Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/453

 tions about the antichrist have more than once been applied to various persons. Some, according to the testimony of St. Augustine, saw the antichrist in Nero; others saw him in the Gnostics; others again in the pontiff at Rome and in general in popery: an idea which arose and was quite common in the Middle Ages in the West among many sectarians, but which became especially strengthened with the appearance of Protestant communities, and which has penetrated into their theological systems and has many times been discussed in special works, and so forth.” (p. 619.)

The author does not mention that the greater part of the Russian people regards our hierarchy as the hierarchy of the antichrist.

262. Events which are to take place on the day of the general judgment, and their order. “The actions of the antichrist on earth will last to the very judgment day.” (p. 619.)

263. The premonitory circumstances of the general judgment: (a) the arrival of the Lord Judge over the living and the dead. On that day the Lord Jesus Christ will come down upon earth. Everything is proved by Holy Scripture.

264. (b) The resurrection of the dead, and the transformation of the living. “On that last day (John vi. 40-14) and just at the time that the glorious descent of the Lord upon earth, surrounded by those who live in heaven, will take place, he shall send before him with a great sound of a trumpet (Matt. xxiv. 31), and the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God (John v. 25); for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive shall be changed (1 Thes. iv. 16, 17; 1 Cor. xv. 52).” (pp. 622 and 623.)

That is, in Russian: first all the dead shall arise, and