666

The German philosopher Josef Pieper, a devout Christian, reminded us:

 „…prophecy certainly speaks about coming events, about a future that cannot be calculated in advance by any speculative technique, but it does not straightforwardly describe what is to happen. One cannot read prophecy like a ‚wanted person‘ notice in which something previously unknown is made recognizable and identified by name, so that one could keep it in mind like a detailed image of a sought object and use it to make the future ‚present.'“

This is wisdom that has been forgotten, or deliberately ignored, by the end-times hucksters. Instead of humility, they offer their flock perverted hope for Armageddon, despair, and global conflict (which they eagerly incite). The real war and conflict isn’t ultimately between America and Russia or Israel and Iran. As Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn taught with such profundity, the battle line between God and the Devil, good and evil, runs through the heart of every man.

The Savior warned us that there would come false prophets and teachers appearing as sheep, but inwardly ravenous wolves, and to be ever mindful of their works. What is to be said of those whose fruits are greed, lust for power, warmongering, and the de-humanization of their fellow man?