As many readers of this blog may know, Tim Cohen is an American prophecy writer of Jewish background, best known for his 444-page 1998 book The Antichrist and a Cup of Tea. In it, he presented his reasons for believing that Charles, then Prince of Wales and now Charles III, was the most likely contemporary candidate for the office of the biblical Antichrist. I read his book in 2008, around the same time that I began developing my own systematic eschatological interpretation of the Book of Daniel, which eventually led me to the same conclusion as Cohen.

Cohen has published several other books, as well as an expanded and updated edition of The Antichrist and a Cup of Tea, none of which I have read. I first contacted Cohen in April 2015. In my letter, I told him about my first unpublished book, completed a few months earlier: a 700-page manuscript titled Muhammad, Charlemagne and the Antichrist, which had received many positive reviews from Finnish Christians who had read it. My later printed books, such as the Finnish-language Joka ei ollut saapa kuninkaan arvoa – Antikristus paljastettu? (Books on Demand, 2019) and its English counterpart, To Whom the Majesty of Kingship Has Not Been Conferred – The Antichrist Revealed? (Books on Demand, 2022), were based largely on the contents of that first book.

Although Cohen’s books and mine advanced the same theory about the eschatological role of the then Prince of Wales, their structure, content and emphasis were very different. Cohen’s argument relied heavily on the heraldic animal symbolism in Charles’s coat of arms, which he associated with the beasts in Revelation and Daniel. Although some of this heraldic symbolism was quite interesting, I considered it the weakest part of his argument. At times, Cohen’s eschatological interpretation of this heraldic zoo resembled an example of how easily people begin to see in their material precisely the connections they already expect to find. Once the starting assumption is that a certain person fulfils biblical prophecy, almost every lion, dragon, unicorn or other symbolic detail can begin to look like another piece of the same puzzle.

Some of Cohen’s comparisons therefore seemed to me more like associations produced by his own imagination. This does not mean that every connection he observed was meaningless, but in research of this kind I would expect a greater degree of self-criticism about where biblical symbolism is applied and how much evidential weight is assigned to one’s own associations. The fact that a symbolic connection can be constructed between two things does not yet mean that the connection was intended by the author of the text or is even historically meaningful. Otherwise, the danger is that the researcher no longer tests the theory against the evidence, but unconsciously arranges the evidence around the theory.

Although my own book listed numerous Old and New Testament prophecies concerning the Antichrist to demonstrate how surprisingly well they all appeared to fit the Prince of Wales, its argument centred strongly on the vision in Daniel 11 of the despised crown prince “to whom the honour of royalty had not been given.” My argument was not merely an isolated comparison of the “look, this one verse here fits Charles” variety. I sought to show that this person appears as part of a much broader historical and chronological whole, in which the events of the vision follow one another in a specific order and the events preceding him must also fit the same interpretive framework.

My book therefore attempted to show how Daniel 11 foretold a long chain of historical events from the Persian Empire to modern times, and how the Prince of Wales appeared near the end of that chain only after the preceding verses had first been placed consistently in history. Charles was not simply selected from history and matched with a single Bible verse that happened to sound suitable. The argument also had to work without Charles: if the historical identification of the earlier events in the vision was wrong, the conclusion concerning its later despised prince could not stand on a very firm foundation either.

This difference was methodologically important to me. It is relatively easy to find similarities between a single Bible verse and almost anyone if the interpreter has sufficient imagination and a sufficiently strong desire to make the theory work. With an entire prophetic sequence, the room for manoeuvre becomes considerably smaller. It is not enough for one verse to resemble a particular person. The preceding events must also form a coherent historical chain that leads to that person at precisely that point in the prophecy.

For this reason, I considered my argument fundamentally different in its starting point from Cohen’s case built around heraldic symbols. My primary question was not how many Charles-related symbols I could make look like the Beast of Revelation, but whether Daniel’s text could be interpreted as a coherent historical sequence that ended with the Prince of Wales without first deciding to place him there.

I admit, however, that I too may have succumbed to the same confirmation bias and may find Charles in the prophecies of Daniel precisely because I want to find him there. But to demonstrate this, a reader taking a more critical view of my interpretations would also have to disprove the historical sequence on the basis of which I placed Charles at that particular point in the prophecy.

When I explained the central theses of my research to Cohen in April 2015, he replied that he had not himself found Charles in the vision of Daniel 11 but would be interested to hear in more detail how I had reached my conclusion. I answered that explaining it by email would be difficult, because it was not an interpretation of one or two isolated verses but of a long historical sequence. Making it understandable would have required dozens of pages in practice—as it already had in my book.

