JOHN BUNYAN: OF ANTICHRIST AND HIS RUIN (1692)

OF ANTICHRIST AND HIS RUIN (1692) – Last week Balladeer’s Blog reviewed John Bunyan’s often neglected work The Holy War (1682). This time around I’ll take a look at Bunyan’s Of Antichrist and His Ruin, published posthumously in 1692.

Bunyan depicts the Antichrist as a religious leader who poses as a Christian at first, then gradually replaces “God’s Word” with his own and distorts religious teachings. The Antichrist cons his followers into believing that he is preaching the true religion and that other faiths are evil.

Ironically, even though the Puritan John Bunyan made it clear that he was referring to the Catholic Church and its Pope (especially claims of papal infallibility), he doesn’t seem to realize that this description could also be applied to Martin Luther, who launched the Protestant Reformation which Bunyan championed.

This book’s Antichrist is described as a three-part entity – the devil as the head, the huge numbers of Antichrist’s followers as the body, and the Antichrist itself as the animating spirit of that mob of followers.

In a variation of the Biblical saying “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”, Bunyan stated that followers of Christ should fight the worshipers of the Antichrist only with “the word of God” and leave physical opposition of those worshipers to kings and their states.

John further stated that Christians could pray for heads of state to see the light and understand the “true” interpretation of God’s word to get them to recognize the dangers of the Antichrist’s forces.

The text tells us that the devil “made use of the church of God to midwife this monster into the world” and that the Antichrist “covered his cloven foot” to further his deceptions. The Antichrist emerged from a bottomless pit when first appearing to his adherents and traveled with a retinue of locusts.

As the entity set to work the legends and “miracles” of the Antichrist steadily spread through “blasphemous rites and ceremonies.” The Antichrist – which we are told can appear as man or woman or beast – causes “bloody massacres” in France, Ireland, Piedmont “and in several places besides.”

The spirit of the Antichrist infuses entire nations and turns all the mechanisms of government against true believers, and Bunyan specifically cites the Spanish Inquisition as an example. The text depicts the deceived governments as a Beast ridden by the Antichrist, and it is by the heads and horns of which the vile entity is protected and defended.

Bunyan’s biased view presents the Protestant Reformation as the start of the uprising against the spreading influence of the Antichrist. 

At length, the Antichrist will motivate its forces to use violence against the followers of Christ in order to keep its vile movement alive.

The followers of the Antichrist will eventually wipe out Christianity to the point where the few practitioners left must gather covertly to express their faith. In the end it will seem that the Antichrist has snuffed out all pockets of Christianity, and its evil followers will spitefully celebrate the deaths of all the “witnesses” of Jesus.

Next, God will take a hand in dealing catastrophe upon catastrophe against the Antichrist and its 10 cities.

One of those ten will be struck by an earthquake, killing 7,000 and the survivors will return to the true Christianity. Time will pass, then another, far greater earthquake opening up three ruptures, will destroy the other nine cities all at once.

Antichrist’s followers will fight mercilessly among themselves in the aftermath. Soon, God will send a massive hailstorm against the Antichrist and its forces, killing many with hailstones that weigh 56 pounds each. (?)  

Next, the book tells us, Jesus Christ will personally intervene, resurrecting (literally or figuratively) his followers slain in the Antichrist’s genocidal campaign and will lead the way to decisively defeating the entity. He will do that by first slaying the 7,000 leaders of the Antichrist’s legions and then all of the followers.

Angels will fight at the side of Jesus and, once the spirit and body of Antichrist are destroyed, angels will seize the head – the devil itself. Satan will be chained up in Hell for a thousand years, unable to trouble the Earth above in any way.

Bunyan depicts that Millenium as a period of peaceful Christian worship following the defeat of the Antichrist. As the era goes on, eventually people will be born wondering how such a thing as Antichrist could ever have existed.

Of Antichrist and His Ruin lacks a lot of the universality of many other John Bunyan works because of the way it is mired in topical references to Protestantism versus Catholicism. Plus, the tale is structured largely like a marathon sermon and that doesn’t do any favors for its narrative appeal. 

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE IRISH MYTHOLOGY IN THE BOOK OF THE DUN COW CLICK HERE.