The 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 which this man will inspire, and, particularly, by 
his strategems 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 heresiarchs 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 terri- 
fying 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 . [46] St. Paul 
designates this great adversary by a noun, calling him a 
man, "the man of sin, the son of perdition" . [47] 

Daniel informs us that he will attack all that is 
holy and worthy of respect, exalt himself boldly against 
Did not an abstract being; they can only fit an individual 
of flesh and blood, a real, definite personage. 

The Fathers and Doctors endeavoured to ascertain the 
oriain of 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... 

What seems certain is that The Antichrist
will be of Jewish birth. St. Ambrose, 
commentated on the Epistle to the Thessalonians, says 
That he will be circumcised. Sulpicius Severus, in book 
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 making the Jews believe that he is the Messias 
whom they have unceasingly awaited, and that they, in their 
blindness will hasten to receive him and honour 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 am come in the name of my Father, and you 
receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him 
you will receive." [50] 

The same meaning must be given to these other words 
of st Paul to the Thessalonians: "Because they receive 
not the love of the truth, that they might be .saved 
Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to 
believe lying. "151] Now, is it. likely that the Jews would 
acclaim a man who did not be born to their 
race and had not been circumcised? 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 
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. [52] . "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 tenderest years, he will be com- 
pletely possessed by the spirit and genius of the devil. 
The lion of the abyss which, in the last ages of mankind, 
God, in His inscrutable justice, will unleash 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 suf- 
ficient 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 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 com- 
pensation 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 which 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 honours and a cult of latria 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: 

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 wicked- 
ness. He will make this living figure the quintessence, 
as it were, of all the sinister schemes which he has 
formed against mankind, and will not cease to arouse in 
him the burning, implacable hatred of God which moves him; 
and the Lord of Heaven, in His hidden counsels, will allow 
this firebrand from Hell to prevail for a time; 

St. Thomas applies to this delegate of Satan the 
description "caput omnium malorum" : the prince and insti- 
gator 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 
sceptre like Mohammed; he will be a learned man, a philo- 
sopher, a skilful 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. 

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 receive not the love of 
the truth, whereby they might be saved. Therefore, God 
shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying; 
that all may be judged who have not believed the truth but 
have consented to iniquity- " 

 Suarez says that God 
will permit the coming of Antichrist, particularly in 
order to punish the incredulity of the Jews. The latter, 
not having wished to worship the true Messias, nor to be 
convinced by His doctrine and miracles, God will permit 
them, for their punishment, to attach themselves to a 
false Messias, accord credence to his impious deeds and 
doctrine, and follow him in his dissolute life.  

At that time the peril for souls will be great, and 
the scandal of the contagion universal. Nevertheless, in 
order that those who are taken by surprise may not attri- 
bute their misfortune to anyone but themselves, the Holy 
Spirit has sought to give us an outline in advance of the 
principal stages of that terrible, decisive trial, the 
climax of all those that mankind has undergone. 


First of all, in order to make us understand the violence 
and ferocity of the man of sin, and the skill with which he 
will conduct the war he has undertaken against the saints, St. 
John the Apostle depicts him in Apocalypse 13 under the figure 
of a monstrous beast, having ten heads or diadems on his horns, 
and, written on each of these diadems, the name of a blasphemy. 
According to interpreters, these ten heads and ten_ diadems 
signify ten dependent kings, who will be his lieutenants and 
will act as the executors of his trickery and cruelty. - - 

Moreover, St. John tells us that he will be invested with 
absolute sovereignty, and that his power will extend over all 
tribes and peoples, over men of every nation and language. 

As he succeeds in overcoming the saints by a persecution 
carried to the extreme limit, he will simultaneously give free 
rein to all kinds of licentiousness, and there will be no 
freedom except for evil. 

Lastly, he will be a master in the occult sciences and in 
the art of magic, and, through the agency of demons, he will 
perform wonderful deeds, which deluded men will take for true 
miracles.  

The first of these miracles mentioned by St. John will be 
an apparent resurrection. In one of the wars where Antichrist 
will appear as if mounted on a chariot of light and fire, he 
will be mortally wounded in the head. For a time he will be 
seen lifeless, apparently dead. Then, suddenly, he will rise, 
and his wound will be instantaneously healed. At the sight of 
this the deluded men, the unbelievers and free-thinkers of that 
time who, like those of our own day, lacking any faith in the 
supernatural and in revealed truth, will spurn miracles as 
implacably condemned by science and reason - these men will 
give credit to the hoax. They will exclaim, with enthusiasm 
and admiration: "Who is like to the beast? And who shall be 
able to fight with him?" 

