The Papacy Is the Antichrist 1 of 3 (1888) - Part 1 — J.A. Wylie

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And now to the message of tape number one from The Papacy is the Antichrist. We pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will greatly bless you as you listen. The Papacy is the Antichrist, a demonstration by Reverend J. A. Wiley, LLD, author of History of Protestantism, History of the Scottish Nation, etc., published by George MacGibbon in 1888.

The dedication is to the Reverend Ministers of the Church of Scotland, with Mr. John Hope's compliments. The following demonstration is rested on no narrow basis. Its two postulates, like two posturns, admit us into the edifice, but they are not its foundations.

The whole economy of redemption and the whole course of history are the broad substructions on which the argument is based and built up, and the author humbly submits that it cannot be overturned or the conclusion arrived at set aside without dislocating and shaking the structure of both revelation and providence.

The Papacy as the Predicted Antichrist

The same line of proof which establishes that Christ is the promised Messiah, conversely applied establishes that the Roman system is the predicted apostasy. In the life of Christ we behold the converse of what the Antichrist must be, and in the prophecy of the Antichrist we are shown the converse of what Christ must be and was.

And when we place the papacy between the two and compare it with each, we find on the one hand that it is the perfect converse of Christ as seen in his life, and on the other that it is the perfect image of the Antichrist as shown in the prophecy of him.

We conclude, therefore, that if Jesus of Nazareth be the Christ, the Roman papacy is the Antichrist. Chapter 1. The Term Antichrist. We shall not go far afield in this discussion, nor is it in the least necessary to do so.

The materials for a right decision on the question before us lie close at hand. The Apostle John, speaking of the great apostasy to arise in Christendom, calls it the Antichrist, and the Pope has taken to himself, as the name that best describes his office, the title Vicar of Christ.

All we shall ask as the basis for our argument are these two accepted facts, namely, that John styles the apostasy the Antichrist, and that the head of the Roman system styles himself Christ's Vicar. The papacy holds in its name the key of its meaning.

We shall make use of that key in unlocking its mystery and true character. The papacy cannot complain, though we adopt this line of interpretation. We do nothing more than use the key it has put into our hands.

The Apostle John, we have said, speaking of the apostasy, the coming of which he predicts, styles it the Antichrist, and we have also said that the papacy, speaking through its representative and head, calls itself the Vicar of Christ.

The first, Antichrist, is a Greek word. The second, Vicar, is an English word, but the two are in reality one, for both words have the same meaning. Antichrist, translated into English, is Vice-Christ, or Vicar of Christ, and Vicar of Christ, rendered into Greek, is Antichrist, Antichristos.

If we can establish this, and the ordinary use of the word by those to whom the Greek was a vernacular, is decisive on the point, we shall have no difficulty in showing that this is the meaning of the word Antichrist, even a Vice-Christ, and if so, then every time the Pope claims to be the Vicar of Christ, he pleads at the bar of the world that he is the Antichrist.

Moreover, this will clear our way and simplify our discussion, for let it be noted, if Antichrist signifies a Vice-Christ, that is, one who comes in the room of Christ, deception, dissimulation, counterfeit, must be an essential element in his character.

In whatever persons or systems that fundamental characteristic is lacking, we fail to find the Antichrist, whatever may be their general opposition to Christ and to Christianity, or whatever other features of the Antichrist they may bear.

They may have every other characteristic by which prophecy had described this noted adversary of Christ in his gospel, yet lacking this fundamental one, their claim to this pre-eminently evil distinction cannot be admitted.

This enables us to dismiss summarily and at once a host of Antichrists which have been conjured up by persons who have drawn upon their imagination, rather than followed any sound principle of prophetic interpretation.

The cause of the papacy is served by the false glosses and mistaken interpretations of Scripture which interpose a pseudo-Antichrist between it and prophecy, which unfolds against it so black a record and suspends above it so terrible a doom.

We shall suppose that an atheist or an infidel has been put to the bar to answer it to a charge of being the Antichrist. He has manifested a satanic malignity against the gospel and has labored to the utmost of his power to destroy it.

He has blasphemed God, execrated Christ, and derided, vilified, and persecuted all who profess his name, and on these grounds he has been assumed to be the Antichrist. The case is no imaginary one. Atheists and scoffers in former ages, Voltaire and Paine in later times, communists and pantheists on our own day, have all been arraigned as the Antichrist.

