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Hell on earth: The reign of Antichrist

"The leaders of your country and the rulers of your world are faster and faster plunging forward, bringing in the reign of the evil one whom you will know as the Antichrist of one world. The plan for his rule has been set for many years." Our Lady, August 14, 1974

 

An excerpt from the book The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life by Fr. Charles Arminjon, originally published in 1881: 

"We beg you, brothers, not to be so easily agitated or terrified ... into believing that the day of the Lord is here ... since the mass apostasy has not yet occurred nor the man of lawlessness been revealedthat son of perdition and adversary who exalts himself above every so-called god proposed for worship, he who seats himself in God's temple and even declares himself to be God." (2 Thess. 2:1-4)

***

What is clear and undeniable from the passage we have just quoted is that, before the end of the world, there will appear on earth a profoundly evil man, invested with a quasi-superhuman power, who, challenging Christ, will wage an impious and foolish war against Him. Through the fear this man will inspire, and, particularly, by his stratagems and seductive genius, he will succeed in conquering almost the entire universe; he will have altars erected to himself and will compel all peoples to adore him.

Will this strange man, unique in his evil, be one of our race? Will his face have the features of man, and will the same blood as ours flow in the veins of this ringleader of error and corruption? Or, as some have understood, will he be an incarnation of Satan, a demon thrown up from hell, and disguised in human form?

Or again, as other Doctors have maintained, is this wicked creature just a myth, an allegorical personage, in whom Holy Scripture and the Fathers intended to portray, in a single image, the totality of tyrants and persecutors — to set out prominently the collective image of all the wicked and all the heretics who have fought against Christ and His Church, since the beginning of time?

These various interpretations cannot be reconciled with the definite, precise text of the Sacred Books. Almost all the Doctors and Fathers, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas, clearly maintain that this terrifying malefactor, this monster of impiety and depravity, will be a human person. The learned Bellarmine shows that it is impossible to give any other meaning to the words of St. Paul and those of Daniel 11:36-37. St. Paul designates this great adversary by a noun, calling him a man: "the man of sin, the son of perdition."

Daniel informs us that the Antichrist will attack all that is holy and worthy of respect, exalt himself boldly against the God of gods and consider as nothing the God of his Fathers: "Is Deum patrum suorum non reputabit." (Cf. Dan. 11:37) The apostle Paul adds that Christ will kill him. All these various aspects and characteristics evidently cannot be applied to an ideal, abstract being; they can fit only an individual of flesh and blood — a real, definite personage.

The Fathers and Doctors endeavored to ascertain the origin of the Antichrist, and to discover from what parents and race he will come. They unanimously express the opinion that he will be born of Jewish parents, and some declare that he will be of the tribe of Dan. Such is the interpretation they give of the passage of Genesis, "Let Dan be a snake in the way, a serpent in the path" (Cf. Gen. 49:17);  and of this other one from Jeremiah: "The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan." (Cf. Jer. 8:16) They also surmise that St. John, in Revelation, failed to mention the tribe of Dan through hatred of the Antichrist.

But all these suppositions are uncertain. What seems beyond doubt is that the Antichrist will be of Jewish birth. St. Ambrose, in his commentaries on the letter to the Thessalonians, says that he will be circumcised. Sulpicius Severus, in book II of his Dialogues, says that he will compel all his subjects to submit to circumcision.

Moreover, all concur in saying that at the beginning of his reign he will succeed, by means of his trickery and fame, in making the Jews believe that he is the Messiah whom they have unceasingly awaited, and they, in their blindness, will hasten to receive him and honor him as such. That is how Suarez and most of the commentators interpret this saying of our Lord Jesus Christ, in St. John, 5:43: "I have come in my Father's name, and yet you do not accept me; but let someone come in his own name and him you will accept."

The same meaning must be given to these other words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians: "because they have not opened their hearts to the truth in order to be saved. Therefore God is sending upon them a perverse spirit which leads them to give credence to falsehood." (2 Thess. 2:10-11) Now, is it likely that the Jews would acclaim as Messiah a man who did not belong to their race, and had not been circumcised? The Antichrist, then, will be a Jew.

