At the First Coming, Jesus Christ was a Jew.
At the SECOND Coming, though, if he's STILL a Jew, he's the Antichrist.
Falwell: Antichrist Probably Jewish
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) -- The Rev. Jerry Falwell said the Antichrist is
probably alive today and is a male Jew. He also believes the second coming of
Christ probably will be within 10 years.
In a speech Thursday about the concern people have over the new millennium,
Falwell told about 1,500 people at a conference on evangelism at Kingsport,
Tenn., that the Antichrist is male and is a Jew.
``Who will the antichrist be? I don't know. Nobody else knows,'' said Falwell,
whose Sunday morning services at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg are
carried by television stations nationwide.
``Is he alive and here today? Probably. Because when he appears during the
Tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course
he'll be Jewish. Of course he'll pretend to be Christ. And if in fact the Lord
is coming soon, and he'll be an adult at the presentation of himself, he must
be alive somewhere today.''
According to the Bible, the Antichrist will spread universal evil before the
end of the world but will be finally conquered at the second coming of Christ.
Falwell, the chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg and founder of the
now-defunct Moral Majority, said Friday in Williamsburg that he did not intend
for his statement to be anti-Jewish. He said he meant only that the Antichrist
must be Jewish because Jesus Christ was a Jew.
``If he's going to be the counterfeit of Christ, he has to be Jewish,''
Falwell said. ``The only thing we know is he must be male and Jewish.''
Rabbi James Rudin, the director of inter-religious affairs for the American
Jewish Committee in New York, said the comment surprised him because he knows
Falwell is a strong supporter of Israel and is not anti-Jewish.
``This is part of what I call millennial madness,'' Rudin said. ``To single
out any one man and particularly to identify him as Jewish plays into some
latent and historical anti-Semitism from the past.''
