From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know, Fellow conspiracy realists. Before we get started this evening, we want to make sure everyone tunes in to our exclusive interview with Arkasha Stevenson, director of The First Omen. You can catch it only in theaters April fifth. It's a question humanity has quarreled
with since before the dawn of the written age. What is the nature of good? What is the nature of evil? For some folks, it's a matter of shifting perspectives, a long spectrum of gradients. For others, there are absolutes, clearly defined rights and wrongs, clear good guys, clear bad guys. And with that in mind, tonight we are exploring one of history's most extreme symbols of evil, the opposite of divinity, a dark, oppositional Messiah, the eternal enemy of God, and
Jesus Christ, known for millennia as the anti Christ. Here are the facts. The Antichrist has done a lot for fiction.
Well, yeah, I mean, and I've always kind of struggled with, like, is the Antichrist in service of Satan? Is the Antichrist? Like Satan incarnates like in the way that Jesus is God on earth? You know, Like, what's that relationship? Is it the Sun of the Devil? It is in some fiction, right, very much so.
In some well, it's weird to think of it as between nonfiction and fiction.
Because again, Rosemary's Baby, just in terms of Son of the Devil is like the Antichrist.
No, You're absolutely right, it's just in my mind even when I'm trying to separate the fictional depictions of what we would consider an Antichrist versus like letters that were written, you know, nine hundred and fifty a d That are concerning and Antichrist based on you know, scriptures that that person takes to becomingly fact.
This individual literal interpretation. And I'm glad we're bringing that point up at the top, because, as we always want to say, when we explore concepts like this bit of a spiritual disclaimer. Your beliefs are your own. We're not here to tell anyone what they should or should not believe. But we do find a fascinating, surprising bevy of conspiracies
in Tales of the Antichrist. I mean, I think it's fair to say that, even if you don't consider yourself Christ in particular or religious in general, you have heard about the concept of the Antichrist in clear like in clear seminal works of fiction, some of the best horror films, some of the best horror novels on the planet, some of the best art. In fact, if we're getting pretentious, it's about the Antichrist.
Yeah, Christ Superstar and Marilyn Manson.
Again, that guy sucks, but that was like he kind of peaked, you know. In terms of the concept album with Antichrist Superstar.
There is one I'm glad you mentioned music to there because there is one line that stood out to me. I returned to it with the sex Pistols where they say they don't say I am the Antichrist, they say I am an Antichrist, which will be interesting later. So anyway, Yeah, the question is, oh, and also in real life over millennia, there have been numerous people who at various times claimed that they themselves were the Antichrist, you know, and maybe that's what Marilyn Manson's picking up on there.
Well, and let's point this out. I think we've talked about this before, but biblically, from passages of the Bible, there's very specific ones that paint anybody who is who does not follow Jesus, believes that Jesus is the son of God and says that out loud to people is Antichrist or is in It's weird because it's the term. The is what you end up like trying to like quarreling over, and is what historians end up talking about.
Is that passage talking about the Antichrist or and Antichrist or just of the Antichrist Christ.
Yeah, So the best way to explain it is like there's an individual and then there's a vibe, and then there are opening acts. So if your vibe is off, you are being not ann or thee, but you're being anti Christ and Christian.
But then in Thessalonians it goes on to talking about basically being a minister of the Antichrist. Or you know, a worker of the Antichrist. So it's it's really interesting because in some of those places there doesn't require to be an individual at all. It is just an act or as you said, a vibe.
Yeah, so the anti Christ to get polar opposite of Jesus Christ according to Christian tradition. So everything Jesus Christ represents, the anti Christ is super against. He thinks it's all a terrible idea if it's the individual, the main anti Christ. And this guy has a grift, he has a grand conspiracy. He's going to take over the world, reign over the
earthly world in the time before the last judgment. And in Christian theology, the last judgment is when Jesus and a divide army and the angels returned the dead or resurrected. So comes God to judge the living and the dead. And I like the point where we're talking about the complexity of the concept. Jesus Christ is the son of God. The Antichrist is often at least the singular like final boss. Antichrist is the son of Satan in a dark parody
of the nature of God and Jesus. So there's a lot of misogyny in here, and also a lot of anti semitism.
Oh yeah, is the concept of the Antichrist as the son of Satan specifically addressed in scripture?
Oh?
Man, I'm glad. So there are specific interpretations of scripture that would say that. So, like, it's strange because for a guy, and it's almost always typified as a guy, for a guy who plays such a big role in the grand climactic events of reality and the universe. It might spry some of us to learn that there are only a scant number of passages, like three passages in the New Testament that specifically mentioned the Antichrist in a singular sense, like there is a guy, he is evil.
They all come from the letters of John.
Yeah, they're they're interesting. Should we read some of them?
Yeah?
I just here's here is first John, Chapter two, verse eighteen and nineteen. Dear children, this is the last hour. And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming. Even now, many Antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But they're going showed that none of them belonged to us.
This really feels just like being anti referring to a lot of people that are maybe following someone who is preaching speaking out against Jesus and the message of Christianity.
Again, I keep going back to, and I don't mean to be crass. I keep going back to the idea of escalating spiritual arms races, or even more basically an opening act before of a genre of music, before the big headliner, which is the anti Christ. So we say, there are a lot of things. It's very cold war, it's very them versus us paranoia.
