Guest
Joshua Charles is a Catholic convert, #1 New York Times bestselling author, former White House speechwriter, historian, scholar, speaker, and classical pianist. He has authored and co-authored several bestselling books, including the New York Times Bestseller The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution with Glenn Beck. He recently edited the book The War of the Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilization.
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Transcript
Eric Sammons:
Today we’re doing a continuation of the interview that we have with Joshua Charles about anti-church, Antichrist, where we stand in the church today, how can we look at the crisis today typologically? And so we’re continuing that here. So make sure you watch, listen to part one first, and then go ahead and join us here in part two. And I think you’re going to get a lot out of this part as well. We go really in depth into a lot of the topics that we just started to talk about in part one. So here I am in the interview with Joshua Charles, part two.
I think a few things that came to my mind, first of all, this idea of the crescendos and the way history works. I like this idea of combining the Judeo-Christian linear path, but also with that pagan secular path that … was it Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”
Joshua Charles:
Yeah. Supposedly, yeah.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, right. We see these things in history of where these things happen. And I think the undermining of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Mass, in our own time, you don’t have to say, “Oh look, the anti, The, capital T, Antichrist, capital A, is coming.” But it’s not even sensationalist to say this is a spirit of Antichrist.
Joshua Charles:
No.
Eric Sammons:
A spirit of Antichrist that anything that would… I’ll put it this way, anything that leads to 30% or less Catholics actually believe in the real presence, is a spirit of Antichrist.
Joshua Charles:
Absolutely.
Eric Sammons:
That should be, all Catholics should accept that. And that’s what we’ve seen, now-
Joshua Charles:
That’s Judas.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Joshua Charles:
Judas didn’t believe.
Eric Sammons:
Right. He received and didn’t believe. And so I think we have definitely an era … We are living in an era of Antichrist. And it’s kind of funny, because the progressives love dropping the definite articles. Instead of saying “the Eucharist” they say “Eucharist.” But in this case, there’s a reason. When we say Antichrist, we’re talking about just the spirit that St. John talks about that comes back and returns. And it’s not like it ever leaves the world. It’s always with us.
Joshua Charles:
No.
Eric Sammons:
But I do think it’s louder at certain times than it is at others. I think it’s very loud right now. But one of the things that you brought up that is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve been reading St. John’s Gospel. I was in chapter 10 recently, still am in it. And he starts chapter 10 by talking… Jesus is giving the parable, the figure of the shepherd, the doorkeeper, the door, that anybody who doesn’t go through the door is a thief or a bandit, and only the shepherd goes through the door.
And then John throws in there, this is verse six, I believe, of chapter 10 … He throws in there and says, “This figure Jesus used, but they did not understand.” And what I thought was interesting is a couple of things. First of all, John does not say who they is. You kind of think it’s the Pharisees but he actually doesn’t make clear if it’s also Christ’s disciples. It’s just a very generic they. And St. Thomas Aquinas actually, calling to mind St. Augustine, says it actually does mean both because there’s a difference. There are those who don’t understand, yet are faithful to Christ because they trust Christ. And then there are those who don’t understand and reject Christ because they don’t understand.
And I feel like today we are in a situation in which we cannot fully understand. Everyone on Twitter will tell you we can, but we cannot understand exactly what’s going on today, with Pope Francis, with having the church, with the loss of faith we see, with doctrinal confusion, all of that. We can’t fully understand what it is.
But I do think by putting it in this context of theological, historical, biblical … A context of that nature, I do think it helps us to at least navigate it, knowing … It’s like if you’re navigating a ship, you can’t see in front of you, let’s say it’s a dark and cloudy night, you can’t see in front you, but you do have some instruments to help you to say, “Okay, I’m going in the right direction. I can’t see everything, but hopefully I can see enough to get there.” And I feel like we’re in that time today. That we can’t see everything.
Joshua Charles:
Totally. Well, and Jesus constantly says, “Those who have eyes to see.”
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Joshua Charles:
And I think John had those eyes to sees most of all the apostles, even more than Peter. This is why he was the beloved disciple.
Eric Sammons:
This is why the eagle represents him, because it’s the best eyesight.
Joshua Charles:
Oh, exactly, exactly. Well, this gets into another aspect of it, this katechon. So I gave a lecture last year I think September on what is the katechon. Again, it’s too much to get into right now, but basically the hermeneutic I proposed … I’ve never heard this hermeneutic proposed. I think it yields a lot of very interesting results. The katechon is the restrainer. It holds back the coming of Antichrist, and it restrains the mystery of lawlessness until he arrives. But this mystery of lawlessness is growing, growing, growing, and it climaxes with Antichrist.
I proposed the hermeneutic of restrain, release, return, three R’s. Restrain refers to the restraint of Satan. Release refers to the release of Satan, and return refers to the return of our Lord. So the restraint of Satan, all the fathers say, took place at the passion and resurrection of our Lord. This is how our Lord restrained Satan.
