The Antichrist According To Hippolytus Of Rome

This booklet explores the teachings of an early church father regarding the Antichrist and the end of the age.

Hippolytus is an important figure in the development of Christian eschatology. In On Christ and the Antichrist and Commentary on the Prophet Daniel Hippolytus gave his interpretation of Bible prophecies. With the onset of persecutions during the reign of Septimus Severus, many early Christian writers turned to eschatology. On Christ and the Antichrist is one of his earliest works. Hippolytus was greatly influenced by Irenaeus. However, unlike Irenaeus, Hippolytus focus on the meaning of prophecy for the Church in his own time. Of the dogmatic works, On Christ and the Antichrist survives in a complete state and was probably written about 202.

Focuses especially on Irenaeus, Against heresies (p. 5-26), and Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist (p. 27-56). Conclusion: Satan/antichrist, a Jew, will seize power during the last half of the seventieth week of Daniel (i.e., three and a half years), and reign from the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. The Jews will proclaim him messianic king god. He will deceive a majority of the world's population and will persecute the believing minority. His reign ends with the coming of Christ. The two men agree on this point, and their view is validated by their closeness to the apostles (apostles -> Polycarp -> Irenaeus -> Hippolytus). The author is leader of Voice of Elijah (www.voiceofelijah.org).

Hippolytus of Rome (170 - 235 AD) wrote this treatise on the Antichrist and the end times during the early period of the Christian church, before it was an established religion. Evidence suggests that Hippolytus was a priest in Rome, although Eusebius of Caesarea and St. Jerome did not give a definite role for him in the wider church. Photios I of Constantinople names him as a disciple of Irenaeus, however many say that he was an antipope for the bishop of Rome, caught up in the debate about whether to receive back into the church those who had fallen away. He is most famous for his writings which had a great influence on the early church. The text for this work is taken from "Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886), translated by JH. MacMahon (1829-1900)." The footnotes and Bible references have been preserved and illustrations have been added of the Antichrist and figures from the book of Revelation.

Hippolytus of Rome (170-235) was the most important 3rd-century theologian in the Christian Church in Rome, where he was probably born. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus himself so styled himself. However, this assertion is doubtful. He came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival Bishop of Rome. For that reason he is sometimes considered the first antipope. He opposed the Roman bishops who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was very probably reconciled to the Church when he died as a martyr. Starting in the 4th century, various legends arose about him, identifying him as a priest of the Novatianist schism or as a soldier converted by Saint Lawrence. He has also been confused with another martyr of the same name. Ironically, it is Pius IV who identifies him as "Saint Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontus" who was martyred in the reign of Alexander Severus through his inscription on a statue found at the Church of St. Lawrence in Rome and kept at the Vatican as photographed and published in Brunsen.

This volume contains his most important polemic against heretics, the "Philosophumena", the original title of which is ‘A Refutation of All Heresies’. The first book had long been known; books IV to X, which had been discovered a short time previously, were published in 1851. But the first chapters of the fourth and the whole of the second and third books are still missing. The first four books treat of the Hellenic philosophers; books V to IX are taken up with the exposition and refutation of Christian heresies, and the last book contains a recapitulation. The work is one of the most important sources for the history of the heresies which disturbed the early Church. In addition this edition offers many fragments and an extensive appendix.

Two works by early Christian writer St. Hippolytus of Rome. The first work is entitled On the End of the World and the second is his most well known work, On Christ and the anti-Christ.

Who was the Church Father Hippolytus? The answer to this question has eluded scholars for centuries. His true identity was unknown even to Eusebius, the church historian, in the fourth century and to subsequent writers of the ancient Church. Yet his corpus was largely preserved through theearly centuries and influenced numerous theologians and exegetes, including Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome. Using ancient, Byzantine, and modern sources, the present study charts the growth of the Hippolytus question from its inception to the present day. It traces how early speculations led to theformation of various traditions of a prolific and controversial writer.This book is the first thorough analysis of the Hippolytus question in English for over a hundred years. Drawing on leading scholarship of the twentieth century, it untangles millennia of theory and points to the evidence of the Asian roots of the great biblical commentator known as SaintHippolytus. It suggests that this writer, so influential on the rethinking of western liturgical practice in the twentieth century, is best viewed as a scion of the East.