Well, let us suppose that one or other of these notoriously wicked personages or systems has been put to the bar on the charge of being the adversary predicted by John. Who are you, says the judge? Are you a vice-Christ?

So you make a profession of Christianity, and under that pretext seek to undermine and destroy it? No, replies the accused, I am no counterfeit. Christ and his gospel I hate, but I am an open enemy. I fight under no mask.

Turning to the likeness drawn by Paul and John of Christ's great rival and opponent, and finding the outstanding and essential feature in the portrait absent in the accused, the judge would be constrained to say, I do not find the charge proven.

Go your way. You are not the Antichrist. Mohammedanism comes nearer than any of the other opposing systems to the Antichrist of the Bible, yet it falls a long way short of it. Mohammed did not disavow the mission of Jesus.

On the contrary, he professed to hold him in honor as a prophet. And in much the same way do his followers still feel toward Christ. But Islam does not profess to be an imitation of Christianity. Any counterfeit that can be discovered in Mohammedanism is partial and shadowy when placed alongside the bold, sharp-cut counterfeit of Romanism.

It requires a violent stretch of imagination to accept Mohammedanism, or indeed any other known ism, as a vice-Christ. Of all systems that ever were on the earth or are now upon it, Romanism alone meets all the requirements of prophecy, and exhibits all the features of the vice-Christ.

And it does so with a completeness and a truthfulness which enables the man who permits himself to be guided by the statements of the word of God on the one hand, and the facts of history on the other, to say at once, This is the Antichrist.

What we have said is meant to indicate the lines on which our demonstration will proceed. We must trace the parallelism between their respective chiefs, Christ and the Pope, along the entire line of their career.

In this parallelism lies the essence of Antichristianism, and of course the strength of our argument. It is this counterfeit, so exact and complete, which has misled the world into the belief that this is Christianity, to the waste of ages, not a few, the unsettling and overthrowing of kingdoms, the stunting of the human understanding, and the loss of millions of immortal souls.

Prophecies of Antichrist Before His Appearance

Chapter 2. Antichrist Portrayed Before His Birth. It is somewhat remarkable that the clearest, fullest, and most lifelike description of Antichrist we possess is that which was given of him before he arose.

The papacy, if we may be allowed to anticipate what it will be the object of the following pages to demonstrate, the papacy has been twelve hundred years in existence, and during all these centuries it has been one of the main actors in the world.

Neither time nor opportunity has been lacking to it for the display of its spirit and aims. The record of its deeds lies open to the world, and he that runs may read it, and after so long, and, we may add, so dismal an acquaintance with it, it might be supposed that we should now be able to give a fuller and truer description of it than any that could possibly be given before it had come into existence.

Yet no, incomparably the most lifelike portrait of the papacy that exists is that which was given by Paul in the first century when writing to the Thessalonian Christians, and which we give below. Paul's is not the only painting of popery on the page of the Bible.

Daniel, centuries before, had foreshadowed the rise of this system in imagery of graphic vividness and dramatic grandeur. A little while after Paul, John, in symbols equally majestic and awful, foretold the advent of the same power.

The vision was doubled because the thing was sure. Paul comes in between these two prophecies, two yet one, as their inspired interpreter. He employs neither figure nor symbol, but in words, plain yet solemn, he lifts the veil and lays bare the infernal origin and satanic character of that power, which, when he wrote, was so near that the Christians to whom he addressed his epistle might almost hear the sound of its approaching footsteps and see the shadow which it had already begun to project upon the church and the world.

We quote the passage of 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 1 -11. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there comes a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above 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.

Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. Only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, even him whose 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, because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. Chapter 3. Antichrist, an Enemy Under a Mask. In order to introduce ourselves to our subject, we have taken it for granted that the system described by Paul in the passage we have just quoted is the papacy.

This is the thing to be established. We now proceed to prove this, and provided we shall show on good and conclusive grounds that the system depicted by Paul is the Roman apostasy, and that this is the same system which Daniel and John have portrayed under symbolic imagery, it will follow that one who admits the Bible to be the word of God, and that Paul wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, must believe that the papacy, that is, the Roman apostasy, is the Antichrist of Scripture.

This is not point of mere speculation. It is a question that has attendant upon it great practical issues. This inquiry has for its object the ascertainment of the true meaning of an important part of the word of God, even the better half of its prophecies.

