The Antichrist
By
Francis Panakal
Antichrist in Sacred Scripture
As early as the first century the Christians belonging to the church which St. Paul founded in Thessalonica were convinced that the second coming of Christ was at hand. They therefore waited in expectation of it and in the process began neglecting their daily duties. The need therefore arose to instruct them and subsequent generations as well concerning what to expect before the second coming of Christ. In his second letter to the Thessalonians St. Paul said:
”Let no one deceive you in any way, for the day of the Lord will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition who opposes and is exalted above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God and gives himself out as if he were God” ( 2 Thess 2:3-4)
By apostasy is meant a defection from the Christian faith. How widespread it will be can be judged by what Christ Himself said: “Yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find, do you think, faith on earth?” (Lk18.8). Thus the truths of the faith which Our Lord communicated first to the apostles and commissioned the Church to propagate among all mankind would disappear to such an extent that Christ could ask whether anything will be left of it when he returns. While Our Lord alluded to the destruction of the faith in somewhat general terms, St. Paul has provided us with details concerning how it will occur and the role of the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition.
What will the Man of Sin do? He would sit in the temple of God and act as though he were God and even oppose God which means that he would temporarily succeed in undoing what Christ did. And since Christ came to redeem fallen human race through His death on the cross and dispense the grace He merited for us through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Man of Sin would replace the same Mass with the ‘ abomination of desolation’. And we have Christ’s own words to substantiate it.
“ Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place - let him who reads understand – then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Mt 24:15-16).
We are therefore obliged to refer to the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament to find out about the abomination of desolation. “ … they shall defile the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the continual sacrifice, and they shall place there the abomination unto desolation.” (Dan 11:31). The continual sacrifice is the Mass which was celebrated in Latin in almost all the Catholic churches throughout the world until April 3, 1969 (Holy Thursday of the same year) when Paul VI introduced the novus ordo mass. In the vernacular mass Paul VI changed Christ’s words of the consecration uttered at the last supper thereby rendering the mass invalid. “ This is my blood of the new covenant, which is being shed for many unto the forgiveness of sin” (Mt 26:28). The next time you attend Paul VI’s spiritual progeny, the novus ordo mass, listen carefully to the words of consecration which your post-Vatican II novus ordo priest utters and you will realize that “ for all men” has replaced “ for many”.
If therefore the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is abolished then Christ’s sacramental presence in the Eucharist will simply cease to be. Whereas, therefore, any Catholic prior to the novus ordo mass, could go to any Catholic church in the world and encounter Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, in the absence of Christ’s sacramental presence, they will be constrained to seek Him elsewhere and in consequence will fall prey to false christs that Our Lord has warned us about.
“ Then if anyone say to you, ‘Behold, here is the Christ,’ or, ‘There he is,’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise …so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Mt 24:23-24)
This warning of Our Lord finds literal fulfillment in Kerala where the faithful are lured into various spiritual oases that are springing up everywhere – Pottah, Muringur, Veli, etc. In far off America and Europe the same scenario prevails as Catholics there gravitate towards various charismatic and pentecostal centers.
This writer cannot recall a single fan of the Muringur circus who does not wax eloquent about the numerous cures that take place. This instant elevation of alleged cures to the status of miracles, the result of which psychologists would call mass hysteria, is in sharp contrast to the Church’s attitude at Lourdes. It takes about thirty or so years before the Church proclaims that a cure at Lourdes cannot be explained by natural causes. The Muringur crowd is forever expatiating on the numerous bodily cures that take place daily as though body fitness is modern man’s pressing need. Forty million abortions performed every year according to a UN report, and the number moving constantly up, should indicate that we are spiritually and morally bankrupt, that Roman Catholicism has ceased to be the moral force it once was and that the Catholic Church is now in virtual eclipse.
