01.02.03. The Advent of Antichrist

Part II Chapter III. THE ADVENT OF ANTICHRIST.

Out of the apostasy comes the Antichrist. To look for him without the Church in latter-day Judaism, or against the Church in latter-day infi­delity, is equally to miss the clear marks of iden­tification which have been set for our warning in “the sure word of prophecy.”

Exhorting the Thessalonian Christians “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto Him,” the Apostle ad­monishes them not to be deceived: “For it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God,” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 R.V.). Here is the great Pauline prediction of Antichrist; and how rigidly does its language bind us to the conception of a dreadful enemy of God, springing up within the Christian Church! “Except the apostasy come first,” the words read exactly. It can be “no political or politico-religious falling away” that is here indi­cated, as Ellicott truly says; but, according to the scriptural use of the term, “that religious and spiritual apostasy, that falling away from faith in Christ, of which the revelation of Antichrist shall be the concluding and most appalling phenom­enon.” And looking backward over the history of the Church for eighteen hundred years, we ask how the prediction could be more literally fulfilled than in the astonishing eclipse of pagan and idol­atrous superstition under whose shadow two thirds of nominal Christendom now rests. So we may premise that we shall find the answer to this mysterious prophecy in the line of popes having their seat of authority in Rome, and extending their rule through more than twelve centuries of the Christian era. In examining this prediction we begin with that expression which is most central and sug­gestive: “He sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God.” The interpretation which applies these words to the material temple rebuilt in Jerusalem is lacking both in accuracy and sig­nificance, — in accuracy, since there is no un­disputed instance in the New Testament where the phrase, o naoV tou qeou, the temple of God, is applied to the Jewish temple; and in significance, since it would be a matter of indifferent interest to Gentile Christians that some distant pretender was to arise who should win the acceptance and homage of the Jews.1 Scripture interprets Scrip­ture; and when we hear false witnesses accusing Christ of saying, “I am able to destroy the tem­ple of God and to build it in three days,” we have only to turn to another text to find that in what he said, “He spake of the temple of His body,” (John 2:21). So when a Judaizing interpretation would lead us, from this phrase of the Apostle, to imagine a future temple rebuilt in Jerusalem, en­throning an infidel Antichrist, we have only to collate the passages in which the expression occurs to find how invariably it stands for Christ’s mystical body, the Church, considered as a whole or in its members: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Here is wisdom; for why is the Church called the temple of God? Because indwelt by the Spirit, presided in by the Holy Ghost. When this temple—the redeemed Church of Christ — was dedicated on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit descended in the semblance of tongues of fire, and it “sat— ekaqisen —upon each one of them.” Henceforth the body of believers, sanctified and sealed, is the true Cathedra, where the Spirit sits; the real “Holy See,” or seat of the Holy One. Sanctity or sacrilege, therefore, is indi­cated by this word “sit,” according as it is ap­plied to God presiding in His own house, or to man thrusting himself into God’s place. Observe how reverently the apostle Peter recognizes the Spirit’s presence and primacy in the Church so soon as He is come. Rebuking the sin of Ana­nias, he says: “Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?” “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God,” (Acts 5:3). No thought of His own primacy here! Mark with wonder, also, the holy deference which the ascended Lord Himself yields to the Spirit, now that, as the promised Paraclete, He has taken His place in the Church. Seven times in his post-ascension gospel—the epistles to the seven churches—we hear Him say: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;” as though to teach us that, while the Spirit is in office as President and Teacher, even the glori­fied Christ will not intrude into His seat; but will commend us to His guidance, even as while He was on earth the Father commended His disciples to Him, saying, “This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him.”

We are prepared thus to comprehend the pre­sumption and blasphemy which it would imply for a man to sit in the Spirit’s seat in the Temple of God. And we know that one of the most con­spicuous traits of the early apostasy was clerisy, the thrusting of man into the place of rule and authority which belong to the Spirit; that this tendency constantly strengthened till the bish­ops, instead of humbly heeding the apostolic in­junction to feed the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers, began to lord it over that flock, rearing a primacy out of the pastorate, and a papacy out of the primacy, till the evil culminated in the sovereign pontiff usurp­ing the place of the Holy Ghost. For since the Holy Ghost is Christ’s true and only Vicar on earth, — “another Paraclete” sent to take the place of the ascended Lord, — what is he who should claim to be the Vicar of Christ but a usurper of the Spirit’s seat in the temple of God?

