feels just like being anti referring to a
lot of people that are maybe following someone who is
preaching speaking out against Jesus and the message of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Again, I keep going back to, and I don't mean
to be crass. I keep going back to the idea
of escalating spiritual arms races, or even more basically an
opening act before of a genre of music, before the
big headliner, which is the anti Christ. So we say,
there are a lot of things. It's very cold war,
it's very them versus us paranoia.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh yeah, let me give you one more passage here,
this first John, chapter four, because I think it speaks
to exactly that First John four, verse two. This is
how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit
that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh
is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge
Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of
(08:44):
the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even
now is already in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
So like a lovecrafting monster or some kind of spiritual contagion,
this thing's decay. It's a possible, he spreads, and I
want to go to just to round it out right
to John seven, I think the other notable passage talking
about Antichrist stuff says expounds on this and says, for
(09:14):
many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who
will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Such a one is the deceiver and the anti Christ.
Even though John clearly thinks there's more than one.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
And last one, this one is, I think speaks to
again that other perspective, cause we're seeing kind of versions
of this that can be easily interpreted as that Leviathan coming,
you know, this actual force. And then there's ones like
this that almost feel a little more political.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Who is the.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Liar, But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ,
this is the ampti Christ. He who denies the Father
and the son. No one denies the son has the father.
He who confesses the son has the Father. Also, this
to me is just about like adhering to doctrine and like,
you know, kind of othering people who are not in
that that particular religious clique, you.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Know, And it sounds like we may have given you
four quotes, but again, these all we're clipping out, yes,
the passages that we mentioned here, And you can see
the confusion because already we're reading this in modern American English,
and it's been translated so many times before it got.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Here exactly the ones I new international version, by the way,
which is like the more easily translated to other languages,
which is why that version was created.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, I mean, what, you know, mess with the King James.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I will? I mean I dig at King James every
once in a while. It's kind of fun. But yeah,
there's so many versions of the Bible, and the one.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
I read was from First John, chapter two, verse twenty
two and twenty three, a quick mention of the Antichrist.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
There again, it's scant in its specificity, and early Christians
agreed with us, so they would do this. They would
pour over other parts of the Bible as it evolved
through different translations and interpretations, and they would interpret different
passages as referring to this villain. Uh think of things
(11:11):
like the Letters of Paul and Paul they don't specifically
say the Antichrist, but they say the man of lawlessness,
the son of pradition, you know, what I mean. It's
kind of like saying a certain Russian president.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know, the exactly the first oh subtweet. Yeah, the
first time I heard son of Perdition, I always think
about Road to Perdition.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I don't know why Western too. I picture of the
man in black from the Gunslinger.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, totally. But son of Perdition.
I didn't know that term. I didn't understand it, and
I've found that it's the letter the Letter on the
Origin Time of the Antichrist for a Medoso of Montirander,
where he talks about the Son of Perdition, but specififically
(12:01):
as that title, basically, the man of lawlessness, of like
of sin Oh tradition is bad, the eternal damnation.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah yeah, and ad so we'll get to is very
good at cementing the idea of the Antichrist for the public.
I mean, it's also weird that the Christian concept of
the Antichrist comes from beliefs that predate the concept of
Christianity itself. If you go back to Jewish traditions, the
(12:32):
Book of Daniel that was written like one sixty seven
BCE loosely, then the author there predicts that there will
be what they call a final persecutor, a rising, a
villain who will quote speak great words against the most
high and wear out the saints of the most High
and think to change time and laws. That's a seven.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Is this end of days type situation?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Like yeah, like big, big third act energy and right,
and as we will see later then as now, a
lot of people were absolutely certain we're making a base
assumption that the world would end in their lifetime. That
nobody wants to feel like you were in one of
(13:20):
the you know, one of the less good seasons of
the human experience. You want to be there with something
climactic occurred.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
One of the spinoffs that went straight to DVD, right, right,
nobody wants to be in those.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So, I mean, if you look at the political context
of the time in which the Book of Daniel was written,
this is interesting because it appears the author is referring
to a specific human individual, a real pill to be fair,
named Antiochus for epiphanies, and Antiochus rules Palestine during the
(13:55):
Hellenistic period, and these super mean the Jewish can communities
persecuting the massacring them, trying to root them out of Palestine.
But When Daniel writes this, it is a sneak diss
It's what we would call a subtweet today, because the
author never mentions Antiochus by name, And this establishes a
(14:17):
pattern that we could argue continues today. New threats, tyrants, villains,
other generally unpleasant people come on the stage of Barack Obama.
Thanks Obama, right, every president actually since FDR, except for
weirdly enough, Gerald Ford, which I still don't understand, means
the one who didn't get called the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Wasn't Gerald Ford, the president who had two assassination attempts
on his life by women who have like, is that wrong?
I thought that was it?
Speaker 5 (14:47):
Mea rock?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
He was also put us during the height of one
of the cyclical anti christ panics in the nineteen seventies. Anyway,
So because this pattern has been established, when you are
living your life and you're reading this as a member
of the faithful, then you will see your own story
written in these things. You will tend to interpret these
(15:11):
ancient passages in ways that center yourself and your own
life experience. So it makes sense that someone would read
John or you know, read parts Daniel and hear about
it and think, oh, that makes sense. It is going
to be the end of the world while I'm alive
and I do know the guy who's the Antichrist. In
the days of early Christianity, they would say, it's insert
(15:34):
Roman emperor here.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Oh yeah, that's convenient.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
I mean it's like witchcrafts, you know, it's like a
witch hunt kind of situation.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Well, yeah, And he got more and more specific, and
that Adso a Dso person that we mentioned before the month,
the Benedictine Monk, he got real specific with it, even
saying what that this Antichrist is going to come from Babylon,
like definitely going to be born in Babylon, you know,
the tribe of Dan exactly because the whole pagan thing.
