MARTYRS UNDER THE ANTI-CHRIST

The persecution directed by the anti-Christ would be the worst the world has ever known. . .thus, the more blessed will the martyrs be. But, for the elect's sake, the days shall be shortened. In these times, the martyrs shall wrestle not with man but with Satan, himself.

With God's permission, the anti-Christ will work with a strong delusion that all may be tested and those who believe not in the truth may be condemned.  God forbid that it should be fulfilled in our days. His personal existence and future events surrounding him must be considered as an object of faith. 

The signs of the end accompanying the anti-Christ given by St. Cyprian are: failure of crops, the absence of rain, intense summer sun, murderous plague, the raging of wars. Evils and misfortunes will be multiplied. There will be physical disasters which will accompany wide-spread moral rottenness. Corruption in the courts and the buying off of judges, avarice in the market place, violence in public life, the wholesale and shameless seizure of properties among brothers. Finally, there is the general persecution of innocent Christians. This last event will call down upon the world the avenging wrath of God.

The anti-Christ will be the final test, the final Divine Scourge against a world seeped in apostasy and idolatry. The Kingdom of the anti-Christ will be a city of confusion. At first, this city will be powerful and wonderful in construction and will gain supremacy over the whole world. It will challenge the heavens and blaspheme God. Its followers will be the "hunters of the saints."

The greatest allies of the anti-Christ will come from that Scriptural cockle within the wheat field, the heretics within the Catholic Church, that group which is not so much brothers who need a bit of talking to but they are rather a solid structural encampment of the earthly city within the heavenly city, planted there to subvert the latter. From this encampment of heretics, one must expect not only the ideological warfare of impostors claiming to be faithful citizens of the true city of God. One must expect violence from these impostors.

(01-14-04)