It is here that we will understand why self-denial was the first requirement that Christ proclaimed to the world. The entire Sermon on the Mount is based on the idea of renunciation. To turn one's gaze to another, to God or to one's neighbor, to forget oneself, not to show oneself, to hide oneself, not to care about one's affairs, to give oneself to others – the main motive of Christ's preaching. What is this demand to turn the other cheek when you have already been hit on one, if not an order not to let the anger that flares out, to step over yourself. What is this commandment to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, if not an indication that such giving to another makes us children of "our Father in heaven" (Matt. 5:45, that is, it deifies our being? fasting, not to be despondent, what is this, if not a commandment to hide oneself from the eyes of people and open oneself only to God? What else is the requirement not to lay up for oneself treasures on earth, not to worry about food and clothing, if not by trying to turn one's gaze away from oneself and direct it to God? Self-love is the greatest temptation of man. And overcoming it should be the main concern of a person.

That is why Christ directs man's attention to this overcoming, sharpening the gaze of his spirit, so that man would closely observe the manifestations of self-love and not succumb to its temptation. Self-love is often like love, just as the beast is like the Lamb. It is hidden under justice, under good deeds, behind fasting, behind care, behind almsgiving, behind prayer. It justifies itself by the need to act, create, educate, and take care of. It is dressed in the garb of religion so that it will be easier for it to bury the religion itself. After all, Solovyov's Antichrist was blameless, restrained, virtuous, zealous in his desire to serve and help others. He was a man of "unblemished morality." Most likely, he did not violate any of the Ten Commandments of God. But he loved neither God nor his neighbor, and thus violated the greatest commandment, on which "all the law and the prophets are established" (Matt. 22:40). With the Sermon on the Mount, Christ wanted to reveal the deceptiveness of self-love. He wanted to warn man against all those external forms in which love has died and which therefore become traps on the path of human existence. Christian self-denial is the overcoming of self-love and at the same time the strengthening of love. This is the strengthening of the divine in man and thus the main means of combating the designs of the Antichrist. Self-denial is the power that leads a person to God and makes him a member of the society of the Lamb. It is essentially a religious force. Its basis lies in the very existence of man. To deny oneself means to be for another and in another, to be together, that is, as God has ordained for man.

The expression "renunciation of oneself" is love. It is, as it has been said, a force directed towards being: a force from oneself into another. Therefore, a person who renounces himself, who directs his gaze to another, leans towards this other, takes care of him, takes care of him and helps him. This is Christian caritas. However, it is not only external behavior, not only external help, but also a deep experience of the other as the realization of oneself. After all, it is possible to help another not only out of love, but also out of self-love. Solovyov's Antichrist is just such a selfish friend and benefactor of people. He saves people not because he considers them to be his brothers in the Lord and experiences them as a space in which he realizes his existence, manifesting the image of God in himself, but because people for him are only a means of satisfying his own self-love, he wants people who have been saved by him and who have accepted his help to revere him, thank him and recognize him as their guide and master. Doing good deeds, the Antichrist feels that he has risen above people, that he dominates them, he sees them bowing down before him. The Antichrist's caritas not only does not overcome self-love, but elevates it to the highest degree, for it turns one's neighbor into the slave of the benefactor. Only when our neighbor is experienced as standing above us, as our inner calling, as the bearer of the same image of God, only then does our external help to him become an expression of Christian caritas and marks us with the sign of God. Only then is our renunciation of ourselves realized, as Christ demands.

This inner attitude, this experience of the divinity of man, is precisely what distinguishes Christian caritas from the help of the Antichrist. Helping a person has now become almost fashionable. All kinds of international and national societies compete with each other in providing such assistance. The beast adorns his horns to resemble the Lamb as much as possible. And many are seduced by this similarity. Many believe that some part of these societies really works in the name of love for one's neighbor. And yet, in its essence, their activity belongs to the sphere of antichrist help, for they lack the experience of the divinity of man. They look at their wards as prisoners, as if they were bought for a piece of bread. Superficially, these blessings are similar to Christian caritas, and those who do them sometimes materially do much more than Christians.