I have always acknowledged Tim Cohen’s significant role in the field of research toward which my own spiritual calling eventually turned. Although our subjects, methods and many eschatological conclusions have differed considerably, I have tried to make it clear to my readers that the idea of Charles’s possible eschatological role did not originate in my own mind. Before me, it had been discussed by Monte Judah and Tim Cohen, and later or alongside them by other Christian researchers such as New Zealander John D. Christian and American Craig Bong.

This should not, however, give the impression that there is some unified “Charles school.” Rather than forming a secret society of five men who meet on Zoom every week to plot how to expose Charles to the world, we are all very different believers whose views, research methods and personalities differ substantially. Nor do we always get along particularly well with one another.

For years I had occasional correspondence with John D. Christian. There was never an actual falling-out between us, but the exchange gradually dried up. I admit that one reason was simply that we were on very different wavelengths on many questions. I did not consider it particularly meaningful to spend my time on endless email debates about matters on which neither of us was likely to change his position.

Nor do I agree with everything Craig Bong writes on Facebook—and the same is probably true in the other direction. I am not, however, the kind of person who feels a need to argue on social media over every opinion with which I happen to disagree slightly. Bong and I exchange messages rather infrequently. Although we may not be the closest of friends, I appreciate how he, among many other believers, supported and encouraged me after my brother’s suicide. He is my dear brother in Christ, whom I believe is doing important work in the body of Christ.

Monte Judah, for his part, is someone I hardly know at all. I contacted him once by email but received no reply. From the few public talks of his that I have seen, I have formed a rather positive impression of him. I cannot, however, assess his theology or eschatological views very broadly because I have not followed his work particularly closely.

I mention these other researchers because I want to make one thing clear before turning more closely to Tim Cohen. Disagreement itself is not a problem for me. I have disagreed with all the people mentioned above on many matters without feeling any need to write a critical article about their personality.

In Tim Cohen’s case, however, I see his ego as the central problem. About ten years ago, he wrote to me in an email that he believed himself to be the “man who has understanding” foretold in Revelation 13:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. – Revelation 13:18

The Greek version of the verse does speak of an individual who has the understanding needed to calculate the number of the Beast. The Greek reads:

ὁ ἔχων νοῦν ψηφισάτω τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ θηρίου

Literally, approximately: “Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast.” Ho echōn is masculine nominative singular, “the one who has,” and psēphisatō is also a third-person singular imperative, “let him calculate.” But it does not follow that John meant one predetermined and unique prophetic person—as though “at the end of history, one special Man Who Has Understanding™ will appear.” The Greek construction can perfectly normally mean, in general: “whoever/the one who has understanding, let him calculate…” The English “the one who has understanding” expresses the same thing.

I pointed out to Cohen that even if the verse were interpreted as referring to a particular person possessing understanding, that person would, strictly speaking, be Monte Judah rather than Tim Cohen. It was Monte Judah who calculated the number 666 from Charles’s name in the early 1980s. In the foreword to The Antichrist and a Cup of Tea, Tim Cohen himself acknowledged that its ideas were based on insights originally discovered by Monte Judah and presented to Cohen at a Sabbath meal in 1987.

I also did not understand why the fact that this person in the prophecy possessed understanding to calculate the number of the Beast would mean that he possessed special understanding of everything else as well, as Cohen seemed to imply. Such a conclusion cannot be deduced from the verse. In deductive reasoning, the conclusion must follow from the premises. For example:

1. All human beings are mortal.
2. Tim Cohen is a human being.
3. Therefore, Tim Cohen is mortal.

If the first two premises are accepted, the conclusion can no longer be logically denied. In Cohen’s case, however, the reasoning would appear to go something like this:

1. In Revelation 13:18, a person has understanding to calculate the number of the Beast.
2. Tim Cohen believes that he is this person.
3. Therefore, Tim Cohen also possesses special understanding in other matters.

The third claim does not follow from the first two. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accepted both that the verse refers to one particular prophetic person and that this person is Tim Cohen, the most we could conclude from the text is that Cohen has special understanding to calculate the number of the Beast. Understanding one particular riddle does not give a person’s views special authority in other questions.

To be honest, I believe this particular mistake has filled Tim Cohen’s heart with pride and led him astray as a researcher, even if God originally used him to reveal prophetic secrets. And perhaps our God is great enough to use us even when we go astray in some area. But the fact that God uses someone for a purpose does not make that person infallible or give him a general mandate to speak with God’s authority on every other subject.

