“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matthew 24:4,5).

These are the opening words (and, therefore, key words) of the “Olivet Discourse,” the great prophetic sermon preached by Christ to His disciples just before His crucifixion. In answer to their question concerning the time of His second coming, He responded by warning them that there would first be many deceivers who would come claiming to be the Christ.

But the key test is given in I John 4:3: “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of anti-christ.” The man, Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross and rose from the dead and ascended back to heaven in His physical body, is the only Christ. “The Christ” does not inhabit any other human body, male or female, past or future. Jesus, alone, is the Christ incarnate.

Many are even claiming today, especially in the so-called New Age Movement—in the burgeoning eastern religions, in various Christian cultic offshoots, and in the strange philosophies of “religious science”—that anyone can be Christ if he or she simply follows the mystical teachings of some guru who may, himself, claim to be a new incarnation of Christ. But the Lord Jesus warned: “Go not after them, nor follow them” (Luke 17:23).

When the Lord Jesus Christ does return to Earth, there will be no doubt or question at all. He will still be in His resurrection body, with the crucifixion wounds (Zechariah 12:10; 13:6), and everyone will know that He is “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Only “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). “God hath made that same Jesus . . . both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). HMM