If a son, then an heir. And what is the inheritance of which he is the heir? It is "perdition." The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them first, perdition in the end. It was written of him before he arose "He goeth into perdition." Better to have had the bitter first and the sweet after; but no; the day of his glory over and past, there comes the voice: "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime had thy good things and Lazarus" (the church) "his evil things; now thou are tormented." This inheritance is conveyed to the papacy in the same charter and made sure to it under the same seal as the "glory" that goes before it. The King of Heaven has made this decree and sealed it with his own signet, and the decree may no man change. As sure as the Papacy has had its glory so surely shall its doom come. Paul, before closing his prophecy, pauses, and in solemn and awful words foretells the night of horrors in which its career is to end. "That wicked whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." (2 Thess. 2:8)
There is here a dual destruction suspended above Antichrist –a slow wasting first, for, it may be, centuries, and a sudden and utter extinction in the end. This duality in the doom of Antichrist has been noted in prophecy ever since its beginning. It is emphasised by Daniel. Speaking of the "little horn" which had a mouth speaking great things, eyes like the eyes of a man, a look more stout than his fellows, and which made war with the saints, and was to have dominion over them, "until a time, times, and the dividing of time," that is 1260 years, the prophet says. "The judgement shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end" (Daniel 7:26) another proof, by the way, of identity between the "little horn" of Daniel, and the Antichrist of John.
In the predicted doom of the Papacy there are thus two well-marked stages. There is, first, a gradual consumption; and there is, second, a sudden and terrible destruction.
The "consumption," a slow and gradual process, is to be effected by the "spirit of his mouth," by which we understand the preaching of the Gospel. This consumption has been going on ever since the Bible was translated, and the Gospel began to be preached at the Reformation. Men have begun to see the errors of popery; its political props have been weakened, and in some instances struck from under it, and its hold generally on the nations of Christendom has been loosened; and thus the way has been prepared for the final stroke that will consummate its ruin. Great systems like the papacy, with their roots far down and spread wide around, cannot be plucked up while in their vigor without dislocating human society. They must be left to grow ripe and become rotten, and then the final stroke may be dealt them with safety to the church and the world.
When that hour shall have come then will the second part of the doom of the Papacy overtake it. The Lord shall "destroy" it "with the brightness of his coming." The form of the judgment is left vague, but enough is said to warrant us to conclude that it will be swift and final –it will come with lightning flash, and its holy vengeance will be so manifest that, to use the figure in the prophecy, it will irradiate both heaven and earth with a moral splendour. Whether Christ shall then come as he came at the period of the flood, and as he came at the burning of Sodom, and again at the destruction of Jerusalem, when, himself remaining on the throne of heaven, he girded the ministers of his wrath, and sent them down to earth to execute his vengeance on the ungodly; or whether, leaving his seat in glory he shall in very person descend and confront his Vicar, whether he shall return to close the Apocalypse in the divine magnificence in which he appeared to John in Patmos, when he came to open it, it is not necessary that we should here decide. Enough, that this "day of wrath" will be unspeakably great, and will rank as one of the greatest days of vengeance that have been on the earth since the foundation of the world. Paul despatches it in a single sentence; John expands it into a whole chapter. And in what other chapter of the bible or of human history is there such another spectacle of judgment –such another picture of blended horrors, of awestruck consternation, of loud and bitter wailings, and cries of woe as in the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse? "The kings of the earth shall bewail her and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning; standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, alas! Alas! That great city, for in one hour is she made desolate." But this dark scene has one relieving feature. It is a scene that will not need to be repeated, for it will close earth's evil days, and begin the hallelujahs of the nations. "And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all." (Rev. 18:9-19, 21)