The Dilemma of the Antichrist

By Colin and Russell Standish

The powerful impact that the Reformers made in identifying the Roman Catholic Church as the antichrist can scarcely be imagined today. As millions of Christians joined the Reform movement, the Roman Church attempted to use methodology that had proven successful for more than a thousand years, in order to eliminate those whom it designated heretics. With the exception of isolated communities of faithful Christians (often hidden in the natural fortresses of the earth), the Roman Church had been remarkably successful in its persecution. This success had been achieved by the strong arm of the state, which ruthlessly eliminated millions of those who would not bow to the her authority. Historians have not agreed upon the number of people who were tortured and martyred for their efforts to uphold pure Bible truth, but estimates range from fifty to one-hundred and twenty million. These men, women and children lost their lives during the period of papal domination. Almost all of this mayhem was done at the hand of secular governments which carried out the desires of the Papacy.

   The period of the sixteenth century proved different. Sickened by the excesses and corruptions of the Papacy, many monarchs and rulers embraced the Protestant proclamation and were no longer vassals of the Papacy, obeying its every command. Thus in a number of European countries the arm of flesh was not available to carry out the Roman Church’s dictates. The situation naturally alarmed the Roman Catholic Church. The Papacy was not accustomed to these circumstances. Therefore it discerned that a new methodology must be devised to counter the rapid spread of the Reformation which was engulfing Europe.

The Reformers View of the Antichrist

   Looking back for understanding of this development, we must go to the fourteenth century. Ecclesiastical turmoil was everywhere. The new pope, Urban VI, returned the seat of the Papacy to Rome after seventy years of exile in Avignon, France. But many of the cardinals rebelled against Urban’s strict discipline. They returned to Avignon and crowned the bishop of Geneva, Robert of Cambray, as Pope Clement VII. Now there were two popes. The year was 1378. For thirty-one years both Rome and Avignon continued to elect popes, each claiming to be the vicar of Christ, each claiming to be the infallible successor of Peter, each claiming that the other was the antichrist. In England a priest who was a powerful preacher, the rector of Lutterworth, John Wycliffe, agreed with both of them on this latter point.

The fiend no longer reigns in one, but in two priests that men may the more easily overcome them both in Christ’s name.

Now is antichrist divided and one pope fights against the other (Emma H. Adams, John Wycliffe, Pacific Press Publishing Association, Oakland, 1890).

   Wycliffe’s stand against papal taxation would have led him to the stake if it were not for the powerful friendship of English peers and even the royal court.

   However two great Bohemian Reformers, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, were burned at the stake four decades later for their stand against the Papacy. They had been greatly influenced by Wycliffe. Identification of the Papacy as the antichrist became the constant theme of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther believed that the Papacy, not an individual pope, is the antichrist. This sentiment was shared by Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, and other Reformers. The following are comments of just a few of the Reformers; the consensus of their views is striking:

(1) Martin Luther:

There sits the man, of whom the apostle wrote (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4), that will oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God. That man of sin to be revealed, the son of perdition . . . He suppresses the law of God and exalts his commandments above the commandments of God (LeRoy Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2, 281).

We here are of the conviction that the Papacy is the seat of the true and real antichrist (Froom, 256).

(2) John Calvin:

I deny him to be the vicar of Christ. . . . He is the antichrist—I deny him to be the head of the Church (John Calvin Tracts, vol. 1, 219–20).

(3) John Knox:

That tyranny which the pope himself has for so many ages exercised over the church, the very antichrist and son of perdition, of whom Paul speaks (The Zurich Letters, 199).

(4) Philip Melanchthon:

It is most manifest, and true without any doubt, that the Roman pontiff, with his whole order and kingdom, is very antichrist. . . . Likewise, in 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul clearly says that the man of sin will reign in the church by showing himself above the worship of God (Froom, vol. 2, 296–99).

(5) Sir Isaac Newton:

But it [the Papacy] was a kingdom of a different kind than the other kingdoms (referred to in Daniel 7:7–8) . . . and such a seer, prophet, and king is the church of Rome [referring to the little horn of Daniel 7] (Sir Isaac Newton, Observations of the Prophecies, 75).

(6) John Wesley:

Romanish papacy, he is, in an emphatical sense, the man of sin (John Wesley, Antichrist and His Ten Kingdoms, 110).

(7) Samuel Lee (a seventeenth-century Rhode Island minister):

It is agreed among all main lines of the English Church that the Roman pontiff is the antichrist (Samuel Lee, The Cutting Off of Antichrist, 1).

