Sometimes I am forced to wonder how I can hold on so tenaceiously to the idea that the Antichrist is the Pope in the face of all the sincere confident opinion that he is only going to be revealed at the very end just before he takes the rieins of world rulnership for the last part of the great tribuiotn . They stronly believe this, and I just heard a little montage of a number of them sayig so, those who subscribe to the pretribulation eschatology that is the most popular eschatology tin the Church these days. Well, it's hared to be at odds with so many strong leaders of the Church, but I just don't have any other reason to wavewr. I got convinced through my own researches when I started this blog back in oh seven or so, by Richard Bennett for starters, but also by the calculation of the number six six six that I had already known about for a number of years efore that. Later Chris Pinto became a source as well. But I think maybe the number is what is the strongest of my foundations.
It's just oo perfect a calculation for that number to be wrong. There is nop way anyone will come up with anything more convicingh for that number. It's embedded in a gtitle of the Pope that in itself just about defines the Antichrist, meaning Subsitutute for the Son of God in Latin, vicariuvs filii dei, a Latin name of rhte Pope from which the number is calculationed in Roman Nnumberals. And the Roman connection is quite clear in the Book of Revelation, in Chapter seventeen, as well as the first beast of chapter thirteen. Rome Rome Rome. All the things they try to put together to add up to this Roman identity just don't fit like this one does, they are all quite tenuous by comparison. o no, I'm not giving this up. I just have to go on cringeing when others carry on abou this other version of the concept that I have to regard as simply false. And probably concocted by the Roman Church too, as critics of the futiurist eschatology used to say. Nobody has much to say about or against the roman Church these days, and that in itself is a clue I think, paving the way to his taking the role by surprise in the end.
There are definitely two different descriptions of the coming of CHrist, the second coming that ios, in Matthew twenty four, where Jesus is answering His deisciples' questions about how to recognize the End and His return. Two different descriptions is what makes the Rapture idea compelling to me, aas nothing else does. He will come twisde, once to get His Church and snatch us away to Heaven some time before the Great tribulation plays out on earth during which the Antichrist will reign and those who becomine believers will have to do it the hard way, the hardest way, maybe even harder than the believers did under the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. Then at the very end He will return in fulll glory and visible to all on Earth.
