Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of ATP, Ask the Pastor.
I am still Pastor Joshua Sullivan at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Kerrville,
Texas.
Today's question, Dear Pastor Sullivan, why or why not is the papacy still the
Antichrist?
Alright, this is always a fun topic to talk about.
The term Antichrist in popular usage is used in the wrong way.
My experience with this, typically today when people mention the Antichrist,
they're usually talking about a being of pure and unadulterated evil with no
religious connotations at all, with no relationship to the church.
So it's not uncommon for people to label their least favorite politician as the
Antichrist.
But right off the get-go, we have to say this isn't what Scripture is talking about
when it teaches about the Antichrist.
The Scriptures are actually pretty clear about this.
So if we go to 1 John 2 verse 18, St. John writes, Little children,
it is the last hour, and you have heard that the Antichrist is coming.
Even now many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.
So John says that there is the Antichrist who is coming, but there are also many
Antichrists.
He says something similar in 1 John 4 verse 3.
He says, Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh
is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist.
Now what he means there, what he's saying is that all the heretics, whether they
deny Christ as the Son of God in the Incarnation, or if they deny the effects
of the Incarnation, they are Antichrists because they're teaching contrary to
Christ either in his person or in his work.
Now, while there are many Antichrists, and everyone who is a heretic then has the
spirit of Antichrist, the scripture also teaches, as we saw there in 1 John 2 verse
18, that there is one preeminent Antichrist.
Now he's not a political ruler as much as some people would like him to be.
Rather, he's a ruler of the church.
So if we look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, St. Paul writes that the Antichrist,
now this is in verse 4, he opposes and exalts himself above all that is called
God or that is worshiped so that he sits in the temple of, excuse me, as God in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Now, two main points can be drawn out from this.
First, the Antichrist has set himself up in the place of God and opposes God.
We'll get to that in a moment.
The second, and to what we're dealing with here at first, the Antichrist is someone
who then will rule in the church as he, Paul says, sits in the temple of God.
Now, let's get back to that first point.
How does one oppose God and exalt himself above all that is called God or that is
worshiped?
Well, by teaching doctrines that are contrary to Christ, that are contrary to
the gospel, and in doing so, assuming divine authority for oneself.
So to be Antichrist is to be set against the gospel, to be set against Christ,
and demonstrating this by teaching doctrines which detract from who Christ is
or, more specifically, from what he does, from his saving work.
And generally then, you do that by substituting human works in the place of
the work of Christ's merits and atoning work upon the cross.
Now, it's all of these things that led the Lutheran reformers to identify the papacy
of the Roman church as the Antichrist.
And there are several reasons for doing so.
Let's walk these out a little bit.
So why did the Lutheran reformers think that the Pope was the Antichrist?
Well, first, the Pope claims to rule all Christianity by divine right.
By that, I mean that the Pope claims that according to scripture, according to what
God has told us, he rules the entire church.
All churches, all ministers.
The thing is, there's no word of God anywhere in the scriptures that
establishes the Bishop of Rome as the supreme ruler of the church.
Now, the papacy's chief proof text for this, which is Matthew 16-18, doesn't
specifically speak to this at all.
In fact, if you've got more questions about that, I've dealt with that topic
specifically in another ATP video entitled Does Jesus Establish the Papacy in Matthew
16-18.
So I highly recommend checking that video out as well.
Now, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
Throughout the New Testament scriptures, what we see is the equality of ministers
and churches by divine right.
Now, so that's the first thing.
He puts himself by human right over all churches and all ministers.
Second, the papacy's doctrine is one that's contrary to the gospel,
that it leads men away from Christ and faith in Christ.
Now, that's a pretty bold claim, but we can back this up.
We can give you a couple examples.
So first, the papacy reserves the right to change Christ's doctrine by adding to it
or reinterpreting it.
And by doing so, he's putting himself above the scriptures.
Again, I've got to recommend another ATP video we've done called Scripture and
Tradition.
In that video, I give a full treatment of how the Roman Catholic doctrine isn't
based on scripture, but mostly man's doctrine, false opinions.
And then the papacy turns around and binds men's consciences to these false
pronouncements then.