Moreover, on this question must rest the verdict we are to pronounce on that society which calls itself the church, as also the revelations in which we are to stand to it. And on it too must depend whether we shall abandon, or whether we shall continue to occupy the ground which we have been accustomed to regard as our divine central position in our war with popery, or rather whether we ought not to end this war, and confess that we have been fighting all along under a mistake.

Antichrist as a Deceptive Religious Counterfeit

Who is Antichrist? It will help us to the right answer to this question if we shall first determine what is Antichrist. Antichrist is an enemy who makes war with the Son of God. Of that there is no doubt.

But what is the form of this war, and under what character does Antichrist carry it on? Does he wage it openly, or does he fight it under a mask? Does he take the field as an open rebel and a declared foe, or does he come as a friendly adherent who professes to bring support and help to the cause, which in reality he seeks to undermine and destroy?

To determine this point, let us look at the meaning of the word Antichrist as employed in Scripture. The reader sees that the term is a composite one, being made up of two words, Anti and Christ. The name is one of new formation, being compounded, it would seem, for this very enemy, and by its etymology expressing more exactly and perfectly his character than any older word could.

The precise question now before us is this. What is the precise sense of Anti in this connection? Does it designate an enemy who says openly and truly, I am against Christ? Or does it designate one who says plausibly, yet falsely, I am for Christ?

Which? To determine this, let us look at the force given to this prefix by writers in both classic literature and Holy Scripture. First, the old classic writers. By these, the preposition Anti is often employed to designate a substitute.

This is, in fact, a very common use of it in the classic writers. For instance, Antibasilites, he who is the locum tenens of a king, or as we should now say a viceroy, Anti, having in this case the force of the English term vice, he who filled the place of council was Antiopatus, pro-council.

He who took the place of an absent guest at a feast was entitled, or styled, Antidepnos. The preposition used in this sense of the great substitute himself, Christ is said to have given himself as an antilutron, a ransom in the stead of all.

Classic usage does not require us to give only one sense to this word and restrict it to one who seeks openly and by force to seat himself in the place of another, and by violent usurpation bring that other's authority to an end.

We are at liberty to apply it to one who steals into the office of another under the mask of friendship, and while professing to uphold his interests, labors to destroy them. This leaves us free to turn to the use of the word in Scripture.

The Antichrist comes first into view in our Lord's discourse recorded in Matthew 24 .24 and Mark 13 .22. For false Christs and false prophets shall arise and show signs and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.

Our Lord does not indeed use the word Antichrist, but what is almost its synonym, Pseudo-Christ, or false Christ, Pseudo-Christos in the Greek. Nevertheless, the persons whose coming he foretells are in the line of Antichrist.

They belong to the same family, and their grand characteristic is deception. Manifested they are not open enemies, but pretended friends. They are false Christs and false prophets, and as such are forerunners of that great Antichrist who is to succeed them, and in whom they are to find their fuller development and final consummation.

They shall seek by signs and wonders, false of course, to obscure the glory of Christ's true miracles, to weaken the evidence of his Messiahship arising therefrom, and to draw men away from him and after themselves.

The other place in the New Testament in which reference is made to Antichrist is the first and second epistles of John. The idea which John presents of the Antichrist is quite in harmony with that of our Lord.

John looks for him in the guise of a deceiver. Little children, says John, from his first epistle, chapter 2, verse 18, it is the last time. And as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now there are many Antichrists.

After this announcement of a special and great Antichrist to follow in the wake of those minor Antichrists that were already arrived and were urging their claims on the attention of the world, he comes to look more closely at the giant who was to stand up after these dwarfs had passed away.

He notes prominently one characteristic of him, and it is his falsehood. Antichrist, says John, is to be a liar, verse 22, 1 John chapter 2. Quote, Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?

He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son, unquote. St. John's words, says Archbishop Trench, seem to me decisive on the matter, that resistance to and defiance of Christ, not the false assumption of his character and offices, is the essential mark of Antichrist, unquote.

That is from Synonyms of the New Testament by R .C. Trench, B .D., page 120, published in Cambridge and London in 1854. Such is Dr. Trench's opinion, but he gives no grounds for it, and we are unable to imagine any.

We draw the exactly opposite conclusion from the Apostle's words, even that the false assumption of his character and offices is an essential mark of Antichrist. He is a liar, says John, but if he comes boldly and truthfully avowing himself the enemy of Christ, how is he a liar?

