Speratus,

It's obvious that you have a very well developed and elaborate eschatological narrative worked out in your head, complete with dark conspiracies and villains who are so cunningly clever they are always several steps ahead of anyone who might expose them or their insidious secret plans. But so far I have not seen any good Scriptural support or evidence for these speculations; if I may say so, thus far your arguments are all Jenkins and no LaHaye.

Pilgrim makes the right points in response to your charge that Boniface VIII's denial of sola fide is equivalent to Benedict XVI denying that Jesus is the the Son of God, that he is the Christ, and that he came and will return in the flesh. Is every heresy equivalent to or identical with every other? Are there no distinctions? As Pilgrim observed, all popes have been guilty of myriad heresies, including Benedict XVI, and there is no need to add heresies that they have explicitly denounced and condemned to their account. As harsh as his words may sound, this is slander and bearing false witness.

In response to my statement that "the only references to the Antichrist (as opposed to "the Beast," the "man of lawlessness," or the "Abomination of Desolation") that I can find are in the letters of John," you said:

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Please refer to the WCF for equivalent names in scripture.

Well, the Westminster divines don't mention "the Beast," but they do refer to "that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God," which I suppose means the "man of sin" or "lawlessness" and "son of perdition" that Paul describes in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12. While many people believe this passage refers to and describes The Antichrist, simply calling him by another name, I am not convinced that it does, and I do not believe that the text demands this, though it may be a valid interpretive inference. The Westminster Confession may consider the "man of sin" and "the antichrist" equivalent terms (although this too seems debatable) but I do not. I am open to biblical arguments demonstrating why the Westminster Confession is right about the pope being the antichrist, and the antichrist being the same person as the "man of lawlessness;" but, as Pilgrim has noted elsewhere, it is not an inerrant document, and it cannot simply be quoted like Scripture to put an end to an argument. While it does provide scriptural texts to justify and defend its statements, it does not provide a defense for its interpretation of these passages. That is something you must do.

But really all of this is beside the point. Assuming that the "man of lawlessness," "the Beast," "the Abomination of Desolation," and "the Antichrist" are all the same person (or even the same 'office' as some would have it), nothing in Scripture indicates or even suggests that his blasphemous acts and/or heretical denials are secret, hidden, or concealed; rather, they are performed openly and spoken plainly for all to see and hear. People are/were/will be "deceived" and damned by believing these lies which are/were/will be openly proclaimed.

Christ is the sole head of the Church (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:8), and the Roman Catholic Church's claim that the pope is the head of the church and the Vicar of Christ is unbiblical, blasphemous, and heretical; it is even un-Christian and anti-Christian. But it is not the spirit or doctrine of the antichrist, because it does not deny those things that the Bible says the antichrist will. The fact still remains that no pope (that I know of) has ever denied that Jesus was the Christ, that he was the Son of God, or that He came in the flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. John Paul II did not deny these things, and Benedict XVI has not. If and when he does then it will be obvious that he manifests the spirit of the antichrist, and is an antichrist, if not The Antichrist. Until then, in my humble opinion, all you've got is an unbiblical conspiracy theory.



In Christ,

Brad Hammond

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