April 21, 2000 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - Hank Hanegraaff, the personality behind "The Bible Answer Man" radio broadcast," claims that Dave Hunt’s book A Woman Rides the Beast presents an inaccurate and extremist view of the Roman Catholic Church. He particularly opposes Hunt’s identification of Rome with the Harlot of Revelation 17. Hunt says: "As we shall see, there is only one city on the earth which, in both historical and contemporary perspectives, passes every test John gives, including its identification as Mystery Babylon. That city is Rome, and more specifically, Vatican City" (Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast, Harvest House Publishers, 1994, p. 68). Hanegraaff claims that this is an impossible position to maintain.

By making such a claim, Hanegraaff displays a gross ignorance both of the character of Roman Catholicism and of church history. For more than a thousand years, Bible-believing Christians have identified Rome with the Harlot of Revelation 17. To give an overview of this issue, we offer quotes from the writings of two men who wrote widely acclaimed church histories. Both men knew far more about Roman Catholicism than Hank Hanegraaff. One is Peter Allix, who published a diligently researched history of the Waldenses in 1692. The other is John Dowling, who published the classic "History of Romanism" in 1847. Only seven years after its first publication, it could be said of Dowling’s book, "it has already obtained a circulation much more extensive than any other large volume ever published in America, upon the subject of which it treats; or perhaps in England, with the exception of Fox’s Book of Martyrs." Note what these men said about the identification of Rome with the antichrist and the Harlot of Revelation:

Allix says: "Now it is certain, first, that since the tenth century, wherein Arnulphus, Bishop of Orleans, called the Pope Antichrist, in a full Council at Rheims, nothing has been more ordinary than to give him this title. The Antipopes of the eleventh century very lavishly bestowed it upon one another. This example was followed in the twelfth century, and has never since been discontinued till the time of the Reformation; a vast number of writers having set themselves against the Pope and the Papacy, openly proclaiming him to be the Antichrist, and his Church the Great Whore, and Mystical Babylon" (Peter Allix, The Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont and of the Albigenses, I, 1692, 1821 edition, p. 281).

Dowling says: "The result of our examination is the solemn conviction . . . that the Romish, so far from being the true church, is the bitterest foe of all true churches of Christ--that she possesses no claim to be called a Christian church--but, with the long line of corrupt and wicked men who have worn her triple crown, that she is ANTI-CHRIST. . . This identity of papal Rome with anti-Christ was maintained by Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and all the continental reformers; by Latimer, Melancthon, Calvin, and all the British reformers: by the illustrious Sir Issac Newton, Mede, Whiston, Bishop Newton, Lowth, Daubuz, Jurieu, Vitringa, Bedell, and a host of equally pious, illustrious and learned names. The same testimony has been borne in the authorized doctrinal standards of the Episcopal, Presbyteiran, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and other churches both of Europe and America. The same doctrine is still taught in the theological school of Geneva by the illustrious D’Aubigne and Gaussen, and with but here and there a solitary exception, by all the most learned professors and clergymen of the present day, connected with the various evangelical denominations of protestant Christians" (John Dowling, The History of Romanism, 2nd edition, 1852, pp. 646,47).

Hank Hanegraaff is obviously at liberty to disagree with the countless numbers of godly Christians who have identified Rome with the Harlot of Revelation 17 and with the spirit of antichrist, but he is misleading his listeners when he pretends that such a position has no possible foundation in truth and is merely the ravings of an "extremist."