Oh yeah, let me give you one more passage here, this first John, chapter four, because I think it speaks to exactly that First John four, verse two. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
So like a lovecrafting monster or some kind of spiritual contagion, this thing's decay. It's a possible, he spreads, and I want to go to just to round it out right to John seven, I think the other notable passage talking about Antichrist stuff says expounds on this and says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the anti Christ. Even though John clearly thinks there's more than one.
And last one, this one is, I think speaks to again that other perspective, cause we're seeing kind of versions of this that can be easily interpreted as that Leviathan coming, you know, this actual force. And then there's ones like this that almost feel a little more political.
Who is the.
Liar, But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this is the ampti Christ. He who denies the Father and the son. No one denies the son has the father. He who confesses the son has the Father. Also, this to me is just about like adhering to doctrine and like, you know, kind of othering people who are not in that that particular religious clique, you.
Know, And it sounds like we may have given you four quotes, but again, these all we're clipping out, yes, the passages that we mentioned here, And you can see the confusion because already we're reading this in modern American English, and it's been translated so many times before it got.
Here exactly the ones I new international version, by the way, which is like the more easily translated to other languages, which is why that version was created.
Yeah, I mean, what, you know, mess with the King James.
I will? I mean I dig at King James every once in a while. It's kind of fun. But yeah, there's so many versions of the Bible, and the one.
I read was from First John, chapter two, verse twenty two and twenty three, a quick mention of the Antichrist.
There again, it's scant in its specificity, and early Christians agreed with us, so they would do this. They would pour over other parts of the Bible as it evolved through different translations and interpretations, and they would interpret different passages as referring to this villain. Uh think of things like the Letters of Paul and Paul they don't specifically say the Antichrist, but they say the man of lawlessness,
the son of pradition, you know, what I mean. It's kind of like saying a certain Russian president.
You know, the exactly the first oh subtweet. Yeah, the first time I heard son of Perdition, I always think about Road to Perdition.
I don't know why Western too. I picture of the man in black from the Gunslinger.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, totally. But son of Perdition. I didn't know that term. I didn't understand it, and I've found that it's the letter the Letter on the Origin Time of the Antichrist for a Medoso of Montirander, where he talks about the Son of Perdition, but specififically as that title, basically, the man of lawlessness, of like of sin Oh tradition is bad, the eternal damnation.
Yeah yeah, and ad so we'll get to is very good at cementing the idea of the Antichrist for the public. I mean, it's also weird that the Christian concept of the Antichrist comes from beliefs that predate the concept of
Christianity itself. If you go back to Jewish traditions, the Book of Daniel that was written like one sixty seven BCE loosely, then the author there predicts that there will be what they call a final persecutor, a rising, a villain who will quote speak great words against the most high and wear out the saints of the most High and think to change time and laws. That's a seven.
Is this end of days type situation?
Like yeah, like big, big third act energy and right, and as we will see later then as now, a lot of people were absolutely certain we're making a base assumption that the world would end in their lifetime. That nobody wants to feel like you were in one of the you know, one of the less good seasons of the human experience. You want to be there with something climactic occurred.
One of the spinoffs that went straight to DVD, right, right, nobody wants to be in those.
So, I mean, if you look at the political context of the time in which the Book of Daniel was written, this is interesting because it appears the author is referring to a specific human individual, a real pill to be fair, named Antiochus for epiphanies, and Antiochus rules Palestine during the Hellenistic period, and these super mean the Jewish can communities persecuting the massacring them, trying to root them out of Palestine.
But When Daniel writes this, it is a sneak diss It's what we would call a subtweet today, because the author never mentions Antiochus by name, And this establishes a pattern that we could argue continues today. New threats, tyrants, villains, other generally unpleasant people come on the stage of Barack Obama. Thanks Obama, right, every president actually since FDR, except for weirdly enough, Gerald Ford, which I still don't understand, means the one who didn't get called the Antichrist.
Wasn't Gerald Ford, the president who had two assassination attempts on his life by women who have like, is that wrong? I thought that was it?
Mea rock?
He was also put us during the height of one of the cyclical anti christ panics in the nineteen seventies. Anyway, So because this pattern has been established, when you are living your life and you're reading this as a member of the faithful, then you will see your own story written in these things. You will tend to interpret these ancient passages in ways that center yourself and your own
life experience. So it makes sense that someone would read John or you know, read parts Daniel and hear about it and think, oh, that makes sense. It is going to be the end of the world while I'm alive and I do know the guy who's the Antichrist. In the days of early Christianity, they would say, it's insert Roman emperor here.
Oh yeah, that's convenient.
I mean it's like witchcrafts, you know, it's like a witch hunt kind of situation.
Well, yeah, And he got more and more specific, and that Adso a Dso person that we mentioned before the month, the Benedictine Monk, he got real specific with it, even saying what that this Antichrist is going to come from Babylon, like definitely going to be born in Babylon, you know, the tribe of Dan exactly because the whole pagan thing.
And and also he's real specific about the Roman Empire as you're talking about, basically in this letter from nine to fifty eight, saying, uh, this this time when the Antichrist arises and all this stufft the end of days, the last days, it's not gonna happen until all of the peoples and countries that were once ruled by Rome are no longer ruled by Rome. It's weird.
And he was also super anti Semitic, he was like, first things first, the Antichrist is definitely Jewish.
Well yeah, but that's it's super specific, right.
From the tribe of Dan born in Babylon, taught raised in the ways of wizards and magicians.
