Is the Church of Rome the Antichrist? - Glenn Conjurske
Is the Church of Rome the Antichrist?
Introduction: A Careless Interpretation of Scripture
I have received several publications of late which confidently affirm that the papacy is the antichrist, and that there shall be no other. This belief might appear harmless to some, but it is based upon a very careless use of the Scriptures, and leads to further carelessness, especially in its departure from the literal meaning of many of the prophetic scriptures. This is a system of allegorical (falsely called “spiritual”) interpretation, which makes Scripture mean almost anything except what it says. Those who “spiritualize” the reign of antichrist usually “spiritualize” the reign of Christ also, and so of course the binding of Satan, thus veiling the true character of the present age. Thus, they fail to recognize most of the army of the enemy, while they inveigh against one of his detachments.
The Reformers and Their Weaknesses
It is typical of such publications to discourse, on the one hand, on the great spirituality of the Reformers (whose doctrine they follow), and on the other hand, on the supposed evil origin of the doctrine that the antichrist is a man. Of direct appeal to the Scriptures they contain but little—and little wonder, for the Scriptures afford them but little help. I intend to make my appeal directly to the Scriptures, yet I dare not completely ignore these two favorite arguments of the opposing party.
In the first place, I admire the Reformers, and rejoice in all that they were. Yet they were but men, and had weaknesses, and very great ones, both in doctrine and practice. What is the meaning of modern professed Protestants exalting these men to the place of virtual infallibility, and allowing them to determine their faith for them? This is popery in principle, and I utterly repudiate it. Those who teach that the papacy is the antichrist claim to be perpetuating the teaching of the Reformers (which in fact they are). But to me, this is beside the point. I am called to teach the Bible, not the teachings of any set of men, no matter how great and good they may have been. The Reformers were men of God, but they were just emerging from the Egyptian darkness of the dark ages, and they certainly did not see all things clearly. None of them (except the Anabaptists) so much as understood what the church is, but followed the Catholic example of baptizing babies, and made the true Church out to be the whole population of the country. Luther was often led astray by Augustine, and under his influence made void the prophetic scriptures in general. It was quite natural for a man in Luther’s position, and with his temperament, to declare the papacy to be the antichrist. This we might excuse: but there is less excuse for folks in this day who use the Bible not to learn the whole truth of God, but only to glean support for the teachings of the doctors of the past. This is in fact practically to set aside the Bible, and revert to one of the leading principles of Romanism. With that, I will have nothing to do, but will oppose it with all my might.
The Jesuit Origin Argument
As for the supposed evil origin (the Jesuits!) of the doctrine for which I stand, they must be either ignorant or dishonest who assert such a thing. That the antichrist is a man—an individual—was the doctrine of the early church, before the existence of papacy or Jesuit, and of course before the existence of the wretched system of “spiritual” interpretation which makes the Bible mean anything or everything or nothing, but never allows it to mean what it says. And if folks wish to speak of the evil origins of things, let them study the origin of that “spiritual” system of interpretation, and they will find it to have been born and bred in worldliness and unbelief of the worst sort. The early church knew nothing of such a system of interpretation, nor of the antichrist being anything other than an individual man.
Early Church Fathers on the Antichrist
Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of the apostle John, writes much of the antiChrist, and always treats him as an individual person, who will come upon the scene in the last days, enter the temple in Jerusalem, show himself as Christ, reign over the earth for three years and six months, and be destroyed by Christ at his coming. Hippolytus also, a disciple of Irenaeus, speaks in the same vein, in his Treatise on Christ and Antichrist, clearly setting forth that Daniel’s “one week” when antichrist flourishes is the last week at the end of the world, before the coming of Christ.
Hippolytus and the Papacy
Hippolytus was noted as a vigorous opponent of the bishops of Rome (now called popes) at the beginning of the third century. And yet now we are told that his doctrine was invented by a Jesuit in order to save the papacy from the odium of being antichrist!
