Lyin’ Signs and Wonders

 

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False messiahs and false prophets will arise,
and they will perform signs and wonders
so great as to deceive,
if that were possible, even the elect.
(Matthew 24:24)

 

Are you finding it increasingly difficult to know what is real on the internet and what is not? The World Wide Web has become a veritable sea of lies. It’s estimated that a quarter to a third of Facebook and X accounts are fake, constituting hundreds of millions of false users that are merely programmed or bots. That means many comments you read may actually be artificially generated through algorithms in order to make it appear that a certain post is supported or not. 

Now, with the advent of so-called artificial “intelligence” (AI), we have entered a new era of mass deception unlike anything humanity has ever experienced. AI is capable of generating “deep fake” photos, audio, and video that can realistically fabricate or alter a person’s appearance, voice, or speech (I recently heard a video of my voice where I was speaking perfect Spanish.) AI can generate realistic videos out of thin air or alter existing ones to create fantastical scenes.

I receive weekly emails from people sharing videos of Pope Leo or other speakers, thinking they’re real when they’re complete fabrications. [I always tell people that they need to verify the original source, such as the Vatican’s website, a diocesan page, or even a story from an official news site.]

And today, people’s phone lines, texts, and emails are overrun with elaborate schemes aimed at robbing them of their savings. Scammers prey on the trust and goodwill of folks who hand over their financial information or access keys/codes, thinking they are just protecting themselves. [If you ever get a call from someone posing as a border, bank, tax, etc. agent, and they want to sort out a financial issue, hang up, log in to your account, or go to the institution’s official website and call them back from there. Any serious issue should always be flagged on your account or in the internal messages or notifications.]

 

A Liar and a Thief

We have entered Satan’s Golden Hour when his character is being plainly exposed, for those with eyes to see:

You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

Moreover, said Jesus:

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

In just a few short sentences, Our Lord revealed the entire programme of Satan that is now reaching its crescendo in our times. Communism is essentially the social ideology whose goal is to completely restructure society’s fundamental order. History has shown repeatedly that Communism does so by stealing wealth and property, slaughtering resistors, and destroying history; it steals human creativity and supplants it with government control; it slaughters human rights and social unity; it destroys culture and subverts religion — ultimately making the State a religion itself. Communism is the penultimate utopian deception of the Antichrist:

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 judgment. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 676

My long-term readers have no doubt heard me quote Pope John Paul II for 20 years now in his warning, while still a Cardinal, that, “We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel…” But did you hear what he said right before that?

We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully.  —Eucharistic Congress for the bicentennial celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, PA, August 3, 1976; cf. Catholic Online (confirmed by Deacon Keith Fournier who was in attendance)

That confrontation, which was reaching its Cold War peak as he was about to become the next Pope, was with Communism. Thus, he added:

It is a trial — perhaps the greatest trial — through which humanity must pass; a trial of two thousand years of culture and Christian civilization, in all of its consequences for the dignity of man, the rights of the individual, and the rights of nations.^[1]Source: Archdiocese of Kraków archives — internal documentation listed under: “Archiwum Kurii Metropolitalnej w Krakowie, Sprawozdania z Kongresu Eucharystycznego, 1976″; from alter.systems

 

The Christian Counterfeit

Recall how the early Church was born after Pentecost: into authentic community. Believers sold their belongings in freedom through charity in order to care for the needs of one another.^[2]Acts 2:42-45 Communism, on the other hand, is Satan’s direct mimicry (and mockery) of Christian community: it seeks economic “equality” through coercion, not charity; it appeals to “social justice” while ignoring individual moral culpability; it appeals to fairness while crushing freedom.^[3]cf. The New Rising Beast 

This is why pope after pope has openly condemned the Freemasons, who were not only the authors of this ideology but its global financiers.^[4]Few realize that Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Karl Marx, who wrote the Communist Manifesto, were on the payroll of the Illuminati. cf. “She Shall Crush Thy Head” by Stephen Mahowald, p. 100; 123 In his encyclical against atheistic Communism, Pope Pius XI lamented that the “errors of Russia” (ie. Marxism, atheism, socialism, materialism, etc.) that Our Lady of Fatima warned would spread throughout the world were, in fact, doing so — embodied in Communism. Pius XI also framed this revolution as the greatest challenge to the Church in her entire history:

