One of the interesting aspects of the story of Christ and the Christian story in general is that within the story of Christ,

you see that Christ chose his own betrayer.

And this, of course, is a testimony to how, in a larger sense in Christianity, we have the sense that Antichrist will rise out of Christianity,

will appear as a side effect or a kind of a strange

deformation of the Christian message. And so there are several aspects to Antichrist. I'm going to

look especially at one which I called something like weaponized compassion. And we will see this

virgin or this aspect of Antichrist, especially in the story

of Judas Iscariat, who is the disciple that Christ chose, who ultimately ended up betraying him.

This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. And so there are several aspects of Antichrist.

There are two aspects which we could see almost as something like opposed to each other or two extremes of what Antichrist looks like.

The one that people usually tend to look upon is the empire idea of Antichrist or the beast, this notion of Rome as being

something like the whore of Babylon, all this kind of imagery of Antichrist. And it's especially

happened in the Protestant Reformation where, you know, the notion of the relationship between the Catholic

Church and Rome was related to a certain extent with the idea of a kind of parody of Christ

and of Christ's message and something like Antichrist. And there's something about that which

is interesting because there is an aspect in the story of Christ, of Antichrist, you could say,

which is related to St. Peter,

because St. Peter is, of course, the one who denies Christ.

St. Peter is also the one who, although he is the first one to recognize Christ, he ultimately

refuses one aspect of Christ, refuses for a certain amount of time, one aspect of Christ's message, which is that Christ must die. And when St. Peter wants to oppose that, wants to say that Christ will not die on the cross, then that is when Christ tells St. Peter, get behind me Satan. And so, of course, St. Peter is important,

and there's a very positive aspect of St. Peter, which is true and which is good to understand.

But the story of Christ is very complex and contains all this subtlety within it. And one of the

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