And it’s even in a parable of his. He talks about binding the strong man and then plundering his goods. The release of Satan is this brief release of Satan in sort of this eschatological climax. And it’s very interesting. This is too much to get into right now. I’m still pondering it now. It’s deeply fascinating to me because our Lord’s passion is the source of the power of the sacraments. And it’s what binds Satan. But then Jesus allows Satan to be unbound. So what connection that may have, it may have a connection with the previously mentioned Eucharistic element as well. There’s additional typology of that, and I would argue in the book of Maccabees.
And then there’s the return of our Lord who slays Antichrist devil, the great judgment day of judgment, whatnot. And this pattern is perfectly outlined in Apocalypse 20. Apocalypse 20 begins with the dragon being bound.
Now, many fathers will say, again, this is the binding of Satan by the passion of our Lord. Not all of them will quite interpret it that way, but all of them do say that when our Lord died and rose again, that was the binding of Satan. So even for those of fathers who don’t interpret the beginning of Apocalypse 20 exactly that way, I kind of incorporate what they say elsewhere about the binding of Satan. And then it in verse four, I believe, it talks about the establishment of thrones.
Well, Jesus told the apostles, you will sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. These thrones, these cathedral, are the bishops, the success of the apostles, the age of the church. St. Augustine explicitly affirms this. But then it says, I think around verse seven says, “Satan will be unleashed for a brief time.” Again, there’s that word brief. When our Lord said to Judas, “Do what you’re going to do and do it quickly.”
And then Paul talks about the restraint being released and then antichrist coming. This is a quick thing. Antichrist doesn’t have power for all that long, seven years, but more like three and a half years. And then in verse seven, he’s released, but then Christ comes back. So I would argue that this pattern is very revelatory throughout scripture. I’ll point to Daniel as an example. So Daniel, very historical book, and it’s actually where many of the fathers got this idea that the katechon was in some sense Roman or the Roman Empire.
So in Daniel too, we have the statue, the golden head going down to the iron feet with iron and clay mixed together, partly strong, partly weak. So basically, virtually unanimous consensus that this is talking about going from Babylon to the Roman Empire. And then the prophet says that a stone, a petra hits the feet, which is the Roman Empire, and grows into a great mountain that fills the whole earth.
And all the fathers that I’ve read at least interpret this as referring to the establishment of the church, and it’s growing to be worldwide. And it’s very interesting because Daniel 2 says, “In the days of those kings,” referring to the Romans, presumably. The God of heaven … I’m paraphrasing … will establish an eternal kingdom and it’s authority, and sovereignty will not be passed to another. Authority and sovereignty. That’s very interesting. It’s very interesting because in Daniel 12 … this is the most specifically end times related chapter in Daniel … explicitly, Daniel asks the angel, “When will all this be fulfilled?”
And I think at verse seven or something, around there, the angel says, “When the power of the holy people has been shattered, all these things will be fulfilled.” I find that extremely interesting. It’s a different word. Power is different from authority and sovereignty, right? But the angel says, “This will all be fulfilled when the power of the holy people is shattered.”
So again, this matches up with the whole passion of the church idea. Now again, looping in another element, our Lord talks in his parables, talks about the strong man being bound and his goods being plundered. But then he says he’ll come back with seven more demons. Okay, now why is this interesting? Because Paul talks about the great apostasy. I think our Lord is describing the apostasy. We know the parables about the mystery of the kingdom. He’s describing the great apostasy. And we know that apostasy is worse than simply not knowing Christ. A pagan who never knew Christ is in a much better position than a pagan who once knew him and rejected him. St. Peter says explicitly … is it St. Peter? Might be St. Peter. And in Hebrews too, he says it’d be better that they had never known the truth than to have known and then reject it.
Same with our Lord to Judas. It would’ve been better that you’d never be born. So there’s something much worse. Put that at a civilizational level, a pagan civilization’s really bad. But a civilization that once knew Christ and then decides to go pagan again is infinitely worse in many ways, infinitely worse. I think we’re seeing that all around us right now. We’re not, a post-Christian civilization is way worse than a pre-Christian civilization. And I think it’s following that same pattern.
And so when we talk about this great apostasy … if the sources of order are the spiritual sword, the spiritual power, and the temporal sword, I think part of that great apostacy is the rebellion of the temporal from the spiritual. Christendom is just about done. Paul the six laid down his tiara. There used to be the papal states. Now there’s just a small little micro-state called the Vatican City.
So I do believe that this process is the dissolution of Christian. Now, if I can mention one other aspect here from the book of Maccabees. Daniel talks about an abomination of desolation. Jesus talks about the same. And I’m still studying this issue, but what is agreed upon by many fathers and many biblical scholars is that a type … again, one of these early crescendos of Antichrist and the abomination of desolation took place during the period of the Maccabees. Antiochus epiphanies was the Greek king. So you have Alexander the Great creates this huge empire. And as Daniel predicted, this empire was divided into four kingdoms after Alexander died because they couldn’t maintain the unity of the empire. One of those empires was the Seleucid Empire, which was a Greek empire. Well, I guess they were all mostly Greek, but one of them Persia, more Eastern.
