I’m sure the list above is not exhaustive, but it does give you some sense of the level of influence the Vatican has over American society and over the West in general.
And this isn’t the influence of some mere religious celebrity. But it’s the influence of the Antichrist, man of sin, and son of perdition we’re talking about. It’s live and in color and right there on the internet for the entire world to see. Yet the world doesn’t see it. The world misses the Antichrist of the Apostle John, the Little Horn of Daniel, and the Beast of Revelation 13 and 17.
How is it possible for people to be so deluded as not to discern the presence of Antichrist when he’s right in front of their faces?
The short answer is that understanding who Antichrist is – by Antichrist, I mean the pope and, more generally, the entire body of the Roman Church-State; as Charles Spurgeon once said if Antichrist “be not popery in the Church of Rome there is nothing in the world that can be called by that name” – is a matter of spiritual discernment. That so few in the Year of Our Lord 2024 can discern the identity of Antichrist is a sad commentary on the level of Christian understanding in our time.
How did the Protestant church, which little more than a century ago was largely united on the identity of the office of the papacy as the Antichrist of Scripture get to the point where almost no one seems to know this? How did we become so blind?
Author David N. Wilcoxson gives an interesting history of the decline of Protestant eschatological discernment in his book The 70th Week of Daniel 9 Decoded. After noting that it was the Jesuits in the 16th century who developed futurism – futurism is an eschatological system that posits a future, single Antichrist, an idea that is now standard issue in Protestant churches. Wilcoxson gives an interesting history of the major figures in the 19th and 20th centuries who were responsible for the spread of this thinking. Futurism, most commonly promoted as part of dispensationalism, is the default eschatology of American Protestant churches. Wilcoxson shows how this false teaching spread, starting with Samuel Roffey Maitland, who became librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the early 19th century and wrote a number of tracts attacking Protestant eschatology. Wilcoxson writes,
In 1826, he [Maitland] published a book attacking the Reformation and supporting Ribera’s idea of a future on-man antichrist. For the next ten years, in tract after tract, he continued his anti-Reformation rhetoric. As a result of his zeal and strong attacks against the Reformation, the Protestantism of England – the very nation that produced the King James Bible in 1611 – received a crushing blow.[1]
Wilcoxson goes on to discuss numerous individuals in Great Britain and America over the remainder of the 19th and 20th centuries who attacked Protestant eschatology and promoted Jesuitism in the churches and seminaries.
The attack on Protestant eschatology progressed so quickly in the 19th century, that by the early 20th century, the Presbyterians, who had an outstanding statement on the identity of Antichrist written into the Westminster Confession, a statement that had stood from the time the Confession was first published in 1647, removed all reference to the Pope of Rome as Antichrist, man of sin, and son of perdition beginning with the new edition of the Westminster Confession published in 1903. Leading fundamentalist Presbyterian B. B. Warfield, apparently influenced by the intellectual climate of his day, approved the edit.
The triumph of Jesuit eschatology, even among conservative, Bible-believing Protestants, is so complete that Robert Godfrey, in his Ligonier Ministries lecture series on Revelation, commented that he knew of no one who held to Historicist eschatology. Historicism is the system of end-times interpretation that, among other things, views the Pope as Antichrist.
To further illustrate the triumph of the Jesuit deception in our time, I have had discussions about the papal Antichrist with fellow believers, who have told me that they never heard the argument before I presented it to them. These are people who have sat in Reformed churches for decades and never once have had anyone broach the subject of the papal Antichrist.
It is the view of this author that if the Protestant church is ever again to speak with prophetic power to this generation and tear down the strongholds of unbelief that bind the minds of men, it must present a defensible, historicist eschatology and once again boldly proclaim the Pope of Rome to be “that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”
[1] David Nikao Wilcoxson. The 70th Week of Daniel Decoded (Self-published, 2020), 231.
Lux Lucet 
People don’t just “pop” in to see the Pope – they are summoned. This is the antichrist. The world is now controlled by Rome, The UN and all its affiliates control everything – from the vaccine push, to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, to all the so called elections around the “free world” – it’s all under the control of Rome and the Jesuits. The US has been under the control of Rome for decades – maybe even since the its founding. It’s sad to see but the Lord is sovereign over it all.