Historicist Interpretations Of The Book Of Revelation

Historicism is a method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies; it has been applied to the Book of Revelation by many writers. The Historicist view follows a straight line of continuous fulfillment of prophecy which starts in Daniel's time and goes through John's writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

One of the most influential aspects of the early Protestant historicist paradigm was the assertion that scriptural identifiers of the Antichrist were matched only by the institution of the Papacy. Particular significance and concern were the Papal claims of authority over the Church through Apostolic Succession, and the State through the Divine Right of Kings. When the Papacy aspires to exercise authority beyond its religious realm into civil affairs, on account of the Papal claim to be the Vicar of Christ, then the institution was fulfilling the more perilous biblical indicators of the Antichrist. Martin Luther wrote this view into the Smalcald Articles of 1537; this view was not novel and had been leveled at various popes throughout the centuries, even by Roman Catholic saints. It was then widely popularized in the 16th century, via sermons, drama, books, and broadside publication.
The alternate methods of prophetic interpretation, Futurism and Preterism were derived from Jesuit writings, whose counter-reformation efforts were aimed at opposing this interpretation that the Antichrist was the Papacy or the power of the Roman Catholic Church.

Origins in Judaism and Early Church

The interpreters using the historicist approach for the Book of Revelation had their origins in the Jewish apocalyptic writings, such as those in the Book of Daniel, which predicted the future time between their writing and the end of the world. Throughout most of history since the predictions of the book of Daniel, historicism has been widely used. This approach can be found in the works of Josephus, who interpreted the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2 as the Roman empire with a future power as the stone "not cut by human hands", that would overthrow the Romans. It is also found in the early church in the works of Irenaeus and Tertullian, who interpreted the fourth kingdom of Daniel as the Roman empire and believed that in the future it was going to be broken up into smaller kingdoms, as the iron mixed with clay, and in the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Jerome, as well as other well-known church historians and scholars of the early church. But it has been associated particularly with Protestantism and the Reformation. It was the standard interpretation of the Lollard movement, which was regarded as the precursor to the Protestant Reformation, and it was known as the Protestant interpretation until modern times.

Antichrist

Church Fathers

The Church Fathers who interpreted the Biblical prophecy historistically were: Justin Martyr, who wrote about the Antichrist: "He whom Daniel foretells would have dominion for a time and times and an half, is even now at the door"; Irenaeus, who wrote in ''Against Heresies'' about the coming of the Antichrist: "This Antichrist shall ... devastate all things ... But then, the Lord will come from Heaven on the clouds ... for the righteous"; Tertullian, looking to the Antichrist, wrote: "He is to sit in the temple of God, and boast himself as being god. In our view, he is Antichrist as taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies; and especially by the Apostle John, who says that 'already many false-prophets are gone out into the world' as the fore-runners of Antichrist"; Hippolytus of Rome, in his ''Treatise on Christ and Antichrist'', wrote: "As Daniel also says (in the words) 'I considered the Beast, and look! There were ten horns behind it – among which shall rise another (horn), an offshoot, and shall pluck up by the roots the three (that were) before it.' And under this, was signified none other than Antichrist"; Athanasius of Alexandria clearly held to the historical view in his many writings, writing in ''The Deposition of Arius'': "I addressed the letter to Arius and his fellows, exhorting them to renounce his impiety.... There have gone forth in this diocese at this time certain lawless men – enemies of Christ – teaching an apostasy which one may justly suspect and designate as a forerunner of Antichrist"; Jerome wrote: "Says the apostle aul_in_the_Second_Epistle_to_the_Thessalonians.html" ;"title="Second_Epistle_to_the_Thessalonians.html" ;"title="aul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians">aul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians">Second_Epistle_to_the_Thessalonians.html" ;"title="aul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians">aul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians/nowiki>, 'Unless the Roman Empire should first be desolated, and antichrist proceed, Christ will not come.'" Jerome claimed that the time of the break-up of Rome, as predicted in Daniel 2, had begun even in his time. He also identifies the Little horn of and which "shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law" as the Papacy.

Protestant view of the Papacy as the Antichrist

Protestant Reformers, including John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, as well as most Protestants of the 16th18th centuries, felt that the Early Church had been led into the Great Apostasy by the Papacy and identified the Pope with the Antichrist. The Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg headed by Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume ''Magdeburg Centuries'' to discredit the Catholic Church and lead other Christians to recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. So, rather than expecting a single Antichrist to rule the earth during a future Tribulation period, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers saw the Antichrist as a present feature in the world of their time, fulfilled in the Papacy. Like most Protestant theologians of his time, Isaac Newton believed that the Papal Office (and not any one particular Pope) was the fulfillment of the Biblical predictions about Antichrist, whose rule is prophesied to last for 1,260 years.

