"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).
These words were spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
occasion on which they were uttered and the connection in
which they are found, invest them with peculiar solemnity.
The chapter opens by depicting the Saviour healing the
impotent man who lay by the pool of Bethesda. This occurred
on the Sabbath day, and the enemies of Christ made it the
occasion for a vicious attack upon Him: "Therefore did
the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay Him, because He
had done these things on the Sabbath day" (v. 16). In
vindicating His performance of this miracle on the Sabbath,
the Lord Jesus began by saying, "My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work" (v. 17). But this only served to
intensify their enmity against Him, for we read,
"Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because
He not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God
was His Father, making Himself equal with God" (v. 18).
In response, Christ then made a detailed declaration of His
divine glories. In conclusion He appealed to the varied
witnesses which bore testimony to His Deity: - the Father
Himself (v. 32); John the Baptist (v. 33); His own works (v.
36); and the Scriptures (v. 39). Then He turned to those who
were opposing Him and said, "And ye will not come to Me,
that ye might have life. But I know you, that ye have not the
love of God in you. 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" (vv. 40, 42, 43). And this was immediately
followed by this searching question - "How can ye
believe which receive honor (glory) one of another, and seek
not the honor (glory) that cometh from God only?" (v.
44).
Here is the key to the solemn
statement which begins this article. These Jews received
glory from one another; they did not seek it from God, for
they had not the love of God in them. Therefore it was that
the One who had come to them in the Father's name, and
who "received not glory from men" (v. 41) was
rejected by them. And just as eve's rejection of the word
of God's truth laid her open to accept the serpent's
lie, so Israel's rejection of the true Messiah, has
prepared them, morally, to receive the false Messiah, for he
will come in his own name, doing his own pleasure, and will
"receive glory from men". Thus will he thoroughly
appeal to the corrupt heart of the natural man.
The future appearing of this
one who shall "come in his own name" was announced,
then, by the Lord Himself. The Antichrist will be
"received", not only by the Jews, but also by the
whole world; received as their acknowledged Head and Ruler;
and all the modern pleas for and movements to bring about a
federation of the churches and a union of Christendom,
together with the present-day efforts to establish a League
of Nations - a great United States of the World - are but
preparing the way for just such a character as is portrayed
both in the Old and New Testaments.
There will be many remarkable
correspondences between the true and the false Christ, but
more numerous and more striking will be the contrasts between
the Son of God and the Son of perdition. The Lord Jesus came
down from Heaven, whereas the Antichrist shall ascent from
the bottomless Pit (Rev. 11:7). The Lord Jesus came in His
Father's name, emptied Himself of His glory, lived in
absolute dependence upon God, and refused to receive honor
from men; but the Man of Sin will come in his own name,
embodying all the pride of the Devil, opposing and exalting
himself not only against the true God, but against everything
that bears His name, and his deepest craving will be to
receive honor and homage from men.
Now since this parallel, with
its pointed contrasts, was drawn by our Lord Himself in John
5:43, how conclusive is the proof which it affords that the
Antichrist will be a single individual being as surely as
Christ was! In further proof of this 1 John 2:18 may be
cited: "Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye
heard that Antichrist cometh, even now hath there arisen many
antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour"
(R.V.). Here the Antichrist is plainly distinguished from the
many who prepare his way. The verb "cometh" here is
a remarkable one, for it is the very same that is used of the
Lord Jesus Christ in reference to His first and second
Advents. The Antichrist, therefore, is also "the coming
one", or "he that cometh". This defines his
relation to the world, - which has long been expecting some
Conquering Hero - as "the Coming One" defines the
relation of the Christ of God to His Churches, whose
Divinely-inspired hope is the return of the Lord from
Heaven.
