Some Franciscans had considered the Emperor Frederick II a positive Antichrist who would purify the Catholic Church from opulence, riches and clergy.

The historicist approach, which is the historic Protestant interpretation of the book, sees the Book of Revelation as a prewritten record of the course of history from the time of the apostle to the end of the world. The former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a deeply committed Shiite and claims that he is to personally prepare the world for the coming Mahdi. The Antichrist and Gog and Magog Archived 1 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Ohio: Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i Ishāʿat-i Islām, pp.

What obstacles are there but the Roman state, the rebellion of which, by being scattered into the ten kingdoms, will introduce the Antichrist upon its own ruins? In the Counter-Reformation, the views of Preterism and Futurism were advanced by Catholic Jesuits beginning in the 16th century in response to the identification of the Papacy as Antichrist. The spiritual Antichrist is said to rule in the heretical church and state as a spirit through many people – since 1000 in the West and since 1666 in Russia. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

The Hour will not be established until two big groups fight each other whereupon there will be a great number of casualties on both sides and they will be following one and the same religious doctrine, until about 30 dajjals appear, and each of them will claim that he is Allah's Apostle. According to Revelation 6:2 and Daniel 9:27, the Antichrist will pose as a man of peace, ready to set the world right. Cardinal Benno, on the opposite side of the Investiture Controversy, wrote long descriptions of abuses committed by Gregory VII, including necromancy, torture of a former friend upon a bed of nails, commissioning an attempted assassination, executions without trials, unjust excommunication, doubting the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and even burning it. On his forehead would be inscribed: 'Kafir' (disbeliever) which would readable to the literate as well as the illiterate.The teaching that Jesus was a mortal man who survived crucifixion and died a natural death, as propounded by Ghulam Ahmad, has been seen by some scholars in this regard as a move to neutralise Christian soteriologies of Jesus and to project the superior rationality of Islam. They regard papal rule as supreme in Europe from 538 (when the Arian Ostrogoths retreated from Rome into temporary oblivion) until 1798 (when the French general Louis-Alexandre Berthier took Pope Pius VI captive)–a period of 1,260 years [128] – including the 67 years of the Avignon Captivity (1309–1376).

There are groups today that still identify the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the antichrist, ((For example, Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1994).The earth would be under his control to such an extent that even the ruins will turn into treasures and the earth will sprout vegetation on his command.

In Matthew ( chapter 24) and Mark ( chapter 13), Jesus alerts his disciples not to be deceived by the false prophets, who will claim themselves to be the Christ, performing "great signs and wonders".For who is the man of sin and the son of perdition, but he who by his teaching and his ordinances increases the sin and perdition of souls in the church; while he yet sits in the church as if he were God? He preached that by knowing Paul's description of the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians, Christians would avoid deception.