About Richard Bennett: When I first started my blogs and they settled into categories I felt God wanted me to discuss here, I kept getting divine hints as it were that one of the topics I was to cover was the identity of the Antichrist. I already understood that the Pope had all the qualifications for the role, I'd quit a charismatic organization because they treated the Pope as a brother in Christ, and the derivation of the number 666 from the Roman numberals in one of his titles in Latin had wowed me since my nephew called me up to tell me about it.
But I wasn't expeting to delve into the subject beyond what I already believed. The divine hints, however, led me to listen to teachings on the subject at Sermon Audio and that's whre I found Richard Bennett. Bennett is probably the most scholarly teacher on the subject in our time. Later I got a lot of information from Chris Pinto as well, butI think it is Bennett I would most want evangelicals to study. He died at age 81 two years ago but his website is still up: Berean Beacon.con. some of his talks are on You Tube as well as Sermon Audio.
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Many Christians naively believe that the Pope can't be the Anticvhrist becaus4e he doesn't fulfill the definition given by the apostle John that the Antichrist denies the Father and the Son, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh: 1 John 2:22 and 1 John 4:3
If a Pope assembles together some words that seem to affirm that Christ has come in the flesh this is accepted as sufficient evidence that he can't be the Antichrist. The many blasphemous statements made by Popes that put Mary in the place of Christ and the Pope himself in the place of the Father, also in the place of Christ and the place of the Holy Spirit, are ignored while an empty affirmation is accepted. Since apparently there are many who are deceived along these lines I want to post here the reasoning of an ex Catholic priest, Richard Bennett, who shows the many ways the Popes deny the Father and the Son:
He talks for over an hour about how the Popes are Antichrst but right at the bginning he makes it clear that simply by usurping the titles of the Father and the Son they deny Christ.
Bennett names many who regarded the Pope as Antichrist down through the centuries. He stronly laments our current popular eschatology that puts the Antichrist into the future, ignoring all the historical fulfillments of Antichrist in the papacy.
Instead of 606 AM by the emperor Phocas he holds that it was Justiniah who made the Bishop of Rome universal Bishop and Pope in 538 AD. I've heard this also and I don't know which date is most pertinent. In any case it's clear that the papacy does not go back to the apostles.
He says around 20 that Justinian established a law that gave civil power to the Bishop of Rome and that this power is now law for the European Union as well, which of course we don't hear about from other sources.
The temple of God the Pop0 sits in is identified as the people of God according to Paul's identification of believers as that temple, and then he goes on to quote canon law on the powers of the Pope that clearly "exalt him above everything that is called God.
So. If we are to understand that the Antichirst has already been revealed and that he has been operating in the world for some 1500 years, does that mean we should completely scrap the popular eschatology that puts all this into the future?
At this point I don't think so but it's posible I'll change my mind. I think both can be true and this is the position I've held, that the Antichrist has been revealed as the Pope, all the Popes, but that there will yet be a last Pope who will be THE Antichrist at the end, after the true Church has been raptured and the Roman Church resumes its former political power on a global scale headed by the Antihrist Pope of that time,which will see the reinstatement of the Inquisition against all nonCatholics.
I have other problems with the Premillennial eschatology I hope will be resolved,but I don't see how I could give up the basic eschatology of the seven years Tribulation or Day of the LORD since it so perfectly dovetails with the prophecies in the book of Daniel. If I live long enough maybe I'll have answers to my questions eventually.
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PS I was thinking of making a separate post on this subject but it's really just a postscript so I'll include it here.
This is a talk by Dennis Prager about the evils of Lefiism and he covers many aspectsw of it but at one point he brings up Pope Francis, identifying him as a Leftist, which he is. He says this is because he comes from Latin America, which has some truth to it but the truth is deeper than that. In fact you could say that Latin America is Leftist because of the Popes, or because of the Roman Church. Francis is a Jesuit and it was a Jesuit who invented the idea of Social Justice. Marx had Jesuit connections as did many Communist and Fascist dictators. It's one of their inventions for the purpose of destroying their hated enemy the Protestant West. You could say that Catholic Latin America is the model for what they want to do to the United States.
What Prager said was that people from Latin America do not share our American values. If they did, he said, they would be rich because they have all the natural resources we have. So they are coming here and bringing their povery-making value system here, which is app0arently what our current Leftist politicians desire for our future. And they are helped by the Catholic Church, surprise surprise.
His remark about their values keeping them from being rich, by which he meant their Leftism of course, reminded me of observations I ran across wh4en I was listing books on my catholicisim blog. I don't know the analyses behind it but more than one writer mentioned that Catholic countries produce poverty and dysfunctional societies. Leftist is certainly one expression of that but apparently it is Catholicism itself that creates such misery. Yep, that's where we're headed under our current administration with the eager help of the Roman Church and myriads of Jesuits whspering in the ears of American leaders, teaching in the universities and so on and so forth.
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