The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter IV. Time of Antichrist’s Appearance.

Continued from Chapter III. Characteristics.

THE time of the appearance of the Antichrist is definitely fixed by Daniel, by Paul, by John. The first, places it among the ten heathen horns of the Fourth Wild Beast, which horns necessarily are to be sought, neither in the old age and decrepitude of the Wild Beast, nor in its early youth, but, as in Nature, during its maturity and vigour. Hence they cannot be mushroom growths of three and a half years’ duration, but must be, as depicted, (Dan. vii. 8, 20; Rev. xvii. 12) contemporaneous with Antichrist’s one thousand two hundred and sixty years from the epoch of Apostasy’s maturity. The second, places its appearance at, or just after, the point when the Caesarean “let,” or hindrance,(2 Thess. ii, 6, 7) was removed out of the way,* a period fixed by history as somewhere between A.D. 330-476-684; a removal by degrees, and by successive stages; Constantine removing the seat of Cesarean power from Rome to Constantinople in A.D. 330,(Rev. xiii. 2, xvii. 11) then the last Western Caesar, Augustulus, being deposed by the Goths in A.D. 476; and then the entire Western Roman Empire being broken up and divided among the various Gothic tribes, described by Macchiavelli, the Romish historian, as numbering ten in the fifth century.

*Cardinal Manning, in his “Temporal Power,” Preface, pp. 42-46, said: “Now the abandonment of Rome was the liberation of the Pontiff, and from the hour of this providential liberation . . . no sovereign has ever reigned in Rome except the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” “The abandonment of Rome liberated the Pontiffs and left them free to become independent sovereigns, and take up the sovereignty the emperors had just laid down.”

The third, places its appearance at some point in history when the “throne,” or “seat” of power of the Roman heathen world, was conveyed by Satan—as “god of this age” (2 Cor iv. 4) —to the Revived Head (of the Ten Horned Wild Beast) which was the eighth in order of succession.

Daniel xi, appears to allude to the same epoch of time when it describes the “willful king” of the Romans (Dan. xi. 30, 36, 38) (“Kittim” being Italy), as honouring in his “seat” the Pagan God of Force—Hercules;(See ‘The Chair of St. Peter,’ by H. Forbes Witherby, pp. 76-84.) for it ties down the period in question to a “king” enthroned in the seat of Latin paganism in the “latter days,” extending from the “time of the end” of Daniel xi. 40 to the “time of the end” of Daniel 4, 6, 7—a period of one thousand two hundred and sixty years.

Hence the converging lines of Revelation point to the period between AD. 330 and the resuscitation of Pagan Caesarism after the break-up of Roman power in the West, a period followed by the “Dark Ages”; and they point also to a Latin power seated on the “throne” of the ancient Caesars; and so combine to fix the locality whence the Antichrist was to emerge, as the seven-hilled Metropolis (xvii. 9, 18) of the Fourth Wild Beast of prophecy—Rome.

Continued in The Antichrist: His Portrait and History – Chapter V. Name Locates Antichrist.