The Billionaire Who Lectures on Evil

What's happening

Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, is delivering private lectures on the Antichrist in Rome this week. The talks are closed to media and held at an undisclosed location near the Vatican. Two Catholic institutions have distanced themselves from the events.

Thiel argues the Antichrist may come as a global government system exploiting fears around AI, climate change, and nuclear war. He has reportedly expressed concern that Vice President JD Vance, whose career and Catholic conversion Thiel shaped, might become "too close to the pope." Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, has emerged as a spiritual counterweight to the Trump worldview, criticizing the "inhuman treatment" of immigrants and warning journalists against becoming "a megaphone for power" during wartime. The story drew nearly 25,000 upvotes on Reddit, where the top comment, with over 9,000 votes, read: "Spoiler: He is actually the Antichrist."

What the text says

In Matthew 4, Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

Matthew 4:8-108Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.9He said to him, "I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me."10Then Jesus said to him, "Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.'"

The offer is specific: all of this can be yours. Every nation, every system of power, every structure of influence. The price is worship. The passage reveals something about how the Bible thinks about the relationship between wealth, power, and the sacred. The temptation is real because the kingdoms are real. Satan is offering something that actually exists. The offer is dangerous precisely because the person receiving it could do extraordinary things with that kind of power.

Jesus refuses. The text does not say he was untempted. It says he chose differently.

What makes this passage speak to Thiel's Rome lectures is the direction of the gaze. Thiel looks outward for the Antichrist: global government, international institutions, collective action on climate. The temptation narrative in Matthew suggests a different direction. The figure who offers all the kingdoms of the world does so to a single person, in private, on a mountaintop. The danger Scripture identifies is not the system. It is the one who accepts the offer.

The reflection

A man who co-founded a surveillance company, bankrolled a political movement, and helped shape a vice president's worldview is in Rome, behind closed doors, lecturing on the nature of evil. He locates the Antichrist in global institutions. The crowd on Reddit located it closer to the podium. Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world on a mountaintop, in private, and said no. The text has always been more interested in the person who accepts the offer than in the system that delivers it.