Post by Marya Dabrowski on Aug 3, 2017 1:07:47 GMT -5
Post what you know/have heard about AntiChrist.
On Antichrist:
"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 disguise 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." 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"; and of this other one from Jeremiah: "The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan." They also surmise that St. John, in Revelations, 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 don 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." 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."
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; 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 i 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.
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."--The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life
It then goes on to list the "miracles" AntiChrist will perform including an apparent rising from the dead, fire from heaven, etc...
On Antichrist:
"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 disguise 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." 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"; and of this other one from Jeremiah: "The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan." They also surmise that St. John, in Revelations, 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 don 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." 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."
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; 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 i 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.
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."--The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life
It then goes on to list the "miracles" AntiChrist will perform including an apparent rising from the dead, fire from heaven, etc...