In the Bible, people used by God do not cease to be fallible human beings. On the contrary, a spiritual calling can become dangerous precisely when a person begins to infer something about his own special status from the task he has received. It is one thing to think, “God may have given me understanding to perceive this matter,” and quite another to infer, “I am the special person whose understanding the Bible foretold, so my other views should also be heard in the light of that status.”

The first thought still leaves room for gratitude and humility. In the second, a spiritual experience easily begins to turn into an epistemological privilege: one’s own conclusions are no longer evaluated by the same critical standard as those of others, because the researcher begins to see himself as part of the fulfilment of the prophecy he is studying. At that point, confirmation bias gains an even more powerful ally—personal identity.

Perhaps this is precisely why a researcher should be most suspicious of the theory that tells him something especially magnificent about his own position. The more an interpretation elevates its interpreter, the more—not less—it needs external criticism. To be honest, I too was once tempted to see myself as part of prophecy—in this case Paul’s prediction in 2 Thessalonians 2:3:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

Because the Greek text uses for “revealed” a verb whose basic idea is the disclosure of something covered or hidden—as if a veil were being removed from the spiritually concealed identity of the man of lawlessness—I was tempted to feel spiritual pride at the thought that I might have some significant role in that process of revelation.

A few facts have served as a counterweight to this temptation. First, I am not the first or only person to write about this subject. Monte Judah, Tim Cohen and a few others wrote about it twenty years before I did. Nor am I the best known, since the gentlemen mentioned above are far more famous than I am. Second, despite our extensive arguments, all of us may also have been mistaken.

Third, given my own history I have no reason to boast, for I am only a former truant who did not succeed at school or in working life and eventually became socially excluded. Only by the grace of God did I nevertheless find my calling and my place in this life. Perhaps this is why I adopted Soli Deo Gloria as the dedication of my writing from the beginning, a phrase also known as one of the five solas of the Protestant Reformation.

• Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone: the Bible is the highest authority for Christian doctrine.
• Sola Fide – faith alone: a person is justified before God through faith, not on the basis of his own merits.
• Sola Gratia – grace alone: salvation is entirely a gift of God’s grace.
• Solus Christus – Christ alone: Christ is the only mediator between God and humanity and the foundation of salvation.
• Soli Deo Gloria – glory to God alone: the glory for salvation, and ultimately for all of God’s work, belongs to God and not to man.

The last of these has also been the motto of my literary work. If my research proves wrong, I naturally have no reason to boast about it. But if I am right about something significant and God truly has used my work for His purposes, then I have even less reason to claim the credit. The talents and gifts of grace God has distributed to each of us are gifts precisely because they are based not on our merit or excellence, but on God’s grace alone.

The Protestant Reformation was also closely connected with the idea that the Fall darkened not only our moral compass but also our intellectual compass. Human reason did not cease to function, but neither did it remain completely untouched by sin. Theology often calls these the noetic effects of sin: our ability to perceive, interpret and evaluate reality can become distorted just as our will and desires can. From this follows, in my view, an important Christian principle that in modern language might be called epistemic humility. I can be deeply convinced that an interpretation of mine is correct and still be wrong. I can even believe that God led me to investigate something without it following that I have understood everything correctly.

This applies with particular force to the study of prophecy. The more personal an interpretation becomes, and the greater the spiritual significance it gives to the interpreter himself, the greater should be our willingness to doubt our own conclusions. A Christian researcher should ask not only, “On what grounds do I believe this to be true?” but also, “What would make me change my mind?” If the answer is that no possible observation could shake my theory, perhaps I am no longer researching it but defending my identity.

In this sense, epistemic humility does not mean perpetual uncertainty or that one may never be convinced of anything. It simply means preserving the distinction between two claims: “I believe this to be true” and “it is impossible for me to be wrong about this.” The first belongs to conviction. The second easily begins to resemble the doctrine of papal infallibility, which a Protestant would hardly wish accidentally to proclaim concerning himself.

Our very different epistemic starting points became clear in the reply Tim Cohen sent me in early 2024, after I shared with him my article discussing the news of Charles’s cancer. I had written it in an almost apologetic tone in case I had ultimately been mistaken about his eschatological role. Tim Cohen was not pleased at all and commented:

Samuel, God did NOT choose YOU to be “him who has understanding” because you are NOT me. You want to (foolishly) “prepare” your readers because you LACK the certainty that comes from actual revelation via The Holy Spirit. You have made a MISTAKE, just as you are (falsely) convinced that the rapture will be pretribulational, when I have informed you repeatedly that it will ONLY be POST-tribulational.