Yeah, is what's depicted in Revelation concerning the Antichrist, like with the Horror of Babylon and all of the great beasts of the Abyites, great beasts, Yeah, I mean all the stuff where people sixty six to six comes from.
Is there like any association or those.
Unrelated Often, yeah, there's often an association or again an interpretation because after seeing specific mentions of Antichrist vibes or a specific Antichrist, people are reading into this. So they'll find a villainous force that seems vague in the text, and then they'll say, boom, that is the Antichrist, And depending on where they're living, what their life is like at the time, they will often, as we'll see, have a specific person who is alive at the same time
that they think is the Antichrist. This is not cynical propaganda for the most part, which is so weird. It's not made in bad faith. People making these claims. A vast majority until pretty recently in history. Genuine like they interpreted the Bible literally and they genuinely believe the person they were calling the Antichrist was a supervillain, did have superpowers, was supernatural, and was the main antagonist of Jesus Christ.
Man, did you see the thread running through a lot of these things, Some of these writings where the Antichrist, at least to a secular world in society, the Antichrist will be seen as a very positive force, at least at first as this person emerges, which is something that also talks about, like he will be of the world right and the world will love him.
He'll be accepted as first a secular power, and then he will be gradually accepted as a messiotic power. So like, first you become the king of Jerusalem, right, Adso starts this. He's the one who says the Antichrist will rule over Jerusalem, and then he will, by hook or by crook, become a spiritual leader, ultimately declaring himself divinity.
But the idea is that with all of this, it's sort of like a frog and boiling water situation of being corrupted, right, Like the public is being swayed by this individual and turned unto godless ways, but like a little at a time where they barely notice.
Is that kind of the the idea?
Yeah, yeah, but just going back to what you had talked about earlier in Noel, Uh, I add so in his letter here, I'm just going to read a part of this because it goes back to how is this thing created, this Antichrist?
Right?
Is it like Jesus was, you know, born with the Holy Spirit going into marry Uh? He says he will be born from the union of a mother and father like other men, not as some say, from a virgin alone. Still he will be conceived holy in sin, will be generated in sin, and will be born in sin. But at the very beginning of his conception, the devil will
enter his mother's womb at the same moment. So it says, though it's like, you know, the way the baby is created migration, the human way, but there's a third party there.
It just pops in, you know, last minute ivf infernal vitro fertilization. But he's not saying that the devil had intercourse with the mortal woman either.
It depends on this. So Adso is like, okay, this is in a way and we're not we're not making any religious judgments. But the way this story grows, it's helpful to look at the way folklore evolves, right, or oral storytelling, because again, the written documentation in the beginning is very, very scant, adso creates one of the big resurgences of this He's like when Coca Cola cements the image of Santa Claus. He provides the hard ground rules for how the West and indeed other parts of the
world envisioned this idea of the Antichrist. He puts in this seven year rule. He says, all right, either the angel Gabriel or the return Jesus Christ. He is going to defeat this guy. And then the final judgment is happening as soon as you know, all those Roman countries are gone.
Well, show us your notes, guy, where's all this coming from.
There's citing there, there's a really great oh gosh, was it on and was it NPR. No, it's an old PBS website that you can find right now where the entire letter is written out, and there are places where it's cited, like Psalms fifty seven is cited when it says that this Antichrist will be conceived holy in sin and then John nine thirty four is sited and there's like, there's biblical, but.
It's a leap though. I mean the guy's editorializing, to say the least.
Again, it's interpretation. Yeah, I want to say, with this, with Ozso's interpretation again Odso Montie. And there with this this one letter. By the way, we see immensely high stake stuff. At a time whens on, these stories grow deeper, people are taking notes from each other. It takes off in another cycle of resurgence during the Middle Ages of Western Europe, and it resounds still in the modern day
and indeed to the future. So with all that context, folks, before we go to our ad break, let's ask you this. Who is the anti Christ? We'll be right back. Here's where it gets crazy. Who is the Antichrist? Single question, simple question. It is conjured a library of Alexandria's worth of conspiracies.
And I mean it also, as may have been indicated by some of that we're talking about earlier, has been used as a political tool, like depending on what side of the al you're on as to who your Antichrist might be.
Yeah, really quickly, you guys, want to rattle off some of the movies that deal with the Antichrist before we get into like who it could actually be. Just rattle them off, because I I did. I forgot that that Arnold Swarzenegger movie End of Days and directly with the anti Christ.
Warlock is the absolute banger.
Uh there, am remember that the least.
Remember the Devil's Advocate, Devil's First Off, that's the best one. I can't say that. I can't say it. It's my favorite though, Yeah yeah, who you're carrying all those bricks for Kevin God Godlaw. I'm a humanist, maybe the last humanist? Sorry I did that monologue.
My favorites well, well, but again baby, the.
Left Behind series, Paul was mentioning that before we even started rolling.
We'll talk, isn't that?
And like the Leftovers?
You know, but Antichrist is heavily involved in there?
Sure?
Uh well in the OMEN series is something I was really thinking about.
Yeah yeah, and also shout out to Angel Heart, so angel Heart's great. Otherwise, emails that egg scene makes me so uncomfortable.
Still, you know, it's it's it's wild and the Omen. I recently rewatched the seventies Omen the o g One, you know, Damien, and uh, it really holds up. I mean, it's just it's that era of like horror movies with Rosemary's Baby, and you know that that was just a very kind of almost cinema verite approach to to horror. A lot of stuff happening in your head. They don't show you too much, you know, but it really gets under your skin.