All the dark outlines of Paul’s prophetic pic­ture of the Antichrist harmonize with this inter­pretation. He is called “The man of sin,” as though to mark his utter contrast to the true pas­tor, whom the Scriptures name “The man of God.” But could the long succession of popes be designated by this individual name, “The man?” Yes; the elect Church, extending through all ages, is called in Scripture “one new man,” (Ephesians 2:15). The true line of spiritual ministers is evidently intended by “the man of God thor­oughly furnished,” named in the Epistle to Tim­othy. So with other terms in which the singular is used for the plural: the succession of the Jewish priesthood is certainly meant in the state­ment in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Into the second went the high priest alone once every year.” Indeed, if it be urged that the name Anti­christ — ò anticristoV—must mean an individual man, we find that this is not necessary, since the whole body of believers throughout the dispensa­tion is called by its counterpart “The Christ,” ò CristoV (1 Corinthians 12:1-31). Thus Scripture, as well as the common usage, in which we speak of the royal or of the ecclesiastical succession as “the king,” or “the bishop,” justify us in interpreting “the man of sin” to mean the line of pontiffs. As to the character indicated by the words, must we not admit its fulfilment to the uttermost in the pontificate? Whatever virtue or mildness may have appeared in single instances, we are to remember that the pictures of prophecy are com­posite photographs, giving the main features com­bined as revealed throughout the age. Who can deny that many of the popes have been mon­sters of iniquity, or that the great majority have stained their hands with the blood of saints? If so, does not this language sufficiently express their blended likeness?

Yet deeper and more dreadful grow the shad­ows with which inspiration paints the portrait: “The man of sin, the son of perdition.” Only one has borne this latter name, Judas Iscariot, who with a kiss betrayed his Lord, and, with a “Hail, Master!” on his lips, delivered Him to His ene­mies. And who was Judas that his significant name should be thrown forward upon the coming Antichrist? He was an apostate bishop, — “His bishopric let another take,” (Acts 1:20). He was a thief who had the bag, and who, in order to en­rich himself sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. Oh appalling counter-reality which we see emerging from the shadows of history! the pontifical bag-bearer, rich with untold treasures purloined from his poor flock, delivering up the Body of Christ evermore to death, as the first betrayer did the Head, till the enthroned Re­deemer must have groaned again and again, as of old: “Why persecutest thou Me?” Revolting as it is to our Christian charity to dwell upon these things, we are compelled, in a time when a speculative interpretation is joining hands with a sacramental apostasy, to veil the face of Anti­christ. Yet, if only once in the ages, —after Waldensian slaughter or St. Bartholomew’s mas­sacre, —we could see this vicar of Iscariot fling­ing down his silver and crying, “I have betrayed the innocent blood,” what haste would we make to throw the mantle of forgetfulness over his ghastly deeds! The marks of correspondence between this counter-Christ and the true are most striking at every point. He has his Parousia and his Apoca­lypse—his coming and his revelation—as does the Christ. The Son of God enters His earthly career through incarnation, “Great is the mys­tery of godliness, He who was manifested in the flesh,” —and the son of perdition does the same: “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” As it was said of the Lord’s betrayer, “Then entered Satan into Judas Iscariot,” so the begin­ning of this enemy is through a dark, mysterious entering in of the Evil One for corrupting the Church. The mystery of godliness is God humbling Himself to become man; the mystery of iniquity is man exalting himself to become God, — “Ye shall be as gods.” The mystery of god­liness is loyalty; the Son of God, through the Holy Spirit, rendering perfect obedience to the will and word of the Father: the mystery of in­iquity is lawlessness, anomia; the son of perdition, through “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” subverting God’s law, and rule, and order in the Church. In the one we see Christ emptying Himself of His glory; in the other we see Antichrist filling himself with his glory, so that he “opposeth and exalteth him­self above every one called God or an object of worship,” and “sitteth in the temple of God, set­ting himself forth as God.” 2 How marvelously has this latter prediction been realized! “Domine Deus!” [O Lord God: Ed.]. If but once we heard these words addressed to the pope by his allowance, it should lead us, as the students of this prophecy, to ask, “Art thou he that should come? “What if employed repeatedly, and with every variety of adoration? Alexander VI., the Nero of the Pon­tificate, as he has been called, moving to his con­secration, passes under a triumphal arch, on which is inscribed: “Caesar was a man; Alexander is a God.” Marcellus, in an address to Pope Leo X. at the fifth Lateran Council, exclaims, “Thou art another God on earth” —tu denique alter Deus in terris. Gregory II. boasts to the Greek emperor: “All the kings of the West rev­erence the pope as a God on earth.” Pope Nicholas writes: “Wherefore if those things which I do be said to be done, not of man, but of God, what can you make me but God? Again, if the prelates of the Church be called and counted of Constantine for gods, I, then, being above all prelates, seem by this reason to be above all gods.” These instances of deification, if there were no more, would fill out every line and speci­fication of this Pauline prediction; while that cul­minating act of 1870—the placing of the crown of infallibility upon the head of the pope by the Ecumenical Council—would set the attesting seal of literal history to this astonishing word of literal prophecy.

