Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church history.

Last week we were reviewing the history of naming and identifying the Antichrist.

We got up to the 1200s, but I want to dip back into the third or fourth century for an anonymous description of the Antichrist.

There was some rather fanciful things happening in biblical interpretation, and this represents

it quite well.

So here we go.

This is a physical description of the Antichrist.

These are the signs of him.

His head is as a fiery flame. His right eye shot with blood. His left eye, blue black, and he has two pupils. His eyelashes are white.

And his lower lip is large, but his right thigh slender, his feet broad, his great toe is bruised

and flat. Well, if you see someone like that, then that would be the Antichrist. Moving forward

to the 1200s, I told you, the row between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory the 9th and then Gregory's successor, Innocent, the 4th.

Both of those popes called Frederick the Antichrist.

Frederick then said of Innocent the 4th that he is theichrist, and that his name is the mark of the

beast, and that he is of the Antichrist who equals 666.

It had to do with one of his papal titles.

You know that Roman numerals are letters, so you add up the numerical value of the letters,

and you get 666.

Impeccable logic.

So not only do we begin the tradition of identifying the Pope as Antichrist, but we have this

tradition of trying to find reasons or arguments.

However flawed they may be that, in fact, this person deserves to be called the Antichrist.

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