THE COUNTER REFORMATION

The Counter Reformation

In spite of the separation of the reformed churches from Roman Catholicism, Scripture predicts that at the end of time the whole world would follow the beast. This includes the churches of today. The Reformation would grind to a halt, and the principles, which lead to separation from Rome, would not be considered obstacles at the end of time. As discussed in the chapter The Wine of Babylon, Rome considers herself the mother of all the churches, and her strivings have been to bring about the return of her separated children to her.

Preterism and Futurism

To meet the challenge and exposure of the Papacy as the Antichrist and the Pope as the “son of perdition”, the Jesuits were summoned to counter the reformers’ teachings, and here two Jesuit scholars stand out in particular. They are Alcasar and Ribera, and they developed the preterist and futurist systems of prophetic interpretation. The preterist interpretation puts all prophecy pertaining to the Antichrist into the past (persecutors outside the Jewish or Christian religion), and the futurist interpretation puts them into the future after the Christian dispensation and the Secret Rapture. Ribera published his futurist views in 1585.

According to the futurist view, the antichrist was to come from the tribe of Dan, and would make his appearance after the secret rapture. He was to rebuild the temple, abolish the Christian faith, pretend to be God and then conquer the world in the space of threeandahalf years. Furthermore, futurism teaches that, instead of coming with the clouds with great power and great glory, our Saviour will come secretly and silently to take away his Church a teaching foreign to that of the apostles.

For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. I Thessalonians 4:16,17.

The apostles referred to the spirit of antichrist already working in their time, to be fully revealed at the end of time. There is no question of referring to the antichrist power in the past. Jesus in Matthew 24 speaks of this great apostasy as a future event, not a past occurrence.

In the nineteenth century, the Protestant world, starting with the Anglican priest Samuel R. Maitland, accepted the futurist teachings and saw in it an opportunity to cease hostilities with Rome.

The prophetic interpretation of futurism was further refined, when, according to S.P. Tregelles, dispensationalism originated in an “utterance” by means of tongues in Edward Irving’s church in England. The futurist dispensationalistic mode of prophetic interpretation has been accepted by most Protestant churches today, and is the form of interpretation employed in the Scofield Reference Bible.[v] Dispensationalism is a product of futurism and it teaches that history is divided into seven dispensations:

Human History
Innocence Kingdom	Conscience	Government	Promise	Law	Grace	Millenium
Before Eternity sin (Eden)	Antediluvial Civilization	Postdiluvial Period	Abraham to Exodus	Levitical Era	Church Period	Era of Peace

During the dispensation of the Millennial Kingdom, the Jews will preach the gospel after the rapture of the Christians. The Jews will be suppressed by antichrist and the visible appearing of Christ will save them at the end of seven years. According to futurists, the Church is concerned with grace, and the Jews are concerned with the Kingdom. The Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come” can therefore have no meaning to the Christian. Furthermore, Scofield allows for no continuity between the Old Testament believer and the New Testament church. Not even Christ spoke to us (because he taught under the old dispensation); only the epistles speak to us.

Most men who subscribe to dispensationalism are of Calvinistic creed, with a deeprooted belief in predestination. According to this doctrine, man has so far fallen in sin that he is unable to choose for himself. Salvation is therefore not conditional but unconditional, and one is either predestined to eternal salvation or to eternal damnation. All promises of scripture are also unconditional, and the Jews were God’s chosen people whether they wanted to be or not.

This is not a Biblical teaching: it destroys man’s freedom of choice, relegates him to the position of a pawn, and renders the teaching of the Gospel obsolete. This teaching is in clear violation of the Biblical teaching of conditionalism (Exod. 19:5,6; Deut. 28:1,15; Jeremiah 18:710 and many other texts in both the Old and the New Testament). It is the doctrine of predestination, which opened the way to the acceptance of dispensationalism by the Calvinistic churches. Without the uttering in tongues in Irving’s church, this system of interpretation would never have arisen, because no one taking the Bible alone (sola scriptura) would have accepted it. Scripture warns against deceptive teachings of spirits. Paul writes:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. 1 Timothy 4:1

Paul admonishes all to make the word of God our standard and to come into harmony with the teachings of Christ so that we would be protected from false doctrines.

And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. For the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. Ephesians 4:1114

- Prof. Walter J. Veith

REFERENCES:

[v] D.F. Neufield, Ministry, July 1978.

Source: http://amazingdiscoveries.org/the-counter-reformation.html