We know how some, at this point, have started on an adventurous hunt into the future for an Antichrist who is at once a God-denier and a God-pretender; since the apostle John has declared concerning this terrible personage that he “de­nieth the Father and the Son.” But the candid reader has only to compare this word “deny” as employed by John with its use by Paul, and Peter, and Jude, in their predictions of the falling away, to see that the reference is beyond question to the denial of apostasy, and not to the denial of infidelity; to such as “profess that they know God, but in works deny Him,” and not to such as are avowedly and openly atheistic. 3 The anom­aly of bald infidel worship, exacted by one who at once deifies and undeifies, has no place, we are persuaded, in this prophecy. Nor has that other conception of a Napoleonic demigod drunk with the infatuation of world-rule, —a conception which has greatly colored the imaginations of many ex­positors. That the man of sin is identical with the “little horn” of Daniel, and the “beast” of the Apocalypse, is clear enough; and that as such he is a temporal ruler, no one doubts. And so has he proved; for when has the world seen a line of world-sovereigns like the popes? But can we imagine such a blending, in any single infidel man, of secular and spiritual imperialism as is foreshadowed in this compound prediction of Scripture, and as is fulfilled in this double-headed ruler in the Vatican? The pontiffs are the lineal successors of the Cæsars, as they claim to be of the apostles. Mr. Pember, in describing this combination of office, gives a perfect description of the sovereign pontiff, though he did not intend it as such: —

“At length, however, Julius Caesar, who had previously accepted the office of Pontifex Maxi­mus, solved the difficulty by constituting himself emperor. He thus became the first Roman in whom the powers of the Pontifex and the Impe­rator were combined, and was probably the first to be recognized as the head of the Oriental priesthood, —the Roman pontificate having pre­viously been distinct from and inferior to the Chaldean, with which it was thenceforth identi­fied. He was consequently declared to be divine, and exercised a wonderful influence over his army and the people, even going to the length of openly prescribing to the latter for whom they should vote. And lastly he corrected the calendar and changed times by inserting two additional months, in accordance with the pontifical preroga­tive, which gave him his title of King of the Ages. The power which he had acquired descended to his successors; so that in the statues of the emperors, the ring is always engraved with the figure of a lituus, or crosier, to indicate the highest quality of imperatorial rank, —that of Pontifex Maximus.” 4 And the popes are the successors of these successors.

