4. Prophetic Panorama - Pastor Stephen Bohr

[Music] well welcome again this is our second presentation this evening and the title of our study is Protestantism prophetic apostasy and this will be part one in our next presentation we will do part two before we begin though we do want to have a word of Prayer that's the Lord to bless our study together and help us see its importance so I invite you to reverently bow your head as we pray father in heaven what a joy it is to be here how wonderful it is to have your word Asher guide an anchor that holds in this world that is so confused father we've hid the message under a bushel we've hid the light under a bushel I asked Lord that you will help us to announce it from the rooftops that people might know what the final events will be like they will make a total and complete commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior Lord we ask that you will bless our study you'll be with us open our minds and hearts and give us your power to proclaim that which we learn we pray this in the precious name of Jesus amen before we actually begin our study I would like to mention a book that I wrote just brief few years ago it's called future isms incredible journey and you know some people have asked whether Ellen White was aware of the dangers of preterism and futurism whether Ellen White knew that there were individuals who were trying to project the fulfillment of prophecy to the Past and project the fulfillment of prophecy to the future and Ellen White definitely didn't know about the two different systems in this book I've included an appendix at the end of the book where you have a two-part article written by Ellen White and this article is actually a testimony to a John Bell he was a schoolteacher and he was delving into futurism he was a Seventh day Adventist but he was taking prophecies that had been fulfilled in the past that he was projecting them to the future and he was taking prophecies that were still future and he was saying that they were that they were fulfilled in the past and they might had some really interesting things to say about that and about the importance of understanding prophecy as a prophetic chain one link after another without any parentheses without any interruption also in this book we have at the end of the book the tremendous implications of abandoning historicism and embracing preterism and futurism I'm not going to cover all of those points here but I specifically show how preterism and futurism not only destroyed the Reformers view of Bible prophecy but actually destroys every distinctive truth of the seventh-day Adventist Church and so this I consider to be an extremely important book and you might want to obtain a copy and read the book to see the importance the extreme importance of what we are studying here now we want to study about Protestantism prophetic apostasy and actually most of our study is going to deal with the Roman Catholic counter-reformation in other words with the Roman Catholic Church's attempt the papacy z' attempt to overthrow the Protestant interpretation of Bible prophecy to overthrow historicism or what I like to call the historical flow method within a relatively short period the Roman Catholic Church as I was mentioning at the end of our last study lost thousands of members to Protestantism in fact the Roman Catholic Church lost entire nations in Europe to the Protestant Reformation and so the Roman Catholic papacy reach the conclusion that somehow they had to deflect the accusing finger the incriminating finger from the papacy as the fulfillment of the Antichrist prophecies to other individuals you see the biblical evidence as we've noticed was extremely compelling the Reformers could see the sequence of Bible prophecy and they could see that the actions of the Roman Catholic papacy was a precise fulfillment of what we find in the different passages about the Antichrist and saw the Roman Catholic Church prepared a strategy to annul historicism as the prophetic method of interpreting Bible prophecy after the Protestant Reformation not long actually after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation which most scholars believe is what was in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg not long after that actually in the year 15:45 the Roman Catholic Church actually convened in the city of Trenton we know it as Trent and they celebrated an ecclesiastical council the purpose of that council was to reaffirm the theology and the doctrines the dogmas the Roman Catholic Church calls them dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church to counteract the Protestant teachings doctrinal teachings better rolls during the Reformation and so they had this this very important council it's the longest council in the history of the Roman Catholic Church it lasted for 18 years from 1545 to 8 to 15 63 and the amount purpose was to reaffirm the dogmas of the church and to pronounce an anathema that is a curse upon everybody who did not agree with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church now the council of trent did that as far as I know I haven't read all of the conciliar declarations of the Council of Trent but as far as no they did not reach any firm conclusions on the interpretation of Bible prophecy at that point they had not established preterism or futurism as a method of interpreting prophesy to