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their day (LeRoy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, p. 19). Hippolytus believed the
breaking up of the fourth empire, Rome, would bring on the Antichrist who would persecute the
saints (ibid., p. 271). Tertullian said: "What is the restraining power? What but the Roman State,
the breaking up of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon [its
own ruins]?" (ibid., p. 258).

Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth century, speaking of this same prophecy said: "This, the
predicted Antichrist, will come, when the times of the Roman Empire shall be fulfilled....Ten kings
of the Romans shall arise together...among these the eleventh is Antichrist, who, by magical and
wicked artifices, shall seize the Roman power" (Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophe-
cies, p. 463).

Jerome, noted bishop and translator of the early church, stated: "He [Paul] shows that that
which restrains is the Roman Empire; for unless it shall have been destroyed, and taken out of the
midst, according to the prophet Daniel, Antichrist will not come before that" (Jerome, Commen-
taria, Book 5, chapter 25). "Let us therefore say what ALL ecclesiastical writers have delivered to
us, that when the Roman Empire is destroyed, ten kings will divide the Roman world among them-
selves, and then will be revealed the man of sin" (Porcelli, op. cit., p. 49).

Ambrose said the Roman Empire was that which was holding back the appearance of Anti-
christ and that "after the falling or decay of the Roman Empire, Antichrist would appear" (Newton,
op. cit., p. 463). Chrysostom stated: "One may naturally enquire, What is that which withholdeth?"
He answered that it was the Roman Empire and that "when the Roman Empire is taken out of the
way, then he [Antichrist] shall come. And naturally. For as long as the fear of this empire lasts, no
one will willingly exalt himself, but when that is dissolved, he will attack the anarchy, and en-
deavor to seize upon the government both of man and of God" (Chrysostom, Homilies, pp.
388-389).

"We have the consenting testimony of the early fathers," writes Edward B. Elliott, "from
Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.), the disciple of the disciple of St. John, down to Chrysostom (347-404)
and Jerome (331-420) to the effect that it was understood to be the Imperial power ruling and re-
siding at Rome" (Horae Apocalyticae, Book 3 p. 92). The Expositor's Bible Commentary states:
"There is no reason to doubt that those fathers of the church are right who identified it with the Em-
pire of Rome and its sovereign head" (Denny, Commentary on Thessalonians, p. 325). Also, af-
ter many pages of carefully documented proof for his statement, researcher Froom says that the
"restraining" power impeding the development of the "man of sin" was interpreted in the early
church as the Roman Empire (op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 150).

H. Grattan Guinness remarks: "The early writings of the fathers tell us with remarkable
unanimity that this "restraint" or hindrance was the Roman Empire as governed by the Caesar; and
that on the fall of the Caesar, he [the man of sin] would arise" (Romanism and the Reformation,
p. 119). Clarke's Commentary adds that the UNITED testimony of the church leaders of those
first few centuries was that the restraint which was to be removed was the Roman Empire (Adam
Clarke, Vol. 6, p.569). The Encyclopedia Britannica clearly says this was universally believed
by Christians everywhere (1961 edition, article: "Antichrist," Vol. 2, p. 60).

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