It is reported that among the thousands who flock to these s-called spiritual havens are Hindus and other non-Catholics. If this is true then it adds a melancholic note to an already bizarre scene. In the days when the Catholic Church shone as a beacon of light – educating, instructing, evangelizing and sanctifying souls – the darkness outside the Church could not comprehend the light within. “ And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehends it not” (Jn 1:5)
Now that the Church, the Bride of Christ, has become the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse (Apoc 17:3) and the Mystical Body of Christ has been transmogrified into the mystical body of Satan, the darkness that has replaced the light unites apostate Christians and non-Catholics, thereby giving a new twist to Vatican II ecuмenism. At any rate the question must needs be asked: If Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist, will Catholics feel the need to search for a reality greater than His Sacramental Presence? Again, have Catholics in the entire history of the Church ever behaved thus?
The Modern Popes (pre-Vatican II) and the Antichrist
In the unprecedented crisis that now faces the Church, what Sacred Scripture states concerning the Antichrist and the interpretation we attach to it must receive corroboration by what the Church has taught. Therefore, it is not to laymen, priests or even bishops that we must ultimately turn but to the popes who reigned prior to the present crisis. For these popes were clearly used by God to prepare the faithful for the present crisis. They issued warnings about a present or future crisis, one that would become the ultimate crisis precisely because it would affect the papacy itself.
The first modern pope to issue a warning was Gregory XVI (1831-1846). As more and more governments were separating themselves from the Church during his pontificate, there was more than enough reason to believe that the apostasy, that is the defection of the Gentiles from the Christian faith – against which St. Paul has so clearly warned – was being realized in the modern world. In his encyclical Mirari Vos Gregory XVI, describing the general problem of evil confronting the Church from the outside, quoted the following passage from the Apocalypse. He wrote:
“ In seeing men deprived of every restriction capable of holding them in the path of truth, led as they are already by a natural inclination to evil, it is in truth that we say that the abyss has been opened up, from which St. John saw rise the smoke of the darkened sun, and locusts come out for the devastation of the earth” (Apoc 9:3)
Gregory XVI mentioned the bottomless pit of Apocalypse 9 to warn the faithful in a general way about the loss of faith which characterized the world of his time.
The next warning came from Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) which was more specific for he quoted Apocalypse 12, which describes the battle taking place in heaven – that is, in the Church itself – to describe the evils threatening the Church from within. In the prophetic Exorcism of Leo XIII, after having had a vision of the future tragedy of the Church, he wrote:
“Where the seat of the most blessed Peter and the Chair of Truth was established as a light to the nations, there they have placed the throne of the abomination of their impiety; so that having struck the Pastor, they might destroy the flock.”
Again, it was Leo XIII who enjoined upon priests to recite the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel after every mass, a practice that was abolished by Pope John XXIII.
Pope St.Pius X succeeded Leo XIII and in his very first encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus wrote:
“ So extreme is the general perversion that there is reason to fear that we are experiencing the foretaste and and the beginnings of the evils which are to come at the end of time, and that the Son of Perdition, of whom the Apostle speaks, has already arrived upon the earth.”
(When St. Pius X wrote these ominous lines in 1903, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI, was six years old.)
Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), in his encyclical on the Sacred Heart Miserentissimus Redemptor, added yet another assertion as to the proximity of the coming of the Antichrist. After describing numerous atrocities committed against the Church in his own day he went on to characterize them as “ the dawn of the beginning of sorrows that will bring “ the man of sin” arising against all which is called God and is honored by worship.”
After the death of Pius XI, Pope Pius XII began his pontificate with still another statement which has even more significant implications. In his encyclical Summi Pontificatus after describing his generation as one “ tormented … by spiritual emptiness and deep-felt interior poverty,” he applied to it this passage of the Apocalypse:
“Thou sayest: I am rich, and made wealthy , and have need of nothing: and knowest not, that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Apoc 3:17)
This particular passage is a description of the church at Laodicea which, in the opinion of Catholic interpreters, is a representation of the Church as a whole during the time of the Antichrist. Thus Pius XII’s application of this passage of the Apocalypse to his time would, in effect, be an indication that the age of the Antichrist had in some way already begun.