counteract Protestant historicism you see 11 years approximately before this council began in the year 1530 for an individual whose name you probably will recognize you definitely will recognize the society that he established his name was st. Ignatius Loyola in 1534 he founded the Jesuit Order it's actually called the Society of Jesus and the purpose of the Society of Jesus was clearly to overturn the Reformation the entire purpose was to crush the Protestant Reformation in fact even to this day if you visit Saint Peter's Basilica I was there several years ago I'll actually have only been there once but when you go into the Basilica there's this big area beyond the entrance that goes to the very front to the symbolic papal throne that is way up high and you have a statue of Saint Ignatius Loyola and Loyola it has his foot on the head of a Protestant in fact what that is saying is that the purpose of the Jesuit Order was to crush Protestantism and the Jesuit they were the most well trained of all of the Roman Catholic scholars now Ellen White had something very interesting to say about the Jesuits we find in the book great controversy pages 234 and 235 Ellen White's description of the purpose why the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus was established here is what she wrote in them I'm not reading the entire statement I'm reading only the portions that deal with what we're talking about throughout Christendom Protestantism was menaced by foreign herbal fools the first triumph of the Reformation past Rome summoned new forces hoping to accomplish its destruction so why was it rallying its forces to destroy what Protestantism she continues writing at this time the order of the Jesuits was created the most cruel unscrupulous and powerful of all the champions of popery vowed to perpetual poverty and humility it was there studied aim to secure wealth and power to be devoted to the overthrow of Protestantism and the re-establishment of the papal supremacy so what was the purpose of the establishment of the Jesuit Order or of the Society of Jesus once again to overthrow Protestantism and re-establish the papal supremacy and then she ends the quote by saying the Jesuits rapidly spread themselves over Europe and wherever they went there followed a revival of potpourri now potpourri is an expression that was used in the times of Ellen White to this rather papacy so if you're wondering what the word potpourri means it basically means the papacy and so we find that the Jesuit Order rises and by the way these days the Jesuit Order is the most powerful order in the Roman Catholic Church you're all aware of the fact that benedict xvi resigned as pope you know many people think that the reason why Francis the first I mean why a princess first yes took the place of benedict xvi before Benedict's death was because benedict was all caught up in this child abuse sexual abuse thing but there's something far deeper and that is that the Jesuit Order actually manipulated things so that a Jesuit would become Pope the first Jesuit in history and by the way I don't have time to get into this right now but secrets unsealed has published a series of articles I write long articles for our newsletter and in two of those articles I show very clearly what this Pope's strategy is to destroy Protestantism and to recover the power that the Roman Catholic papacy lost when it received the deadly wound it's an interesting story this Pope is a different Pope than any other one that we've had before his talking points are different you know Benedict the sixteenth and John Paul the second you know they spoke about against abortion and they spoke against gay marriage and they spoke against euthanasia you know all these social issues this Pope doesn't deal with those issues this Pope deals with issues such as climate change such as immigration such as you know helping the poor he says virtually nothing about abortion or euthanasia or gay marriage and there's a strategy behind that you see the civil powers of the world do not like any talk about abortion and gay marriage and use the neza because they're in favor of it and the papacy once they have to win over the political powers of the world in order to regain the power that they lost because a deadly wound is the loss of the support of the civil power so the this Pope is talking about things that interest the political leaders of the world saw that he can win them over and he can once you once again use their sword to recover the power that he lost now this is kind of a sign light of what we're studying but the fact is that you know the Roman Catholic papacy has allowed the fact the Fox to guard the and that is a very dangerous thing as you can surmise now the Jesuit Order actually spawned two very notable scholars that would write documents or books to attempt to overturn the prophetic method of the Protestant reformers the first of these his name was Louisville Casa or as the Spaniards would probably properly pronounce it Luis del cotta that's the way the C and the Z is pronounced in the Spanish from Spain but anyway this individual had great theological cunning it was his intention to overthrow the Protestant method of interpreting Bible prophecy he wrote a 900-page Bible commentary on the book of Revelation the name of that commentary was an investigation of the hidden sense of the Apocalypse in this volume Alcazar affirmed