IS ‘ANTICHRIST’ YET TO COME OR IS HE ALREADY HERE? Part V

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

IS ‘ANTICHRIST’ YET TO COME OR IS HE ALREADY HERE? Part V

Jesus warned: “For FALSE CHRISTS and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand [you have been duly warned].

Therefore if they say to you, Look, He is in the desert!’ Do not go out; or, ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ Do not believe it.” Matt. 24:23,24, NKJV.

I just realized that when Jesus warned His first disciples regarding the coming of “many false Christs” after His ascension, He meant both false messiahs (“messhiachs”) that arose among the Jews and other eastern religions but also the “many antichrists” that would lord it over the Church in its “falling away” during the Pergamos and Thyatira (Dark Ages of over a thousand years).

Apostle Paul picked up from that and warned the early church of “falling away” and revealing of the “man of sin” and the “son of perdition” the “lawless one” that was already beginning to work in his time as “the mystery of iniquity!” 2 Thess. 2:1-11.

ALL AGREED ON ANTICHRIST. “Up to the close of the [Protestant] Reformation God’s people were generally agreed that the Papacy was the Antichrist foretold in prophecy. The WALDENSES taught it. (See our past messages).

About 1384 A.D. JOHN WYCLIFFE wrote a book against the papal system entitled: ‘Of Antechreest and His Meynee.’ In fact, the English Reformers.—TYNDALE, CRANMER, LATIMER, and RIDLEY, —-all agreed in pointing to the Papacy as Antichrist. JOHN HUSS of Bohemia, in his ‘De Anatomia Antichristi,’ did the same. Turning to Germany we turn to DR. MARTIN LUTHER strong in his convictions on this subject. He says:

‘The Pope is…the true Antichrist, of whom it is written, that he sitteth in the temple of God [the church], among the people where Christ is worshipped.’ —‘Luther’s Church Postil,’ ‘Gospels,’ 25th Sunday After Trinity.”

(To be continued tomorrow). Bless all, NMF