If he avows without concealment his impious design of overthrowing Christ, with what truth can he be spoken of as a deceiver? But such is the character plainly ascribed to him by John, in the second epistle, verse 7.

For many deceivers, quote, for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist, unquote. Plainly the exegesis, or rather supposition, of Dr. Trench is inadmissible.

Dr. Chalmers had no difficulty in seeing the Roman system in the apostasy predicted by Paul. We find him saying in his scripture readings, Save us, O Lord, from falling away, lest we share in the perdition that waiteth on the great apostasy.

We hold the usurpation of Rome to be evidently pointed at, and therefore let us maintain our distance and keep our resolute protest against its great abominations. That is from Dr. Chalmers' Sabbath Scripture Readings, Volume 1, page 310, as published in Edinburgh in 1848.

Archbishop Trench was misled, it may be, by the strength of the term deny. Quote,. He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. But he who does not confess when he is called to do so denies. Such is the use of the word in these applications all through the New Testament.

Such is the use John makes of it in this very passage. Quote,. For many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. It is clear that Antichrist, as depicted by our Lord and by his Apostle John, is to wear a mask and to profess one thing and act another.

He is to enter the church as Judas entered the garden, professedly to kiss his master, but in reality to betray him. He is to come with words of peace in his mouth, but war in his heart. He is to be a counterfeit Christ, Christ's likeness stamped on base metal.

He is to be an imitation of Christ, a close, clever, and astute imitation, which will deceive the world for ages. Those only accepted who, taught by the Holy Spirit, shall be able to see through the disguise and detect the enemy under the mask of a friend.

Why Antichrist Is Not an Atheist or Political Tyrant

Chapter 4. Antichrist, No Atheist or Communist Antichrist, then, is a counterfeit. But this one mark is not alone sufficient to identify the person on whom it is found as the great apostate. All deceit in religion is anti-Christian.

The other marks must come along with this one to ward us to say that we have found a pre-eminently wicked one and that portentous combination of all evil that is to form the Antichrist. Yet this one mark enables us to test certain theories which have been advanced on this subject.

If Antichrist must necessarily be a deceiver, a false Christ, then no atheist or body of atheists can be Antichrist. No pantheist or body of pantheists can be Antichrist. They are not deceivers. They are open enemies.

They make war in defiance of God and Christ and under the protestation that there is no such person as the Bible affirms filling the office of the world's mediator and savior. They hold the whole affair to be an invention of priests.

Antichrist dared to make no such avowal. It would be fatal to him. Were he to affirm that Christianity is a fable, an out and out imposture, he would cut away the ground from under his own feet. He would deny the very first postulate in his system, for there must first be a Christ before there can be an Antichrist.

And not less does this mark shut us up to the rejection of the theory which has been advanced with much earnestness and some plausibility that Antichrist is a political character or potentate, some frightfully tyrannical and portentously wicked king who is to arise and for a short space devastate the world by arms.

This is an altogether different Antichrist from that Antichrist which prophecy foreshadows. He may resemble, may surpass him in open violence, but he lacks the profound dissimulation under which Antichrist is to commit his atrocities.

The rage of the mere tyrant is indiscriminately vented upon the world at large. Antichrist's rage is concentrated on one particular object and cause. Nor with any propriety can such a one be said to sit in the temple of God, the seat on which the mock Christ specially delights to show himself.

Prophecy absolutely refuses to see in either of these theories the altogether unique and overtopping system of hypocrisy, blasphemy, and tyranny which it has foretold. So far we are helped in our search.

When we are able to put aside some of the false Antichrists, we come more within sight of the true one. We turn now to the prophecy of Paul, and we shall be blind indeed if, after the study of it, we shall be in any doubt as to whose likeness it is that looks forth upon us from this remarkable prediction.

The name Antichrist, it is true, does not occur in this prophecy. It is not needed. John had given the name. Paul presents us with his portrait. He says the Antichrist has power, a truth, an accuracy, and a fullness which has left nothing for the eighteenth centuries which have since rolled past to supplement, much less to correct or amend.

The strokes with which this portrait is drawn are few, but each is a lightning flash, and every member and feature of the terrible colossus stands revealed. Paul did not paint this portrait and leave it as a riddle to perplex and baffle future ages.