You should stop doubting what I have said, and PAY ATTENTION, as I actually KNOW what I am talking about. As for Charles, he will NOT die (permanently) until The LORD has him cast down to Hell at Armageddon. You destroy your own credibility by demonstrating spinelessness in this. Even you know the evidence is unassailable concerning Charles, but you are wishy-washy. I say this to your SHAME. So, you MUST repent. As for the rapture, pay close attention to this discussion and likewise REPENT

The quotation above comes from a private Messenger message Cohen sent me. Normally, I would not consider publishing private correspondence good practice. In this case, however, I consider it more justified because I have seen Cohen use a very similar style in many of his public comments. Over the years, I also pointed out to him privately that I considered this rhetoric problematic, but judging by our discussions, he did not appear to see anything in it that particularly needed correcting.

This message may also have been a turning point in my relationship with Cohen, since I have had almost no contact with him since. In May 2024, he commented on one of my blog articles in his very Cohen-like way:

INCORRECT at multiple points. For example, the temple of the Millennial Kingdom is the FOURTH, not the third and not the Tribulation temple. Moreover, the rapture will ONLY be POST-TRIBULATIONAL.

I replied, somewhat irritated:

I give you now a bit poignant brotherly advice to you. If you criticize my thoughts on eschatology or anything else, I would much prefer in-depth arguments than patronizing comments about how “incorrect” my points are. And it doesn’t convince me any more of the fallacy of my points if you capitalise the word INCORRECT.

I recently joked with ChatGPT that Cohen’s style of argument needs its own place in the taxonomy of fallacies: argumentum ad caps lock:

Argumentum ad caps lock — a fallacy in which the truth value of a claim is increased by WRITING IT IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Although Leo Meller followed my blog for several years, he once told me privately that he understood Charles’s role differently from me. I felt no need to argue with him about it, because he respected my work until the end. Although Cohen agrees with me about Charles, I feel no such respect in the way he speaks to me. He spoke to me more as though I were an unbelieving apprentice who ought to repent for not trusting his teacher enough. To be honest, I found Cohen’s condescending manner rather insulting, because I have never been the sort of person who trusts any researcher blindly without first questioning his premises and conclusions. I am no follower of a “Cohen cult,” just as you should not be a follower of a “Tuominen cult.”

Cohen sees it as spinelessness when I dare tell my readers that I may be wrong. But this is not because I am uncertain about my reasons. On the contrary, I believe many of my arguments withstand more critical scrutiny than Cohen’s, whether the issue is the identity of the Antichrist, the rapture or anything else. I am also prepared to argue for them instead of merely declaring “INCORRECT” and demanding repentance from those who dare disagree with me.

Cohen’s way of communicating his own infallibility tells me more about insecurity than certainty. If questioning your doctrinal authority provokes an almost hostile reaction, the issue no longer appears to be merely that you are defending arguments you consider strong. Criticism then easily begins to feel like an attack on your identity.

True confidence, in my view, does not need capital letters, spiritual titles or demands for repentance. If I know that my arguments are strong, I can let them stand on their own merits. I can also allow another person to examine them critically without his doubt becoming a threat to my position. In fact, a strong argument benefits from critical examination: if it withstands the objections, confidence in it only grows.

For this reason, I find far more convincing the researcher who says, “Here are my reasons. Examine them and show me where I am wrong,” than the researcher who says, “I know that I am right because God revealed it to me, and you must repent if you do not believe me.” The latter may sound like certainty, but it also makes the claim almost immune to outside criticism. At that point, research begins to turn into a defence of authority.

Nor do I see any contradiction in someone saying, “I believe my calling came from God and that the Holy Spirit has guided my work,” while also admitting, “I may have been wrong.” Belief in God’s guidance does not make all my own conclusions infallible. The Holy Spirit may guide someone to study a subject, give him gifts for it and even help him notice things others have missed without every interpretation he subsequently makes becoming authorised by God Himself.

Otherwise, we very quickly arrive at a dangerous chain of reasoning: God called me to this task → God guides me → therefore my interpretations are God’s guidance → therefore questioning them means questioning God’s guidance. In that final transition, a spiritual calling can become a personal doctrine of infallibility.

I see the matter almost the opposite way. If I truly believe God has given me a task, I should take all the more seriously the possibility that my human preconceptions, confirmation bias or simply incomplete knowledge may distort the way I carry it out. Trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit and acknowledgement of the fallibility of one’s own reason are not mutually exclusive. From a Christian perspective, they should belong together.