Such is the figure which history presents as its answer to prophecy. Is it only the eye of bigotry that can detect a likeness between the two? The germs of this evil system were growing in the apostle’s day, —“The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” Is it credible that it should have continued operating through eighteen cen­turies, in order to bring forth some yet future short-lived, infidel Antichrist, so transcendently wicked that all which has gone before, with its unspeakable record of blood and blasphemy, is only an indifferent prototype of him? If charity could bias our interpretation at all, which it must not, how little mercy have they who, in order to relieve the papacy of this stigma, darken our future with such an appalling apparition! More­over, such a conception puts a strain upon our credulity greater than it can bear. For when we study Satan’s career in Scripture and in history, we find that open infidelity is little in his line. His way has ever been to masquerade in the symbols and sacraments of the Church; to manipulate the machinery of spurious miracles; to put on a sad countenance as the hypocrites do, that behind it he may mock at God. Therefore the epiphany of “that Wicked One” should be looked for in a feigned religiousness rather than in a blatant atheism; as it is tersely said in the Noble Lesson of the Waldensians “Antichrist is the falsehood of eternal damnation covered with the appearance of truth and righteousness of Christ and his Spouse.” 5 For this reason we are not surprised at the prediction of startling wonder-working as signal­izing the advent of this pseudo-Christ, “whose coming is after the working of Satan in all power, and signs, and wonders of falsehood.” One who is at all acquainted with the history of the Middle Ages need not be told how exactly the papal reality fits this prediction; how the chaste and artless miracles of the primitive Church were travestied by those of the medieval Church in the grotesque signs and wonders alleged to have been wrought at saints’ tombs, and through the agency of martyrs’ bones and sacred relics. Thus was the man of sin to authenticate his ministry “in all deceit of unrighteousness for them that are perishing;” and the issue would be that God should “send them a working of delusion that they should believe the lie, that they may all of them be judged who believed not the truth.” 6 And so has it come to pass; the assumptions of the priesthood culminating in a deified man, and the work­ing of delusion culminating in a deified wafer. A devout minister in the Church of England, crying out in pain at the apostasy now repeating itself in his own communion, boldly says, con­cerning the miracle of transubstantiation: “The crowning error into which the visible Church was by degrees led—the process of Satanic inspira­tion extending from the eighth to the thirteenth century—was, that the priesthood possessed a divine power to locate the Lord Jesus Christ on an earthly altar, and to lift him up, under the veils of bread and wine, to the adoration of the people.

It is in this blasphemous fraud that the apostle Paul’s prophecy finds its accurate fulfillment. Of the apostasy forerunning the second coming of Christ he says, that the deluded followers of the Lawless One should believe ‘THE LIE,’ —tó yeudpV. Of all the impostures that the Father of Lies ever palmed upon a credulous world, this doctrine, which both logically and theologically repeats millions of times the humiliation of the Blessed Redeemer, necessarily transcends all! Hence it is that the definite article is placed by the Holy Ghost before this word ‘lie’” 7 Of “the mouth speaking great things and blasphemies,” ascribed to this being both in Daniel and Revelation, we have only to inquire what mouth-assumption could surpass that con­tained in the well-known Bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII.: “It is essential for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff” Blasphemy means usurpation of the prerogatives of the Deity rather than profane denial. When the Jews accused Jesus of this sin, this was the ground: “Why does this man speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone! “Again: “For a good work we stone Thee not; but for blasphemy, and because Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Does not the man of Rome stand openly convicted on both these grounds? In the expression, “He who now letteth,” we have one of the most significant touches in the whole picture. What hindered the manifestation of Antichrist? “And now ye know what with­holdeth,” says the apostle. If they did know, and passed the secret from lip to lip, tradition on this point is valuable. Hence when we find that it was the well-nigh unanimous understanding among the Christian fathers, from those who touched hands with the apostles onward, that it was the Roman Empire that must be taken out of the way before the man of sin could be re­vealed, we have strong reason to credit this opinion. And mark how the reserve of the apos­tle, in not mentioning this hindering power, bears out this interpretation. If, as some now say, it was the Holy Spirit that was intended, we can see no reason why He should not have been distinctly named; but if it was the Roman Empire, there is every ground for the apostle’s withholding the fact from his epistle, and com­mitting it only to oral tradition. For, the epistle would be publicly read in the churches, and its contents reported, perhaps, to the ears of the rulers. To say that the empire, which was held to be eternal, was about to pass away, would savor of treason, and would form a just ground for persecution. And therefore, it would seem, the apostle gave it out as a whispered secret: “Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time,” (2 Thessalonians 2:6). For once tradition has authority, since in this chapter the apostle not only enjoins that those addressed “obey our word by this epistle,” but also “hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle.” And we know on the fullest testi­mony that the opinion named was held as a tra­dition apostolical in the early Church; and as such it has come down to us. If, then, the Thes­salonians knew, and that which they knew has been, with reasonable certainty, reported to us, is it presumptuous that we should strongly believe?

