pseudomessiah

plural pseudomessiahs · alternative pseudo-Messiah

1. A false Messiah; someone falsely claiming to be the Messiah.

   The reign of Elizabeth produced a small army of pseudo-Messiahs.

   1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 129

   2 more examples

   There is evidence that he was a Sabbatean, a follower of the seventeenth-century Jewish pseudomessiah, Shabbatai Zevi.

   1990, Bryon L Sherwin, In Partnership with God, page 240

   Ferrar did not rule as a tyrant, nor was he the pseudomessiah of a cult.

   2013, Frank N. Magill, editor, The 17th and 18th Centuries: Dictionary of World Biography, page 463