Prayer Against the Antichrist by Elder Anatoly the Younger of Optina Pustyn Monastery | Retro Computer Screen Pixel Text | Orthodox Christian T-Shirt

At the time when the serpent shall come, there will be no calm on the earth; there will be great affliction, consternation, disorder, death and famine unto all the ends of the earth. And our Lord himself said with his divine lips that such affliction ‘was not from the beginning of the creation’ (Mark 13:19). How indeed can we sinners imagine this measureless and even unspeakable affliction, when God gave it such a name? Let everyone hold his mind with attention on the holy sayings of the Lord and Savior, how he, according to his compassion, because of the extreme necessity and tribulation, wishes to cut short the days of sorrow, exhorting us and saying: ‘pray ye that your flight be no; in winter neither on the Sabbath’ (Matthew 24:20); And again: ‘watch ye therefore, and praying always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape these things and to stand before God’ (Luke 21:36) because the time is near. We are all plunged into this misfortune but we do not believe. But let us ask unceasingly with tears and prayers, day and night prostrating ourselves before God in order that we sinners may be saved. He who possesses tears and compunction, let him entreat the Lord to deliver us from the affliction which will come upon the earth, and that we see not this beast at all and do not hear of his dreadful spectacles.

+ St Ephraim the Syrian