For me, a mark of a true man or woman of God has always been a certain kind of doubt—not necessarily doubt about God, but doubt about one’s own adequacy, understanding and ability to perform the task given. This appears repeatedly in the Bible. Moses asked, “Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh?” and also pleaded that he was not a good speaker. Gideon wanted several signs before he dared trust his calling. Jeremiah replied to God that he was too young and did not know how to speak. A prophetic calling does not always arise as grand confidence in one’s special status, but sometimes almost as its opposite: “Lord, are You quite sure You chose the right person?”

I have often identified with that feeling. At school, I was mocked, among other things, for barely speaking at all—and, when I did speak, for speaking too quietly or unclearly. When I began my literary career at the age of twenty-four, I felt completely unsuited to it: I had not succeeded at school in either Finnish or foreign languages, and I had no theological or academic education of any kind. At seventeen, however, I received a personal prophecy from a brother in the faith who quoted Paul’s letter to Timothy:

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

– 1 Timothy 4:12–16

If I could trace my literary calling, which has produced millions of words, to one particular prophecy, this would undoubtedly be it. This was the seed planted in me that caused me to “read, exhort and teach diligently,” despite feeling wholly unqualified. Even today I may think, “Lord, You chose the wrong person.” At times I doubt something even more fundamental: did the Lord ever choose me at all, or have I constructed my literary calling over the years around nothing more than my own interpretations and life story?

But regardless of whether the prophecy I received at seventeen truly came from God, it became one of the decisive turning points of my life. It planted in me the thought that I ought to read, study, teach and write about the subjects that had already interested me in 2006. When I later began my literary work, I returned again and again to that moment as the birth of my spiritual calling. In a sense, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it encouraged me to come forward more boldly and develop as a researcher and writer.

In 2020, a few months before my older brother Mikael’s suicide, I received another prophecy confirming my work from a brother in the faith, who wrote to me by email:

I have prayed for your brother. In prayer I received a message from the Lord for you: “Before you were born of your mother, I chose you, called you and set you apart, as I called and set apart Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5; Gal. 1:15). For even then I saw your humble heart; beforehand I saw your tender conscience before My word. I have given you the skill to put the prophecies of the Bible into words in a form people can understand. That is your gift, received from Me. As I said to Jeremiah, so I say to you: you have seen correctly (Jer. 1:12). Soon the Antichrist will appear on the stage of the whole world. To you I have revealed him, and I will continue to reveal great and hidden things (Jer. 33:3). Continue to obey My voice, and I will bless you and your ministry, as I have blessed it until now. With these words I want to strengthen you. You are dear to Me—know this—very dear. In Me you may live an abundant life (John 10:10); I give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:11). My Spirit assists you in your writing; I speak My thoughts to your heart. Do not worry about earthly things, your livelihood or anything else, but seek first My kingdom, and all these things will be given to you as well. I am your portion (Lam. 3:24).” “The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” Psalm 12:6.

Because of prophecies like these, and because of the positive feedback my books have received—even from a retired professor of mathematics and physics—I have much greater confidence in the divine origin of my own calling than in the infallibility of Tim Cohen’s eschatological conclusions. If I wished to construct some special prophetic authority for myself, it would be easy to do so on the basis of these prophecies. I could tell my readers that God Himself had declared that I had seen correctly and that the Holy Spirit assists me in my writing.

But then I would easily commit the very error for which I have criticised Cohen here. A personal prophecy may strengthen my own faith in my calling, but it cannot serve as an argument that my readers should regard my eschatological conclusions as infallible. Otherwise, I could have ended my book after its foreword and would not have needed hundreds of pages of exegetical and historical reasoning. If the reader were expected to believe me merely because I feel that God called me to this task, my entire argument would ultimately be unnecessary.

This, in my view, is the important boundary between spiritual conviction and the abuse of spiritual authority. I may believe my calling came from God. I may believe the Holy Spirit guided my research. I may even be strongly convinced that my conclusions about Charles are correct. But none of this releases me from the obligation to justify my claims or gives me the right to demand that readers accept them on the grounds that I received them from God.

This is perhaps ultimately the greatest reason why my relationship with Tim Cohen became more distant. My problem is not that he disagrees with me about the rapture or many other eschatological questions. My problem is the way he appears to connect his own interpretations with his own special spiritual authority and to treat their questioning almost as a spiritual offence.

I do not want my readers to relate to me in the same way. If I am wrong, show me where. If I am right, believe it because of the evidence—not because my name is Samuel Tuominen, because I have written thousands of pages on the subject, or because I believe God called me to write about it. If God truly has used my work for some purpose, the glory does not belong to me, but to Him alone.

Soli Deo Gloria.