as "the man of sin" and "son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." In reference to this passage of the Bible, Martin Luther wrote: "Oh Christ, my Master, look down upon us and bring upon us your day of judgment, and destroy the brood of Satan in Rome! There sits the Man, of whom the Apostle Paul wrote (2 Thess. 2:3,4) that he will oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God – that man of sin, that Son of Perdition." Most commentators agree that statements such as this were typical of the view held by the Reformers of the Papacy. According to Edward Hendrie, author of Solving the Mystery of Babylon the Great: "The belief that the pope is the antichrist was once a virtually unanimous belief among Protestant denominations. In fact, the Westminster Confession of Faith (Church of England) states: 'There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and Son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Chuch against Christ and is called God.' Other Protestant confessions of faith identified the pope as the antichrist, including but not limited to the Morland Confession of 1508 and 1535 (Waldenses) and the Helvetic Confession of 1536 (Switzerland). Today, those that hold such a belief are in the minority. In fact, nowadays it is viewed as radical and uncharitable for a Christian to say that the pope is the antichrist. How did such transformation take place among the Protestant denominations? The change in the position of the Protestant denominations toward Rome was the direct result of a concerted campaign by agents of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the methods used by the Roman Catholic Theologians was to relegate the Book of Revelation to some future time. In 1590 a Roman Catholic Priest Francisco Ribera, in his 500 page commentary on the Book of Revelation, placed the events of the book of Revelation in a period in the future just prior to the end of the world. He claimed the antichrist would be an individual who would not be manifested until very near the end of the world. He wrote