And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority, Revelation 13: 1 and 2.
THE Puritans in their preaching and teaching clearly identified the Antichrist in the Scriptures as the Papacy. Thomas Manton stated that the “doctrine of Antichrist is a profitable doctrine, and a point very necessary to be preached and known”. In eighteen sermons he expounds the revelation of this great apostasy under names and titles such as “man of sin” and “son of perdition”, and shows that he is not a single person but rather a succession of men. The Antichrist, he says, is opposed to Christ, mainly in respect of pride; exalts himself above all mankind and above all that is “reverenced”; usurps divine honours; and grew to a monstrous height in the Roman Pontiff, Boniface III. “This spiritual usurped power… grew to its monstrous excess and height by degrees, as to ecclesiastical dominion, in Boniface III, who obtained from Phocas the title of universal bishop.”
So alarmed were the Jesuits by the Reformers having accurately and scripturally described the antichristian beast that they put the Counter-Reformation machine into high gear to deflect attention from the Papacy. The duty of producing a different interpretation of Scripture for dissemination in the Protestant camp fell to two able Jesuit scholars, Luis de Alcazar (1554-1613) and Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), both Spaniards. They took careful note that the Reformers based their views on the usual historical interpretation of the Book of Revelation, according to the opening statement of the Book: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John,” (Rev. 1:1). De Alcazar developed the preterist system of interpretation. This system proposed that the events recorded in the Book of Revelation had their fulfilment entirely in the pagan Roman empire and that Nero was the beast of Revelation. According to this view of events, all the predictions recorded in the Apocalypse would have been fulfilled well before the Reformation.
Ribera took a different direction altogether. He developed the idea that the Antichrist is a single future figure and who was yet to come. Having advanced the theory that most of the Book of Revelation refers to future events, his system is referred to as the Futurist School of interpretation.
Both these perversions of the truth have become widely accepted in what is called Protestant religion, that is, most non-Roman Catholic denominations. Very few modern Protestants understand the significance of the term “Protestant”, and of those who do, very few are prepared now to recognise the need of the distinction. This attitude is clearly demonstrated in the Presbyterian Church of Australia and New Zealand (PCANZ), by its 1986 Assembly resolution which officially distanced the denomination from terms in the Westminster Confession of Faith that might be offensive to the Papacy. Thus the good old wine of the Reformation has become so diluted that one cannot any more speak of a Protestant, or even a Reformed, position with regard to many Reformed and Protestant denominations. The Reformation banner has made way for the white flag of surrender.
There is a denomination here in New Zealand that has the term Reformed in her name: the Reformed Churches of New Zealand. As the name suggests it is a confederation of churches. The membership is largely of Dutch origin and consequently is often referred to as the Dutch Reformed Church. Many of the members have their roots in the denomination in the Netherlands founded by Abraham Kuyper. It is not surprising that this church is very weak in respect of Protestant principles, because less than a hundred years ago Kuyper, then Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1901-1905), was responsible for increased co-operation with the Church of Rome and for popularising the view in his large denomination in the Netherlands that the Papacy was not to be identified with the Antichrist of Scripture.
A book circulating in English-speaking countries, The Beast of Revelation, by Dr Kenneth Gentry who holds a degree from the Reformed Theological Seminary in the USA, has done not a little to spread these erroneous views lately. The foreword to the book, being by Dr Gary North who is a scholar with the Reformed label, promotes its wide circulation. Do these scholars know that their views were spawned by the Jesuit, De Alcazar, under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation? Possibly they do know, for the opinion of the neo-Protestants is that the Church of Rome can and does produce true Christians.
Other professing Christians who have swallowed the poisonous Jesuitical brew are the pre-millennialists. Their appetite is satisfied by the futurist concoction of Ribera. Oswald Ellis, in his book Prophecy and the Church, makes the comment that this “acceptance by the Brethren was not due of course to any objection to the ‘Protestant’ interpretation as such, but to the fact that their literal interpretation of prophecy and their refusal to admit that predicted events were to precede the rapture made their acceptance of this system of interpretation inevitable.”
The consequence of all this is that the Jesuitical, Counter-Reformation interpretations of the Antichrist by the Church of Rome have prospered beyond the wildest dreams of the Spaniards, De Alcazar and Ribera, to the detriment of believing prayer being offered up for the destruction of the Antichrist.
At present, when the Roman Antichrist is so popular and powerful, there is more need than ever for prayer to be made for its destruction. That event cannot be far off. At least it is nearer now than ever before, and God’s promise is: “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,” (2 Thes. 2:8). •