The Prophecy of Saint Nilus
Describing the Plight of the World and the Church during the 20th Century

Written By  SAINT NILUS  (d. circa AD 430)

Preliminary Remarks

St. Nilus was one of the many disciples and fervent defenders of St. John
Chrysostom. He was an officer at the Court of Constantinople, married, with
two sons. While St. John Chrysostom was patriarch, before his exile
(398-403), he directed Nilus in the study of Scripture and in works of piety.
St. Nilus left his wife and one son and took the other, Theodulos, with him
to Mt. Sinai to be a monk. The Bishop of Eleusa ordained both St. Nilus and
his son to the priesthood. The mother and other son also embraced the
religious life in Egypt. From his monastery at Sinai, St. Nilus was a
well-known person throughout the Eastern Church; by his writings and
correspondence he played an important part in the history of his time. He was
known as a theologian, Biblical scholar and ascetic writer, so people of all
kinds, from the emperor down wrote to consult him. His numerous works,
including a multitude of letters, consist of denunciations of heresy,
paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes, of rules and principles of
asceticism, especially maxims about the religious life. He warns and
threatens people in high places, abbots and bishops, governors and princes,
even the emperor himself, without fear. He kept up a correspondence with
Gaina, a leader of the Goths, endeavoring to convert him from Arianism. He
denounced vigorously the persecution of St. John Chrysostom both to the
Emperor Arcadius and to his courtiers. St. Nilus must be counted as one of
the leading ascetic writers of the fifth century. His feast is kept on
November 12th in the Byzantine Calendar; he is commemorated also in the Roman
Martyrology on the same date. St. Nilus probably died around the year 430 as
there is no evidence of his life after that. [copied from "The Catholic
Encyclopedia," 1911 copyright edition]

The Prophecy of Saint Nilus


After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of
that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the
Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions,
and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become
unrecognizable. People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible
to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style
of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of
the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and
elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, bishops, and priests will
become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from
the left. At that time the morals and traditions of Christians and of the
Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign.
Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile
up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will
rule in society. At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes
and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit,
which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse. The Churches of
God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the
Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose
their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of
knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the
world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but
everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints. And all this will result
from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become
the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic
signs. He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man so that he will
discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from
one end of the earth to the other. At that time men will also fly through the
air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish. And when they
have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in
comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is deceit of the Antichrist.
And, the impious one! -- he will so complete science with vanity that it will
go off the right path and lead people to lose faith in the existence of God
in three hypostases. Then the All-good God will see the downfall of the human
race and will shorten the days for the sake of those few who are being saved,
because the enemy wants to lead even the chosen into temptation, if that is
possible... then the sword of chastisement will suddenly appear and kill the
perverter and his servants.