   The statement from the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Church of England, which was also adopted by the Presbyterians, is significant.

There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be the head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition that exalteth himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God (The Westminster Confession of Faith, Section 6, Chapter 24).

   The Helvetic Convention of Switzerland mentions the Papacy as the predicted antichrist. The Lutheran statement contained in the Smalkald Articles refers to the pope as the very antichrist who exalts himself and opposes Christ. The 1680 New England Confession of Faith states that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and not the pope of Rome, who is identified as the antichrist and the son of perdition.

   The identification of the Papacy as the antichrist was the focal point of the Reformation.

   These ideas became the dynamic force which drove Luther [and the other Reformers] on in his contest with the Papacy (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1962 edition, Vol. 2, 61).

   After the initial thrust of the Reformation, the identification of the Papacy as the antichrist became less common. However, it was still strong among Protestants of almost all denominations until about the end of the nineteenth century. Today, in the environment created by the Ecumenical movement, it has certainly become most unpopular to identify the Papacy as the antichrist. Some Evangelical Christians prefer to ignore the issue, believing it to be of little importance in today’s modern society.

Biblical View of the Antichrist

   The concept of the antichrist goes back in history to the time of the sixth century b.c. when Daniel prophesied about the apostate power that he called the “little horn” (Daniel 7:8–11, 24–26, 8:9–12, 23–25). Jews living in the period before the birth of Christ often referred to the coming of the anti-Messiah. Some of the Maccabees, a powerful Jewish sect of the inter-Testamental period, were convinced that the little horn (the anti-Messiah) was fulfilled when a Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, desecrated the temple in Jerusalem during the second century b.c., necessitating the rededication of the sanctuary. Some Christians thought the emperor Nero (died a.d. 68), who ruthlessly slaughtered many of the Christians in Rome, might have been the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. But the apostle John clarified the matter when he indicated that neither Antiochus Epiphanes nor Nero could fulfill the specification of the antichrist. Writing about the end of the first century after Christ, John identified the antichrist, not as one person, but as many people, some of whom were present in his day.

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time (1 John 2:18).

   It surprises many people to learn that the antichrist is mentioned by name only four times in the Bible, and then only by the apostle John (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3, 2 John 7). But it has not dampened the enthusiasm of Christians who know that the antichrist is the most crucial enemy of truth, salvation, the cross and of Christ Himself. There has been no shortage of effort to provide a contemporary identification of the antichrist. During the dreadful years of the second World War, some identified Adolph Hitler as the antichrist. Others have identified the great Muslim power, and more recently, atheistic communism, as antichrist. While the term antichrist is sparingly used in the Scriptures, the apostate power is widely described in the Bible. Paul uses the terms, “the man of sin,” and “the son of perdition.” He pinpoints the appearance of antichrist as occurring prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

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; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4).

   In Revelation, John uses different symbols to identify the antichrist, including the beast, Babylon and the impure woman.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority (Revelation 13:2).

And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath (Revelation 16:19).

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (Revelation. 17:3–5).

   As stated earlier, the Old-Testament prophet Daniel described the antichrist power with the symbol of the little horn.

And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time (Daniel 7:25).

   The centuries-old question remains: Who or what is the antichrist? Is it one individual, or is it a succession of individuals, a nation or a power? Has the antichrist come? Is he here now or will he appear in the future? Many within Evangelical Protestantism look for a satanic individual who appears just prior to the end of the world who will sit in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem blaspheming and desecrating it and ruthlessly persecuting. But such a description defies the whole Evangelical understanding of the Reformation. In his book, The Church of Rome, The Apostasy, Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841, William Cuninghame specifically identified the Papacy as the man of sin and the antichrist. He pointed to the Roman Catholic Church as guilty of idolatry, Mary reverence, image worship and Satan worship (p. 105). He also pointed out numerous instances of blasphemy by the Church (pp. 199, 120). He identified the call to come out of Babylon (Revelation 18:4–5) as a call out of the Roman Catholic Church (pp. 155–160).

   In 1846, in his book, Christ and Antichrist, the former pastor of the Norfolk, Virginia Presbyterian Church, Samuel J. Cassels, presented one of the most comprehensive reviews that identified the Papacy as the antichrist. This book was thoroughly endorsed by the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist and Baptist leaders of the day. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, identification of the Papacy as the antichrist had been undermined.

