It's also worth noting that this concept of some future antichrist was popularized as a direct countermeasure to the reformation by a Jesuit by the name of Ribera at around 1600. He made it up to protect the papacy from being accused by the reformers (and rightly so) of being the man of perdition.

I have seen others comment that the idea of a future antichrist existed before this time BUT I have not read those sources and regardless it was not widely accepted in the early church, not even by Catholicism. It was not until Ribera that it was accepted by Catholicism and then later Protestants. It took a few hundred years for it to finally be accepted by protestants and I personally lay a lot of blame for that on Scofield's shoulders.