Some people believe in a literal Antichrist, while some believe “there is a little Antichrist in all of us”, apparently. I would tend to argue for the latter in the sense that the concept of right and wrong are uniquely human and we have certainly shown ourselves capable of both.

However large he looms in modern Christian storytelling, he’s referenced in only four passages of the Bible. The word Antichrist appears nowhere but in one of John’s epistles, which also warns that “even now many antichrists have come,” indicating, as Trelawny puts it, those who reject “that Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah…”

The apostle Paul or one of his disciples, in a letter to the Thessalonians, foresees the rise of “a mysterious figure known only as ‘the lawless one,’ who will gain power by deceiving people through false miracles, and once in power, he will commit his greatest crime of all: ‘He will oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God or worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” For its part, the Book of Revelation adds “the arrival of a monstrous seven-headed beast,” and later, a companion with “the horns of a lamb but the voice of a dragon.” Thereafter comes the “mark of the beast,” 666 — or perhaps 616, Trelawny adds, given that either could be seen as code for Neron Kaisar in Greek or Nero Caesar in Latin, better known as the ancient Roman Emperor Nero.

My favorite literary Antichrist is of course Stephen King’s “Walking Man” from The Stand.