Peter Thiel has been talking about the Antichrist. Yes, that Peter Thiel—the billionaire investor, PayPal co-founder, and political provocateur. His recent lecture series explores what he calls “the modern Antichrist,” a force he believes wants to stop progress, restrict innovation, and use fear to centralize control.
He paints a dramatic picture: innovators on one side, regulators on the other. Freedom versus fear. Builders versus those who would shut everything down.
It is a powerful story. But it is also too simple.
As someone who takes both technology and theology seriously, I think Thiel is asking the right kind of question and offering the wrong kind of answer. The problem is not that he is thinking too much about evil. It is that he is defining it too narrowly.
The world is rarely black and white. It is mostly gray. And in the gray, discernment matters more than ideology.
The Antichrist Is Not Just One Man
Thiel’s version of Revelation imagines one final showdown between progress and tyranny. But Scripture offers a broader, more complex picture. The Antichrist is not a single future dictator waiting in the wings. The Bible describes many antichrists—people, systems, and moments across history that oppose truth and elevate human power over divine authority.
Every age produces its own version of that spirit. It shows up in empires that worship control, in movements that glorify self-sufficiency, and in technologies that promise salvation apart from God.
In that light, the question is not who the Antichrist will be, but where that spirit is showing up right now. It might appear in governments that suppress truth, in corporations that profit from fear, or even in the parts of our own hearts that want to be in charge.
When Thiel frames the Antichrist as a single force opposing innovation, he misses that deeper reality. Evil does not just show up in those who stop progress. It often shows up in those who idolize it.
What Revelation Actually Teaches
Revelation was not written as a codebook for predicting the future. It was written as a letter to real people who were trying to stay faithful in the middle of pressure, confusion, and persecution. It reveals that God is sovereign even when the world feels chaotic. It reminds us that worship is always the central question—who or what deserves our ultimate trust.
The book’s images of beasts and battles are not only symbols of one distant event. They are recurring pictures of power gone wrong. Each generation must decide who it will serve: the kingdoms built by pride or the kingdom ruled by the Lamb.
Revelation’s ultimate message is not fear but endurance. It calls believers to live faithfully in the middle of the storm, to refuse both despair and arrogance, and to remember that renewal, not destruction, is where the story ends.
Innovation Without Worship Becomes Idolatry
Thiel is right that centralized power and fear-driven control can lead to tyranny. He is right to be wary of a world that regulates everything until imagination dies. But he overlooks another danger just as real: worshiping innovation itself.
Technology is not good or evil by nature. It is a mirror that reflects what we value most. It can serve truth, generosity, and healing, or it can amplify greed, pride, and manipulation.
The Antichrist spirit does not need to destroy technology to thrive. It only needs people to believe that technology can save them. The moment we look to machines, systems, or human ingenuity as our source of redemption, we have built a new altar.
Progress without humility becomes pride, and pride is the soil where idolatry grows.
Living Faithfully in a Gray World
The tech world loves clear categories: build or block, innovate or regulate, disrupt or die. But real life—and real faith—are more complicated.
Sometimes wisdom means slowing down. Setting boundaries on artificial intelligence is not rejection of progress; it can be an act of stewardship. Creating new tools is not automatically redemptive; it depends on how they affect human dignity. Even restraint can be an expression of faith when it protects what is true and good.
The challenge for believers working in technology, marketing, or culture is not to escape the gray, but to walk through it wisely. We are called to think, to question, and to stay awake to the ways power and pride can disguise themselves as virtue.
Faithfulness in this world is not about choosing one perfect side. It is about staying alert to the spiritual forces that keep reappearing under new names and new branding.
Power Reimagined
Revelation does not celebrate domination or rebellion. It redefines power altogether. Real power is found in faithfulness, endurance, and love that outlasts fear.
The story ends not with humanity’s victory over technology or technology’s victory over humanity, but with God restoring creation. The future is not a startup success story or a global collapse. It is renewal—heaven and earth made whole again.
That is the true hope of Revelation: not an escape from the world, but the transformation of it.
A Better Vision for Builders
Thiel often talks about the world as a war between visionaries and villains. Scripture tells a more honest story. Good and evil are not divided neatly between sides. They run through every human heart, every institution, every company, and every idea.
The danger is not only that someone will build the Antichrist’s empire. It is that any of us could build a smaller version of it when we trade humility for control or treat technology as the ultimate hope.
The task for people of faith is not to reject innovation or embrace fear. It is to build what is good, resist what is corrupt, and remember that the story ends with God, not us, in charge.
Revelation reminds us that victory has already been won, not by human progress or political power, but by the Lamb who reigns through sacrifice.
So keep building, keep creating, and keep pushing forward. Just remember that what we build is temporary, but who we serve is eternal.
Leave a Reply