# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

That the Pope at Rome is the Antichrist. 271

...man, but a mingled person out of God and man, just as our Christ alone is. And what a man of sin is, you may easily learn from the previous sections, since he is not merely a sinner on his own account, but has filled the world — especially the temple of God, the church — full, quite full, of sins, false worship, blasphemy, unbelief, and lies, whereby he has also become a child of perdition, that is, has led himself, together with countless souls, to hell and eternal damnation. The Turk also leads the world astray; but he does not sit in the temple of God, does not bear the name of Christ and St. Peter, nor Holy Scripture either; rather he storms Christendom from outside and boasts of being its enemy. But this inward destroyer wants to be a friend, wants to be called father, and is twice as bad as the Turk. That is called an abomination of desolation, or destruction — an idol who, against Christ, destroys everything that Christ has built and given us." (Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil, 26, p. 189.)

From both passages cited it already appears how Luther saw the features of 2 Thessalonians 2 fulfilled in the papacy; as for the prophecies of the Apocalypse, he seldom goes into them, on account of his unfavorable opinion of that book (Preface of 1522, Erlangen ed. 63, p. 169); only in the preface of 1545 (63, p. 158 ff.) does he clearly explain that in the 13th and 17th chapters "the papal empire and the imperial papacy" are depicted, and likewise in the 14th, "that the city of Babylon shall fall, and the spiritual papacy perish." All the more does Luther hold to the prophecies of Daniel — though not in such a way that the enemy of God arising out of the fourth monarchy (Dan. 7:8, 24-25), who humbles three kings, is taken to be the Pope; rather this is "Mohammed, or the Turk, who now holds Egypt, Asia, and Greece" (41, p. 244) — but rather in such a way that he takes the Greek antichrist (Dan. 8 and 12) as a type of the Pope. He himself states his hermeneutical principle in the commentary on Daniel: "This Antiochus is set here as an example of all wicked kings and princes, especially those who rage against God and his Word. Therefore all the earlier teachers, too, have called and interpreted this Antiochus as a figure of the Antichrist, and have hit the mark rightly in doing so. For such a filthy, wild wretch and such a raging tyrant was fittingly chosen as a prefiguration of the final abomination, as indeed a number of phrases in the 8th and 12th chapters may be noted and secretly point to." (41, p. 246) "The 12th chapter of Daniel, as all teachers interpret it in agreement, goes entirely, under the name of Antiochus, to the Antichrist and to this last time in which we now live." (p. 294) So then Luther applies Daniel 8:23-25 entirely and wholly to the Pope in the tract "Revelation of the Antichrist" (Walch XVIII, p. 1799 ff.), and likewise Daniel 11:36-12:12 is explained in particular detail with reference to the papacy in the already-cited tract "The Prophet Daniel in German, together with an Exposition of the Twelfth Chapter" (Erlangen ed. 41, p. 232 ff.). Here it is shown how the true fulfillment of this prophecy