Will he be born of an illegitimate union? The theologian Suarez tells us that it is uncertain. Nevertheless, it may be presumed that a man so utterly evil, so opposed to Christ in his life and morals, will have an infamous origin; and, just as Jesus Christ had the Immaculate Virgin as His mother, so we may conclude, by analogy and induction, that His avowed adversary will be born of an impure union, and will be the offspring of an unchaste woman. "He will be a child of fornication," says St. John Damascene, "and his birth will be saturated with the breath and spirit of Satan." (De fide orthodoxa)

What may be safely asserted of this man of iniquity is that, right from his most tender years, he will be completely possessed by the spirit and genius of the Devil. The lion of the abyss, which, in the last ages of mankind, God will unleash in His inscrutable justice in order to punish the infidelity of men, will unite himself with him in a certain way, infusing him with the fullness of his evil. No doubt he will not be deprived of the assistance of his guardian angel, nor of the necessary help of sufficient grace, which God bestows in this life upon every single man (Suarez, Disputationes);  but his hatred of God will be so violent, his aversion for every good work so invincible, and his association and commerce with the spirit of darkness so close and continual that, from his cradle to his last breath, he will remain immutably hostile to all divine invitations, and grace from above will never penetrate his heart.

St. Thomas tells us that, in his person and his works, he will reveal himself as the reverse of the Son of God, and will parody His miracles and works. Since his origin, the evil spirit has ever pursued one single goal: to usurp the place of the Omnipotent God, to form a kingdom for himself here below, in compensation for the kingdom of heaven from which he is excluded by his rebellion; and, says Tertullian, the more surely to attain this goal, he is in the habit of making himself the ape of God, counterfeiting all His works.

The adversary of the last times, then, will not only set himself up as the avowed, personal enemy of Jesus Christ: he will aim openly to dethrone Him, to replace Him in the homage and veneration of men and have directed to himself the worship and glory that are due to the Creator alone. He will declare, says St. Thomas, that he is the supreme, eternal being, and, by virtue of this, he will ordain that honors and a cult of worship shall be accorded him. Thus, he will have priests, he will have sacrifices offered to him, he will demand that his name should be invoked in oaths, and that men should use it to guarantee the security of treaties: Ita ut ostendens se tanquam sit Deus. (Cf. 2 Thess. 2:4)

In order to lend greater credence to this belief, he will counter divine revelation with false revelations; in opposition to the ceremonies of divine worship, he will set up his own impious rites; and, against the eternal Church founded by Christ, he will constitute an abominable society, of which he will be the leader and pontiff. St. Thomas adds that, just as the fullness of the Divinity dwells corporally in the Incarnate Word, so the fullness of all evil will dwell in this terrible man, whose mission and works will be but an imitation in reverse, and an execrable counterfeit, of the mission and works of Christ.

Through him Satan will put the seal on his wickedness. He will make this living figure the quintessence, as it were, of all the sinister schemes he has formed against mankind, and will not cease to arouse in him the burning, implacable hatred of God that moves him; and the Lord of heaven, in His hidden counsels, will allow this firebrand from hell to prevail for a time.

St. Thomas characterizes this delegate of Satan by calling him "caput omnium malorum" (Summa Theologica, III, Q. 8): the prince and instigator of all the covetousness of the flesh and all the aberrations of the mind — so much so that the masters of lies and architects of evil who have followed one another in the course of the ages will seem, by comparison with this man, mere pygmies beside a giant. Thus, he will repeat the infamous deeds of Nero; he will be filled with the hatred and violence of Diocletian; he will have the cunning and duplicity of Julian the Apostate; he will resort to intimidation and will bend the earth beneath his scepter like Mohammed; he will be a learned man, a philosopher, a skillful orator, outstanding in the arts and in the manufacturing sciences; he will handle mockery and ridicule like Voltaire. Lastly, he will work wonders, and rise into the air like Simon Magus. (Cf. Acts 8:9-24)

