APOSTASY AND ANTICHRIST ACCORDING TO THE HOLY FATHERS OF THE CHURCH

Part 2

(Exerted from a booklet published by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY in 1992, no longer in print.)

A NEW BABYLON

As the day of the glorification of the Holy Church approaches, a new edifice arises in the world, an edifice contradictory to the truth of Christ’s Building – this is the mystery Babylon.  The actions of the ancients who dreamed of immortalizing themselves on earth, of creating a name for themselves, is being repeated.  Today’s Chaldeans, however, do not dream of having their names written in heaven, but rather of leaving a name and a memory of their deeds on earth.

Here is a new Babylon in the fullness of the word: mixing truth with untruth.  Instead of the clear light of the teaching of the Holy Church, founded on the Gospels, the prophets, apostles, fathers and Councils of the Church, these new Babylonians thirst for apostate teachings and dark philosophical systems in which truth is mixed with lies and interwoven with untruth.  This manner of thinking is the foundation of the new Babylon.  This tower of false teaching grows daily.  Great indeed is the danger of losing one’s way on the path of salvation because of the spreading dust from this Babylonian construction of a monument to the dreamers and those who seek to inscribe their own names on earth.

How great the enmity between Satan’s principality and the kingdom of God is has been revealed to us in the Revelations, especially at 12: 1-8 and 13:14.  According to the Holy Fathers these words reveal to us that, in the last days, Satan will be allowed to make war against the saints of God, and the Church (the woman vested in the sun) will flee away into the wilderness.  The Holy Church will have returned to the catacombs and house churches, becoming very small, scattered and persecuted.  The Church will have no place of honor or protection in society.  It will be much the same as it was for the Church in the first century under pagan Rome.

Christ’s Church has been persecuted and oppressed in all ages by the prince of this world in different ways at different times.  The early years saw severe persecution from without - from society, the world, the government, the Jewish religion and pagan Greek and Roman religions.  

Once the Church became recognized and under the protection of Constantine in the fourth century, the persecution of the Church by Satan came from within in the form of schisms and heresies.  Satan used members of the Church to attack the dogmas of the faith, seeking to create disunity and to destroy the doctrines necessary for salvation.  To be sure, in both periods many souls abandoned the Holy Church and joined the ranks of Satan.

A third period of persecution began with the rise of Mohammed and again the Church was submitted to open physical persecution.  During this period the Orthodox Christian population of entire areas of the East was slaughtered for refusing to renounce Christ.  It is notable that the Moslem conquest of the Orthodox Christian world took place at about the same time as new heresies were arising in Western Europe; first Papism and then Protestantism and finally such cults as Freemasonry.   At this time Satan began using both persecution from within and from without to try to destroy the Church.

A forth period of persecution came in the form of the anarchist and social revolution movements, attacking every social order on earth, striving to throw the world into a state of conflict and confusion to pave the way for the extermination of Christianity, notably Marxist Socialism, Communism and Nazism.

Satan continues in our day to use all types of persecution against the Church.  Orthodoxy today is in a type of Babylonian captivity, suffering loss from without at the hands of the Moslems in the Middle East, materialistic and humanistic socialism and the heresies of Rome and Protestantism in the West, and from the heresy of Ecumenism from within.   The special snare-words that  Satan has used in order to entice people into these movements include: “freedom”, “love”,  “brotherhood”, “equality”, and “unity of mankind”.   How many are following after these meaningless slogans, not caring who originated them or what the actual manifestations of these so-called humanitarian movements are.  How clearly they are being led by the prince of this world, by artificial enticements, how quickly they are headed for the anarchy which will bring about the last tormentor of mankind, Antichrist.

End of Part 2

To be continued with Part 3