Hanegraaff might argue that the Roman Catholic Church has changed and therefore is no longer the same wicked institution which was opposed by the men previously cited. To prove such a point, though, he would have to show us when the Roman Catholic Church renounced the blasphemous doctrines that caused the saints of old to identify it with Revelation 17. He would, further, have to show us when the Roman Catholic Church renounced the papal bulls and encyclicals which fueled the inquisition whereby the Christians of old saw Rome drunken "with the blood of the saints." He would further have to produce evidence that the Roman Catholic Church has renounced the declarations of the Council of Trent, which spewed forth curses upon those who accepted the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice and who therefore rejected Roman dogmas, which set into motion the terrible counter-reformation, which proclaimed the Roman Catholic Church as the only true church of Jesus Christ, and which worked to codify age-old Catholic heresies such as the blasphemous doctrine that Catholic tradition is equal in authority to the Holy Scriptures and which raised to canonical authority the apocryphal books. The fact is that the Vatican Council II declarations of the 1960s and the New Catholic Catechism of the 1990s have reaffirmed the Council of Trent unequivocally. I have documented this in the book Evangelicals and Rome (Way of Life Literature, 1701 Harns Rd., Oak Harbor, WA 98277. 360-675-8311).

Rome has not changed its heretical character. It is the Evangelical crowd which has changed. Refusing to practice biblical separation, they have become spiritually blind. If Hank Hanegraaff wants to look upon Rome with some favor and refuse to look upon it as the great anti-christian religious harlot that it is, that is his prerogative, but he is deceiving his listeners when he claims that old-fashioned Protestant and Baptist views on this matter are "extremist" or unscholarly.

Let me give a few more specific examples from church history of the "old fashioned" view:

At the end of the NINTH CENTURY, "TERGANDUS, Bishop of Treves, called the Pope antichrist, yea, a wolf, and Rome, Babylon" (Martyrs Mirror, 5th English edition, p. 240).

In the TENTH CENTURY, "ARNULPHUS, Bishop of Orleans, who had the greatest reputation of any man of his time, solidly maintained, from the canons and customs of the Church, that the Pope’s sentence was not to be waited for in that case ... ‘To desire an answer from him, is to consult the stones. ... Who do you think that man is, who sits in his high chair? he is, answers he, the Antichrist, who sits in the temple of God, and shews himself as God.’ And the rest of his discourse is a sufficient evidence that he took the Pope to be the Antichrist, and that he acknowledged that the mystery of iniquity was then coming in upon the Church" (Allix, p. 199).

"FRANCE, which first bestowed upon the Popes the temporal dominions they now enjoy, long since owned the Pope to be the Antichrist. For Gregory I. having declared, in twelve several letters written against the Patriarch of Constantinople, who assumed the title of Universal Bishop, that whoever claimed that title for himself was either the Antichrist, or the forerunner of him; it was not long after, that Pope Boniface III. persuaded Phocas to give him the title of Universal, which all his successors took up afterwards with joy, and affected to use it: for which reason the French, fearing lest they should fail of the respect which they had for St. Gregory, if they should accuse themselves of having so often made use of a false way of reasoning, at last called the Pope Antichrist. They were not therefore Manichees that were come from the east, in the eleventh century, to settle themselves in the west, who first set on foot this accusation; but they were the French, who, in a full council at Rheims, after the tenth century, called the Pope Antichrist" (Allix, pp. 198,199,200).

In the ELEVENTH CENTURY, BERENGER OF TOURS denounced Rome’s dogmas and maintained that the Roman Church was the See of Satan (George Faber, The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1838, p. 159).

In THE 12TH CENTURY there were many groups of separatist Bible believers who labeled Rome as the Harlot of Revelation and the antichrist. This included the PETROBUSIANS, the PAULICIANS, the HENRICIANS, the ARNOLDISTS, and the PARTERINES (Allix, The Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches; Robinson, Ecclesiastical Researches, etc.).

THE WALDENSIANS, throughout their long history, identified the Pope as the Antichrist. In the year 1100, the Waldensian document titled the Noble Lesson, was produced. It identified the pope as the "Antichrist, the predicted murderer of the Saints, hath already appeared in his true character, seated monarchally in the seven-hilled city." George Faber testifies: "Of the authenticity of the Noble Lesson, the beautifully simple production of a confessedly simple people, there can, I think with the learned Raynouard, be no reasonable doubt entertained" (Faber, The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses. p. 371).