Nor does this by any means
exhaust the proof that the coming Antichrist will be a single
individual being. The expressions used by the apostle Paul in
2 Thess. 2 - "that Man of Sin", "The Son of
Perdition", "he that opposeth and exalteth
himself", "the Wicked One whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of His mouth", "he whose
coming is after the working of Satan" - all these point
as distinctly to a single individual as did the Messianic
predictions of the Old Testament point to the person of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, in accordance with these
texts, and many others which might be quoted, we find that
all the Christian writers of the first six centuries (that is
all who make reference to the subject) regarded the
Antichrist as a real person, a specific individual. We might
fill many pages by giving extracts from their works, but
three must suffice. The first is taken from a very ancient
document, entitled "The Teaching of the Apostles",
which probably dates back to the beginning of the second
century: -
"For in the last days the
false prophets and the destroyers shall be multiplied, and
the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be
turned into hate. For when lawlessness increases, they shall
hate and persecute and deliver up one another; and then shall
appear the world-deceiver as Son of God, who shall do signs
and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands,
and he shall do lawless deeds such as have never yet been
done since the beginning of the world. Then shall the race of
men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be offended
and shall perish, but they who have endured in their faith
shall be saved under the very curse itself".
Our second quotation is taken
from the writings of Cyril, who was Bishop of Jerusalem in
the fourth century:
"This aforementioned
Antichrist comes when the times of the sovereignty of the
Romans shall be fulfilled, and the concluding events of the
world draw nigh. Ten kings of the Romans arise at the same
time in different places, perhaps; but reigning at the same
period. But after these, the antichrist is the eleventh,
having, by his magic and evil skill, violently possessed
himself of the Roman power. Three of those who have reigned
before him, he will subdue; the other seven he will hold in
subjection to himself. At first he assumes a character of
gentleness (as if a wise and understanding person),
pretending both to moderation and philanthropy; deceiving,
both by lying miracles and prodigies which come from his
magical deceptions, the Jews, as if he were the expected
Messiah. Afterwards he will addict himself to every kind of
evil, cruelty, and excess, so as to surpass all who have been
unjust and impious before him; having a bloody and relentless
and pitiless mind, and full of wily devices against all, and
especially against believers. But having dared such things
three years and six months, he will be destroyed by the
second glorious coming from heaven of the truly begotten Son
of God, who is our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the true Messiah;
who, having destroyed Antichrist by the Spirit of His mouth,
will deliver him to the fire Gehenna".
Our last quotation is made
from the writings of Gregory of Tours, who wrote at the end
of the sixth century A.D.: -
"Concerning the end of
the world, I believe what I have learnt from those who have
gone before me. Antichrist will assume circumcision,
asserting himself to be the Christ. He will then place a
statue to be worshipped in the Temple at Jerusalem, as we
read that the Lord has said, `Ye shall see the abomination of
desolation standing in the holy place'".
Our purpose in making these
quotations is not because we regard the voice of antiquity as
being in any degree authoritative: far from it; the
only authority for us is "What saith the
Scriptures?". Nor have we presented these views as
curious relics of antiquity - though it is interesting to
discover the thoughts which occupied some of the leading
minds of past ages. No: our purpose has been simply to show
that the early Christian writers uniformly held that the
Antichrist would be a real person, a Jew, one who should both
simulate and oppose the true Christ. Such continued to be the
generally received doctrine until what is known as the Dark
Ages were far advanced.
It is not until we reach the
fourteenth century (so far as the writer is aware) that we
find the first marked deviation from the uniform belief of
the early Christians. It was the Waldenses, - so remarkably
sound in the faith on almost all point of doctrine - who,
thoroughly worn out by centuries of the most relentless and
merciless persecutions, published about the year 1350 a
treatise designed to prove that the system of Popery was the
Antichrist. It should however be said in honor of this
people, whose memory is blessed, that in one of their
earliest books entitled "The Noble Lesson",
published about 1100 A.D., they taught that the Antichrist
was an individual rather than a system.
