[Proposition] 4 They did not commence after the [time][reign] of Gregory the 7th. 1084 [AD]
Like the children’s picture book, “Where’s Waldo?” or a game of “Whack-a-Mole,” every generation of Christians is intrigued by the mystery of who might be this “man of sin,” otherwise known as “Mystery Babylon,” “the Beast” or “the Antichrist.” Religious groups commit much time and effort to prove that theirs is the pure faith and that all other denominations represent an “antichrist” of sorts or a “doctrine” of the Antichrist.
Isaac Newton’s generation was no exception.
However, as a master of the Historicist School, Newton would have recognized that there were many “antichrists.” In this respect Historicism is an advancement over the Preterist and Futuristic Schools in the recognition that “evil” cannot be reduced to a single person, principle or event, but that it resurfaces in every generation from sometimes unexpected sources.
The writer of the First Epistle of John in the Bible confronted the alarmism in his day (probably Pauline:1 Thessalonians 4, who in responding to this rebuke, issued a correction in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2), because, as our Johannine writer declares:
Ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists. (2:18)
[We think that the reference to “the last time” interwoven in this text is either an interpolation or a mistranslation. More another time.]
Likewise, the Protestant reformers considered the Antichrist to be an “office” which could be filled by many men: the single office of the Papacy is filled by many Popes in succession.
It is curious then that Newton should think that Pope Gregory the 7th could have been a candidate to represent the beginning of this apostasy which characterizes the period of “time, times, and half time” as iterated in his “Proposition 3” which was under discussion in our last installment and elsewhere throughout this series. The reader will remember that there are other equivalents, such as the 1260 days, 3 1/2 days, 3 1/2 years, and so on.
Pope Gregory the 7th was a “reformer’s” Pope and actively sought to use his office to fight the evil in the world, so much so, that he is remembered as the “Pope who excommunicated a King.”
But we should also notice that Newton chose the year 1084 which was the last year of Gregory’s reign and not his first. The proposed period of apostasy follows Gregory’s reign; it does not start it.
1084AD was also the year in which the Normans laid siege and sacked Rome, an event which many consider a complete reversal of Gregory’s reforms and which sadly ended his life soon thereafter.
[That’s right, the same Normans who had conquered England just two decades earlier].
Thus, in Newton’s worldview, the retraction which follows every reformation deepens the apostasy. The declension after every revival worsens the depravity. The delusion after every enlightenment darkens the darkness.
This nihilistic spiral characterizes the Great Tribulation Period – or the first half of it, as in the 1,260 years – until the Stone Kingdom should strike the “feet and toes” of the statue in Daniel’s visions (Daniel 2:45).
We closed the last installment with Newton’s implication of the “Ten” great houses of Europe as the Ten Kingdoms (the Ten Horns) which make alliance with the Whore of Babylon (the Papacy), Revelation 17. This association presents a serious complication of our perception of the value of “European” Civilization.
For many Protestants, it was sufficient at the time to apply the Antichrist label on the Papacy. Indeed, as it was in England, the respective monarchies were often the engines producing reformation. But in Newton’s lexicon, that did not matter. The leading Reformers represented in their own movements a different kind of apostasy, one exchanged for another which was far worse.
For example, as alluded to in the last installment, the sale of indulgences of the medieval church which outraged the Reformers was a sort of monetization of soul-saving, while usury had been banned for almost a millennium. The Reformers came and banned the superstition, but brought back usury which resulted in the modern banking system and which Newton noted,
For these are the Merchants of the Earth, who trade with the great Whore, and their merchandize is all things of price, with the bodies and souls of men: whose judgment – lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not . . . [Revelation 18:12-13; 19:20]Obervations, p.75
Elsewhere, Newton claimed that the worship of ghosts and spirits of the pagans with their ancestor worship carried over into the Byzantine and then later the Roman churches in the veneration of saints and angels with a corresponding fear of demons.
Likewise today, the Charismatics with their “Seven Mountain” ideology and deliverance ministries have magnified the world of spirits and of spiritual warfare into a war engine not seen since the Crusades. They who claim to be “led by the Spirit” and can “hear the voice of God” display a derangement which requires its own deliverance. The exorcists are in need of exorcism.
These examples should illustrate what Newton had in mind, but we can – and will – expand the discussion to other doctrinal constructs. I invite the reader’s introspection.
So then, as in Christ’s warning about recurring bouts of demonic possession on the personal level – the departing demon bringing seven more to torment the possessed (Luke 11:24-26) – during this “Tribulation Period,” there is no true reformation, no true revival, no true enlightenment” until the end of days.
For the few and obscure Prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming were for setting up the Christian religion, which all nations have since corrupted; so the many and clear Prophecies concerning the things to be done at Christ’s second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting a recovery and re-establishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a kingdom wherein dwells righteousness.
Newton, Observations, p. 79
We are challenged, then, to look at the particulars of what constitutes an apostasy? What are the doctrinal features which we should expect to see to clearly delineate a true reformation from one which aggravates the apostasy? What is this “long-lost truth” which is necessary for a kingdom of righteousness?
I propose a deeper dive with future installments. I will be focusing on Newton’s interpretations, not necessarily my own. I don’t always agree with him, and I am propositional with my own views. But we need to start somewhere.
JWS, 9/22/24
