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Can We
Identify
The Antichrist?
The Man of Sin Revealed
Chapter 5
Since it is necessary that the
“Lawless One will be
revealed” before the Lord returns, has this prophecy (2
Thessalonians 2:8) been fulfilled? The answer is yes. The Man of
Sin was understood and
“revealed” in the writings of the
sixteenth century Reformation. The historic Protestant
identification of Antichrist is not a matter of superficial
arguments against a common adversary—the Papacy. The Reformers
comprehended root causes and serious consequences of sin in man
and his institution. The Romish Church is the religious
personification of fallen human nature.
The noted historian D’Aubigne observed,
“We cannot
reproach Rome with anything which does not recoil upon man
himself.”[21] For good reason, the Apostle Paul
calls Antichrist the Man of Sin. The Little Horn (Daniel 7:8) had
“eyes like the eyes of man.” The leopard-like beast
which all agree is the same power as the Little Horn—is said to
have
“the number of a man” (Revelation 13:18). The Papal
system was developed by man—not God. But many were very good
men. They might even have worked with great energy and self
sacrifice to build up the Church of God on earth. But they
gradually shaped the development of the church according to
“the eyes of man”— man’s carnal wisdom and
understanding. More and more the Church of Rome bore the image and
superscription of
“Man” until it sat in the temple of
God acting as if it were God. The Papacy was the embodiment of the
singular sin of all ages—man taking the place of God.
“They
glorified him not as God…but became vain in their
imaginations” (Romans 1:21).
Lest we become haughty in identifying the Man of Sin, we must
realize the Antichrist succumbed to the same struggle that every
individual leader in the Church of God faces to this day. The
temptation was and still is to dominate and rule.
The Reformation
Although many pre-Reformation writers perceived Papacy as the
Man of Sin, the leaders of the sixteenth century Reformation wove
this identification into a larger prophetic mosaic. That Martin
Luther, the father of the Reformation, recognized the Papacy as
the Man of Sin is obvious,
“We are convinced that the Papacy
is the seat of the true and real Antichrist.”[22]
The Protestant Church of the Reformation saw Papacy as more
than the apostate church. Prophecy became the rallying point of
the Reformation. Protestants identified the Papacy as the
prophetic Antichrist of Daniel and Revelation. They acted on that
belief and many died for that conviction:[23]
From the first, and throughout, that movement [the
Reformation] was energized and guided by the prophetic Word.
Luther never felt strong and free to war against the papal
apostasy til he recognized the pope as antichrist. It was then
he burned the papal Bull. Knox’s first sermon, the sermon
which launched him on his mission as a Reformer, was on the
prophecies concerning the papacy…All the Reformers were
unanimous in the matter…It nerved them to resist the claims of
that apostate church to the uttermost. It made them martyrs, it
sustained them at the stake. And the views of the Reformers were
shared by thousands, by hundreds of thousands.
Not only did the Reformers proclaim the mighty truth of
justification by faith for the liberation of men’s souls, but
they nerved thousands to break from the tyranny of the dark ages
of the Papacy by explicitly identifying the Antichrist of Bible
prophecy. The symbols of Daniel, Paul and John were applied with
tremendous effect. The realization that the incriminating finger
of prophecy rested squarely on Rome aroused the consciousness of
Europe. In alarm, Rome saw that she must successfully counteract
this identification of Antichrist as the Papacy—or lose the
battle.
The Counter Reformation
Jesuit scholarship rallied to the Roman cause by providing
alternatives to the historical interpretation of the Protestants:
“Futurism”—Antichrist, a Man in
the Future
The most successful tack was taken by Francisco Ribera
(1537-1591) of Salamanca, Spain. He was the founder of the
Futurist system of prophetic interpretation. Ribera argued that
Antichrist would appear in the distant future. About 1590 Ribera
published a 500-page commentary on the apocalypse denying the
Protestant application of Antichrist to the Church of Rome. The
following is a synopsis:
While the first few chapters in the Revelation were assigned
to ancient Rome in the time of John, the greater part of the
prophecies of the Revelation were assigned to the distant future—to
events immediately preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Antichrist would be a single evil person who would be
received by the Jews and would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
Antichrist would rule the world from this temple in Jerusalem
for a literal three and a half years.
Doesn’t this 1590 presentation sound like a page right out of
Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth—or some other current
evangelical’s writings on the Antichrist and the 7-year
tribulation?