Well, I forgot that. That series takes you from like the Birth of the Anti Christ into the second movie, then becomes to the President. Well no, the second movie, he's a kid like at a military school and things get real dark, and then he becomes a man in the third movie and just breaks havoc. But man, that's just crazy.
Yeah, And so this resounds through the world of fi and through the world of art. As we said earlier, when we ask that single question that we came back on, who is the Antichrist, we have to point out the Antichrist is tons of people. Depending on who you ask, there could be multiple Antichrist. And at this point you might think, ah, here we go, and everybody's got a
multiverse these days. But this is different because Biblical sources again differentiate between a main Antichrist and other you know, anti junior varsity Antichrist, some of whom are already in the world, and that I think that distinction kind of explains the later and present practice of labeling folks as and Antichrist. You might not be the Great Beast, but you're super down with them, and you're not fooling us.
This is the idea, but I mean, you know, to your point, it is such a depending on where you stand and what your belief systems are, there are obvious candidates that kind of emerge, you know, throughout history, throughout the world in terms of folks that follow that kind of trajectory, right that we were talking about, the sort of ascending as a man of a person of the people and then being lifted up by you know, society, and then then affecting great change and then gradually plummeting
the world into darkness. But that part we haven't exactly necessarily seen that happen yet.
So in a way, you know, these folks get portrayed as sort of the infernal answer to the divine armies of Christ and God. They're like officers in an enemy army of damnation, and a lot of.
Our ministers, right, basically going out and preaching the anti Christ.
Message proselytizers, Yeah, of evangelicals, and so an early example of this comes from the Middle Ages. This was a great time for anti Christ promotion. There's a collaborate monk named yo kim Or Yokim of Feor, and he pitches the idea of a series you call them opening Acts anti Christ for the Big Antichrist Show. And he says, look, what we're looking at is a cavalcade of people, an escalation.
And he says, folks like Nero, folks like the Muhammad, the actual prophet Muhammed from Islam, Folks like Saladin, these are all Antichrist leading up to the emergence of the Big Bad. And like a lot of Middle Ages writers, he believed the real Antichrist, the big One, would of course come in his society during his lifetime.
Yeah, any major figure that pushes people away from a what would what that person would consider a Christ's centered life and the Word of God and how a human should live in the things they should believe in. Right, So, anybody that pushes that message and pushes you further away from that is one of these ministers and then the main one is eventually comes to power, right, But there's an other theme here that it's power over the world, not of a country.
That's up to interpretation too, and again it's highly linked to politics and geopolitics and all of these interlocking complex systems. And also depending on where you are in the world, what affiliation you have, it's also up to interpretation and easily weaponized.
It's fascinating.
Yeah, Secularism rises in the stories. All early Christians agree there's one great, big bad. As secularism rises, as people go away from God lose their belief in God. This individual swoops in opportunistically deceiving people with apparent miracles, taking over positions of earthly power like all the New World type stuff, and then spiritual power, and then finally claiming
to be God themselves. And I want to be very clear here the idea of secularism rising or turning people from God, that doesn't just mean saying atheism or there's no God. That can mean very minor doctrinal disagreements.
I mean, just think the difference in the wars that were started with the disagreement between Protestantism and Catholicism. A lot of basic similarities there, but some very specific things that cause people to murder each other.
Well, think about just listen to ourselves talking about this, guys. You can see why someone who believes wholeheartedly in some of the core beliefs here would see something like the United Nations, right, or the World Health Organization, or anything that's bringing the entire world together in some secular way. How you could view those potentially as negative entities and organizations.
Right.
Sure, we'll get to that because we'll see another complex fold in of conspiratorial folklore in this.
Well, I think it's the all or nothing nature of religious belief and the fact that it inherently has this adversarial quality with people of other religious beliefs who believe their thing just as much as you believe your thing. For we are not the same, and we must war. If we can't convert you to our thing, then you are our enemy. And so it's almost like the introduction of secularism. Well today it feels a very innocuous thing, but some I'm sure doesn't. Then was tantamount to heresy,
you know, the idea of secularism. Godlessness is what that translates to.
Well, yeah, and this is again, like we said earlier, this is in us versus them mentality, and we have to understand, like as weird and literally apocalyptic as this may so out during the later Middle Ages, if you're the average person in many communities, you just accept as fact that the Antichrist, the main one, is about to
reign on Earth in your lifetime. Pretty much any overly successful political figure that you disagree with might be the Antichrist, or they might the anti Christ might already be here. The final judgment maybe nigh. It's a level of paranoia resembling the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons. Like people genuinely thought this was happening. It wasn't until the sixteenth century that folks stopped thinking of this as a present or coming imminent terrible individual and thought of
the Antichrist as a collective body of evil. And we owe all of that to a guy named Martin Luther. Pretty big deal to Protestantism. He's the guy. He did a lot of stuff. He also said, look, folks, fight the real enemy, said, the Antichrist is none of a not a single pope, the institution of the papacy, this organization is the anti Christ, and that's what's driving us
away from God. And the thing is, I mean, it sounds weird today right to say like the Catholic Church, which is responsible for Christianity, is also anti christ Like. But once you get that paranoia in play, anyone can be a villain.
