Can anyone explain how the "The Pope is the antichrist" thing works?

[laconicsax]

If I'm not mistaken, the conspiracy theory that the Pope is the antichrist predates the Reformation. Does anyone here know how this is supposed to work?

Does each new Pope become the antichrist in turn, or have they always been the antichrist, meaning that there are multiple antichrists? If each new Pope becomes the antichrist in turn, how does the new Pope become the antichrist and at what point?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. My religion is X. There is religion Y. X =/= Y.

Therefore, the leader of religion Y is Ultimate Evil.

QED.

[laconicsax]

3. That's the only part that makes sense.

It's the process or mechanism that I'm curious about. Since John Paul II was supposed to be the antichrist, and Benedict XVI is now, at what point did Ratzo become the antichrist? Was he always the antichrist? Did he instead become the antichrist at some point, and if so, when?

:shrug:

[skepticscott]

2. Don't try to figure it out

It'll hurt your brain.

[Angry Dragon]

4. Throughout Church history at times there was more than one Pope

I believe the anti-christ thing works by soul shifting

[laconicsax]

8. What happens when there's no Pope?

Soul-shifting makes me wonder--at what point is the 'soul' of the antichrist supposed to inhabit the new Pope? Does it leave the previous Pope before death or after? What does it do in the interim?

I know there are people who sincerely believe the whole "the Pope is the antichrist" mess, and while I doubt any are DUers, I'm hoping someone may have picked up the explanation somewhere.

[Angry Dragon]

9. When a Pope dies the anti-christ spirit that was living in his soul

then transfers to the Camerlengo until the new Pope is chosen.

The soul never dies so it is an easy transition for the anti-christ spirit

Funny that politics plays such a huge role in the choosing of the new head of a religion

[laconicsax]

11. Well, that's an elegant explanation. n/t

[Deep13]

5. Something about being a false prophet and one of the beasts of Revelation.

Beyond that, I have no idea. I guess it's mostly "I believe in the literal truth of the Gospels, therefore anyone who is successfully convincing people that a different view of them is right must be Satanic."

[LuvNewcastle]

6. There's a lot of talk about the Anti-Christ

in Revelation. People can't really make head nor tail of much of Revelation since it seems mostly to be ravings of a madman, but some preachers come along occasionally and find a new 'interpretation' of some passage. There are verses in Revelation which mention an "Antichrist" and a "False Prophet." When I was forced to attend the Baptist church as a child, I remember different theories being floated as to who those men might be (they were always called men).

Some preachers said that the Antichrist would be the Pope, but that was not the most common opinion. Most of them seemed to believe, for reasons unknown to me, that the Antichrist would be a Jewish man and the Pope would be the False Prophet who would proclaim the Antichrist to be the Son of God. According to their reasoning, the Antichrist would have to be Jewish because Jesus was Jewish. I'm pretty sure that's what they said, anyway.

[laconicsax]

7. The only explicit mention is in John.

I could be mistaken on this, but I think the mentions in Revelation are implied rather than explicit.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. You're right.

I just looked it up. Revelation talks about "beasts" and because the John who wrote Revelation was believed by many to be the same person, they used "Beast" and "Antichrist" interchangeably. Many people today consider John of Patmos and John the Apostle to be different men. They use Daniel to explain their theories as well. I used to write papers on different novels and stories and I did the same thing that the preachers I used to hear would do in their sermons -- I would take a character or story from one book and compare/contrast it with that of another book. Then I would weave them together and make them seem as if they had something in common. I usually got good grades.....

[Adsos Letter]

19. Same with the one in 2 Thessalonians, where "Man of Sin"

was understood early on to refer to Antichrist (as opposed to small-a "antichrists").

[onager]

12. 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith...

26.4. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1689_Baptist_Confession_of_Faith

Since I was raised as an SoB - Southern Baptist - I heard that message a lot as a kid. Some preachers outright said the Pope was the Antichrist. Other preachers were more ecumenical and didn't say that...exactly. But they interpreted all those "sevens" in Revelation as direct references to Rome in general, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular.

To put this is context, I grew up in the rural South, where Catholics and Jews were about as common as Martians. The closest Catholic church was about 20 miles away, located suspiciously near a nest of godless heathens known as a "college."

The first Catholic I knew personally was a fascinating girl I met when I was about 14 yrs. old. Not only Catholic, but from New York! (Her dad had been transferred, and I always wondered who he had pissed off.) We used to meet at the movies on Saturday afternoon, but unfortunately we didn't discuss much theology.

[Thats my opinion]

13. If you have to go back to 1689

trying looking at what scientists were saying in that era. I haven't heard anyone utter or primitive anti-Catholic bigotry in recent times.

[Angry Dragon]

14. I was wondering what had happened to you

had not seen any posts from you lately

[dmallind]

22. Jack Chick? 2008? If that's not recent then the gulf between Jesus and Mark is aeons

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0047/0047_01.asp

[onager]

24. Try looking at what I said under the quote.

I heard exactly the same message, from many different species of Protestants, while growing up in the South. In fairly "recent times." And I can guarantee you that where I grew up, to this very day, people are still calling the Pope the Antichrist.