This modern revolution, it may be said, has actually broken out or threatens everywhere, and it exceeds in amplitude and violence anything yet experienced in the preceding persecutions launched against the Church… Our words are now receiving sorry confirmation from the spectacle of the bitter fruits of subversive ideas, which We foresaw and foretold, and which are in fact multiplying fearfully in the countries already stricken, or threatening every other country of the world. —POPE PIUS XI, Divini Redemptoris, n. 24, 6;

Communism has not died; it has merely changed hats. It’s buried beneath new euphemisms like “climate justice”, “sustainability and development,” “equality”, “anti-racism”, the “Great Reset”, “Build Back Better”, etc., but its goals remain the same:

…that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view — namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism. —POPE LEO XIII, Humanum Genus, Encyclical on Freemasonry, n.10, Apri 20th, 1884))

It sounds, at times, like a Christian ethos, but in practice, it is its antithesis. That’s why it is so deceptive, especially among the young “who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system,” said Pius XI.^[5]Divini Redemptoris, n. 15 Consider these recent disturbing polls, which reveal that the youth, who are the future of the world, are seemingly ready to embrace this antichristic ideology, particulary in the West:

The spiritual crisis involves the entire world. But its source is in Europe. People in the West are guilty of rejecting God… The spiritual collapse thus has a very Western character. —Cardinal Robert Sarah, Catholic Herald, April 5th, 2019

 

Lyin’ Signs and Wonders

Before passing from this world, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was quoted in a letter sent in 2015 to Vladimir Palko, a retired Bratislava statesman who lived through the Cold War. Benedict wrote:

We see how the power of the Antichrist is expanding, and we can only pray that the Lord will give us strong shepherds who will defend his church in this hour of need from the power of evil. —POPE EMERITUS BENEDICT XVI, The American Conservative, January 10th, 2023

In his teaching on the coming of the Antichrist, St. Paul warned of this “lawless one”…

…whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie. (2 Thess 2:9)

2000 years ago, believers might have assumed that the false prophets who would come would perform deceptive miracles along the line of Pharaoh’s magicians who turned their staffs into snakes.^[6]cf. Exodus 7:11-12 But today, could the actual “signs and wonders that lie” not be technology itself whereby reality and deception have virtually become indistinguishable? Watch:

Clearly, nearly all of humanity is utterly captivated by these technological feats as we collectively gaze into our devices and scroll through reel after reel of social media posts, videos, games, pornography, and more. If Satan is a liar and a murderer, a thief who comes to steal, slaughter, and destroy, what is ruining and robbing this generation more of its innocence and trust than internet content that is intentionally meant to addict us through constant surveillance and clever algorithms?

In case anyone thinks this is hyperbole or “conspiracy theory,” it was the Vatican itself that drew this very parallel of the Antichrist and artificial intelligence. Transhumanist, Elon Musk, referred to AI as an attempt to build a “digital god”^[7]cointelegraph.com and even “summoning the demon.”^[8]cnet.com According to the Vatican’s recent document Antiqua et Nova (“Ancient and New”): 

…the presumption of substituting God for an artifact of human making is idolatry, a practice Scripture explicitly warns against (e.g., Ex. 20:4; 32:1-5; 34:17). Moreover, AI may prove even more seductive than traditional idols for, unlike idols that “have mouths but do not speak; eyes, but do not see; ears, but do not hear” (Ps. 115:5-6), AI can “speak,” or at least gives the illusion of doing so (cf. Rev. 13:15). —nos. 104-105

The scriptural reference to Rev 13:15 included in the document speaks of the coming Antichrist and a false prophet who…

…was then permitted to breathe life into the beast’s image, so that the beast’s image could speak and could have anyone who did not worship it put to death. (Revelation 13:15)

Has anyone noticed how artificial intelligence can now take images of the past of the deceased and “breathe life” into them?^[9]eg. here 

In other words, the lyin’ signs and wonders of the Antichrist may very well be appearing on the screens we’re transfixed by. “Watch and pray,” Jesus said,^[10]Mark 14:38 watch and pray.

…He will destroy the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations.
(Isaiah 25:7)

 

Related Reading

When Communism Returns

Isaiah’s Prophecy of Global Communism

The Great Theft

The Spectre of Global Communism

The Final Revolution

These Times of Antichrist

 

 

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Thank you!

 

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