Many Christians know a bit of the history of the Protestant Reformation that began with Martin Luther in 1517. But how many know about the Roman Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation, also known as the “Counter-Reformation”? How many Christians have even heard of the Counter-Reformation? Not many! And why? It’s because the leadership of the Counter-Reformation have done a bang-up job of undermining Protestant churches and seminaries with false interpretations of Daniel, Matthew 24 and the Book of Revelation to the point they do not know anymore who the Biblical Antichrist is!

What early Protestant leaders taught about the Antichrist:

Martin Luther

“We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the seed of the true and real antichrist. I owe the Pope no other obedience than that I owe to antichrist.”

“I am persuaded that if at this time St. Peter in person should preach all the articles of Holy Scripture and only deny the Pope’s authority, power and primacy and say that the Pope is not the head of all Christendom, they would cause him to be hanged.”

“The Pope is the very antichrist who is exalted himself above and opposed himself against Christ because he will not permit Christians to be saved.”

“It is nothing else than the devil himself, because above and against God he urges and disseminates his papal falsehoods concerning Masses, Purgatory, monastic life, one’s own works, fictitious divine worship, which is the very papacy, and condemns, murders and tortures all Christians who don’t exalt and honor these abominations of the Pope above all things. Therefore just as little as we can worship the devil himself as Lord and God we can endure his apostle the Pope. For to lie and to kill and destroy a body and soul eternally, that is wherein his papal government really consists.”

John Calvin 1509-1564

“Some persons think us too severe and censorious when we call the Roman Pontiff antichrist, but those who are of this opinion do not consider that they bring the same charge of presumption against Paul himself after whom we speak and whose language we adopt. I shall briefly show that Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians 2 are not capable to any other interpretation than that which applies them to the papacy.”

Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I.

“Whereof it follows Rome to be the seat of antichrist and the Pope to be the very antichrist himself, I could prove the same by many scriptures.”

Cotton Mather An American Puritan who died in 1728

“The oracles of God foretold the rising of an Antichrist in the Christian Church: and in the Pope of Rome, all the characteristics of that Antichrist are so marvelously answered that if any who read the Scriptures do not see it, there is a marvelous blindness upon them.”

Charles Spurgeon

“It is the bound and duty of every Christian to pray against this Antichrist, and as to what Antichrist is, no sane man ought to raise a question. If it be not the popery in the Church of Rome there is nothing in the world that can be called by that name.”

“Popery is contrary to Christ’s gospel and is the antichrist and we ought to pray against it. It should be the daily prayer of every believer that the antichrist might be hurled like a millstone into the flood and for Christ, because it wounds Christ, because it robs Christ of his glory, because it puts sacramental efficacy in the place of his atonement and lifts a piece of bread into the place of the Savior and a few drops of water into the place of the Holy Spirit. And puts a mere fallible man like ourselves up as the Vicar of Christ on Earth. IF we pray against it, because it is against him, we shall love the persons though we hate their errors. We shall love their souls though we loathe and detest their dogmas. And so the breath of our prayers will be sweetened because we turn our faces toward Christ when we pray.”

“Of all the dreams that have ever deluded men, and probably of all blasphemies that ever were uttered, there has never been one which is more absurd and which is more fruitful in all manner of mischief than the idea that the bishop of Rome can be the head of the church of Jesus Christ.”

“A man who deludes other people by degrees comes to delude himself. The deluder first makes dupes out of others and then becomes a dupe to himself. I should not wonder but what the Pope really believes that he is infallible and that he ought to be saluted as “His Holiness.” It must have taken him a good time to arrive at that eminence of self deception. But he’s got to, I daresay, by now and everyone who kisses his toe confirms him in this insane idea. When everybody else believes a flattering falsehood concerning you, you come, at last, to believe it yourself or at least to think it may be so.”

“Christ did not redeem his church with his blood so the Pope would come in and steal away the glory. He never came from heaven to earth. He never poured out his very heart that he might purchase his people. That a poor sinner, a mere man, should be set upon high to be admired by all the nations and to call himself God’s representative on earth, Christ has always been the head of his church.”

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