If you ask why Divine Providence will allow him to exercise such power and seduction, St. Paul the Apostle gives us the reason: "Because they have not opened their hearts to the truth in order to be saved. In punishment, God is sending upon them a perverse spirit which leads them to give credence to falsehood, so that all who have not believed the truth but have delighted in iniquity will be condemned." (2 Thess. 2:10-12) Suarez says that God will permit the coming of the Antichrist particularly in order to punish the incredulity of the Jews. The latter, not having wished to worship the true Messiah, nor to be convinced by His doctrine and miracles, God will permit, for their punishment, to be attached to a false Messiah, accord credence to his impious deeds and doctrine, and follow him in his dissolute life. 

***

 . . . Now, if we take Israel as a whole, leaving aside the men of that nation who have fallen into rationalism and unbelief, the nucleus of the Jewish race have not ceased to nourish the same illusions we have just indicated: still expecting a Messiah, whom they continue to see as a powerful conqueror who will subdue the earth. Not long ago, one of the most authoritative exponents of the Talmud dared to say, "A new messianism must be born; a Jerusalem of a new order, set reverently between East and West, must replace the twofold city of Caesars and Popes." (Archives Israelites) Furthermore, it is an established fact that the majority of orthodox believers have retained, as their slogan and watchword, the remark once uttered by a famous rabbi: "Jerusalem is still the pivot of our hopes and of our faith."

Now, is it improbable that, in social conditions like ours, in which the most dreadful and unforeseen events loom up with the rapidity of steam and lightning, there may live a man who will take advantage of the chaos into which our revolutions will have cast us, and succeed in beguiling the masses and gaining mastery over minds and hearts; then, pledging himself to regenerate mankind, will send out a rallying cry to which all his co-religionists will respond, thus achieving the conquest of universal power, a stupendous dominion over minds and bodies, a dominion accepted enthusiastically by the universality of misled, seduced peoples?

Lastly, may we not believe that this powerful and wicked man, who will imprison the world in the jaws of an indescribable, unrestrained despotism and unify the human race through the enslavement of consciences and the humbling of spirits, will be the personage portrayed and predicted by St. John as the Antichrist, and that he will be the man whom Divine Providence has desired to use in order to undeceive Israel, who will at first have acclaimed him as her Messiah and King?

Finally, what will be the characteristic marks of the persecution under the Antichrist? Its main features have been described by Cornelius à Lapide and Suarez, in accordance with Scripture and the Fathers.

At the outset, what is certain and should be taken in faith is that, of all the persecutions the Church has had to suffer, that of the Antichrist will be the most terrible and the most violent.

First, because this persecution will be general, and will extend over the whole earth. It is written: "They spread over the whole country and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city" (Cf. Rev. 20:8-9).

St. Augustine, in book 20 of the City of God, explains this text from St. John by saying that all the infidels, heretics, sectarians, and depraved men, scattered over the surface of the earth, will unite with the Antichrist to make war on the saints and to persecute those who are faithful to God.

Secondly, this persecution will be the most severe and violent of all because it will be inspired not by superstition or fanaticism, nor by a blind attachment to the worship of idols, as were the persecutions unleashed by the pagan emperors. Its purpose will not be to assuage pride, or to satisfy an unbridled lust for power, like the persecution of Mohammed. Nor will it be aroused by the unrestrained lusts of the flesh and by the lure of plunder, like the one to which the German princes subjected the Church under Protestantism and in the lifetime of Luther. It will be a persecution inspired solely by hatred of God, in which God and His Christ will be directly challenged, and its sole objective will be the extermination of the divine kingdom, the complete annihilation of Christianity and of all positive religion. Thus, the Tiberiuses, Neros, and the most frightful tyrants of paganism at least acknowledged an apprehension and, as it were, a distant reflection of the divinity in the idols, which they sought to compel the Christians to adore; but, in the times of which we are speaking, it will no longer be permissible to accord even a modified and corrupted adoration to any divinity. All men without exception will be forced to honor and render a cult of worship to Satan himself, personified in the Antichrist — that is, in the most evil and abominable man that humanity has ever produced.