I've heard several people pause it that the Vatican really is the last remnant of the Roman Empire, and that is how the Roman Empire continued on, and that's how it still is able to exert a lot of power. Maybe that's wrong. That does seem like it seems like there's something to that that the Holy Roman Empire still exists, but as the papacy.
But even more so, it seems like there's definitely something to how much these declarations by Martin Luther caused Catholics and Protestants to truly despise each other. Like I've been watching that show Showgun on FX, which is a remake of like an older mini series based on a novel
about you know, invading forces into Japan. It was these Protestants, you know, this Protestant ship who were going to, you know, try to take over this part of Japan which is being held by Catholic Portuguese monks and they have absolutely hate each other and want to murder each other on site.
Yeah again us versus them, ILG. I got a little bit lost because I'm trying to remember one of the best shows I saw. It was out on Netflix. There's a TV series about addiction and possession and one of the big plot lines. I guess it's okay to say because I remember the name of this. One of the big plot lines is active conspiracies within the Catholic Church, right, the call is coming from inside the house, and people, Yeah,
people believe this, you know. And if you're a Protestant and much of what you have witnessed in your life experience seems to be corruption, right and sin on behalf of the Catholic Church, then you are going to fall into other ring, you know. And now look, now, the Catholic Church as it exists is less inclined to identify the anti Christ and Antichrist as a specific coming individual. But there have been a lot of candidates. We mentioned
Barack Obama. I thought I found it interesting we're talking about this a little bit off air. There was a twenty thirteen poll that showed there's a great Guardian article about this, it showed roughly one in four Americans believed Obama might be the Antichrist.
Well, yeah, and I think a lot of that goes back to how how he brought so many people together. It seemed as though, right his message was very positive. It was about helping each other out, working together, we can do positive things, you know, as a collective of humanity. They didn't see it maybe as very christ like or biblical.
Right, How was this guy so successful? Yeah, he can't just be trying to do his best at his job.
It's kind of postular, I think, so popular.
Why do people like it? I bet it's the devil? And they said stuff like that about Napoleon, Benito, Mussolini, Peter the Great, Thomson, Tom Hooks. You could kind of name anybody like I'm sure there's someone right now. I watched The Family Guy and thought it's Seth MacFarlane.
You know, I've been accused of being the Antichrist three times already this week.
Oh no, no, I'm joking.
I'm not not high profile enough to be accused of being the Antichrist. But it does Joe that this kind of talk is being thrown around pretty fast and loose, you know, when it comes to identifying the ultimate enemy of a given group.
Yeah, it's often in the modern day in the West, it's often leveraged by what we will call factions of conservative Christianity. And these are you know, for everybody, everybody tuning in practitioners of the Christian faith. When you hear that, obviously we're talking about the people that you at your church would call crazy, really far out there, folks. And for a while again, except for except for Gerald Ford, for some reason, for a while, every single president has
been accused by someone of being the anti Christ. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, it knows no political ideology. Henry Kissinger had the top slot for a long long time in the seventies and eighties.
And then you supported that I did, I do?
And uh.
Mikhail Gorbachev was also a front runner for a time because he was in charge of the USSR, and he had a very unique and distinct earth mark of the beast, mark of the beast.
Oh, there's only it's so funny. There's only one person who could possibly right now be the Antichrist, and I would fall for.
It, oh boy, And I would fall for it.
Well, that's yeah, Okay, there's two neil in his one.
Actually that's not true.
That's not true. I really like Neils, say, follow him like him.
I wouldn't the guy.
I wouldn't follow him. But it worries me that I do see like John Stewart, sorry Jay stew but I see him as a person. I see him as a person that I would follow like kind of. I would just be like, you know what, like, uh, Grimma Stewart, I'm with you. Let's go that.
I'll email him, I'll be like, hey, man, are you from the.
Tribe of dan Oh. I didn't even think about that far oh j.
Anyway, your liberalism is showing.
I know, I know, but like, but it's but it's not about that, It's about growing up with somebody.
Yes, trust.
Yeah, it's weird.
Yeah, he's kind of a conscience of America, regardless again of political ideology. There's a funny story. In twenty fourteen, a US Republican politician Ryan z zinc Zinke accused Hillary Clinton being the anti Christ. Is very public about it. He's very serious. It was like I read the Bible, I see the signs. Think about it. People, do your own research. Hillary Clinton is the anti Christ.
And that a bass song was about.
That's what every as bass song is about.
Even all that she wants is another baby.
I thought it was the sign.
That's a different one you're talking about and.
Waving without God.
Yes, but you're right, she wanted a baby. That's a different song.
That's ah that she wants the baby at.
AULTI. Christ is very into babies, so for different reasons.
So this one story, you know, the political circus that has replaced journalism and American discourse, they love stories like this, and uh, it got so much press that during the Trump inauguration, the inauguration, former President Donald Trump, uh, Hillary Clinton made a big deal about specifically pointing out this riot guy and reassuring everybody that she was not, in fact, the scion of Satan sent to overthrow all that is good in the universe.
Thank goodness.
I don't think he believed her, Oh, because you know, there's always that logic trap where you can say, well, that's what any antichrist.
Would say, spider Man pointing at Spider Man exactly.
Yeah, I mean, and then you know there's all the hits. Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden, who I still don't. I just don't think he's a great guy and the person. I don't think so. Yeah, but we did find a we did find at least one explanation for the trend of accusing a lot of people of presidents, in particular being accused of being the Antichrist. We are going to introduce you, folks to a guy named Gerald Burton win Rod.
