Will you give briefly the background and implications of "the coming superman" theory, as for example, in the August Moody Monthly, where L. Sale-Harrison, D.D., of Sydney, Australia, writes: "The head of this great and revived empire has the ferocity, cruelty, and blasphemy of all the empires which preceded him. His character is well described in Revelation 13:5-7 [quoted] . . . Without doubt this awful ruler will be an infamous tyrant, such as the world has never seen in its history."
The Papacy met the Reformation of the sixteenth century with a Counter Reformation, and challenged the widespread prophetic interpretation of the Reformers—specifying the Papacy as Paul's "man of sin," the "little horn" of Daniel 7, and the "beast" of Revelation 13, which was to dominate for 1260 literal years—by the futurist system of counterinterpretation. This rebuttal maintained that the predicted antichrist was a single individual yet to come, a superman of sin, who would reign three and one-half literal years, just before the end of the age. The progenitor of this theory was the noted Jesuit, Ribera. Sad to record, this false eounterinterpretation of Rome, together with its equally false preterist system of interpretation, succeeded in largely breaking down the noble start in sound prophetic exposition made by the Reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, clearly identifying the Papacy historically in the prophetic symbols.
And now a certain group of bewildered Fundamentalists are echoing this same false theory, proclaiming and predicting a coming superman, who is yet to allegedly fulfill Revelation 13:5-7, thus conceding and virtually contending for this anti-Protestant view of the Counter Reformation,—that the first power symbolized in Revelation 13 was not the Papacy of the Middle Ages. We need to understand the history and implications of such an appealing, but specious theory, and to expose its basic fallacy.
L. E. F.
