Global Or Local Antichrist?

By Nathan Jones

Will the Antichrist rule over every nation of the earth, or just 10 of those nations? Will he be a global ruler, or a local ruler over a coalition of nations? Will the world tremble under his iron grip, or only the nation of Israel fear his wrath? Global, or local Antichrist?

Local View

Where does the local view that the Antichrist will rule just ten nations come from? Revelation 17:12-13 is the answer. It reads, "The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast."

As the text states, in the future ten kings (presidents, dictators, whatnot) will arise to rule kingdoms and will for a short time in history grant their power to "the Beast," which Bible prophecy students will recognize as the Antichrist. The Antichrist is given rulership over the ten kingdom nations.

The local view stops with this description. All the further acts in Revelation that the Antichrist commits against the Jews is just for the Jews, and as this view holds, has nothing to do with the rest of the world. It's Israel against a ten-nation empire, and that's that.

Global View

The global view takes Revelation 17:12-13 and puts it into context with other passages that express the scope of God's wrath during the Tribulation, the time period the Antichrist has such prominence in. The references are as follows:

Concerning the amount of nations the Lord is angry with: "The LORD is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter." - Isaiah 34:2

Concerning the number of nations the Jews were scattered to that the Lord will destroy: "I am with you and will save you,' declares the LORD. 'Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you but only with justice; I will not let you go entirely unpunished.'" - Jeremiah 30:11

Concerning the number of nations that will join to attack Israel: "I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning my inheritance, my people Israel, for they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land." - Joel 3:2

Concerning the available fighting men available to attack Israel: "Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack." - Joel 3:9

Also concerning the number of nations that will join to attack Israel: "I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city." - Zechariah 14:2

Concerning how much of the world the Lord will gather and destroy: "Therefore wait for me,' declares the LORD, 'for the day I will stand up to testify. I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on them — all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger." - Zephaniah 3:8

Concerning the influence of the Antichrist's kingdom: "A second angel followed and said, 'Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.'" - Revelation 14:8

Concerning the scope of the Antichrist's ability to call the world into battle: "They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty." - Revelation 16:14

Also concerning the influence of the Antichrist's kingdom: "For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries... The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again. Your merchants were the world's great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray." - Revelation 18:3, 23

In all ten of these verses, either or both of the words "all" and "whole" are used to explain the number of nations involved that:

1. the Jews were scattered to in the Diaspora
2. the Antichrist will influence
3. the Antichrist will command
4. the Antichrist will general their armies
5. the Lord's anger will burn against
6. the Lord will gather in Israel
7. the Lord will destroy

Judgments

Beyond these verses, Revelation portrays the judgments God lets loose. Does he let loose these judgments on the whole earth, or just on the Antichrist's ten kingdoms?

Verses like the Seal Judgments in Revelation 6:12-17 set the scope:

"I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'"

Then there's the Trumpet Judgments of Revelation 8 and 9, full of references to the plagues resulting in a third of the world, waters, light and peoples being destroyed. The "rest of mankind" in Revelation 9:20 are left to face the Bowl Judgments, ending with an earthquake so great that "No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake… Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found" (Rev. 16:18, 20).

Each of these plagues were so terrible in scope — involving sun, moon, stars, bodies of water and land — that they could not happen without effecting the entire planet.

Objection to the Global View

An objection made against the global view rests on a figure of speech called synecdoche. Synecdoche, pronounced "si-nek-duh-kee," is defined as "a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part." In this case, the words "all" and "whole" that the various authors in the Bible use is a form of exaggeration. It is like saying "he ate the whole bag of popcorn," when in reality he only ate the popcorn within the bag and not the bag itself (hopefully).

The objection rests on other references in the Bible that use synecdoche, such as Paul's compliment to the church in Rome in Romans 1:8 that their "faith is being reported all over the world." Or, in Daniel 2:38, when Nebuchadnezzar is told he in his dream was made ruler over all of mankind, beasts and birds. In these two examples the use of synecdoche is quite evident in the context, as clearly "all" the world at the time hadn't heard of the faith of the church in Rome, just the Roman Empire, and all of mankind at the time didn't know they were subject to Nebuchadnezzar, just where his influence resided over.

And yet, hasn't the faith of the church in Rome today been spread all over the world since Paul's time through the Bible? And, didn't God give Nebuchadnezzar authority over the entire world, though some lands didn't know who God's "world king" at the time was? But, that's a side counter.

The local view concludes that in all ten verses by all six prophetic authors God Himself is exaggerating what He is going to accomplish during the Tribulation. Such a claim goes far beyond sound biblical, literal interpretation and sounds reminiscent of Satan's deceptive query in Genesis 3:1, "Did God really say..."