that the Antichrist prophecies of daniel and revelation found their fulfillment long before his time this system of interpretation is known as preterism the idea that the Antichrist prophecies were fulfilled in the past alcázar believed that the little Horn of Daniel 7 represented a nasty individual that arose in the Maccabean period his name was Antiochus Epiphanes in fact he ruled from 171 BC to 164 BC you know he sacrificed a pig in the Jewish temple he persecuted the Jews he suspended the sacrificial system and so they say the the little Horn of Daniel 7 that did all these things was Antiochus Epiphanes now when it comes to the book of Revelation this is different because antiquey Antiochus Epiphanes had passed away and so now alqasas' had to find a way to interpret the prophecies of Revelation and basically what he said is that the book of Revelation everything in the book of Revelation was fulfilled by the sixth century AD in fact he believed that the Antichrist of Revelation chapter 13 the beast of revelation 13 was probably Nero because there was this tradition supposedly in Rome that Nero was going to resurrect or come back from the dead and he was going to do what the Bible says about the little horn after it recovered from its deadly wound and so he established this counterfeit system of interpreting prophecy of course if the little horn and the Beast were fulfilled way back in the Old Testament period and early in the Christian period these prophecies were not fulfilled with the papacy are you understanding what what he's trying to do he's saying know that the little horn no that's not us that wasn't I guess epiphanies oh the Beast no that has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic famously the Beast that was Nero you know when he passed away that prophecy was fulfilled and so by projecting the Antichrist prophecies to the Past both to the Old Testament intertestamental period and the period period of the Christian Church as well as the times of the fall of the Roman Empire he deflected the finger from the papacy to these individuals in the past now it's interesting that today the choice method of the Roman Catholic Church of interpreting prophecy is preterism I don't know of very many Roman Catholics that are futurists we're going to come back to talk about future is in a few moments Rowen catholics if you read their commentaries and I'm going to give you some examples these days are preterists not only a roman catholics preterists but we're going to notice in our next presentation that the great Protestant mainline churches like for example the Lutheran's the Methodists the Presbyterians those churches have also imbibed the preterist method of interpreting Bible prophecy and I'm going to show you from several commentaries in our next presentation how Protestantism the mainline churches of Protestantism have imbibed preterism as their choice method of interpreting Bible prophecy let me just give you a few examples here the new American Bible which is a Roman Catholic Bible has a very interesting translation of Daniel chapter 7 and verse 25 Daniel 7:25 is translated in this Roman Catholic Bible and by the way folks many of the modern Protestant Bibles translated in the same way this is the translation he shall speak against the Most High and oppressed the Holy Ones of the Most High thinking to change the feast days and the law interesting and Protestant versions translated in the same way not all of them but many of them do I'm going to give you several examples now concerning the times and the laws that the little horn attempted to change this is the interpretation that the Jerusalem Bible gives the Jerusalem Bible is a Roman Catholic Bible now notice how this Roman Catholic Bible in a footnote explains that times in which that the the times which the little horn attempted to change I read the hellenizing policy of Antiochus Epiphanes included a ban and the observance of the Sabbath and the feast days so in other words he's saying you know this idea of you know changing the times well that has to do with the feasts and by the way the word Simon the word time is used to refer to the feasts but to translate the word time with feasts is an interpretation it is not a translation now there's more how does that prayer is view explain the four beasts of Daniel 7 this is very interesting in a footnote of the Jerusalem Bible we are told that the first beast of Daniel 7 represents Babylon so far so good the second beast the bear represents the Medes the leopard represents the Persians and the dragon listen carefully represents the Empire of Alexander the Great and the ten horns are the ten kingdoms of the Seleucid dynasty interesting so the dragon beast according to preterism is Greece and the ten horns are the ten solution kingdoms of Greece and then it says that the little horn that rises among the ten and above the 10 is Antiochus Epiphanes that is the Prentiss interpretation what does that do it totally eliminates the Roman Empire from Bible prophecy and eliminates the ten horns being the divisions of Western Europe and it eliminates also the idea that the little horn that rises among the ten represents the Roman Catholic papacy how in the world can the preterist progress Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible say that the first kingdom is Babylon the second pink kingdom is the Persians and the third the