The view that all the events of Revelation are future to us is a relatively new view in the history of the church (Introduction, pg. 1).
“The Futurist system: The events of the Apocalypse from ch. 4 to the close lie beyond the second advent of Christ. This scheme usually adopts a literal interpretation of Israel, the Temple, and the numbers (the 3-1/2 times, 42 months, 1260 days, 3-1/2 years). So Ribera, (a Jesuit, 1592), Lacunza, (another Jesuit, who wrote under the name of Ben-Ezra ‘on the coming of Messiah in glory and majesty,’ and taught the premillennial advent, the literal restoration of the ancient Zion, and the future apostasy of the clergy of the Roman church to the camp of Antichrist) …”.
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 1, p. 838.
“The Futurist school is open to this great objection: it would leave the Church of Christ unprovided with prophetical guidance or support under her fiery trials for 1700 or 1800 years. Now God has said, ‘Surely He will do nothing, but He revealeth His secrets unto His servants the prophets’ (Am 3:7). The Jews had a succession of prophets who guided them with the light of prophecy: what their prophets were to them, that the apocalyptic Scriptures have been, and are, to us.”
Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown’s Commentary, “Introduction to Revelation.”
“In its present form it may be said to have originated at the end of the Sixteenth Century, with the Jesuit Ribera, who, actuated by the same motive as the Jesuit Alcazar, sought to rid the Papacy of the stigma of being called the ‘Antichrist,’ and so referred the prophecies of the Apocalypse to the distant future. This view was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church and was for a long time confined to it, but, strange to say, it has wonderfully revived since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, and that among Protestants. It is the most largely accepted of the three views.”
Clarence Larkin, Dispensational Truth, Ch. 2, “Pre-Millennialism.”
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