The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

V. Samuel Mather-Antichrist’s 1260-Year Reign Among the Ten Kingdoms

SAMUEL MATHER (1626-1671), minister at Rawley and Boston (1649), and older brother of Increase Mather, was born in Lancashire, England. Coming to New England in 1635, he was graduated from Harvard with an M.A., but returned to England in 1650, where the Lord Mayor of London noted his abilities and made him chaplain. Thus he became acquainted with the most prominent ministers of the kingdom. He was preacher at Gravesend and Oxford, and chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford. Then he preached in Scotland for two years. But in 1655 he was back in England. PFF3 108.3

The “Romanizing faction in the church of England” was gaining, and a storm of persecution arose. Mather was chosen to preach against the “revival of those dead superstitions.” So lie preached two sermons in a great auditorium, contending that the compromising ceremonies were the old leaven of popish corruption, the ceremonies of Antichrist. ⁵⁴ In 1662 Mather was one of 2,000 ministers expelled from all public places. He became increasingly interested in prophecy, and wrote to his younger brother, Increase Mather, later president of Harvard: PFF3 108.4

“I must needs tell you, how much I do rejoyce, that it hath pleased God to stir up your Spirit to search into the Prophetical Parts of the Scriptures; of which I have often thought and still do, That it is a great pity they are so little minded and seen into, by many, both ministers and others, who do deprive themselves of much satisfaction, which they might receive thereby.” ⁵⁵ PFF3 109.1

1. TEN KINGDOMS MAKE UP PAPAL KINGDOM

Cotton Mather records him as a pre-millennialist and a thorough student of the prophetic numbers and times. He held that the ten kingdoms were the ten horns of the papal kingdom wherein Antichrist reigns, and that erelong the 1260 years would expire and God’s kingdom come. Mather wrote A Defence of the Protestant Christian Religion against Popery, wherein the manifold Apostasies, Heresies, and Schisms of the Church of Rome ...are briefly laid open (1672). ⁵⁶ PFF3 109.2

2. SEVENTH TRUMP FOLLOWS THE 1260 YEARS

Mather made special note of the fulfillments of prophecy already accomplished, from “thence to make Computation of the Times, that were yet before us, and of the Things to be done in those Times “He makes this significant statement: PFF3 109.3

“That whenever God sets up in any of the ten Kingdoms, which made the ten Horns of the Papal Empire, such an Establishment, Sovereign and Independent, wherein antichrist shall Have ... neither Power of Laws, nor Force of Arms, to defend him and his Corruptions; Doubtless, then, the Witnesses of our Lord, are not more trodden down, to prophecy in sackcloth, any longer. Then therefore expires the 1260 Years, and since that such a Kingdom well may be called The Lord’s, then will the seventh Trumpet begin to sound. Which, that it is Near, even, at the Door, 1 may say, through Grace, I doubt not.’” ⁵⁷ PFF3 109.4