Joseph Tanner in 1898 made these observations on the origin of
Futurism:[24]
The Jesuit Ribera tried to set aside the application of these
prophecies to the papal power by bringing out the Futurist
system, which asserts that these prophecies refer properly not
to the career of the papacy, but to that of some future
supernatural individual, who is yet to appear, and to continue
in power for three and a half years. Thus, as Alford says,
the
Jesuit Ribera, about A.D. 1580, may be regarded as the Founder
of the Futurist system in modern times.
Ribera’s futurism was polished and popularized by the great
Papal controversialist, Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) of Italy.
He took up the battle against Protestantism and became the
foremost apologist for Rome in the Counter Reformation. Bellarmine
insisted that the prophecies concerning Antichrist in Daniel, Paul
and John had no application to the Papal power. Between 1581 and
1593 he published the most detailed defense of the Catholic faith
ever produced. The following quotation summarizes:[25]
For all Catholics think thus, that Antichrist will be one
certain man; but all heretics teach…that Antichrist is
expressly declared to be not a single person, but an individual
throne or absolute kingdom, and apostate seat of those who rule
over the church.
For 300 Years Protestants
“Revealed” Antichrist
The Reformation Cry identifying Papacy as the Antichrist
predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 nerved countless thousands to
leave the Roman Catholic Church. The concept fabricated by
Catholic Jesuits that an individual Antichrist seated in a literal
temple in Jerusalem would reign for 3 ½ years had little
effect. So clearly was Papacy
“revealed” as the Man
of Sin that Protestants stood united for nearly 300 years in
declaring this fact. Dr. L. E. Froom, the accepted authority on
prophetic exposition in the Christian Church, noted that in the
nineteenth century, three centuries after the Reformers first
revealed Papacy as the Antichrist, all the leading prophetic
expositors (62 European and 57 American) were
“a unit in
identifying the Antichrist as the Papacy.”[26]
Wake Up, Protestants!
Two hundred and forty years after the Jesuit Ribera founded the
Futurist school (individual man of Sin who will reign in a literal
temple for 3 ½ years), John Darby, embraced Ribera’s Futurist
concepts.
Darby, a founder of the Plymouth Brethren, embellished the idea
of a future Antichrist with a Pre-tribulation-Secret-Rapture
concept. S. P. Tregelles, whose scholarly works are still highly
esteemed among evangelicals, was an associate of Darby in the
Plymouth Brethren. Tregelles identified the origin of the Secret
Rapture idea:[27]
I am not aware that there was any definite teaching that
there should be a Secret Rapture of the Church at a secret
coming until this was given forth as an
“utterance” in
Mr. Irving’s church from what was then received as being the voice
of the Spirit. But whether anyone ever asserted such a thing
or not it was from that supposed revelation that the
modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose…it
came not from Holy Scriptures, but from that which falsely
pretended to be the Spirit of God.
The Pre-tribulationist-Secret-Rapture-Antichrist-Superman
concept is not scriptural. Furthermore, this concept traces back
to a Protestant, John Darby. He ironically utilized the
Catholic idea of a one-person Antichrist to counter the historic
Protestant belief of Papacy as Antichrist, which had stood for
300 years. However, Darby’s Catholic view did not
become popular among born-again Christians until after World War
II.
Although a vociferous minority currently has yielded the
300-year-old historic Protestant view of Antichrist in favor of a
Catholic view, the Antichrist was still unmistakably identified.
That the Papacy is Antichrist was the rallying cry of the
Reformation! There can be no doubt that the Man of Sin, The
Antichrist, was completely "revealed" to the Christian
Church as a necessary prerequisite to the second advent of Christ
(2 Thessalonians 2:8).
But Antichrist will again take center stage at an
"end-time drama" before it’s complete demise.
[21] J. H. Merle D’Aubigne, History
Of The Reformation Of The Sixteenth Century, Vol. 1 (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 32.
[22] D.
Martin Luther's Works, ed. Briefwechsel (Weimar,
1930-1948), Vol. 2, 167, cited in What
Luther Says, ed. Ewald M. Plass, Vol. 1, 34.
[23] H. Grattan Guinness, Romanism
and the Reformation (Toronto: S. R. Briggs, [n.d.]),
250-260.
[24] Joseph Tanner, Daniel
And The Revelation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1898),
16, 17.
[25] Robert Bellarmine, De
Summo Pontifici, Disputations, 1593, Bk. 3, 185.
[26] Dr. L. E. Froom, The
Prophetic Faith Of Our Fathers, Vol. 4, 396.
[27] S. P. Tregelles, The
Hope Of Christ's Coming, p. 35, cited by George L. Murry, Millennial
Studies-A Search For Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1960), 138.
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