Secondly, the man of sin will make fire come down from 
Heaven, in order to create the belief that he is the master of 
nature, the ruler of seasons, and that he has dominion over the 
sky and the stars. 

It is well known that the devils, deprived of their orig- 
inal beauty and goodness, have not lost any of their powers. 
They can act on the elements, condense clouds and vapours, 
project lightning and unleash storms. As for miracles properly 
so called, God alone can perform them. A miracle is a dero- 
gation of the laws of nature which surpasses every created 
force, whether human or angelic. Thus, Antichrist will not 
work true miracles, but only false and apparent ones. It is 
said in the Sibylline Books , lib. Ill, Oraculum, that he will 
make the sun stand still, walk upon the sea and move mountains. 
These marvels will all be mere illusions, a sort of mirage, 
similar to those worked by devils when, through the agency of 
their magicians and mediums, they fascinate men, befuddle their 
imagination and sight, to the extent of making objects seem to 
them very different from what they are. 


Thirdly, he will make a statue speak; demons will use 
a tree or a lifeless piece of wood as an instrument, with 
the aid of which they will utter their fabrications and 
false oracles. Pieces of furniture will also be seen to 
move and run around of themselves, mountains will change 
their position in an instant, and demons, transformed into 
angels of light, will appear in the air. 

Then, by an incomprehensible judgement of God, the 
free-thinkers and the great sceptics of the last times 
will take these impostures and conjuring tricks seriously. 
Dupes of their own presumption and credulity, they will 
plunge headlong into all the follies of necromancy and 
divination, thus vindicating, in the face of the world, 
the oracle of the Sacred Books: "Now, the Spirit mani- 
festly saith that in the last times some shall depart from 
the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines 
of devils:"

Lastly, it is written that the pride of the man of 
sin will be boundless. He will open his mouth in blas- 
phemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle 
and the saints in Heaven. Daniel says that he will think 
himself entitled to abolish times and laws

 That is, he will 
suppress feasts and Sunday observance, alter the order of 
months and the length and division of weeks, and remove 
Christian names from the calendar, replacing them with the 
emblems of the lowest animals. In a word, this counter- 
feit of Christ will be an atheist in the full sense of the 
term. He will make away with the Cross and every relig- 
ious symbol; as Daniel again declares, he will substitute 
abominable rites for the Christian sacrifice in every 
church. Pulpits will be silent; teaching and education 
will be lay, compulsory and godless. Jesus Christ will be 
banished from the child's cradle, from the altar where 
spouses are united, from the bedside of the dying. Over 
the whole surface of the earth, worship of any god other 
than this christ of Satan will not be tolerated. 

In His impenetrable designs, God will allow men to 
undergo this supreme, terrible trial in order to teach 
them how great the power of the devil is, and how immense 
their own weakness; He desired to announce it to us so 
that we might prepare ourselves even now to sustain it, by 
having recourse to Him through prayer, and by providing 
ourselves with the spiritual weapons of charity and faith. 
In addition, Antichrist is destined to bring out, in its 
splendour, the fidelity and constancy of those whose names 
are written in the Book of Life, those whom all his vio- 
lence and wiles will not succeed in daunting. 

On the other hand, it is certain that the duration 
and bitterness of this persecution will make it the ulti- 
mate criterion for discerning the elect from the reprobate 
since it will also be the ruin of many whose perseverance 
will fail; thus it will be a test "set for the ruin and 
for the resurrection of many.... that out of many hearts 
thoughts may be revealed. "

Apostasies will be numerous, and courage will become 
rare. It is written that the powers of the heavens will 
be shaken, and the stars of the firmament will fall. In 
other words, the leaders of peoples will be seen to bend 
the knee before the reigning idol, and,~-what is still more 
lamentable, among the exponents of science, the luminaries 
of theology- and the oracles of sacred eloquence, a large 
number will abandon the truth, and let themselves be 
carried along with the current of depravity. 

Again, St. John speaks of a strange, mysterious 
character which all, "both little and great, rich and 
poor, freemen and bondmen, " will be obliged to have on 
their right hand or on the forehead; this mark will be a 
sign of apostasy, attesting that all those who bear it, 
whether to please the master, or to escape his wrath, have 
renounced the true Christ, and enlisted for ever under the 
banner of His enemy.

Those who bear this degrading mark will enjoy the 
advantages of fortune in abundance; they will have the 
high salaries, the public offices, and a multiplicity of 
pleasures and of all desirable possessions; but those who 
refuse to clothe themselves with this abominable seal will 
be outlawed. It is written that "no man might buy or 
sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of 
beast, or the number of his name." All those who do not 
have this mark will be forbidden to draw water from the 
public fountains, and will even be unworthy to open their 
eyes to the light of day, and breathe the pure air of the 
heavens. 

