Phoneman777
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- Jan 14, 2015
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That's assuming the Antichrist has yet to arise, assuming the Antichrist is a single evil person who will arise and sit in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, assuming that that rebuilt temple is actually the "temple of God".The subject of the OP is the time of the Antichrist appearing in a temple in Jerusalem per Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2. It is not about the so-called dark ages in Europe nor during the time of Christian persecution by pagan Rome before that.
The final event during the time of the Antichrist's appearance is our Lord Jesus' coming to destroy him. Our Lord Jesus did not return during the dark ages, nor has He returned yet to this day. So it's actually you that is following a doctrine of men that does not align with God's Holy Writ. Because if your arguments were true, then Jesus should have come to gather His Church already back then. And because it's been over a thousand years since that dark age you speak of, it shows just how far your doctrine is skewed away from God's Truth in His Word.
However, Paul said there was a "restrainer" preventing the rise of this "man of sin" Antichrist, and when it was "taken out of the way" the Antichrist would arise. Now, you probably think according to your Jesuit "left behind" Futurist ideas that this restrainer is "the Holy Spirit filled church" or some other agent of holiness which will be "taken out of the way" by the "secret rapture", after which this evil Antichrist dude will arise.
The problem with all that is Paul told the early church the Restrainer was the Roman Empire, and every Early Church Father who had anything to say on this subject understood the Restrainer to be such - not some "agent of holiness" down at the end of time. This was the belief of Protestantism for over 300 years, but what you are saying is relatively new by comparison - it's Jesuit Futurism that has infiltrated Protestantism and taken over. There are some here who actually argue that although the catholic church can't even get right something so simple as "we're saved by grace through faith, not works", they somehow arrived at a correct understanding of end times prophecy - Jesuit Preterism and Jesuit Futurism - when they unveiled these versions as a response to the decades-long Protestant Reformation beatdown of the papacy with their Protestant Historicism interpretation of end times prophecy, which identified the Antichrist as the papacy. The papacy basically said, "hey, look to the past, the future, ANYWHERE BUT AT US for the Anitchrist."