All these people in history were unanimous on this view of the antichrist

The historicist view that the papal system was antichrist was commonly held view among protestant reformers, bible translators, theologians, and others.

The Waldensians denied the "imaginary purgatory of antichrist".
The history of the Waldenses: connected with a sketch of the Christian church, p. 45

Wycliffe regarded the Pope of Rome and the Pope of Avigon, France to be both antichrist, "two halves of antichrist, making up the perfect Man of Sin between them".
Lectures on Medieval Church History, p. 314

Martin Luther:
"I know that the pope is Antichrist, and that his throne is that of Satan himself".
History of The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, p. 141

William Tyndale says of the pope's forbidding of matrimony and meats created by God for man's use as a devilish doctrine. He then says they are "tokens good enough" that the pope is the antichrist.
The Works of the English Reformers: The works of Tyndale, p. 178

Hugh Latimer: the papists "go about to thrust Christ out of his seat".
Sermons by Hugh Latimer, p. 147

Thomas Cranmer reasoned "Rome to be the seat of antichrist" and "the pope to be very antichrist himself" . The Works of Thomas Cranmer, p. 63

Nicholas Ridley:
The Papal See is "the seat of Satan" and "is antichrist himself".
The Works of Nicholas Ridley, p. 415

John Calvin:
"we call the Roman Pontiff Antichrist"
The Institutes of the Christian Religion: Vol. 3, p. 126

John Smyth, Founder of the Baptist church exposed the "antichristian heresy of infant baptism"
The Works of John Smyth, p. 617

Roger Williams, the founder of the First Baptist Church in America, regarded the pope as "the pretended vicar of Christ" and identifies him as "the Man of Sin" of II Thessalonians 2.
The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience, p. 216

The Westminister Confession of Faith in 1647 stated that "there is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ", not even the pope, identifying him as antichrist.
The Creeds of Christendom: The Evangelical Protestant creeds, p. 723

John Wesley says of the pope that "he is in an emphatical sense, The Man of Sin, as he increases all manner of sin above measure".
Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, p. 551

The scientist Isaac Newton, in analyzing Daniel and Revelation, identifies the pope as "the little horn of the fourth beast".
Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, p. 88

According to Henry Grattan Guinness, the little horn of Daniel is the symbol of the Roman papacy "fitting it as one of Chubb's keys fits the lock for which it is made". Romanism and the Reformation, p. 41

Someone named Joseph Tanner suggests that the abandoning of the historicist view for the modern futurist view (involving a secret rapture and 7 year tribulation) was a conspiracy of Jesuit doing. Daniel and the Revelation [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1898], pp 16-17

Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

Last Edited by truthinquirer on 09/20/2010 08:52 PM