But yeah, the Greek empire Antioch’s epiphanies. Basically, it’s very interesting when you reread Maccabees in light of what’s happened in the last few years. By the way, Eric, just so people know, you know how my research began, it is explicitly connected to you. I come into the church July 13th, 2019. So at a Fatima date, that was not on purpose. A Saturday. Saturday, I think our lady was absolutely instrumental. I think she’s been praying for me way longer than I realized, so I just adore her. But July 13th, 2019. So I haven’t had an Easter yet as a Catholic. So my first Easter as a Catholic-
Eric Sammons:
Oh no,
Joshua Charles:
Is 2020.
Eric Sammons:
I know where this is going.
Joshua Charles:
And it’s me seeing your map, your darn map with America going black. The periods of which I remember checking in on that map all the time. I was like, oh, this is … because I knew from the fathers and from scripture and all that, the only person who brings the public celebration of the mass to an end on a virtually worldwide scale is Antichrist. And some of us knew at the time. I was genuinely thinking this was a serious disease. I think it’s more serious than the flu, I will say that. But I was thinking it was more on the level they were telling us it was that for the first month. By end of March, early April, I was like, no, something is very, very wrong here. And so from then on forward, I was like, this is garbage. So anyway, not to get on COVID, but what happened … they’re all admitting now. This was not as deadly as we thought. There’s issues with the vaccine. There’s all sorts of issues that are coming out now that some of us knew then. Okay.
Eric Sammons:
And Cardinal Dolan just recently said, we probably shouldn’t have done everything we did. He-
Joshua Charles:
Oh, good.
Eric Sammons:
He admitted, well, it’s too late, too late. I don’t know. But I just thought-
Joshua Charles:
Too little too late. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
At least he did admit that their reaction was not appropriate. And it’s funny you called that my darn map. I think it’s appropriate to call that my damn map, because it was, really just the idea of I’m more known for that stupid thing than just about anything. Because it just showed that all of a sudden. I made it black on purpose because it was taking away the light. I mean, when the public mass is no longer available. And think about at the height of that, probably late March, early April, how many public masses were there in the world? In America, there were really none. SSPX, and I know some other assorted, but really there were none. Canada the same. Most of Europe the same. And just when you think about what the father’s talking about, about the public celebration of the mass going away, it’s hard not to … that clearly is Antichrist right there.
Joshua Charles:
It’s a type. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
Right. It’s a type, exactly. So I think the question is a little bit of, at least for me, we see these crescendos, we see these eras of Antichrist that are stronger and sometimes than they are in others. And then I believe it’s very strong right now. The question is … I guess I should put it this way. Should it even be a question, should we even be asking, is this the era of The Antichrist or is it more a matter of, let’s just acknowledge it’s an era of Antichrist and whether or not The or not is somewhat irrelevant to our reaction to it. If somebody’s asking you, do you think this is the era of The Antichrist or not? How do you address that issue?
Joshua Charles:
Well again, there’s some things I speculate more about in private, but I say in all the podcasts I’m on, I have suspicions.
Eric Sammons:
Oh. It’s just between you and me, Joshua. Say whatever you want.
Joshua Charles:
Look, I think it’s very possible. Again, for a lot of details that I haven’t been able to fully lay out here. I’m writing a book about it at the suggestion of many friends and some priests, and even a bishop friend of mine. I’ll call it … well, I’ll keep the name private for now, but look, this restrainer that holds back evil. I think that’s the key. And I do believe it’s Christendom. And Christendom is just about done.
And there’s also other less fundamental, but still very interesting. In Luke, Arlo talks about Jerusalem being trampled underfoot by the Gentiles. And he speaks of, he kind of implies that the Jews will get sovereignty over Jerusalem again. That happened in 1967. And this is … let me mention the Maccabees thing really quick and then mention another aspect of this that is very important. So in Maccabees, we have a type of Antichrist. And when you read the books of Maccabees, what did Antiochus want to do? I’m paraphrasing a bit here.
But he sends a letter to all of his peoples, his people, including the Jews at the time. I was about to say state of Israel, not state of Israel, just Israel. And he says he basically wants all of them to shed their national identities and become one people. Does this sound remotely familiar? And then first Maccabees actually opens with a description of the Jewish anti-church. It talks about those within the people of Israel who wanted to team up with the Gentiles to abandon the covenant with their fathers. It’s the same. It’s the same typology. There’s a lot of typology in the Book of Eze … we can’t get to it all right now, but typology in the book of Ezekiel about the priests of Israel, the 10 northern tribes who had broken off infiltrating into the temple itself.
And in Ezekiel chapter 8, the angel takes Ezekiel and he says, “Son of man, open your eyes. Look.” And he says, “There’s the hole in the wall.” It made me think of Paul VI six talking about there’s some hole through which the smoke of Satan has entered the church. Ezekiel 8 literally has a description where the angel’s saying, look, and there’s a hole in the wall of the true temple in Jerusalem where Judah and true worship was still being maintained. And he says, look inside, and it’s the priests of Israel. Again, the northern 10 tribes who had broken off who were doing pagan things.