(16:02):
And and also he's real specific about the Roman Empire
as you're talking about, basically in this letter from nine
to fifty eight, saying, uh, this this time when the
Antichrist arises and all this stufft the end of days,
the last days, it's not gonna happen until all of
the peoples and countries that were once ruled by Rome
(16:23):
are no longer ruled by Rome. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And he was also super anti Semitic, he was like,
first things first, the Antichrist is definitely Jewish.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well yeah, but that's it's super specific, right.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
From the tribe of Dan born in Babylon, taught raised
in the ways of wizards and magicians.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Yeah, is what's depicted in Revelation concerning the Antichrist, like
with the Horror of Babylon and all of the great
beasts of the Abyites, great beasts, Yeah, I mean all
the stuff where people sixty six to six comes from.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
Is there like any association or those.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Unrelated Often, yeah, there's often an association or again an
interpretation because after seeing specific mentions of Antichrist vibes or
a specific Antichrist, people are reading into this. So they'll
find a villainous force that seems vague in the text,
and then they'll say, boom, that is the Antichrist, And
(17:21):
depending on where they're living, what their life is like
at the time, they will often, as we'll see, have
a specific person who is alive at the same time
that they think is the Antichrist. This is not cynical
propaganda for the most part, which is so weird. It's
not made in bad faith. People making these claims. A
vast majority until pretty recently in history. Genuine like they
(17:44):
interpreted the Bible literally and they genuinely believe the person
they were calling the Antichrist was a supervillain, did have superpowers,
was supernatural, and was the main antagonist of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Man, did you see the thread running through a lot
of these things, Some of these writings where the Antichrist,
at least to a secular world in society, the Antichrist
will be seen as a very positive force, at least
at first as this person emerges, which is something that
(18:21):
also talks about, like he will be of the world
right and the world will love him.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
He'll be accepted as first a secular power, and then
he will be gradually accepted as a messiotic power. So like,
first you become the king of Jerusalem, right, Adso starts this.
He's the one who says the Antichrist will rule over Jerusalem,
and then he will, by hook or by crook, become
(18:49):
a spiritual leader, ultimately declaring himself divinity.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
But the idea is that with all of this, it's
sort of like a frog and boiling water situation of
being corrupted, right, Like the public is being swayed by
this individual and turned unto godless ways, but like a
little at a time where they barely notice.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Is that kind of the the idea?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, but just going back to what you had
talked about earlier in Noel, Uh, I add so in
his letter here, I'm just going to read a part
of this because it goes back to how is this
thing created, this Antichrist?
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Is it like Jesus was, you know, born with the
Holy Spirit going into marry Uh? He says he will
be born from the union of a mother and father
like other men, not as some say, from a virgin alone.
Still he will be conceived holy in sin, will be
generated in sin, and will be born in sin. But
(19:47):
at the very beginning of his conception, the devil will
enter his mother's womb at the same moment. So it says,
though it's like, you know, the way the baby is
created migration, the human way, but there's a third party there.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
It just pops in, you know, last minute ivf infernal
vitro fertilization. But he's not saying that the devil had
intercourse with the mortal woman either.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It depends on this. So Adso is like, okay, this
is in a way and we're not we're not making
any religious judgments. But the way this story grows, it's
helpful to look at the way folklore evolves, right, or
oral storytelling, because again, the written documentation in the beginning
(20:33):
is very, very scant, adso creates one of the big
resurgences of this He's like when Coca Cola cements the
image of Santa Claus. He provides the hard ground rules
for how the West and indeed other parts of the
world envisioned this idea of the Antichrist. He puts in
this seven year rule. He says, all right, either the
(20:57):
angel Gabriel or the return Jesus Christ. He is going
to defeat this guy. And then the final judgment is
happening as soon as you know, all those Roman countries
are gone.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Well, show us your notes, guy, where's all this coming from.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There's citing there, there's a really great oh gosh, was
it on and was it NPR. No, it's an old
PBS website that you can find right now where the
entire letter is written out, and there are places where
it's cited, like Psalms fifty seven is cited when it
says that this Antichrist will be conceived holy in sin
(21:32):
and then John nine thirty four is sited and there's like,
there's biblical, but.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
It's a leap though. I mean the guy's editorializing, to
say the least.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Again, it's interpretation. Yeah, I want to say, with this,
with Ozso's interpretation again Odso Montie. And there with this
this one letter. By the way, we see immensely high
stake stuff. At a time whens on, these stories grow deeper,
people are taking notes from each other. It takes off
(22:03):
in another cycle of resurgence during the Middle Ages of
Western Europe, and it resounds still in the modern day
and indeed to the future. So with all that context, folks,
before we go to our ad break, let's ask you this.
