On August 15, 1534, Ignatius Loyola founded a secret Catholic order called the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. Historically, we might compare this order to Darth Vader's Evil Empire in the classic Star Wars films. The Jesuits definitely have a dark history of intrigue and sedition, that's why they were expelled from Portugal (1759), France (1764), Spain (1767), Naples (1767), and Russia (1820). "Jesuit priests have been known throughout history as the most wicked political arm of the Roman Catholic Church. Edmond Paris, in his scholarly work, The Secret History of the Jesuits, reveals and documents much of this information" (Seventy Weeks: The Historical Alternative, by Robert Caringola. Abundant Life Ministries Reformed Press, 1991, p. 31). At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church gave the Jesuits the specific assignment of destroying Protestantism and bringing people back to the Mother Church. This was to be done not only through the Inquisition and through torture, but also through theology.
It's time to discover those X-ray eyeglasses. At the Council of Trent, the Jesuits were commissioned by the Pope to develop a new interpretation of Scripture that would counteract the Protestant application of the Bible's antichrist prophecies to the Roman Catholic Church. Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), a brilliant Jesuit priest and doctor of theology from Spain, basically said, "Here am I, send me." Like Martin Luther, Francisco Ribera also read by candlelight the prophecies about the Antichrist, the little horn, that man of sin, and the Beast. But because the Pope was his boss, he came to conclusions vastly different from that of the Protestants. "Why, these prophecies don't apply to the Catholic Church at all!" Ribera said. Then to whom do they apply? Ribera proclaimed, "To only one sinister man who will rise up at the end of time!" "Fantastic!" was the reply from Rome, and this viewpoint was quickly adopted as the official Roman Catholic position on the Antichrist.
"In 1590, Ribera published a commentary on the Revelation as a counter-interpretation to the prevailing view among Protestants which identified the Papacy with the Antichrist. Ribera applied all of Revelation but the earliest chapters to the end time rather than to the history of the Church. Antichrist would be a single evil person who would be received by the Jews and would rebuild Jerusalem" (George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope: A Biblical Study of the Second Advent and the Rapture. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956, pp. 37-38). "Ribera denied the Protestant Scriptural Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2) as seated in the church of God - asserted by Augustine, Jerome, Luther and many reformers. He set on an infidel Antichrist, outside the church of God." (Ralph Thompson, Champions of Christianity in Search of Truth, p. 89). "The result of his work [Ribera's] was a twisting and maligning of prophetic truth" (Robert Caringola, Seventy Weeks: The Historical Alternative, p. 32).
Following close behind Francisco Ribera was another brilliant Jesuit scholar, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) of Rome. Between 1581 and 1593, Cardinal Bellarmine published his "Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of the Christian Belief Against the Heretics of this Time." In these lectures, he agreed with Ribera. "The futurist teachings of Ribera were further popularized by an Italian cardinal and the most renowned of all Jesuit controversialists. His writings claimed that Paul, Daniel, and John had nothing whatsoever to say about the Papal power. The futurists' school won general acceptance among Catholics. They were taught that antichrist was a single individual who would not rule until the very end of time" (Great Prophecies of the Bible, by Ralph Woodrow, p. 198). Through the work of these two tricky Jesuit scholars, we might say that a brand new baby was born into the world. Protestant historians have given this baby a name - Jesuit Futurism. In fact, Francisco Ribera has been called the Father of Futurism.
Before we go much farther, let's define some terms....