So again, it was the anti-church teaming up with the world somehow. I know it’s a loaded word these days, but infiltrating the temple and carrying out false worship. There’s something there. And then so Antioch’s epiphanies it leads to a war, it leads to a conflict. There’s the faithful remnant of the Jews who are not going to abandon the old covenant. It’s very interesting though.
Antioch’s epiphanies, a type of Antichrist, engages in a type of the abomination of desolation. What did he do? He went into the holy … Now, we don’t know exactly … the scripture doesn’t tell us precisely what happened. But at the very least, a gentile, a non-priest entering the temple at all, let alone the holy of Holies, which only the high priest, only once a year, only with blood. So that’s a horrible, that’s sufficient in and of itself for the abomination of desolation. He probably set up a false idol or maybe a sacrifice, maybe sacrificed a pig or something abhorrent to the Jews and the Torah. Now, here’s where it’s interesting. Again, I’m not trying to make implications … I’m just saying this is part of scripture. It’s very interesting because all the fathers acknowledge Antioch is as a type of Antichrist.
St. Thomas Aquinas in his lectures on Second Thessalonians 2 says that when Antichrist comes, it will seem as if he has darkened the church. This is St. Thomas Aquinas here. This is not rabid speculation by some nutty trad, which I never call myself that, by the way, not the nutty part, but the trad part. Although I was brought into the church to an FSSP parish. Antiochus was escorted into the holy of Holies by a man named Menelaus. He was a Jewish man, but he had a Greek name. And Menelaus was a false high priest. Menelaus had stolen the high priesthood from his brother, Jason. But Jason had stolen it through what we would call simony from the legitimate high priest, Onias, I believe it was Onias III.
And Maccabees literally explicitly says about Jason, he was no high priest. It literally says that. So when Menelaus did exactly to Jason, what Jason did to Onias, I can only assume the false priesthood continued. So with this type of the abomination of desolation, this type of Antichrist with a false Jewish high priest being escorted into God’s temple, I don’t feel the need to pry much further. There’s potential implications in all of that typologically.
Now, the other mystery that this is all very connected to, and I admit this is extremely mysterious to me … it’s kind of one of those things you look at, you’re like, I’m okay enjoying it from this far. There’s no need for me to pry further. The other mystery is simply predestination of the coming in of the elect. The Roman catechism issued by the Council of Trent says, there are three principle signs before the return of our Lord. One, the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth. Two, that there’s some sort, I believe it’s a great apostasy and third Antichrist. Okay, those are the three great signs. So the question is, I believe the gospel. There’s a very strong argument that it has gone to the ends of the earth at this point, especially in the age of the internet.
Starlink. Thank you, Elon Musk, I think. So Antichrist has clearly not come yet. At least he’s not revealed himself. Maybe he’s here, but he hasn’t revealed himself. So that’s off the table. So the question that becomes is have we or are we in the middle of the great apostasy? I think there’s a solid argument that we are, when you understand the apostasy as rebellion against the source of order, the source of lawfulness, as I mentioned earlier, that God has established, whether it’s the sacraments, divine worship, Christendom, the coordination of temporal and spiritual powers, all that sort of stuff seems to be progressively breaking down in some very serious ways. And so I ask many people, if this is not the great apostasy, what on earth would be?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah what would it look like if it wasn’t this? When you have millions of people … this is kind of a crass way to look at it, but just numbers. Just the fact is that when you look at the numbers, we just have millions of people who have apostatized. Basically, they no longer believe what the church believes and still claiming to be Catholic, but have just formally said, “I’m not Catholic anymore as well. And so what would the great apostasy look like if it doesn’t look like this? Yeah, it’s a very good question. And so-
Joshua Charles:
Well, can I finish … one last, I know we’re getting a little long the last final point-
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, that’s good-
Joshua Charles:
To top this off would be Paul says why all this is allowed by God to happen. He says explicitly. He says, it’s to draw those who don’t love the truth into final condemnation. That’s why all this is allowed, and it’s why the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism says that a preceding sign is that the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth. Why? Because Jesus said it is a testimony. So if I hadn’t come, you wouldn’t be in sin. But now I’ve come, I’ve told you. So now you’re in sin if you reject it. So the gospel needs to go to the ends of the earth. Why? To bring in all the elect, all those who in God’s foreknowledge. I’m not going to get into the question predestination, but there is a very high form of predestination. Catholics can hold to St. Thomas Aquinas at a very high view of predestination, not double predestination. We’re not going Calvin here.
But anyway, that’s why it is allowed to happen. So the other mysterious … and I admit, I’m still studying this and thinking through this, St. Augustine was wondering, he was wondering, will there be any people saved during the three and a half years of Antichrist? I forget what he says off the top of my head. But this is another part of the mystery of it’s allowed to happen at a particular time because all the elects will have come in and that’s it. There’s no one else who will be saved. What? That’s utterly mysterious. I don’t claim to know all that. But that is part of the mystery here.