Thirdly, this persecution, which will mark the last ages, will be waged with an irresistible seductiveness, "insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect." (Cf. Matt. 24:24) Cornelius à Lapide says, "He will excel at all the crafts, forms of guile, and practices of politicians." At first, the Antichrist will convince the Jews that he is the Mes­siah. In order to deceive them the more successfully, he will hide behind a mask of moderation and feigned holiness. When St. Paul tells us that he will have himself worshiped in the temple of God, he seems to imply that he will rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, utterly destroyed by Titus; consequently, he will prescribe circumcision and, for a time, restore the bloody sacrifices and the other rites of the Judaic religion.

As for those who are foreign to the Jewish religion, he will draw them to himself, first, by persuasion and eloquence. He will be skilled in artifice and will be taught by the Devil himself all knowledge useful for the ends for which the evil spirit destines him. St. Anselm tells us that he will be acquainted with all the natural sciences and will know all the sacred texts by heart. In the second place he will win men over by lavishing gold and riches. He will be the wealthiest person on earth. Satan will deliver to him all the treasures concealed in the bowels of the sea and in the hidden depths of the earth. (Dan. 11:43)

Fourthly, he will fill all men with admiration by his genius, and by the amazing rapidity of his elevation to the height of fortune and omnipotence. As for the ignorant and the multitude, he will fascinate them by marvels, cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanae, in omni virtute et prodigiis mendacibu — "whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders." (Cf. 2 Thess. 2:9) St. Thomas says that, just as Christ worked miracles in confirmation of His doctrine, so also the man of sin will work false miracles in confirmation of his errors; and just as the true Christ worked wonders by the power of God, the author of all truth, so, too, His adversary will work, as we have indicated above, by the power of Satan, the father of fraud and lies.

Thus, the man of sin will not perform true miracles, like Jesus Christ, but will perform false and apparent ones. All his wonderful works will be, in reality, mere illusions and works of fantasy; so that, as St. Athanasius says, when he appears to resurrect a dead man, either the man whom he resurrects will not really have been dead, or else, if he had been dead, he will not really be restored to life.

Lastly, the same saint continues, the works performed by the Antichrist that appear to transcend the laws of nature will not be miracles in the true sense, but effects and phenomena of the physical order, performed through the intermediary of certain secret, hidden, and natural causes. In order to better captivate men, the Antichrist will permit lasciviousness and the licentiousness of the flesh, and will stimulate the most intoxicating pleasures, totus erit in libidinibus et concupiscentiis feminarum — "he shall follow the passions and lust of women." (Cf. Dan. 11:37)

Fifthly, the persecution under the Antichrist will be the bloodiest and most barbarous of all those which Christianity has ever suffered. Jesus Christ so assures us, when He says, "For those days will be more filled with anguish than any from the beginning of the world until now or in all ages to come." (Matt. 24:21) This can be surmised if we refer back to two causes. The first is the vast power and the stupendous instruments of force and destruction that the Antichrist will have at his disposal and, with these, the evil and fury of the men appointed to execute his commands. The second will be the terrifying wickedness of the Devil, because in those days, says St. John, God will allow him to leave the fiery prison where he is chained, and will give him full permission to seduce and satisfy his hatred of the human race. (Rev. 20:7-8) Whence it follows, says St. Cyril, that there will then be multitudes of martyrs, more glorious and admirable than those who formerly fought with lions, in the amphitheaters of Rome and Gaul.

These had to struggle against mere agents of the Devil, but the confessors of the last ages will have to struggle against him who is a murderer from the beginning. To torment them, the old enemy will practice monstrous tortures with unheard-of refinements, unparalleled in past centuries, which the human mind could never have contrived to invent by itself.

