Foreword

Many books have been written on the Antichrist, and these exhibit a great diversity in content, style, and interpreta­tion method. Please let me explain where the present book fits within this diversity, so that you can decide whether it is the right book for you.

This book Antichrist Arch-Deceiver is a collection of sermons on the Antichrist by Eric H.H. Chang. It is a biblical-expo­sitory work that is marked by a devotional style, a sense of urgency, and deep pastoral care.

Most significantly, it disagrees with almost every modern book on the Antichrist on several fronts. This is evident when we look at its thesis which can be broken down into the following points: the Antichrist is a pseudo Christ rather than a contra Christ; he is a religious figure rather than a poli­tical dictator; he comes from the church, not outside the church; and the pillar of his satanic work is deception rather than perse­cution.

Like all things eschatological, the topic of the Antichrist can take one of several paths. If you are only interested in end-time specula­tions, may I direct you to some other books that are brim­ming with end-time predic­tions? These books dis­agree wildly with one another in how they read the Old Testament, decipher symbolic language, build time­lines, and interpret world events.

The pursuit of the speculative for curiosity’s sake will go off the rails if we, at the same time, fail to see that when the Bible speaks of the last days, its foremost concern is with our spiritual victory and surviv­al — so that we will not succumb to the satanic forces roiling this age of deception and law­less­ness.

This book strikes a good balance. It avoids sensationalism on the one hand, yet does not dismiss end-time predic­tions outrightly on the other. Instead, it dives deep into the person of the Antichrist, and identifies deception as the deadliest aspect of his work.

As we go through the book, spiritual lessons are gleaned along the way and applied to our Chris­tian lives, in order that we may be ready for the Antichrist when he appears.

These spiritual lessons apply to us because the Antichrist is a man. As a human being, he shares our world­liness, our wicked ways, our evil think­ing, though in his case these are raised to satanic levels. In studying the ways of the Antichrist, we will gain insight into our own condition, so that our spirits may be trans­formed by the Holy Spirit.

This book was not written in the calm and quiet of a study, but is a collection of urgent messages delivered by Pastor Chang in the late 1980s, and recently edited by me. We are now in the year 2023 as I write, yet these time­less messages remain fresh and relevant when we read them today.

An example of their relevance today is the proliferation of photo­shopped images, deepfake videos, and fake news dissemi­nated via social media. Can we even fathom how the Antichrist will harness these forces of decep­tion? And this is just the start. With remark­able prescience, Chang stresses again and again that the true danger posed by the Antichrist is deception rather than persecution.

In the midst of global warming, economic chaos, the emerging AI threat, and wars and rumors of war, may Yahweh our God prepare our hearts and souls as we move closer and closer to the coming of his son Jesus Christ, judge of nations and our blessed hope.

Maranatha!

Bentley C.F. Chan

Montreal, Canada, June 17, 2023

biblicalmonotheism@gmail.com

Bible passages in this book are taken from English Standard Version (ESV) and sometimes from New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB) or New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). For short quotes, the Bible version is usually not stated, but is ESV or NASB in most cases.

To know more about the author, you can read his testimony at https://www.christiandc.org/content/ehhc-testimony