So go ahead and check out that video, Scripture and Tradition.
The papacy also sets itself against God's word in that he sets himself up as God by
refusing to be subject to anyone else.
And so papal authority cannot be questioned.
The pope's doctrine cannot be judged by councils, by ministers, most of all,
most importantly, by the word of God.
So when a bishop refuses to be judged by the word of God, at that point,
he's made himself God.
And that's specifically what Paul's talking about in 2 Thessalonians 2,
verse 4.
There are some other ways, though, that the pope does this.
Another way the pope subverts the gospel is by teaching people to pray to the
saints rather than to Christ.
Saints, the Virgin Mary, etc.
Instead of Christ or alongside of their prayers to Christ.
And so invoking the saints for help and for aid is ultimately idolatry.
St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2 that there's one mediator between God and man,
the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
1 John 2, verse 1, If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ, the righteous one.
Now, Rome does teach officially in her catechism that Christ is the only mediator
between God and But by simultaneously teaching the people to flee to the saints
and to the Virgin Mary in times of trouble with their prayers, they're leading people
away from Christ.
Now, another blatant example of how the papacy teaches contrary to the scripture
would be to compare papal doctrine, some of the ones which people are most
familiar with, with what St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4, verses 1 through 3.
There, Paul says that in the latter times, some will preach a doctrine of demons.
Specifically, they'll forbid marriage, and they will preach abstinence from
certain foods on certain days.
And so where do we see this?
Well, we see this precisely in the Roman church that forbids marriage to her clergy
and prohibits certain foods on certain days during certain times of the year.
St. Paul calls this a doctrine of demons, because you're ultimately doing something
for the sake of meriting favor before God and the church rather than faith in
Christ's merits as that which saves and grants God's favor then.
Now, in all of this, the most egregious error by which the papacy opposes Christ
in the gospel is what it does with justification.
The papacy teaches men to trust in their own works and merits in fasts,
pilgrimages, rosaries, and things like that.
If those things are done with the right intention, Rome teaches, then people merit
grace by them.
Along with this goes the mass, the Roman mass.
They teach that the mass is an unbloody re-sacrificing of Christ upon the altar at
each mass, and that those merits that are earned there can be applied either to the
living who are present at the mass or to the dead in purgatory.
Again, it's this sort of thing that demonstrates that the papacy is leading
men not to faith in Christ, but to their own works and to their own merits.
Even then, it's through the invention of purgatory, which doesn't come from
Scripture, but comes from Plato, that the Pope claims authority over men's
souls even after death.
And in all of these things put together, we see that all of this contradicts the
scriptural gospel that men are justified solely by faith in Christ, and not by
faith in a combination of human works.
Now, so far, I actually haven't answered your question yet of, is the papacy still
the antichrist?
And the answer to that is to look at the papistic doctrine of today and say,
has anything changed?
And the answer is really no.
Some people are going to cite the Vatican II Council as an example of changing Roman
beliefs, but if you read through the documents of Vatican II, what you see is
that Vatican II really changed nothing.
It was cosmetic changes for the Roman Church.
It changed the Church's posture towards the unbelieving world, if anything.
The Roman Church still believes what it does about the papacy and about the
doctrines that we've mentioned here, and in some ways it still behaves as it
did during the time of the Reformation.
The long and short of it is, the papacy puts doctrines in front of people to
believe, which are not Christian, which are not biblical, and in doing so,
it leads men away from Christ, away from trusting Christ alone for their
salvation, and teaches them to place their faith in themselves and their works.
Does that mean the papacy is still the Antichrist?
You betcha.
Now, if you want to do some more research on this, I would highly recommend you go
to two places.
The first is the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.
This is by Philip Melanchthon.
It's one of the confessional documents of the Lutheran Church.
You can find it in the Book of Concord.
Also, then, I would highly recommend two books against the papacy.
It's by Nicholas Junius and Balthasar Meissner.
You can get this also from Repristination Press.
I'd highly recommend that as they tackle this issue of the papacy, papal doctrine,
and the Antichrist, and they do it quite succinctly and quite well.
Thanks for the question.
We'll see you next time on Ask the Pastor.