The tribulation will be great "such as hath not been 
from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall 
be. "The just will be dishonoured and despised; they 
will be called fools and disturbers of the peace; they 
will be accused of trampling upon honour and patriotism, 
by refusing to acclaim the greatest man ever to have 
appeared in the world, the incomparable genius who has 
raised human civilization to the zenith of perfection and 
progress. 

If the just were not to be sustained by a special 
assistance from God, there would not be a single one who 





(This sign is called a character, because it will be im- 
printed on the flesh. The Apostle informs us that the beast 
will compel both young and old to carry it. By "the young" are 
meant the children who will be born; for the son of perdition 
and his false prophets will abolish all baptism given in the 
name of the Holy Trinity. They will take pains to force all 
children to accept the character of the beast on the forehead, 
and reject the baptism instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ.) 

could withstand the violence of such temptation: 
In the dreadful days of the great French Revolution, 
there were still some havens, places of safety open to 
convicts and outlaws. The countryside was friendly; there 
were impenetrable forests and hidden, isolated paths. 
However, in the period we are engaged in describing, 
science and human discoveries will have reached their 
zenith, and the surface of the earth will be dotted with 
telegraph wires and railways. Every mountain will have 
been bored. There will be no more rocks or caves, islands 
or deserts, where freedom can expect a refuge. The home 
itself will no longer be safe: for i't is said that 
"brother shall betray his brother unto death, and the 
father his son. 

It is not usual for the Sacred Books, when they 
reveal the future to us, to go into such precise, minute 
detail. The prophets speak to us only enigmatically, and 
in abbreviated form. In general, they limit themselves to 
marking out the main lines of future events. However, so 
far as the final combat waged against the saints is con- 
cerned, the inspired Apostles have followed the maxim, 
and they have neglected 
nothing which might strengthen the just during those days 
of trial and great calamity. 

Thus they teach us that, at that time, the East will 
once more become the focal point of politics and human 
affairs, and that the impostor, possessed with the blind, 
maniacal passion to desecrate the holiest places (those 
which have been the scene of the labours and suffering of 
the God-Man), will establish his royalty at Jerusalem. 
For our consolation, they tell us that God will shorten 
the duration of his power, limiting it to forty-two months 
or three and a half years,

The number given in the Sacred Books probably does 
not express the length of time which the man of sin will 
need in order to conquer the earth and reach the zenith of 
his omnipotence. It is not reasonable to suppose that, 
even with the aid of the superhuman and satanic powers 
which will be at his disposal, he will be able to become 
master of the earth in a single day. It is to be supposed 
that he will only attain the fullness of his sovereignty 
gradually, and will require a longish period to subdue the 
nations and envelop the whole world in the murky web of 
his trickery and seduction. All we know from St. John and 
Daniel is that his dominion over men "of every race, tribe 
and language" will subsist " that is, one year, two more years and 
half a year. Daniel, in chapter 12, tells us: "From the 
time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away and 
the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there 
shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days. "[69] Hence, 
it follows that the point when Christ will no longer be 
present on our altars, offering Himself as a victim to His 
Father's justice in order to make reparation for men's 
crimes, is to" be reckoned from the day when Antichrist has 
obtained universal dominion: only then will the unbloody 
sacrifice of the altar cease to be celebrated; but, until 
that day, and during the time taken by Antichrist to 
achieve his - kingship, the sacrifice of the mass will 
continue to subsist. 

St. John indicates the name, of Antichrist; but he 
deems it proper to tell us only in the form of numerals. 
We know that in various languages numbers can be trans- 
lated into letters of the alphabet and, conversely, the 
letters of the alphabet into numbers. So, St. John tells 
us that, in a language which he does not make known to us, 
the name of the beast is expressed by the number 666. 

The Fathers and Doctors have laboured to discover the 
key to this number, and to ascertain the name hidden 
.beneath this mysterious number; [70] but their investi- 
gations have come to nothing. It is possible to imagine a 
vast number of different names the letters of which, 
according to the way they are put together, express the 
number indicated by St. John. We cannot go beyond the 
view of St. Irenaeus, who assures us that the Holy Ghost 
presented the name of Antichrist in the form of this 
enigmatic number, because He wanted its true meaning to 
remain unknown until the fulfilment of His prophecy, the 
day when it would be in the interest of men for Antichrist 
to be revealed to them. Then, says St. John, "he that 
hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast. 