Finally — the last feature of the persecution under the Antichrist — it will be so violent that it will succeed in making almost the entirety of Christians apostatize. "And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them." (Rev. 13:7) "For, as I watched, that horn made war against the holy ones and was victorious . . ." (Dan. 7:21) St. Paul informs us that Christ will not return until the great apostasy has come. (2 Thess. 2:3) Interpreting these words of the apostle, St. Augustine tells us that if, in every age, we have seen believers renounce Christ on account of the wiles of heretics and the fear of persecutors and tyrants, nevertheless the defection that will take place under the Antichrist is called the apostasy, properly speaking, because, in number and extension, this apostasy will exceed all that has been seen in previous times.

However, it would not be correct to conclude from this testimony that there will be none of the elect left on earth, and that the Son of God will fail to keep the promise made to His Church, when He said, Propter electos, dies breviabuntur ("because of the elect, the days will be shortened"). Moreover, St. John, in his Revelation adds, "And he [the beast] will be worshiped by those who dwell upon the earth whose names are not written in the book of life." (Rev. 13:8)

St. Augustine tells us that, in the reign of the Antichrist, there will be multitudes of martyrs who will display a heroic constancy, and also a number, more or less large, of confessors who will manage to escape into caves and high or sheer mountains, and God will see to it that these sanctuaries shall elude the vigilance and investigations of the persecutors, and will not permit the Devil to point them out to them.

Daniel tells us that, at the time when this terrible persecution breaks out, the abomination of desolation will openly sit enthroned in the holy place. "The king shall do as he pleases," says Daniel. "He shall exalt himself and make himself greater than any god; he shall utter dreadful blasphemies against the God of gods ... He shall have no regard for the gods of his ancestors ... for no god shall he have regard." (Dan. 11:36-37)

In other words, once the man of sin has cowed the human race by his threats and entangled it in the meshes of his lies and wiles, he will observe no restraint, show his hand, and act openly. He will not permit anyone to worship or invoke any other god than himself, and will proclaim himself sole lord of heaven and earth. Wherever he is not present in person, men will be obliged to pay homage to his image or statue: Et elevabitur, magnificabitur adversus omnem Deum. (Cf. Dan. 11:36) He will tolerate neither the Mosaic religion, nor natural religion itself. He will persecute with equal thoroughness Jews, schismatics, heretics, deists, and every sect that recognizes the existence of a supreme being and the immortality of the life to come. Yet God, in His wisdom, will draw good from evil. The horrible tempest that His justice has allowed to be unleashed upon the earth will result in the disappearance of false religions. Along with Judaism, it will abolish the remains of Mohammedanism, idolatrous superstitions, and every religion hostile to the Church.

It will deal the finishing blow to the sects of darkness. Freemasonry, Carbonarism, Illuminism, and all subversive societies will vanish in the vortex of wickedness which will be their work, and which they had prepared for centuries in the belief that it would be their definitive, supreme triumph. They will have assisted unintentionally in the establishment of the reign of unity foretold by our Lord: "There shall be one flock then, and one shepherd." (John 10:16)

The triumph of the wicked one will be of short duration, but the consolations that follow will be universal, abundant, proportionate to the extent of the tribulations the Church will have suffered.

However, the final consummation will not come yet, as it is written:

And then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and loud voices in heaven cried out; the voices of angels and of virgins, together with the voices of confessors and holy martyrs, will hail Christ with praise and acclamations, giving thanks for His victory over the Antichrist, and for the extermination of the wicked. All men, now become worshipers of one and the same God, all professing the same faith, united in the same adoration, sharing the same table, will exclaim in chorus, "The kingdom of this world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed One . . . We praise you, O Lord God Almighty, who is and who was and who are to come; because You have assumed your great power, and You have begun Your reign." (Rev. 11:15-17)

 

"The state of your world has been reduced by the immorality. The state of your world is capitulating now to all of the forces of the octopus that will seek to bring about a one-world religion and a one-world government under a supreme dictator of evil." Our Lady, March 18, 1978

 

Directives from Heaven

D12 - One World Government / Religion  PDF LogoPDF
D122
- Antichrist 
 PDF LogoPDF


 

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Revised:
March 07, 2018