Prophetic Interpretation

I wish to emphasize the fact that it is my most earnest desire to offer you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For forty-seven years I have prayerfully, studiously, and persistently searched the writings of the foremost prophetic authors in the English-speaking world. After long study and extended search, however, I am led to think that there are many people in this world who are not looking for the truth but rather for possible or assumed facts to bolster up a false theory and a contradictory interpretation.

I am well aware there are many Futurists in the United States and doubtless there are some now present. I only ask you to exercise patience, while I place before you certain facts, which no Futurist writer can disprove and which no well-informed man will deny.

The Two Principal Schools of Prophetic Interpreters

“We shall not be surprised to find antagonistic schools of prophetic interpre­tation, but, on the contrary, we shall expect such, and we shall expect the apostates and persecutors to belong to one school, and the faithful confessors and martyrs to another. . . . On turning to the history of prophetic interpretation this is precisely what we find.

“With many varieties as to detail we find there have existed, and still exist, two great opposite schools of interpretation, the Papal and the Protestant, or the futurist and the historical. The latter regards the prophecies of Daniel, Paul and John as fully and faithfully setting forth the entire course of Christian history; the former as dealing chiefly with a future fragment of time at its close.

“The former, or futurist, system of interpreting the prophecies is now held, strange to say, by many Protestants, but it was first invented by the Jesuit Ribera, at the end of the sixteenth century, to relieve the Papacy from the terrible stigma cast upon it by the Protestant interpretation. This interpretation was so evidently the true and intended one, that the adherents of the Papacy felt its edge must, at any cost, be turned or blunted. If the Papacy were the predicted antichrist, as Protestants asserted, there was an end of the question, and separation from it became an imperative duty.”

—H. G. Guinness in Romanism and the Reformation, pp. 183 and 184.

Definition of Futurism and Futurists

Futurism may be defined as that distinctive interpretation of Biblical Prophecy, especially of the last nineteen chapters of the Book of Revelation, which places its fulfillment in the future, or just before the Second Coming of Christ, instead of at any time in the past. This theory usually interprets all symbols in a literal sense.

“Futurist, -one who believes that certain Biblical prophecies are yet to be accomplished: with special reference to the Book of Revelation. A follower of Futurism.”—Standard Dictionary.

Additional Evidence That the Jesuits Invented Futurism

“One Ribera, a Jesuit Priest of Salamanca (Spain), who about A. D. 1585 published an Apocalypic Commentary, which was on the grand points of Babylon and Antichrist what we now call the Futurist scheme. . . . The great object of the writer was the setting aside of all application of the prophecies of Antichrist from the existing Church of Rome.” — Horae Apocalypticae by E. B. Elliott, Vol. IV, p. 465.

From the preceding quotations, which are taken from Guinness and Elliott, two prominent facts appear.

The prophetic interpretation known as Futurism, was invented and perfected by the Jesuits for a well-known and avowed purpose.

That well-known and avowed purpose was and is to combat, and if possible to overthrow the Protestant contention that the reigning Pope is the veri­table Antichrist of John’s First Epistle.

Note the Following Questions

Can any sensible person give a satisfactory reason why Protestants should go to Rome for a prophetic interpretation? What is your answer?

Why should Protestants adopt a prophetic interpretation, invented to destroy their own interpretation, one which has withstood the vigorous assaults of its deadly enemies for nine long centuries?