To attribute synecdoche to these weighty verses and conclude that the Antichrist is a local ruler that doesn't affect the world outside of his ten nations and Israel is to ignore God's plan for the ages — one that brings justice, restores Israel, and sets up His Millennial Kingdom.

An Old "Global or Local" Debate

Another "Global or Local" debate once raged over whether the Flood during Noah's time covered the entire planet, or was merely an overflowed body of water in the Middle East. The global view in this Flood debate continues to base itself on the Genesis account's literal, repeated statements that God's watery wrath upon man's evil was global in nature, such as in Genesis 6:17, "I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish."

The Genesis account has been confirmed as global in scope by both paleontology and geology beyond the literal reading of Genesis 6:17. After all, something had to get all those clam fossils up to the tops of mountains, and trees buried vertically through ground layers. And yet, despite the Bible's account of the Flood reiterating again and again that it covered the whole earth and all the extra-biblical evidence, a few remain who hold to the local view of the Flood.

How far the Antichrist's empire will extend has become the new "Global or Local" debate.

Conclusion

The Bible makes it clear the Antichrist will rule ten nations, but it also makes it clear their boundaries and authority encompass the entire planet. Like the Flood debate, the literal, biblical descriptions concerning the world-wide scope of God's wrath upon the whole world overwhelmingly support a Global Antichrist.

How Is Fukushima's Fallout Affecting Marine Life?

By David Pacchioli :: Originally published online May 2, 2013

The Fukushima nuclear disaster delivered an unprecedented amount of radioactivity into the sea over a relatively brief time. How did that pulse of cesium and other radioisotopes make its way through the marine food chain? Scott Fowler, who helped pioneer marine radioecology for more than 30 years at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Marine Environment Laboratories, offered a primer on the subject at the Fukushima and the Ocean Conference in Tokyo in November 2012.

The food chain starts with marine phytoplankton—microscopic plants that account for as much photosynthesis as plants on land. These organisms take up radioactive contaminants from the seawater that surrounds them. As the phytoplankton are eaten by larger zooplankton, small fish, and larger animals up the food chain, some of the contaminants end up in fecal pellets or other detrital particles that settle to the seafloor. These particles accumulate in sediments, and some radioisotopes contained within them may be remobilized back into the overlying waters through microbial and chemical processes.

How much radioactivity gets into marine life depends on a host of factors: How long the organisms are exposed to radioactivity is certainly important, but so too are the sizes and species of the organisms, the radioisotopes involved, the temperature and salinity of the water, how much oxygen is in it, and many other factors such as the life stage of the organisms.

In all this, Fowler said, it’s important to remember the omnipresence of natural background radiation. Polonium-210 and potassium-40 are naturally occurring radioisotopes in the ocean, for example. Potassium-40 is the most abundant radioisotope in the ocean, but polonium-210 accumulates more readily in marine organisms.

“Polonium is responsible for the majority of the radiation dose that fish and other marine organisms receive,” he said. 

In an experiment in the early 1980s, Fowler demonstrated vast differences in how much plutonium was absorbed from seawater by marine life across a spectrum of taxonomic groups. Phytoplankton accumulated roughly 10 times as much plutonium as microzooplankton, which took up 100 times more than clams. Octopi and crabs took up about half as much plutonium as clams, but about 100 times more than bottom-dwelling fish. 

Another cross-species comparison showed that organisms took up different amounts of radioactivity depending on which particular radioisotopes were out there, he said.

Radioisotopes are also transferred to marine organisms from contaminated sediments—once again in ways that display a complex range of factors, Fowler noted. In one experiment measuring uptake of americium, worms exposed to contaminated sediments took up significantly more of the radioisotope than clams did. But both worms and clams took up much more of the radioisotopes from Pacific sediments, which contain relatively high amounts of silica minerals, than they did from Atlantic sediments, which contain more carbon minerals. 

Food is another pathway into marine organisms and “may be in some cases the most important factor in uptake,” Fowler said. Consumed radioisotopes are assimilated internally through the gut, potentially a far more efficient route than if they are absorbed externally from the environment. Marine invertebrates, such as bottom-dwelling starfish and sea urchins, are particularly proficient at absorbing a wide range of ingested radioisotopes, he said, but fortunately, they lose that incorporated radioactivity over time, via excretion. 

