Firstly, Jesus Christ is clearly identified by the Nicene Creed* and by the New Testament text which of course agrees with it (since the Nicene Creed in its 381 recension is the most reliable summary of New Testament doctrine), as being God incarnate, and therefore, as the incarnate Son and Word of God, He cannot be restrained by the devil, or by any anti-Christ, since being fully God and fully man, coequal and coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, there exists divine omnipotence, which means that God’s power is absolutely unbounded.
Rather, any restraint that exists on the anti-Christ is some other institution ordained by God for that purpose, but of course, God can restrain the anti-Christ and other demonic entities any which way. And it is the apostolic doctrine of the early church, preserved by all traditional churches, as my Lutheran, Orthodox, Anglican and Catholic friends such as
@MarkRohfrietsch @prodromos @HTacianas @ViaCrucis @dzheremi @chevyontheriver @Shane R and the indomitable and inimitable force of nature that is
@Xeno.of.athens , all of whom I love very much, can confirm, is that God restrains the devil, allowing our adversary to act only to such a degree as is ultimately beneficial for the faithful, and detrimental to himself, so that our faith might be pure, like gold tested in the fire, as we see, for example, in Job.
So the idea of an anti-Christ or the anti-Christ having some kind of independent agency whereby they can restrain Christ our True God is frankly preposterous. One typological anti-Christ might restrain the ultimate anti-Christ, but not Christ Himself, for He, being the incarnate Son and Word of God, having risen from the dead triumphant over death, is beyond all restraint. Indeed, in the Resurrection he seems to have even passed through doors and been otherwise able to move at will through creation, even beyond the miracle of walking on water earlier in the Gospels.
This antichrist could be the papacy, the final pope, or even a false messiah whom the Jews might hail as the messiah, but later turns out to be the son of satan. I tend to believe the latter, although I believe the papacy will work together with him.
I had greatly hoped the idea that people would associate the anti-Christ with the office of the Papacy had gone out of fashion in the 18th century, as its the sort of sectarian polemic one expects to find in, say, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and other relics of the various Wars of Religion and the English Civil War of the 17th century.
Also, which Papacy? Are you aware that the bishops of Alexandria have been called Pope for centuries longer than the Bishop of Rome? And there are two of them, with that title, due to a disagreement at Chalcedon in 451, which has since largely been resolved, to the extent that His Beatitude Theodore II of Alexandria and His Holiness Theodore II of Alexandria (the former of the Alexandrian Greek Orthodox Church, the latter of the Coptic Orthodox Church) get on very well, and have formed an ecumenical agreement, although neither Church of Alexandria has ever claimed its Pope to be supreme over its other bishops (indeed a Coptic Pope once got his mitre stomped by a diocesan bishop for starting the divine liturgy without the bishop, when that bishop was unavoidably detained, which is a canonical violation of the territory of the diocesan bishop according to the Apostolic Canons, a rebuke which the Coptic Pope accepted, although in the Roman church I suspect stomping the mitre of Pope Francis would be a career-limiting move for most Catholic bishops (although it might survive, whereas the old Coptic mitre, being a sort of pumpkin-shaped construction, likely was flattened beyond repair, but I would not recommend it, although I do suspect I echo the sentiments of many Anglicans, including most high church Anglicans and Episcopalians, when I express my heartfelt wish that Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, the primus inter pares of the Anglican Communion, would get himself a new mitre, as his mitre with the three dolphins has been a spectacular eyesore, in my opinion at least, and he has consistently used it preferentially, except on the most solemn occasions, throughout his archepiscopacy. I suppose the dolphins were intended to invoke the Trinity, which is good, and a love for creation, also good, but the execution was tacky, and underscores the importance of dignity, tradition and a unified simplicity or elegance of form and concept when executing liturgical artwork. But I digress.
At any rate, there are other Popes as well, anti-Popes, according to the Vatican, but given Sedevacantism, and given the recent controversy over Fiducia Supplicans, it seems quite possible a scenario could occur in which there are, for not the first time, multiple reasonable contenders to the title of Bishop of Rome (as was the case during the schism towards the end of the Avignon Papacy, when there were three Popes, or in the early third century, when you had a legitimate Pope but also St. Hippolytus, an important and highly respected anti-Pope, both of whom were martyred together after a reconciliation by the Roman pagans, and are thus venerated as martyrs.
By the way, as an interesting aside, in the Orthodox Church many believe the Roman Empire and its various successor governments, including the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia, and even the Soviet Union, and its various successors, have acted as the brakes on the anti-Christ. I am not extremely well versed in this eschatological concept, but basically the idea is that when this government or group of governments collapses, the resulting anarchical crises would provide the perfect conditions for the arrival of the man of lawlessness.
However, since we are warned that the exact time of the arrival of the anti-Christ is unknowable, and since preparation for our own death and facing the dread judgement seat of Christ is equally good as preparation for dealing with the Eschaton, since either way, we get judged by Christ Pantocrator and then either enter into the World to Come or are by our own voluntary misotheism damned the outer darkness as a mercy, less we be tormented by close proximity to God, which for the unfaithful and unprepared would be a torture, for His infinite Love would be experienced as infinite Wrath, I myself am inclined to regard eschatological speculations as to the exact identity of the anti-Christ and his precursors to be of limited spiritual value, although admittedly they are interesting and can attract people to pay attention to the faith, but are a bit like signs and wonders - not a great foundation for a truly robust faith, and we have very little way of knowing with any reasonable degree of confidence what actually awaits us in the Eschaton.
*The Nicene Creed is scriptural - see the CF Statement of Faith, which provides scriptural support for all parts of it
CF Statement of Faith