Who is the anti Christ? We'll be right back. Here's
(22:28):
where it gets crazy. Who is the Antichrist? Single question,
simple question. It is conjured a library of Alexandria's worth
of conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
And I mean it also, as may have been indicated
by some of that we're talking about earlier, has been
used as a political tool, like depending on what side
of the al you're on as to who your Antichrist
might be.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, really quickly, you guys, want to rattle off some
of the movies that deal with the Antichrist before we
get into like who it could actually be. Just rattle
them off, because I I did. I forgot that that
Arnold Swarzenegger movie End of Days and directly with the
anti Christ.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Warlock is the absolute banger.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Uh there, am remember that the least.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Remember the Devil's Advocate, Devil's First Off, that's the best one.
I can't say that. I can't say it. It's my
favorite though, Yeah yeah, who you're carrying all those bricks
for Kevin God Godlaw. I'm a humanist, maybe the last humanist?
(23:37):
Sorry I did that monologue.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
My favorites well, well, but again baby, the.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Left Behind series, Paul was mentioning that before we even
started rolling.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
We'll talk, isn't that?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
And like the Leftovers?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
You know, but Antichrist is heavily involved in there?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Uh well in the OMEN series is something I was
really thinking about.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah yeah, and also shout out to Angel Heart, so
angel Heart's great. Otherwise, emails that egg scene makes me
so uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Still, you know, it's it's it's wild and the Omen.
I recently rewatched the seventies Omen the o g One,
you know, Damien, and uh, it really holds up. I mean,
it's just it's that era of like horror movies with
Rosemary's Baby, and you know that that was just a
very kind of almost cinema verite approach to to horror.
A lot of stuff happening in your head. They don't
show you too much, you know, but it really gets
(24:35):
under your skin.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Well, I forgot that. That series takes you from like
the Birth of the Anti Christ into the second movie,
then becomes to the President. Well no, the second movie,
he's a kid like at a military school and things
get real dark, and then he becomes a man in
the third movie and just breaks havoc. But man, that's
just crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, And so this resounds through the world of fi
and through the world of art. As we said earlier,
when we ask that single question that we came back on,
who is the Antichrist, we have to point out the
Antichrist is tons of people. Depending on who you ask,
there could be multiple Antichrist. And at this point you
might think, ah, here we go, and everybody's got a
(25:17):
multiverse these days. But this is different because Biblical sources
again differentiate between a main Antichrist and other you know,
anti junior varsity Antichrist, some of whom are already in
the world, and that I think that distinction kind of
explains the later and present practice of labeling folks as
(25:39):
and Antichrist. You might not be the Great Beast, but
you're super down with them, and you're not fooling us.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This is the idea, but I mean, you know, to
your point, it is such a depending on where you
stand and what your belief systems are, there are obvious
candidates that kind of emerge, you know, throughout history, throughout
the world in terms of folks that follow that kind
of trajectory, right that we were talking about, the sort
(26:06):
of ascending as a man of a person of the
people and then being lifted up by you know, society,
and then then affecting great change and then gradually plummeting
the world into darkness. But that part we haven't exactly
necessarily seen that happen yet.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So in a way, you know, these folks get portrayed
as sort of the infernal answer to the divine armies
of Christ and God. They're like officers in an enemy
army of damnation, and a lot of.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Our ministers, right, basically going out and preaching the anti Christ.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Message proselytizers, Yeah, of evangelicals, and so an early example
of this comes from the Middle Ages. This was a
great time for anti Christ promotion. There's a collaborate monk
named yo kim Or Yokim of Feor, and he pitches
(26:59):
the idea of a series you call them opening Acts
anti Christ for the Big Antichrist Show. And he says, look,
what we're looking at is a cavalcade of people, an escalation.
And he says, folks like Nero, folks like the Muhammad,
the actual prophet Muhammed from Islam, Folks like Saladin, these
(27:20):
are all Antichrist leading up to the emergence of the
Big Bad. And like a lot of Middle Ages writers,
he believed the real Antichrist, the big One, would of
course come in his society during his lifetime.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, any major figure that pushes people away from a
what would what that person would consider a Christ's centered
life and the Word of God and how a human
should live in the things they should believe in. Right, So,
anybody that pushes that message and pushes you further away
from that is one of these ministers and then the
main one is eventually comes to power, right, But there's
(27:59):
an other theme here that it's power over the world,
not of a country.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
That's up to interpretation too, and again it's highly linked
to politics and geopolitics and all of these interlocking complex systems.
And also depending on where you are in the world,
what affiliation you have, it's also up to interpretation and
easily weaponized.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, Secularism rises in the stories. All early Christians agree
there's one great, big bad. As secularism rises, as people
go away from God lose their belief in God. This
individual swoops in opportunistically deceiving people with apparent miracles, taking
over positions of earthly power like all the New World
(28:44):
type stuff, and then spiritual power, and then finally claiming
to be God themselves. And I want to be very clear
here the idea of secularism rising or turning people from God,
that doesn't just mean saying atheism or there's no God.
That can mean very minor doctrinal disagreements.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I mean, just think the difference in the wars that
were started with the disagreement between Protestantism and Catholicism. A
lot of basic similarities there, but some very specific things
that cause people to murder each other.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Well, think about just listen to ourselves talking about this, guys.
You can see why someone who believes wholeheartedly in some
of the core beliefs here would see something like the
United Nations, right, or the World Health Organization, or anything
that's bringing the entire world together in some secular way.
