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VIII

THE ANTICHRIST, HIS HISTORY AND HIS

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DOOM

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N dealing with a subject of this kind, time spent

in review is not always misspent. Therefore let

us sweep the horizon once more, the better to relate the present mountain peak of prophecy to the rest of the range. We have seen:

(1) That God has a purpose of redemption for the race revealed in the promise of Eden that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.

(2) At a certain point in time, He called out the nation of Israel as an instrument in the execution of this promise.

(3) The failure of Israel to fulfill her mission has caused her to be set aside temporarily while the "times of the Gentiles" are in process.

(4) These times are to come to an end in catastrophic judgment by and by, at which time Israel will have been regathered to her own land and restored to fellowship with God in order to the renewal of her commission as His witness to the world. The millennial blessing follows.

(5) But now, while Israel is rejected and the "times of the Gentiles" are in their course, God is

doing a new thing in the earth. He is calling out a people for His Name from all the nations. This people are being formed into the body of Christ, which, when its number is completed, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and to reign with Him over the millennial earth.

To return now to those catastrophic judgments. When will they fall upon the earth? What will be their character? And where, and in whom, will they be focused? To this last inquiry we address ourselves in this study.

The prophet Daniel is our authority for saying that the Gentile nations, which in earlier times were federated under Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander and the Cæsars, shall again be federated under a secular despot mightier and wickeder than they. He is described by him in chapters 6 and 8 as a "little horn," in chapter 9:26 as a "prince" of the Roman people, and in chapter 11: 36 as "the king.'

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The details of the description indicate his intellectuality and boldness: "eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things." These "great things" are "words against the Most High," and he "shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and "think to change times and laws." "His power shall be mighty," and "he shall destroy wonderfully," and "through his policy he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand."

His time will be "the time of the end," i. e., as we learn from other Scriptures, the last seven years of the present age, during which time he will "make a firm covenant" with the Jews then residing in

Jerusalem. This covenant he will break in the middle of that period and "cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease"; he will deny the Jews liberty to worship God, and will set up his own image to be worshipped on a pinnacle of the restored temple. "Yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him."

In other Old Testament Scriptures he is spoken of as "the king of Babylon," prouder even than Nebuchadnezzar "I will be like the Most High"but he "shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit" (Isa. 14; Micah 5:6). In Zechariah 11: 15-17, he is spoken of as a shepherd, but a foolish and a worthless one, who "shall eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hoofs in pieces."

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The New Testament takes up the story of his career in the Gospels. It is a common opinion of expositors that our Lord refers to him in John 5:43, where, rebuking His fellow countrymen for their unbelief and rejection of Himself, He says: "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." It is thus not improbable that this coming one may be a Jew, but in any event he will be accepted by restored Israel as their predicted Messiah. It is this fact which in a later writing of the New Testament gives him the title of "the Antichrist."

It is in the Olivet discourse of Matthew 24, however, that our Lord refers to him more particularly. "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of

desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place" (verse 15). This "abomination of desolation" is none other than the wicked "prince" of Daniel 9:27, and the same "little horn," who shall have his image placed on a pinnacle of the temple where all may behold it, and who himself on some occasion, or occasions, will be found sitting in the temple giving out that he himself is God (2 Thess. 2:4).

This allusion to Paul's words in 2 Thessalonians brings us to the next New Testament reference. In his first epistle to that church he had expatiated on the coming of Christ for His Church; but at this time a grievous persecution seems to have been raging in the city, and some of the Christians had come to believe that "the day of the Lord" had come. In other words, they thought they were already in the tribulation period, which a better intelligence doubtless would have led them to see could not be true while the Church was still on the earth. Moreover, they had been misled by a forged letter, as from Paul, that contributed to their error.

The apostle is now seeking to correct this, and he tells them that that day shall not come until after the apostasy and "the man of sin (or lawlessness) be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above (or against) 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."

A further description follows in the same chapter, in which it is said that his "coming is after the

working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." He will come to an end, however, for "the Lord shall consume him with the breath of his mouth, and shall destroy him with the brightness of his coming.'

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This may be as good a place as any to say that the common application of these words to the Pope does not fit. When he is carried into St. Peter's, he may be seated somewhat higher than what is called the "tabernacle of the host"; but still, St. Peter's is not the "temple of God." That temple was erected in Jerusalem by Solomon, according to the instruction of his father David, who said: "All this the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern" (1 Chron. 28:19). And there it is to be reërected, according to the prophets; and there the "abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet' is yet to be seen.

It is the Apostle John who specifically calls this person the Antichrist. "Who is the liar," he exclaims, "but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son" (1 John 2:22). Another evidence this is that the Pope is not he, for the Pope does not deny that Jesus is the Christ. On the contrary, he calls himself the "vicar of Christ," and in a way professes to exalt Him. He does not deny the virgin birth of Christ, but makes much of it rather, in the form of Mariolatry. Neither does he deny His atoning sacrifice, nor His resurrection, nor His coming

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