What a win Rod?
What a win I do like that like a spit on Nimro.
It's like a windbag and a Nimrod combined.
Which was accurate. Yeah, I think so.
He's a pro Nazi, far right evangelical from Kansas who is largely responsible for the modern president is the anti Christ kind of rhetoric that we're sort of dancing around here. Win Rod believed that FDR was a devil linked with of course the Jewish Communist conspiracy, and of course the Hitler was cool, and that he would save Europe from the Communist horde.
Yeah, wind Rod Man, that kind of sucks.
Yeah, and he's a heck of a trendsetter. Because again after this, like people who hear these predictions often don't or these accusations often don't know that it comes from blood libel. You know, it comes from this strong background of anti Semitism, and and that's where things like the Mark of the Beast get folded in. But it's still not it's still not quite I think the the strangest stuff.
Maybe we talked about the Mark of the Beast though, because we've mentioned it a couple of times, it's often called six sixty six.
Right, oh, and really quickly before we get into that mark, Matt, You're absolutely right. Gerald Ford had assassination attempted on his life a couple of times, and one of them was by a member of the Manson family, Squeaky Frome. He tried to kill Gerald Ford in California. But you think the Mansons would be pro Antichrist?
Well, maybe is a Squeaky from or from I can't remember, I think, yeah, but I no, it's fine. I just dude. There is an entire show that's going to be coming out later this year called Rip Current that deals with the two assassinations against Gerald Ford by Squeaky and there's another woman that attempted an assassination on him.
It's crazy, yeah, and he's survived both of them, perhaps because he had the Mark of the beast, mark.
The beast, demonic force field or something right, right, not.
Just secret security? Who are you really working for? Answer the Department of the Treasury. People need to understand how weird that is anyway, So the mark of the Beast comes from Revelations Revelation chapter thirteen, which we briefly discussed earlier. Then the whole you know, the horror of Babylon and the you know, the beasts in the sort of Ends of Times kind of situation. And the idea is that the mark of the beast similar to the concept of
putting blood on your door in Egypt of old. The mark of the Beast is kind of a parody of that, and regular humans, the Jane's and John's and so ons of the world, will have to have a mark of the beast on them if they participate in the society that the Antichrist runs. Over the years, as society is modernized, that quote unquote mark has been interpreted as many things. Is it, for instance, this is really popular a few
decades back. Is it your Social Security number? Is it the UPC you know all that other stuff.
Could it be the color of your skin perhaps.
Well, yeah, or you know a barcode or a chip maybe, or something a vaccination.
I say the thing I said as pointedly just because that's one way it could be really disgustingly used to another, you know race.
Oh yeah, well yeah, I mean it can be used, right, the concept of it could be used in a lot of ways. But there are strange technologies that again, like imagine if you're talking about something that would be a technology that allows you to exist in a society. Yeah, if you don't have a some kind of bank card or cash app, car card or something like that, you really can't function in a lot of society today, right sure.
Yeah, And in days of old you couldn't do it. Like you might have to have a licensing system to live in a certain community. And if you didn't vibe with that, you would say, well, this is a mark of the beast.
Well yeah, but most of it isn't an actual mark or an actual thing that's attached to the human body. Rob, What was that recent There's a company we just heard from recently that is making a Star Trek thing that goes on your shirt that you could touch and be like, hey, computer, what's this.
Oh, there's a couple of different ones I've seen called rabbit, and there is another one. Yeah, a little AI kind of personal assistant kind.
Of but taking your phone technology basically or most of your phone technology and putting it on you, right, rather than a handheld device or something like that. And just imagine that iteration or two ahead. And it could be something that is like an implant, right, or something that is a part of your body that becomes the mark.
Already, I mean that is statistically inevitable unless there is an extinction event that affects humans immediately. Like that is going to happen. The the meat and the metal will continue to merge. It's just going to happen.
The most illiterative sentence I've heard all day, and I love it.
It's still kind of early. We'll get we got some work, but yeah, I love that point because we also, again we see interpretation. What is meant by a mark?
Right?
Is it just a like a signaling to the world. Is it something that goes inside you as a person? And then is it communicable? Will you be punished for not participating the same way our pal ads so said the Antichrist would torture and execute people.
Yeah?
Maybe again, like, well, there are three ways, right, ASO said, the first thing he's going to do is deceive people, and those he can't deceive, he's going to use fear to control. If he can't do that, then he's gonna throw you in a kulog basically. But in a couple other instances, the mark is a hidden thing and it only is on the Antichrist. It's not a part of followers or anything.
Right.
The yeah, take it back to the Omens series, and it is a hidden birthmark that has to be discovered. But nobody on the outside, like no one looking at this child would know that's the Antichrist. But if you pull the hair back in a certain way, you can see it.
And then in other stories too, it's like a hidden sign, you.
Know, or on the hand there's like a six sixty six in the hand somehow.
And the idea of this serves the conspiracy theory aspect or the folklore aspect, because in these stories one needs if you're the good guys, right, then you needed the ability to identify somehow, uh, the the opposition. That's a huge part of it.
The ops.
You know, it's interesting too, how one reason that this depiction of this kind of stuff in fiction and in popular culture at the time or at a time like maybe in the well as far back as it was beginning to be written about, but even in the nineties and stuff with like the Anti Christ Superstar record from Marilyn Manson, this stuff was controversial, like people were still freaked out by.