How you could view those potentially as negative entities and organizations.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Sure, we'll get to that because we'll see another complex
fold in of conspiratorial folklore in this.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Well, I think it's the all or nothing nature of
religious belief and the fact that it inherently has this
adversarial quality with people of other religious beliefs who believe
their thing just as much as you believe your thing.
For we are not the same, and we must war.
If we can't convert you to our thing, then you
are our enemy. And so it's almost like the introduction
(30:08):
of secularism. Well today it feels a very innocuous thing,
but some I'm sure doesn't. Then was tantamount to heresy,
you know, the idea of secularism. Godlessness is what that
translates to.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Well, yeah, and this is again, like we said earlier,
this is in us versus them mentality, and we have
to understand, like as weird and literally apocalyptic as this
may so out during the later Middle Ages, if you're
the average person in many communities, you just accept as
fact that the Antichrist, the main one, is about to
(30:42):
reign on Earth in your lifetime. Pretty much any overly
successful political figure that you disagree with might be the Antichrist,
or they might the anti Christ might already be here.
The final judgment maybe nigh. It's a level of paranoia
resembling the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons.
Like people genuinely thought this was happening. It wasn't until
(31:05):
the sixteenth century that folks stopped thinking of this as
a present or coming imminent terrible individual and thought of
the Antichrist as a collective body of evil. And we
owe all of that to a guy named Martin Luther.
Pretty big deal to Protestantism. He's the guy. He did
(31:28):
a lot of stuff. He also said, look, folks, fight
the real enemy, said, the Antichrist is none of a
not a single pope, the institution of the papacy, this
organization is the anti Christ, and that's what's driving us
away from God. And the thing is, I mean, it
sounds weird today right to say like the Catholic Church,
(31:51):
which is responsible for Christianity, is also anti christ Like.
But once you get that paranoia in play, anyone can
be a villain.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I've heard several people pause it that the Vatican really
is the last remnant of the Roman Empire, and that
is how the Roman Empire continued on, and that's how
it still is able to exert a lot of power.
Maybe that's wrong. That does seem like it seems like
there's something to that that the Holy Roman Empire still exists,
(32:24):
but as the papacy.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
But even more so, it seems like there's definitely something
to how much these declarations by Martin Luther caused Catholics
and Protestants to truly despise each other. Like I've been
watching that show Showgun on FX, which is a remake
of like an older mini series based on a novel
about you know, invading forces into Japan. It was these Protestants,
(32:48):
you know, this Protestant ship who were going to, you know,
try to take over this part of Japan which is
being held by Catholic Portuguese monks and they have absolutely
hate each other and want to murder each other on site.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah again us versus them, ILG. I got a little
bit lost because I'm trying to remember one of the
best shows I saw. It was out on Netflix. There's
a TV series about addiction and possession and one of
the big plot lines. I guess it's okay to say
because I remember the name of this. One of the
(33:24):
big plot lines is active conspiracies within the Catholic Church, right,
the call is coming from inside the house, and people, Yeah,
people believe this, you know. And if you're a Protestant
and much of what you have witnessed in your life
experience seems to be corruption, right and sin on behalf
of the Catholic Church, then you are going to fall
(33:48):
into other ring, you know. And now look, now, the
Catholic Church as it exists is less inclined to identify
the anti Christ and Antichrist as a specific coming individual.
But there have been a lot of candidates. We mentioned
Barack Obama. I thought I found it interesting we're talking
(34:11):
about this a little bit off air. There was a
twenty thirteen poll that showed there's a great Guardian article
about this, it showed roughly one in four Americans believed
Obama might be the Antichrist.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Well, yeah, and I think a lot of that goes
back to how how he brought so many people together.
It seemed as though, right his message was very positive.
It was about helping each other out, working together, we
can do positive things, you know, as a collective of humanity.
(34:43):
They didn't see it maybe as very christ like or biblical.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Right, How was this guy so successful? Yeah, he can't
just be trying to do his best at his job.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
It's kind of postular, I think, so popular.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Why do people like it? I bet it's the devil?
And they said stuff like that about Napoleon, Benito, Mussolini,
Peter the Great, Thomson, Tom Hooks. You could kind of
name anybody like I'm sure there's someone right now. I
watched The Family Guy and thought it's Seth MacFarlane.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
You know, I've been accused of being the Antichrist three
times already this week.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Oh no, no, I'm joking.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
I'm not not high profile enough to be accused of
being the Antichrist. But it does Joe that this kind
of talk is being thrown around pretty fast and loose,
you know, when it comes to identifying the ultimate enemy
of a given group.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, it's often in the modern day in the West,
it's often leveraged by what we will call factions of
conservative Christianity. And these are you know, for everybody, everybody
tuning in practitioners of the Christian faith. When you hear that,
obviously we're talking about the people that you at your
(35:57):
church would call crazy, really far out there, folks. And
for a while again, except for except for Gerald Ford,
for some reason, for a while, every single president has
been accused by someone of being the anti Christ. John F. Kennedy,
Ronald Reagan, it knows no political ideology. Henry Kissinger had
(36:20):
the top slot for a long long time in the
seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
And then you supported that I did, I do?
