Antichristianity

“ Let us pray that the 'mystery of abomination' may at length be taken away, and that to all the people may be discovered and made known 'the man of sin,' the son of perdition, the adversary; he who exalts himself above every one, and is called a divinity or god, who sits in the temple of God, as God, showing himself to all, and asserting that he is God. Let us pray that the holy name of Jesus Christ may be no longer profaned and blasphemed by a class of people who have unworthily usurped it, and, as it were, solely to abuse it. ”

“ Faith is the primary condition of justification. This is showm to us in the words used by St. Paul in his first sermon at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13, 39) : “In Jesus Christ every one (whether Jew or Gentile) that believeth (in our Lord Jesus Christ and His doctrine) is justified.”
Sins against faith. This chapter puts before us several examples of the various ways of sinning against faith.
1. Idolatry. This sin was committed by the Lystrians, when they wished to offer sacrifice and pay divine honour to the two apostles. ”

“ Antichrist is carried to Hell, where he is received by the Devil and his allies. Antichrist being dead, princes and people become Christians, and there is only one faith. But the people fear the Day of Judgment. ”

“ From infancy the evil one is to take possession of Antichrist, and to train him for his office, instilling into him cunning, cruelty, and pride. His doctrine will be not downright infidelity, but a “show of godliness,” whilst “denying the power thereof,” i.e. the miraculous origin and divine authority of Christianity. He will sow doubts of our Lord’s manifestation “in the flesh,” he will allow Christ to be an excellent Man, capable of teaching the most exalted truths, and inculcating the purest morality, yet Himself fallible and carried away by fanaticism. ”

“ This open confession of faith in Jesus Christ and the truths He has revealed, this fearless espousal of His cause, is demanded especially in our times. Modern society is to a great extent anti-Christian or inimical to Christ, pervaded by hatred to Christianity in general, and to the Catholic Church in particular. ”

“ The sum of revealed religion is comprehended in the doctrine concerning Christ, his person and office. We see then the aggravation of a systematic opposition to him and it. And this is that spirit of antichrist whereof you have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world, v. 3. It was foreknown by God that antichrists would arise, and antichristian spirits oppose his Spirit and his truth; it was foreknown also that one eminent antichrist would arise, and make a long and fatal war against the Christ of God, and his institution, and honour, and kingdom in the world. ”

“ Antichrist is he who usurps the place of Christ. "He is antichrist who denieth the Father and the Son." Our hearts go out in pity for those whose mechanical ideas of the universe may be a revolt from a mechanical theology which has lost sight of the Fatherhood of God. We stand where two ways meet. ”

“ We learn that every church partakes of the faults, as well as of the excellencies, of its own age and country,—that each is fallible as human nature itself,—that each is useful as a means, none perfect as an end. To find Christ or Antichrist exclusively in any one community is against charity and against humility, but above all, against the plain facts of history. Let us hold this firmly, and we shall have then secured ourselves against two of the worst evils which infest the well-being of religious communities—the love of controversy and the love of proselytizing. ”

“ Then Antichrist shall come, who is human man and true devil, as our Saviour is truly man and God in one person. And the visible devil shall then work innumerable miracles, and say that he himself is God, and will compel mankind to his heresy: but his time will not be long, for God's anger will destroy him, and this world will afterwards be ended. Christ our Lord healed the weak and diseased, and the devil, who is called Antichrist, which is interpreted, Opposition-Christ, weakens and enfeebles the hale, and heals no one from diseases, save those alone whom he himself had previously injured. ”

“ Even with regard to a distinctively anti-catholic doctrine, which he imbibed very early in life, he varied much less than is commonly supposed. For many years antichrist was for him the pope. When he gave up this interpretation it was to substitute for it the spirit of the world working in the church for temporal ends. As he expressed it in writing to a friend in 1876, ‘The church is in the world and the world in the church and the world “totus in maligno positus est.” ”

“ While they rejected the principle of the ever-recurring ecclesiastical miracles of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful to ardent faith) , their devout imagination yet required the aid of a present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the perplexing doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and they gladly embraced the consoling belief that the present evils are the work of the enmity of the devil, whose temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown in the world to come, when the faith and constancy of his victims shall be eternally rewarded. ”

“ Because Christian people have so long been taught that the foundation for this awful blasphemy against God's character and government is deeplaid and firmly fixed in the Word of God—the Bible—and consequently, to whatever degree their belief in “hell” is shaken, to that extent their faith in the Bible, as the revelation of the true God, is shaken also;—so that those who have dropped their belief in a “hell,” of some kind of endless torment, are often open infidels, and scoffers at God's Word. ”

“ In pursuance of this accommodating doctrine, they dissected the Catholic faith till they reduced it to a mere skeleton; they lopped off the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the divine Christian sacrifice offered in the Mass, confession of sins, most of the sacraments, penitential exercises, several of the canonical books of Scripture, the invocation of saints, celibacy, most of the General Councils of the Church, and all present Church authority; they perverted the nature of justification, asserting that faith alone suffices to justify man ”

“ Is there, then, no positive Christian duty? Are we never to rest in principles and practices of actual faith and love? or are we to be always on the offensive and negative side, stigmatizing all who act contrary to our belief of the truth as doers of the work of Antichrist? Antichrist, I fear, cares little for orthodox doctrines, but fights against the Christian spirit."
9th Mo. 13th. Conflicting thoughts again. I long that there may be no building on any sandy foundation. But oh, the fitness that appeared to me this evening in the blessed Saviour to supply all my need. ”

