By deceiving people, the Antichrist will show many amazing miracles. The chosen vessel of God, the Apostle Paul, says: "His coming, according to the work of Satan, will be with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all unrighteous deception."
In his interpretation of these words, St. John Chrysostom argues: "With all power and signs and false miracles, he said, that is, the Antichrist will show all power and everything that is possible to deception, but will not do anything true" (Demon 4 -I am). And he does great signs, says the Apocalypse, so that fire brings down from heaven to earth in front of people. And with the miracles that he was given to do, he deceives those who live on earth.
The miracles of the Antichrist are also mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew: "False Christs and false prophets will rise and give great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, the elect." The plural of the predicate "will give" indicates that false miracles will be performed not only by the Antichrist, but also by his followers.
The Antichrist, according to the fatherly interpretation, will be a great sorcerer and sorcerer. The Apocalypse indicates three types of miracles: 1) To seduce many people, the Antichrist will bring fire from heaven. About this miracle of St. Andrew of Caesarea says: “It is not surprising that fire from heaven will be visible to deceived eyes. We know that, by God's permission and the action of Satan, fire fell from heaven and scorched Job's flocks. 2) The great magician will put the spirit into the image of the beast, why this image will speak.
The same saint says about this: “They say that demons often spoke through statues and images, waters and trees, through the Apollo statue and others. I think that through dead bodies, as, for example, Simon the Magus under the Apostle Peter showed the Romans the dead to the moving ones. The Apostle denounced him, showing how the dead rise, whom he himself raised. 3) Antichrist will pretend to be dead and then will rise again. He will surprise the whole world with these miracles!
As for the performance of "great signs" by the Antichrist and his assistant, science and technology now "work miracles." By that time, a whole series of great scientific discoveries and inventions will be made. And now many discoveries that have or may have military significance are kept secret by states. There will be even more such secrets in the kingdom of the Antichrist. Obviously, the Antichrist and his main assistants will use these secret inventions as proof of their genius and their power.
In addition, even now at spiritualistic seances, many miracles are performed with the help of demons, since spiritualism is nothing more than communication with the spirits of evil. At the same time, communication with evil spirits will naturally become so close and widespread that the barrier between the life of people as material beings and the kingdom of evil spirits will almost disappear. By the depth of their fall into evil, people themselves will become like demons, and demons will live among people and in people …
“The Antichrist will perform false miracles - some imaginary, others in a natural way, as the Egyptian sages once did. With the development of science and technology today, such "natural" miracles, or, in other words, such tricks are much easier to create than before.
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There are striking press reports that experiments are being carried out in the West in which chemical agents are used to help "expand consciousness" to the realms of the "invisible world." Through electrical stimulation of brain activity, a person can gain a personal experience of the “divine”.
“Being the father of lies, the Antichrist by means of false actions will deceive the imagination, so that the people will imagine that they see a resurrected dead man, while he is not resurrected; as if he sees the lame walking and the blind despising, when there was no healing."
Do not all kinds of sorcerers, psychics, magicians do the same now? Let us recall at least the sensational at the time and shown on television the revival of a dead man by the sorcerer Longo or the "television bridge" for carrying out an anesthesia-free operation only at the suggestion of Kashpirovsky, followed by a scandal, grandiose for a "telemag" …
“This tormentor will rearrange mountains in one deceitful ghost, and not in reality. In the presence of a crowded crowd of many nations and estates praising him for his dreamy miracles, he will emit a strong voice that will shake the place where the crowds ahead of him are gathered, and will boldly say: “Know, all peoples, the great power of my power. Here, before all of you, I command this great mountain, standing opposite, so that, according to my word, from across the sea it will now come here to us. " And the nasty one will say: "I command you, now cross the sea here." And in the eyes of the spectators, the mountain will go without moving at all from its foundations. For what the Almighty God placed and placed in the beginning of creation, this all-filthy one will not have power over that, but will deceive the world with magical dreams.
Also, another mountain, lying in the depths of the great sea, in the form of a very great island, will command to leave its place and, for the pleasure of the audience, stand on land, on pleasant shores. And although the island will not move out of the sea at all, however, it will seem to be a mountain standing on land. Even this serpent will stretch out its hands and gather many reptiles and birds. Likewise, he will step onto the abyss and walk along it as if on dry land, imagining all this in a dreamy way. And many will believe and glorify him as a mighty God. But whoever has God in him, those eyes of the heart will be bright; and by sincere faith they will see exactly and recognize him. Anyone who has the fear of God in him and who has bright eyes of the heart will know exactly that neither the mountain moved from its place, nor the island passed from the sea to the land.
Yet the Antichrist will do this in his name. For he will not tolerate that the most pure name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit be called, because he will be a fighter against God and a son of destruction. When this is done according to what has been said, and the nations will worship him and praise him as God, the Most High in heaven from day to day will manifest His anger and turn His face away from him. And, finally, there will be heavy famines, prolonged ulcers, incessant earthquakes, everywhere the scarcity of food, great sorrow, everywhere crowding, incessant death, great fear, unspeakable trembling. Then the heavens will not give rain, the earth will not bear fruit, the springs dry up, the rivers dry up. The grass will not grow, it will not show greenery on the ground; trees will freeze at the roots and will not give offspring; fish and whales in the sea will die out. And the sea will emit such an infectious stench and such a terrible noise,that people will fall unconscious and die of fear."
