"
"So it is the old story again?"
"Story! Get thee hence Satan, for thou savourest not the things
which be of God, but those which be of men."
"Do you call me Satan?"
"Yes, when you deny the Word. Is it not written in John's Apocalypse,
'And when the thousand years are accomplished, Satan will be let
loose from his prison. And he shall go to deceive the nations which
are in the four ends of the earth, Gog and Magog'? There you have the
northern peoples who are now in England, Normandy, and Sicily. Is not
Theodora the great Babylonian Harlot? Is not the deceiver Muhammed
the Wild Beast?"
"Wait, my son! I might quote a verse from the same chapter: 'He who
hath part in the first resurrection shall reign with Christ a
thousand years.' So that the Millennium is _beginning_ now, and
cannot end forthwith."
"The old one ends, and the new begins."
"Just so! The old dark age is past, and we await Christ's second
coming on earth. If you retained the hope, you would see the new era
dawn."
"I do not believe a word of what you say. The last year of the
thousand years is here, and now I go out in the desert to await,
with fasting, prayer, and penance, the day of the Lord, and the
coming of my Redeemer. I will pray for you, my father, but here our
ways part, and you will see me no more.
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