That the Church is the Temple of God during this Church age is a given.
This truth does not preclude another Temple being built in Jerusalem, as many prophesies tell us.
Re 2 Thess 2:4. The person referred to as the Anti-Christ, the one who will persecute the saints, as per Revelation 13:7 and Daniel 7:25, is a physical man.
How can he sit in the spiritual Temple, who are the Christian peoples?
He sits in the spiritual temple of the Church as one who has usurped and arrogated spiritual authority which belongs to Christ, the spiritual Head of the Church, alone.
The Reformers recognized him in the apostate papacy, based in part on the following declarations:
Pius X: "The Pope...is Jesus Christ Himself, hidden under the veil of flesh."
Pius XI: "You know that I am the Holy Father, the representative of God on the earth, the Vicar of Christ, which means that I am God on the earth."
Pius IX was described as "the living Christ", and "the Lamb of the Vatican".
The Canon Law in the Gloss on the Extravaganza of John XXII, AD 1316-1334, calls the Roman pontiff "Our Lord God the Pope."
Martin V was addressed as: "The most holy and most blessed, who holds the celestial jurisdiction, who is Lord over all the earth...the anointed...the ruler of the universe, the father of kings, the Light of the World."
During the Vatican Council, 9 January 1870, it was stated: "The Pope is Christ in office, Christ in jurisdiction and power...we bow down before thy voice, O Pius, as before the voice of Christ, the God of truth; in clinging to thee, we cling to Christ."
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning said: "He [the Roman pope] was elevated to be, in his Divine Master's Name, King of kings and Lord of lords." (Manning,
Temporal Power, Preface, 42-46)
“All the names which in the Scripture are applied to Christ, by virtue of which it is established that He is over the church, all the same names are applied to the Pope.”
Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, De Conciliorum Auctoriatate (On the Authority of the Councils) Bk 2, chap. 17 Bellarmine (1542-1621), a professor and rector at the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, is generally considered to have been one of the outstanding Jesuit instructors in the history of this organization.
“The pope is of so great dignity and so exalted that he is not mere man, but as it were God, and the vicar of God. He is the divine monarch and supreme emperor, and king of kings. Hence the pope is crowned with a triple crown, as King of heaven and of earth and of the lower regions.”
Lucius Ferraris, Prompta Bibliotheca, vol.6, art. “
Papa II” (Ferraris was an Italian Catholic canonist and consultor to the Holy Office in Rome.)
“We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.”
Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, p. 304.