"A Treatise Concerning Antichrist," dated roughly 1160, identified the Pope of Rome as the Antichrist. George Faber identifies this as a production of PETER THE VALDO. The manuscript was found among the Waldensians in the year 1658, by Sir Samuel Morland, who was appointed by British authorities to aid the Waldensians in their bitter persecutions. Morland brought the manuscript for "A Treatise Concerning Antichrist" and packets of other manuscripts back to England and deposited them in the University Library at Cambridge. They have since mysteriously disappeared, but many of the most important documents were copied and published prior to their loss.

Antichrist is the falsehood of eternal damnation, covered with the appearance of the truth and righteousness of Christ and his Spouse.—The iniquity of such a system is with all his ministers, great and small: and, inasmuch as they follow the law of an evil and blinded heart, such a Congregation, taken together, is called ANTICHRIST OR BABYLON, OR THE FOURTH BEAST, OR THE HARLOT, OR THE MAN OF SIN WHO IS THE SON OF PERDITION.

His first work is: that, the service of Latria, properly due to God alone, he perverts unto Antichrist himself and to his doings; to the poor creature, rational or irrational, sensible or insensible; to man, for instance, male or female saints departed this life; and to their images, or carcases, or relics. His doings are the sacraments, especially that of the Eucharist, which he worships equally with God and Christ, prohibiting the adoration of God alone.

His second work is: that he robs and deprives Christ of the merits of Christ, with the whole sufficiency of grace and justification and regeneration and remission of sins and sanctification and confirmation and spiritual nourishment; and imputes and attributes them, to his own authority, or to a form of words, or to his own performances, or to the saints and their intercession, or to the fire of Purgatory. Thus does he divide the people from Christ, and lead them away to the things already mentioned: that so they may not seek the things of Christ nor through Christ, but only the works of their own hands; and not through a living faith in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but through the will and the works of Antichrist, agreeably to his preaching that man’s salvation depends upon his own deeds.

His third work is: That he attributes the regeneration of the Holy Spirit to a dead outward faith; baptising children in that faith; and teaching, that, by the mere work of the outward consecration of baptism, regeneration may be procured.

This fourth work is: that he rests the whole religion of the people upon his Mass; for, leading them to hear it, he deprives them of spiritual and sacramental manducation.

His fifth work is: that he does everything, to be seen, and to glut his insatiable avarice.

His sixth work is: that he allows of manifest sins, without ecclesiastical censure.

His seventh work is : that he defends his unity not by the Holy Spirit, but by the secular power.

His eighth work is: that he hates, and persecutes, and searches after, and robs, and destroys, the members of Christ.

These things and many others are the cloak and vestment of Antichrist, by which he covers his lying wickedness, lest he should be rejected as a pagan.—But there is no other cause of idolatry, than a false opinion of grace and truth and authority and invocation and intercession, which this Antichrist has taken away from God, and which he has ascribed to ceremonies and authorities and a man’s own works and saints and purgatory (Faber, The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, pp. 379-384).

Note that of the eight reasons given by the Waldensians for labeling Rome Antichrist or Mystery Babylon, the majority remain in force. Rome still requires prayer to and worship of things other than the Lord Jesus Christ. It still robs Christ of His merits as the sole Savior and Mediator by imputing salvation to the sacraments, etc. It still attributes regeneration to a dead outward faith. It still retains as the focus of its religion and the great trust of its people the dead and unscriptural mass. It still does everything to be seen, as is evident by its grand buildings, ceremonies, and garb. It still allows of manifest sins without ecclesiastical censure. Though it no longer defends its unity by the secular power as it did for 1,500 years it is only because the secular powers are not as susceptible today to her manipulations. In those parts of the world where Rome is still able to affect her way within the secular government (such as in parts of Mexico) she still tries to harass non-Catholic Christians and impose her religion through the force of law.

