The Signs of the Times

As we continue to celebrate Paschaltide, our enemy’s rage at his cosmic defeat and his hatred for Christians continue to become ever more palpable. The signs of the times are becoming ever more obvious.

In California, a bill has been introduced in the state legislature that would ban books advocating the traditional Christian teachings on marriage, gender, and sexuality, as well criminalize therapy intended to help persons who are experiencing unwanted sexual attraction or gender dysphoria.

In Brooklyn, second graders are being indoctrinated with LGBTQ propaganda, literally alongside math posters.

Meanwhile Google, undoubtedly the single most powerful corporation on the face of the planet, has recently refused to do business with a Christian publisher solely because they express the Christian faith.

And in Great Britain, the state has ordered the killing of a 23-month-old child who suffers from an unknown neurological condition. At the order of the courts, against the express demands of his Catholic parents, he was removed from life support yesterday. Physicians expected him to be unable to breathe on his own and to die almost immediately; instead, he has been breathing on his own ever since. But the doctors continue to refuse to provide him with nourishment, and the courts continue to block his parents’ efforts to transport their child to Italy, which has granted the child citizenship and offered to continue his care at the Vatican children’s hospital. Italy is keeping a military plane on standby to transport Alfie should the British government relent, which it utterly refuses to do. All of this is being done, of course, in the name of the child’s “best interest.”

And that is precisely the worst part of all of these tragedies: they are all being done in the name of goodness, morality, and humanity. More than this: they are all being done in the name of love.

Christians being persecuted is nothing new. Christians being persecuted by those who think they are doing the right thing is nothing new. But what is new is that Christians are being persecuted precisely in the name of love.

It is this, even far more than the sea change in morality which we have witnessed over the past century, that is the sign of the times in which we live.

We are not being persecuted by those who have turned against religion. We are being persecuted by those who have embraced a new religion. It is a religion which, without any exaggeration, is the religion of the Antichrist. It is Antichristianity, which can be translated not only “against Christianity,” but also, even more chillingly, “in place of Christianity.”

And even many Christians, totally without realizing it, are quietly converting to this new faith.

Here, my dear, a new religion is on its way to replace the old one, that’s why so many fighters are coming, and this is a big thing.

-Verkovhensky, from Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Much of my purpose in writing these articles is to examine this new religion, to investigate its growing influence both within and outside of Christianity, to understand its doctrines and the extent to which many of us already believe them, and ultimately to attempt to counteract its vast appeal. This will doubtless take a long time and countless articles, but with God’s help we can at least make a beginning.

The blame for the rise of this Antichristianity does not belong to the evil one alone. It is our failure, the failure of Christians to become truly Christian and to preach the true Christianity, that has allowed our enemy to succeed to such an awful extent. And therefore it is only by our own repentance that we can hope to fight him.

But though “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” and though the hour has grown late, yet still we have the chance to take heed to the Apostle’s call: “take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Christ is Risen!