The Antichrist???

Another Look at the Scripture:

The University of Sheffield has undertaken to recover and transcribe the 4 original versions of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) published during Foxe's own lifetime (1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583), and has made the results of the project available free online. Modern abridgements really don't do this book justice in most cases, so this project provides what amounts to a fresh look at life-work of Foxe. http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/foxe/index.html

What you'll find is another source from antiquity which corroborates the identity of Nero as the beast of Revelation (or "Antichrist"):

From the 1576 Edition, book 1, page 0031 :

"But especially the third of these Neros, called Domitius Nero. An. 56. Domitius Nero. Whiche succeding after Claudius, reigned. xiiij. yeares, with such fury and tyranny, that he slew the most part of the Senate, he destroyed the whole order of knighthode in Rome. So prodigious a monster of nature was he, more like a beast, yea rather a deuill then a man, that he semed to be borne to the destruction of man."

And, from the 1576 Edition, book 1, page 0034

"The first of these. x. persecutions: was styrred vp by Nero Domitius the vj. Emperour before mentioned, about the yeare of our Lorde. 67. The tyrannous rage of whiche Emperour was so fierce agaynst the Christians, (as Eusebius recordeth,) Vi adeò vt videres repletas humanis corporibus ciuitates, iace¯tes mortuos simul cum paruulis senes: fæminarum absq; vlla sexus reuerentia nudata in publico, reiectaque starent cadauera. That is: In somuch that a man might then see Cities lye full of mens bodyes, the old there laying together with the young, and the dead bodyes of women cast out naked without all reuerence of that sexe in the open streetes, &c. Likewise Orosius writing of the sayd Nero, sayth,Orosius Lib. 7. that he was the first, which in Rome did rayse vp persecution agaynst the Christians, and not onely in Rome, but also through all the prouinces therof, thinkyng to abo- lish and to destroy the whole name of Christians in all places, &c. Wherunto accordeth moreouer the testimony of Hierome vppon Daniell, saying: that many there were of the Christians in those dayes, which seyng the filthy abhominations, & intollerable crueltie of Nero, thought that he should be Antichrist, &c."

For a collection of other historic material affirming the identity of Nero as the beast of Revelation, see the following link from the Preterist Achive: http://www.preteristarchive.com/StudyArchive/n/nero_emperor-beast.html

See also how "666" is likewise a reference to Nero Caesar:
http://www.preteristarchive.com/StudyArchive/r/revelation_13-8_666.html