This kind of stuff.
So to like, you know, depict it, it felt a little dangerous, like a little edgy, and it freaked out parents, you know what I mean.
Yeah, I mean there is great power to that, right, because what you're doing then is tapping into your leveraging one of the oldest, most dynamic stories in all of human culture, right, religion aside, just touching on that idea of a very powerful force that has been around forever and is fundamentally beat me here, Paul is fundamentally opposed to you, you personally, unless you get the right mark, unless you switch sides, I don't know. And there's like
you mentioned, the fiction and the music aspect. It's so endlessly fascinating that the concern and interest in the Antichrist story encounters cyclical popularity just like a Satanic panic, you know, another mass hysteria outbreak like the Screaming Girls of Malaysia, you know, one of the big resurgences in this I would argue there are two variables. First, how stable is the current world of which you live right, your current community,
et cetera. Do you feel safe secure access to resources? Second, are there any particularly popular things in the world of novels and film and art? Have any of them mentioned the anti Christ? Because if they do, that's a cheat code that gets people interested. Shout out to the fiction series and later adaptations. Left Behind. It's a fantastic example of how fiction feeds the factual interest told you alliteration.
Left By would also be considered of a certain niche of cinema that is, you know, pretty religiously based or so most movies in Hollywood stuff is pretty secular. Left Behind series is very much has a message and is sort of promoted by the Christian community.
Yeah, and it's a big example, but there's a lot of like in the world of Christian oriented fiction. There are a lot of similar things, and they're leveraging the story that everybody knows at least in pieces, and they're saying, well, let's reevaluate it or recontextualize it through a more modern lens. I mean, look, the book series Left Behind in the first one comes out in two thousand and five, and
there are years of chaos that follow. In the two thousands and more and more people begin to search for an behind the pandemonium. What if? They ask, just like those people centuries and centuries go, what if the end times are coming? And what if they're happening while I'm alive. I hate to say it, but I see the trend. I kind of think a lot of people want to be around at the end of the world.
I think it's something that a lot of people feel they need to be prepared for for some reason, which again kind of like an apocalypse or you know, preparing for the zombies or you know whatever. It is, thinking about bunkers, thinking about survival buckets of food and all that stuff. It is maybe in the back of a lot of people's minds because you don't want to get
caught off guard by something like that. You want to have the best chances of surviving, I guess, but it is weird to think that it would be surviving and maybe not really living for a lot for you know what I mean, Like life would be very different after whatever cataclysmic event or if we're hitting up on the end times. I think it's an that inner thing where you don't want to be a sucker, you don't want to be caught off guard.
But I see that. I do think there is there's a lot of validity to that. I think maybe those two impulses coexist in the same person, in the same communities.
I've had a couple of conversations with people recently who are convinced that this election coming up is like the last chance to save humanity from the actual end times, which.
Like Christian theological end times.
I think so, I think, I mean, I'm not really sure, you know, like what these individuals believe in their personal life about that kind of thing, like religiously, but something about the politics side of it intersecting with their religious life. It feels like they think the stakes are at the level.
Surely people have accused Taylor Swift of being the Antichrist as for her part in all of this, remember the whole conspiracy about Taylor and being able to sway the election, and that it feels like the kind of rhetoric on the right was Porterer lines She's the Antichrist, kind of talk.
I feel you.
I also I'm glad you bring that up because there is a bit of a soapbox I want to get on here. You know, it's rare for women or female identifying individuals to be identified as the Antichrist, and I think that is historically unfair. Everybody should get a chance to be the big villain, so, you know, more equality in anti Christ accusations.
So if Taylor were to be accused of being the Antichrist, that would be another big win historically for her.
Yeah, progress, yeah, yeah, yeah, added to the accolades, and at least some of the success between the of these modern fictional and interpretations, you know, like left Behind or most notably the Omen. At least part of this success comes from this combination of long standing Antichrist theory and later conspiracies surrounding what we talked about earlier, modern institutions.
We love a global cabal. Modern anti Christ speculation folds into this stuff because it's an easy red stream to connect.
I guess we haven't talked a whole lot about the idea that there are forces at work working to make sure the Antichrist is born and brought forth like in Good Omens the Terry Practett and Neil Gaiman series that
is also a really delightful TV series as well. The book rather came first, But that is all about these secret sects within I believe, even the Vatican and with them that are like working to make sure the Antichrist is born, and maybe even to a lesser degree in like Kevin Smith Dogma, but very much that's part of
the story. Is there's like, you know, again, like in Rosemary's Baby, there's members of this kind of unnamed cult no spoilers, well spoilers for a forty year old movie that are like working to make sure that Rosemary gets impregnated with the seed of Satan and then they're going to raise the baby and all of that, you know.
And there are things like Hereditary, which takes the same sort of plot line, just isn't specifically Satan. It makes sense when you when you think about the fear that people inherently encounter living in a globally connected world, you can see where these the origin the provenance of these things.
The United Nations is an insane idea. I mean, if you went back in time and you explained it, people would tell you that's devilment, you know, and if you like the builder Burgers, any global banking institution, conspira corporations past a certain threshold, all of them have been accused of various shenani and stuff like this, some of it with validity, to be fair, But they those cabal conspiracy theories, they inherited other earlier stories. They carry with the burden
of prejudice us versus them, ideologies anti Semitism. So like, whenever you hear these things, we have to put on our thinking caps and remember the lesson from all that old wind rod stories are another kind of technology, That's all they are. And like any other kind of technology, they can be weaponized for great and sometimes horrific effect.