In 1206, at the conference of Montreal, the ALBIGENSES made the following confession: "That the Church of Rome was not the spouse of Christ, but the Church of confusion, drunk with the blood of the martyrs. That the polity of the Church of Rome was neither good nor holy, nor established by Jesus Christ" (Allix, p. 178). The Albigenses "expressly declared that they received the canonical books of the Old and New Testament, and that they rejected every doctrine that was not grounded upon, or authorized by them, or was contrary to any one point of doctrine that may be found there. According to which maxim, they confessed that they rejected and condemned all the ceremonies, traditions, and ordinances of the Church of Rome, which they declared to be a den of thieves, and the whore that is spoken of in the Revelation" (Allix, p. 194).

The BOHEMIANS, a colony of Waldenses in Bohemia, held the following beliefs, according to the Roman Inquisitor. This description was given in the 14th century but uses material from the 13TH CENTURY: "The first error, saith he, is that the Church of Rome is not the Church of Jesus Christ, but an assembly of wicked men, and the whore that sits upon the beast in the Revelation. ... They declare the Pope to be the head and ringleader of all errors" (Allix, pp. 242-259).

JOHN HUSS (1373-1415), in an epistle unto the people of Prague: "The more circumspect you ought to be, for that Anti-Christ laboureth the more to trouble you. Death shall swallow up many, but of the elect children of God the kingdom of God draweth near... Know ye, well-beloved, that Anti-Christ being stirred up against you deviseth divers persecutions" (John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 8th edition 1641, III, p. 497,498).

Many of the LOLLARDS of the 14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES maintained that the pope was antichrist and identified the papacy with Revelation 17 (Allix, p. 230; John Thomson, The Later Lollards, pp. 76, 80, etc.).

All of the REFORMATION LEADERS considered the Pope the Antichrist, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Huss; their successors in the 16TH, 17TH, 18TH, AND 19TH CENTURIES persisted in this. Rome was considered the Mother of Harlots. The Westminster Confession of Faith exemplifies what all of the Protestant denominations believed: "There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof: but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church, against Christ and all that is called God" (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1648, chapter 25, section 6).

On December 1, 1520, MARTIN LUTHER published two tracts in answer to the Bull of Leo X, one of which was entitled, "Martin Luther against the Execreable Bull of Anti-Christ." He charged the Pope and his cardinals of acting "the undoubted part of the Anti-Christ of the Scriptures."

Many of the EARLY PROTESTANT BIBLES (16th century) contained dramatic wood cuttings of the Scarlet Woman of Revelation 17, plainly identifying the Roman Catholic Church with this apostate religious system.

WILLIAM TYNDALE, the father of our old English Bible, identified the Pope as the Antichrist in his treatise The Practice of Prelates. Tyndale also labeled the Pope the antichrist in the Preface to the 1534 edition of his New Testament. "Though the Bishop of Rome and his sects give Christ these names (His rightful names), yet in that they rob Him of the effect and take the signification of His names unto themselves, and make of Him but a hypocrite, as they themselves, and make of Him but a hypocrite, as they themselves be, they be the right Anti-Christs, and deny both the Father and the Son; for they deny the witness that the Father bore unto His Son, and deprive the Son of all power and glory that His Father gave Him" (William Tyndale).

On September 9, 1560, Pastor JEAN LOUIS PASCHALE of Calabria, just before he was burned alive in the presence of Pope Pius IV in Rome, turned to the pope and "arraigned him as the enemy of Christ, the persecutor of his people, and the Anti-Christ of Scripture, and concluded by summoning him and all his cardinals to answer for their cruelties and murders before the throne of the Lamb" (J.A. Wylie, History of the Waldenses, c1860, p. 120).

