The Antichrist (15 page)

‘“Then I recognized that I had dealt with the Evil One himself. I had prayed and eaten in his house. So I left him on the spot.

‘And yet,' finished the righteous Jew, ‘he was a very pleasant man. He had a gentle glance and an agreeable voice.'

This was what the righteous Jew recounted to me.

Thus I realized that the Antichrist dwells also among the Jews, just as he does everywhere else. And he is already sitting in the synagogues just as he is sitting upon the spires and crosses of the churches.

I received a message from the Master of a Thousand Tongues that I should return to him as soon as possible.

I had already, he said, visited many nations and cities, so now I was to take a holiday, see my own country and do anything I pleased.

So I visited my own country, that is to say the land of my Master of a Thousand Tongues.

This country lies in the centre of Europe, between east and west, and is a remarkable country, that is to say, many of the people who live there seemed to me remarkable. Many among them boasted that God had chosen them. And when I asked one of them for what purpose God might have chosen them, he said: ‘To place the world in its proper order, to grant it the light of our thoughts, the richness of our language, the truths our scholars discover practically on a daily basis.'

‘Everything that you mention,' I replied, ‘can also be achieved by all the other people and nations of the entire world. Nobody has ever been chosen by God to perform earthly deeds, unless such deeds are in service of Heaven. He must be a remarkable God.'

‘He is a remarkable God. He is our God. Our own God. The God of our nation. The God whom all others worship is the God of Love, a pitiable creature. But our God is strong. He is the God of vigour. He made the iron grow. He is an iron God.'

‘You worship,' I said to him, ‘not the golden calf but an iron one.'

‘We don't worship,' said he; ‘we fight, and that is our prayer.'

‘So you fight not only against the other peoples but also against the God of the other peoples?'

‘Yes,' he replied, ‘and we have never yet been defeated.'

‘Then,' I said, ‘continue your fighting. But you are already defeated even before the fight has begun.'

But he did not understand me so dismissed me abruptly.

And as I left his house I saw a man standing in front of his door with the sign of the Cross on the cap that sat over his forehead and upon his right arm. But it was no ordinary cross, rather, one on which the right and left, top and bottom ends were broken and bent. It looked as if the man had first wantonly broken the holy symbol of the cross and then forgotten the right way to put it together again. It also seemed that the cross itself suffered pain in being so crooked and deformed. And as I felt pity for the man and also for the cross. I said: ‘Kind sir, you've got your cross wrong. May I show you what a cross should look like?'

‘No,' he said, ‘my cross is correct. It is through this symbol that we shall conquer and not by the one that you have in mind.'

‘You're mistaken,' I responded.

The man then hit me over the head so that I collapsed on the ground and lay for some time as though dead.

Then charitable people lifted me up and took me to a hospital.

And once I recovered my senses some time later I wrote again to the Master of a Thousand Tongues in the following words:

Mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues

I cannot visit in your country, for people beat me over the head and leave me for dead.

But this alone would not prevent me from seeing the country so long as I could hope to regain my health.

Other things hinder me, namely, the fact that in your country they have other gods than the One God. I was once in a land where it is said God does not exist. And in another land where He is seen as their rich uncle. And among heathen peoples who said there are many gods. But never have I seen a land in which people worship God and revile Him in a single breath. And where they not only do not follow the Son of God but even hate Him; and not only hate Him but even despise Him, His death, His love and His humility. For they have deformed His cross and say that it is the right and true cross and that it is not deformed and bent. Their God is an iron God. I know that it is written in the Revelation of John that the servants of the Antichrist would receive a mark in their right hands and on their foreheads. In this country the people already bear this mark. And they are preparing for the end of the world, but I cannot speak justly of them because they beat me on the head. Where one denies God, He may yet one day be acknowledged. Where He is unrecognized or unacknowledged He may yet reveal Himself. But where He is blasphemed and worshipped in a single breath the Antichrist is revealed. When the Children of Israel worshipped the golden calf the Ten Commandments had not yet been issued. Now, however, the children of your country are bowing before an iron calf five thousand years after the Ten Commandments were handed down and two thousand years after the Cross first shone its light over the world. Release me from your service now, Mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues.

His reply ran:

I dismiss you as of this date (date of postmark) from my service.

You are a refractory tongue. I have already found a new and more willing one.

My time, our time, has dawned.

I no longer need to treat you courteously.

So now I can close with the truth.

Hail the Anticross!

Signed

The Master of a Thousand Tongues

So I left the land of the Master of a Thousand Tongues and crossed the border into other countries.

I took up residence in one of the houses that they call hotels.

And there came all kinds of people who had known me when I was one of the thousand tongues.

There came a rich man, a poor man, a pious man, an unbeliever, a Jew, a Jew-hater, a heathen, a Christian, an agent of the Master of a Thousand Shadows, one who hoped for a world revolution and another who wished to maintain the world just as it is, one who wanted peace and another who desired war.

They had all read the truths that I had written. They came, some to question me, others to listen to me and a third group to corrupt me. And through all of them spoke the Antichrist.

Thus I sat each day – and thus I still sit today – in the hotel.

Many people seek me out, and all of them are convinced that I believe them and their words. However, I am protected by my fear of the Antichrist and am on my guard against the false words of my guests, even of those who are honest.

For sometimes they think they are speaking the truth when, in fact, the words belong to the Antichrist.

They themselves don't know it. But I can understand. For just as I myself, when I was a soldier, sold my shadow to the Antichrist without realizing it, so have they unwittingly sold their words to the
Antichrist, and out of their mouths come not the words themselves but what the Antichrist has transformed into the shadows of words.

