VISIO DECIMA, cap. XXXI
The Man of Sin and His Deception
The 'man of sin' is revealed as the son of perdition who will deceive multitudes into worshiping him as God, fulfilling the image of the beast.
This same "man of sin" is called a man because he will carry out every evil, and because all those evils will be poured back upon himself; and he is called "son of perdition" because death and destruction will rule over him and, as was foretold, by drawing vast crowds of people to himself through perverse and utterly abominable methods of deception, he will make them worship him as God — exactly as John, portraying his savagery under the image of the beast, says by way of plain truth: "And all who dwell on the earth worshiped it, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb."✦✦
Earthly Hearts and the Book of Life
Those who cling to earthly things worship the beast of iniquity and are not inscribed in the Lamb's book of life.
The meaning of this sentence is also to be understood in the following way with regard to future events: those who fix the dwelling-place of their hearts on earthly things will bow down, body and mind, to the beast of iniquity — people whose names are not inscribed with the marks of holiness in the eternity of the life of the One in whose mouth no deceit was found.✦
Satan, Death, and the Lost Man
Worship of the lost man aligns one with Satan, who was cast out and called Death because he shuns the immortal life that vivifies all things.
Therefore, whoever worships this lost man by treating him as an object of devotion will be in perdition, along with the one who carries Satan in his heart — Satan, who was cast out by God because God willed that Satan exist by his own power. And so he was also called Death, because he shuns the life in which no mortality is found — the very life that gives life to all things.
The Lamb as the Word of God
Those who do the works of the son of perdition are excluded from the Lamb's book of life, for the Lamb is the Word through whom all creation came forth.
And all those who cling to this son of perdition by doing his works will not be written in the book of life of the Lamb, because this Lamb is the Word of God, through whose creative word all creation came forth.✦
The Devil's Followers Across the Testaments
The Devil's followers appeared in the Old Testament through Baal and in the New through the Sadducees, but later heretics will arise who deny God in creation and living souls.
Now the Devil has always had his followers in both the Old Testament and the New: in the Old, through Baal; but in the New, through the Sadducees, who are his sinews in schism, because they first violated God's law — which is the root of righteousness, and in which the patriarchs and prophets found their hiding place — along with the filth of Baal; and later, in the New Testament, they joined the Sadducees in denying the resurrection in their affliction of righteousness, because the Gospel is the branch of that foretold root, and the fruit of the branches bears witness to Christ — Christ who powerfully crushed both the idols of Baal and the Sadducees.✦ But after them, heretics will arise who contradict the order of the first growth, and their error will be worse than the earlier one, because they will utterly deny God in his creation and in living souls.
Worship of the Beast and Antinomian Pride
All these will worship the lost man, abandon faith in God, and claim that disregarding God's commandments will do them no harm.
All these, however, will worship the wretched beast — that is, the lost man — and, abandoning the faith of the almighty God, they will say that it will do them no harm if they disregard God's commandments.
Signs, Deception, and the Mark of the Beast
The lost man will perform magical signs, feign death and resurrection, and inscribe a devilish writing on his followers' foreheads so they cannot be torn from him.
