1/17/03
By
J. Parnell McCarter
Puritan News Service
Our chief enemy is Satan. It is his desire to receive all the glory and all the submission that properly belongs to Christ. He is the ultimate Anti-Christ. That is, he is the ultimate one who would like to sit in the place of Christ, which is what scripture principally means by the term anti-christ. Right before the Second Advent of Christ, he will personally come on earth and seek this honor for himself, following the millennial restoration (which is a restoration of the Protestant Reformation, but on a grander scale).
But
before the millennial restoration Satan works through human agents. He has two chief agents that represent him
on earth, who seek to sit in the place of Christ. We see this aspect of two
chief agents in the Sea Beast and the Land Beast described in Revelation
chapter 13. We also see it in the Beast
and False Prophet described in Revelation chapter 19. (The False Prophet in Revelation 19 is the same as the Land Beast
of Revelation 13, but the Beast of Revelation 19 is a new manifestation of the
Sea Beast of Revelation 13.) Finally we
see it in the star that represents Satan, which is Sirius the Dog-Star. (See the Puritan
News Weekly article on New Year’s Eve celebrations, which addresses this
topic.) Sirius is actually 2 stars
revolving around each other, a fact that the ancient Egyptians knew.
The
Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation 19 most probably correspond to the
Black Pope and the White Pope. The
first Black Pope was Ignatius Loyola, and subsequent Black Popes have been the
line of Secretary Generals of the Jesuit Order. The Papacy, as Satan’s agent on earth, seeks to receive all the
glory and submission of peoples and nations in place of Christ. In their scheme of things, all should “kiss
the Pope”.
The
power of the Black Pope and the White Pope proceeds in part from their
international network of single male agents.
As the Apostle Paul noted, singleness generally affords one more ability
to concentrate fully upon a particular task.
There are not the responsibilities and cares attached to marriage. Their single male agents can therefore focus
more fully and engage in more dangerous activities. But they are not limited to this network of single male agents,
but employ married agents as well.
Their
power, at least in the short term, also proceeds from their lack of
scruples. Some of their agents can be
secret agents, appearing to be what they are not. (In this respect, they are like their father the Devil, who
appears as an angel of Light, but is not.)
So a Jesuit agent can be sent into the Protestant ministry, and work to
undermine Protestantism while building up Romanism. And Jesuit agents can be sent into all sorts of civil
governments, and work for Romish interests.
They can lie, steal, cheat, and deceive, so long as the ends are for
Rome.
There
is internecine strife even between the Black Pope and the White Pope, just
enough to remind them that Satan is the one really in charge of them, but never
so much as to destroy the other. Some of
this internecine strife is played out in the competition between their network
of agents, like Jesuits versus Opus Dei.
Sometimes it is even has played out in civil strife, as between
communist and fascist factions. This
internecine strife corresponds to the competition between the Holy Roman
Emperor and the (White) Pope, in the era described in Revelation 13.
This
is not to suggest that all of Christ’s enemies are under the Papacy. Clearly many Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims,
and communists are not. Human depravity
is such that there are many ways to rebel against God. But the most dangerous anti-christ is that
Man of Sin, who like the Son of Perdition Judas Iscariot, is within
Christendom. Such an anti-christ is
especially subtle, like Satan himself, who appears as an angel of light.
Much
more could be said about the enemy. And
much more will be said in future articles.