Following the new view
espoused by the Waldenses it was not long before the
Hussites, the Wycliffites and the Lollards - other companies
of Christians who were fiercely persecuted by Rome - eagerly
caught up the idea, and proclaimed that the Pope was the Man
of Sin and the papacy the Beast. From them it was handed on
to the leaders of the Reformation who soon made an earnest
attempt to systematize this new scheme of eschatology. But
rarely has there been a more forceable example of the
tendency of men's belief to be mouled by the events and
signs of their own lifetime. In order to adapt the prophecies
of the Antichrist to the Papal hierarchy, or the line of the
Popes, they had to be so wrested that scarcely anything was
left of their original meaning.
"The coming Man of Sin
had to be changed into a long succession of men. The time of
his continuance, which God had stated with precision and
clearness as forty-two months (Rev. 13:5), or three years and
a half, being far too short for the line of Popes, had to be
lengthened by an ingenious, but most unwarrantable, process
of first resolving it into days, and then turning these days
into years.
"The fact that, in the
13th chapter of the Apocalypse, the first Beast or secular
power, is supreme while the second Beast or ecclesiastical
power is subordinate, had to be ignored; since such an
arrangement is opposed to all the traditions of the Roman
system. Also the circumstances that the second Beast is a
prophet and not a priest, had to be kept in the background;
for the Roman church exalts the priest, and has little care
for the prophet. Then, again, the awful words pronouncing
sentence of death upon every one who worshipped the Beast and
his image, and receives his mark in his forehead or in his
hand (Rev. 13), seemed - and no wonder - too terrible to be
applied to every Roman Catholic, and, therefore, had to be
explained away or suppressed" (G. H. Pember).
Nevertheless, by common
consent the Reformers applied the prophecies which treat of
the character, career, and doom of the Antichrist, to Popery,
and regarded those of his titles which referred to him as
"that Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition", the
"King of Babylon" and "the Beast", as
only so many names for the head of the Roman hierarchy. But
this view, which was upheld by most of the Puritans too, must
be brought to the test of the one infallible standard of
Truth which our gracious God has placed in our hands. We must
search the Scriptures to see whether these things be so or
not.
Now we shall hold no brief for
the pope, nor have we anything good to say of that pernicious
system of which he is the head. On the contrary, we have no
hesitation in denouncing as rank blasphemy the blatant
assumption of the pope as being the infallible vicar of
Christ. Nor do we hesitate to declare that the Papacy has
been marked, all through its long history, by impious
arrogance, awful idolatry, and unspeakable cruelty. But,
nevertheless, there are many scriptures which prevent us from
believing that the Papacy and the Antichrist are identical.
The Son of Perdition will eclipse any monstrosities that have
sprung from the waves of the Tiber. The Bible plainly teaches
us to look for a more terrible personage than any Hildebrand
or Leo.
Undoubtedly there are many
points of analogy between Antichrist and the popes, and
without doubt the Papal system has foreshadowed to a
remarkable degree the character and career of the coming Man
of Sin. Some of the parallelisms between them were pointed
out by us in the previous chapter, and to these many more
might be added. Not only is it evident that Roman Catholicism
is a most striking type and harbinger of that one yet to
come, but the cause of truth requires us to affirm that the
Papacy is an antichrist, doubtless, the most devilish
of them all. Yet, we say again, that Romanism is not the
Antichrist. As it is likely that many of our readers have
been educated in the belief that the pope and the Antichrist
are identical, we shall proceed to produce some of the
numerous proofs which go to show that such is not the case.
That the Papacy cannot possibly be the Antichrist appears
from the following considerations: =
1. The term
"Antichrist" whether employed in the singular or
the plural, denotes a person or persons, and never a
system. We may speak correctly of an anti-Christ-ian
system, just as we may refer to a Christian organization; but
it is just as inadmissible and erroneous to refer to any
system or organization as "the Antichrist" or
"an antichrist", as it would be to denominate any
Christian system or organization "the Christ", or
"a Christ". Just as truly as the Christ is the
title of a single person the Son of God, so the Antichrist
will be a single person, the son of Satan.
