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The Antichrist Most Definitely Is Not a Person! 19

ourselves unnecessary enmities, when there is nothing to call for it. So indeed he says
here: Only there is one that restrains now, until he be taken out of the way, that is, when
the ROMAN EMPIRE is taken out of the way, then he shall come, and naturally. For as
long as the fear of this empire lasts, no one will willingly exalt himself, but when that is
dissolved, he will attack the anarchy and endeavor to seize upon the government both of
man and of God! (Ibid.).

Jerome. Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible -- upon which version all later Roman
Catholic vernacular versions would be based (including the English Douay version) -- was born
circa 340 and died in 420. He lived well into the first of the Barbarian invasions and actually wit-
nessed his home town on the Dalmatian border being destroyed by the marauding Goths. He saw, as
did the others, that the fall of Rome was necessary to the coming of the Antichrist. The events of his
later life would have anticipated the event of the fall, and those living just a few years longer would
have witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire. Of II Thessalonians he writes,

that antichrist shall sit in the temple of God, either at Jerusalem (as some imagine) or IN
THE CHURCH (as we more truly judge) showing himself that he is Christ, and the son
of God: and unless the Roman Empire be first desolated, and antichrist precede, Christ
shall not come (Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies. 1804, Vol. II, pp. 115-116).

Jerome also said: “He [Paul] shows that that which restrains is the Roman Empire; for un-
less it shall have been destroyed, and taken out of the midst, according to the prophet Daniel,
Antichrist will not come before that” (Jerome, Commentaria, Book 5, chapter 25).

Jerome fully understood why Paul was so careful when writing about the Antichrist and
what restrained it because “if he had chosen to say this openly, he would have foolishly aroused a
frenzy of persecution against Christians” (Jerome, op. cit., Book 5, chapter 25).

There are many others who came to the same conclusions about the fall of the Roman Em-
pire and its division into ten kingdoms based on the seventh chapter of Daniel. Then authors left
writings with similar views, i.e. The Roman Empire would be dissolved into ten kingdoms, and the
Antichrist would arise from among them -- preceding the second coming of Yeshua by a long pe-
riod of time. None of these men were in ignorance that that day would overtake them as a thief.
They knew the second coming of Yeshua was not imminent in their life-time. Only those, like
Jerome in the latter time of the empire, thought the time was near because the fall of the empire was
near.

Justin Martyr spoke of Christians praying for the continuance of the restraining Roman Em-
pire, lest the dreaded times of Antichrist, expected to follow upon its fall, should overtake them in
their day (Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 1, p.19).

Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth century, speaking of this same prophecy, said: “This, the
predicted Antichrist, will come, when the times of the Roman Empire shall be fulfilled....Ten kings
of the Romans shall arise together...among these the eleventh is Antichrist, who, by magical and
wicked artifices, shall seize the Roman power” (Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 463).

The Berean Voice July-August 2002