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, in its Book of Homilies, makes the following statement in regard to Romanism: "Which the idolatrous Church [of Rome] understandeth well enough. For she being indeed not only an harlot (as the Scripture calleth her), but also a foul, filthy, old withered harlot (for she is indeed of ancient years) and understanding her lack of natural and true beauty, and great loathsomeness which of herself she hath, doth (after the custom of such harlots) paint herself, and deck and tire herself with gold, pearl, stone, and all kind of precious jewels, that she, shining with the outward beauty and glory of them, may please the foolish phantasy of fond lovers, and so entice them to spiritual fornication with her; who, if they saw her (I will not say naked) but in simple apparel, would abhor her, as the foulest and filthiest harlot that ever was seen: according as appeareth by the description of the garnishing of the great strumpet of all strumpets, ‘the mother of whoredom,’ set forth by St. John in his Revelation" (Homily of the Peril of Idolatry, Part Third).

BISHOP NICHOLAS RIDLEY, who was burnt during the reign of Queen Mary in 1556, then declared: "The See of Rome is the seat of Satan, and the bishop of the same, that maintained the abominations thereof, is Anti-Christ himself indeed; and for the same causes this See at this day is the same that St. John calls, in his Revelation, Babylon, or the whore of Babylon, and spiritual Sodom and Egypt, the mother of fornications and abominations on earth."

WILLIAM LATIMER, a Greek scholar who loved the Word of God during the time of Tyndale, said, "Do you not know that the Pope is very Antichrist, whom the Scripture speaketh of? But beware what you say; for if you shall be perceived to be of that opinion, it will cost you your life. I have been an officer of his but I have given it up, and defy him and all his works" (Christopher Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, I, pp. 35,36).

In his 1893 work titled Union with Rome, CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, bishop of Lincoln in the Church of England stated the view which prevailed among Protestants at that time: "… we tremble at the sight, while we read the inscription, emblazoned in large letters, ‘Mystery, Babylon the Great,’ written by the hand of St. John, guided by the Holy Spirit of God, on the forehead of the Church of Rome" (Wordsworth, Union with Rome, p. 62).

WALTER WALSH, author of The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, 1899, testified as follows: "In common with most of the learned Divines of the Church of England since the Reformation and—as we have seen—in accordance with the teaching of her Homilies, we object to Reunion with the Papacy because the Church of Rome is the Babylon of the Revelation." (The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, p. 370).

These examples could be multiplied almost endlessly. Further, old-line Protestants, Baptists, and other Fundamentalist Christians continue TODAY to identify Rome with Revelation 17. There are still millions of Christians who consider Rome the Babylon of Revelation. These include Bible Presbyterians, some of the Lutheran synods, Bible Methodists, Brethren groups, fundamental Baptists, and many others.

We definitely believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the partial fulfillment of the prophecy in Revelation 17 of a one-world religious Harlot. This is not to say that Revelation 17 is entirely fulfilled by Roman Catholicism. This prophecy will not be completed until the reign of the Antichrist just prior to the coming of the Lord, and Rome will be joined by a conglomeration of other apostate churches and organizations, the end result, no doubt, of the present Ecumenical Movement. Even so, every feature of this religious Harlot is found in the Roman Catholic Church.

We would ask Hank Hanegraaff this: Does the Roman Catholic Church not have a golden cup in her hand? (The papal chalice which the pope uses for the mass is made of gold, and by Catholic liturgical law every mass chalice until recent times was at least gold plated if not entirely of gold.) Is the Roman Catholic Church not filled with idolatrous "abominations"? Is the Roman Catholic Church not decked with gold, and precious stones and pearls? Is the Roman Catholic Church not clothed in purple and scarlet? Has the history of the Roman Catholic Church not been characterized by gross moral licentious and fornication? (The history of the popes and the "celibate" priesthood and nunnery is so morally filthy that the full details have never been written. Even to this day the Catholic priesthood is a den of iniquity.) Are the Roman Catholic dogmas such as calling the pope "His Holiness" and calling Mary "the immaculate Mediatrix" "names of blasphemy"? Have the kings of the earth not committed fornication with the Roman Catholic Church? Is the Roman Catholic Church not "drunken with the blood of the saints"?

Maybe Hanegraaff is right after all. Maybe the Roman Catholic Church is not the Harlot of Revelation 17. If not, though, she is that Harlot’s identical twin!