The question then becomes, when do the wheat and the chaff get separated? That’s also the question. Because if Antichrist and the final passion of the church are meant to bring those who do not love the truth, as Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2 into ultimate condemnation, well, it’s also meant to bring those who do love the truth into ultimate glorification, right? St. Pope Gregory the Great and his moralia, I know we were talking about that earlier. He has a really profound portion of the … I can send you the quote later on. He basically talks about the state of the church prior to the coming of Antichrist. He says, it will be awful. He says, there’ll be fewer miracles. He says, the penances will be weaker. He says, the words of doctrine will fall silent. But then he follows it up with an explanation of all this.
He says, why would God allow this? I think his term is secret dispensation, meaning the secret purposes God has in history that we can’t immediately perceive, but they’re there. And he basically says what I just said. That the good, by having fewer consolations before them, by having fewer visible signs of the reality of the truth, but continuing to persevere in the truth will merit more. It’s like God giving them this glorious opportunity to merit even greater reward for eternity. For eternity. And likewise, the opposite with the wicked. And this is also very interesting because our Lord, in relation to his own passion, cited Zachariah 13:7 and Zachariah 13:7 talks about the shepherd being struck and the sheep scattering. But the follow-up verse, verse eight, nine, what whatnot, it talks about, there’s three parts, two, that they’ll be thrown into the fire.
One part will come out purified gold, brilliant. The other two thirds will be burned and they’re done. Okay? So it’s the same sort of pattern there that when God sends suffering … I joked with my convert. Many of us folks at the White House and the speech writing team were converts. And I joked one day, I was like, the thing that sucks about being Catholic, they were like, what? I was like, we can’t complain about suffering anymore. And they all laughed. And they agreed, of course.
But this mystery of suffering is very important to all this because God allows it. And St. Pope Gregory the Great in the five hundreds is foreseeing a period of history in the church where many visible signs that would normally be sources of consolation to the faithful are somehow removed or severely diminished in some way. And this is part of the scourge of Antichrist related to what Paul says about those who do not love the truth being brought to condemnation. And the final note will be St. Thomas Aquinas likewise says in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2 that this ultimate separation between wheat and chaff, it’s not a day of judgment thing, St. Thomas explicitly says it will begin during the persecution of Antichrist.
Eric Sammons:
Interesting.
Joshua Charles:
Again, very interesting.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I think … I want to try to bring this all together and we’ll wrap up here pretty soon. Although we could go on and on and I’d like to.
Joshua Charles:
Sure.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. But a couple things I’ve heard. Some themes. And so one is this idea of the katechon, the restrainer, and you’re arguing at least the possibility of Christendom. And I feel like Christendom today is like the car that already ran out of gas, but it’s still coasting down the highway. And so it’s going to stop pretty soon if it hasn’t already. But we’re definitely out of gas. There is no such thing as Christendom today, but there’s remnants of Christendom still in effect, I think might be another way to put it. And so that seems to be a potential removal of the restrainer to keep Antichrist from coming. And then also you talk about the idea of the gospel to the ends of the earth … I think that’s pretty much … I guess you could argue maybe against it.
But it seems like, especially with the internet, everybody in the world basically has the opportunity, at least to have heard the gospel and probably most have on some level, or at least heard of Christianity. And then you have the great apostasy and I think the great apostasy. Now, you’ve mentioned years a few times, like three and a half, some years. But wouldn’t it be possible for both the great apostasy and the time of The Antichrist that these timeframes could be symbolic on some level-
Joshua Charles:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
That they don’t necessarily … okay, so you don’t necessarily have to be exactly-
Joshua Charles:
Well Pope Leo the 13th. I have to catch myself, I’m tempted to say Saint Pope Leo 13th. I think he is a saint. But in the full prayer to Saint Michael, he quotes that same Zechariah 13:7. It’s very interesting. He says they and he refers, he has encyclical on the Freemasons where he talks about this. He uses virtually identical language. He says they have established their throne. I forget whether he says in Rome or in the center. He’s basically saying Rome … in order that they may strike the shepherds, that the sheep may be scattered. So Leo the 13th in the St. Michael Prayer is referring to the same Old Testament prophecy, our Lord referred to about his passion.
And so I can only assume he’s referring to some sort of passion of the church that he either believes it’s beginning or it’s going to be entering. He uses the exact same verse and he describes the exact same thing. So yes, I do believe it could be epochs. I believe there will be a moment. I believe the beginning of the three and a half years of the final reign of Antichrist will be the culmination of the katechon no longer restraining, and the great apostasy and the abomination of desolation. I believe the beginning of that three and a half years will be where all these three diabolical threads come together into a knot that Satan thinks will lead to victory, but will ultimately lead to his defeat.
Eric Sammons:
I think one of the things that always has gotten me about the … I’m old enough to remember when Gorbachev was The Antichrist in evangelical circles.