Of course, if YOU didn't personally hear it, then obviously it never happened.

:crazy:

[laconicsax]

15. By that time, there had already been many, many antichrist Popes.

"Antichrist" was used as an attack against the Pope as far back as the 10th century and a common theme among early Protestantism was that the Pope was the antichrist. By the time you get to 1689, Protestants had called 24 different Popes antichrist over almost 170 years.

[LuvNewcastle]

16. Was the Bishop of Rome ever called an antichrist

by the other churches in the Roman Empire? It seems that I recall there was some conflict over whether the Pope was the Head of the Church or merely the first among equals. Patriarchs and Bishops of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, etc. were considered by many to be just as important as the Pope. Was the Pope called an antichrist by any Christians in those days? Of course, that would have been well before the 10th century.

[Adsos Letter]

18. The idea of "Angelic Pope/Papal Antichrist"

was a theme developed by various Catholic exegetes in association with the Monastic and Gregorian Reform movements, and the rise of the Papal Monarchy.

And the Eastern Churches argued with Rome about Papal supremacy, and contiued the argument from Constantinople (after Islam overran the territories of the other Eastern centers) well into the Crusader period of the Middle Ages.

The Roman Church even struggled within itself over the authority of the Pope within the Western Church during the Conciliar period.

[Adsos Letter]

17. Revelation, 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (Man of Sin), 1 & 2 John...

and certain texts pulled from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah in the OT.

As I understand it there is actually very little specific mention of "Antichrist" or "antichrists" in the bible; most of the picture is developed from types, anti-types, symbols. etc., and varies according to historical time-period and theological persuasion.

The specific association with an individual Pope, or the Catholic Church in general, probably finds its root in the statement of the ante-Nicene Church bishop Polycarp (ca. 69 – ca. 155) who "warned the Philippians that everyone that preached false doctrine was an antichrist."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist#Post-Nicene_Christianity

You can see how this would become useful for anyone disagreeing with the Church, even from within the Church itself; for example, the development of the idea of "Angelic Pope/Papal Antichrist" was a theme developed by various Catholic exegetes in association with the Monastic and Gregorian Reform movements, and the rise of the Papal Monarchy.

Protestantism incorporated the association with either the Pope or the Church (or both) early on.

The late 10th-century monk, Adso of Montier-en-Der, is (I think) the earliest surviving source for the full-blown description of Antichrist which contained the elements that would carry on through the Medieval period. His Libellus de Antichristo ("Life of Antichrist" also known as "Life and Times of Antichrist" or simply "The Antichrist") was collated from the various ideas floating around in his day. Many of these elements continue today in the eschatology of Dispensationalists ("Left Behind" series, or Hal Lindsay's "Late Great Planet Earth" for instance).

Historicist interpretation, which was dominant in Protestantism during the 17th-thru-19th centuries, uses less of these elements and also (I think) places more specific emphasis on the Catholic Church as "Babylon" or the "Beast" power, and the Pope as Antichrist.

If you're interested in doing some reading on the historical development of the idea of the Antichrist, here is a list of books I have which I found interesting:

A couple of interesting ones on the history of Antichrist interpretation in America (covering both Dispensationalist and Historicist interpretations:

Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession by Fuller
When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture by Paul Boyer

This one is especially good on explaining the Historicist interpretation of Seventh Day Adventism, one of the Protestant denominations which has retained the Papacy/Antichrist/Beast interpretation. Especially interesting because they assign a negative apocalyptic role to the United States, based on an expected destruction of Church/State separation and the loss of other Constitutionally protected rights:

Adventism & the American Republic: Public Involvement Of A Major Apocalyptic Movement by Douglas Morgan

Another study on the development of Historicism:

Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England by Christopher Hill

Historical development of the Antichrist theme itself:

Antichrist by Bernard McGinn
Visions of the End by Bernard McGinn
The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages by Bernard McGinn

The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism 3 volumes, various editors and authors. Very interesting survey from the origins of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic ideas through current interpretations.


The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore by Bousset

Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages by Whalen
Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future by Reeves
Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages by Hughes

[Silent3]

20. Maybe it's a sort of "Dread Pirate Roberts" thing. n/t

[laconicsax]

21. +1

[Taverner]

23. Starts with the Anabaptist movement

Which, Anabaptists will claim, has been around since the time of Paul. They're dead wrong, but they do predate the Reformation.

The Anabaptists were a response to the Medici-controlled Vatican, which was selling indulgences among other things. Pope had orgies, slept with small children and medium sized animals, ran the Vatican like the Mafia, etc. The Showtime show was actually pretty good.

So from this, the Anabaptists declared the Vatican 'Babylon' and with the recurring theme in Christianity that Jesus is going to come back any moment now, it seemed like the Babylon described in Revelation.