If we are right at this point, a strong light is thrown upon the question raised in the early part of the chapter, whether a singular noun can stand for a succession of individuals. This hindering power is “he that letteth,” which antiquity inter­preted to mean the succession of emperors. On which Bishop Wordsworth remarks, “As he that letteth is a public person or series of persons, so is he that sitteth also; “the one being the suc­cession of emperors, and the other being the succession of popes. And here comes in the most weighty consider­ation that so it was, that the papacy did actually emerge upon the subsidence of the empire. Car­dinal Manning, who certainly has no preposses­sion in favor of the view we are advocating, writes thus: “The possession of the pontiffs com­mences with the abandonment of Rome by the emperors. . . . No sovereign has ever reigned in Rome since, except the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” 8 Singular coincidence! does the reader exclaim? No, not singular; it was bound to be so, on ac­count of certain words which an apostle wrote centuries before under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Prophecy is the mould in which history is cast; and no violence of man, no con­vulsions of nations, can either break that mould or constrain the course of history, that the one should not answer to the other point by point, feature by feature. It is for the Christian in­terpreter to note such correspondences as they occur, counting each conformation as a confirma­tion for establishing the sure word of prophecy. A system of exposition which withdraws our at­tention from these coincidences, and sets us to gazing into blank space for something to emerge, of which not even the shadow is in sight, we can­not think profitable. There are things to come which ought powerfully to attract our attention, but our eyes should not be so holden thereby that we cannot see what is passing and what has already come to pass upon the earth. Such cor­respondences of history with prophecy, of fact with prediction, as these that we have pointed out, cannot occur by chance. And in view of them we may as certainly hold the papacy to be the fulfillment of Paul’s prediction of the Anti­christ as we hold the face of a coin to be the ful­fillment of the die in which it was struck. 9

We end where we began, —with the temple of God. The dreadful prediction of the destiny of the man of sin is in the words: “Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His com­ing.” Behold how the consuming has been going on within the last few centuries, especially during our own time; so that an eminent writer has declared that in the downfall of the temporal power the papacy met with the heaviest loss which has befallen her in a thousand years. But of the rest how can we speak but with an un­utterable awe and pity: “Whom He shall destroy with the brightness of His appearing.” For what? “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye,” (1 Corinthians 3:17). What language can tell how this temple has been defiled? The heathen rites and ceremonies corrupting the wor­ship of Christ; the idols and the sacrilege; the worship of the queen of heaven; the blood of God’s saints staining His own courts; the blas­phemy of a man professing to forgive sin; of a man snatching the attribute of Divine infalli­bility; of a man receiving worship from his fel­lows; in fine, of a man sitting in the seat of the Holy Ghost, shutting the mouth of God’s Spirit, —the Holy Scriptures, —and bidding the Church hear only his own “mouth speaking great things.” Idolatry of Mary; idolatry of the mass; idolatry of the cross! How solemnly sounds God’s word in view of it all! “And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols?” (2 Corinthians 6:16, R.V.) Do we not know, if we have read the Scriptures, that it is such desecration of His house, and such defiling of His worship, which have ever called down the severest judgments of God? Let us recall the fact, not that we may redouble our denunciation of an apostate Church, but that we may search our own sanctuaries, with a lighted candle, to see if aught of the corrupting leaven be found among us.

What our eyes see is, again, an astonishing seal set to the truth of this great prediction. Who has not heard the oft-quoted saying that the con­dition of the Jews in the present dispensation is the most striking verification of the truth of the Scripture? Just as was predicted, they have been scattered, peeled, and subjected to daily death; and yet here they are preserved as a dis­tinct people, a burning bush ever aflame with persecuting fires, but not consumed. So has the line of pontiffs continued. 10 Taking its rise in the beginnings of the age, gradually strengthening and maturing till fully developed, with temporal and spiritual sovereignty centering in one head, it has lived on for more than twelve hundred years, and there it sits today on its seat in Rome, in spite of every likelihood that it would long ago have passed away, the longest line of rulers the Western world has ever seen. As the Jewish succession remains unbroken, that the last generation of cast-off Israel may confront the descending Lord at His advent, looking on Him whom they pierced, and mourning because of Him with saving penitence that “so all Israel shall be saved;” so likewise the long succession of hierarchs continues, that the last Pontifex Maximus may stand face to face with the Lord at His appearing, and receive his doom, in the cut­ting off of his usurping line forever. As we read all this, let it be with bowed heads and with weeping eyes, while we ponder the lesson, once more, of the terrible consequences of pride, and ambition, and worldliness, when permitted to run their course in the Church of God.

