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It should be known that the Antichrist is bound to come. Every one,
therefore, who confesses not that the Son of God came in the flesh
and is perfect God and became perfect man, after being God, is
Antichrist. But in a peculiar and special sense he who comes at the
consummation of the age is called Antichrist. First, then, it is
requisite that the Gospel should be preached among all nations, as the
Lord said, and then he will come to refute the impious Jews. For
the Lord said to them: I am come in My Father's name and ye
receive Me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will
receive. And the apostle says, Because they received not the love of
the truth that they might be saved, for this cause Gad shall send them
a strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might
be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness. The Jews accordingly did not receive the Lord
Jesus Christ who was the Son of God and God, but receive the
impostor who calls himself God. For that he will assume the name of
God, the angel teaches Daniel, saying these words, Neither shall
he regard the God of his fathers. And the apostle says: Let no man
deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come except there come
a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son, of
perdition: who opposeth and exalleth himself above all that is called
Gad or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God,
shewing himself that he is God; in the temple of God he said; not
our temple, but the old Jewish temple. For he will come not to us
but to the Jews: not for Christ or the things of Christ: wherefore
he is called Antichrist.
First, therefore, it is necessary that the Gospel should be preached
among all nations: And then shall that wicked one be revealed, even
him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs
and lying wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them
that perish, whom the Lord shall consume with the word of His mouth
and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming. The devil
himself, therefore does not become man in the way that the Lord was
made man. God forbid! but he becomes man as the offspring of
fornication and receiveth all the energy of Satan. For God,
foreknowing the strangeness of the choice that he would make, allows
the devil to take up his abode in him.
He is, therefore, as we said, the offspring of fornication and is
nurtured in secret, and on a sudden he rises up and rebels and assumes
rule. And in the beginning of his rule, or rather tyranny, he
assumes the role of sanctity. But when he becomes master he persecutes
the Church of God and displays all his wickedness. But he will come
with signs and lying wonders, fictitious and not real, and he will
deceive and lead away from the living God those whose mind rests on an
unsound and unstable foundation, so that even the elect shall, if it
be possible, be made to stumble.
But Enoch and Elias the Thesbite shall be sent and shall turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children, that is, the synagogue to our
Lord Jesus Christ and the preaching of the apostles: and they will
be destroyed by him. And the Lord shall come out of heaven, just as
the holy apostles beheld Him going into heaven perfect God and perfect
man, with glory and power, and will destroy the man of lawlessness,
the son of destruction, with the breath of His mouth. Let no one,
therefore, look for the Lord to come from earth, but out of Heaven,
as He himself has made sure.
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