# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S270
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

270 That the Pope at Rome is the Antichrist.

Babylon! For instance, Gregorius Heimburg, Doctor of Laws, at the time of the Council of Basel, in his book "Against the Primacy." He calls the Pope and his clergy Babylon and the Babylonian whore, and calls, as in the Apocalypse, for people to come out of it.

This cloud of witnesses against the antichristian papacy — and their number could easily be increased still further — went before Luther, and he therefore did not come forward with a new arbitrary opinion, but as the representative of a complaint half a millennium old, even though he himself said the Pope was the Antichrist. For as mild as he had been for three years (1517–1520) toward the person of the Pope, and as, in all his controversies, he had still hoped that the Pope would give truth its due — when at last the bull against Luther was published, then Luther too openly declared "that this bull was made by senseless raving spirits, or by the head of all wickedness, the Antichrist." "If the Pope does not revoke and condemn this bull, and along with it punish Dr. Eck and his companions, the followers of such bulls, then no one should doubt that the Pope is God's enemy, Christ's persecutor, the destroyer of Christendom, and the true Antichrist." (Against the Bull of the Antichrist, Erlangen ed. 24, p. 35 ff.) That was the last time Luther put the dilemma to the Pope; for since the bull was not withdrawn, and error and lies and spiritual tyranny were instead to continue, the proposition stood firm for Luther that the Pope was the Antichrist, and from then on he proved it dogmatically and exegetically. "I do not hold Mohammed to be the Antichrist: he makes it too crude, and has a recognizable black devil who can deceive neither faith nor reason, and is like a heathen who persecutes Christendom from outside, as the Romans and other heathens have done. — — But the Pope among us is the true Antichrist; he has the lofty, subtle, beautiful, glittering devil, who sits inside Christendom itself, and lets Holy Scripture, baptism, the sacrament, the keys, the catechism, and marriage remain standing; as St. Paul says, 2 Thess. 2:4, that he sits (that is, rules) in the temple of God, that is, in the church or Christendom, namely among that people which is baptized," etc. (Refutation of the Koran, Brother Richard, 65, p. 20.) "And even if the devil himself were to rule at Rome, he could not make it worse; indeed, if he ruled in person, we could cross ourselves and flee from him. But now that the Pope has surrendered himself to be a mask adorned with God's Word, under which one could not recognize him, that is God's wrath; there everything has happened that his bitter, devilish, hellish malice against Christ and his church could devise; there he has become our idol, whom we have worshiped under the name of St. Peter and of Christ, together with all his lies, blasphemies, and idolatries. — — Here you may read for yourself 2 Thess. 2:4 and see what St. Paul means when he says that the Antichrist sits in the temple of God, that is, in the church of Christ, as though he were Christ and God himself, as his hypocrites blaspheme and say: the Pope is not a mere