third the beats in the third kingdom of the Persians and the fourth Kingdom is Greece it doesn't fit with history because Revelation chapter 12 tells us that the dragon beast represents Rome it's the power that tried to kill the child that the woman was going to have and so we know that the dragon beast with ten horns represents Rome but pro tourism says no it represents Greece and the ten horns are ten divisions the ten kingdoms of the Greek dynasty and the little horn represents Antiochus Epiphanes now how does a preterism interpret the three and a half times the time times and dividing of time once again I'm reading from the Jerusalem Bible three and a half years the approximate duration of the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes but the fact is and I learned this from dr. water else in his classes the fact is that Antiochus Epiphanes only was there for three years not three and a half years so you notice this statement says three and a half years the approximate duration God doesn't let doesn't deal in approximations when he gives time prophecies he's precise and exact but it says three and a half years the approximate duration of the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes but this period of time also expressed as forty-two months stands for a temporary time of persecution with a limit set by God's providence and waters away the idea that the three and a half times are precise they begin at a certain date and they end at a certain date now the Roman Catholic Church has a commentary a renowned commentary called the Jerome Bible commentary and I want you to notice what they how they interpret the three horns that are uprooted in Daniel 7 you remember the little horn uprooted three horns we believe that those are the the vandals and the Ostrogoths the three kingdoms that the papacy used the civil power to uplink so it could rise to unopposed power but notice what preterism says in the Juris Jerome Bible Commentary this translation is based on the interpretation supposing that three of Antiochus the fourths Epiphanes predecessors died violent deaths so that he could succeed to the throne so the three horns are three opposers of Antiochus Epiphanes so what does preterism do it's projecting the fulfillment of all these prophecies to where to the past and do you know why they do this because most of the individuals who embrace preterism they use a method of Bible study which is called the historical critical method they don't believe that God can predict the future they study the Bible like any other document they don't believe that the Bible is able to predict long range when it's going to happen in the future so it's much easier to simply say that these things were fulfilled in the past and they're passed off as if there were history but they're not really history incidentally this is the reason why liberal scholars say that Daniel was not written in the 6th century Daniel was written in the sec's 2nd century BC in that way they can say see Daniel was actually written after all these things had taken place and the writer wrote it to make people think that he was prophesying things that were going to happen from the time of Daniel on that's the liberal method of interpreting Bible prophecy then is the preterist method of interpreting prophecy now how does the jerome Bible Commentary explain the beasts deadly wound once again I read from the Jerome Bible Commentary Roman Catholic commentary this passage may be a reference to some definite event such as the murder of Caesar and the healing of the Emperor under Gustus The Legend of Nero read the Vives which means resuscitated or any of several imperial misadventures so in other words in Reverse the things that happen in ancient Rome it has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic papacy so what does preterism do very simple by saying that these prophecies were fulfilled in the distant past it deflects the finger from the fulfillment of the Roman Catholic papacy because if the prophecies concerning the little horn and the beast were fulfilled with Antiochus Epiphanes and with the early Roman emperors then it has nothing to do with the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages because it happened back then it didn't happen during the period of the Christian Church so let me ask you did preterism attempt to change God's times then it tried to change the sequence of events in God's calendar yes very similar to what Nebuchadnezzar did in principle at least but there's another school there was another scholar his name Francisco Rivera he lived from 1537 259 day one he was a brilliant student he knew Latin he knew Greek he knew Hebrew he actually taught at the University of Salamanca in Spain and by the way I felt to mention that Luis del casar was a Jesuit and Francisco Rivera also was a Jesuit in fact he joined the Jesuit Order in 1570 when he was only 33 years old now what did Rivera teach basically everywhere at each death the prophecy of the little horn had not been fulfilled yet it was going to be fulfilled in the distant future now he also taught some very interesting things he actually accused the Protestants of being inconsistent in their interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel revelation and will explain how the early church fathers know when I say early church fathers are not talking about the Bible writers I'm talking