The Reformed Church’s Lost Doctrine of Antichrist
There was a time in my Christian walk that eschatology, that is, the study of the doctrine of end times, didn’t seem all that important. There were a lot of competing ideas about end times in the popular Christian press, but none of the popular ones that I saw made much of an impact on me. None of them struck me as compelling.
But the longer I’ve been a Christian, the more I’ve come to appreciate the importance of having a sound understanding of eschatology.
Take the doctrine of the identity of Antichrist. Although many Presbyterians and members of other Reformed churches may be surprised to hear this, the original version of the Westminster Confession of Faith had a very well-developed statement on Antichrist, leaving no one in doubt as to the identity of this person.
It was the Pope of Rome.
Westminster Confession of Faith 25.6 originally read,
There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.
I suspect not a few Presbyterians in 2022 would be surprised to hear that this sort of language was in the original Confession. Further, of those who know about it, not a few probably consider it an embarrassing relic from a barbarous era that is best forgotten.
After all, Rome has changed since the bad old days of the 17th century when those words were first penned.
Well, yes and no. Semper eadem, always the same, is the motto of the Roman Catholic Church-State (RCCS). In many ways, the Little Horn speaking great things has not changed at all from the time when then Reformers to a man identified the office of the papacy as the Scriptural Antichrist, man of sin, and son of perdition.
Rome still maintains its false faith-works non-gospel, its blasphemous doctrine of transubstantiation, and its promoting of the worship of Mary – I am well aware that the RCCS argues that it does not worship Mary but rather venerates her; this is a distinction without a difference - and the other “saints.”
Of course, this is not a full catalog of all of Rome’s false doctrines.
But while Rome still carries on with its old-school heresies, she had added to herself additional false doctrines since the time of the Reformation. Papal infallibility, the immaculate conception of Mary, and her bodily assumption into heaven have all come in the last 170 years, well after the time of Luther and Calvin.
If anything, the RCCS is more heretical now than it was in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door.
But in addition to being more heretical than it was 500 years ago, Rome is also an organization recovering from a mortal wound inflicted on it by the Reformation.
By God’s grace, Rome no longer has control of the civil governments of the nations. If it had this, doubtless the fires of the autos de fé would be burning in 2022 as they did in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.
But even though Rome currently does not and cannot carry out its butcheries as it did in the past, this does not mean that Rome is not a clear and present danger to the lives, fortunes, and liberties of present-day Christians. Nor does it mean that Rome has given up the idea of once again ruling the nations – this time on a truly worldwide scale - as it did in Europe during the Middle Ages.
With these things in mind, it’s important for the reader to understand that the doctrine of Antichrist is not some trivial matter or some theological footnote, but one of great importance to the comfort of the individual believer, to the witness of the Church of Jesus Christ, and even to the liberty of the nations, to which the papacy is a constant threat.
Regarding the comfort of the individual believer, I would go so far as to say that unless one understands the proper identity of Antichrist – and by this, I mean “popery in the Church of Rome” as Charles H. Spurgeon put it – he runs the continual risk of falling into sinful beliefs and practices in his Christian walk. For example, he will fail to recognize the Romanized “gospel” of faith and works preached from many Reformed pulpits as the Romish heresy that it is. He will lack the discernment needed to keep himself from falling into ecumenist practices such as working shoulder to shoulder with Roman Catholics to oppose abortion. Indeed, such a person will be greatly offended if someone points out to him that by yoking with Roman Catholics, even for a good cause such as pro-life, he is compromising the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone, the doctrine of the standing or falling church.
Because of their rejection of the Reformed doctrine of Antichrist, twenty-first-century Reformed churches find themselves impotent to stand against his aggressive attacks on them. For that matter, many Reformed churches are blind to the fact that they are even under attack by Antichrist, even as they argue that he already came and went in the first century AD.
In many ways, the tactics of the RCCS are more subtle and dangerous here in our own day than they were in the time of the Reformers. Back in the day, Rome would throw you in jail, have you tortured, and then executed in a most brutal fashion. In addition to that, you’d find yourself publicly denounced as a heretic by one or more of their priests, bishops, cardinals, or popes.
But during the Second Vatican Council, the Church adopted a different tactic: kill them with kindness.
Instead of fulminating against Protestants as heretics by hurling anathemas at them as the Council of Trent did, Rome softened its language, preferring to call them “separated brethren.”
This softer approach has borne fruit for Antichrist, as the many signed agreements Rome has entered into with various Protestant groups attest.
One such effort, Evangelicals & Catholics Together, attempted to convince wary Evangelicals that Rome believed the same gospel they did. Sadly, in some cases this is all too true, as many conservative Baptist and Presbyterian churches have fallen for the mongrelized faith-works non-gospel taught by the likes of Richard Gaffin, and John Piper.
The danger of the failure to identify Antichrist as the papacy is not limited just to what we think of as traditionally church issues. It is the settled opinion of this author that unless one believes the doctrine of the papal Antichrist, he will never fully understand the political and economic upheavals going on all around him.
If you investigate the Covid deception, you’ll find Jesuit fingerprints all over it. Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Justin Trudeau, and Klaus Schwab are some of the prominent Jesuits of the short robe heavily involved in promoting Covid tyranny. Pope Francis has been positively enthusiastic about pushing vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and lockdowns.
Then there’s the matter of what this author has sometimes called Covid 2.0, the war in Ukraine. Just last week, in a move designed to fulfill the request of Our Lady of Fatima – the Fatima apparition was not the Biblical Mary as is claimed by Rome, rather, it appears to have been an example of a demonic episode, the very sort of lying wonder Christians are supposed to be able to discern – to consecrate Russia to her, which would result in Orthodox Russia acknowledging the authority of the Pope and ushering in an era of peace.
It is the opinion of this author that one of the major drivers of the constant demonization of Russia and Vladimir Putin in the media is the desire of the Antichrist RCCS to subvert the nation and bring it under its authority. After all, if the Pope cannot reign supreme in Russia, he cannot reign supreme in all the world. And this is something that is entirely unacceptable to the megalomanic popes.
Immigration is another very practical political matter that cannot be properly understood apart from understanding the globalist ambitions of the RCCS and the Antichrist who is her head.
Rome hates, sovereign nations, seeing them, correctly, as impediments to her ambitions of world domination. For Antichrist, mass, taxpayer-subsidized, illegal immigration has become one of his primary tools for weakening and subverting entire nations. The pope was, and is, one of the biggest cheerleaders of the flood of migrants loosed on Europe in the last decade. Likewise, he is one of the biggest, perhaps the biggest, promoters of the immigration chaos being loosed on Americans since the installation of the Biden regime in America in 2021.
It is no accident that America’s ongoing immigration disaster is taking place under a Roman Catholic president who was cheated into office, most likely with the assistance of RCCS. For what it’s worth, Joe Biden, when he’s in Washington D.C. attends a Jesuit-run parish.
A nominally-Protestant President, Donald Trump, was cheated out of office and replaced by a Roman Catholic President committed to carrying out the political and economic program of the Antichrist.
So far, things are going Antichrist’s way.
America is under full-bore assault by Antichrist, yet the vast majority of American Christians have no idea who is attacking them. They have no idea of the level of evil to which they are being subjected.
The news media won’t tell them.
The politicians won’t tell them.
Conservative pundits won’t tell them.
Tragically, their churches won’t tell them.
So who will tell them?