Joshua Charles:
The mark, right? His birthmark.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, he had the mark. Come on. Yeah he had the mark the beast right there.
Joshua Charles:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
I feel like some people want to suggest certain current figures, including some people have said, even the Pope, like The Antichrist. And I always feel like for me, The Antichrist…First of all, I don’t think the Pope-
Joshua Charles:
No,
Eric Sammons:
Can be The Antichrist. I think the Pope could point people to The Antichrist. A final Pope. Not the final Pope necessarily. But a pope could point people to The Antichrist. But I don’t think the Pope will be The Antichrist.
Joshua Charles:
No.
Eric Sammons:
I don’t think that’s really works.
Joshua Charles:
Antichrist will be a temporal ruler.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Right. And I feel like also, one of the things is The Antichrist will be, to me, I always assume maybe this is my Protestant background of thinking this, will be an impressive figure, and nobody on the world stage right now, is that impressive in my mind. It’s not like, what’s the guy, Trudeau in Canada is some impressive figure or anybody like that. And obviously not Biden or any of the crop of people running for President-
Joshua Charles:
Did you say his muttering with the President of Israel yesterday or the day before?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Charles:
Oh it was just horrifying. Yeah it was horrifying.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah it is. And so, I feel like even if we’re in an era that is leading to The Antichrist, he has not revealed himself because in my mind, because simply I’m just not impressed. And I guess maybe that’s a bad standard, but The Antichrist will attract so many people. He will be an attractive figure. That’s kind of the point. He will … a lot of … you see this in art and things where he looks like Christ. He’s beautiful, and that’s why he brings so many people to him. And I don’t think we really see that yet. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have Antichrists in the sense of people who help lay the path, so to speak.
And I just want to state also that I’m willing to believe that we’re in the era of the great apostasy … I’m not saying we are or not. I’m just saying I think it is a plausible idea, but The Antichrist might be a hundred years from now, 200 years from now. I think whenever you start putting timeframes on, I think that’s when you start getting really squished.
Joshua Charles:
I agree. And we’re not supposed to put time. And by the way, it’s counterintuitively my writing and research on this. I’ll tell you. When I have a lot of private discussions about this stuff. And even publicly, I’ve had a lot of people watch some of what I’ve said publicly. So far, the responses I largely get are, this is bringing me a lot of peace, which I’m like Dale Gracias. That’s the entire purpose. Ironically, by going into detail about some of these things, I’m actually trying to get people to not be so obsessed with the details. I’m trying to provide a framework I think is very defensible from scripture and the fathers. I’m just pointing out very, I think, very obvious patterns in our Lord’s passion in the Old Testament, all sorts of things. And I think that’s a sufficient to give somebody of goodwill who wants to have eyes to see, sufficient … like you were saying, with the ship going through a storm, you’re not seeing the horizon all the time because it’s dark and it’s storm, whatever, but you have your instruments. They’re working.
The apostles didn’t see they were on a ship, they thought they on the Sea of Galilee or a boat, they were going to be overturned. And Jesus seemed to be sleeping. I think these people don’t real- … if there’s no typology, there’s no gospel. This is Scott Hahn shared this book that a friend of his wrote recently. I think that’s literally the title. Like No Typology, No Gospel, or something like that. It’s like typology is powerful.
Now we don’t want to just make of it anything we want, but we have now 2000 years of reflection on these things to inform … that’s actually … we have more at our disposal to consider than even the fathers of the church in that regard. We also have a lot of things that have happened in the last few centuries, especially the last a hundred years that have never happened before. And frankly, we also have a good number of private revelations that seem to have predicted some of it. So I don’t put dates, but actually a lot of this is meant to help people bring the fizzle down, not because I don’t want them to be concerned.
One of the best books I ever read was The Power of Silence by Cardinal Sarah, or is it Sarah? Yeah, Sarah.
Eric Sammons:
Yes, yes.
Joshua Charles:
I was saying I was reading Sarah. It was Sarah. One of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. Silence is … in the book of Revelation, there’s a period of 30 minutes of just silence at the mystery and majesty of God. I’m forgetting which chapter it’s in at the moment. But silence would do a lot of people good these days. I try to be very careful on social media. One of the categories of sin that since becoming Catholic, I try to be very careful of is sins of the tongue. Very careful because it’s one of the easiest … St. Benedict, it’s one of their key things because it’s one of the easiest sins to fall into. I told our mutual friend Michael Hitchborn recently, I said, yeah, social media is going to send many of us to Hell. And I hope to God I’m not among them. But that’s why-
Eric Sammons:
That’s a sad way. That’s a pitiful way to go to Hell…over social media.
Joshua Charles:
Truly. Yeah, that an anonymous troll caused you-
Eric Sammons:
At least do something great. I don’t really mean that of course.
Joshua Charles:
Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
The anonymous troll will go to Hell.