No doubt about it.
And last thought to leave us with for this evening's episode, What's Next? We talked a little bit about Taylor Swift and what's going on and all of the chatter around this political cycle. But like, what's the true future of antichrist rhetoric? Is it even maybe becoming a little obsolete as the world does get a little more secular, or at least this country, But I don't know on the religion's going anywhere.
Well, well, it's tough because the some of the recent episodes we've done and historically do point us to small groups of people who do work in secret against humanity by selling goods that give us cancer, by you know, by circumventing yeah, well, by building weapons and then finding ways that those weapons need to be sold, or at least pushing right for the need for those weapons to be sold.
Starting off, starting work.
But again, like for me, it goes back to consumerism and some of the globalization, that there are groups of people that are all about profit and they don't care if they're actually hurting people. And that goes to the individual level, but also two individuals working together for profits and shareholders and all that other stuff. So I can see why this would continue on guys like I can see antichrist concepts and people fingers being pointed at people
saying you are the Antichrist. I think it's going to increase.
I think it's going to continue. I mean, it's a very it's a story that resonates with people because people do conspire against one another and do attempt to for good or for ill. They attempt to paint folks they don't like as villains because you don't want to have someone you don't care for be thought of as the
good guy. You're the hero of your story, and that's that's part of the Like even back to the early days of tribal warfare, religious ideology is a often irrationalization to say, here's why I should have the resources and you should not, and what.
But we also don't want people causing mass harm, right, yeah, I mean, and I think that in a weird way. I don't think that has anything to do with being the hero or not. I think that has to do with being able to look out in the world and say that person or that group is hurting us or others.
You know, this is such an easy constant to wrap your head around to the anti us. You know, it's the it's the ultimate them.
It's like my kid.
I guess a lot of the kids are using the term the ops, and at first I thought it was just referring to cops. But it means my enemy, the opposition, someone who is is the opposite of me, and that's what the Antichrist represents. It's easy to wrap your head around the idea of hating that which is different than you, or that which threatens you.
Right, because you deserve the resources, not these, not these nabops. I'm bringing back the nabob. I love it is.
That was that ever a thing? I love it.
I just heard it in Apocalypse now which stop but anyways, an acronym maybe it is. Let's learn the etymology that in a future episode. The idea of mass harm though, is we have to remember the same people doing mass harm or often rationalizing their actions. So from their point, from their perspective, they are also the good guys. It just depends on what what you see good. As you know, it goes back to our original question nature of good
and evil. I mean, it's exciting, I think to explore the idea of the anti Christ evolving in the future. We know it's been happening, it's still happening, and there are a lot of changes on the horizon space exploration, cloning corporations, so called artificial intelligence, space antichrist AI antique Christ.
Now, when are people going to start accusing artificial intelligence of being the end?
That's what I say?
No, I love that.
Wouldn't it be the perfect anti Christ. It's completely of man of the world, and it shows us progress.
It's progress, guys. You know, it's helping us, it's a tool.
And then it eats all of our lunches.
It's kind of a I've been working on a related story with something like that. It's interesting. We'll see if it works to hear it. Oh yeah, long, I don't know if it's good, but I'll send it along. So I wonder, then, like, can we now that we know these texts are reinterpreted, recontextualized, and they respond socially right to the pressures of the day, then I agree with you, guys.
I think humans will see new threats and fears emerge, and then they'll see them through the shadow of that ancient story, and so the Antichrist as a concept will evolve and it will assume a shape that personifies the fears of that modern age. AI Antichrist, you know what I mean, dude.
I can see a clear picture.
Guys.
It's a huge warehouse, and you have six hundred and sixty six supercomputers. They are in a they are laid out in a pentagram.
They eventually sprout robot tentacles and start through the city.
And it takes a while. You get like thirty minutes into the film until someone figures out that they move along lay lines, so and we have the influence opposition. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. It makes sense in times of mass uncertainty, of fear and privation. People wonder if you know this is the moment where the House of cards collapses, whether with a bang or a whimper. Shout out to s Eliot. All good stories have a villain. Humans need and explanation for why bad things happen to good people.
It's a question that hasn't been answered yet. And so the Antichrist fits the bill on all of those things. Whatever shape these new stories take, the people telling them are going to do one thing for sure. They're going to assure you the story they're telling you is true, and it's the stuff the devil doesn't want you to know.
The end the or is it.
I'm looking forward to the tentacled supercomputer Antichrist.
It's so metal. I will do your bidding.
I will follow you into the dark.
And hey, this episode was brought to you by the First Omen. Please don't forget to catch it in theaters on April fifth.
We're super excited to see it.
We talked about a lot of anti Christ fiction and film in this episode, and I'm thinking this is going to be a pretty good addition to that canon.
And if you want to see the movie, remember this is only in theaters April fifth.
I can't wait. I can't wait to go see this with you.
Guys.
I love this kind of stuff and we hope that you enjoy it too. We want to hear your thoughts, especially if you have a conspiratorial take on the idea of the Antichrist that you think your fellow listeners either will enjoy or need to know. We try to be easy to find online.
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Yeah man.
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