The Protestant Reformers tended to believe that the Antichrist power would be revealed so that everyone would comprehend and recognize that the Pope is the real, true Antichrist and not the vicar of Christ. Doctrinal works of literature published by the Lutherans, the Reformed Churches, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Anabaptists, and the Methodists contain references to the Pope as the Antichrist, including the Smalcald Articles, Article 4 (1537), the ''Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope'' written by Philip Melanchthon (1537), the Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 (1646), and the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754, John Wesley published his ''Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament'', which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the United Methodist Church. In his notes on the Book of Revelation (chapter 13), Wesley commented: "The whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII are undoubtedly Antichrists. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit."

The identification of the Pope with the Antichrist was so ingrained in the Reformation Era, that Luther himself stated it repeatedly:

and,

John Calvin similarly wrote:

John Knox wrote on the Pope:

Thomas Cranmer on the Antichrist wrote:

John Wesley, speaking of the identity given in the Bible of the Antichrist, wrote:

Roger Williams wrote about the Pope:

The identification of the Roman Catholic Church as the apostate power written of in the Bible as the Antichrist became evident to many as the Reformation began, including John Wycliffe, who was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the doctrine and practices of the Catholic Church, which he believed had clearly deviated from the original teachings of the early Church and to be contrary to the Bible. Wycliffe himself tells (''Sermones'', III. 199) how he concluded that there was a great contrast between what the Church was and what it ought to be, and saw the necessity for reform. Along with John Hus, they had started the inclination toward ecclesiastical reforms of the Catholic Church.

When the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli became the pastor of the Grossmünster in Zurich in 1518, he began to preach ideas on reforming the Catholic Church. Zwingli, who was a Catholic priest before he became a Reformer, often referred to the Pope as the Antichrist. He wrote: "I know that in it works the might and power of the Devil, that is, of the Antichrist".

The English Reformer William Tyndale held that while the Roman Catholic realms of that age were the empire of Antichrist, any religious organization that distorted the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments also showed the work of Antichrist. In his treatise ''The Parable of the Wicked Mammon'', he expressly rejected the established Church teaching that looked to the future for an Antichrist to rise up, and he taught that Antichrist is a present spiritual force that will be with us until the end of the age under different religious disguises from time to time. Tyndale's translation of 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, concerning the "Man of Lawlessness" reflected his understanding, but was significantly amended by later revisers, including the King James Bible committee, which followed the Vulgate more closely.

In 1870, the newly formed Kingdom of Italy annexed the remaining Papal States, depriving the Pope of his temporal power. However, the Papal rule over Italy was later restored by the Italian Fascist regime (albeit on a greatly diminished scale) in 1929 as head of the Vatican City state; under Mussolini's dictatorship, Roman Catholicism became the State religion of Fascist Italy (see also Clerical fascism), and the Racial Laws were enforced to outlaw and persecute both Italian Jews and Protestant Christians,; especially Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Thousands of Italian Jews and a small number of Protestants died in the Nazi concentration camps.

Today, many Protestant and Restorationist denominations still officially maintain that the Papacy is the Antichrist, such as the conservative Lutheran Churches and the Seventh-day Adventists. In 1988, Ian Paisley, Evangelical minister and founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, made headlines with such a statement about Pope John Paul II. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod states about the Pope and the Catholic Church:

Other views

Some Franciscans had considered the Emperor Frederick II a positive Antichrist who would purify the Catholic Church from opulence, riches, and clergy.

Some of the debated features of the Reformation's Historicist interpretations reached beyond the Book of Revelation. They included the identification of:
* the Antichrist ( 1 and 2 John);
* the Beast of Revelation 13;
* the Man of Sin, or Man of Lawlessness, of 2 Thessalonians 2 ();
* the "Little horn" of Daniel 7 and 8;
* The Abomination of desolation of Daniel 9, 11, and 12; and
* the Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17.

Seven churches

The non-separatist Puritan, Thomas Brightman, was the first to propose a historicist interpretation of the Seven Churches of Revelation 2–3. He outlined how the seven Churches represent the seven ages of the ''Church of Christ''. A typical historicist view of the ''Church of Christ'' spans several periods of church history, each similar to the original church, as follows:
# The age of Ephesus is the apostolic age.
# The age of Smyrna is the persecution of the Church through AD 313.
# The age of Pergamus is the compromised Church lasting until AD 500.
# The age of Thyatira is the rise of the papacy to the Reformation.
# The age of Sardis is the age of the Reformation.
# The age of Philadelphia is the age of evangelism.
# The age of Laodicea is liberal churches in a "present day" context.

The age of Laodicea is typically identified as occurring in the same time period as the expositor. Brightman viewed the age of Laodicea as the England of his day. In the Millerite movement, each church represented a dateable period of ecclesiastical