Transcription
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Catholic prophecy is full of warnings of the time that the Antichrist will arrive, what the Antichrist will do, who he is without giving away his name, of course, for our Lord tells us not to spend too much time dwelling on the Antichrist. But it's still good, the church tells us to know some details about him. And so many mystics and prophets and just wise teachers in the history of Catholicism have told us who the man of sin will be. He will be from the tribe of Dan. He will be accepted by our Lord's kinsmen as one of their own as their Messiah. He will be a leader of some kind who will be accepted by the world as a divine figure who will be able to have such power that he'll be able to control commerce and all sorts of other things.
But who is he, or rather, what will his method be? His father is of course Satan, the father of lies. So the Antichrist will be, by necessity, a liar. He will be a great deceiver, the great deceiver. And I thought for a plain language understanding of this side of the Antichrist, it would be good to turn to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who seemed to be better than almost any other figure in the 20th century at reading the signs of the times. And you can glean from his various writings the following 12 tricks of the Antichrist, according to Fulton Sheen. Let's just go over these one by one. They're written in plain language and probably don't need that much explanation, but we'll go do so as we go along.
The first, the Antichrist will come disguised as the great humanitarian. He will talk peace, prosperity, and plenty, not as a means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. This first warning should be particularly jarring for us. We hear Catholic prelates, bishops, cardinals, and yes, popes, preaching a gospel about alleviating poverty, even ending poverty, in complete defiance of the words of our Lord: "The poor you will always have with you." Not to say that we're not to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Our Lord commanded us to help the poor, and we should do everything in our power to alleviate the suffering of the poor. But we shall not sacrifice the gospel for a false gospel of creating a better world. And that is one of the hallmarks of the Antichrist. He will be a great humanitarian. He will preach a gospel of making a better world, a more socially just world. It is one of the key hallmarks of the man of sin.
The second is he will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live. Now, this is a little bit of an anachronism, I would say. Sheen saying he will write books, and perhaps he will, depending when he arrives. But already the written word is almost dead as it is. I would, I would adjust what he said there to say that he will master the media to promote his errors. He will use every foreseeable form of communication to communicate his new idea of God to suit the way people live. This is not a conversion of you, your interior conversion to God. Instead, he will promote a new way of converting God to your life. This should sound a little familiar to people. We have had the US bishops recently approve an overtly heretical translation of the Bible that changes the morality given to us by God into the morality of the world. So, that should be familiar to you. You see some of these signs already in the world we live in.
Now, the Antichrist in point three will induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will, but the stars responsible for our sins. And we haven't seen that so much. Normal people still laugh at astrology, rightly so. But we have seen some Catholics get in trouble because they understand astrology, but maybe went a little far in understanding astrology so as to better talk to the people who believe in astrology. They understood astrology and went a little far with it and caused scandal. Others will tell you it's harmless. They still read the silly little horoscopes written and published in the typical newspaper. While the church has in recent years said there's no real sin in reading those, as long as you understand that what you're reading isn't basically a joke. May as well be just put in there next to Calvin and Hobbes in the comic section. They say for entertainment, it's fine. But you go back in time, church leaders in the past would have said, "Don't touch these things at all. Don't become, don't become experts in this stuff. Don't, don't read the ravings of the people who publish this stuff. Don't do it. It's dangerous. You are messing with forces that you should never, the average Catholic should never encounter."
Point four, he, the Antichrist, will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex. Make men shrink and shame if their fellow men say they're not broad-minded and liberal. We've heard this already many times. We are to be open-minded. We hear this from the pulpit of the highest office in the church these days and from bishops, even some decent bishops, that we need to be more open-minded to things. Fulton Sheen was a big fan of G.K. Chesterton. And I'm certain he would agree with this old G.K. Chesterton aphorism, which is: "Don't be so broad-minded that your brains fall out." Don't be so broad-minded that you lose the faith, that you become so lukewarm that you don't feel the need to find a means of communicating Christ crucified and resurrected from the dead to those who need to hear it, or a call to reconversion to Catholics who have become so lukewarm they've walked away. That is one of the great dangers of this ecumenical movement we see today.
Point five, he, the Antichrist, will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong. We ladies and gentlemen, are clearly already there. That is the world we live in in the church today. The church today is indifferent to right and wrong on many, many issues and conflating other popular political issues with the church's teachings, which is strange. We're talking here about immigration, uh, that stuff that James Martin is really interested in for some reason. But we become indifferent as a people, as the, as the people of God in post-Vatican II language. We have become indifferent to central issues of right and wrong. If you do not believe me, look how hard conservatives in the United States and across the Western world try to cater to those with James Martin type inclinations to tell them, "Oh, we don't really care about this disordered, sinful, socially destructive way of living you adopt." Well, come join us. You see this every day. People leave their faith at home. That is an insidious form of indifference because you can spend a great deal of time praying and fasting and doing all the things you need to do as a Catholic, but if you are in the public sphere denying your religion, and indifference in this way is one way of just denying your faith.