Endnotes:

1For the significance of this phrase, oti nadV tou qeou, see the following texts, the only ones where it occurs: (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Revelation 3:12; Revelation 11:19). Of the word nadV alone, we beg it to be noticed that after the institution of the Christian Church it is never once applied to the temple in Jerusalem. Twenty-five times in the Acts the Jewish temple is spoken of, but the word ierdn, is used in every instance, never nadV. Neither is the latter word once employed in any epistle to designate the Hebrew temple. How could God call that His temple (nadV) when He had ceased to dwell therein (ndw), —“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate”? How surely must the word apply to the Christian Church after that God by the Holy Ghost had taken up His abode in it! —“An holy temple (loads) in the Lord, in whom ye also are budded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” We believe that a candid exegesis of this phrase—ote nadV tou qeou—fixes the seat of the man of sin within the sphere of the Christian Church, as certainly as the designation of the seven hills fixes the seat of the woman of sin in the city of Rome.

2 “‘As God, showing Himself that He is God.’ For many hun­dred years, to this day, the Roman pontiffs have literally fulfilled this prophecy of St. Paul. When Cornelius, the centurion, fell down at Peter’s feet and worshipped him, St. Peter forbade him, saying, ‘Stand up! I myself also am a man.’ But the self-called successors of St. Peter sit in the temple of God as God. For many centuries each of them, at his inauguration, has taken his seat in God’s Church, upon God’s altar, and, so sitting, has been adored by men falling down before him and kissing his feet.” [Bishop Wordsworth on the Apocalypse, p. 394.].

3 See Titus 1:16, 2 Peter 2:1, Jude 1:4. The latest dictionary of the Greek New Testament—the Grimm, edited by Thayer—gives this as the second definition of arneomai, to deny: “Arneomai, God and Christ, is used of those who, by cherishing and disseminating pernicious opinions and immorality, are ad­judged to have apostatized from God and Christ.” (1 John 2:22 (cf. 1 John 4:2; 2 John 1:7-11); Jude 1:4; 2 Peter 2:1).

4 Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming Kingdom, p. 81.

5 “Antichrist es falseta de damnation ætera cuberta de specie de la verita e de in justitia de Christ e de la soa sposa.” —Des Egiises Vaudoises, chap. xiv.

6 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 (Ellicott’s translation).

7 Ormiston, Satan of Scripture, p. 126.

8 “By a singular arrangement of Divine Providence, as we have said on a former occasion, it happened that the Roman Empire, having fallen, and being divided into many kingdoms and divers states, the Roman pontiff, in the midst of such great variety of kingdoms, and in the actual state of human society, was invested with his civil authority.” [The Pope’s Allocution, 1866].

9 It is coming to be admitted even by futurist interpreters that the word “Antichrist “signifies a vice-Christ, rather than an open opponent of Christ. Andrew Jukes says: “I am satisfied that, according to the derivation of the word, Antichrist means primarily ‘in the place of Christ,’ rather than ‘against Christ.’ Anri —in Latin, vice, whence we get the word Vicar, the very title claimed in reference to Christ by the Pope of Rome— is literally in the place of.’” He cites, among others, the follow­ing examples: AnquupatoV (Acts 13:7), the deputy, or proconsul, not “against the consul,” but “in the place of the consul;” AntepiskopoV (Gregor. Naz.), a vice-bishop, one acting for the bishop. That this is not a merely modern and Protestant interpretation will appear from the fact that Lactantius (260-330) speaks thus of this personage: “Now this is he who is called Antichrist; but he shall falsely call himself Christ, and shall fight against the truth.” [The Divine Institutes, lib. vii., cap. xix].

10 “And power was given unto him to continue forty and two months” (Revelation 13:5). This period of Antichrist’s duration we hold to be, according to the “year-day theory,” twelve hundred and sixty years. To those who deride such interpretation as strained, and insist that the words mean three years and a half, we reply: What expositor has interpreted the ten days’ tribula­tion in Revelation 2:10 to be ten literal days? But if the Holy Spirit meant years, in the Apocalypse, why did He not say years? it is replied. Why, when He meant churches and ministers, and kingdoms and kings and epochs, did He say candle-sticks, and stars, and beasts, and horns, and trumpets? Yet, having used these miniature symbols of greater things, how fitting that the accompanying time should also be in miniature! To use literal dates would distort the imagery, as though you should put a life-sized eye in a small-sized photograph.