With history in our hands, there is no room for a moment's doubt about it. Since Paul wrote, there has been only one system to which this portrait can apply. It applies to it in every particular, as the photograph agrees in every liniment with the living face from which it is taken.

But it will agree with no other system that now is or ever was on the earth, even as the photograph will not agree with any countenance but that which stamped itself upon the plate of the artist. So clearly did the spirit of prophecy foresee the coming of Antichrist, and so truthfully did he enable Paul to depict him.

The key of this prophecy is in the seventh verse. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. The mystery of iniquity. The phrase is a striking one. It is not simply iniquity. It is the mystery of iniquity.

Since the time when the first transgression in Eden opened the door for its entrance, iniquity had never been absent from the earth. History is little else than a sorrowful recital of iniquities. But now a new epoch was to be opened in the career of evil.

A hitherto unexampled and unthought of organization of iniquity was about to appear. The phrase mystery of iniquity suggests a secret and terrible conspiracy to sin amongst beings of various ranks and faculties, and perhaps also of various natures.

Not a mere series of isolated acts, but a skillfully constructed system, the several parts nicely adjusted to one another, and their joint working inducing a product of tremendous evil character surpassing what any former age had witnessed.

That mystery was as yet undivulged. But it was, even now, when Paul wrote, traveling towards the light and would be revealed in due time. The mystery of iniquity. This is our true standpoint, once we may look around over the whole passage.

When surveyed from this position, Paul's prophecy will be seen to have an amplitude of meaning and a depth of import as profound as its range is vast. We venture to think that the height and depth of this prophecy have not yet been very accurately measured, or its meaning fully fathomed.

The Mystery of Iniquity and the Mystery of Godliness

What is the mystery of iniquity? The phrase suggests another, the mystery of godliness. Paul writing to Timothy says, in 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 16, without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.

These two phrases stand alone in the Bible. We read but once of the mystery of godliness, and but once of the mystery of iniquity. They are the two preeminently grand mysteries of revelation. They stand over against each other.

The mystery of iniquity, fashioning its outward character and semblance upon the mystery of godliness, making it its pattern, till at last the mystery of iniquity presents itself to the world a perfect imitation and counterfeit of the mystery of godliness.

Seeing the two mysteries stand so related to each other, the one mystery interprets the other. We must give the same height and depth, the same length and breadth, to the one as to the other, so far as the diverse origin and character of the two will permit.

We ask then, what is the precise idea of the Holy Spirit in the phrase the mystery of godliness? Does the phrase denote simply that system of spiritual truth which God has been developing during the successive ages of the world, which now at last stands fully manifested in the gospel?

No doubt this is part of the mystery of godliness, but it is not the whole, nor indeed is it the principal part of it. The mystery of godliness is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person.

So does the apostle define it. Without controversy, says he, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. It was the gradual development of certain great and supernatural principles and truths through symbols, prophecies, and typical persons, till at last they attained their completed development and full manifestation in the person of the Son of God.

The mystery of iniquity, which stands over against the mystery of godliness as its parallel and counterfeit, must be like it, like it in having its source outside the world, like it in its slow and gradual development, and like it in its final culmination.

Of it too, we must say, it is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person. It is the gathering together of all the principles of evil and the marshalling of them into one organization or host and their embodiment at last in a representative person or head.

Antichrist. He was to be the grand outcome of the apostasy, not its mere ornamental head, but its executive. He was to guide its councils, inspire its policy, execute its decrees, in short, he was to be the organ through which its terrible powers were to be put forth.

This we take to be the ruling idea in the passage. Just as the mystery of godliness is not merely the manifestation of the system of godliness, but the manifestation of God himself, so the mystery of iniquity is not merely the manifestation of the system of iniquity, but the manifestation of the person or author of iniquity.

The prophecy brings us two mysteries. The one, the counterfeit, in all points of the other. We have an invisible agent, even God, beneath the one. We have an invisible agent, even Satan, beneath the other.

We have the one mystery culminating at last in an incarnation, God manifest in the flesh. We see the other in like manner culminating in an incarnation, in a loose sense, for all its principles concentrate themselves in and show themselves to the world through its living head on earth, Antichrist.

We may go even farther and say that there is as real an incarnation of the spirit and mind of Satan in the mystery of iniquity as there is of the spirit and mind of God in the mystery of godliness. And, as in Christ, God and man meet, so in Antichrist, his counterfeit and rival, the human and the superhuman meet and act together.

