Temple of God;" that is, according to the earlier Fathers, in the Jewish Temple. Our Saviour’s own words may be taken to support this notion, because He speaks of “the Abomination of Desolation,” (which, whatever other meanings it might have, in its fulness denotes Antichrist,) “standing in the holy place.” Further, the persecution of CHRIST’S witnesses which Antichrist will make, is described by St. John as taking place in Jerusalem. “Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, (which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,) where also our LORD was crucified.”
Now here a remark may be made. At first sight, I suppose, we should not consider that there was much evidence from the Sacred Text for Antichrist taking part with the Jews, or having to do with their Temple. It is, then, a very remarkable fact that the apostate emperor Julian, who was a type and earnest of the great enemy, should, as he did, have taken part with the Jews, and set about building their Temple. Here the history is a sort of comment on the prophecy, and sustains and vindicates the early interpretations of it which I am relating. Of course I must be understood to mean, and a memorable circumstance it is, that this belief of the Church that Antichrist should be connected with the Jews, was expressed long before Julian’s time, and that we still possess the works in which it is contained. We have the writings of two Fathers, both Bishops and martyrs of the Church, who lived at least one hundred and fifty years before Julian, and less than one hundred years after St. John. They both distinctly declare Antichrist’s connection with the Jews.
The one of them speaks as follows: “In the Temple which is at Jerusalem the adversary will sit, endeavouring to show himself to be the Christ.”
And the other says, “Antichrist will be he who shall resuscitate the kingdom of the Jews.”