[70] In his Interpretation de 1' Apocalypse , the holy and learn- 
ed Holzhauser remarks that, in the Greek language, which was 
the one used by the St. John the Apostle, the word dyceuoq , 
meaning "converse", >• when rendered by a figure, corresponds to 
the number 666. Thus, in his view, the number 666 designates 
the characteristic quality of the man of sin, not his own name. 
It is difficult to believe that St. John would have announced 
the number 666 as something profound and mysterious, an impene- trable enigma, as it were, if the meaning were so simple and 
evident. In that case, the Apostle would merely have informed 
us that Antichrist would be the converse of Christ. Holzhauser 
adds that the beast's number, 666, is a number of months which 
make fifty-five and a half years. On the basis of this fact, 
he tells us that Antichrist was born in 1855, that he will live 
for fifty-five years, and that his persecution will take place 
around 1908. It must be said that these are altogether arbit- 
rary conjectures and suppositions. Men no less holy and 
learned than Holzhauser have often indulged in the same calcu- 
lations, and have constantly been mistaken. The Church has not 
taught us anything on the time of Antichrist's coming. There 
is not a single passage in Holy Scripture which supports such 
interpretations. 


St. Paul tells us that God is faithful, for He has 
made a pact with temptation, and does not permit man to be 
tested beyond his strength. Here, the temptation will 
exceed the normal conditions and laws of mankind. It 
befits the mercy of God that the remedy should be pro- 
portionate to the extent of the evil. Now the means of 
succour foretold is the most superhuman and extraordinary, 
the most alien to the rules of history and the ordinary 
workings of Providence, of all those that Heaven has sent 
man since the Incarnation . 

Just when the tempest is at its most violent, when 
the Church is leader less, when the unbloody sacrifice has 
everywhere ceased and everything seems humanly lost, two 
witnesses, St. John tells us, will be seen to arise. 

These two witnesses will be two strange men, appear- 
ing suddenly amidst the world, without anyone being able 
to say of what birth or origin they are, nor from what 
place or family they have come . 

This is how St. John speaks of them in the eleventh 
chapter of the Apocalypse: 

"And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they 
shall prophesy a thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed 
in sackcloth. These are the two olive-trees and the two 
candlesticks that stand before the Lord of the earth." [72] 

No tongue can express the sheer amazement which will 
grip mankind, at the sight of these two men, strangers to 
our passions and affairs, one of them having lived six 
thousand years, the other thirty centuries, in some eth- 
ereal region or other, beneath. firmaments and upon spheres 
inaccessible to our senses and understanding. Yet, 
neither of these witnesses is alien to the human family. 
One of these candlesticks and olive-trees is Henoch, the 
great-great-grandfather of Noe, the direct ancestor of the 
whole human race. The other is the prophet Elias who, as 
St John does not tell us expressly that the two witnesses 
whom he mentions will be Henoch and Elias, but it is clear from 
the context that, by the two candlesticks and the two olive- 
trees, he does not mean any two saints or preachers, but two 
definite personages, endowed with an extraordinary power and 
holiness. Now - pondering all the facts and circumstances 
foretold to us about the life and death of these personages, 
and recalling all that we are told about them by Scripture, 
especially in Ecclesiasticus 4 8 and by the prophet Malachias, 
concerning the mission they will one day be called upon to 
fulfil - Bede,- St. Anselm, St. Augustine and a large number of 
the Fathers assure us that the two witnesses of whom the Apoc- 
alypse speaks are none other than Henoch and Elias, and that 
they were miraculously preserved from death for no other pur- 
pose- than to fight against Antichrist, and bear testimony to 
Jesus Christ, at- the end of the world. 

the Saviour has said, is destined to restore all things. 

He will come a second time to stem the tide of 
wickedness, more reckless and unrestrained than it was in 
the days of Achab. It will also be the hour of the redemp- 
tion of_ -Israel. The great prophet will convince the 
posterity of Abraham that the Messias has come, and will 
remove the -veil of ignorance and darkness which has lain 
heavy upon their eyes for nineteen centuries. 

What sort of appearance and bearing will these strang- 
ers from another age present? What venerable majesty will 
shine forth from their persons? What inspired language^ 
will flow from their lips? Holy Scripture does not tell 
us. It teaches us that they will prophesy for one thous- 
and two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth, 
their garments and features bearing the marks of humility 
and penance. According to Daniel, the persecution of 
Antichrist will last for one thousand two hundred and 
ninety days; so the preaching of Henoch and Elias will be 
thirty days shorter. Hence it follows that they will 
appear in the period when the persecution is unleashed 
with the greatest violence. How, within the space of time 
set for their mission, will they manage to give their 
testimony in all inhabited places, and cover the whole 
extent of the earth? We answer that it will not be 
necessary for them to visit every town; it will be enough 
for them to appear in the principal ones, and for their 
preaching to be heard in the capitals and main centres of 
population where Antichrist has been present and has 
exercised his most powerful fascination. Furthermore, it 
is unlikely that Henoch and Elias will be constantly 
together: it is more probable that they will preach 
separately, until, by a command from God, or following a 
providential inspiration, they suddenly come together for 
the final battle. 