2. The Antichrist will be a
lineal descendant of Abraham, a Jew. We shall not stop to
submit the proof for this, as that will be given in our next
chapter; suffice it now to say that none but a full-blooded
Jew could ever expect to palm himself off on the Jewish
people as their long-expected Messiah. Here is an argument
that has never been met by those who believe that the pope is
the Man of Sin. So far as we are aware no Israelite has ever
occupied the Papal See - certainly none has done so since the
seventh century.
3. In line with the last
argument, we read in Zech. 11:16,17, "For, lo, I will
raise up a Shepherd in the land which shall not visit those
that be cut off, neither shall seek the young ones, nor heal
that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but
he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in
pieces. Woe to the Idol Shepherd that leaveth the flock! The
sword (of Divine judgment) shall be upon his arm (his power),
and upon his right eye (intelligence): his arm shall be clean
dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened".
"The land" here is, of course, Palestine, as is
ever the case in Scripture with this expression. This could
not possibly apply to the line of the Popes.
4. In 2 Thess. 2:4 we learn
that the Man of Sin shall sit "in the Temple of
God", and St. Peter's at Rome cannot possibly be
called that. The "Temple" in which the Antichrist
shall sit will be the rebuilt temple of the Jews, and that
will be located not in Italy but in Jerusalem. In later
chapters it will be shown that he Mosque of Omar shall yet be
replaced by a Jewish Temple before our Lord returns to
earth.
5. The Antichrist will be
received by the Jews. This is clear from the passage
which heads the first paragraph of this chapter. "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"; but the Jews have never yet owned allegiance
to any pope.
6. The Antichrist will make a
Covenant with the Jews. In Dan. 9:27 we read, "And he
shall confirm the covenant with many for a week". The
one referred to here as making this seven-year Covenant is
"the Prince that shall come" of the previous verse,
namely, the Antichrist, who will be the Head of the
ten-kingdomed Empire. The nation with whom the Prince will
make this covenant is the people of Daniel, as is clear from
the context - see v. 24. But we know of no record upon the
scroll of history of any pope having ever made a seven-year
Covenant with the Jews!
7. In Dan. 11:45 we read,
"And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace
between the seas, in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall
come to his end, and none shall help him". The person
referred to here is, again, the Antichrist, as will be seen
by going back to v. 36 where this section of the chapter
begins. There we are told, "The king shall do according
to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself
above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against he
God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be
accomplished; for that that is determined shall be
done". This is more than sufficient to identify with
certainty the one spoken of in the last verse of Dan. 11. The
Antichrist, then, will plant the tabernacles of his palace
"between the seas", that is, between the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea. By no species of ingenuity can
this be made to apply to the pope, for his palace, the
Vatican, is located in the capital city of Italy.
8. The Antichrist cannot be
revealed until the mystic Body of Christ and the Holy Spirit
have been removed from the earth. This is made clear by what
we read in 2 Thess. 2. In verse three of that chapter the
apostle refers to the revelation of the Man of Sin. In verse
four he describes his awful impiety. In verse five he reminds
the Thessalonians how that he had taught them these things by
word of mouth when he was with them. And then, in verse six
he declares "And now ye know what withholdeth that he
might be revealed in his time". And again he said,
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He
who now letteth (hindereth) will let until He be taken out of
the way". There are two agencies,then, which are
hindering, or preventing the manifestation of the Antichrist,
until "his time" shall have come. The former agency
is covered by the pronoun "what", the latter by the
word "He". The former, we are satisfied, is the
mystical Body of Christ; the latter being the Holy Spirit of
God. At the Rapture both shall be "taken out of the
way", and then shall the Man of Sin be revealed. If,
then, the Antichrist cannot appear before the Rapture of the
saints and the taking away of the Holy Spirit, then, here is
proof positive that the Antichrist has not yet
appeared.
