Saturday, June 04, 2005

A true vision of the future from the 17th century?

via Michael Duburiel, the Prophecy of Saint Nilos, a hermit of Mount Athos on the time of the Antichrist.

I found this passage particularly interesting:
...the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs. He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man, so that he will discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from one end of the earth to the other. At that time, men will also fly through the air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish. And when they have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is the deceit of the Antichrist.


I do not know whether it is of reliable provenance or if it is a recent forgery. A google search mentions this Saint Nilos almost entirely in relation to this putative prophecy.

Even if it was truly his, of course, doesn't make his prophecy a genuine one. However, its technological allusions would be of interest to anybody interested in the history of futurology.

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