Window on Europe is the title of a broadcast at Sermon Audio by Richard Bennett in 2003:
In the first 25 minutes he talks about his personal experiences traveling in Europe with other evangelicals. From 25 on he talks about the European Union, starting with its new Constitution,, bringing out its Catholic character, which was overtly recognized by the former Pope John, whom he quotes. European Bible believers/ Protestants are worried about how this is shaping up because of course if the RCC ascends to its former power over the Holy Roman Empire of Europe, which it is believed is what is developing rapidly, they will be persecuted as they were throughout the Middle Ages. Already the terms of the new Constitution are clearly totalitarian, far from incorporating the great liberalizations of European history. The Vatican would wield both religious and civil power.
https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=117182031410
In other broadcast, this one in 2009, Papal Rome, The European Union, Antichrist, Prophecy, Jesuits Pope John Paul is said to be preparing to be the Holy Rroman Emperor ruling over Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic. \
Then there is Reformation History, Eschatology, Prophecy, WWII, Facts About the Papacy (Antichrist) by Bennett and a guest speaker.
https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=530111153203
It is not so much about Reformation History as Counterreformation history, meaning the work of the Jesuits in their neverending attempts to undo the Reformation, which include becoming teachers in Protestant colleges and tutors in royal families, where by interpreting everything through a Catholic lens they are able tu undermine the Protestant beliefs of the parents of the children in their charge. The Jesuits have a reputation for being excellent scholars and teachers, so Protestant parents naively send their children to be educated under them, only to find them converting to Catholicism or just having their thinking so changed they no longer share their parents' belief.
From there they go on to how it was the Catholic Oxford Movement in England that promoted the futurist eschatology that removed the idea of the Pope as Antichrist in modern thinking. It is certainly true that most modern eschatology has dropped that Reformation understanding completely, now teaching an Antichrist who is to come who is as yet unknown but is expected to be revealed and to emerge into world prominence during the Tribulation period. This is really a sad development, along with all the other ways the RCC has been getting a pass from evangelicalism in recent years.
Also discussed in this audio sermon is the Vatican's involvement in Catholic nations during WW((, with Mussolini and Hitler and Franco and Salazar and Pavlik(?) in Croatia, supporting the persecutions and murders of nonCatholics. In Croatia 700.000 Serbian Greek Orthodox believers were murdered. So although the Inquisition is no longer in force its practices continue anyway, and if the global political situation continues in the current direction it will no doubt be openly reinstated. It's been renamed, by the way, from The Office of the Inquisition, to The Congregation for the Doctrines of the Faith. (I hope I got that right, my memory is good for about five minutes these days.)
We definitely need a massive return among evangelical churches to the truths of the Reformation and the kowledge that it is the papacy scripture identifies as the Antichrist. Bennett freequently mentions how we need revival in the churches based on a return to fundamental Protestant principles, especially the Protestant Gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
So far I haven't seen a complete eschatological system attempted by Bennett or others who recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. Bennett objects to the futurist interpretation of the Antichrist but doesn't address other elements of futurist eschatology. I don't recall if Chris Pinto does but I don't think so. I think the general idea is that we have to do away with the whole system of thought because the papacy is the Antichrist.
But as I've been arguing, there are certainly strong reasons to view the Book of Revelation in particular as describing future events. The Antichrist most certainly IS to be a Pope, that Antichrist we see in the Book of Revelation, leader of the Harlot Church which is also clearly the Roman Church. This figure will have civil and religious powers, WHICH THE PAPACY HAD THROUGH THE MIDDLE AGES over the Holy Roman Empire. A Pope is the perfect fit. Most of the necessary framework is already in place, and the European Union is shaping up only too well to fit right into the papal ambitions. As I mention above, the Pope would function as Emperor over the revived Holy Roman Empire, pretty much the position he held during the Middle Ages. After the Roman Empire fell and the Caesars were out of the way, then the Bishop of Rome ascended to essentially the position of Emperior. They invented a document called "The Donation of Constantine" to take civil power to the papacy.
In 1798 Napoleon took that civil power away from the Pope, which is understood to fulfill the biblical prophecy of the wound described in Revelation, that was healed, and it was healed in 1929 when Mussolini restored civil power to the papacy. All they need now is for the European Union to fall into line under the Pope's rule and from what Bennett has been saying in these talks I'm linking, that's well underway.
SO the way I am now looking at all this, the Rapture is still future and most likely shown in Revelation 4, and the Tribulation period is also future, a seven-year period of the outpouring of God's wrath known throughout the Old Tstament as the Day of the LORD. Paul reassures the Thessalonian Church that the Day of the LORD had not yet come, which had been rumored among them, and that it can't come until the Man of Sin be revealed, who can't be revealed until an unnamed Restrainer is out of the way. Because of his cautious way of talking about this Restrainer it seems pretty clear he is talking about a temporal power that could punish him and the churches, which makes Caesar the Restrainer since there were no more Caesars when the empire moved to Byzantium. So the Antichrist was revealed centuries before the Reformation, and even more centuries before our time, probably in 606 AD when the Byzantine emperor resxolved a dispute among the four Bishops of the Day by making the Bishop of Rome Universal Bishop.
So Paul says the Day of the LORD won't come until the Man of Sin is revealed. If he was revealed in the 7th century then that Day could have come any time afterward, but clearly it hasn't. It is yet future, it fits Jesus' description of great tribultion that God would have to shorten or nobody would survive it, and it fits the Seventieth Week of Daniel that is also as yet unfulfilled.
It does seem to me that the arguments for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture are pretty solid, the many promises the LORD makes to the Church that we will not go through God's wrath, and the fact that the Church is not mentioned or even hinted at during the Tribulation period when the seals are opened and God's judgments are poured out. Tribulation in the sense of persecution the Church endures, but not the wrath of God. So that part of Pre=Trib eschatology remains intact in my mind
BUT I do have one unresolved question and that is how to think about the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6 when the fifth seal is opened. That is, there were tens of millions of martyrs under the papacy during the 600 years of their persecutions of "heretics," and I find it hard to separate those from some future group of martyrs during the Tribulation. I suppose if I can accept the idea of two different sets of believers anyway, why not two different sets of martyrs? But it nevertheless remains a question, and one that could potentially undo the whole Pre-Trib point of view.
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