THE BIBLE AND THE LITTLE HORN WHICH IS THOUGHT TO BE THE PAPAL ANTICHRIST

The Bible warns of a figure called the antichrist.  Antichrist in the Greek means not somebody who is opposed to Christ but who tries to take his place.  Antichrist is to be a nominal Christian and not an outright enemy so he cannot be a Muslim or Pagan or atheist.  Many at and since the Reformation regarded the Pope as the antichrist.
 
The most bizarre fact is that Bible prophecies that condemn the Roman Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon and the pope as one who leads you away from the real Jesus are spot on the mark as regards seeing events that hadn’t happened yet though they were written before the Roman Church was founded by Constantine and Pope Damasus I.

DANIEL 7,8
 
Daniel 7 describes a prophetic vision which shows the rise of four nations which are symbolised as beasts. Common opinion is that the nations are Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.

But the most popular view is that the nations or kingdoms are the Babylonian, Median, Persian and Greek kingdoms.  There is thought to be no reason to include Rome.  But the Book of Revelation which relies heavily on Daniel would disagree.   The kingdoms are given in chronological order.

If the fourth kingdom is Rome then there is the issue of a little horn to deal with.  If the fourth kingdom is Greece then the little horn is a symbol for the dire Antiochus Epiphanes (Antiochus IV).   Indeed the predictions were written after all the events.  Christians say that they could have been but argue that it is possible that though they match events in the time of Antiochus they might not be about them.

"After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.  While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully." 

In fact the Babylonian, Median, Persian and Greek empires were not that different from each other.  Rome definitely was being more brutal and religious and iron-toothed as in ruthless.

The little horn is considered by some to refer to Constantine the Great the Roman Emperor who created the evil Christendom machine.  Others think it refers to the papacy.  Either way it still marks the Catholic Church as a force for evil.  If the pope is not the antichrist he is not far from being it. 

The final clue is that the horn has the eyes of a human being.  That odd expression is trying to tell us something.  It obviously thinks it does not have the eyes of a human being but of a god or it could be a person who thinks he is infallible like the pope.

As we learned, out of Rome which is the fourth beast comes a little horn. It grows after ten horns grow. The ten horns are believed to represent the division of the Empire into ten sections so the papacy came about after that division. They could be ten leaders. Perhaps there were ten bishops of Rome before the first one was taken over by the Spirit of Antichrist? It could be that Pope Soter who was the eleventh pope in the Roman list, yes my interpretation would demand the eleventh for he was the tenth for Peter, the apostle and alleged first pope, who makes it eleven was never a pope. Linus, Peter’s supposed successor, might have been the first pope. Or perhaps there were ten leaders who set up the papacy sufficiently for it to become the power and arm of Satan? It is a little horn at first which indicates that it seems harmless. Then it gets absolute power and has eyes and a mouth indicating that it is a man or perhaps a succession of men. It changes laws and wars with the saints and is different from other horns so it is not a political horn like them but a religious one. It hates the saints and persecutes them and it is finally destroyed in the end. This prophecy can only refer to the papacy. The papacy did all these things so it is a perfect match.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM REPLIES
 
The Catholic Truth Society booklet, The Beasts and the Little Horn, tries to refute the identification of the little horn with the papacy.
 
First of all it considers the 666 which is given in the Book of Revelation as referring to the Antichrist.
 
Many Protestants believed that the beast 666 mentioned in the book of Revelation is the pope of Rome - and that the beast 666 is the antichrist.
 
The booklet tells us that St Irenaeus claimed to have had statements from people who knew the author of the Book of Revelation who said that 666 was the right number. They must have told him that it stood for a name for Irenaeus was so sure that it did and Nero, the usual identification, was not mentioned. It seems that the 666 is not Nero. The booklet informs us that if the author had wanted to hide Nero’s name in 666 then it would have been to avoid offending the Roman Empire. But he wrote even more offensive things about it in his book so that was not the reason. The 666 was not Nero.  There was no other emperor it could have been. The 666 could stand for the name of the last pope who will preside over the whore of Babylon before its final destruction.
 
The title Vicarius Filii Dei is Latin for Vicar of the Son of God. Its numerals as written in Roman numerals VICARIVS FILII DEI add up to 666. Rome says that this does not imply that the pope is the Antichrist because he does not use this title. But the Donation of Constantine says the pope bears that title and the Church accepted this document as valid for over 600 years. The title was officially accepted and the papacy never revoked the legal rights and titles it provided it with. Obviously, the pope would not reject that title but for some reason he prefers to keep it quiet. It is still his title. He bears the mark of the antichrist. The statement from Pope Fiction page 94 that the Donation was bogus and so the pope didn’t have the title officially choose to turn a blind eye to the fact that the document was accepted as real and official so the pope did have the title officially.
 
The Book of Revelation addresses the seven Churches. Scholars agree that the number 7 stands for perfection or completeness. So the 7 Churches really means the whole Church. 6 falls short of 7 and indicates imperfection or incompleteness. Thus the beast being 666 is a religious entity. He is condemned not for being radically opposed to the gospel but for teaching it in a distorted way. This fits the pope.
 
Rome says that after the fall of Rome there were not ten kingdoms (page 16).
 
