Antichrist And His Ten Kingdoms – By Albert Close
Introduction from James
I have been praying for more insightful material to share on this website because I ran out of interesting things to share from the Converted Catholic Magazine. I am therefore very excited to find an insightful commentary on the Book of Revelation by an author who holds the Historicist school of interpretation of Revelation, an author who was born in the 19th century, Albert Close.
Here’s a part of the PDF file I got the text from.
Converting text from PDF files of rare books by godly authors into something easy to read from a phone is one of my current services to my brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s of course a blessing to me as well because it gives me more knowledge which gives me more conviction to stand strong against the popular literal futurist school of interpretation of the Book of Revelation.
Some people say we don’t need to read Bible commentaries, we only need the Bible and have the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but because these same people are often ignorant of history, many of them have been misled by Jesuit invented doctrines of Futurism, doctrines that did not come out of the Bible as they claim, but doctrines they heard from Bible teachers when they were younger, doctrines that influenced their thinking. They may think the Holy Spirit is guiding them in their Bible studies, but because Jesuit invented doctrines from Bible teachers they heard in the past tainted their thinking, they will say the prophecy of Daniel 9:27 is all about Antichrist. And when they say that, I absolutely know that they have been misled by Jesuit futurism. They are either ignorant of Church history, or are in denial of it.
To properly understand Bible prophecy, we also need to know and understand true history. Christian Zionists say promises of the return of the children Israel to their homeland was fulfilled in 1948, but those promises were already completely fulfilled by the time of Christ! The promises in Jeremiah and Ezekiel were referring to the return of the Jews after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, and not a return 2000 years later after God had the Roman army destroy their city and their temple.
ANTICHRIST AND HIS TEN KINGDOMS was first published in 1917 and this is the fifth edition. The author also wrote, The Hand of God and Satan in History; The Divine Programme of European History; Where We Got Our Bible; Jesuit Plots from Queen Elizabeth to King George V; Campion-Parsons Invasion Plot, The Babington Plot and Mary Queen of Scots; The Close — Fr. McNabb Debate: “Martyrs or Traitors”; Rome’s Attack on the British Empire and the U.S.A. Just the titles of these books speak volumes of Mr. Close’s views! I can’t find his bio anywhere but just reading the first few paragraphs of this book tells me he has an accurate true Protestant and Historicist view of Bible prophecy.
Mr. Close writes:
That really sold me that he has something to say about the Ten Kingdoms of the Antichrist, what most Futurists think haven’t been developed yet because they think the Antichrist / Man of Sin has yet to be revealed.
There are 231 pages in the PDF file. It has no chapters, only a list of topics. I am dividing it into sections at my discretion and hope to post a section every day of no more than 10 minutes each, meaning the time an average person would take to read the section.
PREFACE
ALTERING THE SIGNPOSTS.
The late Reader Harris, K.C., relates that, when he was a boy, Blondin, the famous tight-rope performer, who walked across Niagara Falls on a tight-rope, gave an exhibition in his native town. People traveled all night in carts and wagons to see the wonderful sight. Two boys conceived the idea of playing a practical joke upon the country people who were coming to the town. They went out into the country a few miles with spades and axes, and dug up about half-a-dozen finger-posts at the cross-roads and turned them around, so that every finger pointed the wrong way! It was meant as a practical joke, and they thought it very funny; but it had a very tragic ending. A cart conveying two men, two women, and some children arrived at the cross-roads in the dark; they took their lamps and read the sign-post, and followed its directions. But the lane led to a ferry, which only worked by day. The road was a precipitous one, which ran right down into the river.
The cart went merrily on, fearing no evil, when suddenly the road ended, and before they knew where they were, they were all in the river. All but one were drowned! The finger-posts pointed the wrong way!
A somewhat similar tragedy happened in the theological world of Britain and America about ninety to 110 years ago (from 1944), or to be exact, in 1826 and 1844-45 A.D. Five leading scholars turned the finger-posts of Divine Prophecy around, so that ever since they have pointed the wrong way, and turned multitudes of ministers, scholars and students, off the King’s highway down into two side lanes of false interpretation, whither they have led nearly the whole Christian Church.
