(Updated July 16, 2025)
The Roman Catechism (1566)
- End Times | Part 1, Art. 7: Circumstances of the Judgment
(Part 1, Art. 7: Circumstances of the Judgment)1
The Sacred Scriptures inform us that the general judgment will be preceded by these three principal signs: the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world, a falling away from the faith, and the coming of Antichrist. This gospel of the kingdom, says our Lord, shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come [Matt. 24:14]. The Apostle also admonishes us that we be not seduced by anyone, as if the day of the Lord were at hand; for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed [2 Thess. 2:3], the judgment will not come.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
(Par. 675) Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers [Luke 18:8; Matt. 24:12]. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth [Luke 21:12; John 15:19-20] will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh [2 Thess. 2:4-12; 1 Thess. 5:2-3; 2 John 7; 1 John 2:1, 8, 22].
(Par. 676) The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. the Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism [DS 3839], especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism [Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, condemning the “false mysticism” of this “counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly”; cf. GS 20-21].
(Par. 677) The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection [Apoc. 19:1-9]. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven [Apoc. 13:8; 20:7-10; 21:2-4]. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world [Apoc. 20:12; 2 Pet. 3:12-13].
Buy Us a Coffee
