APOSTASY AND ANTICHRIST ACCORDING TO THE HOLY FATHERS OF THE CHURCH

Part I

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

Preface

“First, be aware of this: In the last days scoffers will enter…saying, ‘where is the promise of His coming?  For…all things continue to be as they were since the dawn of creation’”.

True to this prophecy of the Holy Apostle Peter, there are many such scoffers amongst us.  There are even many who bear the name Christian who have, nevertheless, ceased to hope on the return of Christ.  Now they are planning better things of their own.  Having resolved that there will be no God-created “new heaven and new earth”, these scoffers have decided to forge a man-created new world.

To this, Saint Paul admonishes, “Let no man deceive you by any means?  That day will not come before there first comes the great apostasy and that man who is sin personified is revealed, the inheritor of perdition who will oppose himself to and exalt himself above all that is called divine or that is worshipped by man, even sitting in the temple of God, claiming to be a god himself…Therefore, brethren, stand firm and hold fast to all the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our epistle.”

The Orthodox Christian Church has always taught that the cause of the ultimate destruction of civilization will be the religious and moral decay of humanity; that the time would arrive when vast segments of the Holy Orthodoxy Church would apostatize, when a counter church, formed under Satan’s leadership, would arise and when evil will reign so strongly in the life of mankind that life on earth will become almost impossible.  Then the world will lose its right and its reason for existence.  The destruction will come about according to God’s sentence, but the cause of the sentence will be the evil of mankind.

Concerning the fulfillment of such prophecies, our attention must turn to Revelation 8:7-12 and the ninth chapter, where the visionary, Saint John, persistently emphasizes that various disasters and miseries will descent upon one-third of mankind and upon one-third of the earth’s surface at the beginning of the culmination of time.  “If one considers,” says Father Alexander Kolesnikov, “those nations and peoples which have become a sacrifice to wars and revolutions in the twentieth century, then it will be seen that they make up approximately one-third of the earth’s surface and population.”

Most especially, the “permanent” disasters, which include true martyrdoms and open warfare against he Church, have befallen Orthodox Christian nations – almost entirely in the first half of the twentieth century and general as one of the results of the first general war.  Communism captured all of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus before 1950.  Nor was Greece spared fro the Venezelists and several defiled Church leaders launched their attacks upon Holy Orthodoxy in Greece in the 1920’s, almost as if to counter the holy teaching and saintly example of Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis.  Alexandria, Antioch and the Church of China have also fallen under Communist controlled governments since the second general war.  [Since the publication of this book we have seen other huge Orthodox populations in the Middle East be almost wiped out by the Muslim invasions.]  One cannot help but have the impression that the evil forces of the world have set themselves to the task of weakening the Orthodox Christian peoples in order to remove the main obstacles to the realization of their future plans.  [St. Paul spoke of the force that would hinder the arrival of the antichrist until that force would be taken away reminding us also of God’s willingness to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if ten righteous men could have been found.]

In addition to the shock of world events and of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, authors of anti-Christ philosophical, political and religious theories and systems have attacked Christianity especially heavily in recent times.  For the most part, these philosophies have taught, and still are teaching, that a “law of progress” reigns in the history of mankind.  Accordingly, humanity, in all aspects of its existence, has, throughout its history, evolved upward.  These philosophers teach that the political, social and ideological forms of the life of the human race are continually improving and that man will eventually find and bring about, by his own power and human development, the most complete and ideal political and social order of life; an order in which reason, science, peace, safety, justice and material well-being will be complete.  As a matter of fact, a large number of defiled, nominal Orthodox Christian leaders have begun to present such thesis.  Most notable amongst these are hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate which has begun to teach these things “so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect”. 

Christ, on the other hand, taught something completely the opposite.  Christ foretold that there would be “wars and rumors of wars”; that there would be “not peace, but the sword”; that the “love of many will grow cold because of the violence of mankind”.  Let us look at the history of the twentieth century and ask: who has been proven to be right, Christ or the wistful philosophers?  There has arrived no reign of reason, but rather a reign of the most coarse materialism and animalistic passions in man.  In place of peace and safety there are terrible wars and the almost daily rumor of new wars; instead of justice we have witnessed violence, rioting, murders, mass executions, concentration camps; instead of material well-being, there are regular reports of mass starvations and deprivations of millions.  Instead of accord with the reason of religion there is the almost daily appearance and strengthening of sects with the darkest of teachings – freemasonry, Theosophy, Baha’i, Kabala, Islam, so-called Christian Science, open Satan worship and witchcraft cults to name only a few.

What is more significant is the fact that the will to resist all these evil movements has begun to leave mankind.  Now, people can accept Satan cults with little or no shock, pausing only briefly to be dismayed or horrified [before returning to their favorite movie happy hour].  That society in general is willing to condone Satanic acts is clearly demonstrated in the legalization of abortions.  The mass extermination of babies for immorality and convenience has not only ceased to shock most people, but has become accepted as a “norm”.

END OF PART I – TO BE CONTINUED