That agenda includes total opposition to the desires of God toward Israel, toward His Son, toward the disciples of Jesus. It includes world domination so that the God of Heaven will have no chance to find a dwelling place here. And most importantly it includes worship. All earthlings, including the God-Man Himself, must bow at the feet of the Satan-man, whom we generically call the “antichrist.” His name while here will be much more appealing than that.

The prophecy of Revelation 17 leads us to seven candidates for that Presidential Office. An angel is trying to describe to John the nature of the beast that has appeared before him, carrying a woman. He says that the seven heads on this beast have a dual interpretation. First, he says, they stand for seven mountains on which the woman sits. But further, “there are seven kings”, quite possibly sitting atop one mountain each.

Rome has always been singled out here, because it is a city on seven hills. And the word translated mountains here can indeed be “hills.” The end of the chapter will suffice to identify Rome, in some form, as the woman. The statement there is clear: The woman is the city that reigns over the kings of the earth! Period. (Exclamation mark, in my opinion.)

But if the woman is the city, how can the seven mountains also be the city she sits on? A gymnastic impossibility, I believe. Though I am one who has always favored the seven-hills-is-Rome thing, a closer look may cause us to see that these seven mountains are nothing more than seven kingdoms upon which seven specific kings have sat in the past, and present (for John), and future.

The flow of the explanation given by John seems to me to fit that interpretation quite well. Seven kings sitting atop seven kingdoms. Identify them, and you identify antichrist. Here’s why:

Verse 10: In John’s day, five of these kings/kingdoms had fallen. One was in existence as he watched. One had not (still has not) come.

Now don’t go to sleep here. Listen…

This seventh world kingdom/king will only be around a little while. It is not the antichrist kingdom, though I can almost guarantee that people living then will think so.

How do I know that number seven is not the antichrist? I know from verse 11: The beast (code for antichrist) is the eighth kingdom! But I thought there were only seven! No, seven heads. But the creature itself is the eighth entity, and includes all the seven!

Not only does he include, through his characteristics, all seven, he is actually one of the seven! (Read it yourself!)

Get it? One of the seven specified kings who ruled in the past, or John’s present, or our future, will rule again as antichrist (here called “the beast.”). Raised from the dead! That’s why he is called the beast that “was, and is not (John’s day), and yet is (to come).” He’s coming.

Mimicking Jesus, you see. Jesus too was, then was killed, and then was raised again from the dead, and is coming.

The world will go wild over this man. Who is he? The angel narrows it down, I believe, to seven men. I believe God has seen to it that these men are described in the very Book – the Bible - that describes the true King that shall come. There would be no way for His people to scan the headlines and figure out who he is. The mystery would have to be resolved via information He has given to all of us.

Consider again verse 10: In John’s day, five of these kings had already fallen. They lived before John did, in the days we call “Old Testament times.”

Consider also that the angel says that this beast was (in John’s day) and is not (in John’s day, first century). He ruled, then, before John, and is one of the five that were fallen, or that are dead. These are the very candidates, then, to examine as possible antichrists.

There is a popular theory out there about the “seventh” head of the beast, the seventh king, the one that is still in our future. They say he comes, he is assassinated, he is clearly dead, but then soon after he is miraculously brought back to life as antichrist. That fits nicely much of the prophecy we have just examined. But not all. There is still the detail given to John that the antichrist was (based on the first century) and is not.

Believing that every detail matters, I take you through a series of studies of men, right out of your Bible, who lived before John, and who had characteristics that a true antichrist would have. These are men who have already been used by Satan once on the planet, but who never finished the work they had started. Now they will finish it, perhaps soon…

I apologize for the fact that I was not able to bring the number to five in “Old Testament Times” . Perhaps you can help with this, and then narrow it further to one.

For the sake of the argument, I will also include a look at the king who “is” in the first century, and we will discuss further that seventh king idea.

Pretty important stuff. You may well know the name of the one who will rule the world in which you are still living. Without a newspaper. Without CNN or Fox News or a laptop or an android. Just by knowing your Bible. You do know your Bible, don’t you?

Before we take a look at the candidates, we need to get his final description, so we will be able to recognize him a little more easily when he appears. What is the antichrist going to look like, the one who takes the Kingdom out of the control of “king seven” and becomes “number eight”?