Historicism, a method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies, has been applied to the Book of Daniel by many writers. The Historicist view follows a straight line of continuous fulfillment of prophecy which starts in Daniel's time and goes through John's writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.History of the Church of God, pp. 252, 253 (1876)
One of the aspects of the Protestant historicist paradigm is the speculation that the Little Horn Power which rose after the breakup of the Roman Empire is the Papacy, the predicted Antichrist power. Futurism and Preterism, alternate methods of prophetic interpretation, were used by Jesuits to oppose this interpretation"Jesuit scholarship rallied to the Roman cause by providing two plausible alternatives to the historical interpretation of the Protestants. 1. Luis de Alcazar (1554-1630) of Seville, Spain, devised what became known as the 'preterist' system of prophetic interpretation. This theory proposed that the Revelation deals with events in the Pagan Roman Empire, that antichrist refers to Nero and that the prophecies were therefore fulfilled long before the time of the medieval church. Alcazar's preterist system has never made any impact on the conservative, or evangelical wing of the Protestant movement, although in the last one hundred years it has become popular among Protestant rationalists and liberals. 2. A far more successful attack was taken by Francisco Ribera (1537 - 1591) of Salamanca, Spain. He was the founder of the 'futurist' system of prophetic interpretation. Instead of placing antichrist way in the past as did Alcazar, Ribera argues that antichrist would appear way in the future. About 1590 Ribera published a five hundred page commentary on the Apocalypse, denying the Protestant application of antichrist to the church of Rome." M.L. Moser, Jr., An Apologetic of Premillennialism, p.27H. Grattan Guinness, Romanism and the Reformation From the Standpoint of Prophecy, p. 268 (1887)Rev. Joseph Tanner, Daniel and the Revelation, pp. 16, 17. that the Antichrist was the Papacy or the power of the Roman Catholic Church.The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 4 [4BC], 42.)
Overview Historicists claim that prophetic interpretation reveals the entire course of history of the church from the writing of the Book of Daniel, some centuries before the close of the 1st century, to the end of time.Seventh-day Adventist Bible Student's Source Book, No. 1257, p. 775 There are two kinds of prophecy in the Bible. One is Classical (or typical) prophecy which commonly deals with immediate events or issues. An example of this is Belshazzar's feast. Daniel 5 tells how Belshazzar holds a great feast and a hand appears and prophetically writes on the wall that his kingdom will be given to the Medes and the Persians. Apocalyptic prophecy is the other, and focuses on the distant future or the end time events relating to the Second Coming. This type of prophecy is what is found in Isaiah 24-27, Zechariah 9-14, and with Christ speaking about it in Matthew 24 as well as the book of Daniel.William H. Shea, “Making Sense of Bible Prophecy,” Adventist Review, March 29, 2001, pp. 25-26.
The Historicists methodology was also used by Jerome (c. 347–420) in his writings, which can be seen in his study of the coming Antichrist. He warned that those substituting false interpretations for the actual meaning of Scripture belonged to the "synagogue of the Antichrist". "He that is not of Christ is of Antichrist", he wrote to Pope Damasus I. He believed that "the mystery of lawlessness" written about by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 was already in action when "every one chatters about his views." To Jerome, the power restraining this mystery of lawlessness was the Roman Empire, but as it fell this restraining force was removed. He warned a noble woman of Gaul:
In his Commentary on Daniel, Jerome noted, "Let us not follow the opinion of some commentators and suppose him to be either the Devil or some demon, but rather, one of the human race, in whom Satan will wholly take up his residence in bodily form." Instead of rebuilding the Jewish Temple to reign from, Jerome thought the Antichrist sat in God's Temple inasmuch as he made "himself out to be like God." He refuted Porphyry's idea that the "little horn" mentioned in Daniel chapter 7 was Antiochus IV Epiphanes by noting that the "little horn" is defeated by an eternal, universal ruler, right before the final judgment. Instead, he advocated that the "little horn" was the Antichrist:
Jerome used the application of the year-day principle to the seventy weeks as made by others and refers to the interpretations of Eusebius, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and “the Hebrews”.."Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 450.