[73] Cornelius a Lapide tells us that it is a certain truth, 
almost of faith, fidei proximum , that Henoch and Elias did not 
die. Tertullian, in book LVIII on the Resurrection, calls them 
"candidates of Eternity", in order to make us understand that 
they are freed from all misery and suffering, and incapable of 
sin. St. Irenaeus, bk.IV, ch.V, calls them coauspicantes 
immortalitatem , which means that they have the certain presage 
and omen of immortality. Neither Henoch nor Elias are yet 
glorified in their bodies; since they continue to be enveloped 
in flesh, from which, like us, they will one day be separated 
by death. The Fathers teach that Henoch was taken up into 
paradise, which is also the teaching of Ecclesiasticus 44:16. 
At the Flood, when the earthly paradise was submerged, Henoch 
was taken up into some unknown region of heaven, where Elias 
accompanied him when he was borne away on a fiery chariot. In 
their dwelling-place they live absorbed in the contemplation of 
divine things, in a state which is not that of heavenly bliss 
but in which they are inundated with divine consolations and 
enjoy continuous repose. As they have, in a certain sense, 
left this life and are no longer subject to trial, they cannot 
acquire new merits, nor grow in holiness. When, however, they 
return to earth at the end of the times, they will revert to 
the conditions of the present life, will again become liable to 
undergo suffering and, once more, will gain merit, whether by 
fighting Antichrist or by bearing witness, through their preach- 
ing and death, to Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 


At first, no doubt, incredulous men will refuse to 
admit their identity. They will seek to lay hold of them, 
and punish them as mountebanks and sham visionaries; 
public opinion will shower them with satirical barbs and 
mockery, and the organs of publicity will persist in 
ignoring them, and pretend not to know of them. The per- 
secutor, foaming with rage, will try to have them put to 
death; but, as long as their mission lasts, they will be 
guarded by a superior force. Here is what St. John, 
chapter 11, verse 5, says: "And if any man will hurt 
them, fire shall come out of their mouths and shall devour 
their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, in this 
manner must he be slain. These have power to shut heaven, 
that it rain not in the days of their prophecy; and they 
have powers over waters, to turn them into blood and to 
strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they will." 

The Gospel is not so specific about the result and 
efficacy of the mission of these two great witnesses; but 
it may be taken as certain that they will undeceive a 
large mass of the deluded, and bring back most of those 
whom fear or ambition had enticed from worship of the true 
God. Indeed their preaching will need to have a power 
which no other words since those of the Gospel have ever 
had, since it will overcome the obstinacy of the Jews, 
who, bowing to the lustre of the marvels and the evidence 
of the facts, will return beneath the staff of the Shep- 
herd of shepherds, to form with the Christians one flock 
and one fold. 

However, God gives His graces with due proportion. 
When the light has been given, when men have had all the 
time they need to distinguish -truth from error, God, in 
His wisdom, will then suspend the miracle. That is how 
Providence invariably acts. So it was of old with Samson 
when, once the Philistines had been humbled and defeated, 
God took away from him His spirit and the stupendous 
strength with which He had endowed him. Heaven proceeded 
again in the same way with Joan of Arc: once her mission 
had been fulfilled, when she had routed the English and 
placed the crown back upon the head of Charles VII, her 
genius and military talent seemed to pale; she was taken 
prisoner, and reverted to the . normal circumstances of 
human life. So shall it be in the case of Henoch and 
Elias. Besides, the miracle, if prolonged, would have no 
other effect than to confirm in their obduracy stubborn 
men who had refused to receive their words with a submis- 
sive ear and heart. In short, the two witnesses are not 
dead, although one of them is six thousand and the other 
three thousand years old, and it is necessary that they 
should seal their testimony by the shedding of their 
blood, and be subjected to the law of human nature from 
which Christ Himself did not desire to be spared. 


Here  then, is what will take place, says St. John, 
in the chapter already quoted: 

- "And when they shall have finished their testimony, 
- the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss shall make war 
against them and shall overcome them and kill them. And 
their bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city 
which is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt; where their 
Lord also was crucified. ' And they of the tribes and 
peoples and tongues and nations shall see their bodies for 
three days and a half; and they shall not suffer their 
bodies to be laid in sepulchres. And they that dwell upon 
the earth shall rejoice over them and make merry; and 
shall send gifts one to another, because these two pro- 
phets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth. And after 
three days and a half, the spirit, of life from God entered 
into them; and they stood upon their feet; and great fear 
fell upon them that saw them... And at that hour there was 
made a great earthquake; and the tenth part of the city 
fell. And there were slain in the earthquake, names of 
men, seven thousand; and the rest were cast into a fear 
and gave glory to the God of heaven." 

