Characteristic 2.
The little horn arises among the ten horns. The ten horns are the divisions of western Europe, so the little horn must arise in western Europe (Daniel 7:8). Notice that these first two characteristics restrict the geographical location of the little horn to western Europe.
That the little horn was to rise up among ten future kings was understood by the early church fathers. They saw and understood that what Paul meant when he said….
2 Thessalonians 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
….Was the Roman power. They understood that when the Roman power was taken out of the way, the antichrist would appear among the ten kings, and would subdue 3 of them.
First, let us read what the well known Catholic historian Cardinal Manning had to say:
“Now the abandonment of Rome was the liberation of the pontiffs. Whatsoever claims to obedience the emperors may have made, and whatsoever compliance the Pontiff may have yielded, the whole previous relation, anomalous, and annulled again and again by the vices and outrages of the emperors, was finally dissolved by a higher power. The providence of God permitted a succession of irruptions, Gothic, Lombard, and Hungarian, to desolate Italy, and to efface from it every remnant of the empire The pontiffs found themselves alone, the sole fountains of order, peace, law, and safety. And from the hour of this providential liberation, when, by a divine intervention, the chains fell off from the hands of the successor of St. Peter, as once before from his own, no sovereign has ever reigned in Rome except the Vicar of Jesus Christ.”
(Henry Edward Manning, The Temporal Power of The Vicar of Jesus Christ, Preface, pp. xxviii, xxix. London: Burns and Lambert, 1862).
According to Manning, there was a restraint that inhibited the Bishops of Rome from exercising full authority as the temporal and spiritual leaders they believed was their destiny.That restraint was the pagan Roman power. Continue reading
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