I've been thinking about the spirit of the antichrist...
No no no, put your crystal ball down. Everybody tries to predict who the "Antichrist" will be. The most popular choices always seem to be the current pope or the current USA president. The only thing the Bible talks about though, is the spirit of the antichrist, which was already at work in the new testament church days.
The spirit of the antichrist... a spirit that is anti-Christ, directly opposite everything that Christ is. What kind of spirit would that be? Pride? That is the Original Sin after all, the starting point of satan's fall. Greed? Greed precludes a lot of what Christ is. Hatred? That's about the worst thing we can think of, hating everybody. Hatred seems to be the opposite of love, and everybody knows God is love.
Personally I think it is spite. Spite is the best... or rather, worst... opposition I can think of to everything God is. Spite requires a person to destroy, not for any gain to oneself, but just because a spiteful person can't stand to let other people have it if he can't have it.
If a spiteful person doesn't get his way, he can't bear to just sit down and sulk. He has to cause a problem to ruin everybody else's good time. A spiteful person can't just accept that he didn't get the promotion and go back to his job, he has to find some way to tear down the person who did get the promotion. If a spiteful person does get something, it's not enough to have it - he has to make you feel bad because he has it and you don't. Spite is as destructive as love is constructive. That is what I think the antichrist spirit is.
I've heard a lot of people say the devil is stupid. He fights a war he knows he can't win, and I hear a lot of Christians, ministers even, talk about how dumb he is to think he might win anyway. I don't think he's stupid at all, and I don't think he actually believes he will win. I believe he's just destroying all he can, because all he has left is one last act of spite.
It's the only way I can make sense of everything the devil does. Logically he should just sit in the corner and try to not mess anything else up. He made a big play for control of everything, he lost, there is no possible way to win, so he should just sit down and shut up. But he can't do that. If he can't have it all, he is compelled to do everything he can to ruin it for God and for the humans God made.
Mind you, this is just what I've been thinking about. I don't have chapter and verse on it, and I'm certainly not going to preach it from the pulpit. But thinking back on all the really spiteful people I have known... and all the times I myself have been spiteful, and there have been a few... it sure makes sense to me.
