Is the Pope the Antichrist?

For ages, since Martin Luther’s time at least, there have been those who claimed that the Roman Catholic Pope, or the Roman church itself, is the Antichrist. Myriads of scriptures have been used to display the similarities and comparisons of the Pope to the Beast.  If one reads just on the surface level, he or she could be easily persuaded.

But one shouldn’t do so!  Our instruction is to “Study to show thyself approved” (2 Timothy 2:15).

This July 4 blog from a Zimbabwe believer is one of many blog posts, articles, books, and videos proclaiming the Pope as the antichrist.  Unfortunately, an odd system of Biblical hoola-hoops was used in drawing the blog’s conclusions.

The blog correctly states that the Antichrist is a religious and political power.  From there the author goes awry.  He claims that the 1,260 days (42 months) in which the Antichrist speaks blasphemies is really 1,260 years.  He gains this interpretation by using Ezekiel 4:6 and Numbers 14:34.  While both scriptures speak of days and years, neither passage gives one any indication that when God says “days” he means “years.”  As has often been said, “When the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense.”

With this change of definition, the bloggist began looking for a geo-political power that was dominant for 1,260 years,  then is unexpectedly wounded but then healed of its wound and gains global control.  The 1,260 year period claimed is 538-1798 A.D., at which time the Catholic church received a mortal wound, but then rose again from near death 59 years later, under Mussolini. 

Still not convinced?  Perhaps the information that the Latin term Vicarius Filii Dei, meaning “vicar of the Son of God”, which is the title of the Pope, happens to add up to 666 using the Roman numeral system.  The “mark of the Beast” is Sunday worship as opposed to Sabbath worship.

It doesn’t seem to bother the Antichrist-is-the-Pope crowd that their principles of interpretation are flawed nor that dozens of other Biblical descriptions of the Antichrist are not at all fulfilled in the Pope.  They were looking for the Antichrist, and in their mind they found him.

Now all that is left is the rebuilding of the Temple…followed by the Pope holding mass from the Holy of Holies!