9. Closely akin to the last
argument is the fact that quite a number of definite
scriptures place the appearing of the Antichrist at that
season known as the End-Time. Dan. 7 and 8 make it plain that
the Antichrist will run his career at the very end of this
age (we do not say this "dispensation" for that
will end at the Rapture), that is, during the great
Tribulation, the time of "Jacob's trouble".
Dan. 7:21-23 declares, "I beheld, and the same horn made
war with the saints, and prevailed against them; Until the
Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of
the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed
the kingdom". Dan. 8:19 places his course (see 8:23-25)
at "the last end of the indignation", i.e. of
God's wrath against Israel and the Gentiles. Dan. 9 shows
that he will make his seven-years' Covenant with the Jews
at the beginning of the last of the seventy "weeks"
which is to bring in "the end" of Israel's sins
and "finish the transgression" (9: 24). If the time
of the Antichrist's manifestation is yet future then it
necessarily follows that Rome cannot be the Antichrist.
10. The Antichrist will deny
both the Father and the Son: "He is Antichrist, that
denieth the Father and the Son" (1 John 2:22). This
scripture does not speak of virtual, but of actual and formal
denial. But Rome has always maintained in her councils and
creeds, her symbols of faith and worship, that there are
three persons in the Godhead. Numerous and grievous have been
her departures from the teaching of Holy Scripture, yet since
the time of the Council of Trent (1563 A.D.) every Roman
Catholic has had to confess "I believe in God the
Father...and in the Lord Jesus Christ....and in the Holy
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, which proceedeth from the
Father and the Son".
As a system Romanism is a
go-between. The "priest" stands between the sinner
and God; the `confessional' between him and the throne of
grace; `penance' between him and godly sorrow; the
`mass' between him and Christ; and `purgatory'
between him and Heaven. The pope acknowledges both the Father
and the Son: he confesses himself to be both the servant of
God and His worshipper; he blesses the people not in his own
name, but in that of the Holy Trinity.
11. The Antichrist is
described as the one "who opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that
he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself that
he is God" (2 Thess. 2:4). This is what the popes have
never done. Not even Leo ventured to deify himself or
supersede God. The popes have made many false and impious
claims for themselves; nevertheless, their decrees have been
sent forth as from the "vice-gerent" of God, the
"vicar" of Christ - thus acknowledging a Divine
power above himself.
12. In Rev. 13:2,4 we read,
"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...and they worshipped
the dragon which gave power unto the beast". By
comparing these verses with Rev. 12:9 we learn that the
Dragon is none other than Satan himself. Now by almost common
consent this first beast of Rev. 13 is the Antichrist. If,
then, Romanism be the Antichrist, where, we may ask, shall we
turn to find anything answering to what we read of here in
Rev. 13:4 - "And they worshipped the dragon,
which gave power unto the beast".
13. This same 13th chapter of
Revelation informs us that the Antichrist (the first Beast)
shall be aided by a second Beast who is denominated "the
False Prophet" (Rev. 19:20). The False Prophet, we are
told "exerciseth all the power of the First Beast before
him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to
worship the First Beast" (Rev. 13:12). If the First
Beast be the Papacy, then who is the False Prophet who
"causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to
worship" her?
14. Again; we are told that
this False Prophet shall say to them that dwell on the earth
"that they should make an image to the Beast, which had
the wound by a sword and did live" (Rev. 13:14).
Further, we are told, "And he had power to give life
unto the image of the Beast, that the image of the Beast
should both speak, and cause that as many as would not
worship the image of the Beast should be killed" (Rev
13:15). Where do we find anything in Popery which in anywise
resembles this?
15. In Dan. 9:27 we are told
that the Antichrist "shall cause the sacrifice and the
oblation to cease". And again in 8:11 we read,
"Yea, he magnified himself even against the Prince of
the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken
away". If Romanism is the Antichrist how can these
scriptures be made to square with the oft repeated
"Sacrifice of the Mass"?