  In his book, Christianity and Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict, Samuel Andrews identified the beast that is described in Revelation 13 as a cruel and oppressing secular state. He did not identify it as the Papacy, as Protestants prior to the twentieth century had consistently identified it. By the earlier part of the twentieth century, the futuristic interpretation of prophecy had received almost universal acceptance among Protestants; yet there were still a few Protestants who correctly identified the Papacy as the antichrist. Fred J. Peters in his work, The Present Antichrist (1920), was one of these. He cited the Waldensians, Huss, Jerome, Luther, Calvin, Sir Isaac Newton, Latimer, Bunyan, Moody and Spurgeon as dedicated Christians who were agreed that the man of sin is the antichrist pope. Peters correctly identified the seventy-week prophecy of Daniel 9 as the 490 years left to the Jews to be God’s chosen people, a period of time which ended in a.d. 34.

An Unholy Alliance

It is because of the failure to identify the Papacy as the antichrist of biblical prophecy, that conservative Protestants have dared to join hands with conservative Catholics in an alliance that would have filled the Reformers with the utmost grief.

In what’s being called a historic declaration, evangelicals including Pat Robertson and Charles Colson joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders Tuesday in upholding the ties of faith that bind the nation’s largest and most politically active religious groups.

They urged Catholics and evangelicals to increase their efforts against abortion and pornography and to lobby for value-laden education, but to no longer hold each other at theological arm’s length and to stop aggressive proselytization of each other’s flocks.

Addressing a major source of tension between Catholics and evangelicals in the United States, Eastern Europe and South America, the declaration says “it is neither theologically legitimate nor a prudent use of resources” to proselytize among active members of another Christian community (The San Bernadino Sun, March 30, 1994, p. A2).

   The Roman Catholic Church was determined to dispel the indisputable scriptural evidence that identified the Papacy as the antichrist power. They claim that the antichrist is an individual who will appear only at the end of time and will cause havoc in the Christian Church for a literal period of three-and-a-half years.

Futurism Adopted by Protestantism

   Today this Jesuit-devised futurist view predominates in mainstream Protestantism. In his book, His Apocalypse (1942), John Quincy Adams presents the futurist’s concept of the satanic power that will appear at the end of time. This false concept was also supported by F. M. Messenger in his book, The Coming Superman (1928). More recently the futurist view was supported by Herman Hoyt in his book, The End Time, Moody Press (1969). Yet John’s description of the antichrist excluded the possibility that it be one individual.

   It has taken time, but the Jesuits have done an effective work. In the Council of Trent (1545–1563), one of the great burdens of the Roman Catholic bishops was to destroy the influence of the Protestant identification of the Papacy as the antichrist. Eventually the task was given to the newly-formed elite intelligentsia, the Jesuits. In 1585 Francisco Ribera contrived his futurist interpretation of prophecy. His thesis was that the antichrist is a future personage who at the end of time will challenge the power of Christ, and with great persecution suppress God’s people.

   The early part of the nineteenth century saw the rise of the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Church of England. The Oxford professors S. R. Maitland, James Todd and William Burgh imbibed and taught the futurist concept of Ribera, in order to muffle the alarmed protest of faithful evangelical Anglicans against the suggestions of reunification with Rome. The pioneers of the Protestant Reformation were not simply following a concept of retaliation as they identified the Roman Catholic Church as the great antichrist power of prophecy. They were correctly discerning the inspired words of Holy Scripture. Here are some reasons why the identification of the antichrist is so important to God’s end-time people:

   (1) That we not be deceived by the great efforts to unite the world under the banner of this antichrist power (Revelation 13:8).

   (2) That we take seriously the challenge of Revelation 18:4–5 to call God’s people out of apostasy into the fullness of the truth of God. True Evangelical Protestants do not make this identification out of bigotry or hatred. Instead they do it out of love for lost humanity. An integral part of the proclamation of the gospel commission necessitates that men and women be led to the salvation that will free them from the bondage and deception of sin. Today, as at no other time in history, the identification of the antichrist and the invitation to call men and women out of Babylon must be made.

  (3) Both the second and third angels’ messages of Revelation 14:8–12 focus upon the fall and destruction of this power and all who serve it. Its identification is necessary to warn the world. The delinquency of Evangelical Protestantism over the last decades to correctly identify the antichrist must be reversed, if they are to contribute to the work that is necessary in warning men and women before the return of Jesus. God demands that the warning against the papal antichrist and his work be given. It will take a complete revision of the present presuppositions of Evangelical Protestantism, but it will bring them back into line with the original evangelical identifications made by Luther and others of the sixteenth-century Reformers.