For over 200 years, the Protestant reformers had been proving from scripture and from history that the papal church of Rome was the Antichrist, the man of sin, and the little horn of Daniel 7. As a result of this, the Catholic Church was leaking members and financial support like a burst water balloon. Rome needed an answer. Previously, they would meet such a challenge head on, through war and threats against secular rulers. In this case however, the stampede towards protestant truth required more. So Rome called what was later known as the council of Trent.
At this council they affirmed Catholic teaching, that tradition was of equal authority as scripture. They compromised on nothing, but still couldn't find an answer to the fast growing protestant movement, until the Jesuits provided it. They had to change the manner in which prophecy was interpreted. The reformers were historicist, just as were many of the church communities before them, such as the Waldenses and Cathars (Albigenses) and the Celtic church in Britain.
Enter Francisco (Franciscus) Ribera, a Spanish Jesuit priest (1537–1591) who is widely regarded as the key early futurist Jesuit commentator on Revelation. Ribera was a Jesuit from Spain who taught at the University of Salamanca and wrote a large commentary on Revelation around 1585–1590. His commentary argued that most of Revelation (after the early chapters) refers not to church history, but to a short, literal period (about three and a half years) immediately before the Second Coming.
Ribera was more of a writer than a lecturer. He also died at the early age of 54. For these reasons, Ribera’s views needed a shrewd and articulate champion to carry his message far and wide. The champion was found and his name was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621).
Bellarmine was an Italian cardinal and also one of the ablest Jesuit
controversialists. He was a powerful speaker and lectured to large audiences. Bellarmine picked up where Ribera left off. In fact, Bellarmine made it his special project to spread the literalistic hermeneutic of futurism with unabated passion.
“He insisted that the prophecies concerning Antichrist in Daniel, Paul, and John, had no application to the papal power. This formed the third part of his Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei Adversus Huius Temporis Haereticos [Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of Christian Belief Against the Heretics of This Time], published between 1581 and 1593. This was the most detailed apology of the Catholic faith ever produced, and became the arsenal for all future defenders and expositors. It called forth a host of counter-writings from Protestant leaders, who considered him their greatest adversary.” (Froom, PFF, II, p. 495).
Though the basics of Bellarmine’s prophetic views were identical to Ribera’s, he “perfected”, “refined” and amplified many of the details. And he crusaded in favor of the literalistic futurist view and against the Protestants with an evangelistic zeal worthy of admiration!
Bellarmine was an expert at turning the Reformers against themselves. For example, he wondered why Luther, who taught that his views were based on Scripture alone, doubted the canonicity of the book of Revelation. In contrast, Bellarmine appeared to be the defender of the book of Revelation as part of the New Testament canon.
He also took painstaking efforts to document the fact that the Reformers could not even agree among themselves as to when the prophetic periods began and ended. For example, some Protestants dated the beginning of the dominion of the Antichrist from the fall of Rome (400 A. D.). Others dated it to 600 A. D., when Pope Gregory the Great took the papal throne, and still others dated it to somewhere between 200 and 773, 1,000, or even 1,200. Bellarmine contended that if the Reformers could not agree on the time period of Antichrist’s dominion, neither could they be trusted to identify who he was. Bellarmine also documented that the Early Church fathers (not the New Testament writers!!) taught an individual Antichrist who would rule for a literal three and a half year period. In this way he tried to prove that his view was the original belief of the Early Church. He also showed that each of the Reformers interpreted Daniel and Revelation’s symbols differently. In this way he worked to undermine their views regarding the identity of the Antichrist.
In chapter five of his work, Bellarmine employed an argument which would later be picked up by Protestants. There, Bellarmine rewrote history, saying that the Roman Empire had never been divided according to the specifications of the prophecy and therefore, Antichrist could not have come yet. According to Bellarmine, the complete desolation of the Roman Empire must come before the advent of the Antichrist, and this had not yet taken place. It turned out later that a host of Protestant writers picked up this argument and “ran with it”.
The essence of Bellarmine’s argument is that the Papacy cannot be the Antichrist for three reasons:
1. The Antichrist prophecies call for an individual but the Papacy is a system.
2. The Antichrist time periods demand a literal three and one half years, but the Papacy has existed for centuries.
3. Antichrist is to sit in the Jerusalem Temple, but the popes are ruling in Rome.
Let’s allow Bellarmine to tell us these things in his own words:
“For all Catholics think thus that the Antichrist will be one certain man; but all heretics teach. . . that Antichrist is expressly declared to be not a single person, but an individual throne or absolute kingdom, and apostate seat of those who rule over the church.”
(Quoted in Froom, PFF, II, p. 500).
“Antichrist will not reign except for three years and a half. But the Pope has now reigned spiritually in the church more than 1500 years; nor can anyone be pointed out who has been accepted for Antichrist, who has ruled exactly three and one-half years; therefore the Pope is not Antichrist. Then Antichrist has not yet come. (Quoted in Froom, PFF, II, p. 502).
“The Pope is not antichrist since indeed his throne is not in Jerusalem, nor in the temple of Solomon; surely it is credible that from the year 600, no Roman pontiff has ever been in Jerusalem.”
(Quoted in Froom, PFF, II, p. 502).
The above teachings were later picked up by catholic leaning Protestants such as Samuel Maitland, James Todd, William Burgh, John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren, and the renowned John Henry Newman. Then through the Schofield Bible these Jesuit lies and deceptions, all invented to destroy Protestantism, ended up in the Dallas Theological Seminary, and the rest is history.
Futurism is the principle cause and motivation behind the current war against Iran and the wholesale unconditional support for Israel. All on delusion and Jesuit deception designed, successfully, to take the teeth out of protestant scriptural authority.
How you may wonder? Through the lie, invented by Ribera and later refined by Bellarmine, that the temple, spoken of in 2 Thess.2, must be a third temple expected by the dispensation people today to be built and that it is essential to Christ's second coming. Nearly all evangelical and charismatic preachers teach this, and they are all wrong. And what's more, they are responsible for deceiving multitudes and turning the attention of sincere well meaning Christians away from true Protestantism and the biblically affirmed teaching of the reformers and their almost fanatical focus on Israel as the center of end time prophecy, when in reality the focus ought to be on the United States.
All of futurism is built on the false premise of a future physical temple in Jerusalem. It is a curious blindness that those who promote this teaching cannot see within the very verse they use as the basis for it, declares the reason why it is untenable. Paul calls this temple, whatever you want to believe it may be whether physical or spiritual, the temple of God. Paul clearly and succinctly declares the temple as God's own temple. A dwelling place for His presence. That one single profound statement renders the entire Jesuit and now modern Protestant belief in a third temple built by either apostate Jews or the Antichrist himself, as a satanic inspired deception. And now there's a war being waged on those false grounds.