Speaker 4 (36:27):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Mikhail Gorbachev was also a front runner for a time
because he was in charge of the USSR, and he
had a very unique and distinct earth mark of the beast,
mark of the beast.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Oh, there's only it's so funny. There's only one person
who could possibly right now be the Antichrist, and I
would fall for.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
It, oh boy, And I would fall for it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, that's yeah, Okay, there's two neil in his one.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Actually that's not true.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
That's not true. I really like Neils, say, follow him
like him.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I wouldn't the guy.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I wouldn't follow him. But it worries me that I
do see like John Stewart, sorry Jay stew but I
see him as a person. I see him as a
person that I would follow like kind of. I would
just be like, you know what, like, uh, Grimma Stewart,
I'm with you. Let's go that.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I'll email him, I'll be like, hey, man, are you
from the.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Tribe of dan Oh. I didn't even think about that
far oh j.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Anyway, your liberalism is showing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I know, I know, but like, but it's but it's
not about that, It's about growing up with somebody.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yes, trust.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, he's kind of a conscience of America, regardless again
of political ideology. There's a funny story. In twenty fourteen,
a US Republican politician Ryan z zinc Zinke accused Hillary
Clinton being the anti Christ. Is very public about it.
He's very serious. It was like I read the Bible,
(38:01):
I see the signs. Think about it. People, do your
own research. Hillary Clinton is the anti Christ.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
And that a bass song was about.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
That's what every as bass song is about.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
Even all that she wants is another baby.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I thought it was the sign.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
That's a different one you're talking about and.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Waving without God.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
Yes, but you're right, she wanted a baby. That's a
different song.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
That's ah that she wants the baby at.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
AULTI. Christ is very into babies, so for different reasons.
So this one story, you know, the political circus that
has replaced journalism and American discourse, they love stories like this,
and uh, it got so much press that during the
Trump inauguration, the inauguration, former President Donald Trump, uh, Hillary
(38:59):
Clinton made a big deal about specifically pointing out this
riot guy and reassuring everybody that she was not, in fact,
the scion of Satan sent to overthrow all that is
good in the universe.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
I don't think he believed her, Oh, because you know,
there's always that logic trap where you can say, well,
that's what any antichrist.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Would say, spider Man pointing at Spider Man exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yeah, I mean, and then you know there's all the hits.
Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden, who I still don't. I
just don't think he's a great guy and the person.
I don't think so. Yeah, but we did find a
we did find at least one explanation for the trend
of accusing a lot of people of presidents, in particular
(39:48):
being accused of being the Antichrist. We are going to
introduce you, folks to a guy named Gerald Burton win Rod.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
What a win Rod?
Speaker 3 (39:57):
What a win I do like that like a spit
on Nimro.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
It's like a windbag and a Nimrod combined.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Which was accurate. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
He's a pro Nazi, far right evangelical from Kansas who
is largely responsible for the modern president is the anti
Christ kind of rhetoric that we're sort of dancing around here.
Win Rod believed that FDR was a devil linked with
of course the Jewish Communist conspiracy, and of course the
(40:30):
Hitler was cool, and that he would save Europe from
the Communist horde.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
Yeah, wind Rod Man, that kind of sucks.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Yeah, and he's a heck of a trendsetter. Because again
after this, like people who hear these predictions often don't
or these accusations often don't know that it comes from
blood libel. You know, it comes from this strong background
of anti Semitism, and and that's where things like the
Mark of the Beast get folded in. But it's still
(41:04):
not it's still not quite I think the the strangest stuff.
Maybe we talked about the Mark of the Beast though,
because we've mentioned it a couple of times, it's often
called six sixty six.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
Right, oh, and really quickly before we get into that mark, Matt,
You're absolutely right. Gerald Ford had assassination attempted on his
life a couple of times, and one of them was
by a member of the Manson family, Squeaky Frome. He
tried to kill Gerald Ford in California. But you think
the Mansons would be pro Antichrist?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Well, maybe is a Squeaky from or from I can't remember,
I think, yeah, but I no, it's fine. I just dude.
There is an entire show that's going to be coming
out later this year called Rip Current that deals with
the two assassinations against Gerald Ford by Squeaky and there's
another woman that attempted an assassination on him.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
It's crazy, yeah, and he's survived both of them, perhaps
because he had the Mark of the beast, mark.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
The beast, demonic force field or something right, right, not.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Just secret security? Who are you really working for? Answer
the Department of the Treasury. People need to understand how
weird that is anyway, So the mark of the Beast
comes from Revelations Revelation chapter thirteen, which we briefly discussed earlier.
Then the whole you know, the horror of Babylon and
(42:30):
the you know, the beasts in the sort of Ends
of Times kind of situation. And the idea is that
the mark of the beast similar to the concept of
putting blood on your door in Egypt of old. The
mark of the Beast is kind of a parody of that,
and regular humans, the Jane's and John's and so ons
(42:54):
of the world, will have to have a mark of
the beast on them if they participate in the society
that the Antichrist runs. Over the years, as society is modernized,
that quote unquote mark has been interpreted as many things.
Is it, for instance, this is really popular a few
decades back. Is it your Social Security number? Is it
(43:17):
the UPC you know all that other stuff.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
Could it be the color of your skin perhaps.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Well, yeah, or you know a barcode or a chip maybe,
or something a vaccination.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
I say the thing I said as pointedly just because
that's one way it could be really disgustingly used to another,
you know race.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Oh yeah, well yeah, I mean it can be used, right,
the concept of it could be used in a lot
of ways. But there are strange technologies that again, like
imagine if you're talking about something that would be a
technology that allows you to exist in a society. Yeah,
if you don't have a some kind of bank card
or cash app, car card or something like that, you
(44:01):
really can't function in a lot of society today, right sure.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah, And in days of old you couldn't do it.