The Vatican II Popes and the Antichrist
The first of the Vatican II popes was John XXIII whose enthusiastic optimism about the future of the Church was implicit in his criticism of Popes Gregory XVI, Leo XIII, St.Pius X, Pius XI and Pius XII as prophets of gloom. A brief look, however, at the crisis in the Church during the thirty seven years after John XXIII gave expression to his optimism will show that never before has a pope been proved so terribly wrong. Catholics today should have little difficulty deciding whom to ally themselves with, the five pre-Vatican II popes mentioned above or Vatican II popes, John XXIII, Paul VI and JPII. Still, the only logical conclusion we can reach regarding John XXIII’s criticism of his illustrious predecessors, is that the papacy itself was somehow being affected by the crisis.
John XXIII convoked an ecuмenical council, a perfect medium which the Antichrist would use to destroy the Church. His first papal act was to enlarge the College of Cardinals so as to accommodate Giovanni Battista Montini whom he named as a cardinal. Having done that he questioned the authenticity of Sts. Philomena, Nicholas, Christopher, and others with callous indifference to Catholic sensitivity, so unworthy of a pope. Thirty-seven years have passed but the seeds of confusion and doubt he sowed still produce an astounding harvest. John XXIII next directed his attention upon the Mass. Like a surgeon with scalpel he snipped away the Last Gospel and the prayers after the Mass. The operation would be concluded by the Man of Sin who would mutilate the victim beyond recognition. It is reported that before he died John XXIII made public his desire to have Montini succeed him.
Catholics who might be shocked by the though of Satan wielding such an influence over the Chair of Peter must realize that Our Lord Himself gave an implicit warning of this danger when, shortly after naming Peter as the rock upon which He would build His Church, He rebuked this same Peter in the most forceful language, because of his failure to recognize His imminent passion and death. “ Get behind me, satan, thou art a scandal to me, for thou dost not mind the things of God, but those of men” (Mt 16:23)
However, what St.Peter did in a moment of weakness, thus meriting Our Lord’s rebuke, Paul VI did consistently and unceasingly for fifteen years – minding not “ the things of God, but those of men.” Paul VI accomplished the evil he did precisely because he sat on the Chair of Peter – no other man, no matter how gifted or talented, could have done the same thing, had he not occupied that most awesome position of authority. In the final analysis Paul VI accomplished what he did because he was the Antichrist, one who fulfilled the prophecies of Scripture and whose actions brought to a clear focus the very tragedy against which various modern popes had warned. No greater evil can be imagined as befalling the Church, than that Satan would wield such an influence over the entire Church. Our Lord’s warning and rebuke to Peter prefigured nothing less than the reign of the Antichrist. But in addition to His own words, Our Lord entrusted to the modern popes the task of warning and clarifying the time and the manner in which this tragedy would come about.
The Mother of God and the Antichrist
God has established one enmity in the world and that between the Mother of God and Satan. “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed. She shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen 3:15) This enmity is to last till the end of the world. Thus, while Catholics had been warned by the popes, starting with Gregory XVI and ending with Pius XII, about the final assault upon the Church by the forces of Antichrist, the Mother of God irrupted into the modern world with a series of apparitions.
* 1830 Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Laboure and started the Miraculous Medal devotion.
* 1846 Our Lady appeared at La Salette and said Rome would lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist
* 1858 Our Lady appeared at Lourdes, the same year that Karl Marx published Das Capital, the bible of communism
* 1917 Our Lady appeared at Fatima and said “ …in the end my immaculate heart will triumph.”
It is not mere coincidence that the Marian Age began a year before Pope Gregory XVI started his pontificate. It began on July 18, 1830 at 11:30 at night when the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Catherine Laboure. To combat the viles of Satan and to save souls she established the devotion to the Miraculous Medal. At La Salette in 1846 she prophesied that Rome would lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist. This prophecy was fulfilled on June 21, ’63 when Giovanni Battista Montini was elected pope.
