The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

IV. Even Newspaper Joins in Widespread Exposition

The first two “books” of Elias Smith’s Clergyman’s Looking Glass, No. II ³⁶ were published in the New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth), in 1803. The very fact that in 1803 a newspaper would run a serial called the “Book of Antichrist,” based on prophecy and written in chapter and verse form, after the Bible style, is significant. This use of the Antichrist theme for political satire shows how widespread and accepted was the belief that the Papacy was that predicted power, and that, in accordance with the prophecy, it had been gravely wounded by the French Revolution. And so, not only books, pamphlets, printed sermons, published reports, and periodical articles appeared, but now even newspaper columns became the medium for the wave of prophetic interpretation that began to spread over the land. PFF4 151.3