Like you might have to have a licensing system to
live in a certain community. And if you didn't vibe
with that, you would say, well, this is a mark
of the beast.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Well yeah, but most of it isn't an actual mark
or an actual thing that's attached to the human body. Rob,
What was that recent There's a company we just heard
from recently that is making a Star Trek thing that
goes on your shirt that you could touch and be like, hey, computer,
what's this.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Oh, there's a couple of different ones I've seen called rabbit,
and there is another one. Yeah, a little AI kind
of personal assistant kind.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Of but taking your phone technology basically or most of
your phone technology and putting it on you, right, rather
than a handheld device or something like that. And just
imagine that iteration or two ahead. And it could be
something that is like an implant, right, or something that
is a part of your body that becomes the mark.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Already, I mean that is statistically inevitable unless there is
an extinction event that affects humans immediately. Like that is
going to happen. The the meat and the metal will
continue to merge. It's just going to happen.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
The most illiterative sentence I've heard all day, and I
love it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It's still kind of early. We'll get we got some work,
but yeah, I love that point because we also, again
we see interpretation. What is meant by a mark?
Speaker 5 (45:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Is it just a like a signaling to the world.
Is it something that goes inside you as a person?
And then is it communicable? Will you be punished for
not participating the same way our pal ads so said
the Antichrist would torture and execute people.
Speaker 5 (45:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Maybe again, like, well, there are three ways, right, ASO said,
the first thing he's going to do is deceive people,
and those he can't deceive, he's going to use fear
to control. If he can't do that, then he's gonna
throw you in a kulog basically. But in a couple
other instances, the mark is a hidden thing and it
only is on the Antichrist. It's not a part of
(46:12):
followers or anything.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
The yeah, take it back to the Omens series, and
it is a hidden birthmark that has to be discovered.
But nobody on the outside, like no one looking at
this child would know that's the Antichrist. But if you
pull the hair back in a certain way, you can
see it.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
And then in other stories too, it's like a hidden sign, you.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Know, or on the hand there's like a six sixty
six in the hand somehow.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
And the idea of this serves the conspiracy theory aspect
or the folklore aspect, because in these stories one needs
if you're the good guys, right, then you needed the
ability to identify somehow, uh, the the opposition. That's a
huge part of it.
Speaker 5 (47:01):
The ops.
Speaker 4 (47:02):
You know, it's interesting too, how one reason that this
depiction of this kind of stuff in fiction and in
popular culture at the time or at a time like
maybe in the well as far back as it was
beginning to be written about, but even in the nineties
and stuff with like the Anti Christ Superstar record from
Marilyn Manson, this stuff was controversial, like people were still
freaked out by.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
This kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
So to like, you know, depict it, it felt a
little dangerous, like a little edgy, and it freaked out parents,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Yeah, I mean there is great power to that, right,
because what you're doing then is tapping into your leveraging
one of the oldest, most dynamic stories in all of
human culture, right, religion aside, just touching on that idea
of a very powerful force that has been around forever
(47:54):
and is fundamentally beat me here, Paul is fundamentally opposed
to you, you personally, unless you get the right mark,
unless you switch sides, I don't know. And there's like
you mentioned, the fiction and the music aspect. It's so
endlessly fascinating that the concern and interest in the Antichrist
(48:18):
story encounters cyclical popularity just like a Satanic panic, you know,
another mass hysteria outbreak like the Screaming Girls of Malaysia,
you know, one of the big resurgences in this I
would argue there are two variables. First, how stable is
the current world of which you live right, your current community,
(48:39):
et cetera. Do you feel safe secure access to resources? Second,
are there any particularly popular things in the world of
novels and film and art? Have any of them mentioned
the anti Christ? Because if they do, that's a cheat
code that gets people interested. Shout out to the fiction
(48:59):
series and later adaptations. Left Behind. It's a fantastic example
of how fiction feeds the factual interest told you alliteration.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Left By would also be considered of a certain niche
of cinema that is, you know, pretty religiously based or
so most movies in Hollywood stuff is pretty secular. Left
Behind series is very much has a message and is
sort of promoted by the Christian community.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and it's a big example, but there's a lot
of like in the world of Christian oriented fiction. There
are a lot of similar things, and they're leveraging the
story that everybody knows at least in pieces, and they're saying, well,
let's reevaluate it or recontextualize it through a more modern lens.
I mean, look, the book series Left Behind in the
(49:50):
first one comes out in two thousand and five, and
there are years of chaos that follow. In the two
thousands and more and more people begin to search for
an behind the pandemonium. What if? They ask, just like
those people centuries and centuries go, what if the end
times are coming? And what if they're happening while I'm alive.
(50:12):
I hate to say it, but I see the trend.
