Friday of the First Week of Advent
The Antichrist is born of the apostasy
4. It would be out of place to say more than this at present. I will conclude by directing your attention to one particular circumstance contained in the text, which I have already in part commented on.
It is said there will "come a falling away, and the man of sin will be revealed." In other words the man of sin is born of an apostasy, or at least comes into power through an apostasy, or is preceded by an apostasy, or would not be except for an apostasy. So says the inspired text: now observe, how remarkably the course of providence, as seen in history, has commented on his prediction.
First, we have a comment in the instance of Antiochus previous to the prophecy, as I have already shown. The Israelites, or at least great numbers of them, discarded their own sacred religion, and then the enemy was allowed to come in.
Next the apostate emperor Julian, who attempted to overthrow the Church by craft, and introduce paganism back again: he was preceded, nay he was nurtured, in the first great heresy which disturbed the peace and purity of the Church. About forty years before he came to the throne arose the pestilent Arian heresy which denied that CHRIST was GOD. It ate its way among the rulers of the Church like a canker, and what with the treachery of some and the mistakes of others, at one time it was all but dominant throughout Christendom. The few holy and faithful men, who witnessed for the Truth, cried out, with awe and terror at the apostasy, that Antichrist was coming. They called it the "forerunner of Antichrist." And true, his Shadow came. Julian was educated in the bosom of Arianism by some of its principal upholders. His tutor was the Eusebius from whom its partisans took their name; and in due time he fell away to paganism, became a hater and persecutor of the Church, and was cut off before he had reigned out the brief period which will be the real Antichrist's duration.
The next great heresy, and in its consequences far more lasting and far spreading, was of twofold character,-with two heads, as I may call them, Nestorianism and Eutychianism, apparently opposed to each other, yet acting towards a common end: it in one way or other denied the truth of CHRIST'S gracious incarnation, and tended to destroy he faith of Christians not less certainly though more insidiously than the heresy of Arius. It spread through the East and through Egypt, corrupting and poisoning those Churches which had once, alas! been the most flourishing, the early abodes and the strong holds of revealed truth. Out of this heresy, or at least by means of it, the impostor Mahomet sprang, and formed his creed. Here is another especial Shadow of Antichrist.
As to the third and last instance, which I might mention in the generation immediately before ourselves, I will but observe that in like manner, the Shadow of Antichrist arose out of an apostasy, an apostasy to infidel doctrines, perhaps the most flagitious and blasphemous which the world has ever seen.
Musical Selection (Awaken and Prepare Us; M. Hayes/H. Frombach; lyrics in video)