Rome says the Daniel prophecies refer to events that took place before the coming of Christ and so cannot mean the Roman Catholic Church. The prophecy speaks of four beasts which it takes to refer to the Chaldean, Median, Persian and Grecian Empires with the horn coming from one of the four horns that the last grew. The ten horns of the last beast are the ten kings who succeeded Alexander the Great. This interpretation makes Antiochus Epiphanes the little horn. This is refuted by Daniel 7:26-27 because it says the saints will triumph over the little horn and they shall reign over all the kingdoms of the earth. So this proves the Protestant interpretation to be correct. Daniel 8:10 has the little horn becoming so great that it shocked the hosts of Heaven meaning it had supernatural power for what else would shock them? Antiochus did not have that kind of power. He is a good match for the prophecies but not good enough. Verse 25 says that no human hand will break the little horn meaning he will die supernaturally for to mean that God will destroy him through men would be silly. Why? Because then he could die by human hand and you would be saying this did not refute you for God was behind it and that would be an unconvincing prophecy. Prophecy has to be convincing and unambiguous. So saying his end at human hands was the work of God is no escape route.
 
The Bible says the Antichrist’s religion will try to change the word of God and his law.
 
The Catholic Church changes the Law of God because it tampered with the Ten Commandments. It did away with the commandment to have no graven images in worship and it awkwardly broke the last commandment which forbids coveting into two to make up the ten. By putting the graven images ban together with the first commandment to have only one God it made it look like as if only graven images of false Gods were forbidden.
 
The Catholic Church without any authorisation from the apostles changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.
 
The Catholic Church ignores Jesus’ rule that you may treat one who has sinned against you as a pariah if he doesn’t repent at the behest of the Church (Matthew 18:17). It ignores the apostolic decree discouraging marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1) and going to non-Christian or secular or pagan courts (1 Corinthians 6). The Church has added so many commandments to the word of God that God is lost among them. It ignores Christ’s command to make amends for sin BEFORE you ask for forgiveness by absolving people from sin just because they say sorry. It ignores Christ’s command to forgive foolishly the same person seventy times seven a day by having rules and having canon law to stop people being forgiven too easily! It makes the word of God useless by offering you fake forgiveness for sin at the hands of the priest. It makes you worry more about the priest than God for the priest may not sincerely intend to forgive you and may just go through the motions.
 
The Catholic Church ignores the divine law that what can’t look after itself is not a God to teach that the communion wafer is God.
 
The Church gives men the power to decide who is going to Hell. If the Catholic Church forbids you to have the sacraments to take away your serious sin chances are you will end up in Hell. With all the mistrust of leaders that comes across in the Bible with God not wanting to give Israel a king and Jesus saying the only kind of leaders he would allow would be ones that served and had no power to abuse this is clearly a blasphemous practice. Ideas like that the priest is needed to give you the sacraments and that he is the one you have to go to if you want salvation exalt the priest too much, he is made higher than a king and than your own mother and father and yourself. These ideas are dangerous and make many people unable to disobey the priest so that even if they met Jesus and he commanded something different he could be sure he would be ignored.
 
ROME HAS SPOKEN, A GUIDE TO FORGOTTEN PAPAL STATEMENTS AND HOW THEY HAVE CHANGED THROUGH THE CENTURIES, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing, New York, 1998 is a book that tells us how much Rome has changed in its official declarations of what God wants us to do and how to live. Despite claiming that ancient tradition is the word of God the Church changes it. This is the religion then that lies to us telling us that it has never changed for it is guided by the Holy Spirit and cannot err. When the Church changes its own version of the word of God what will it do to God’s? And the Church has been creating and authorising and using corrupt Bibles, the Vulgate, for instance so it has been physically changing the word of God. It has stopped doing that now for it prefers to run down the Bible as inaccurate when it says something that doesn’t suit its current policies but there still many Catholic Bibles with objectionable translations in them. This put the curse of the Book of Revelation on the Church (Revelation 22:18,19) which curses those who change or subtract or add to the Book of Revelation for it is the word of God and by implication the same curse is on anybody who interferes with any other book of scripture.  Revelation deals with the end times and yet the Church allows and even sometimes approves of apparitions with end time prophecies which is the same thing as changing the Book of Revelation which warns that its prophecies are not to be added to. An apparition can come along and tell you that a pope is coming who will do this and that while in fact the Revelation could be coming true from next week on. The apparition will be trying to prevent preparation for it and contest it. So all apparitions with prophecies oppose the Revelation which commands us to live as if it will start to come true in the next few minutes for it has Christ commanding us to think and live as if he is coming very soon, “”Behold I am coming soon.” Coming up with a new revelation that affects the interpretation of Revelation is the same thing as adding to it for it changes its meaning, the thing you would be wanting to do if you physically stuck in new verses you had made up. The Antichrist will certainly want to distort the message of Revelation. Rome did this so Rome is the Antichrist or his precursor. The Roman Church then has allowed the addition of new revelations to the Revelation so those revelations are from Hell and only Satan would cause them.
 
The Vatican is God to the Church because its decisions are supposed to be the decisions of God but if they are not then it follows that the Church is functioning as God and taking his rule as father and king even if it doesn’t know it. It’s claiming to be God by its actions!