http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=102404132454
Great sermon on the subject!
Also a good word from Horatius Bonar (a historic premillennialist)
"Pagan Rome might be but the branch, Papal Rome the blossom, and the last Antichrist the fruit; but does this disprove their true personal identity? Does it not much rather confirm and display it? The last apostasy will in all likelihood manifest more of the infidel or the atheist than Popery has done; but still it is an “apostasy,” a “falling away.” It originates in, springs out of, and is in some way connected with, the professing Church of Christ, just as the fruit is connected with the branch, though but by a slender stalk. Its name, ANTICHRIST, shows that it professes to be Christ, which it could not do were it openly and utterly infidel. It is an apostasy which has taken ages to ripen, and which, though perhaps shooting up suddenly into unexpected strength, does not rise from some separate root of its own, but is the matured offspring of previous apostasies, their consummation and unfolding, towards which every one of them has been pointing, and which every one of them contained in the bud from the beginning. But though I believe all this, I do not the less surely believe that Popery is the present Antichrist, out of which, how suddenly I know not, the coming Antichrist is to spring. Popery is the apostasy of the day, and, as such, ought to be dealt with by the Church of Christ. There are many symptoms about it of a change of form and aspect; but whatever aspect it assumes, it is still the representative of the serpent’s seed, the personification of the Wicked one in our day, the enemy of the saints. It is right, indeed, that we should fully understand what God has revealed concerning the darker and more hateful form which it is to assume; but it is wrong to overlook its present aspect, as if that which was to come concerned us more immediately than that which is in the midst of us. This would truly be as absurd and perilous as for an army to stand idly on the field, and allow itself to be cut to pieces by a near enemy, because it sees in the rear a more terrible assailant pressing on. I do not mean that the present ought to shut out or supplant the future. But certainly the future ought not to supersede the present, nor blind us to our immediate danger and pressing duty. Some writers on prophecy seem so engrossed with a future Antichrist as to forget, nay, to deny the present. They are so occupied with the picture which they have drawn of the Man of Sin, as yet to be revealed, that they refuse to see any resemblance at all to him in the Church of Rome. They palliate the atrocities, and apologize for the doctrines of Popery, in order to be able to deny the likeness. They labor to conceal or blot out those features expressive of a common paternity which have been so often pointed out. They spare no effort to persuade men, not only that Popery is not the Man of Sin, but that it has nothing in common with him. They exaggerate the future, they soften and palliate the present, they try to obliterate some of the worst features of Popery, in order to remove everything by means of which it might be identified with the Man of Sin."
I think 2 Thessalonians 2 is referring to one single individual who will be occupying the office of the Pope right before Christ returns and in his apostasy will be destroyed, him and the institution he represents...
. Obviously, that could be badly misunderstood. I usually just term myself a triumphalist regarding the progress of the church, and an idealist regarding the interpretation of Revelation.
