Letter from Broadstairs. November 2025.

Nova et vetera-November 2025

The minions of the Antichrist – the vision of Saint John

[taken from the Pere Emmanuel’s work ‘The Drama of the

end times,’ 1885]

I/ Sacred Scripture, which contains many details regarding the Man of Sin, makes known a mysterious agent of seduction which will dominate the world. According to Saint Gregory the Great this agent is a sort of teaching body dedicated to propagating everywhere the perverse doctrines of the Revolution.

The Antichrist will have his own generals and officers, and will command a huge army. But more than this he will have in his service false prophets, disciples of the devil, teachers of lies. As the personal enemy of Our Blessed Lord he will ape the Divine Saviour by surrounding himself with numerous ‘apostles.’

II/ In chapter 13 of the Apocalypse Saint John describes a very similar vision to that of the prophet Daniel. Emerging from from the ocean he sees a monster comprising  all the characteristics of the four beasts as seen by the prophet.

This monster-the Beast-represents the Antichrist’s empire formed of all the corruptions of humanity. It represents the Antichrist himself who is a the centre of of this violent cohort of disparate elements Whilst considering this creature, St John saw one of its seven heads to be mortally wounded and then healed to the amazement of the whole world. Commentators see here one of the Antichrist’s prodigies whereby he himself, or one of his principle lieutenants, is seriously injured and apparently dead but then, by diabolical cunning, suddenly restored to life, creating a general delirium via the gullible media.

Then, continues St John, men will adore the dragon-the devil-which gave such power to the Beast. So it is that the devil will be adored publicly together with the Antichrist, and then the persecution against the Church will follow for a period of 42 months, three-and-a-half years.

“And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given to him over all kindreds, and tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints… (Apoc. 13, 3-10)

This is how the Apostle describes the terrible persecution. And to all the dire threats will be joined every seduction, by means of which a delirious fanaticism will cast the entire world at the feet of the Beast. But all the assaults of hell will fail before the patience and the faith of the saints.

III/ St John, in verses 11-18 of the same chapter, then depicts the great agent of seduction who will bring the spirit of men to the worship of the Beast. Saint Gregory, as we have already seen, interprets this mysterious passage in regard to the Antichrist and his entourage of false preachers and false apostles. These ‘doctors of lies’ will be a bit like modern savants but endowed with seemingly magical powers.

They will appear to be like the Lamb of God and will ape the evangelical maxims of peace, of harmony, of liberty, of human fraternity, by means of which they will propagate the most shameless atheism.

Their audience will be composed of all the reprobate; their tactics will consist in proclaiming that mankind, in the ages of Faith, was plunged into darkness; and they will proclaim the coming of the Antichrist as the dawn of a new age.

These seductive proclamations will be hold spell-bound the masses with their  false prodigies and mystical powers, even giving the gift of speech to the images of the Antichrist wherever they are set up.

More than this, they will force men, under pain of death, to adore these speaking images, and they will oblige them to wear on their right hand or on their foreheads, the sign of the Beast.  Whoever does not have this mark will be unable to buy or sell, being an outlaw guilty of a capital offence.

Already we see the precursors of this tyranny, and of the Antichrist, in those authorities which impose a godless education. The Revolution wants to have its own teaching body, officially invested to de-Christianise the youth, so as to imprint on the minds of all the mark of the “God-State.”  Obligatory secular education has no other goal and thus prepares the coming of the Antichrist.

One might hope that the public mind be too Christian to accept such a torment, hence all the efforts to bring men to a state of stupor.

But there is consolation in the knowledge that all these things will show forth the patience and the faith of the saints in accordance with the mysterious designs of God.

[To be continued]