It isn't well-known that the great scholar R.H. Charles was a Postmillennialist, or at least, was sympathetic to its ideals. For him, the Anti-Christ was alive in his time, during World War I, and could be identified as Kaiser Wilhelm II.
"We shall now return to the most important testimonies of this subject, i.e. in Revelation 13 (and) 17. We need not here deal with them in detail, since they are fully discussed already. Here we have the most vigorous and illuminating conception of the Antichrist in all literature, although, as we have seen in our study of these chapters, our author was to a considerable extent indebted to existing sources in their composition. But though the elements of the Antichrist were drawn for the most part from disparate sources, the result is no mere mosaic, no laboured syncretism of conflicting traits, but a marvellous portrait of the great God-opposing power that should hereafter arise, who was to exalt might above right, and attempt, successfully or unsuccessfully for the time, to seize the sovereignty of the world, backed by hosts of intellectual workers, who would uphold his pretensions, justify all his actions, and enforce his political aims by an economic warfare, which menaced with destruction all that did not bow down to his arrogant and godless claims. And though the justness of this forecast is clear to the student who approaches the subject with some insight, and to all students who approach it with the experience of the present world war, we find that as late as 1908, (William) Bousset in his article on the "Antichrist" in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, writes as follows: "The interest in the (Antichrist) legend ... is now to be found only among the lower classes of the Christian community, among sects, eccentric individuals, and fanatics."
"No great prophecy receives its full and final fulfilment in any single event or series of events. In fact, it may not be fulfilled at all in regard to the object against which it was primarily delivered by the prophet or Seer. But, if it is the expression of a great moral and spiritual truth, it will of a surety be fulfilled at sundry times and in divers manners and in varying degrees of completeness. The present attitude of the Central Powers of Europe on this question of might against right, of Caesarism against religion, of the state against God, is the greatest fulfilment that the Johannine prophecy in Rev 13 has as yet received. Even the very indefiniteness regarding the chief Antichrist in 13 is reproduced in the present upheaval of evil powers. In ch. 13, the Antichrist is conceived as a single individual, i.e. the demonic Nero; but, even so, behind him stands the Roman Empire, which is one with him in character and purpose, and is itself the Fourth Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Antichrist— in fact, the Antichrist itself. So in regard to the present war, it is difficult to determine whether the Kaiser or his people can advance the best claims to the title of a modern Antichrist. If he is a present-day representative of the Antichrist, so just as surely is the empire behind him, for it is one in spirit and purpose with its leader—whether regarded from its military side, its intellectual, or its industrial. They are in a degree far transcending that of ancient Rome 'those who are destroying the earth' (Rev. 11:18)."
-- R.H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), pp. 86-87. Emphasis added.
Andrew Brown
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