I kind of think a lot of people want to
be around at the end of the world.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
I think it's something that a lot of people feel
they need to be prepared for for some reason, which
again kind of like an apocalypse or you know, preparing
for the zombies or you know whatever. It is, thinking
about bunkers, thinking about survival buckets of food and all
that stuff. It is maybe in the back of a
lot of people's minds because you don't want to get
(50:43):
caught off guard by something like that. You want to
have the best chances of surviving, I guess, but it
is weird to think that it would be surviving and
maybe not really living for a lot for you know
what I mean, Like life would be very different after
whatever cataclysmic event or if we're hitting up on the
(51:04):
end times. I think it's an that inner thing where
you don't want to be a sucker, you don't want
to be caught off guard.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
But I see that. I do think there is there's
a lot of validity to that. I think maybe those
two impulses coexist in the same person, in the same communities.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
I've had a couple of conversations with people recently who
are convinced that this election coming up is like the
last chance to save humanity from the actual end times, which.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Like Christian theological end times.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
I think so, I think, I mean, I'm not really sure,
you know, like what these individuals believe in their personal
life about that kind of thing, like religiously, but something
about the politics side of it intersecting with their religious life.
It feels like they think the stakes are at the level.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Surely people have accused Taylor Swift of being the Antichrist
as for her part in all of this, remember the
whole conspiracy about Taylor and being able to sway the election,
and that it feels like the kind of rhetoric on
the right was Porterer lines She's the Antichrist, kind of talk.
Speaker 5 (52:17):
I feel you.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
I also I'm glad you bring that up because there
is a bit of a soapbox I want to get
on here. You know, it's rare for women or female
identifying individuals to be identified as the Antichrist, and I
think that is historically unfair. Everybody should get a chance
to be the big villain, so, you know, more equality
(52:39):
in anti Christ accusations.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
So if Taylor were to be accused of being the Antichrist,
that would be another big win historically for her.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Yeah, progress, yeah, yeah, yeah, added to the accolades, and
at least some of the success between the of these
modern fictional and interpretations, you know, like left Behind or
most notably the Omen. At least part of this success
comes from this combination of long standing Antichrist theory and
(53:12):
later conspiracies surrounding what we talked about earlier, modern institutions.
We love a global cabal. Modern anti Christ speculation folds
into this stuff because it's an easy red stream to connect.
Speaker 4 (53:26):
I guess we haven't talked a whole lot about the
idea that there are forces at work working to make
sure the Antichrist is born and brought forth like in
Good Omens the Terry Practett and Neil Gaiman series that
is also a really delightful TV series as well. The
book rather came first, But that is all about these
secret sects within I believe, even the Vatican and with
(53:50):
them that are like working to make sure the Antichrist
is born, and maybe even to a lesser degree in
like Kevin Smith Dogma, but very much that's part of
the story. Is there's like, you know, again, like in
Rosemary's Baby, there's members of this kind of unnamed cult
no spoilers, well spoilers for a forty year old movie
that are like working to make sure that Rosemary gets
(54:12):
impregnated with the seed of Satan and then they're going
to raise the baby and all of that, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:17):
And there are things like Hereditary, which takes the same
sort of plot line, just isn't specifically Satan. It makes
sense when you when you think about the fear that
people inherently encounter living in a globally connected world, you
can see where these the origin the provenance of these things.
The United Nations is an insane idea. I mean, if
(54:41):
you went back in time and you explained it, people
would tell you that's devilment, you know, and if you
like the builder Burgers, any global banking institution, conspira corporations
past a certain threshold, all of them have been accused
of various shenani and stuff like this, some of it
(55:01):
with validity, to be fair, But they those cabal conspiracy theories,
they inherited other earlier stories. They carry with the burden
of prejudice us versus them, ideologies anti Semitism. So like,
whenever you hear these things, we have to put on
our thinking caps and remember the lesson from all that
(55:24):
old wind rod stories are another kind of technology, That's
all they are. And like any other kind of technology,
they can be weaponized for great and sometimes horrific effect.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
No doubt about it.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
And last thought to leave us with for this evening's episode,
What's Next? We talked a little bit about Taylor Swift
and what's going on and all of the chatter around
this political cycle. But like, what's the true future of
antichrist rhetoric? Is it even maybe becoming a little obsolete
as the world does get a little more secular, or at
least this country, But I don't know on the religion's
(55:59):
going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Well, well, it's tough because the some of the recent
episodes we've done and historically do point us to small
groups of people who do work in secret against humanity
by selling goods that give us cancer, by you know,
by circumventing yeah, well, by building weapons and then finding
(56:23):
ways that those weapons need to be sold, or at
least pushing right for the need for those weapons to
be sold.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
Starting off, starting work.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
But again, like for me, it goes back to consumerism
and some of the globalization, that there are groups of
people that are all about profit and they don't care
if they're actually hurting people. And that goes to the
individual level, but also two individuals working together for profits
and shareholders and all that other stuff. So I can
see why this would continue on guys like I can
(56:54):
see antichrist concepts and people fingers being pointed at people
saying you are the Antichrist. I think it's going to increase.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
I think it's going to continue. I mean, it's a
very it's a story that resonates with people because people
do conspire against one another and do attempt to for
good or for ill. They attempt to paint folks they
don't like as villains because you don't want to have
someone you don't care for be thought of as the
(57:23):
good guy. You're the hero of your story, and that's
that's part of the Like even back to the early
days of tribal warfare, religious ideology is a often irrationalization
to say, here's why I should have the resources and
you should not, and what.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
But we also don't want people causing mass harm, right, yeah,
I mean, and I think that in a weird way.
