Victory Through the Ages (Defeat of the Antichrists)

In a strange coinciding of calendars our American Halloween falls on the same day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Church doors. While our national culture celebrates ghouls and goblins the reformed church celebrates freedom from them through a recovered gospel. The Reformation begun under Luther transformed his era.

We remember the Reformation as the time when the Christian church recovered the true gospel. Men who had long been ensnared by hopeless doctrines of salvation through merits of their own or others were once again convinced to trust in Christ alone by grace alone. The true church stood on its newly healed doctrinal feet and preached repentance to the entrenched bureaucracy of the Papal hierarchy. These were heady times and dangerous. You could be fashioned into a human candle for such pronouncements. The magistrates might torture you with the infamous ‘iron boot’ designed with slots wherein your tormentors could drive iron wedges and crush your leg bones one ghastly stroke of the mallet at a time. The torments of that historical night give testimony to the need for the Reformation. Those who invoked their use most needed the message being preached.

The reformers often referred to the Pope as the antichrist. They took the term from the New Testament writer (1 John 2:18) who actually used the plural ‘antichrists’.  In both ages our Christian forefathers viewed the battle of their day as one against a gigantic foe who opposed Christ and His church. The antichrist was against Christ but not in the same way as a local atheist or bully of some sort. The antichrist wielded strong worldly power and had devious schemes to lay the church down hard.

For four hundred years the early church labored under the persecutions of the antichrist(s) of the Roman Empire. At the time the Romans appeared to be invincible. They had subjugated vastly scattered kingdoms. Roman roads and architecture identified their mastery of the sciences and the peoples. The Roman Legions were nearly impossible to defeat in the field. Trains of slaves were continually being hauled in to the center to labor to their deaths on the imperial projects. Corinthian columns rose while the bones of their lifters were discarded in the rubble. The empire was everything while the individual man was nothing. Every citizen swore allegiance to the emperor not only as his leader but literally as god. A pinch of incense on the alter and the fateful words agreeing that Cesar is god were required as a civic duty. Followers of Jesus did not fare well under that system. And yet, by the beginning of the fourth century the kingdom of iron and clay (see Daniel) was passing into history. Its culture of slavery and crucifixion was rapidly being replaced by a higher order. Christian principle had been permeating the Mediterranean and slowly transforming the society from within. As the dust of time calcified over the ruins the Roman Empire was largely forgotten. History moves on. Men move on. The Roman antichrist had withered and dried and its powdered remains washed away in the tide of living events.

To the reformers the antichrist of the apostatized church hierarchy and doctrine was likewise formidable. The encrusted leadership of the magisterial church resisted all argument and brought viscous retribution on its enemies. The courts were rigged and the excruciations of their punishments were rightly terrifying in the minds of the resistance. The suns of centuries had risen and set over that increasingly wicked system. Men found themselves taxed and enslaved within the iron doors of the house of their own building. This darkened society was not imposed on Europe but developed from within. When the reformers called the Pope the antichrist they stood against a power no right minded man thought he could defeat. But, although thousands of faithful men were devoured by its lions of persecution the reformers did eventually regain freedom in Christ. The medieval antichrist fell and a restored church went out to evangelize the world.

Here we are at the onset of the 21^st century. Once again the enemies of the church have raised themselves to sit on golden thrones. The antichrist of our day is not (yet) an all-powerful emperor nor is it a controlling church hierarchy. What we do have is a dominant anti-Christian culture of secular modernism and its attendant (pseudo) scientific state. This antichrist appears to be impossibly entrenched all around us. Many on our own side of the battle have already given up all hope. They have determined to just wait for the return of Jesus and let Him deal with it. Our current theological fads have delayed us from the battle and are seemingly assuring our demise. But, in the midst of this God is still in control. He is pushing forward His work and His kingdom. Seek first the kingdom and righteousness our Savior commands. Nothing has changed. We are supposed to be kingdom builders not prophecy gazers. This antichrist of self assured, humanistic modernism will be defeated by means of an awakening church. Christ is still building His church! His law and wisdom still stand above the wisdom of men. I believe we are on the cusp of a second Reformation. This is what we ought to work toward, a restructuring of all things according to the will of our Savior and His word, the defeat of the antichrist. Nothing less will save us.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach