St. Augustine (d. 430)

a. "For to this beast belong not only the avowed enemies of the name of Christ and His most glorious city, but also the tares which are to be gathered out of His kingdom, the Church, in the end of the world.

b. "And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall go out to seduce the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. This, then, is his purpose in seducing them, to draw them to this battle. For even before this he was wont to use as many and various seductions as he could continue. And the words 'he shall go out' mean, he shall burst forth from lurking hatred into open persecution. For this persecution, occurring while the final judgment is imminent, shall be the last which shall be endured by the holy Church, throughout the world, the whole city of Christ being assailed by the whole city of the devil, as each exists on earth. For these nations which he names Gog and Magog are not to be understood of some barbarous nations in some part of the world.

c. "For John marks that they are spread over the whole earth, when he says, The nations which are in the four corners of the earth/ and he added that these are Gog and Magog. The meaning of these names we find to be, Gog, 'a roof/ Magog, 'from a roof/ — a house, as it were, and he who comes out of the house. They are therefore the nations in which we found that the devil was shut up as in an abyss, and the devil himself coming out from them and going forth, so that they are the roof, he from the roof. Or if we refer both words to the nations, not one to them and one to th devil, then they are both the roof, because in them the old enemy is at present shut up, and as it were roofed in; and they shall be from the roof when they break forth from concealed to open hatred. The words, 'And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city/ do not mean that they have come, or shall come, to one place, as if the camp of the saints and the beloved city should be in some one place; for this camp is nothing else than the Church of Christ extending over the Avhole world. And consequently wherever the Church shall be, — and it shall be in all nations, as is signified by 'the breadth of the earth/ — there also shall be the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and there it shall be encompassed by the saints, wherewith they refuse to yield obedience to those who rage against them. For the firmament is 'heaven/ by whose firmness these assailants shall be pained with blazing zeal, for they shall be impotent to draw away the saints to the party of Antichrist. This is the fire which shall devour them, and this is 'from God / for it is by God's grace the saints become unconquerable, and so torment their enemies.

e. " 'And now/ that is to say, not the fire of the last judgment. Or if by this fire coming down out of heaven and consuming them, John meant that blow wherewith Christ in his coming is to strike those persecutors of the Church whom He shall then find alive upon earth, when He shall kill Antichrist with the breath cf His mouth, then even this is not the last judgment of the wicked.

f. "After this mention of the closing persecution, he summarily indicates all that the devil, and the city of which he is the prince, shall suffer in the last judgment. Fjr he says, 'And the devil who seduced them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, in which are the beast and the false prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever/ We have already said that by the beast is well understood the wicked city. His false prophet is either Antichrist or that image or figment of which we have spoken in the same place.

g. "Truly Jesus Himself shall extinguish by His presence that last persecution which is to be made by Antichrist. For so it is written, that 'He shall slay him with the breath of His mouth, and empty him with the brightness of His presence/ h. "I can on no account omit what the Apostle Paul says, in writing, to the Thessalonians, 'We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ/ etc.

i. "No one can doubt that he wrote this of Antichrist and of the day of judgment, which he here calls the day of the Lord, nor that he declared that this day should not come unless he first came who is called the apostate — apostate, to wit, from the Lord God.

j. "For when he fell from heaven as fire, and at a stroke swept away from the holy Job his numerous household and his vast flocks, and then as a whirlwind rushed upon and smote the house and killed his children, these were not deceitful appearances, and yet they were the work of Satan to whom God had given this power.

k. "Daniel prophesies of the last judgment in such a way as to indicate that Antichrist shall first come, and to carry on his description to the eternal reign of the saints. For when in prophetic vision he had seen four beasts, signifying four kingdoms, and the fourth conquered by a certain king, who is recognized as Antichrist, and after this the eternal kingdom of the Son of man, that is to say, of Christ. Some have interpreted these four kingdoms as signifying those of the Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans. They who desire to understand the fitness of this interpretation may read Jerome's book on Daniel, which is written with a sufficiency of care and erudition. But he who reads this passage, -even half asleep, cannot fail to see that the kingdom of Antichrist shall fiercely, though, for a short time, assail the Church before the last judgment of God shall introduce the eternal reign of saints. For it is patent from the context that the time, times, and half a time, means a year, and two years, and half a year, that is to say, three years and a half. Sometimes in Scripture the same thing is indicated by months. For though the word times seems to be used here in the Latin indefinitely, that is only because the Latins have no dual, as the Greeks have, and as the Hebrews also are said to have. Times, therefore, is used for two times. "

1. "It is a familiar theme in the conversation and heart of the faithful, that in the last days before the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our Christ, by means of this great admirable prophet Elias who shall expound the law to them.

"For not without reason do we hope that before the coming of our Judge and Saviour Elias shall come, because we have good reason to believe that he is now alive ; for as Scripture most distinctly informs us, he was taken up from this life in a chariot of fire. When, therefore, he is come, he shall give a spiritual explanation of the law which the Jews at present understand carnally, and shall thus "turn the heart of the father to the son," that is, the heart of fathers to their children; for the Septuagint translators have frequently put the singular for the plural number. And the meaning is, that the sons, that is, the Jews, shall understand the law as the fathers, that is, the prophets, and among them Moses himself, understood it. For the heart of the fathers shall be turned to their children when the children shall be turned to their fathers when they have the same sentiments as the fathers.

"The Septuagint used the expression, 'and the heart of a man to his next of kin/ because fathers and children are eminently neighbours to one another. Another and a preferable sense can be found in the words of the Septuagint translators, who have translated Scripture with an eye to prophecy, the sense, viz., that Elias shall turn the heart of God the Father to the Son, not certainly as if he should bring about this love of the Father for the Son, but meaning that he should make it known, and that the Jews also, who had previously hated, should then love the Son who is our Christ. For so far as regards the Jews, God has His heart turned away from our Christ, this being their conception about God and Christ. But in their case the heart of God shall be turned to the Son when they themselves shall turn in heart, and learn the love of the Father towards the Son.

"The words following, 'and the heart of a man to his next of kin/ — that is, Elias shall also turn the heart of a man to his next of kin, — how can we understand this better than as the heart of a man to the man Christ ? For though in the form of God He is our God, yet, taking the form of a servant, He condescended to become also our next of kin. It is this, then, which Elias will do, 'lest,' he says, 1 come and smite the earth utterly.' For they who mind earthly things are the earth. Such are the carnal Jews until this day; and hence these murmers of theirs against God, 'The wicked are pleasing to Him/ and It is a vain thing to serve God' ".