Posted on 11/09/2004 9:57:26 AM PST by Pyro7480
The Prophecy of Saint Nilus
Did this saint forsee the crisis of the Church and world of our time?
St. Niluswas one of the many disciples and fervent defenders of St. John Chrysostom. He was an officer at the Court of Constantinople, married, with two sons. While St. John Chrysostom was patriarch, before his exile (398-403), he directed Nilus in the study of Scripture and in works of piety. St. Nilus left his wife and one son and took the other, Theodulos, with him to Mount Sinai to be a monk. The Bishop of Eleusa ordained both St. Nilus and his son to the priesthood. The mother and the other son also embraced the religious life in Egypt.
From his monastery at Sinai Nilus was a well-known person throughout the Eastern Church; by his writings and correspondence he played an important part in the history of his time. He was known as a theologian, Biblical scholar and ascetic writer, so people of all kinds, from the emperor down, wrote to consult him. His numerous works, including a multitude of letters, consist of denunciations of heresy, paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes, of rules and principles of asceticism, especially maxims about the religious life. He warns and threatens people in high places, abbots and bishops, governors and princes, even the emperor himself, without fear. He kept up a correspondence with Gaina, a leader of the Goths, endeavouring to convert him from Arianism. He denounced vigorously the persecution of St. John Chrysostom both to the Emperor Arcadius and to his courtiers.
Nilus must be counted as one of the leading ascetic writers of the fifth century. His feast is kept on 12 November in the Byzantine Calendar; he is commemorated also in the Roman martyrology on the same date. St. Nilus probably died around the year 430 as there is no evidence of his life after that.
(Excerpted from The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition)
The Prophecy
After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable. People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist.
There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, bishops, and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left.
At that time the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society. At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse.
The Churches of God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints.
And all this will result from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs. He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man so that he will discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from one end of the earth to the other. At that time men will also fly through the air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish.
And when they have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is deceit of the Antichrist. And, the impious one! -- he will so complete science with vanity that it will go off the right path and lead people to lose faith in the existence of God in three hypostases.
Then the All-good God will see the downfall of the human race and will shorten the days for the sake of those few who are being saved, because the enemy wants to lead even the chosen into temptation, if that is possible... then the sword of chastisement will suddenly appear and kill the perverter and his servants.
I have a question for you all. Is the anti-christ supposed to be an actual person or is it supposed to represent a "spirit" of anti-christ.
I have a question for you all. Is the anti-christ supposed to be an actual person or is it supposed to represent a "spirit" of anti-christ.
It's an actual person.
His name................
Woody Harrelson (that guy from "Cheers")
Very funny....very funny!
YES.
BOTH A PERSON AND A SPIRIT, imho.
Evil incarnate, as well.
Christ and Paul, I think, indicated that the spirit of the antiChrist was abroad in the world, even then.
Certainly that spirit has advanced in influence--in the culture and in high places.
worth a ping tonight!
One could easily expect it's translated and not lose any validity at all. The problem is that I believe the concept of ordering centuries (1st c., 2nd c., 21st c., etc.) is fairly modern. Can't source it, but I t hink I heard that it's sort of an 18th-century thing. Not sure if it's THAT recent, but it certainly sounds like something which would not have been said during the time of the Roman Empire, in Rome: they counted their calendars from the founding of Rome. If authentic, it's at least paraphrased and interpreted.
The anti-Christ is here for all to see. Many, out of fears, dare not speak its name. The anti-Christ is neither a person nor a spirit - it's a religious entity made up of people like you and me. Let not fear nor sin rule your life and the truth shall be revealed to you, but only if you're gone through some form of tribulation in your life. All three elements (fear, sin and tribultation) are essential for truth to be revealed.
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