By Betsy Mayer
Today, most Bible-believing Christians would be shocked to know that popular beliefs they’ve been taught about the antichrist are based on a clever plan developed over 400 years ago to destroy their churches.
The authors of the plan eventually died, and the blueprint lay unknown for several centuries until a group of men breathed life back into it. Soon it was being used to stealthily dismantle a once-strong fortress.
There isn’t room to tell the story of how the ancient plan took over seminaries until they were nearly all promoting prophetic viewpoints completely at odds with those of their spiritual forefathers—many of whom died defending the very prophetic principles their spiritual children were discarding.
But to adequately understand this startling story, we must briefly explore some forgotten church history.
In the early 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church encountered a doctrinal crisis which threatened its control over Western and Central Europe—a region also known as the Holy Roman Empire and Christendom. The issue was the rediscovery of the authority of the Bible and salvation through faith in Jesus, not through a church.
These may not seem like radical viewpoints today, but to 16th-century Christians, they were revolutionary! The Catholic Church had claimed for centuries that she alone held the keys to heaven. She regularly used the threat of eternal damnation through excommunication and interdiction to keep rulers and their citizens submissive to her political ambitions.
The Reformation first discovered Jesus Christ, and then, in the blazing light of Christ, it discovered the antichrist.
The Church had also asserted that popes were infallible, and church councils were above the Bible. Teaching or even believing something different than the pope or the Church was heresy, and heretics could be executed as enemies of the state and eternally damned without expiation.
For a thousand years these religious influences had controlled the people and nations of Europe. But by the 16th century, a growing “protest” against these abuses climaxed in the Protestant Reformation. The Bible was placed in its rightful position above church authority and in its pages a Savior and His all-sufficient sacrifice for sin was revealed. This good news was proclaimed from pulpits and published in tracts spread far and wide, overturning centuries of pilgrimages, penance, and payment to obtain forgiveness of sin.
But the good news of the gospel spelled bad news for the papacy and its political hold on Europe. Protestant reformers noted that if sinners could seek forgiveness directly from God through Jesus, the one Mediator approved by heaven, Rome’s whole system of priests and saints was a fraud.
More troubling was the challenge of church finance. Cathedrals, convents, and monasteries, along with the decadent lives of cardinals and bishops, had all been funded by souls eager to buy forgiveness through the Church. If the true gospel was allowed to flourish, what would happen to church revenues?
But far worse was the discovery by Protestants of prophecies identifying the papacy as Daniel’s “little horn” who made war with the saints, Paul’s “man of sin,” and “son of perdition,” as well as John’s “antichrist” and persecuting “ten-horned beast.”1 These had exposed the papacy as the enemy of Christ and His followers and had strengthened the Protestant cause, inspiring believers to remain steadfast despite threats of excommunication and martyrdom. Unless some way could be found to get the prophetic finger of “antichrist” off the Catholic Church and the pope, Catholics feared their cause was bleak.
As whole nations and regions began abandoning the Church, the papacy acted decisively. Bibles and Protestant books were seized and burned. Borders were closed. Inquisitors set forth to root out heretics in every land still under the papacy’s control. The rack, the stake, and the dungeon were employed to punish heretics. Nations who had accepted the “faith once delivered to the saints” were now defending their newfound liberties with the sword.
Jesus warned that deception about the end times would be so subtle that even the very elect could be deceived.
But the more intensely the papacy persecuted, the more it matched Daniel’s description of “the little horn power,” who “made war with the saints, and prevailed against them….” Dan. 7:21. What was needed was a new method of prophetic interpretation that could produce a plausible “persecuting antichrist” to take the focus off the papacy. This became a primary goal of the Catholic Counter-reformation, a hardline movement initiated by Pope Paul III during the Council of Trent (1545‒1563) to regain ground lost to the Protestant Reformation and curb the decadence of the Catholic clergy.
The newly formed Society of Jesus (1540), having sworn unreserved allegiance to the pope in this all-out war with Protestantism, was especially keen to discredit the charge of “antichrist.” Jesuit scholars set to work, and within 50 years they added two new methods of prophetic interpretation to the church’s arsenal: futurism and preterism. Each method cleverly removed both the papacy and the troublesome record of the Church’s treatment of heretics.
Here’s how each of the three prophetic contenders view antichrist:
Historicism is the oldest continually used method of Christian prophetic interpretation. Jesus and the Apostles used it to show the fulfillment of Daniel 9:24-27. It views the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation and the struggle between good and evil as an uninterrupted chain of world events down to the Second Coming and beyond.
When historicists come acrossprophetic symbols, they look for symbolic rather than literal fulfillment, including the symbolic fulfillment of time prophecies. Prophecies about Israel and its future are understood to be conditional, dependent on Israel’s obedience.