On an expedition in June 2011, biologists collected samples of phytoplankton, zooplankton (bottom), and fish, including the tiny hatchetfish (top), to learn if radioisotopes from Fukushima were accumulating in marine life. (Photos by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

From plankton to tuna 

Fowler’s longtime colleague, Nicholas Fisher, zeroed in on the isotopes that have had the most impact from Fukushima. Fisher, a marine biogeochemist at Stony Brook University, has spent 35 years studying the fate of metals and radioisotopes in marine organisms, including radioisotopes associated with nuclear waste. He and members of his lab participated in the research cruise led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine geochemist Ken Buesseler off the coast of Japan in June 2011. 

Analyzing plankton and fish sampled on the cruise, they consistently found cesium-134 and cesium-137. Not surprisingly, they found no iodine-131, the isotope which along with cesium had been released in highest quantity from the damaged Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Iodine-131, with its half-life of a mere eight days, was undetectable after a couple of months, Fisher explained. 

Cesium, of course, is a different story. The ocean and its denizens continue to bear traces of cesium-137 that date from the atmospheric weapons testing during the Cold War era of the 1960s. Cesium-134, while much shorter-lived, will persist for a number of years. 

The chemical properties of radioactive cesium are similar to those of non-radioactive cesium and naturally occurring potassium and sodium, which are abundant in seawater. So all these end up in the same tissues, particularly muscle, of fish and other marine organisms. But potassium and sodium are much less abundant in fresh water, so cesium uptake is much higher in freshwater organisms than in sea life.   

Fish also excrete cesium fairly efficiently, losing a few percent per day. So if fish are no longer exposed to new contamination sources, the levels in their tissue should decrease fairly quickly. 

Of particular concern for top-level consumers is the potential that these radioisotopes will be concentrated as they make their way up the food chain—what ecologists call biomagnification. Fortunately, cesium shows only modest biomagnification in marine food chains—much less than mercury, a toxic metal, or many other harmful organic compounds such the insecticide DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Fisher said. 

On the 2011 cruise, he and his team measured cesium in everything they sampled. “These were primarily zooplankton and some fish,” he reported. As expected, concentrations were higher in organisms sampled closer to shore. Radioactive silver (^110mAg) was also detected in all zooplankton samples. In all cases, however, the amounts of cesium and silver isotopes were much lower than those of naturally occurring potassium-40 in the same samples.

“The radioactivity of the fish we caught and analyzed would not pose problems for human consumption,” he said. Which is not, he noted, the same thing as saying that all marine organisms caught in the region are perfectly safe to eat. 

Persistently higher-than-normal levels

What’s puzzling to Fisher, Buesseler, and many other scientists is the persistence of these low but significant levels of radioactivity in the ocean. Jota Kanda, an oceanographer at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, has extensively studied coastal waters off Fukushima and calculated the amount of cesium still present in coastal waters shallower than 200 meters (660 feet) and in sediments on the seafloor. By his reckoning, what remains is less than three percent of the total discharge, with the rest long since flushed out to the open ocean.

Yet levels of the cesium radioisotopes are still being measured at several tens to hundreds of becquerels per cubic meter in this area, Kanda noted, considerably higher than the levels prior to the Fukushima disaster. More importantly, levels measured in coastal sediments and in some species of fish are higher than those in the surrounding water. 

As Kanda sees it, there are three sources responsible for this stubborn presence. One is river runoff—the fallout washed by rainfall into nearby rivers that drain to the sea. He also suggested that a small amount of contaminated water from basement compartments in the reaction unit housing is continuing to leak from the plant itself. But the biggest culprit—the only plausible explanation for the steady levels of radioactive cesium being measured in fish tissue—is continuous input through a food source. And that, he said, points to sediments.

Kanda has estimated that a total of 95 terabecquerels of cesium (10¹² becquerels) is present in coastal sediments. The question, he maintained, is how it got there. It could have drifted down to the seafloor in the fecal pellets of plankton that consumed it at the surface—and in fact, plankton in shallow waters sometimes showed elevated levels of cesium. It could also be arriving with organic bits and pieces carried along by river water. It could have adhered to clay particles that came in contact with contaminated water; such radioactive cesium is tightly bound to clay particles and may not be easily transferred to marine life.

Sediment is complex stuff, he explained. Viewed up close, a single grain of what looks like sand is likely a mélange of mineral, organic matter, and pore water—the liquid trapped in the tiny gaps between particles. How contaminants are taken into these agglomerations is not well understood. Echoing Scott Fowler, Kanda noted that the composition and properties of sediments can vary dramatically.

Solving the mystery of the ongoing radioactivity will require a thorough analysis of the seafloor off Fukushima’s coast, he stressed. “Local communities are concerned. They want to know ‘When can we resume fishing?’ We scientists will have to answer this question.”

The key may be how long cesium stays put and the pathways for its uptake into the food chain. Given the 30-year half-life of cesium-137, the sediments could be a possible source of contamination in the food chain for decades to come.