Joshua Charles:
But I’m happy these mysteries have been very edifying for me personally. I want to be with St. John and our Lady at the cross. Whether that cross is the final cross of the church, I think there’s a decent argument it is. How long that will take? I don’t know. I don’t claim to know. As a Protestant, I actually coined a term. You’d probably like it because I didn’t like all the left behind. I liked the books. They were entertaining. I didn’t like all the constant end times fervor.
So the term I coined was apocalyptomania. I don’t want to have apocalyptomania. And it’s very interesting. I’ve been talking about a lot of this lately. Most of the time I’m reading the fathers, I’m gathering quotes to share with Protestants and in other writings about the Eucharist and about apostolic succession and about the moral life.
That’s my focus when I’m reading all these guys. That’s the majority of what I’m focusing on. The end times I think is very important. But I do think there are a lot of enthusiasms that are sweeping many people in our world. That’d be a whole other discussion. I know we’re already going past what you normally do, but I’ll just say that I think this mystery of the church and her suffering is very important to go into right now so that people have some sort of framework, especially a typological framework for sufficiently understanding so that they’re not scandalized. That’s my whole goal. Don’t be scandalized.
Eric Sammons:
Probably a bad analogy, but analogy is when you go to the doctor, I don’t know about you, but I love it if you’re doing some procedure or something when they walk you through every step and they say, okay, here’s what I’m doing now. Here’s what I’m going to do, then I’m going to do this. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt necessarily, isn’t scary, and isn’t bad, but you’re put at a certain piece. Like okay, I know there’s somebody in control who has these steps in mind and knows that there’s going to be certain steps that are not … when you get that shot or whatever the case when they start cutting whatever … you know okay, it’s not good, but they have it all under control. And I feel like that’s an analogy for when we go through this time now of purification, of apostasy, all these things, that if you are just in it and you cannot see the woods for the tree, so to speak, it can be very stressful.
You can lose your peace, you can lose your faith even. We know people who have done that has happened to them. But if you know there is that divine physician who is like, “Yes, we’re going to do some painful surgery here, but in the end you’re going to be better off and you’re going to make it through.” And I think that thing gives you a certain amount of peace. Yes. Okay. When I see this typologically, when I see it historically, that helps me a lot. So I do think, I agree with you is what I’m saying with what you said earlier about this, actually, I think because yes, you can get into Apocalyptomania. I saw that in Protestant world too. I never was attracted to it-
Joshua Charles:
Apocalyptomania. You got to get the whole word right.
Eric Sammons:
I can’t even get the-
Joshua Charles:
Apocalyptomania.
Eric Sammons:
Too many syllables. Apocalyptomania. Exactly.
Joshua Charles:
There we go. There we go there.
Eric Sammons:
There we go. There we go. And so I never really got into that myself because, and you do see some crazy stuff with it, and you see it in the Catholic world, and you see, especially with the chasing after private revelations, which you mentioned. And to me it’s like if you stay steeped in the scriptures, in the fathers, in this idea of seeing that the salvation history-
Joshua Charles:
Adoration, daily rosary-
Eric Sammons:
Right. All that’s-
Joshua Charles:
Vital to my spiritual life.
Eric Sammons:
Just salvation history, understanding that we’re part of this salvation history. And maybe we happen to be in a time that is a little bit more outwardly awful than others, but being part of that, knowing this is still God’s providence. And I do think that gives us a certain amount of peace. Now I do … okay. We are going to wrap it up here finally, but-
Joshua Charles:
Maybe we’ll talk about the book on another one.
Eric Sammons:
What I want you to do is I do want you to give a … You’re definitely coming back at some point.
Joshua Charles:
I appreciate it.
Eric Sammons:
That is for sure. No question. I got to have you back.
Joshua Charles:
I appreciate it.
Eric Sammons:
But that being said, I do want you to just give a brief kind of what is this book, The War of the Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilizations from TAN Books right? It’s from TAN. So why is this book something that you think Catholics should consider reading, especially in light of our conversation today?
Joshua Charles:
Yeah. Well I read it in during the lockdowns, which was on an auspicious time period to read. So in April, 1884, Pope Leo XIII issued his most famous encyclical and freemasonry Humanim genus. In that encyclical, he called on the sons of the church, especially the clergy, to tear off the mask of freemasonry and expose it for what it was. Later that year, October of 1884, I believe, Monsignor George F. Dillon, who was an Irish priest, who had been a missionary in Australia for many years, and also a personal representative of Pope Pius the ninth, I believe. He took up this call and gave a series of lectures in Edinburgh about this topic of freemasonry in obedience to the Pope’s summons, so to speak.
And then this was later compiled into a book of the lectures in 1885, Pope Leo XIII endorsed this book. He even paid for it to be translated in Atal into Italian and several thousand copies of it to be printed so that it has Leo XIII’s personal seal of approval, so to speak, was a big deal to me.