I don't think that has anything to do with being
the hero or not. I think that has to do
with being able to look out in the world and
say that person or that group is hurting us or others.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
You know, this is such an easy constant to wrap
your head around to the anti us. You know, it's
the it's the ultimate them.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
It's like my kid.
Speaker 4 (58:06):
I guess a lot of the kids are using the
term the ops, and at first I thought it was
just referring to cops. But it means my enemy, the opposition,
someone who is is the opposite of me, and that's
what the Antichrist represents. It's easy to wrap your head
around the idea of hating that which is different than you,
or that which threatens you.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
Right, because you deserve the resources, not these, not these nabops.
I'm bringing back the nabob. I love it is.
Speaker 5 (58:31):
That was that ever a thing? I love it.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I just heard it in Apocalypse now which stop but anyways,
an acronym maybe it is. Let's learn the etymology that
in a future episode. The idea of mass harm though,
is we have to remember the same people doing mass
harm or often rationalizing their actions. So from their point,
from their perspective, they are also the good guys. It
(58:56):
just depends on what what you see good. As you know,
it goes back to our original question nature of good
and evil. I mean, it's exciting, I think to explore
the idea of the anti Christ evolving in the future.
We know it's been happening, it's still happening, and there
are a lot of changes on the horizon space exploration,
(59:18):
cloning corporations, so called artificial intelligence, space antichrist AI antique Christ.
Speaker 5 (59:27):
Now, when are people going to start accusing artificial intelligence
of being the end?
Speaker 3 (59:31):
That's what I say?
Speaker 5 (59:32):
No, I love that.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
Wouldn't it be the perfect anti Christ. It's completely of
man of the world, and it shows us progress.
Speaker 4 (59:44):
It's progress, guys. You know, it's helping us, it's a tool.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
And then it eats all of our lunches.
Speaker 3 (59:50):
It's kind of a I've been working on a related
story with something like that. It's interesting. We'll see if
it works to hear it. Oh yeah, long, I don't
know if it's good, but I'll send it along. So
I wonder, then, like, can we now that we know
(01:00:11):
these texts are reinterpreted, recontextualized, and they respond socially right
to the pressures of the day, then I agree with you, guys.
I think humans will see new threats and fears emerge,
and then they'll see them through the shadow of that
ancient story, and so the Antichrist as a concept will
evolve and it will assume a shape that personifies the
(01:00:34):
fears of that modern age. AI Antichrist, you know what
I mean, dude.
Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
I can see a clear picture.
Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
It's a huge warehouse, and you have six hundred and
sixty six supercomputers. They are in a they are laid
out in a pentagram.
Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
They eventually sprout robot tentacles and start through the city.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
And it takes a while. You get like thirty minutes
into the film until someone figures out that they move
along lay lines, so and we have the influence opposition. Yeah, yeah,
so I don't know. It makes sense in times of
mass uncertainty, of fear and privation. People wonder if you
(01:01:22):
know this is the moment where the House of cards collapses,
whether with a bang or a whimper. Shout out to
s Eliot. All good stories have a villain. Humans need
and explanation for why bad things happen to good people.
It's a question that hasn't been answered yet. And so
the Antichrist fits the bill on all of those things.
(01:01:42):
Whatever shape these new stories take, the people telling them
are going to do one thing for sure. They're going
to assure you the story they're telling you is true,
and it's the stuff the devil doesn't want you to know.
Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
The end the or is it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
I'm looking forward to the tentacled supercomputer Antichrist.
Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
It's so metal. I will do your bidding.
Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
I will follow you into the dark.
Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
And hey, this episode was brought to you by the
First Omen. Please don't forget to catch it in theaters
on April fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
We're super excited to see it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
We talked about a lot of anti Christ fiction and
film in this episode, and I'm thinking this is going
to be a pretty good addition to that canon.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
And if you want to see the movie, remember this
is only in theaters April fifth.
Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
I can't wait. I can't wait to go see this
with you.
Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
I love this kind of stuff and we hope that
you enjoy it too. We want to hear your thoughts,
especially if you have a conspiratorial take on the idea
of the Antichrist that you think your fellow listeners either
will enjoy or need to know. We try to be
easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
Boy do we ever.
Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
You can find us at the handle Spiracy Stuff on
x FKA Twitter, on Facebook we have our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy. And on YouTube, where you
can see Ben dressed up as George Washington or is
it the actual George Washington time travel You can also
hear Matt sing about existential dread experience by said a
presidential time traveler.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
It's a banger of a song, folks, It's.
Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
Been in my head all week.
Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Or if you want to find us on TikTok and Instagram,
we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Oh and before we move on, just a quick shout
out to everybody. Thank you for tuning into that stuff.
We're hoping it's a series new spoilers. And yes, someone
reach out to Brad Neely. You are you are a
guiding light, my friend.
Speaker 5 (01:03:41):
Yeah man.
Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
And for somehow the whitest kids, you know, it's it's still.
They always come up whenever there's an American President sketch.
For me, it's it's every time. It's the butt still
every time. Hey, we have a phone number. It's one
eight to three three. Styk. When you call in, you've
(01:04:02):
got three minutes. Give yourself a cold nickname. Say whatever
you'd like. Just at some point let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
But if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Take care the void may write back twenty four hours
a day, seven days a week. Tell us what's on
your mind, Send us the links, send us the photographs.
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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