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That passage is in reference to antichrist. Most of the old Protestant confessions identified the papacy as antichrist. Up until just over 100 years ago just about every Protestant knew the identity of antichrist and the great whore of Revelation. Rome (and Satan) must love all the prophecy pimps and weak easily-led preachers who have come along and obscured the truth.

Interestingly enough it was hearing an interview with a former priest that got me to begin studying the writings of historic Protestants. I had no idea how definite and united they were on this topic.

Here is what Spurgeon had to say:

“”It is the bounden duty of every Christian to pray against Antichrist, and as to what Antichrist is no sane man ought to raise a question. If it be not the popery in the Church of Rome there is nothing in the world that can be called by that name. If there were to be issued a hue and cry for Antichrist, we should certainly take up this church on suspicion, and it would certainly not be let loose again, for it so exactly answers the description.”

“Popery is contrary to Christ’s Gospel, and is the Antichrist, and we ought to pray against it. It should be the daily prayer of every believer that Antichrist might be hurled like a millstone into the flood and for Christ, because it wounds Christ, because it robs Christ of His glory, because it puts sacramental efficacy in the place of His atonement, and lifts a piece of bread into the place of the Saviour, and a few drops of water into the place of the Holy Ghost, and puts a mere fallible man like ourselves up as the vicar of Christ on earth; if we pray against it, because it is against Him, we shall love the persons though we hate their errors: we shall love their souls though we loath and detest their dogmas, and so the breath of our prayers will be sweetened, because we turn our faces towards Christ when we pray.”

Antichrist in Our Midst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1OCYXUhUoU