Appeal to Scripture
I attach no authority to the teachers of the early church. I refer to them only to show the falsity of the statement that the doctrine of an individual antichrist is the invention of a Jesuit. To the Scriptures I will make my appeal. These modern tracts and booklets claim that the Catholic Church must be the antichrist precisely because all of the prophecies concerning the antichrist are fulfilled, or “exhausted” in it, yet the real fact is, these publications simply ignore many of those prophecies, and with others they deal in such loose and careless a manner as in reality to empty them of their meaning. They attach to them a “spiritual” sense which fails altogether to reckon with what the prophecies actually say. This will become very clear as we proceed.
Roman Catholic Church and Antichrist
But first, let one thing be clearly understood: I affirm without hesitation that the Roman Catholic Church is anti-Christian, having very little in common with true Christianity. No one who knows anything of the Bible and of the Church of Rome can have any doubt of this. Rome is the great whore of Revelation 17, full of filthiness and fornication and abominations and blasphemies, and drunk with the blood of the saints. This is her unchanging character, and the true church of God can have no union, no cooperation, and no fellowship with Rome. In contending that the Church of Rome is not the antichrist, I have not the least thought of commending or exonerating her. She is the implacable enemy of God and the Bible, and always will be. Yet the same may be said of the Moslem religion and the Communist Party, and yet neither of them are the antichrist, though many points of agreement between them and the antichrist might be found.
The Antichrist as a Man
This much being prefaced, it only remains for us to show that the papacy, the popes, or the Roman Church, cannot be the antichrist, for the simple and conclusive reason that the papacy does not fulfill the scriptural prophecies concerning the antichrist.
In the first place, the antichrist is a man, not a system, nor a succession of men. This, I know, is vehemently denied by those who contend for a papal antichrist, but consider the following: “…as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. They [the many antichrists] went out from us, but they were not of us,” etc. (I John 2:18-19). This scripture plainly distinguishes between “the antichrist” (which is what the Greek says) and “many antichrists” who precede him. Now these “many antichrists” are men, individual persons, who had gone out from among the true saints. They are not systems, nor dynasties, and neither is “the antichrist.” He is “the man of sin, the son of perdition.” (II Thes. 2:3). This latter epithet is applied to the man Judas Iscariot in John 17:12. The antichrist “opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God.” (II Thes. 2:4). Christ says to the Jews concerning him, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” (John 5:43). He is a man, the same as Christ is.
The Antichrist’s Actions
“He as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” (II Thes. 2:4). “And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? 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.” (Rev. 13:4-5, and so on through verse 8.) In Daniel we read of him, “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:25). (This time and times and the dividing of time, by the way, is equal to one time and two times and a half a time, or three and a half years, the precise equivalent of the forty and two months in the verse just quoted from Revelation, and of the 1260 days mentioned elsewhere. It is the latter half of Daniel’s seventieth week, which will be ended by the personal coming of Christ, and the destruction of the antichrist. I merely mention this in passing, as the proof of my thesis no way depends upon it.)
The Beast and the Kingdom
Some have put forth the silly claim that the beast of the book of Revelation cannot be a man because it is a kingdom. We might with just as much truth assert that the beast cannot be a kingdom because it is a man, but this assertion would be as silly as the other. The beast in fact represents both the antichrist and his kingdom, precisely as the “head of gold” in Daniel 2 represents both the Babylonian kingdom, and its great monarch Nebuchadnezzar. “Thou art this head of gold,” says Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, and yet goes on immediately to add, “and after thee shall arise another kingdom [not king] inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth, and the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron,” etc. (Daniel 2:38-40). Now if the remainder of this great image represents another kingdom, and a third kingdom, and a fourth kingdom, then obviously the head represents the first kingdom—and no interpreter of prophecy doubts this. Yet we are explicitly told that the head represents the king, a man. The beast of the book of Revelation may likewise certainly represent both the kingdom of antichrist and the man who is the head of it.