about individuals like Tertullian and origin and all the early church fathers they taught certain futuristic elements in their eschatology they taught for example that the that the Antichrist was going to be an individual and they taught that that individual was going to rule in as the Antichrist for three-and-a-half literal years so the early church fathers had this idea that the Antichrist was going to be a nasty individual and he was going to rule for three and a half literal years we can't deny that they believe that now it's interesting to notice that even though the early church fathers believe this we can understand the reason why there are actually two reasons why they believe this number one the early church fathers did not expect the world history to last another two thousand years you see they were living in the time of the Roman Empire and some of them were starting to see the Roman Empire disintegrate and so as they looked at the living in the time of the Roman Empire and some of them in the latter part they see the Roman Empire starting to disintegrate they say this must mean that the Antichrist is imminent he's going to come right now but of course they did not really understand that the Antichrist was not going to arise until later and that he was not going to rule for three and a half literal years he was going to rule for 1260 years they didn't understand that the time period was not to be taken literally secondly the Bible clearly tells us that individuals do not understand prophecy fully until the times when the prophecy is fulfilled or is about to be fulfilled Jesus actually said in John 14 and verse 29 and now I have told you before it come to pass that when it has come to pass you might believe so Jesus says I told you what's going to happen before it happens so that when it does happen you might believe now what does this have to do with the view that the early church had you see the early church fathers lived in the period of the fourth beast of Rome when the Empire had not yet crumbled into ten kingdoms there was starting to be some fissures but the Empire was still united the lil horn had not yet risen and therefore the best that the early church fathers could do was to guess about the identity of the Antichrist so they concluded that he was going to rain for three and a half years and he was going to be an individual because they did not live in the times of the fulfillment as you reach the times of the fulfillment Bible prophecy becomes much clearer but the Protestant reformers didn't have to guess you see the Protestant reformers were not living in the time of the Roman Empire the Protestant reformers were not even living in the time when the ten kingdoms existed the Protestant reformers were living in the period when the leader horn rose to power and so the Protestant reformers could see what the early church fathers could not see the early church fathers you know they lived in the period of the Roman Empire and they read about a little horn rising among ten horns the ten horns were not fully there the little horn had not risen so they assumed that the little horn was an individual that would rule for three and a half years but once the Empire is divided into ten kingdoms the little horn rises among them suddenly what was not clear to the early church fathers now becomes very clear to the Protestant reformers thus the Reformers had the benefit of historical hindsight they could see back to what was happening what had happened and what was happening at their time now Francisco Rivera wrote a commentary a 500 page commentary on the book of Revelation it was actually published in 1590 posthumously because he had already died now Leroy Froome describes Rivera's method of interpreting prophecy I'm going to read how Froome describes it Lee Bayless eschatology are ascribed to a literal three-and-a-half years reign of an infidel Antichrist who would bitterly opposed and blaspheme the Saints just before the second advent now that's important I'm gonna read that again he said the Antichrist is a little was going to rain a three and a half literal years and he was gonna be an infidel person who would bitterly opposed and blaspheme the Saints just before the second advent so if the Antichrist is an individual who's got to persecute God's people for three and have little literal years just before the second coming of Jesus thus a little horn have anything to do with the past history of the Roman Catholic Church absolutely not because he's projecting the fulfillment to the future from continues he taught that Antichrist would be a single individual who would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem abolish the Christian religion deny Christ be received by the Jews pretend to be God and conquer the world and all this in a brief 3 and 1/2 literal years so what didn't we better do he said no the little Horn prophecy no no no that wasn't fulfilled in the past like my colleague alqasas' had to say no the little horn refers to a future Antichrist that's going to it's gotta be an individual who's gonna rule for three-and-a-half literal years and you gotta persecute the literal Jews he's gonna rebuild the temple does that sound familiar have you heard that on television on Sundays have you read Protestant conservative Protestant ministers speak about the rebuilding of the temple and the persecution of the Jews for three