16. The dominion of the
Antichrist shall be world-wide. The coming Man of Sin
will assert a supremacy which shall be unchallenged and
universal. "And all the world wondered after the
Beast" (Rev. 13:3). "And power was given him over
all kindreds, and tongues, and nations" (13:7). It
hardly needs to be pointed out that half of Christendom, to
say nothing of Heathendom, is outside the pale of Rome, and
is antagonistic to the claims of the Papacy. Again; in 13:17
we read "No man might buy or sell, save he that had the
mark, or the name of the Beast, or the number of his
name": and when, we ask, has any pope exercised such
commercial supremacy that none could buy or sell without his
permission?
17. The duration of
Antichrist's career, after he comes out in his true
character, will be limited to forty-two months. There are no
less than six scriptures which, with a variety of expression,
affirm this time restriction. In Dan. 7:25 we learn that this
one who shall "think to change times and laws",
will have these "given into his hand until a time, and
times, and the dividing of time": that is, for three
years and a half - cf. Rev. 12:14 with 12:6. And again in
Rev. 13:5 we are told, "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.
13:5). Now it is utterly impossible to make this harmonize
with the protracted history of Romanism by any honest method
of computation.
18. In Rev. 13:7,8 we read,
"And it was given unto him to make war with the saints,
and to overcome them: and power was given him over all
kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon
the face of the earth shall worship him, whose names are not
written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world". Here we are expressly told
that the only ones who will not "worship the
Beast", i.e. the Antichrist, are they whose names are
written in the Lamb's book of life. If then the pope is
the Antichrist, all who do not worship him must have their
names written in the Lamb's book of life - an absurdity
on the face of it, for this world be tantamount to saying
that all the infidels, atheists, and unbelievers of the last
thousand years who were outside of the pale of Roman
Catholicism are saved.
19. In 2 Thess. 2:11,12 we are
told, "For this cause God shall end them strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might
be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness". The context here shows that
"believing a lie" means accepting the claims of the
Antichrist. Those who believe his claims will "receive
him (John 5:43), and not only so, they will
"worship" him (Rev. 13:8); and 2 Thess. 2:12
declares that all who do this will be damned". If,
then,the pope is the Antichrist, then it necessarily follows
that all who have believed his lying claims, that all who
have received him s the vicar of Christ, that all who have
worshipped him, will be eternally lost. But the writer would
not for a moment make any such sweeping assertion. He,
together with thousands of others, believes firmly that
during the centuries there have been many Roman Catholics
who, despite much ignorance and superstition, have been among
that number that have exercised faith in the blood of Christ,
and that lived and died resting on the finished work of
Christ as the alone ground of their acceptance before God,
and who because of this shall be forever with the Lord.
20. That the Antichrist and
the Papacy are totally distinct is unequivocally established
by the teaching of Rev. 17. Here we learn that there shall be
ten kings who will reign "with the Beast" (v. 12),
and act in concert with him (vv. 13,16). Then we are told
"these shall hate the Whore (the papacy), and shall make
her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her
with fire" (v. 16). Instead of the Antichrist and the
Papacy being identical, the former shall destroy the latter;
whereas, the Antichrist shall be destroyed by Christ Himself,
see 2 Thess. 2:8.
Perhaps a word of explanation
is called for as to why we have entered into such lengthy
details in presenting some of the many proofs that the Papacy
is not the Antichrist. Our chief reason for doing so was
because we expect that many who will read this paper are
among the number who have been brought up in the belief which
was commonly taught by the Reformers and which has prevailed
generally since their day. For those readers who had already
been established on this point, we would ask them to please
bear with us for having sought to help those less fortunate.
Our next chapter will be one of more general interest, for in
it we shall discuss the person of the Antichrist - who he
will be, from whence he will spring, and what marks will
serve to identify him.