St. John does not tell us what the fate of Antichrist 
will be, but St. Paul teaches that "the Lord Jesus shall 
kill [him] with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy 
[him] with the brightness of his coming. "[75] 

Some have concluded from this passage that Christ is 
to come down in person to strike His great adversary, and 
that this will be the day when He will appear in His glory 
and majesty. This interpretation is incorrect. 
St. Thomas and St. John Chrysostom explain the words "quem 
Dominus Jesus destruet illustratione adventus sui" in the 
sense that Christ will strike Antichrist by dazzling him 
with a brightness, which will be like an omen and sign of 
His Second Coming. St. Paul does not at all say that 
Christ will kill him with His own hands, but by the spirit 
of His mouth, "spiritu oris sui," that is, as St. Thomas 
explains, by virtue of His power, as a result of His 
command: whether, as some believe, executing it through 
the co-operation of St. Michael the Archangel, or having 
some other agent, visible or invisible, spiritual or 
inanimate, intervene. [76] What is certain is that Satan 
will be hurled back into the darkness of the abyss, the 

 Cornelius a Lapide and Holzhauser say that, at the sight 
of the triumph of Henoch and Elias, Antichrist will be struck 
numb with fear; he will quiver with rage, and, in his over- 
weening pride and infernal presumption, will attempt to main- 
tain the nations in error by a novel and more sacrilegious 
hoax. With the aid of demons, he will rise majestically into 
the air from the Mount of Olives, and strive to reach Henoch 
and Elias in order to cast them down to the ground. At that 
grave moment, the virtue of the Almighty will strike him and 
throw him into the utmost ignominy and confusion. This inter- 
pretation of the Venerable Holzhauser is only an opinion, but it 
is possible, and does not conflict with the sacred text. 

The reign of the man of evil will be utterly destroyed, and 
his power, which aspired to extend up to the heavens, will 
vanish like a cloud of smoke. 

Will the resurrection of the body and the Last Judge- 
ment follow close upon that great event? Holy Scripture 
is silent on this point, and the Church has not wished to 
define anything. Among the interpreters of Holy Writ, 
some affirm and others deny it. Suarez expresses the view 
that after the death of Antichrist the world will not 
subsist more than forty-five days. He bases his opinion 
on the prophecy of Daniel who, after announcing that the 
persecution of the man of sin will last for one thousand, 
two hundred and ninety days, adds these words: Beatus qui 
exspectat et pervenit usque ad dies 1335 . [77] Happy he 
who has hope and holds firm until the one thousand, three 
hundred and thirty-fifth day. 

This opinion, however, does not seem to be the most 
certain. The most authoritative view, and the one which 
appears to be most in harmony with Holy Scripture, is 
that, after the fall of Antichrist, the Catholic Church 
will once again enter upon a period of prosperity and 
triumph. In fact, does not St. Paul, the inspired 
Apostle - of all the sons of Israel the one who saw most 
clearly into the future and destiny of his people - seem 
explicitly to affirm this doctrine? Does he not affirm it 
when - recalling the effects of the grace and blessing 
obtained by the conversion of the Jews, who, in accordance 
with the prophecy of Malachias, [7 8] will not be brought 
back to the truth until they are enlightened by the preach- 
ing of Henoch and Elias - he exclaims, moved by a holy 
transport: "Now, if the offence of them be the riches of 
the world and the diminution of them the riches of the 
Gentiles, how much more the fulness of them?" [79] 

These words are precise, and seem to admit of no 
doubt. They are in harmony with those of St. John 
(Apocalypse 15:2) : 

"And I saw... them that had overcome the beast and his 
image and the number of his name. . .singing the canticle of 
Moses the servant of God, and the canticle of the Lamb." 


In other words, the Christians and the remnant of the 
Jews henceforth have one spirit and one faith, they address 
the same praises and blessings to the Son of God and, 
together, proclaim His glory, saying: "Great and wonderful 
are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy 
ways, King of ages." 

Is it really credible that the day when all. people 
Will be united in this long-sought harmony will be the one 
when the heavens shall pass away with great violence, that 
the period when the Church Militant enters her fullness, 
will coincide with that of the final catastrophe? Would 
Christ cause the Church to be born again, in all her glory 
and all the splendour of her beauty, only to dry up forth- 
with the springs of her youth and her inexhaustible fec- 
undity? 