Sometimes my visitors arrive together, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor and so on.

And they offer one another their hands. However, they hate each other.

They would like to kill one another, but they talk with each other. And their words are so full of falsehoods and poison that it is worse than if they actually did kill one another.

They speak on friendly and murderous terms at the same time. It is the tongue of the Antichrist; it is their mother tongue.

The language of the Antichrist has become the mother tongue of mankind.

And instead of dreading the Antichrist they are afraid of one another. The poor fear the rich and vice versa, the Jew fears the anti-Semite and vice versa and so on.

For just as love and justice spring from fearlessness, so comes hatred from fear and injustice from fear.

Fear, however, is the daughter of the Antichrist. By this I mean man's fear of his own kind.

The lion does not fear the lion, the tiger does not fear the tiger, the lamb does not fear the lamb, the ox does not fear the ox, the raven does not fear the raven, and the carp does not fear the carp – when one does not threaten the other. Fear can only emerge between one and another creature of the same species if there is hostility between them for some reason.

But people fear other people without cause; in fact, the fear people have of each other is not the consequence but the origin of their hostilities and wars. Animals fear humans. They fear them more than they fear their natural foes among the other animals. The strongest of the four-legged beasts of prey fears a snake's
venom, but both the serpent and the beast of prey fear man equally.

Since he is to be feared by all creation, man may truly be the master.

But, since he is also afraid of his own kind, he is thus not the absolute Lord of Creation.

If man were not afraid of his own kind he would have no fear of the tempter, of the Devil, of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist plants people's fear of other people into their hearts so that he may not himself become weak.

He sows fear. And from this seed sprouts discord.

As one person fears another individual, so does one nation fear another nation.

And within each nation each of the individual citizens fears the other.

And as soon as all the individual members of a nation fear a neighbouring nation more than the individuals fear one another, war starts.

The soldier who goes to war fears his superior, but the superior and the soldier both fear the enemy, that is to say, the other nation, even more.

Therefore, there will never be peace in the world so long as the fear of men towards other men exists.

Similarly, the fear of God cannot grow in the world as long as man fears man more than he does God himself.

Truly, the Antichrist sows man's fear of his own kind to prevent him from fearing God.

Fearing God, that is to say, not only loving God but also loving each other.

To fear man, however, is to hate man, to abandon God and to be in the presence of the Antichrist.

And this is the condition of the world today.

We are further than ever from the hour when the predator will befriend the prey.

Not even man can befriend his fellow man.

All the animals of creation fear humans. But people's fear of one another today is even greater than animals' fear of people.

For man knows frightfulness of his own kind better than animals.

This is the hour in which, as it is written, man is worse than a ferocious animal.

A man who claimed to be righteous came to me and said: ‘I come from the country where the Master of a Thousand Tongues, in whose service you have been, lives.'

‘Aren't you going to return?' I enquired. ‘They are lacking in righteous men there!'

‘They drove me out,' said the false righteous man, ‘and others with me. In all other countries of the world righteous men are downtrodden and must suffer. But in this country they are banishing justice entirely. They are seating wrong upon the throne of right. They are removing the bandage from the eyes of Justice.'

‘So they are finally allowing her to see?'

‘No,' replied the just man, ‘they aren't removing the bandage so that she can see. Although even that would be false. For it is the nature of Justice to judge without seeing. Her delicate hands, which measure and weigh, are surer than the eye. She has to apply not the judgement of the eye, visual justice, but the scales, the judgement of the hands, manual justice. Truly, when Justice can see, she
ceases to be Justice.
But the unrighteous haven't removed the bandage from her eyes to let her see! They have removed it in order to make her blind.
They have poked out her eyes.

‘At that point the righteous left the country.

‘Yet we cannot abandon Justice, although we, the righteous
have been driven out. And we endeavour to act justly towards the country that blinded her.

‘I have long wondered why these people poked out the eyes of Justice. And I believe I have discovered the reason: the people were acting foolishly, not wickedly. By no means do they understand the nature of Justice. From the beginning they had feared that she might one day take off her blindfold and see. And, as fools are impatient, they anticipated her. But when they saw her eyes they were terrified and pricked them out. They are poor fools.'

‘So what do you ask of me?' I enquired of the just man.

‘That you should be just towards this country,' he replied. ‘That's why I've come to you.'

‘I bow before your sense of justice,' said I, ‘but I cannot myself be just. I am a man. I have fear of the Antichrist – I will try to take vengeance on him. And the Lord Himself will one day decide whether I am worthy of salvation.

‘I respect the just man. But I am not great enough to understand him. I am only an ordinary man. I fear evil. And I hate it.'

At this, the man who thought he was righteous left me, and clearly he resented me.

And when I asked myself why he resented me more than he did the unjust people who had driven him out and blinded Justice it awakened in me the suspicion that the Antichrist was also working within and gnawing at the supposedly righteous man.

I confess that since this meeting I fear even righteous men, those who are too just, those who want to understand everything and those who say they can forgive everything.

There certainly exist men of that sort. But people who can both hate and love and who hate hatred and love love – these are men of my kind.

For I fear that the Antichrist hides himself even behind the man who is all too just, whose righteousness is false.

There next came to me a man who called himself unjust. He spoke to me with pride and said: ‘I am but one of the many millions of unrighteous men; an anonymous unrighteous man, but of that I am also proud. Soon, I will be even less of a name than I am today, for the number of the unrighteous grows with every hour, and soon there will be countless billions, like ants.