Lol....You have authority over what you believe. The Church has authority over what I believe....Just like Scripture teaches.
Mary
Have you ever wondered Marymog why the reformers all agreed that the papacy was the Antichrist? From
The amazing name Antichrist: meaning and etymology
The Antichrist...
There are so many people who have tried to explain the antichrist that this utterly simple phenomenon has managed to slither into the realm of the very complicated. No longer so.
Antichrist is obviously the opposite of Christ, and although the word "Christ" is mostly recognized as being the surname of
Jesus of
Nazareth, it's really an ordinary word which means anointed (see the word study below). Someone would be called an anointed when that person had a rank that had no earthly superior, namely that of king, prophet or high priest.
The epithet Christ or
Messiah (same word but in
Hebrew) was never meant to be used exclusively for Jesus (the word משיח,
mashiah, occurs forty times in the Old Testament). A follower of Jesus is someone who operates according to the principle of being anointed, that is: having no earthly superior.
A follower of Jesus Christ does not simply follow like an admirer or loyal drone; he or she
partakes in the state of being anointed (
2 CORINTHIANS 1:21,
1 JOHN 2:20). The word Christian is really a misnomer; we are
Christs, we are
anointed ones, we are kings, prophets and high priests and we have no earthly superiors (
1 CORINTHIANS 4:8,
HEBREWS 12:28,
JAMES 2:5, and particularly
1 PETER 2:9). We talk directly to God and God talks directly to us. There's nothing and no one that can stand between us and him (
ROMANS 8:38-39). It's therefore the purpose of Christ to put an end to all rule and all authority and power (
1 CORINTHIANS 15:24).
The antichrist is anyone or anything that wiggles in between a human being and God, someone who professes to know God better, or who speaks in God's name, or who rules people "according to God's will". All that is nonsense. Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, humanity has direct access to the deity (
JOHN 14:6-7) and nobody needs anybody else to talk with God or to know what God wants (
JOHN 10:27-28,
ROMANS 2:15,
HEBREWS 4:12,
10:16). The Lord has shown very clearly what is good and what he requires of us (Micah 6:8), and his divine nature can clearly be seen through what has been made (
ROMANS 1:20). Anybody who places himself in between a human person and the Lord, blocks that person from accessing the Lord and is an antichrist.
Antichrist — definition
The antichrist is the opposite of Christ, and Christ is anyone who has no earthly superior. Antichrist is that which brings a person under human authority, and does not allow that person to obey the voice of the Creator, which all people hear in their own heart.
Thanks to @bbyrd009 for above link.