However, if it may be granted that, after Antichrist, 
the end of the world will not come for some centuries yet, 
the same cannot be said of the supreme crisis which shall 
bring about the great unity; for, if we study but a moment 
the signs of the present time, the menacing symptoms of 
our political situation and revolutions, as well as the 
progress of civilization and the increasing advance of 
evil, corresponding to the progress of civilization and 
the discoveries in the material order, we cannot fail to 
foresee the proximity of the coming of the man of sin, and 
of the days of desolation foretold by Christ. 


 Two opinions were current in the early centuries regarding 
the coming of Antichrist. The first was that of the commentat- 
ors who, on the basis of the text of an apocryphal epistle of 
St. Barnabas, maintained that the world would last six thousand 
years, and not one day more or less. 

 Let us observe, 
first, that the Church does not place this letter of St. Barn 
abas among the inspired books; secondly, that, without departing 
from biblical truth, it is possible, beginning at the present 
era, to make the period when the creation took place vary, from 
six thousand to eight thousand years. According to very authen 
tic, ancient documents recently discovered, and to serious, 
chronological studies undertaken in our own times, it would 
appear likely that it is now several centuries since the end of 
the sixth millenium of the creation of the world. So, if, at 
present, we are in the seventh or eighth millenium since the 
creation of Adam, this would be proof that the prophecy con- 
tained in the alleged letter of Saint Barnabas, which Saint 
Hilary is said to have believed, is, like the letter itself, 
erroneous and apocryphal. [Note by the publishers of the 
English edition. There are in fact no documents nor any other 
evidence which conclusively show that the world is older than 
six thousand years, and there is a very considerable weight of 
Church tradition to the effect that it is not.] 

Another opinion, held for a long time from the fourth to 
the tenth century, was that Antichrist would appear immediately 


Holy Scripture gives us three main features which 
will mark the dominance of Antichrist. First, he will be 
emperor and absolute master of the universe Secondly, he 
will have Jerusalem as his capital. Thirdly, he will be 
as clever as he is violent, and the war which he will wage 
against the saints will be, primarily, one of deceit and 
seduction. ..



. In the first place, 
it seems strange that God should have desired to bind the des 
tiny of His Church to that of an earthly empire. The Church is 
cabled to win over all the peoples of the earth, and to gather 
them beneath her staff and within her bosom. It is inadmissible  .should be reduced to keeping within the confines 
of any empire whatever. This view, moreover, stands in mani 
fest contradiction to the facts.

The collapse of the Roman 
Emoire ha long since been consummated. Under Constantme, the 
SSSe divided' into two branches, the Eastern and the West ern 
It revived in Europe under Charlemagne. At the end of the I4tn 
century there appeared Vincent Ferrer, the Angel of the Apocaly- 
pse He predicted that the Last Judgement was at hand, and 
?hat before forty years had elapsed, the premonitory signs of 
the final catastrophe would be seen. As a matter of fact, 
thirty years after* the death of Vincent Ferrer, Mohammed II 
took possession of Constantinople, and suppressed the eastern 
branch of the Roman Empire for ever ?

In our century, the Roman Empire was finally brought to an 
end by the abolition of the electorates and the renunciation of 
the title? "King of the Romans", which Napoleon I obtained from 
Se Emperor FraLis II. Nevertheless, the ; opinion which we are 
contesting is true if it is understood- ma dfe en 
and if the expression "Roman Empire" is applied to the Catholic 
Surch, which has succeeded the Caesars. The Apostle's words 
"nisi 'venerft discessio" would then be understood « meaning 
the present divorce between the nations and the Church, the 
separation of politics from religion, of Church from State. On 
this interpretation, legal atheism that-is, the destruction of 
the public reign of Jesus Christ, the elimination of Christian 


First, Antichrist will be lord of the world. It is 
abundantly clear that the effect of all the events of the 
present time is to prepare the social setting in which the 
dominance of the man of sin will be exercised. -- • •■ 

On the one hand, the railway has reduced barriers and 
triumphed over distance. The Jteiegraph allows i a despot to 
transmit his orders from one point of the ..universe to the 
other with the instahtaneousness -"""of. thought. Moreover, 
the peoples of the diverse races are- mingling: Russian and 
American, Japanese and Chinese meet on the same ships, rub 
shoulders and cross one another's paths, in our great 
cities, and in the commercial centres of Europe, Cali- 
fornia and Equatorial African 

Already, the distant peoples of India are adopting 
our inventions, casting rifled guns and beginning to build 
armoured ships and arsenals. China - that vast empire 
swarming with people, where, each day, the seas and rivers 
engulf a huge excess of human beings whom the rich, fer- 
tile soil can no longer feed - she, too, has her mechan- 
ics, her engineers, and is learning our strategy and 
industrial progress. Now, have our latest wars not shown 
that, at the present time, the issue of battles lies above 
all in numbers, and that, in armies, as in the realm of 
politics, what determines success and wins the victory is 
the brutal, inexorable law of superior numbers? 
ity, its laws and institutions, is the mystery of iniquity 
announced by St. Paul. 

