This is the next chapter after Chapter IV. Time of Antichrist’s Appearance.

IRENEUS had long previously conjectured that the “name of the Beast” was LATEINOS—the Greek spelling of the Roman LATINUS—as that name contains the mystic number six hundred and sixty-six, (l=30, a=1, t=300, e=5, i=10, n=50, o=70, s=200=666.) (Note from the webmaster: I don’t understand how or from where the author assigns a numerical value to these letters. Somebody held me please!) and Latins were supreme in Europe from Christ’s day until the disruption of the Roman Empire. Other patristic (church fathers) writers similarly located the Antichrist; for instance, Sybilla said: “The greatest terror and fury of his Empire, and the greatest woe that he shall work, shall be by the banks of the Tiber.”

The confirmation of the application of this to Rome by the unconscious testimony of Pagan poets and historians is very striking. By the grouping together of the first five heads,(Rev. xvii, 10) the order is not more marked in prophecy—of the succession of Roman rulers—than it was in history. The five forms of government, according to Roman historians, were Kings, Consuls, Decemvirs, Dictators and Tribunes. The Imperial was the one existing at the time of John and Paul. The seventh received a wound by the sword, (Rev. xiii.) and the resuscitated head became virtually the eighth (Rev, xvii. 11) all alike being pagan in origin and nature, as Daniel vii. teaches by its one headship.

The testimony to the title of Rome as the seven-hilled city includes Varro, Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, Martial, Lucan, and as to the five forms of government it includes Tacitus, Livy, Cassiodorus, and Onuphrius Pauvicinus.

The restraining power, therefore, referred to by Paul in 2 Thessalonians ii., was the Imperial power of heathen Rome, as vested in the succession of Caesars; hence the use of the neuter, to Katechon, and the masculine, ho Katechon. Hence his caution. This restraining power was swayed by a series of single persons (or a “Perpetual Person”), following one another in succession; ho antichristos similarly must be a series of single persons, or a perpetual person, the successor of the Caesars after the disruption of the Roman Empire by the sword of the Gothic Nations. The sixth head being the Augustan Caesar, the seventh is either the Diocletian Dynasty, which was displaced forcibly by the Constantinian, or else the seventh must be regarded as continuing till the sword of the Gothic nations gave it a deadly wound, which, however, was healed by the subsequent resuscitation of Roman Caesarism masquerading as “Christian” Pontifex Maximus, the ancient heathen title of the Caesars. Daniel vii. obviously teaches, by its one headship, that all the “heads” are but different manifestations of one and the same pagan form of rule.

The “deadly wound” spoken of in Rev. xiii. 3 was primarily inflicted by the Emperor Theodosius’s Edict for the suppression of Pagan worship. Gibbon (vol viii., p. 116) used this expression: “This last Edict of Theodosius afflicted a deadly wound on the superstition of the Pagans.” He added: “Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome must have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honour and dominion” (p. 161); and so healed the wound by making the Bishops of Rome a new Head, the Eighth, of Empire. And in the rise of Papal superstition to supremacy; the deadly wound inflicted on the Seventh Pagan Headship was healed.

Note from the webmaster: I never heard this interpretation of the “deadly wound” before. I always took it to be the Protestant Reformation and / or the resulting loss of papal temporal power when Napoleon exiled the Pope Pius VI in 1789.

Continued in The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter VI. Identification of Antichrist.

All chapters of The Antichrist: His Portrait and History

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The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter VI. Identification of Antichrist. The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter VII. Antichrist Revealed by Chain of Evidences The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter IV. Time of Antichrist’s Appearance. The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter I. Meaning of the Term The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Appendix A. “The Image of The Beast” (Revelation 13:15) The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Appendix D. Rev. XIII. 16-18 Fulfilled The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Appendix F. The False Prophet, Appendixes G. H. & I. The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter II. True Meaning Of The Term.