By Cris D. Putnam During the fourteenth century, the Waldenses, a truly evangelical group known for their remarkable holiness and simple lifestyle, published a treatise designed to prove that the papal system was Antichrist. This was a remarkable change in position from their earlier position in The Noble Lesson that taught that the Antichrist was an individual. Boldly defying the papists, they insisted on using translations of Scripture that the common man could understand. In obedience to the word of God, they rejected masses, purgatory, and prayers for the dead.[i] The Waldenses were severely persecuted for centuries. In 1545, some three to four thousand of them were massacred at what is now known as Massacre of Mérindol by Roman Catholic President of the parliament of Provence, France and the military commander Antoine Escalin des Aimars.[ii] As early as 1631, scholars began to regard the Waldenses as early forerunners of the Protestant Reformation.

Following the Waldenses it was not long before other Christians were viciously persecuted by Rome: The Hussites, the Wycliffites, and the Lollards also proclaimed that the pope was the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, and that the papacy was the Beast system. These were persecuted Bible-believing Christians who simply wanted to worship and read their Bibles free from Roman popery. These early expressions of the papal antichrist could seemingly be easily dismissed for the all-too-common tactic of demonizing one’s enemy. But as the reformation progressed, and the evidence mounted, it quickly became the dominant position. Contrary to the early rebels and polemicists, Martin Luther did not intend to break away from the Roman Catholic Church, but rather reform it. He did not start out with a bad opinion of the pope. He sincerely believed that the pope, being a man of God, would respond favorably when he nailed up his Ninety-five Theses on October 31, 1517. Yet, just a few years later, after burning the papal bull from the Diet of Worms, Luther had also come to the firm conclusion that the papacy was incorrigibly the Antichrist. He promoted the idea in many of his later writings, most forcefully in the Smalcald Articles:

This business shows overwhelmingly that he is the true end-times Antichrist, who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ, because the Pope will not let Christians be saved without his authority (which amounts to nothing, since it is not ordered or commanded by God). This is precisely what St. Paul calls “setting oneself over God and against God.” [iii]

Here Luther argues unambiguously that the pope shows himself to be the “true end-times Antichrist.” This polemic is concerning the papal bull, Unam Sanctam,which was issued to counter Philip the Fair’s effort to separate the civil and spiritual domains. In that bull, promulgated November 18, 1302, the Latin text reads, “Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus dicimus, definimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis” (underline added).[iv] This substantiates Luther’s argument, in that this bull unmistakably asserts that “every human creature” must submit to the pope for salvation. Of course, this bears no resemblance to the Gospel found in the New Testament and one is hard pressed to find a weakness in Luther’s rationale. However, the idea that the “end times Antichrist” was present in 1302 is only coherent in light of it being the office of the papacy rather than an individual. Since the office of the papacy has endured to this day, Luther’s argument still has some force.

Philipp Melanchthon was a German reformer and collaborator of Luther’s. He is heralded as the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation and an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation.^[v] In “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope,” the seventh Lutheran creedal document of the Book of Concord, Melanchthon also forcefully argues that the pope is the Antichrist. He skillfully reveals how the Gospel was subverted by tradition. Truly, the papacy as antichrist is as characteristic of traditional Lutheranism as the hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

 

Next we will examine Geneva and Calvin.

By Cris D. Putnam
Back in February of 2003, the Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, published a front-page story announcing Isaac Newton’s prediction that the world would end in 2060. This date has been promulgated throughout the internet yet few folks actually understand the rationale behind it. Newton’s calculation is not all that mysterious. In fact it is based on the exact same logic we have presented in Petrus Romanus which as explained in detail in my previous article (I recommended that you read article in order to fully grasp this one).

The main idea is that when the papacy became a political power yielding the temporal sword, the 1260 years of spiritual oppression ensued as inferred from the year/day reading of various biblical prophecies (Rev. 11:3; 12:6; Dan 7:25; 12:7). According to Newton scholar and professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia., Dr. Stephen D. Snobelen:

This did not involve the use of anything as complicated as calculus, which he invented, but rather simple arithmetic that could be performed by a child. Beginning in the 1670s and continuing to the end of his life in 1727, Newton considered several commencement dates for the formal institution of the apostate, imperial Church. Earlier commencement dates include 607 and 609 A.D. As Newton grew older, he pushed the time of the end further and further into the future. In Yahuda MS 7 Newton twice gives 800 A.D. for the beginning of “the Pope’s supremacy”. The year 800 is a significant one in history, as it is the year Charlemagne was crowned emperor of Rome in the west by Pope Leo III at St. Peter’s in Rome. Since Newton believed that the 1260 years corresponded to the duration of the corruption of the Church, he added 1260 to 800 A.D. and arrived at the date 2060 for the “fall of Babylon” or cessation of the apostate Church.

http://www.isaac-newton.org/update.html

Newton based his date of 800 on the reign of Charlemagne and the institution of the Holy Roman Empire. However, as I documented in the last post, The Donation of Pepin was when Pope Stephen first achieved true political power over the papal states and it is dated to 754 -756, the range presented in Petrus Romanus.  We make cogent case based on the historical record that an important moral and spiritual line was crossed at that time. The late David Flynn also wrote about Newton’s theories extensively in Temple at the Center of Time and offered another fascinating synchronicity with our findings:

Rome lay on the Tiber River, which bisected the city. Its original founding date also can be regarded in a similar bisected manner. The prophetic implication of a revived Roman Empire at the coming of the Antichist is not outside the possibility of a supernatural time signature, a year mirroring the original on the other side of the dividing point of the era founded at the birth of Christ. As has been demonstrated in previous chapters, the application of the number 2,520 and its half 1,260, suits a variety of prophetic and geometric realities. Using this principle, the year 753 BC designates the founding of physical Rome and AD 753 establishes the rebirth of the spiritual Rome. Newton’s count of 1,260 years from AD 753 brings us to the future year AD 2013.[i]

My original research was for a Church History term paper and was conducted without regard to Flynn’s work. I arrived at AD 756 based on the beliefs of Jonathan Edwards. While the dates are not identical, the synchronicity is still rather astounding. Furthermore, David Flynn arrived at a prophetic event horizon in roughly the year 2012 from several different angles and our research for the soon to be released, Petrus Romanus, seems to further confirm many of Flynn’s ideas. The date of  temporal ascendency is placed in a range by scholars (752-756), as one can readily see from the various sources I have cited here and in my previous article. On top of all of this, it seems beyond the reach of mere chance that a Belgian Jesuit predicted the arrival of the prophesied final pope in 2012 (back in 1951!) using the Malachy prophecy. The concurrence is remarkable to say the least.

View Newton’s notes and prophetic writings for yourself online here.