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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 11 SECTION 2:2

 

3. "The God of the Earth" and "the Antichrist" Identical

 


 
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Thus, in this eleventh chapter, two Deities are presented to view; the one living and true Deity, styled in the C.V., "the God of Heaven," and his counterfeit and rival, called "the God of the Earth." This is the Antichrist -- ho antichristos. The preposition anti in composition has the force of instead, equal to, like, corresponding to, counter, against, &c. In the word antichrist, which is not a classical word, but one especially coined by inspiration, it signifies AN Anointed One substituted for THE Anointed One; and therefore an usurper of the rights of the true. This is certainly a hostile position for one to hold, and puts him in antagonism to Christ. But an enemy to Christ is not the force of the word. It signifies, as Mr. Elliott contends in his note upon antipope, one occupying the true Christ’s place, receiving his honors, and exercising his functions.

The germ which in after ages was fully developed into the Antichrist was the denying the Father and the Son (1 John ii. 22). This denial was in the sense of not confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (2 John 7). All who held this damnable tradition (which in our time is an article of "orthodoxy" so called) forsook the fellowship of the apostles, and were thus manifested as antichrists.

"Ye have heard," says John, "that The Antichrist comes; even now are there many antichrists. They went out from us, but they were not of us." These were "false prophets," spirits, or teachers, whose doctrine was "that of the Antichrist that should come; and even now already," says John, "is in the world" (1 John iv. 3). They confessed not, that he whom they called Jesus Christ was a man in the flesh common to all mankind, which is sarx amartias, Sin’s flesh (Rom. viii. 3). They maintained that he had another kind of flesh, which was pure, holy, and immaculate. They confounded his immaculate, or spotless, character, with his maculate flesh. This was a fatal heresy; for if Jesus was not crucified in the flesh common to us all, then "sin was" not "condemned in the flesh," as all the apostles taught; and there has been as yet no sacrifice for sin, and consequently there are no means of remission of sins extant.

This immaculate nature of Jesus was the germ of the Catholic Apostasy headed up in the Antichrist, or Deity of the Earth. All who taught the dogma were the founders of a New Religion, and became its "Fathers;" and all who received their traditions became, with them, the Mystical Body of Antichrist, whose Head is the Deity of the Earth. The immaculate nature of Jesus, however, involved "the Fathers," and their "Father of the Fathers" -- pater pateron -- in the necessity of transforming the mother of Jesus into an immaculate virgin-goddess -- immaculate in her conception, and therefore not of the common flesh of Jewish nature. The Deity of the Apostasy was bound to decree this to avoid the inconvenient questions, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" (Job xiv. 4); and, "How can he be clean that is born of woman?" (Job xxv. 4). Job says, "Not one" can do this. But this paragon of patience knew nothing of the Pope! He undertook to accomplish Job’s impossibility; for nothing is impossible with the Great Blasphemer of the Deity of the Heaven!! He decreed that the woman Mary was of clean and holy flesh; and therefore the thing born of her was "a thing" -- spotless flesh untainted of Adam’s sin, though eph’ ho pantes hemarton, in him all sinned, which an unsophisticated mind would suppose included all liable to death; Eli, Mary, her mother, and Jesus all died, and must necessarily have been included federally in Adam. But these considerations are no difficulty with the Chief Sorcerer of "Christendom." His magic wand, "thus I decree," transforms all lies into divine truths, and the grossest absurdities into the sublimest and most adorable mysteries!

Thus, then, "the Antichrist" is the imperial and pontifical incarnation of immaculate-conceptionism; ideally conceived in apostolic times; personally enthroned A.D. 604-8; and culminating in the pontificate of Leo X, A.D. 1513-21. The blasphemies of the Antichrist, the Eyes and Mouth of the Beast of the Abyss (xiii. 1) attained the most audacious phase of their profanity in his reign; and from the intense disgust they created even in the monkish mind, became the occasion of the renowned ANTIPAPAL REBELLION led off by the Augustinian monk of Erfurt. At this crisis, there was no impiety this Lion-Mouth forebore to utter. His pretensions were as high as heaven; his moral degradation, deep as "the lowest hell." His assumption of divine honors, as the Christ-Impersonation, is symbolized in a pontifical medal, on the reverse of which is a lion with his right foot resting on the globe, representing the pope, who assumed the name of Lion X, being crowned by an angel; with the legend, or utterance of the angel, "Vicit Leo de Tribu Iudae" -- The Lion of the Tribe of Judah has conquered.

