The Real Antichrist
A little weekend church for us
You can’t blame us for thinking he’s already come a few times before, but we haven’t seen the likes of the real Antichrist. When he appears, he’s not gonna use up all that devil magic on special effects, no lakes of fire, no spectral abominations vomiting forth from erupted graves. That’s not the style of the real Antichrist.
The one that ushers the end of days will look inside each of us, and he’ll find the pettiest kernel stuck in our craw. Just as the Lord has His eye on the sparrow, the real Antichrist will pluck the tiniest mote from each of our eyes. He’ll find the thing you worry like a dog with a length of rope in its teeth, the slight so old you’ve forgotten the face of the one who wronged you, the hurt inscribed in a dead language that throbs like the ghost of an unset fracture on a thunderstorm morning.
Nothing so big and Biblical as your venal sins or your hatred of your neighbors will be the stock in trade of the real Antichrist. He leaves the broad strokes to the pretenders, the headline names on the villain’s hit parade. He’s all about the micro, not the macro; the grievance he’ll place center stage is so small you’ve told everyone it isn’t even there, even when they didn’t ask. You probably believed it, in the daylight anyway.
It's that one little nugget of spite. That discouraging word. That dishonored loan. The snub at the party, the refund unpaid, the meal left cold, did I mention it was nothing? Less than nothing. But you’ve never really thought so, and you’ve made a pearl out of it, let the eddies of your life whirl around it, and the real Antichrist can read those ripples like tea leaves.
You won’t sell your soul for gain or love or country or lust, though the damage you’ll do down those paths will cut a wide swath just the same. The real Antichrist, the eternal hell broker, he’s gotta find that pearl, and he’s gotta make you know he’s found it. He sees it, you see him see it, you let it be seen.
He ensnares you with the ol’ scratch to the biggest itch a soul could ever feel.
He tells you you were right all along.