The five scholars were: Rev. S. R. Maitland, D.D., in 1826 A.D.; Prof. Lee, of Cambridge, in 1830 A.D., Rev. Dr. Davidson, in 1844, in England; Rev. Prof. Moses Stuart, D.D., in America, in 1845 A.D.; Rev Edward Irving, a London Scottish minister, in 1827-33 A.D.
These five men set streams of error afloat which have completely changed the interpretation of Divine Prophecy ever since.
AND HER DAUGHTER CHURCHES;
OR,
The Apostate Church of Rome Foretold by our Lord.
By ALBERT CLOSE.
The author’s attention was first drawn to this great truth through an address given in the year 1866 in the Young Men’s Christian Association, Montreal Canada, by the distinguished scholar and scientist, the late Sir J. William Dawson, C.M.G., M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal.
In this address Sir William recommended all to read that standard work on fulfilled prophecy, which has since gone through so many editions, The Approaching End of the Age, by the Rev. Dr. H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.A.S., London, a work, which he pointed out, dealt with the subject from the standpoint of history, of science, and of prophecy.
On reading this remarkable work, the author was astonished to find that our Lord in His Revelation to St. John, in chap. xvii., had clearly foretold that a great apostate church would arise in the world that she would endure for centuries, exert a subtle and world-wide influence, and be guilty of exceeding iniquity and cruelty, which she would practice in the name of Christianity.
He further revealed that her seat of power would be at a great city which was seated on seven mountains, and reigning over the kings of the earth in St. John’s day.
Now what great church, with her seat of power at a city seated on seven hills, has fulfilled all these predictions? There can be but one reply — THE CHURCH OF ROME.
It was this astonishing truth that the learned and spiritually minded Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. (late Bishop of Lincoln), in Westminster Abbey, on February 16th, 1851, challenged the whole of the clergy of the Church of Rome to disprove. No reply has ever been made by Rome from that day to this. She fought shy of this chapter for over half a century at the Reformation, and fears it today more than all other Scripture.
THE REVELATION A DIVINE PROGRAM.
The Book of Revelation, as will be demonstrated in the following pages, is God’s great program of proceedings in the Church and the world, so far as it directly concerns His people, from St. John’s day to the end of all things. St. John is informed at a very beginning that the visions he is about to witness prefigure “things which are to come to pass.”
St. John is also commanded in Rev. 22:10 to “seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.” This passage clearly demonstrates the fallacy of the Jesuit futurist theory, i.e, that the time of fulfillment was to be postponed to future ages, as in the case of Daniel’s great prophecy concerning the end of the age (Daniel 12:9). In the case of Daniel’s vision he was commanded, “Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” The fulfillment of the Book of Revelation was to begin at once— “for the time is at hand.”
HISTORY WRITTEN IN HIEROGLYPHICS.
“Symbolic prophecy is simply history written beforehand, not in plain English but in English hieroglyphics. The whole bulk of it in Scripture is small; hence it is evident that the amount of history with which it is needful to be acquainted in order to understand such prophecy, . . . is not very large.
“The Atlantic is broad, almost boundless, but the course over it steered by any given steamer, is definite and restricted within very narrow limits; so the ocean of history is vast and wide, and every passing year makes it more and more impossible to accurately survey it all.” (From Light for the Last Days – Guinness) The history of the struggles of Christian Church for existence and supremacy is confined to fairly narrow limits in the great ocean of history as a whole. The purposes of God concerning the the Chinese, Japanese and other Eastern and Western nations will probably be worked out during the coming Dispensation under the personal reign of Christ. Probably for this reason they are not mentioned in the Prophetic Scriptures.
To understand these prophecies therefore it is only necessary to acquaint ourselves with the history of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Church, and also of the kingdoms and powers which have grown up in the territories of the old Roman Empire.