About the signs and wonders and storms he's going to bring about through magical arts, and how, pretending to die and rise again, he'll have a certain writing—devised by the devil's deceit—inscribed on the foreheads of those who follow him, so that, once deceived, they can no longer be torn away from him or separated from him.12
Read the original Latin
Praefatus quoque homo peccati homo dicitur, quoniam omnia mala perficiet, et quia illa omnia super ipsum fundentur, filiusque perditionis vocatur, quoniam mors et perditio ipsi dominabuntur, atque, ut praedictum est, perversis et nefandissimis modis multitudinem populorum seducendo, sibi attrahet, seque ut Deum adorare faciet, videlicet etiam ut Joannes sub imagine bestiae feritatem ejus describens per ostensionem veritatis dicit: « Et adoraverunt eam omnes qui habitant terram, quorum non sunt scripta nomina in libro vitae Agni . » Hujus quoque sententiae intellectus hoc etiam modo de futuris accipiendus est: Proni corpore et mente adorabunt bestiam iniquitatis, qui habitationem cordium suorum terrenis rebus infigent, quorum non sunt exarata signis sanctitatis nomina in aeternitate vitae illius, in cujus ore dolus inventus non est. Quapropter in perditione erit quicunqne scripta hujus perditi hominis ipsum colendo adorabit, et qui scripta Satan in corde suo geret, qui a Deo expulsus est, quoniam a se ipso Deus esse voluit. Unde et mors nominatus est, quia vitam fugit, in qua nulla mortalitas invenitur, sed quae omnia vivificat. Et isti omnes qui huic perditionis filio adhaerebunt opera illius facientes, in libro vitae Agni non scribentur, quoniam Agnus iste Verbum Dei est per cujus verbi fiat omnis creatura processit. Diabolus autem in Veteri et in Novo Testamento sequentes se assidue habuit; in Veteri quidem per Baal; in Novo autem per Sadducaeos, qui nervi ipsius in schismate sunt, quia legem Dei, quae radix justitiae est, in qua patriarchae et prophetae latebant, cum sordibus Baal primum violaverunt; sed et illos qui postea in Novo Testamento cum Sadducaeis in resurrectionem in afflictione justitiae abnegaverunt quia praedictae radicis rami evangelium est, fructusque ramorum Christi testimonium existit, quod idola Baal et Sadducaeos fortiter contrivit. Sed tamen deinde ab istis haeretici procedent, qui conditioni primae pullulationis contradicent, errorque istorum pejor priore erit, quoniam Deum in creatione sua, et in viventibus animabus ex toto negabunt. Omnes autem isti infelicem bestiam, videlicet perditum hominem, adorabunt, fidemque omnipotentis Dei deserentes dicent, quod nihil eis obsit, si praecepta Dei negligant.
De signis vel portentis et tempestatibus quas per magicas artes facturus est, et quomodo mori et resurgere se simulans quamdam scripturam fallacia diaboli inventa in frontibus sequentium se describi faciet, qua decepti ulterius ab eo divelli et separari non poterunt.
Scripture echoes
- ↩2Thess.2.3 — Let no one deceive you in any way, because the rebellion must come first, and the man of lawlessness must be revealed—the son of destruction.
- ↩Rev.13.8 — And all who dwell on the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.
- ↩1Pet.2.22 — He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.
- ↩John.1.1-John.1.3 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John.1.2 — He was in the beginning with God. John.1.3 — All things came into being through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.
- ↩Matt.22.23-Matt.22.33 — That same day the Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection, and they questioned him. Matt.22.24 — saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If someone dies having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.'" Matt.22.25 — Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and since he had no offspring, he left his wife to his brother. Matt.22.26 — In the same way the second also, and the third also, up to the seven. Matt.22.27 — And last of all, the woman also died. Matt.22.28 — In the resurrection, then, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had her. Matt.22.29 — But Jesus answered them, "You are deceived, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Matt.22.30 — For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Matt.22.31 — But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, Matt.22.32 — I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Matt.22.33 — And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
Notes
- 1 ↩The phrase fallacia diaboli inventa is syntactically ambiguous: it could be taken as an ablative of means ('by the deceit of the devil, devised') or as an appositional nominative/ablative agreeing with scripturam. I have rendered it as attributive to scripturam ('a writing devised by the devil's deceit'), which fits the sense of a counterfeit mark, but the alternative grouping is possible.
- 2 ↩The image of a mark inscribed on the foreheads of followers echoes Revelation 13:16; the candidate allusion is held for tx-08 Moses resolution.
Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) companion
Don't stop at Day 30
All 317 chapters live in the free Chosen Portion app, paced for daily reading
Hildegard's practice of daily attention to God's work in creation becomes a paced daily devotional through all ten visions in the Chosen Portion app
- One vision passage a day, readable in under 10 minutes
- The complete Book of Divine Works plus Hildegard's other major works, free
- Progress tracking so a 317-chapter classic actually gets finished