“The Antichrist will be a great sorcerer, wizard and sorcerer, he will be the instrument of the devil from his very youth and will surprise people with his deceitful power, like the Egyptian wise men, performing miracles with Satan's help. He will be able to seduce people who have departed from God when, in a fierce winter, he makes the stem grow, or erects fire from the sky, or flies through the air without the aid of an aircraft. Such "miracles" are still performed by Hindu fakirs, Brahmins, Arabian dervishes and … illusionists in circuses."
“Can a sign from heaven have special certainty? Those who demanded such a sign, of course, demanded it, attributing this certainty to it. Can we conclude that a sign from heaven is certainly a sign from God? The opposite is evident from Divine Scripture. The very expression "a sign from heaven" is very vague: then, and even now most people who are not familiar with the sciences, refer to the sky that which takes place in the air and in the space above the air. Thus, the sun, the moon, the stars are recognized as being in the sky, while they float in space; rain, thunder, lightning are called celestial phenomena, while these phenomena occur in the air, in the earthly atmosphere, and belong positively to the earth.
Holy Scripture tells us that, according to the devil's action, the fire of God fell from heaven and scorched the sheep of the righteous Job. It is obvious that this fire was formed in the air, as lightning is formed in it. Simon the sorcerer amazed the blind people with miracles, who recognized the power of Satan at work in them as the great power of God. Simon especially astonished the idolaters-Romans when, in a large assembly of them, declaring himself a god and his intention to ascend to heaven, suddenly began to rise in the air. Blessed Simeon Metaphrast narrates about this, borrowing the behavior of the most ancient Christian writers. A terrible calamity is the lack of true knowledge of God in man: it takes the devil's deeds for the deeds of God.
Before the Second Coming of Christ, when Christianity, spiritual knowledge and reasoning become scarce to the extreme between people, false Christs and false prophets will rise and give great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, the elect. In particular, the Antichrist himself will abundantly lavish miracles, amaze and satisfy with them the fleshly wisdom and ignorance: he will give them the sign from heaven, which they seek and yearn for. Ignorance and fleshly wisdom, having seen these miracles, will not stop at all for reflection: they will immediately receive them out of the affinity of their spirit with their spirit, and out of their blindness they recognize and confess the action of Satan as the greatest manifestation of the power of God. The Antichrist will be received in a very hasty, thoughtless manner.
People will not realize that his miracles have no good, reasonable purpose, no definite meaning, that they are alien to the truth, full of lies, that they are a monstrous, all-evil, meaningless acting, increasing to surprise, lead to bewilderment and self-forgetfulness, to seduce, deceive, to captivate with the charm of a luxurious, empty, silly effect.
It is not strange that the miracles of Antichrist will be accepted unquestioningly and with delight by apostates from Christianity, enemies of truth, enemies of God: they prepared themselves for the open, active acceptance of the messenger and instrument of Satan, his teaching, all his actions, having entered into timely communion with Satan in the spirit … It is worthy of deep attention and crying that the miracles and deeds of the Antichrist will lead to the difficulty of the very elect of God. The reason for the strong influence of the Antichrist on people will lie in his infernal cunning and hypocrisy, with which the most terrible evil is skillfully covered, in his unbridled and shameless audacity, in the abundant assistance of fallen spirits, and finally, in the ability to create miracles, albeit false, but amazing.
The human imagination is powerless to imagine a villain like the Antichrist; it is unusual for a human heart, even a corrupted one, to believe that evil could reach the degree that it will reach in Antichrist. He will trumpet about himself, as the forerunners and his icons trumpeted about themselves, he will call himself a preacher and restorer of the true knowledge of God: those who do not understand Christianity will see him as a representative and champion of true religion, join him. He will trumpet his trumpet, he will call himself the promised Messiah; seeing his glory, power, genius abilities, vast development in the elements of the world, they will proclaim him a god, become his companions. The Antichrist will manifest himself as meek, merciful, full of love, full of all virtue:those who recognize fallen human righteousness as righteousness and have not renounced it for the truth of the Gospel will recognize him as such and submit to him because of his most exalted virtue.
The Antichrist will offer mankind the dispensation of the highest earthly well-being and prosperity, will offer honors, wealth, splendor, carnal comforts and pleasures: earthly seekers will accept Antichrist, call him their ruler. The Antichrist will open before humanity a disgrace of amazing miracles, inexplicable by modern science, similar to clever theater performances; he will instill fear with a thunderstorm and a wonder of his miracles, satisfy with them reckless curiosity and gross ignorance, satisfy human vanity and pride, satisfy fleshly wisdom, satisfy superstition, confuse human learning: all people who are guided by the light of their fallen nature, alienated from the guidance of the light of God will be carried away into obedience to the seducer.
The signs of Antichrist will predominantly appear in the air layer: in this layer Satan predominantly dominates. Omens will act the most on the sense of sight, charming and deceiving it. Saint John the Theologian, contemplating in revelation the events of the world that should precede his death, says that the Antichrist will do great deeds, and that fire will also make it descend from heaven to earth in front of men. This sign is indicated by Scripture as the highest of the signs of the Antichrist, and the place of this sign is the air: it will be a magnificent and terrible sight.
A terrible test for the saints of God will come: guile, hypocrisy, the miracles of the persecutor will intensify to deceive and deceive them; refined, invented and covered by the insidious ingenuity of persecution and oppression, the unlimited power of the tormentor will put them in the most difficult situation; a small number of them will seem insignificant before all mankind, and their opinion will be given a special weakness; general contempt, hatred, slander, oppression, violent death will become their lot. Only with the special assistance of Divine grace, under its guidance, will God's chosen ones be able to resist the enemy of God, to confess the Lord Jesus before him and before men."