and a half literal years by this nasty individual who is the Antichrist where did they get it from they got it from Francisco Rivera where did the mainline Protestant denominations get preterism from they got it from the Roman Catholic papacy in other words Protestants have made an image of the beast not only I this prophecy tell us that there's going to be an image of the Beast which means that the papers is going to join church and state the United States is going to join church and state by instigation of the papacy that's going to be the image of the Beast but also that the Protestants today are an image of the Beast in their prophetic interpretation because Protestants are either preterists the liberal ones or they are futurists the more conservative Christians like evangelicals Pentecostals and charismatics now Ravana was a brilliant researcher and writer but it was not an outstanding lecturer furthermore he died at a very early age he died when he was only 54 years old so Ravana's views needed an articulate shrewd and dynamic champion to proclaim his newfound views concerning Bible prophecy and of course that shrewd and articulate champion was found his name was Cardinal Robert bellermine and he actually was born in 1542 and he died in 1621 so the Evangelist for Ravana's views was Robert Bellarmine so we need to take a look at who Robert bellermine was he was actually an Italian Cardinal and one of the most rude and intelligent Jesuit apologists isn't it interesting that all these individuals were Jesuits you know Rivera was a Jesuit alcazar was a Jesuit and now bellermine is a Jesuit as well this is a Jesuit agenda by the way this is no judgment conspiracy you know there are some Adventist that see a Jesuit behind every stone and very clear they have a lot of conspiracy theories about the Jesuits some of them might be true but this is not conspiracy this can be proved historically that preterism and futurism comes from the Roman Catholic counter-reformation directly from the Jesuit Order now let me read what Froome had to say about bellermine he insisted that the prophecies concerning Antichrist in daniel paul and john had no application to the papal power this formed the third part of his polemic lectures concerning the disputed points of christian belief against the heretics of this time that's the name of the document that bellermine wrote published between 1581 and 1593 that's a work that bellermine wrote to defend the views that Ravenna had come up with now Froome continues writing this was the most detailed apology of the Catholic faith ever produced and became listen carefully now and the work of bellermine became the Arsenal for all future defenders and expositors so who was the source of futurism it was Ravenna and bellermine of course he continued Roberta's views and he proliferated them as it says here it became the Arsenal for all future defenders and expositors because bellermine wrote prolifically defending the views of Ravenna he ends the quotation by saying it called forth a host of counter writings from Protestant leaders who considered him their greatest adversary so the Protestants wrote document after document against Robert Bellah Minds views which shows that bellermine was of great influence in the Counter Reformation in spreading the views of Ravenna now basically bellermine repeated the views of Ravenna but he fine-tuned several of the details with an evangelistic zeal worthy of aberration he used certain arguments against the Protestants and I'm going to share those arguments with you the first argument was against Luther he says Luther claims that the papacy is the Antichrist and yet Luther doesn't even believe that the book of Revelation belongs in the biblical canon so if what authority can loser talk about the Antichrist when he doesn't even believe that the book of Revelation should be in the Bible and by the way that's true Martin Luther did not like the book of Revelation he said all I find in Revelation are beasts and mysterious numbers and symbols he says I can't find Christ in the book of Revelation he also did not like the book of James he called it the Epistle of straw and so basically bellermine turns the thing against Luther he says you know I I'm writing about the book of ruggle Luther doesn't even believe that the book of Revelation belongs in the Bible he also showed that the Reformers did not always agree with one another for example about the period in which the Antichrist rose some Protestant reformers said that the anti Antichrist or the little horn rose in the year 400 AD that's what the fall of Rome others taught that it was in the year 600 AD when Pope Gregory rose to the papal throne other reformers believed that the Antichrist arose in the year 200 773 the Year 1000 or the year 1200 so basically the process of reformers they did not have a standard date for the beginning of the Antichrist the rule of the Antichrist and so bellermine said the Protestants can't even agree as to when the Antichrist began so how can we trust what they teach once again we need to understand something very important and that is that the Protestant reformers did not have all of the information that we have the Protestant reformers did not know about 1798 you see we have two ways of studying the 1260 years we can begin in the year 538 and then move forward or we can go to 1798 and we can move backwards you see the