The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IV. Pareus Fxposes Futurism and Establishes Historical System

DAVID PAREUS (1548-1622), Calvinist professor at Heidel berg, was born in Silesia and educated at Hirschberg and Heidel berg. He entered the ministry in 1571, taking up pastoral duties in the diocese of Worms, but lost his post because he was a Calvinist. In 1584 he was made professor of Old Testament at Heidelberg, and became one of the great lights of the university. His fame spread far and wide, drawing students even from Hungary and Poland. In 1587 he issued a German Bible with notes, the so called Neustadter Bibel, and held disputations over the Augsburg Confession. He received a D.D. degree in 1593, and in 1602 was made professor of New Testament, still at Heidelberg, which position he held for twenty years, or until his death.” ⁴⁴ PFF2 518.1

Between 1604 and 1617 Pareus issued several treatises against Bellarmine, summoning all Protestants to meet the Jesuit danger. At the first centenary anniversary, or Evangelical Jubilee, of the Reformation, in 1617, he set forth the proposition that everyone, in order to be saved, must flee the Roman Papacy. This drew upon him the resentment of the Jesuits. PFF2 518.2

In thirty theses he demonstrated that the Papacy bore all the marks of Antichrist that Daniel, Christ, Paul, and John had given. He published the results of his thirty years’ study and lectures at the university in a Latin work, In Divinam Apocalypsin ... Commentarius. This commentary followed soon after that of Brightman, and was first published in 1618, with reprints in 1622 and 1642. An English translation by Elias Arnold, A Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation, appeared in 1644. PFF2 518.3

Pareus excoriates the contradictory positions and subterfuges of the Futurists Ribera and Bellannine, as well as the Preterist Alcazar. ⁴⁵ “What thinkest thou,” he demands of the pope, “dost not thou at least think that in some part it [the Revelation] belongs to thee? ... Hath not Paul sufficiently noted that thou art he that sitteth in the temple of God as god? ... the whorish woman sitting upon the mountains: nor oughtest thou not to suspect all these things?” ⁴⁶ Then Pareus calls upon all kings to make Rome desolate, according to prophecy, and not to be Antichrist’s vassals. PFF2 519.1

Pareus paints a comprehensive picture of the baleful teachings of both Futurism and Preterisrn. He asserts that only a mad man could assign the task outlined in Daniel to the feigned Antichrist to be accomplished during the Futurist’s three and a half years; namely, be acknowledged by all Jews as the Messiah, sit in the Hebrew temple, kill three kings and subdue seven others, repair the ruins of Rome burned by those ten kings, chase out the pope from thence, sit there as monarch, blot out the Christian religion, and subdue the whole world.” ⁴⁷ The logic of his strictures was impressive. PFF2 519.2

1. VIEWS ON SEALS, TRUMPETS, AND ANTICHRIST

Pareus regards the seals as covering the whole Christian dispensation—the first four signifying by the four horsemen the successive periods of the apostles, of pagan persecutions, of heresies, of the rise of Antichrist; ⁴⁸ the sixth, the judgment and wrath of the Lamb. The trumpets cover the same time as the seals, the fifth and sixth referring to the conquests of Mohammedanism, and the seventh to the consummation. The five months of the locusts are based upon the common length of the ravages of the locusts. Pareus refers to the Western and Eastern Antichrists—the Papacy and Mohammedanism. The 1260 years he extends from 606 to 1866—beginning with Phocas’ recognition of the Roman pope, and ending in 1866, though for the elect’s sake the Lord will shorten it.” ⁴⁹ PFF2 519.3

2. HOLDS THE BEAST TO BE ANTICHRIST

The first beast of Revelation 13 is the papal Antichrist, surviving the ten kings of Rome’s division, and is to be destroyed by Christ’s second advent. Pares applies this first beast to the Papacy’s imperial power, and the second beast to the spiritual power of pope and priesthood. He applies the number of the beast to Lateinos, and to the word Romanus in Hebrew letters. ⁵⁰ The first angel of Revelation 14 he assumes to be Wyclif and others, like Huss and Jerome; the second, Luther and the other Reformers; the third, all the evangelical preachers since Luther. ⁵¹ The seven vials are the judgments on the Catholic Church. PFF2 520.1

The beast of Revelation 17 is Antichrist clothed with the skin of the Roman Empire. Like Napier and Brightman, Pareus makes the seven mountains seven forms of Roman government: kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, tribunes, pagan emperors, and Christian emperors, and the eighth the popes. The ten horns include Hungary, Spain, France, England, Denmark, Russia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Aragon, Sardinia, Portugal, Bohemia, Sweden, and Norway—not actually ten, but all the kingdoms of the Christian world. ⁵² PFF2 520.2

3. CONFUSED ON THE MILLENNIAL PERIOD

On Revelation 20 Pareus admitted confusion, frankly confessing, “The more I think upon it, the less I find how to untie the knot that troubled so many.” ⁵³ He attempted to explain it nearly on the Augustinian principle—Satan bound and having no power over the nations after the destruction of Jerusalem, the rejection of the Jews, and the acceptance of the Gentiles, with the loosing, at the time, of Gregory VII, about 1073. ⁵⁴ PFF2 520.3

Antichrist and the enemies of Christ are not destroyed till the advent. Such is the interpretation given by Pareus at the close of the era and century of the Reformation. PFF2 520.4