Whether or no he is to receive a serious check before that terrific triumph over all but the few remaining elect we know not. But so unmistakable is his present manifestation that it is woe to those who blink their eyes and follow in his wake! Woe to those whose judicial blindness causes them to “believe a lie”! Woe to those who are caught napping!
The next of the indications given us by the Holy Spirit of the Antichrist is his modus operandi—his method—the way in which he will effect his purposes, “whose coming is according to the way of working of Satan”—cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanæ.
The beast with seven heads and ten horns crowned with diadems described in the Apocalypse is, we are there told, fully commissioned with his own power by the red dragon, whom we are distinctly informed is the old serpent, who is called the devil (διάβολος, or slanderer), “Satan, who deceives the whole world.”
Now, Satan is designated as “the prince of darkness” in opposition to Christ, “who is the true light, enlightening every one that cometh into the world”; he is the father of those who “hate the light because their deeds are evil.” When he would destroy Christ, “night was his hour and the power of darkness.” But in taking a survey of the craft of Freemasonry, what first seizes our attention? Is it not the profound darkness in which all its operations are veiled? Those terrible oaths of secrecy, made under the assured menace of assassination, attended with all that sanguinary gibberish, the lie involved in which is not known until the “seared conscience” is already in the chains of hell—surely, if anything is, these are “secundum operationem Satanæ.”
In the Vienna Freemason’s Journal, MSS. for circulation in the craft, second year of issue, No. 1, p. 66, is the following: “We wander amidst our adversaries, shrouded in threefold darkness. Their passions serve as wires, whereby, unknown to themselves, we set them in motion and compel them unwittingly to work in union with us.”
In a work written in High-German, the authorship of which is ascribed to a Prof. Hoffman of Vienna, the contents of which are supported by documentary evidence, and of which a Dutch translation was published in Amsterdam in 1792, which was reprinted at the Hague in 1826, the method of working of this “mystery of lawlessness” is thus summed up:
“2. To effect this, a literary association must be formed to promote the circulation of our writings, and suppress, as far as possible, those of our opponents.
“3. For this end we must contrive to have in our pay the publishers of the leading literary journals of the day, in order that they may turn into ridicule and heap contempt on everything written in a contrary interest to our own.
“4. ‘He that is not with us is against us.’ Therefore we may persecute, calumniate, and tread down such an one without scruple; individuals like this are noxious insects which one shakes from the blossoming tree and crushes beneath one’s foot.
“5. Very few can bear to be made to look ridiculous; let ridicule, therefore, be the weapon employed against persons who, though by no means devoid of sense, show themselves hostile to our schemes.