ST
IRENAEUS OF LYON (c. 130- c.202)
St. Irenaeus became Bishop of Lyon, and is noted for his role in guiding and expanding the early Christian communities in what is now the south of France and also for the development of Christian theology through combating heresy and defining orthodoxy.
His best known work is “Against Heresies”, an attack on gnosticism, in particular that of Valentinus. To counter the doctrines of the gnostic sects claiming secret wisdom, St. Irenaeus offered three pillars of orthodoxy: the Scriptures, the tradition handed down from the apostles, and the teaching of the apostles' successors. He stressed that the surest source of Christian guidance is the church of Rome, and he is the earliest surviving witness to regard all four of the now-canonical Gospels as essential.
He is regarded as a martyr
by the Catholic Church and by some within the Orthodox Church. He was
buried under the Church of Saint John in Lyon, which was later
renamed St Irenaeus in his honour. The tomb and his remains were
utterly destroyed in 1562 by the Protestant Huguenots.
A paragraph in Book Five Chapter 30 in his work “Against Heresies” is important for our Timeline as it upholds the Traditional Catholic teaching that the Antichrist will establish his seat in Jerusalem, and, that Christ Himself will defeat the Antichrist at the Second Coming.
St. Irenaeus therefore shows, along with St. Paul, the Fathers, Doctors, saints and authentic mystics of the Church, that The Antichrist will not come before the Age of Peace, and also will NOT set up his seat in Rome but in Jerusalem where he will build a magnicient temple for himself and also sit in the Temple of God and make himself out to be a Messiah. The Antichrist will come at the last few years of the earth right before Christ's Second Coming and therefore will not reign before the Great Monarch and Angelic Pontiff. You can spot a fake mystic or forged text when they don't follow this traditional teaching of the Church. (See more on the Timing and Reign of the Antichrist, click here.)
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“Against Heresies”, Chapter 5, Book 30, Paragraph 4
“But
when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world,
he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple
at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds,
in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him
into the lake of fire; but bringing in for the righteous the times of
the kingdom, that is, the rest, the hallowed seventh day; and
restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance, in which kingdom the
Lord declared, that “many
coming from the east and from the west should sit down with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob”.
(Matthew 8:11)
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More about the Antichrist:
“He shall sit in
the Temple of God as if he were Christ,
and leading astray those who worship him For when he is come, and of
his own accord concentrates in his own person the apostasy, and
accomplishes whatever he shall do according to his own will and
choice, sitting also in the Temple of God so that his dupes may adore
him as the Christ...”
“By means of the
events which shall occur in the time of Antichrist it is shown that
he, being an apostate and a robber, is anxious to be adored as God;
and that although a mere slave. He wishes to be proclaimed as a king.
For he being endued with all the power of the devil, shall come, not
as a righteous king, not as a legitimate king obedient to God but as
an impious, unjust, and lawless one; as an iniquitous and murderous
apostate; as a robber, concentrating in himself a satanic apostasy,
and setting aside idols to persuade men that he himself is God
The antichrist will deceive the Jews to
such an extent that they will accept him as the messiah and worship
him
The disciples of the apostles say (from
oral tradition) that they (Elias and Henoch) whose living bodies were
taken up from this world have been placed in an earthly paradise
where they will remain until the end of the world.
At the time of his reign antichrist
will command that Jerusalem ne rebuilt in its splendour and will
make it a great and populous city, second to none in the world and
will order his palace to be built there.”