In fact, it is undeniable that all governments at the 
present time are at work accomplishing this abominable opera- 
tion of apostasy, and that they are striving to banish Jesus 
Christ from the school, the army, and from the very abode of 
justice! Are not His cross and His adorable name blasphemed 
and held up as a symbol of ignorance and fanaticism? Has not 
the Church been outlawed and excluded from the councils of 
governments and deliberative assemblies? Are not all the laws 
which are formulated marked with the seal of odious intolerance 
towards her, and have they any other purpose than to diminish 
her authority and influence? Blasphemy is raised to the level 
of a privilege and a right; the Roman Pontiff, dispossessed of 
his principality, has been a prisoner for eleven years. Para- 
llel with the destruction of Christianity, we see the re- 
appearance of paganism, in the form of base materialism, marked 
by the exaltation of all that flatters the senses, and the 
glorification of the basest and most brutish instincts; a 
paganism which pervades industry, the arts and literature, and 
predominates in all public institutions. Christianity is 
declared to be the enemy and, at the same time, materialism is 
presented to the aspirations of peoples as the moving force of 
progress, and the God of the future . Now, if the extremes of 
evil do not meet with a prompt and vigorous response, if the 
defection continues on its course, it may be predicted that 
this war on God must inevitably end in total, consummated 
apostasy. It is but a small step from the cult of the state, 
that is, the utilitarian spirit and the worship of the God- 
State which is the religion of our time, to the worship of the 
individual man. We have almost reached that point... and, 
proceeding from these facts and observations, we must conclude 
that the hypothesis of the proximity of Antichrist's coming is 
more probable than the hypothesis which considers his coming as 
remote. 


Thus, the hour bids to be not far off when these 
millions of barbarians who populate the east and north of 
Asia will have at their disposal more soldiers, more 
ammunition and more military leaders than all other 
peoples; and the day can be foreseen when, having become 
fully conscious of their number and strength, they will 
hurl themselves in countless hordes upon our Europe, 
enfeebled and forsaken by God. [82] There will then be 
invasions more terrible than those of the Vandals and 
Huns... Provinces will be pillaged, rights violated, and 
small nations destroyed and ground down like dust. Then, 
a vast agglomeration of all the inhabitants of the earth 
will be observed, under the sceptre of a single leader, 
who will be either Antichrist, or one of his immediate 
predecessors. That day will see the obsequies of human 
freedom. 

The unity of all peoples will be rebuilt, for the 
last time, upon the ruins of all the suppressed national- 
ities. The empire of evil will be accomplished. Divine 
Providence will scourge the world, by subjecting it body 
and soul to one master, the supreme head of the Masonic 
lodges, who will be moved solely by hatred of men and 
contempt of God. 

Accordingly, any careful observer of the events of 
the present time cannot escape the conviction that every- 
thing is being done to bring about a social environment 
where the man of sin, by combining in his person all the 
depravity and every false doctrine of his age, will be 
produced spontaneously and effortlessly, like the para- 
sitical tapeworm which breeds naturally in gangrenous 
flesh and organs. 

Yet the apparently incomprehensible thing which, at 
first sight, no sign seems to presage, is that the seat of 
his empire will be Jerusalem. 

Well, it is easy to see that, if the materialistic, 
atheistic civilization, the impending coming of which the 
free-thinkers and the irreligious Press are always pred- 
icting, ever dawns on the world, its centre of action and 
seat of public power will be Jerusalem. 

In fact, when the Christian Faith has finally died 
out in the hearts of men - when pleasure and well-being 
have become the gods of the day - human activity will then 
have one single goal: the power of the State; one single 
lever and stimulus: public opinion; one inspiration and 
driving force: and this stimulus, this sinew, this driving 
force, will be gold. Gold will take precedence over 
religion and morality, becoming the basis of politics and 
the key-stone of all institutions. The pontiffs and kings 



[8 2] Cornelius a Lapide, at a time when there was yet no 
question of our great discoveries, affirmed that Antichrist 
would have innumerable armies under his command: "Instar arenae 
maris; " (Apocalypse 20) "et numerus equestris exercitus vicies 
millies^ dena millia." (Apocalypse 9:16) According to the 
interpretation of the learned Cornelius, Antichrist's cavalry 
alone will consist of two hundred million men. How much 
greater will be the number of his infantry! (Cornelius a 
Lapide: Commentary on the Epistle to the Thessalonians , p. 164) 

will be the financiers: and the people which possesses the 
most gold will be the one which will soon exercise the 
greatest control over us. 

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