Chapter 29. All Things Are for the Just, but All Evil Is Summed Up in the Antichrist.
Chapter 29
1. In the preceding books we have given the reasons on account of which God permitted these things to happen thus. We showed that all such things were made for man who is saved. Those things would make his free will and self-determining power grow to the mature state of immortality and would prepare it for a more suitable eternal submissiveness to God. For this reason creation is at the service of man. Man, indeed, was not made for the sake of creation, but creation was made for the sake of man. For, Scripture rightly accounted the nations like a drop of water from a bucket, and as the dust on the scales, and as nothing, because they, too, did not lift their eyes to heaven, or give thanks to their Creator, or wish to see the light of the Truth, but were as blind mice hidden in the depths of stupidity. They were, however, of use and service to the just, to the extent that the stem is of use to the growth of the wheat, and as its straw is of use for fire in making gold. For this reason, when in the end the Church will of a sudden be taken hence, [Scripture] says, There will be tribulation such as has not been from the beginning no, and never will be. For this is the last contest of the just. If they are victorious in it, they will be crowned with imperishability.
2. When, then, the beast comes, there will be in it a recapitulation of all evil and of all deceit, so that all rebel power might flow into it, and be shut up in it, and be cast into the fiery furnace. Fittingly, too, its name will consist of a number, six hundred and sixty-six, recapitulating in itself all the mess of evil which existed before the flood, which resulted from the rebellion of the angels. For Noah was six hundred years old and the flood came upon the earth and “destroyed the living being of the earth” on account of the most wicked generation that lived in Noah’s time. He also recapitulated all the lying error of the idols that existed after the flood, and the killing of the Prophets and the burning of the just. For the statue set up by Nebuchadnezzar had a height of sixty cubits and a width of sixty cubits. Because Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael did not worship it, they were thrown into the fiery furnace, and by the event they prophesied the burning of the just that would take place at the end. Really, the entire statue was a prefiguring of the coming of this One, who decreed that he alone should be worshipped by absolutely all people. So the six hundred years of Noah, under whom the flood occurred because of the rebellion, and the number of the cubits of the statue, on account of which the just were thrown into the fiery furnace, signify the number of the One in whom are recapitulated every rebellion of the six thousand years, and injustice and wickedness and false prophecy and deception; on account of which will come also the deluge of fire.