Saturday, January 9, 2016

Of Antichrist Forerunners, Of His False Lying Signs & Deceits, Of His Intolerable Luciferian Pride, Subtlety, And Short Reign, Though Most Violent Persecution Of His Life, Birth, Death, And Ministers.



Of Antichrist forerunners, of his false lying signs & deceits, of his intolerable Luciferian pride, subtlety, and short reign, though most violent persecution of his life, birth, death, and ministers.

Heretics then dying against the truth which is Christ, what other be they then Martyrs of Satan? very Prophets and fore-runners of Antichrist; which most wicked man against the latter day shall come in all false and lying signs and wonders flatly denying Christ and God, extolling himself above God,as saith St. Paul, with such subtlety that the very elect if it were possible should be deceived: But our good Lord JESUS for his elect sake will shorten those perilous days.

For as we gather out of the holy Prophets. especially the Apocalypse of Saint John, he shall reign but three years and a half, whose our Lord JESUS shall destroy with his power,yet in that short time he shall so persecute the Church , that all the persecutions we now feel, or that ever were since Christ, be but as it were a shadow in respect of that of Antichrist.

For as the power of God was in Christ to convert and win souls; So by Gods sufferance, all the power of the Devil shall be in Antichrist, to pervert and deceive men.

Though the Devil shall not be incarnate in Antichrist, as God was in Christ, wherein not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person two distinct natures in Christ be but one person.

This persecution shall be both openly and secretly, openly in might & power, slaying the innocent, and secretly in his fore-runners, that prepare his way before his coming. and after his coming in his ministers that by sleights & wiles under the color of virtue, shall bring in all horrible sin & vice, deceiving the innocent & simple sheep.

He shall be born as many affirm of a Jew of the tribe of Dan. See how far all these qualities be from the Pope of Rome which the heretics call Antichrist; For Antichrist is as much to say, as contrary or against Christ.

The Pope he most honoreth & preacheth, and causeth Christ to be preached. Antichrist shall call himself God, the Pope calleth himself servant of the servants of God; Antichrist as some gather out of Genesis. Fait Dan. Colunber in via &c. Shall be borne of a Jew.

The Pope is commonly an Italian, Frenchman, or Spaniard born, & chosen for his virtue and learning out of these or some other Christian country. The Jews chiefly shall receive Antichrist at his coming whom they look for a s their Messias & Savior to come & conquer the whole world with great pomp and glory as our Savior foretold them that another should combine his own name, him that would receive, which all Fathers understand to be Antichrist, that the Jews shall receive instead of Christ, whom they crucified coming in his fathers name.

To be brief, there hath from Christ’s time to this day been many Popes, but Antichrist born of the tribe of Dan or some other tribe shall be but one man & as St. John in the Apocalypse affright he shall slay Enoch and Elias whom Christ shall send to preach against his false miracles, and to comfort his afflicted flock the Church which he shall never forsake.


John Radford
A Directorie Teaching the Way to Truth
1605

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