I listen to the premillennialist prophecy people who are expecting the Rapture at any time followed by the Great Tribulation, or Day of the LORD, of seven years before the second coming of Jesus. I'm generally persuaded of this end times point of view, but I do have some problems with it.
As they understand the Antichrist who is to come and reign over the whole earth in the Tribulation period, he is someone who will not be revealed until after the Rapture so he is a mystery to us now. This is how they understand what Paul said about him in 2 thessalonians 2:7-9:
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders
Or according to other translations, he who restrains will restrain until he is taken out of the way. This is interpreted to mean that this wicked one, or the Antichrist, will not be revealed until this one who restrains is taken out of the way, and that one is interpreted to be the Holy Spirit who would not be present after the Church is raptured. So, after the Rapture then the identity of the Antichrist can be known.
The final Antichrist is understood to be the beast that rises out of the sea in Revelation 13,
The beast of Revelation 13 has the features of three of the beasts in the vision described in Daniel 7, a lion, a bear and a leopard. The beast of Revelation 13 has the characteristics of all three. Daneil 7:8 describes the "little horn" that rises up among the ten horns of the fourth beast of his vision:
I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.
The beast of Revelation 13 also "speaks great things:"
(Revelation 13:5) And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months
So we have a potrait of the Antichrist first foreshadowed in the little horn of the fourth beast of Daniel's vision, the fourth beast being understood to be the Roman Empire yet far in the future from Daniel's time, and that portrait shows up in Revelation 13 in slightly different form, one beast with the characteristics of all the beasts in Daniel's vision, and the mouth that speaks great things. The beasts of Daneil's vision clearly represent the succession of kingdoms from Babylon, the lion with eagle's wings, through Medo-Persia, the bear risen up on one side, through Greece under Alexander the Great that splitgs into four under four of his generals, the leopard with four heads. The fourth beast is "great and terrible" with iron teeth, devouring the whole world, and that has to be the Roman Empire which followewd the Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great. The final Antichrist represented by the beast in Revelation 13 represents the final or fourth empire, the Roman empire which dominated the world in the time of Christ and didn't come to its end until 476 AD.
In 606 AD the Bishop of Rome was made Universal Bishop by the Byantine emperer Phocas, displacing three other bishops of the Christian church of the day, and this elevantion prompted Pope Gregory to recognize him as the Antichrist. After that elevation hundreds of others also recognized him as the Antichrist, and finally so did Luther and the other Protestant Reformers. I have a post listing many of those who recognized the Pope as Antichrist even before the Reformation. a list I got from Chris Pinto's ministry. I'll try to find it and post the link.
I wasn't expecting to include so much background information in this post but it seems necessary to be clear about where we get the idea of a coming Antichrist and other parts of the picture that add up to the whole end times scenario anticipated by the premillennialists.
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Luther and the other Protestant Reformers understood Paul in 2 Thessalonians to be speaking of the rise of he rise of the papacy in 606 AD, and the Pope to be the Antichrist. All the Popes, but the very last Pope would be the final Antichrist of Revelation 13. They understood Paul's statement to refer to the fulfillment of the prophet Daniel's prophecy of the "little horn" that would rise up out of the Roman Empire. They also understood the description of the Antichrist as presenting himself in the temple of God as God himself, to be fulfilled in his claim to be the Vicar of Christ who sits among the people of God, who are called the Temple of God in the New Testament. The premillennialists are expecting that to happen during the Tribulation too, a literal sitting in the literal rebuilt physical temple in Jerusalem. I'm not saying that couldn't yet ALSO happen, but the Reformers' interpretation is sufficient without that.
If the Reformers's view is accepted, there is no reason to think of the Antichrist as yet to be revealed after the Rapture. In fact the idea that the Holy Spirit would be the Restrainer who is taken out of the way in order for him to be revealed doesn't really make sense. Both Paul and Jesus used cryptic language to talk about the coming of the Antichrist, suggesting some danger in revealing his identity at that time. If he is the Pope who rose to head a new version of the Roman Empire after the end of the line of Caesars, then it makes sense that it was Caesar who restrained his revelation and had to be taken out of the way first. Which is what the Reformers understood to be the case. There is no reason for his identity to be withheld by the Holy Spirit that I can think of. But if the Antichrist is a Pope he has been revealed over and over by many Protestants already. That knowledge has been suppressed again in the last century unfortunatly, but there was one very interesting event when pastor Ian Paisley stood up in the parliament of the European Union to denounce Pope John Paul as the Antichrist when the Pope was speaking there. Few there are these days who are willing -- or knowledgeable enough -- to take such a stand.
WHAT IS "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT?
