First you must know the true Jesus Christ as revealed by the Holy Spirit through the Bible. Knowing the papacy is the anti-Christ, strengthens your knowledge and understanding of the deceptions utilized to lead you away from Christ and therefore salvation.

Knowing who Antichrist is reveals our desperate need for a Savior, a Deliverer, a Redeemer who must, not only rescue us from the tyranny of our modern day pharaoh the pope, but reveal to us his deceptive cloak of Christianity.  Without freeing us from his false lamb-like religion, we are bound to love his doctrines, love the Beast, and worship after his provisions.  This is why the spirit of antichrist has always been among us, since the beginning.  He first tempts us to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, by twisting the simplicity of God's Word into something more.  "Surely God did not say." In other words, "surely God has allowed it by now" might be the phrase he uses today, but nevertheless, he uses our disbelief to lure us. God is not unjust.  According to our desire and free will, we would choose that deceptive fruit every time because our hearts want it.  Without God's grace and mercy to save us, we desire to seek after secret mysteries, special experiences(spiritual formation, experiential, Christianity) with God under the cloak of religion, but through the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.  Rather, we are commanded to eat from the Tree of Life, which is walking by faith according to God's will.  Nothing has changed.  The Tree of Life, which is faith in Christ, remains the only way to the Father today.  The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil remains the unbelieving, works-based, selfish option for those who would rather acknowledge what they know and do, over what God commands.  This option leads to death unto this day as God promised.  Without repentance and returning to the Tree of Life, faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ, there is no life.  From which tree do you eat?  This is the Gospel message, the Gospel of Christ against the gospel of papacy; we have all eaten from that forbidden tree and will continue to do so, attempting to hide our guilt by our own merits, unless God saves us.  If we sin against God, even once, we prove by the Law that we need a Savior to mediate for us.  We cannot stop sinning and we willfully choose to rebel against God.  This is why we need Christ.  We cannot do it ourselves and to believe that we can have Christ and our merits, is not faith, but unbelief that Christ alone is enough.  If you are religious, do you merit your salvation by what you know and do or by your faith in Jesus Christ?  If you are not religious, do you know that God has written His law upon every heart and declares that you do know He exists.  I believe His Word, therefore I have no need to prove God to you.  He says you know Him and from that position, I ask, why rebel against Him any longer?  Repent, believe and Rest in the WORD.

Knowing who Antichrist is exposes the pope's false doctrines, his false teachers and his religion.  It is a religion upon self and not Christ.  It replaces faith with works, dependence on the work of the Holy Spirit with "enlightenment" or a "deeper" knowledge. God is glorified when the papacy is exposed, thus my attempt to explain who he is and has been for centuries.  Many other men of God(all the reformers) have revealed in much detail and under strong persecution who the man of sin, the son of perdition is and I refer to their written works for more clarity, but let me make it very clear, the pharaoh of our day is the pope.  The papacy rules and reigns through the governments, the laws, the kingdoms of this world as a beast, but uses his anti-christian church as a lamb.  It has a form of godliness, but denies the redemptive work of Christ.  Today, the seminaries, the Bible colleges teach futurism,  believing the antichrist is to come in the future and we must address that falsehood in order to understand truth.  He is here, and  the world bears his fruit.  Who wants to admit that?  Not many.  Knowing who Antichrist is would require repentance, a realization that we must turn away from his provisions and that is something many do not want to do.  They love  the beast, they worship after his false doctrines because it is more believable to them.  More logical perhaps, but the just shall walk by faith and not sight. The papacy comes with another gospel and from such, we must turn away.

Knowing the scriptures, the Antichrist begins to stand out throughout history of the papacy.  When you know the anti-christ is the papacy, you are richly blessed with truth, sell it not and tell all men through the love of Christ, that the papacy offers no salvation for the soul, but only death.  The prophecies are true and that the martyrs of the Reformation were led by the Holy Spirit, which gave us the Bible, which gave us the lamp in the dark and led us out of the dark ages.  The Roman Catholic church, the false religion the papacy offers you through works, knowledge and unbelief guise as faith, but unless we repent and understand the deception, we will not see the simplicity of the Gospel.  This is what the scriptures tell us.  Believe, Repent and Rest in the WORD.   Come to the completed work of Christ!  Rest in His Word!  Turn away from the papacy, from the pope's doctrines and know Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb who was slain, who bore the punishment for sin!   Return to the Tree of Life and forsake the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  All false religions stem from the papacy.  The pope's agenda unites the world under all religions as one.  It is works-based salvation, separating from the only true religion that teaches, we are saved by grace alone, lest any man should boast.  Any Christian who thinks that knowing who Antichrist is doesn't matter, that we should just focus on Christ, is deceived. It makes them uncomfortable because knowing that the papacy is  anti-christ, takes away the comforts and and makes us responsible followers of the Gospel.  It compels us to stand up, speak out and reveal the false gospel among us.   Instead, under the pretext of living for Jesus, more nobly then the martyrs of Jesus, they would rather live for themselves.  I would challenge any Christian with that view to realize, God saved us to reveal Himself to the world. Your body doesn't belong to you if you belong to the Body of Christ.  Should you cast aside the eyes that saw the papacy murdering God's people?  Should you speak against the mouths of Luther, Zwingle, Erasmus, Tyndale, Knox, Calvin, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, Hooper, and others, that were associated with the “Reformation” that defended the scriptures against the deception of the papacy?  Be humbled, lest ye fall.  The more we know Christ, the more the papacy deception stands out to the children of God.  The Bible says we would know, as with any other prophecy foretold.  History reveals him to us, just as with any other prophecy given to us in the Bible.