Protestant reformers they had to determine what the beginning was but they didn't know what the end was because the end was going to come in 1798 we live after the papacy was wounded in 1798 so we have a firm period where the Roman Catholic papacy ruled 538 to 1798 so he shouldn't have been too hard on the Protestant reformers because the Reformers did not know the ending date I'm sure that if they had lived at the period of the ending date they would have said 538 to 1798 because in 1798 the papacy received its deadly wound the Pope was taken prisoner France as a nation turned against the papacy and shortly thereafter all of the nations in Europe followed the example of a papacy in forsaking the papacy and so bellermine you know the process of reformers obviously did not have a very good response at that point but they would have had a good response if they had lived today he also said to the Protestants hey you know you interpret symbols differently everybody has a different interpretation of symbols so how can we trust your interpretation of symbols when each reformer has a different way of interpreting certain symbols so basically what bellermine was doing was he was using arguments to try and cloud the issue so that people would distrust what the Protestant reformers were saying now bellermine also used a very interesting argument that Protestants would later pick up conservative Protestants that would be Pentecostals charismatics evangelicals etc basically it's the idea that the Roman Empire was never divided into ten kingdoms bellermine thought that Ravenna didn't teach that specific point but bellermine said when you look at the history of the Roman Empire it was never divided into ten kingdoms like the prophecy of Daniel 7 says now in our study tomorrow our next study I am going to show you from the writings of a futurist he passed away a few years ago his name is Dave hunt he wrote a book called the woman rides the beast and also another one that is called global peace and in his exposition of Daniel chapter 7 he says that there's a gap between the fourth Kingdom the Roman Empire and ten nation Federation that will rise in the future that the ten horns did not come out of the head of the fourth Beast immediately when the Empire fell but there was a gap of over two thousand years between the fourth kingdom and the rise of the ten horns where did Dave hunt get that from from the Roman Catholic papacy counter-reformation the argument was used first by bellermine where he says that the Roman Empire was never divided according to the specification of Daniel chapter 7 now bellermine believed that the Antichrist would be a nasty individual he believed at the time a rulership of this Antichrist was a literal three and a half years and he believed that the Jerusalem Temple for the temple where the Antichrist would sit was the literal Jerusalem Temple let me just read you three statements from bellermine himself first of all about the fact according to him that the Antichrist will be an individual that will rise in the future it's not a system it's an individual he wrote in his famous document which took years to put together I quote for all Catholics think thus that the Antichrist will be one certain man but all heretics teach now he's going to contrast all heretics teach that Antichrist is expressly declared to be not a single person but an individual throne or absolute Kingdom an apostate seat of those who rule over the church are you catching what he's saying in other words Protestants believe that the Antichrist is a system where as he says us Catholics we believe that the Antichrist is an individual to rise in the future whereas Protestants think that it's our system that exists now what did bellermine have to say about the three and a half years that the little horn would rule I read once again from Bill ermine Antichrist will not reign except for three years and a half but the Pope has now reigned spiritually in the church more than 1500 years nor can anyone be pointed out who has been accepted for Antichrist who has ruled exactly 3 and 1/2 years therefore the Pope is not Antichrist then Antichrist has not yet come are you understanding his argument what he's saying is that Antichrist was going to reign three and a half years and there's no Pope then you could show ruled for three and a half literal years because if it's the papacy he says the papacy has ruled for over 1500 years in his time not three and a half literal years so I can't refer to the papacy and then what did he have to say about the temple Antichrist sitting in the temple once again I read from Bellaire Minds writings the Pope is not Antichrist since indeed his throne is not in Jerusalem nor in the Temple of Solomon surely it is credible that from the year 600 no Roman pontiff has ever been in Jerusalem how you understand his argument he's literal izing what the Apostle Paul says in second Thessalonians 2 where it says the Antichrist will sit in the temple of God showing himself to be God and he says well the temple is the Jewish temple but he says no Pope is now sitting in the Jewish temple so the Pope cannot be the fulfillment of the Antichrist prophecy what he doesn't say is that when the Apostle Paul uses the word temple mouth in his writings he always applies it to a spiritual temple that is as a symbol of the Christian Church an example that is found in Ephesians chapter 