Historicism

​Historicism is the correct and long-standing method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies; it has been applied to the Book of Revelation 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 of Patmos' writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

One of the most influential aspects of the early Protestant historicist paradigm was the assertion that scriptural identifiers of the Antichrist were matched only by the institution of the Papacy. Particular significance and concern were the Papal claims of authority over the Church through Apostolic Succession, and the State through the Divine Right of Kings. When the Papacy aspires to exercise authority beyond its religious realm into civil affairs, on account of the Papal claim to be the Vicar of Christ, then the institution was fulfilling the more perilous biblical indicators of the Antichrist. Martin Luther wrote this view into the Smalcald Articles of 1537; this view was not novel and had been leveled at various popes throughout the centuries, even by Roman Catholic priests and church members. The Historicists approach and its interpretations was then widely accepted in the 16th century, as actual current events matched the prophetic biblical accounts. ​

The alternate, more recent methods of prophetic interpretation, Futurism and Preterism, were derived from Jesuits (a Catholic order of priests and brothers founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier-turned-mystic). One Jesuit developed the theory of Futurism, in which everything in Revelation is yet to be fulfilled sometime in the future, while another Jesuit developed the theory of Preterism, in which everything in Revelation has already been fulfilled sometime in the past). Their interpretations were counter-reformation efforts aimed at opposing the well established Historicists' interpretation that the the Papacy (the power of the Roman Catholic Church) is the Antichrist.