Such is the Antichrist, once a formidable power in all Antichristendom by which he was worshipped; but now, as the phrase is "standing upon his last legs," a bye-word and a scorn to millions. But, although the lines of his temporality are contracted almost to the limits of "the Seven Mountains," his divine attributes are acknowledged by many nations, and peoples, crazed and intoxicated by the wine administered to them by the spiritual knaves who are devoted to his will. Respect for this deified impropriator of the attributes of "the Father and the Son," is, however, not wholly confined to papists. The governments of Protestant peoples send their representatives to his court; and subsidize his emissaries in their states. Their schools are patronized by pious sinners of "orthodox" antipapal "abominations;" who, being profoundly ignorant of the history of "the God," or not believing its testimony, entrust the formation of their children’s minds to his spirituals, whose intoxicating superstition and blasphemy inscribe "his mark in their foreheads," and prepare them for drinking the wrath of God in the outpouring of his indignation (Apoc. xiv. 9,10). Many calling themselves protestants recognize the popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and such like, as christians; and the church over which they preside as a true one, and the Mother of all others. In such a recognition is abundant proof, that they do not know what constitutes a christian; and that, consequently, they have no scriptural claim to the name themselves. The church of the Antichrist is undoubtedly the mother of all protestant churches. This I would in no wise dispute; for their dogmas are all stained with the "great things and blasphemies" of his mouth. The fathers of protestantism, in a qualified sense benefactors, were but the rebellious servants of the Antichrist, who revolted from his authority, but held on to many of his traditions. While they rejected Antichrist they did not submit to Christ; but allied themselves with sinful princes and governors of the court. The papal scheme of salvation was through penances and works of merit; the Lutheran and its fellows, "justification by faith ALONE." These two schemes divide the Court of the Gentiles. They are both equally false; and therefore, neither of them "the power of God for the salvation of them that believe." The principle of the Spirit’s witnessing prophets, is "justification through the One Faith." This "One Faith" is proposed for faith, which, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone" (James ii. 17). To the one faith belongs "the law of faith," which excludes all boasting; and where law is, obedience is required (Rom. iii. 27). The one faith was intrusted to the apostles that they might go forth, and publish it "for obedience to the faith for his name among all nations" (Rom. i. 5; xvi. 26). All who received the one faith, and yielded the obedience it demands, "believed the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of Jesus Christ; and were immersed into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, for repentance and the remission of sins (Acts viii. 12; ii. 38; Matt. xxviii. 19). The firm of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer and Company, knew nothing of this; yet they were highly useful in their day. They were Satan casting out Satan, whereby his kingdom was greatly weakened. They fought their master with his own weapons, and prevailed and became the founders of Harlot-Superstitions, which flourished in power and worldly glory, while the Spirit’s Witnesses were lying dead and unburied in the breadth of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified" (xi. 6,9). In this breadth, plateia, they still flourish in all pomps and vanities of sin and folly. They are useful antagonists to the power of the Antichrist, while they are themselves but antichristian fellowships inimical to the truth. But, the Deity of the heaven, in his providence, educes good out of evil to his saints, "for whose sake are all things." The antagonisms of Satan so neutralize his power, that his Deity in Chief can no longer torment them unto death. So shorn is he of his glory, that though still upon his throne, and wearing the pontifical mitre and the imperial tiara, his divine bombast is a bursted bubble, and he stands before the world "the False Prophet of the Beast" (xvi. 13; xix. 20); and unconsciously waiting with the beast, until the expiration of the "forty and two months;" when the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has burlesqued and blasphemed; and the saints whom he has murdered, shall pay him in his own coin; and utterly destroy him in the brightness of their manifestation.

 

 


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