Historicism was the belief held by the majority of the Protestant Reformers especially in identifying the Antichrist, from the time of Wycliffe. William Tyndale, an English Protestant reformer, held that while the Roman Catholic realms of that age were the empire of Antichrist, any religious organization that distorted the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments also showed the work of Antichrist. In his treatise The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, he expressly rejected the established Church teaching that looked to the future for an Antichrist to rise up, and he taught that Antichrist is a present spiritual force that will be with us until the end of the age under different religious disguises from time to time.Tyndale, William, Parable of the Wicked Mammon, c. 1526, (facsimile copy of later printing, no ISBN, Benediction Classics, 2008)at pages 4-5 The Catholic church tried to counter it with Preterism and Futurism during the Counter-Reformation... This alternate view served to bolster the Catholic Church's position against attacks by Protestants,. and is viewed as a Catholic defense against the Protestant Historicist view which identified the Roman Catholic Church as a persecuting apostasy and the Pope with the Anti-Christ..
Prophetic commentaries in the early church usually interpreted individual passages rather than entire books. Protestant Reformers had a major interest in historicism, with a direct application to their struggle against the Papacy. Prominent leaders and scholars among them, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, John Knox, and Cotton Mather, identified the Roman Papacy as the Antichrist. The Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg headed by Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume "Magdeburg Centuries" to discredit the papacy and identify the pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue notes,
Rather than expecting a single Antichrist to rule the earth during a future Tribulation period, Luther, John Calvin and other Protestant reformers saw the Antichrist as a present feature in the world of their time, fulfilled in the papacy. such as the "little horn" of Daniel 7 and 8.
Isaac Newton's religious views on the historicist approach are in the work published in 1733, after his death, Observations upon the Prophesies of the Book of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. It took a stance toward the papacy similar to that of the early Protestant reformers. He avoided predictions based on prophetic literature, taking the view that prophesy when it has been shown to be fulfilled will be proof that God's providence has been imminently active in the world. This work regarded much prophesy as already fulfilled in the first millennium of the Christian era.
The historicist approach has been used in attempts to predict the date of the end of the world. An example in post-Reformation Britain is in the works of Charles Wesley, who predicted that the end of the world would occur in 1794.
Origins in Judaism and Early Church Early interpretations The interpreters using the historicist approach for Bible Propecies had their origins in the Jewish apocalyptic writings such as we see in the book of Daniel, which predicted the future the time between their writing and the end of the world. Throughout most of history since the predictions of the book of Daniel, historicism has been widely used. This approach can be found in the works Josephus who interpreted the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2 as the Roman empire with a future power as the stone "not cut by human hands", that would overthrow the Romans.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 10:10, in William Whiston, trans., The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988), pages = 280; cf. Froom 1:199. We also find it in the early church in the works of Irenaeus (and Tertullian) who interpreted the fourth kingdom of Daniel as the Roman empire and believed that it in the future was going to be broken up smaller kingdoms, as the iron mixed with clay. It is also found in the interpretations in the writings of writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Jerome.Gleason L. Archer, trans., Jerome's Commentary on Daniel (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 32
Protestant interpretations But it has particularly been associated with Protestantism and the Reformation, and was the standard interpretation from Lollard movement which was regarded as the precursor to the Protestant Reformation, and was known as the Protestant interpretation till modern times. The Jews before them had held the many prophecies to be fulfilled, were pointing the messiah such as those by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.Barker, Margaret (2001). "Isaiah". In Dunn, James D.G.; Rogerson, John. Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Eerdmans. page 490.Nahmanides in his dispute with Pablo Christiani in 1263 paragraph 49.Jerome in his Commentary on Daniel went into the kingdoms that Daniel predicted. Many Protestant Reformers were interested in historicism and the day-year principle, assigning prophecies in the Bible to past, present and future events. It was prevalent in Wycliffe's writings, and taught by Martin Luther,Luther, Martin, ″Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity; Matthew 24:15-28″, Church Postil, 1525J. H. Merle D’aubigne’s History of the Reformation of the Sixteen Century, book vi, chapter xii, p. 215. John Calvin,Calvin, John, ″Lecture Fifty-Second", Commentary on Daniel, Volume
John Wesley, and Sir Isaac Newton and many others. George Whitefield, Charles Finney, C. H. Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, and Bishop Thomas Newton also are considered as advocates of this view.S. Gregg, "Revelation: Four Views," Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub, 1997, p. 34. Modern proponents of historicism include theologian Francis Nigel Lee, and denominations derived the 19th century Millerite movement, including Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
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