Just heard a well=known pastor describe the Antichrist as understood in the popular current eschatological system, by which he is an unknown personality who will appear in the future, remaining unknown until revealed just as he rises to power.
How we need the truth about the Antichrist, known by the Protestant Reformers as well as many other Christians down the centuries as the Pope, to be reinstated in the thinking of the Church.
But this pastor did remind me that part of the prophecy, which we get from the Book of Daniel, is that Antichrist rises up as a "little horn" from among the nations of the Roman Empire, displacing three of them at the very beginning of his career. I think it was Richard Bennett in one of his Sermon Audio talks that I heard recently, who explained that the decree of Phocas that made the Bishop of Rome Universal Bishop over the whole Church, was done as the resolution of a conflict between four Bishops of the time: Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem. So the Bishop of Rome did literally defeat or displace three other Bishops in order to gain the seat of power over all of them.
Not nations but seats of power within the Church which was about to replace the Roman Empire itself, eventually acquiringd most of its characteristics including both religious and civil power over nations. It acquired the vestments, the title "Pontifex Maximus," many of the rituals and superstitions of the Roman pagan religions including the rosary, evemtually also elevating "Mary" above Christ, like the Mother Goddess of the pagan religions back to Semiramus; and then by stages and the forgery "The Donation of Constantine" acquired its civil power as well.
If the displacement of three Bishops is the correct understanding of the prophecy, someone will have written about it somewhere, maybe even one of the Reformers, but at the moment it just seems to me to be a reasonable guess.
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