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It seems doubtful that this view can be attributed to the sixteenth-century Jesuit Alcazar since aspects of the writings of the early Church Fathers and Augustine's revision of early premillennial thinking would have naturally led to this line of interpretation. Gratten Guinness is probably linking these ideas to Roman Catholicism in order to discredit the view as merely anti-Protestant propaganda. The other view he refers to as the 'Futurist view':-- which teaches that the prophetic visions of Revelation, from chapters iv to xix, prefigure events still wholly future and not to take place, till just at the close of this dispensation. (Ibid. 95) (175:3) Guinness points out that the 'Futurist view', like the other Catholic interpretation, has some elements that are clearly evident in the writings of the early Church Fathers. However, he adds: (175:4) In its present form... it [the futurist view] may be said to have originated at the end of the sixteenth century, with the Jesuit Ribera, who, moved like Alcazar, to relieve the Papacy from the terrible stigma cast upon it by the Protestant interpretation, tried to do so, by referring these prophecies to the distant future, instead of like Alcazar to the distant past. (Ibid. 95)
(175:5)
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