Jesuit Priest Luis de Alcazar and Counter-Reformation Theology

[beameup]

Luis De Alcazar (1554-1613), wrote a commentary called "Investigation of the Hidden Sense of the Apocalypse", containing about 900 pages. In it he proposed that prophecy should be specifically applied to pagan Rome first and then the first six centuries of Christianity. According to Alcazar (or Alcasar) the correct preterist interpretations should be as follows:

Revelation chapters 1-11 describes the rejection of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Nero is the antichrist and all of the seals, trumpets, and vials took place before the end of 70AD.

Revelation chapters 12 - 19 were the overthrow of Roman paganism whom he identified as mystery babylon, the great harlot. He describes the conversion of the empire and sets up Rome as the head of the universal Christian faith.

Revelation 20 describe the final persecutions by Antichrist, who is identified as Cæsar Nero (54-68 A.D.), who sets in motion God's judgment on Jews and Jerusalem to be fulfilled in 70AD.

Revelation 21 -22 describe the triumph of the New Jerusalem, the Roman Catholic Church as the preterist climax of the millennial kingdom that began in 70AD.

Alcazar continued the allegorical interpretations of the gnostic Origen and the Platoist Augustine. He rejected any connection of prophecy identifying the Catholic church as the great whore and the daughters as Protestant children. The papacy was totally purified as the holy Vicar of Christ to rule until the end of the world. Alcazar did not invent preterism. It existed all the way back to Clement and Origen who were Egyptians [home of Gnosticism]

http://jesus-messiah.com/preterist/luis-de-alcazar.html

 

[asterisktom]

http://jesus-messiah.com/preterist/luis-de-alcazar.html

This view originated way before Alcazar. As far as post-biblical, post 1st century sources are concerned we have:

Chrysostom (one of his homilies on 2 Thess. among other places). Lactantius, Sulpicius Severus, Victorinus, and several others had most or all of these views.

The fact that the Jesuit Alcazar had this view is as damaging to Preterism as the fact that Jim Jones's futurism is damaging to the futurists - in ether case irrelevant. It is an obvious and sophomoric attempt at guilt be association.