Fulton Sheen goes on to say that the Antichrist will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is vital. You kind of see this already. The groundwork for this laid in the changing on how the church handles the question of divorce and secular remarriage. "Another partner is vital." Really. This is why it is, of course, important that people discern before they get married, obviously. But also, it's extraordinarily important that from the pulpit, the priests of the church and the bishops courageously defend the indissoluble sacrament of holy matrimony against all attacks, especially from within the church.
Seven, the Antichrist will increase love for love and decrease love for persons. What does that mean? Well, that's easy. Love for love means people will love the idea of love. You'll become a slogan. It'll become a tool. But the one thing that you will not love are persons. You will really, you'll only love the persons who agree with you or who don't stand in your way. We see that already politically. How often do we hear people say, "Oh, I'm the empathic one. We're the party or group of empathy." yada yada yada. We love everybody except for those people who disagree with us, and we will call them, equate them to being the greatest evil in history, thus making it okay to do violence. That is horrifying. And that's where we are. And he ain't seen nothing yet when the man of sin arrives, because one of his ways he will persecute Christians is, of course, through the people.
The Antichrist in point eight will invoke religion to destroy religion. And the fathers of the church make it sound like it won't only be the Catholic faith he goes after. It'll be everything, because he will institute a false church, a false religion that is the worship of him. The ultimate form of the ape of the church. All religion that turns its eyes from God, or even erroneous ideas about God, will be swept away and turned into the worship of the man of sin directly.
Point nine, he will even speak of Christ and say he was the greatest man who ever lived. There's a certain religion from the Holy Land that calls him the greatest prophet ever. There's your, there's your sort of shadow or hint of the man of sin, denying Christ while praising him, elevating him up to being almost the Messiah, but not quite. In so elevating him, they're actually giving him a demotion, taking him from the Trinity, denying the Trinity itself.
Point 10, his mission, the Antichrist will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and fascism, which he will never define. And that we see this today in our politics. It's not just in America. I see this across the West right now. This dead idol political ideology, died by the 1970s, was basically dead in 1945, but certainly gone by the 1970s when the last of the remaining leaders that held to it went away, is in vogue now and is targeted towards Christians, mostly.
Point 11. In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he'll have one great secret which he will tell to no one. He will not believe in God, because his religion will be brotherhood without the father of God. He will deceive even the elect. Deceiving even the elect. What does that mean? He will deceive good Catholics. Even the, be among the best of the Catholics will fall away thinking the man of sin is somehow the Messiah, because he will preach the brotherhood of God, and he will do it so artfully that he makes all the post-conciliar popes who talked about human fraternity, Francis and Leo specifically, seem like amateurs by comparison to the power he can invoke, the power of pure raw charisma and will to power. You'll be an artist at preaching a false gospel. This being universal human fraternity, it's why for the last seven, eight years that I've been reporting on the happenings in Rome, this universal human fraternity language has struck a chord with me. This is not the first time I've covered the characteristics of the Antichrist on this channel, and that universal human fraternity will be part of his false gospel.
Point 12. Here Fulton Sheen talks about the ape of the church. He, the Antichrist, will set up a counter-church which will be the ape of the church, because he, the devil, is the ape of God. Ape meaning mimic. He will ape the church. It will be the mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the church as the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that he will give man enlargement of purpose without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt.
These are the days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope. And that is a reference in the end there to the vision Pope Leo the 13th had, where he over, where he heard a conversation between the devil and our Lord. The devil bragging he could destroy the church if only he was given more power and more time, and our Lord gave him the time and the power. He said, "You will have the power." He said this in 1884 or 1885. "You will have the power. You will have the time." At some point thereafter, the century started. The devil said he could do it in 75 to 100 years. We don't know precisely when that century started. Some think it may have started as late as the Fatima miracles. Maybe even later. We don't know. Maybe it hasn't even started yet. And if that's the case, I don't want to be around when those years start.
There's a warning of Fulton Sheen about the Antichrist, about the deceiving nature of the Antichrist. If our Lord is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, is truly God incarnate, then the man of sin will be more or less the devil incarnate. Not quite, not the same thing, but he is the ape of God, the ape of Christ.
Let me know what you think of this in the comments. Please hit like and subscribe if you haven't. It does help. Sharing this on social media helps too. If you've ever thought about supporting the work we do here at Return to Tradition, options in the description box below. Patreon, SubscribeStar, that kind of thing. All asked for by viewers of this channel. All help keep these daily messages coming and is greatly appreciated. Pray for the church. I'm Anthony Stein. Ave Maria.