The Apostle John is the only New Testament author to use the term “antichrist” or any derivative thereof. John uses the terms “antichrist”, “antichrists” and “the spirit of antichrist” for a total of 5 references in his epistles.
Many scholars believe that the person referred to by the Apostle Paul as “the man of lawlessness” in 2 Thessalonians 2 is the same person or phenomenon referred to by John as “the antichrist.” Both figures fulfill a pattern that originates in the Book of Daniel and that reappears in John’s vision of the Beast in Revelation 13, giving us a number of passages to consider in this attempt to produce a composite sketch.