Early interpretations Prophetic commentaries in the early church usually interpreted individual passages rather than entire books. The earliest complete commentary on the Book of Revelation was carried out by
Victorinus of Pettau, considered to be one of the earliest historicist commentators, around 300 AD. .
Edward Bishop Elliott, a proponent of the historicist interpretation, wrote that it was modified and developed by the expositions of
Andreas,
Primasius (both 6th century),
Bede (730 AD),
Anspert,
Arethas,
Haimo of Auxerre, and
Berengaudus (all of the 9th century).
Joachimites divided history into three overlapping "stages" which each correspond to the persons of the Trinity. The first stage, of the Father, began with
Adam, peaking with
Abraham, and ending with Jesus. The second stage, of the Son, began with
Uzziah, peaked with
Zechariah, father of
John the Baptist, and was ending around Joachim's time. The third stage, of the Holy Spirit, began with
Benedict of Nursia, was peaking around Joachim's time, and would end with the end of history. Joachim believed that the Jews were the elect people of God during the Old Testament, he believed that during the "first seal" of the Old Testament the Jews endured oppression by the Egyptians, in the "second seal" they battled against the Canaanites and established their royal power and priesthood in Jerusalem. During the third seal the kingdom of the Hebrews was divided into many tribes, in the fourth seal Israel paid a price for its sins and was conquered by the Assyrians, in the fifth seal the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and under the sixth seal the Jews suffered captivity in Babylon and in the seventh seal the Temple was rebuilt and the Jews had a time of peace until the Greeks came, which caused an end to the Old Covenant, and the era of the Father came to an end. The Centuriators of
Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg headed by
Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume "
Magdeburg Centuries" to discredit the papacy and identify the pope as the antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the
Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue notes,
William Tyndale, an English Protestant reformer, held that while the Roman Catholic realms of that age were the empire of Antichrist, any religious organization that distorted the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments also showed the work of antichrist. In his treatise
The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, he expressly rejected the established Church teaching that looked to the future for an antichrist to rise up, and he taught that antichrist is a present spiritual force that will be with us until the end of the age under different religious disguises from time to time. Tyndale's translation of 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, concerning the "man of lawlessness" reflected his understanding, but was significantly amended by later revisers, including the
King James Bible committee, which followed the Vulgate more closely. Rather than expecting a single antichrist to rule the earth during a future
Tribulation period, Luther,
John Calvin and other Protestant reformers saw the antichrist as a present feature in the world of their time, fulfilled in the papacy. Debated features of the Reformation historicist interpretations were the identification of; the antichrist (1 and 2 John); the
Beasts of Revelation 13; the Man of Sin (or Man of Lawlessness) in 2 Thessalonians 2; the "Little horn" of
Daniel 7 and
8, and the
Whore of Babylon (Revelation 17).
Isaac Newton's religious views on the historicist approach are in the work published in 1733, after his death,
Observations upon the Prophecies of the Book of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. It took a stance toward the papacy similar to that of the early Protestant reformers. He avoided predictions based on prophetic literature, taking the view that prophecy when it has been shown to be fulfilled will be proof that God's providence has been imminently active in the world. This work regarded much prophecy as already fulfilled in the first millennium of the Christian era.
Modern The 19th century was a significant watershed in the history of prophetic thought. While the historicist paradigm, together with its pre- or
postmillennialism, the
day-year principle, and the view of the papal antichrist, was dominant in English Protestant scholarship during much of the period from the Reformation to the middle of the 19th century (and continues to find expression in some groups today), it now was not the only one. Arising in Great Britain and Scotland,
William Kelly and other
Plymouth Brethren became the leading exponents of dispensationalist
premillennial eschatology. By 1826,
literalist interpretation of prophecy took hold and
dispensationalism saw the light of day. The dispensationalist interpretation differed from the historicist model of interpreting Daniel and Revelation in picking up the Catholic theory that there was a gap in prophetic fulfillment of prophecy proposed by Futurism, but dispensationalism claim it was an anti-Catholic position. ==The Great Disappointment==