This is another piece of the puzzle that premillennialists may have wrong. This is the title on the forehead of the Harlot in Revelation 17. There are all sorts of speculations about what Babylon the Great means, some thinking it even refers to the United States, or maybe New York City. Jan Markell and her recent guest pastor ark Hitchcock, think it refers to the original ancient Babylon as the mother of all the false religions in the world. I think this is true too but I think what they miss is that the Roman Church is today's Babylon the Great, having inherited many of its superstitious religious practices from there. Nimrod was the first Antichrist and the religion that grew up ar4ound him and his mother Semiramis passed into many of the pagan religions of the world, ending up particularly embodied in the Roman Catholic Church. All this is spelled out in Alexander Hislop's book "The Two Babylons." There is every reason to associate the Harlot of the book of Revelation with the Roman Church and her title that also associates her with Babylon connects the two.
REVIVED ROMAN EMPIRE
The premillennialists are also looking to a Revived Roman Empire to fulfill the end time prophecies, which they talk about as a revival of the empire of the Caesars which has been dead since the fifth century.
Just as they overlook the rise of the papacy as fulfillment of the prophecies of the Antichrist, they overlook the fact that the Pope became the religious head of a revived Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, known as the Holy Roman Empire which lasted a thousand years from the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD to the end of Emperor Napoleon in 1806. it wasn't a particularly cohesive organization but cohesive enough to be called an empire in which all its various kingdomes were all headed by Roman Catholic kings. I ran across a quote from Voltaire somewhere who said it wasn't an empire, wasn't Roman and certainly wasn't holy. Nevertheless it had that title and the Roman Chruch insisted on that designation:
From the Wikipedia article on "The Holy Roman Empire" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#Formation_of_the_Holy_Roman_Empire --
The Empire was considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only legal successor of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Since Charlemagne, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire.[23] The term sacrum ("holy", in the sense of "consecrated") in connection with the medieval Roman Empire was used beginning in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa ("Holy Empire"): the term was added to reflect Frederick's ambition to dominate Italy and the Papacy.[24] The form "Holy Roman Empire" is attested from 1254 onward.[25]
In a decree following the Diet of Cologne in 1512, the name was changed to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nat
As scripture says about the Roman Empire of the last days, it is to be "diverse" or different from other empires or kingdoms, which seems to be a reasonable way to describe the Holy Roman Empire. It wasn't exactly an empire and it was presided over by a religious figure, the Pope, and since the Roman Chruch continues even after the death of Napoleon, there is a sense in which the end times Roman Empire continues to exist, and good reason to think the Roman Empire of the Tribulation period will be the resumption of the Holy Roman Empire with the Pope/Antichrist at its head, wielding a powerful Inquisition against all who refuse to submit to it.
It does seem to me that the Pope's credentials for the role of Antichrist are impeccable, but on the other hand there have been Antichrist precursors who were political leaders who had a messianic religious aura about them. Hitler* was one, but there was also Antioches Epiphanes who was a king of the Seleucids that rose out of Alexander the Great's Greece and persecuted the Jews, desecrating their temple. He is also propesied in the vision of Daniel 7. He and Hitler both are Antichrist figures and there are no doubt others but they stand out. The Pope is also a political leader since the Vatican is a sovereign state in its own right, but the current Pope is elderly and hard to fit into the scenario of a political or military leader. Nevertheless, not only is the papacy well identified as the Antichrist in many ways, including the number 666 which his title as Vicar of Christ in Latin adds up to (
Vicarivs Filii Dei) and this current Pope took office amid some very interesting signs that seem to give him a special status among the Popes. I have a post on it I'll link if I can find it.
For the most part I accept the premillennial eschatology, the Rapture coming first followed by the seven year Tribulation period followedc by Jesus' second coming, then the Millennium, before the final Eternal state. So far I haven't found a reason to challenge that basic scenario. But I do continue to disagree with their view of the Antichrist and the Revived Roman Empire. It hink one of the big errors of today's Protestant churches is that they aren't Protestant any more, and many of them embrace the Roman church as just another denomination, which is the same thing as embracing the Antichrist. Not that there aren't many Catholics who have nothing to do with that, but they too need to wake up and "Come out of her, My people" as the Lord says to them.
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*The title "Third Reich" is a claim to the title of Holy Roman Empire.
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This post could have been three times as long but I can't go that long in one sitting these days and I hate leaving a long post unfinished for later because that usually means I'll never get it finished. I wanted to get into more about the Third Reich, and I wanted to get into the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel 2 which is also about the four empires starting with Babylon. Also more on Hislop's study of the Two Babylons, and a section on the European Uniobn which is the latest attempt to revive the Roman Empire and probably the one that will be in place during the Tribulation. Guess I can only do what i can do.