Earthborn man, an archangel fallen. Chapter 6, Unfolding of the Two Mysteries. The Apostle, having brought these two mysteries upon the stage and shown them to us standing face to face, goes on to trace the parallel between the two.

This parallel is distinctly discernible in every stage of their career. The Apostle traces it first in their rise, second in their coming, and third in their full and completed development. Let us follow the parallelism step by step and stage by stage.

In their rise, for the mystery of iniquity, doth already work. It was already in existence. Its energies were all astir, but it worked in secret and was inaudible to the world. It worked as leaven doth in the meal, which keeps silently fermenting in the mass till the whole has been leavened.

It worketh as the seed does in the soil, which, germinating in the darkness, pierces the clod, bursts into the light, and, receiving an accession of strength from the sun and air, shoots up in the stem and at last culminates in flower and fruit.

The mystery of iniquity worked as treason works. The conspirators meet in secret conclave, they concert their plans unknown to the world, they speak in whispers, but their schemes at length ripen, and now they come abroad into the light of day and proclaim in the housetops what they had hatched in darkness.

So did the mystery of iniquity work. So too did the mystery of godliness work. Even at this initial stage of the two mysteries, we trace a resemblance between them. Let us think how long the gospel worked before it issued in the incarnation of the Son of God.

For ages and for generations, Christianity was a hidden mystery. The redemption of men by means of the incarnation of the Son of God was a secret, profoundly hidden in the counsels of God in eternity, and even after time had begun its course, it long remained a secret unknown to the world.

Bit by bit, this mystery revealed itself. First, the idea of incarnation was dimly made known. In the first promise, mention was made of the seed of the woman, and on this obscure intimation was built the hope of a deliverer, and that hope descended the ages with the race.

The idea of expiation was next revealed in the appointment of sacrifice, which also with the hope which is expressed and sustained came down the stream of time. Next, a complete system of ceremonial worship was instituted to reveal the coming redemption in the amplitude of its blessings.

Still the veil was upon it. It stood before the world in type. There arose an illustrious series of august personages who were forerunners or types of Christ. They exhibited to the church the offices which her incarnate Savior was to fill and the work He was to execute.

There stood up an order of prophetical men who prefigured Him as the Great Teacher. There stood up an order of sacrificial men who prefigured Him as the One Priest. There stood up an order of kingly men who prefigured Himself as a monarch, and a monarch who was to be higher and mightier than any of the monarchs of earth.

The kings of the house of Judah foreshadowed Him as sprung of a royal stock, and the heir of a throne, which all nations should serve, and before which all kings should bow. Thus did the mystery of godliness work, unfolding and still unfolding itself as the ages passed on, the type growing ever the clearer and the prophecy ever the fuller, till at last the mystery stepped out from behind the veil and stood before the world, perfected, finished, and fully revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, God manifest in the flesh, and centering in His person and flowing out from it through His life and ministry and death as rays from the sun were all the glorious doctrines of the gospel.

In like manner the mystery of iniquity kept traveling by the same stages towards the day of its final revelation. It was not the production of one, but of many ages. The fashion of the world changed. Great empires, which had filled the earth with their glory and burdened it with their oppression, went down into the grave.

Worships arose with their powerful hierarchies and grand ceremonials, and when their day was over, passed away, leaving only ruined fanes and deserted altars to tell that they had ever been. But the mystery of iniquity, as if deathless, like the being which inspired it, refused to succumb to these shocks.

It kept on its course over broken thrones and desecrated altars, ever reaching forth to that high goal where it should show itself to the nations and be the wonder of all that dwell upon the earth. Silently and stealthily, this mystery pursued its course.

For ages and for generations, it too was a hidden mystery. Paul tells us that it was working in his day. This warrants us to say that Antichrist was then born and was making trial of his infantile powers.

The world did not hear his working, but Paul, by the spirit of prophecy, did so and sounded an alarm to the church. The Gnostics and other teachers of error that had gone forth into the world so early as Paul's day were Antichrists, and those in a special who propagated the delusion that it was a phantom which the Jews seized and crucified on Calvary.

They seemed to admit the mission of Christ, yet they subverted the great end of his coming by denying his incarnation and, by consequence, the whole work of redemption. But though these teachers were Antichristian, they were not THE Antichrist.