2 where it says that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets those are the foundations Jesus Christ is the chief Cornerstone and the believers are the stones that are built up on the cornerstone and the foundation stones and then he said then the Apostle Paul says that it grows to be a temple in the Lord and it is filled with the Holy Spirit which is the Shekinah so in other words the Apostle Paul whenever he uses the word temple he uses it in a figurative sense by the way even if a Jewish temple was rebuilt it would not be the temple of God because Jesus you remember he went into the temple at the end of the triumphal entry and it says there in Matthew chapter 21 that he entered the temple of God and the money changes win there and Jesus cast out the money changers and Jesus says you have defiled my house so when he goes into the temple it's called the temple of God and he says this is my house but then in the next chapters the rest of chapter 21 22 and 23 Jesus carries on a dialogue with the Jewish leaders he tells several parables and one Jewish sect after another rejects the teachings of Jesus Christ in the temple because he's teaching in the temple in Matthew 21 22 and 23 and he ends in chapter 23 with the wolves upon the scribes and the Pharisees and then Jesus leaves the temple we're gonna study this a little bit more live but later on when we talk about who is Israel because we're going to deal with all of the issues that are presented by futurists and so and so Jesus when he finishes his encounters with the Jewish leaders and they totally reject him we're told in Matthew 23 and verse 38 for the last time Jesus leaves the temple and he says your house is left unto you desolate it was no longer the Lord's house and then immediately afterwards in Matthew 24 1 2 3 Jesus speaks about the destruction of Jerusalem are you with me so the Jewish temple even if it's rebuilt it's not the temple of God the temple of God is the church which means that the Antichrist was going to rise where he was going to rise and sit in the spiritual temple the church in others were supposed to look for the Antichrist sitting somewhere in the Christian Church more specifically in Rome because the Bible tells us that the little horn rises in the midst of the ten horns from the head of the dragon beast which represents Rome now for 200 years after the Protestant Reformation the Protestants withstood the Roman Catholic Papers he's answered they remained faithful to their principles but then in the early eighteen hundreds in Britain Protestants began to forsake historicism as the governing principle for the interpretation of Bible prophecy it's a sad story we'll take quite an extensive period in our next presentation to study how preterism and primarily futurism entered Protestantism through the door of the Anglican Church through the door of the Church of England in the early 1830s and then we're gonna see that it was transplanted to the United States States by John Nelson Darby and CI Scofield the famous preparer of a school field reference Bible and since then Protestantism has eaten up has imbibed the Roman Catholic system of interpreting Bible prophecy as I mentioned last night they have swallowed the Roman Catholic counter-reformation views cook line sinker fisherman boat and everything else they bought it on these days the mainline Protestant churches teach preterism the little horn is Antiochus the Beast is Nero when it comes to the conservative Protestants which are the evangelicals the Pentecostals and the charismatic s' they say no the Antichrist is a future Antichrist that will arise and sit in the Jewish temple he'll build to build a great big statue of himself which is the image of the Beast he will command all the Jews to worship the image that he raised up and he will place this tattoo on the forehead or on the right hand and everybody will have to fall down and worship literal izing everything and projecting it to the future in other words Protestantism has apostatized from the correct way of interpreting Bible prophecy no wonder Protestantism is so weak today no wonder folks that even within the seventh-day Adventist Church we become very weak in the teaching of Bible prophecy we don't say much about Bible prophecy anymore we hardly ever refer to the writings of Ellen White in the interpretation of prophecy because we have also been influenced by these views of the Roman Catholic counter-reformation and so in our next study we will talk about the great apostasy of Protestantism from the correct view of interpreting Bible prophecy I hope you're planning on being here for the next presentation because it's a sad story but it helps us explain the reason why Protestantism no longer has any power to bring about a change in people's lives and why there is so lack of power also in a very own seventh-day Adventist Church so I hope that we're all planning on being here for our next presentation where we will deal with this very important topic [Music] you

Channel: secretsunsealed

Views: 7,738

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

Keywords: SUMTV, SUMTV Latino, Secrets Unsealed, Secretos Revelados, Pastor Bohr, Pastor Bor, Pastor Borh, Pastor Steve Bohr, Pastor Steve Borh, Pastor Steve Bor, Pastor Esteban Bohr, Pastor Esteban Bor, Pastor Esteban Borh

Id: Hvc5kxSRG3g

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 08 2020