Historicism is the popular Protestant interpretation of the Book of Revelation which applies all of the prophecies somehow, conveniently, to the Catholic Church. It is heretical, obviously enough, but it also has significant flaws and fails to even fit neatly into history. Historicism understands the days to be an allegorical reference to years and much of it hinges on this symbols for if these symbols aren't correct, then their whole entire theology collapses. We'll get into the problems with where the apostasy begins and the 1260 "years" in another part, but to open up, I just wanted to point out the glaring flaws in the interpretation first and foremost as well as a little bit about my own background.
When I was younger, I was always attracted to the beauty of Catholicism. I thought of the tranquility of lighting a candle during the church "service" (which I now realize is actually properly called a Liturgy in the East and more frequently called a Mass in the West). I grew up non-denominational. We were charismatic, pietistic, and Arminian. We absolutely despised Calvinists as evil for denying the obvious. But that was the only basic doctrine we seemed to have. I didn't learn things like the Trinity. I learned the basic part but I didn't learn very much in terms of systematic theology or why it was important. There was no deification of the soul through grace, no working out our own salvation. We came across the text, "Not everyone who says, 'Lord, Lord!' will make it into Heaven" but we understood it to mean "only if you say, 'Lord, Lord!' will you make it into Heaven". There was no essence of Christianity. We had people who were formerly Catholic. I wonder why now but based on the debasement of modern Catholic thought, there may be an answer to that. They felt Catholics were only really "quasi-Christian" at best. It seemed strange I couldn't get a definite answer.
Then, my senior year in high school, I discovered some very nasty interpretations of the Book of the Revelation toward the Catholic Church. Some of these interpreted the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation as being about the unfolding events of history and identified the Papacy as the Antichrist and the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. I was very shocked at this but being young and naïve, I thought it a reasonable interpretation. Though this led to an objectively good thing. I began to forge an interest in both history and historical theology and I wanted to know more about the teachings of the Catholic faith too. I am grateful for the Catholics who tolerated my silliness back then and I ask for the forgiveness of any one I led astray in all this.
It was in studying history, I realized soon enough that the historicist interpretation of the Scriptures was a whole bunch of garbage. It was an exercise in eisegesis of the Scriptures and an abuse of shoehorning history to fit an agenda. Namely, the agenda to remain anti-Catholic and in error. We'll get into more detail later but first, I want to focus on the more asinine interpretations of the historicist school to show how contradictory and what a load of bull-hockey it truly is.
The first one to take note of is the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod's (WELS) statement of faith that the Pope is the Antichrist based on the teaching of the Man of Sin appearing in the Scriptures. You can read their full statement here. Obviously, this is ludicrous for multiple reasons. The first of which is that said "Man of Sin" will proclaim himself as God in the Temple of God and direct worship toward himself. Even if we do not understand the Temple of God as the Jewish Temple as it would have been understood at the time St. Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians, if the Man of Sin is standing in the Christian Churches showing himself to be God, then it is better to remain Catholic. For to abandon the Church is to abandon Christ. So WELS refutes its own doctrine on the subject. Secondly, the Pope never shows himself to be God but always directs the faithful's worship to the true God. So for WELS to say the Papacy fulfills this is nuts.
The second one to take note, and we'll be going after this one throughout this series, is the Seventh Day Adventist doctrine which can be found on multiple official SDA websites and SDA off-shoot websites. They teach that the four beasts in Daniel 7 are the Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Roman Empire. That the 10 horns are 10 Barbarian tribes that sacked the Western portion of the Roman Empire. That Justinian's crowning of the Pope in 538 (source???) started 1260 years until Napoleon Bonaparte's abuse of the Papacy in 1798 resulted in the "fatal wound". This theory can be guffawed at so badly that one wonders why waste a series of blog posts writing a refutation of it? Because it's fun and riveting to write about actual history as an historian. I'll go over the flaws more in-depth obviously but to begin with...
1. The 10 horns are on the beast's head. They cover symbolically the whole beast by being on his head. The Roman Empire did not collapse in 476 A.D. as modern Pagans claim but in 1453 A.D. as historians claim. Therefore, there was no rooting up of three horns that could have even possibly happened in 538 A.D.!
2. The fatal wound came before the beast's 1260 day reign so to insist that a fatal wound occurred after is just forcing historical data to match your heretical theology.
3. The SDA position also insists that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, the woman that is ultimately devoured by the beast and the 10 horns. So how can the Catholic Church be both Antichrist and then devour itself?
It was probably the absurdity of the SDA position being forced into my head to consider so much that made me break away from it. But the more and more I consider, the more I realize that there is an agenda behind those who back this ludicrous interpretation. When I was an Arian heretic, I claimed this interpretation because it did justify my Arian beliefs. I fell back on this interpretation in debates with Catholics online because I didn't want to accept the teachings of the Church. As this series continues, I hope people realize and can see what I eventually realized myself about this historicist nonsense. It is nothing more than a mask to keep you from seeing and realizing the beauty of Holy Mother Church. But as this mask is removed, as real history is discovered, we will eventually say with St. John Henry Newman, "To be steeped in history is to cease to be a Protestant."
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