by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons is one of the great Fathers of the Church of the end of the Second Century. He lived from 130 to 202 A.D., approximately. He was born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor. He studied under Saint Polycarp, one of the most famous disciples of Saint John the Apostle. This makes what he says about themes found in the Book of the Apocalypse, very authoritative.
In his summa against error, entitled, Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 31, he describes the faction of the Antichrist, when speaking against the heretics of the School of Valentinus and the practitioners of the black arts such as Simon Magus and Carpocrates. See what he says:
. . . these men are in this way undoubtedly proved to be utter aliens from the divine nature, the beneficence of God, and all spiritual excellence. But they are altogether full of deceit of every kind: apostate inspiration, demoniacal working, and the phantasms of idolatry, and are in reality the predecessors of that dragon3265 who, by means of a deception of the same kind, will with his tail cause a third part of the stars to fall from their place, and will cast them down to the earth. It behoves us to flee from them as we would from him; and the greater the display with which they are said to perform [their marvels], the more carefully should we watch them, as having been endowed with a greater spirit of wickedness. If any one will consider the prophecy referred to, and the daily practices of these men, he will find that 408 their manner of acting is one and the same with the demons.
Here, Saint Irenaeus makes a direct reference to Apocalypse chapter 12, verse 14. And since it appears we may be living in the very age of that great apostasy, we should pay close attention to the words of this Father of the Church.
Notice he explicitly identifies the means whereby the Dragon of the Apocalypse will cast down a third of the clergy in the final age: through apostate inspiration, through demoniacal working and through the phantasms of idolatry.
Apostate inspiration, is the claim to be inspired when teaching things which amount to apostasy from Christ.
Demoniacal working, is the action of demons, who are fathers of lies and murderers from he beginning.
Phantasms of idolatry, is the appearance and manifestation of acts of idolatry.
You could not describe Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his closest followers better than this. Indeed, the mere fact that the clergy justify adhesion to Bergoglio is a demoniacal working, the deceit of the big lie, because they claim Pope Benedict resigned, when he did no such thing.
They ignored that Bergoglio is an apostate when he appeals to inspiration from the god of surprises, which is not a name of the One True God ever given in Scripture or in the writings of the Saints, but is rather the name fit for a trickster spirit, the god of this world, Lucifer.
And finally it is undeniable that Bergoglio is promoting the propagation and worship of images of idols, and thus is involved in the phantasms of idolatry.
These three means are the exact methods Bergoglio is using to seduce the clergy, by promising them surprises in heretical novelty, by speaking like a demon on a daily basis and by employing the phantasms of idolatry as the litmus test of communion with himself!
In short, Saint Ireneaus has prophetically identified the servant of the Dragon and the party of the Dragon at the end of time, 1800 years before their appearance. Moreover, at the end of the section, just quoted, he makes it clear that Apocalypse Chapter 12 is a prophecy of things to come, not, as has been said by Modernists for 60 years since Vatican II, only a book written to encourage Christians in the First Century. They had to deny it, because it speaks of them!
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CREDITS: The text of Saint Irenaeus is taken from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, here: with the sole addition of bold face text and the alteration of a comma to a colon, after the words, of every kind, to correspond to the rules of punctuation in English.
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