The promise made by the Our Lady at Fatima that her Immaculate Heart will triumph means that the enmity God established between the Mother of God and Satan at the dawn of creation might well end with her final and total triumph over the latter. That is consoling indeed but not at all consoling is her other prophecy about various nations being annihilated. And that brings us to a consideration of the day of the Lord
to which Sacred Scripture alludes so many times.
The Day of the Lord and the Antichrist
While speaking about the end of the world, Our Lord foretold that a time would come when “ …there will be great tribulation, such as not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor will be” (Mt 24:21). St. Peter is more precise as to what will happen.
“ But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; at that time the heavens will pass away with great violence, and the elements will be dissolved with heat, and the earth, and the works that are in it, will be burned up” (2 Pet 3:10)
In the heyday of communist expansionism and the persecution of the Catholic Church, it was believed that, as the late Bishop Fulton Sheen said, the time had come to stand up and be counted. The alternatives were either Christianity or communism. Catholics however had reason to be optimistic even in those dark days, for notable communists, communist sympathizers and socialists were becoming Catholics. A generation became jubilant over Louis Budenz, Bella Dodd and others embracing the Catholic faith. We now know from hindsight that Christianity and communism were not proper alternatives. One is not the exact antithesis of the other.
If on the other hand Christ is incarnate Life, Truth and Love, his archenemy the Antichrist must in some sense be incarnate death, falsehood and hatred. The God-man Christ is entitled to our worship, which is freely sought and freely given. Antichrist must also claim comparable worship (read veneration) that must also be freely sought and freely rendered. There are numerous prophecies that relate how the whole world will worship the Antichrist. A political Antichrist can never bring this prophecy to fulfillment. The reason for this is that the homage that is paid to him by sycophants or exacted through physical coercion can neither be free nor can it become universal in scope.
The process of canonization in the Catholic Church by virtue of which Catholics throughout the world freely venerate saints and martyrs – only that process and nothing else – can approximate worship that is universal. The attempt to canonize Paul VI that is now gathering momentum in Europe, and receiving impetus from JPII, must be seen as hastening the day of the literal fulfillment of this prophecy. (Lest this statement be dismissed as pure fiction, consider that on February 22, 1995, the city of Milan gathered in the basilica of St. Ambrose around its archbishop, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, on the occasion of the close of the diocesan phase of the cause of the beatification of Giovanni Battista Montini, the former pastor of the diocese from 1954 to 1963 before his election as Pope and having taken the name of Paul VI.) Whether Paul VI would be canonized and whether his statues would soon fill the niches emptied since Vatican II of saints and martyrs they once bore, are questions over which Catholics might well ponder. The time, however. Has now come to stand up and be counted. Two alternatives are available to us, the one the exact antithesis of the other, that is, whether we will worship Christ or venerate Christ’s archenemy, Paul VI, the Son of Perdition.
About the author:
Francis Panakal graduated from St. Joseph’s College, Trichnopoly before going to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1962 he joined the Redemptorist Congregation and studied philosophy at the Immaculate Conception College, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. He was transferred to Bangalore and studied dogmatic theology at Mount St. Alphonsus College. He left the Redemptorist order in 1966 and subsequently joined the diocese of El Paso, Texas. He continued his theological studies at the Pontifical College Josephinum, Worthington, Ohio until 1970. Since then he has divided his time between the engineering profession and airing his views on what is wrong in the Catholic Church.
Also by Francis Panakal:
666 Beast of the Apocalypse Unmasked
Pamphlet 9 pages (first published in 1970)
The Man of Sin
84 pages (first published in 1983)
Francis Panakal
Post Box 4461
Kochi 682 018
Topic: The Antichrist By Francis Panakal (Read 2543 times)