Since the 10th-century, historicists have viewed antichrist as a system (the papacy), not a single historical individual. 10th-century Bishop Arnulf of Orleans was the first to apply Paul’s “man of sin” to the papacy; so also did Joachim of Floris in 1190 and Eberhard II, Archbishop of Salzburg, in 1240. The view that the papacy was the antichrist was shared by the Waldenses, Wycliffe (1330‒1384), Hus (1370‒1415), and finally all the principal 16th-century Protestant Reformers—Luther, Calvin, Knox, the English Puritans, Early American Reformer Roger Williams, the Wesleys of the 18th century, and many prominent Protestants into the early 20th century, including the great 19th-century English preacher, Spurgeon.
“It has been said that the Reformation first discovered Jesus Christ, and then, in the blazing light of Christ, it discovered the antichrist. This mighty, Spirit-filled movement for Christ and against the antichrist shook the world!”2
Futurism views the majority of Revelation’s prophecies as awaiting fulfillment shortly before the Second Coming. The Spanish Jesuit scholar Francisco Ribera (1590) developed futurism to advance the Catholic Counter-reformation. He taught that a renegade Jew would become the end-time antichrist and would rule from a rebuilt temple at Jerusalem complete with the revival of the Levitical laws and sacrifices. Persecution of the church would start three and a half years into his reign.
Cardinal Bellarmine, a popular and charismatic presenter, and also a Jesuit, enlarged on Ribera’s views and convinced many fellow Catholics to accept futurism. It became the widely accepted view by Catholics for several centuries and helped to retain the church’s influence in battleground regions.
For 300 years, Protestants viewed futurism as a Catholic ploy to discredit the Reformation. But in the 19th century, Anglicans seeking reconciliation with English Catholics discovered Ribera’s and Bellarmine’s writings and began promoting them to ease the tension over the subject of “antichrist.” Their tracts caught the attention of John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren, a prolific writer who saw in futurism a way to package his dispensationalism. Darby influenced many Protestants to accept and promote dispensational futurism, including Cyrus Scofield, an American whose annotated reference Bible included Darby’s views and sold in the millions.
Despite the clear historicist faith of their Protestant Fathers, Evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic as well as their seminaries and Bible colleges, gradually adopted dispensational futurism.
Because a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem is essential to their prophetic timeclock, futurists view the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as a sign that antichrist’s arrival and Christ’s return could be imminent, This is one reason why groups like Christians United for Israel actively seek to influence US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Preterism views Revelation’s prophecies as largely fulfilled in the 1st century ad, more specifically, in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ad. Preterism was developed by Spanish Jesuit theologian Louis del Alcazar (1614). He revived Flavius Josephus’ view that Daniel’s persecuting little horn was Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek king who controlled Palestine several centuries before Christ.
Preterist views on the beast of Revelation range from the Roman Emperor Nero to the Emperor Vespasian or his son Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem. Some preterists believe that “antichrists” have existed throughout history and that Christ’s second coming is a spiritual coming to every soul.
Bible scholars who use higher critical methods favor preterism because they don’t accept the supernatural aspect of predictive prophecy. Instead, they believe that the “prophets” merely described the world in which they lived, not anything in the future. Preterism is also the favored method of Protestants seeking ecumenical agreements. Catholic scholars now largely accept Preterism. So do most Bible scholars from mainline Protestant denominations.
Jesus warned that deception about His return would be rampant. It would also be so powerful that even the very elect could be deceived.3
Because preterists believe that antichrist has already come and gone, sadly, they feel no need to apply Christ’s warning to their day.
Futurists believe that antichrist is an eminent, yet-to-be-identified, single individual who will take over a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, enforce the mark of the beast, and plunge the world into Armageddon. But before all this, the faithful will be raptured. Nonetheless, many left behind will be converted before the end of all things, including many Jews. Most Evangelicals believe some version of this viewpoint. Popular books and movies such as the Left Behind series resonate with these themes.
But what if the antichrist is already here? What if these prophetic deceptions are deceptions to hide him from view and cause millions to receive his mark?
Historicists still believe that the papacy is the best fit for the Bible’s description of the antichrist.
They point to the precise fulfillment of the 1260 day/year time prophecy in 1798, when the papacy received its temporary deadly wound, as even more proof of historicism’s accuracy.4 They believe a 400-year smokescreen of preterist and futurist false prophecy has been hiding the papacy’s stunning return to world influence and paving the way for antichrist to receive the world’s adoration.
Those who receive antichrist’s mark are described as being deceived.5 But if you want to avoid deception, and sincerely desire to know the truth, you have the certainty of Jesus’ promise to send “the Spirit of truth,” to “guide you into all truth,” and to “shew you things to come.”6
Betsy Mayer is the managing editor of Last Generation magazine.