The Church of Rome as a Woman
Now in direct contrast to all of these plain references to the antichrist as a man, the Bible refers to the false church as a woman, and always speaks of her in the female gender. She is “the great whore,” “and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” (Rev. 17:1-2). She is “the mother of harlots,” “the woman drunken with the blood of the saints.” (Verses 5-6). “For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.” (Rev. 18:5). “For she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow.” (Verse 7, and so constantly throughout chapters 17 and 18, and the beginning of 19.)
The seventeenth chapter of Revelation also expressly distinguishes between the woman and the beast. But the full and indisputable proof that this woman is not the antichrist is to be found in the end which Scripture assigns to each of them. The antichrist, as all admit, will be taken and destroyed by Christ at his coming: “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” (II Thes. 2:8). A completely different doom awaits the woman, who represents the Church of Rome, as all admit. She usurps such power over the kings who reign with the beast that they hate and destroy her: “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” (Rev. 17:16).
The Antichrist’s Mark and Romanism
Other plain scriptures which the papacy cannot fulfill are all those which relate to the mark of the beast. I am, of course, well aware that these are the very scriptures which are most confidently claimed as proving that the papacy is the antichrist, but it is only by using them in the most vague and loose manner that they can be made to lend any appearance of support to the doctrine. If we but carefully examine what those scriptures actually say, they will lead us directly to the opposite conclusion.
To begin with what the mark of the beast actually is. Here there can be no doubt: it is “the name of the beast, or the number of his name,” which is 666. (Rev. 13:17-18). Yet directly in the teeth of this plain declaration of the Bible, there are some who inform us that the mark of the beast is “Latin worship,” or even “the sign of the cross”! Such assertions are mere foolishness, and betray minds governed by prejudice rather than Scripture. However evil the Latin worship or the sign of the cross may be, they have nothing to do with the mark of the beast. The mark is either one of two things: the name of the beast, or the number of his name, which is 666.
Conclusion: The Papacy Does Not Fulfill Prophecies
In conclusion, we need only say that, in spite of the claim that is made that Romanism “exhausts all of the prophecies” of the Antichrist, when we once pay careful attention to what those prophecies actually say, it immediately becomes evident that Romanism “exhausts” the meaning of none of them. Romanism fulfills none of them. The beast is yet to come. The Church of Rome is the great whore, who will ride and control the beast (as she did to kings and emperors throughout the dark ages), but for that very reason she cannot be the beast.
Finally, let me address a word of exhortation to those who hold this doctrine. Not one in a thousand of you has come to this doctrine by merely studying the Bible. You have been led into this system of doctrine by others—by teachers who make it their business to teach the doctrines of the Reformers rather than the Bible. And the two are by no means identical, though the Reformers did hold much of the truth of the Bible. And in being thus led into this system of doctrine, you have been led at the same time into a system of interpretation which is extremely loose and careless in handling the word of God. It ignores (or is ignorant of) many of the scriptures which relate to the antichrist. Those which it uses are in fact misused. Any kind of vague resemblance is taken for proof, while they continually fail to deal fairly with what those scriptures actually say. The word of God is more precise than that, and deserves more reverence than that. And if you form the habit of using the Scriptures in such a loose and vague manner on this subject, what is to stop you from using them in the same way on other matters of equal or greater importance? This kind of “interpretation” is neither for the glory of God nor the good of your own soul. You need to repent of such a use of the holy word of truth. You need to cease making reckless and confident statements about what the Bible means, and humbly study what it says (for it means what it says). And those of you who have been guilty of it need to cease denouncing as “compromisers with Rome” those who disagree with you. I no more compromise with Rome than you do. If you love Christ and his cause, and hate Romanism (which Christ also hates), then I value your soul. I value your fellowship. I value your zeal. And I am very sorry to see that zeal thrown away upon a system of interpretation which makes void the word of God.