We have not to take into account all the empires and kingdoms of the world. The range is limited by the prophecies themselves, i.e., to the kingdoms which have grown ur out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. The great battle for existence and supremacy between the Church of Christ and her arch-enemies, has been fought and won within the bounds of the Roman Empire; and the attack has been, for the most part, directed from Rome, and Constantinople, as the headquarters of Satan’s commanders-in-chief, the Pope and the Sultan. Both of these are at the head of combined political and religious powers, and both for centuries have been, and still are, the Church of Christ’s bitterest foes.
In Revelation chapter 17 the Spirit of God deals with the Western Apostasy emanating from Rome. Other chapters in Revelation and Daniel deal with the eastern or Mohammedan and Greek apostasies. The “futurist school,” founded by the Jesuit Ribera, attempts to confuse the issue by bringing the Eastern Roman Empire into Chap. xvii. The Spirit of God in a systematic and orderly manner deals with one subject and one power at a time. The “futurist theory” is simply one of the wiles of Satan to confuse the issue and divert the attention of the Church of Christ from the real fulfillment. Many of God’s own children have been ensnared by this Jesuit interpretation, just as many others mistake New Theology for Divine Truth.
Amongst these visions of St. John is the one mentioned above, in Rev. 17, which prefigures the Church of Rome under the symbol of the purple and scarlet-clad woman seated on the seven hills of Rome, extending to the world the cup of her abominations, disguised as a sacrament or cup of salvation.
THE REVELATION A BOOK WRITTEN IN SIGNS AND SYMBOLS WHICH MUST BE TRANSLATED.
We must keep clearly in view the language in which the Book of Revelation is written, or we will utterly fail to understand its meaning.
In the first verse of the Revelation St. John tells us the book is written in symbols, viz.:—
Rev. 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John.
Rev. 4:1 And, behold, a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice . . . said, “Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.”
“To signify is to show by signs, to intimate your meaning, not in plain literal words, but by signs and symbols.”
Now in a language of signs and symbols, such for example as that employed by the Navy or merchant ships when signaling at sea, each sign and symbol has a definite meaning which can only be discerned by translating them into ordinary language by means of an explanatory key. In reading the Revelation we are bound to do the same. We must translate the symbolic language into ordinary language by com- paring its symbols and emblems with the other Scriptures where the same are employed and explained. We must also be familiar with the symbols and emblems employed by the nations and religious systems which have arisen on the theater of the Roman world since the Revelation was written. Many of these have unconsciously employed in their national or religious life and history the very symbols and emblems used in the Revelation to prefigure the events. Especially is this true of the Church of Rome.
The Romans and the Jews when they crucified Christ and parted His garments among the soldiers, unconsciously fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies.
So has the Church of Rome unconsciously chosen and employed the very symbols, emblems, and literary expressions which have been employed in the prophecy in Rev. 17.
To enable readers to grasp this amazing truth, the whole chapter is here reprinted with explanatory interpolations by the author.
Many good Christian people who wish to be regarded as “broad-minded and tolerant in these enlightened days,” overlook the fact that God’s fiercest anger with ancient Israel was aroused because Israel worshiped in a wrong and forbidden way, i.e., by setting up images, &c., &c. The Church of Rome is guilty of old Israel’s great sin, but on a million-fold greater scale. Hence she is stigmatized the “ Great Harlot,” or great idolatress.
WHAT GOD THINKS OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.
If we can find out what God thinks of this great “Church” we shall know what we ought to think of her, and not mistake such a system for a branch of the Church of Christ, in the face of the clear and emphatic declaration of the Founder and Head of Christianity, that the Church which has her Seat of Power at the seven hilled city of Rome is Satanic and not Divine in origin and character, and will be to the end.
In this wonderful chapter (Rev. 17) the reader will see that our Lord, as Bishop Wordsworth has well said, has lifted the mask from the face of the Church of Rome, and with His Divine Hand has written her true character in large letters, and has planted her title on her forehead to be seen and read of all:
(Continued in Revelation 17 – The Prophetic Portrait of the Church of Rome.)
All sections of Antichrist And His Ten Kingdoms by Albert Close
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