Part 3
APOSTASY AND
ANTICHRIST ACCORDING TO THE HOLY FATHERS OF THE CHURCH
THE BEGINNING OF THE
END OF THIS WORLD AND OF THE EARTHLY SOJOURN OF CHRIST’S CHURCH
(Exerted from a booklet published by Holy Trinity Monastery,
Jordanville, NY in 1992, no longer in print.)
According to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the
holy Fathers of the Church, the end of the world and the second coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ will be heralded by a great, visible spread of lawlessness
and impiety amongst all peoples, the completion of the preaching of the Gospel
throughout the world, including to the Jews in a restored Israel, extreme
physical troubles and the coming of Antichrist and his struggle with Christ’s
Holy Church.
The holy Apostles teach that in the very last times, the
various ruinous heresies and false teachings will multiply and gather great
strength while unbelief will increase.
Mankind as a whole will be morally deaf and blind and insensitive to
everything that concerns salvation.
People will willingly believe any falsehood and reject Christ’s
law. Every possible vise and error will
be accepted by the world at large.
Saint Paul, in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, says that
when Antichrist appears, [there will be many antichrist spirits, movements and
forerunners before the final man of sin is revealed] he will be allowed to
entice many. “…there will be all sorts
of miracles and a deceptive show of signs
and wonders, and everything evil that can deceive those who are bound
for destruction because they would not obey the truth which would have saved
them. The reason why God will send a
power to delude them and make them believe what is untrue is to condemn all
those who refused to believe in the truth and chose wickedness instead” (II Thes, 2:10,12).
In his epistle to Timothy, the Apostle instructs, “You may
be quite certain that in the last days there are going to be difficult
times. People will be self-centered and
grasping; boastful, arrogant and rude; disobedient to their parents, ungrateful,
irreligious; heartless and unappeasable; they will be slanderers, profligates,
savages and enemies of everything that is good; they will be treacherous and
reckless and demented by pride, preferring their own pleasure to God. They will keep up the outward appearance of
religion but will have rejected the inner power of it. Have nothing to do with people like that” (II
Tim. 3: 1-5).
Of course, all these vices have always been present in the
world, but in the last days they will become the dominant characteristics of
society.
End of Part 3
To be continued in part 4