And of course, reading it in the midst of the lockdowns and your damn map, as you say, it was very eerie because I have it right here with me, a copy. And here’s the agenda that we put on the back because I wanted people to just have an over overview of it. It says, Monsignor Dillon details the Masonic plot to de-Christianize the world. Here are the pillars through the separation of church and state, democratic ideology, meaning all sovereignty is with the people, not with God. Religious indifferentism, civil marriage and easy divorce laws, secularized education, the encouragement of moral decay among the population, the destruction of the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope, all animated by an atheistic, socialist, communist and ultimately pantheistic ideology of nature worship that will climax with the arrival of The Antichrist. Does any of that sound somewhat familiar?
Eric Sammons:
You sure that wasn’t written yesterday?
Joshua Charles:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So if I had a mic, I would drop it. But anyway, so that’s why I was like, this needs to be republished because there’s no … There was a partial republished in the fifties, but it’s by the Young Britains, but it had some stuff in there I wasn’t too thrilled about. Some rhetoric. And it was a partial and it wasn’t done very well. So this whole thing needs to be republished. So I was connected with TAN, I proposed to it. They loved it. So basically what I did is I provided an introduction where I kind of laid out the whole book and then throughout the book I provided explanatory footnotes because Monsignor Dillon mentions many people, places, and events that most people today would probably not be familiar with. And so I wanted to explain it from the book itself.
I also made some minor editorial changes that don’t … We kept all the words in there, but sometimes Monsignor Dillon had really long footnotes. And so I would take those footnotes and make them appendices of their respective chapters. So things like that, just to make it more readable. Updated some, I’m sure, I’m sure my friend Dr. Alan Ster, a great, great man, great theologian, Brit guy. He’d probably be .,, this would be an act of barbarism for him, but I took some of the British spelling and made it American spelling. But no, it’s an extremely interesting book. Many of its observations are profound. He goes into a lot of details about this Masonic plot to destroy Christian civilization. And I think the way I’ve articulated the essence of this is Christian civilization is all about joining nature and super nature, i.e. nature and grace. Everything flows from demonizing nature with grace. That’s Christian civilization.
Masonic civilization is about separating those two. It’s really that simple. There’s a whole lot of details that go into. It’s very related to Satan and the garden. Satan’s fall from grace, even before the garden. It’s the ideology of, as I call him, my introduction, Sola natura, I wanted to bring in the language of Sola from my Protestant background, nature alone. It’s this idea that, frankly, that instead of the divinity having to extend his hand of mercy and love to us, to inhabit our souls, that the divinity is already latent within us, which is actually very much connected with the whole heresy of modernism. That religion is sort of the offspring of this experience, this encounter that we have rather than an external reality that we kind of participate in. But just mentioning the agenda is sufficient. It’s all about, in every area of life, church and state, man and woman, education, parents and children separating nature from grace and implicit in Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, if you eat of this tree, you’ll become like Gods.
Implicit in that is that by a certain knowledge, a certain gnosis, you’ll enter into divinity. And that must mean that divinity is somehow latent within you, which is what all … that’s the thread of all occultism. Frankly, it’s Oprah’s God too. That sort of just access the divine within you. I think it’s behind a lot of this ideology of I’m just perfect as I am. I can be trans. I don’t mean this in a mean way to anybody, but it’s even extending to I can be morbidly obese and call myself healthy. It’s absurd. But it all relates to, no, I have the divine within me and redefining everything by according to the tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life. Christian civilization was about founding a civilization in the second Adam. Masonic civilization is about refounding civilization on the first Adam.
Universal fraternity bereft of grace. Which is why one of the greatest objections that Freemasonry and all Occultism has to the Catholic Church. And why the Catholic Church is their number one enemy. It’s another one reason I converted because I saw that all the bad guys identified the Catholic Church as their greatest enemy. But the reason why the Catholic Church is their number one enemy beyond the whole nature grace thing is because the Catholic Church is the sole institution that claims divine authority to teach the faith. That it cannot be contradicted. That the human conscience is not totally free. They want the human conscience to be totally free in the sense of auto defining. Your truth, my truth. If it works for you, if it works for me, whatever. But that’s not what the faith teaches. There is the truth and there is Christ’s Church who has the authority to teach it, and it has the authority to bind the conscience. And you can accept that or reject that. But those are not indifferent choices. So that’s why the Catholic Church alone among all the Christian communions in the world must be destroyed.
Eric Sammons:
That is basically one of the best things about the Catholic Church, the best signs of the truth. Catholic Church is all the wrong people hate it, all the right people, whatever. All the worst people hate it. So I’d encourage people to pick up that book. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing to read a book from the 19th century that is predicting what essentially did happen. And so I think it helps us to see it from a different perspective. Okay. I think we’re going to wrap it up there. I really appreciate this, Joshua, this has been great. I think we’ve got a lot to chew on and I appreciate, and like I said, I’m going to definitely have you back at some point because we could have gone on for five hours easily here.
Joshua Charles:
Sure. Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be with you and I know we went way past what you normally do.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, that’s okay. It was worth it. I didn’t want to stop it. I’m like, nope, this is too good. This is good stuff.
Joshua Charles:
Okay. Okay. Okay, good.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. So till the next time, everybody. God love you.