“ Can we wonder that the people who were still devoted to these gods felt the attack upon them to be an attack upon themselves, their most sacred and cherished possessions; that they were the more deeply incensed at it the more seriously they feared by toleration of it to lose the favor of the gods on whom their welfare depended? The reproach of atheism was therefore the most dangerous that could be brought against the Christians. ”

“ It is the logical evolution of Protestant right of private judgment, of personal independence of the doctrinal authority of the church, and of unwise tolerance of all sorts of mischievous religious vagaries. Stripped, of all disguises and forced to speak in true tones, this deified man of the Religion of Humanity is the Antichrist, setting himself up as God and claiming to be God. It is the apotheosis of man, who renews the folly of building a tower of pride in which he may secure himself against the wrath of the Eternal. ”

“ A late writer, after collecting the principal prophecies relating to antichrist, infers from them that a power, sometimes represented as the little horn, the man of sin, the antichrist, the beast, the harlot, the star falling from heaven, the false prophet, the dragon, or as the operation of false teachers, was to be expected to arise in the Christian world to persecute and oppress, and delude the disciples of Christ, corrupt the doctrine of the primitive church, enact new laws, and establish its dominion over the minds of mankind. ”

“ Notwithstanding the rage of persecution, a calm, devout, earnest, patient protest against the prevailing corruption of religious faith continued for centuries to be uttered. The Christians of that early time had only a partial knowledge of the truth, but they had learned to love and obey God's word, and they patiently suffered for its sake. ”

“ But those who have oppressed them have gone away clandestinely for, terrified by antichrist's censures and seizures, they have turned into the opposite way. But God, up to this time, multiplies the sons of his church who suffer and are patient and publish the truth of Christ’s law. ”

“ This judgment shall be the great persecution of Antichrist and its attendant evils. Then shall be accomplished the "mystery of God" which has been announced (evangelized) by the prophets of old. To evangelize is to announce good tidings, hence this "mystery of God" is probably the plenitude of the Redemption applied to all nations of earth. After the destruction of Antichrist and his kingdom all peoples shall accept the Gospel and the Church of Christ shall reign peacefully over all nations. ”

“ I saw irreverent Christians of all ages, careless or sacrilegious priests, crowds of tepid and unworthy communicants, wicked soldiers profaning the sacred vessels, and servants of the devil making use of the Holy Eucharist in the frightful mysteries of hellish worship. Among these bands I saw a great number of theologians, who had been drawn into heresy by their sins, attacking Jesus in the Holy Sacrament of his Church, and snatching out of his Heart, by their seductive words and promises, a number of souls for whom he had shed his blood. ”

“ But when the common people saw a man or a woman come out and die rather than be false to a religious emotion or idea, there were always some who said, "That is a strange thing,—a man dying for his God. There must be something in that religion! Let us also become Christians." So the new doctrine spread wide; not the simple religion of Jesus,—piety and morality; but what his followers called Christianity,—a mixture of good and evil. In two or three hundred years it had gone round the civilized world. Other forms of religion fell to pieces, one by one. ”

“ I was not a human being, as he was convinced, but an evil spirit, who had got among the Catholics, and being admitted into the nunnery, where I had learnt the rules so that I could repeat them. My appearance, he declared, was a fulfilment of prophecy, as Antichrist is foretold to be coming, in order to break down, if possible, the Catholic religion. ”

“ The first step stone to modern christianity was laid on the smoking ruins of primitive christianity. The christian enemies to new revelations and miracles, actually waded through the blood of apostles and prophets, in order to establish the system of anti-revelation. And did their descendants and abettors realise the bloody and accursed origin of that system that wars against new regulations and prophets, and angels, many of them would shudder at their blind zeal and self-righteousness! ”

“ The coming of Antichrist opens the decisive conflict between the Church and the powers of hell. It shall be the complete realization of the prophecy of Genesis: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman and thy seed and her seed." [5] The seed of the serpent is Anti-christ and his followers; the seed of Mary, the woman, is Jesus Christ and his faithful disciples.
The beast has seven heads and ten horns like those of the dragon. As the representative of Satan Anti-christ will be aided and abetted by the same kings and rulers symbolized in both instances by the horns and diadems. ”

“ Now, when the precursor of Antichrist erects himself against the Church, he must find us innocent and prudent; these dispositions constitute wisdom. We must hate no one, but bear with the madmen who would violate the law of God. Remember that God, descending a second time among men, proclaims aloud: 'He who would follow me must forsake himself!' We have lived in peace long enough, and God wishes that the harvest should again be moistened with the blood of His Saints. ”

“ Antichrist is the falsehood of eternal damnation, covered with the appearance of the truth and righteousness of Christ and his spouse. The iniquity of such a system is with all his ministers, great and small: and inasmuch as they follow the law of an evil and blinded heart, such a congregation, taken together, is called Antichrist, or Babylon, or the Fourth Beast, or the Harlot, or the Man of Sin, who is the son of perdition. ”

“ The vague and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, and the many conflicting theories concerning religious faith, that are found in the Christian world, are the work of our great adversary, to confuse minds so that they shall not discern the truth. And the discord and division which exist among the churches of Christendom are in a great measure due to the prevailing custom of wresting the Scriptures to support a favorite theory. Instead of carefully studying God's word with humility of heart to obtain a knowledge of His will, many seek only to discover something odd or original. ”