No, it was popularized centuries ago, it existed in early church history. The reason it disappeared was Augustine, he was a huge fan of Origen who took upon a gross allegorization of scripture. And during the middle ages no common person had a copy of the Word of God to read. Once men began again to get the Word for themselves they were able to read and say, "Hey, wait a minute, the church is wrong about this."
There were documents that sort of referred to simular theories with things like Daniels 70th week as early as the 3rd century but not taken nearly as far as it has gone today. But its besides the point, no where in the bible does it ever say "the antichrist".
Here is a brief summary of how they became popularized and incorporated into church doctrine in the last few hundred years.
In 1590 a Jesuit priest named Francisco Ribera wrote a book on Revalation to combat the reformation view that the Catholic Church was the harlot in Revelation and the Antichrist. He developed the ideas of a rebuilt Jerusalem, an end time antichrist who would abolish Christianity and be received by the Jews, kill the two witnesses, pretend to be god, etc. To accomplish this, Ribera proposed that the 1260 days and 42 months and 3½ times of prophecy were not 1260 years as based on the year-day principle, but a literal 3½ years.
That takes us to 1771 when a Spanish boy from Chile named Immanuel who left to Spain and became a priest. He eventually moved to Italy and there he claimed to be a Jew named Rabbi Ben Ezra and wrote of ideas that the church would be raptured 45 days before Christs return and that in that time Christ would inflict vengeance on the earth and of the pre tribulation rapture. There was a man named Morgan Edwards who may have printed a pretrib rapture paper before the Jesuit priest did.
In 1801 the priest died and his teachings should have died with him but his works were translated into Spanish in 1812 and then 14 years later by Irving into English.
Around that time an Irvingite named Robert Norton was taken in by the supposed vision of a 15 year girl named Margret Mcdonald that told of the church being secretly raptured. Norton was so charmed by the Idea he preached it all over England, which by the way inspired the Millerites who predicted the rapture in 1844. The girl who had the vision was into occult practices and had a recorded levitation. Her vision didn't mention much of the doctrines were talking about but it was pinned to her because people were in to the spectacular.
Next we come to John Darby who adopted the Irvingite views and teachings of the Jesuit priest. He made the idea more complex and devised that Daniels 70th week had not happened yet and that it would take place at the end of the Christian era for 7 years. And in this 7 year period there would be the anti Christ ruling and a rebuilt Jerusalem temple where animal sacrifices would be resumed. And that 3 and a half years into it the anti Christ would turn on the Jews.
The teachings could have dies there but Darby went to America and that is where he met C.I. Scofield. Scofield was so taken by his teachings that he decided to include them into his Bible which is still around today. These Bibles were mass distributed and given out for free with these teachings in the commentary right next to the text.
That is the story you can look it up yourself. The Protestants considered the Jesuits and Irvingiites heretical so they tried to cover up the origin of the doctrines and claimed to originate them themselves.
We should never forget what Daniel 12:4 and 12:9 say about the book of Daniel. It is sealed untill the time of the end, no one can understand it untill the time of the end. But the doctrine goes against this and says it understands the book of Daniel and points to the time of the end in the future. Besides all of that the doctrines hold just about all of Revelation to occour in the end. But that is not what Jesus told John about the book of Revelation, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified
it by his angel unto his servant John:" but if thats not clear enough in verse 3 it says "Blessed
is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time
is at hand." Notice it says the time is at hand meaning its very close in time.