However, the spirit that sustains and compels the performance of these good deeds is essentially different. Christ commands us to do good so that man may go out of himself, so that he may support himself in the direction of being, so that, by existing in another, he may gain himself. Meanwhile, the Antichrist does good in order to bring man to his knees before him, in order to see him humiliated, despised, and enslaved. Christian caritas is service to one's neighbor, antichrist's beneficence is power over one's neighbor. That is why today it is so widely used, so widespread in the society of the beast. St. John's advice not to believe in every spirit, but first of all to understand them, is especially important and necessary in love for one's neighbor, for here self-love is most easily concealed under the cover of good works. That is why Christianity demands that these deeds be carried out in the name of Christ; so that a person does not boast about them and is not proud; so that he does not demand gratitude for them, as the benefactors of the Antichrist do. The discovery of oneself is an indication that the help given to one's neighbor is really Christian caritas, and not the help of the Antichrist.

However, the consequences of self-love are not limited to this. Self-love not only distances man from the Creator and His creation, but it causes man to hate God and the world, followed by destruction and annihilation. St. John in his first epistle says that "he who does not love his brother abides in death" (1 John 3:14). The statement has a deep meaning. Lovelessness and death are essentially interconnected. Whoever does not love bears death and dies together. Turning away from being and closing himself in on himself, man denies love only psychologically, because he is not able to ontologically refute the forces hidden in him directed towards being. Love as a divine likeness remains in him even in the times of the highest selfishness. It resounds in him as the voice of conscience, it compels him to return to being and begin to exist anew with others and in others. Every encounter with people and things, every relationship with the world and with the representatives of God, reminds the self-lover of the higher direction of existence that he has rejected and does not allow him to be completely satisfied in his choice. The self-lover lives in constant tension between the appeal of love and the rejection of his self-love.

This tension, this constant reminder and appeal, causes a person to hate everything that does not allow him to calm down in his prison. Self-love is transformed into hatred of being. And the more a person loves himself, the more he hates others. This consistently follows from the aversion to being and the turn into oneself. Self-love as a force directed into itself wants to remain the only one. It wants to concentrate a person around it in such a way that everything else disappears. The solipsism of self-love tries to burn with the fire of hatred all the bridges connecting it with the world and man. But such an abrupt break in all ties is achieved only when being is destroyed. When things and people disappear, then the self-lover is really alone, and then no one prevents him from focusing only on himself and taking care only of himself. Destruction becomes a consistent expression of self-love in life. As much as love builds, so much does hatred caused by self-love destroy. It destroys everything: objects, people, and their relationships; it encroaches even on God Himself and His order. That is why St. John says that "everyone who hates his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15). In the physical sense, he may not kill him, as Cain killed Abel, but in his soul he longs for his non-existence. He longs for his neighbor to disappear! Therefore, the thought of murder takes deep roots in every selfish person. From this spiritual murder follows physical destruction. "He who does not love his brother abides in death" (1 John 3:14), and not only in the sense that he himself "has no eternal life in him" (1 John 3:15), but also in the fact that he brings death to another, destruction becomes the mode of his action. The self-lover carries good things with one hand in order to be honored, and death with the other, destroying those who do not bow down before him and do not recognize him as ruler.

That is why Solovyov's Antichrist, having gained power, forcibly drives all peoples into his empire, kills Pope Peter II and Elder John, exiles Christians devoted to Christ to the desert, forbidding them "to dwell in cities and other populated places," and finally, organizes a mass slaughter of Christians and Jews who do not bow down before him. This is the path of the power of the Antichrist at all times. From the very beginning, the spirit of the Antichrist has been murder since the time of Cain. Wherever the destruction of existence takes place, where brother hates brother, where children betray their fathers, where man is man's enemy, there the Antichrist lurks, there he creates his kingdom, for the devil "was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44). He is the true author of death, for "God did not create death, nor did He rejoice in the destruction of the living" (1:13). The killing of life is the most significant phenomenon of the land defiled by the devil. This is a sign of demonism lurking in nature and in history.

And yet this is only the consistent development of self-love, which, through aversion to being, through hatred of it, leads man to its destruction in every possible way. Every Antichrist is selfish, and therefore a murderer. It is enough to make self-love the basis of life, and the performers of this life will wander through the blood of their brothers. That is why the devil is a murderer from the very beginning, because he is selfish from the very beginning. Self-love is the source of every action of the Antichrist. It is the anthropological sign of the Antichrist, which the supporters of the beast wear on their right hand or on their foreheads (cf. Rev. 13:16), and consequently in their thoughts and deeds. Their reason may believe in God and man, they may tremble before God and help man, but selfishness turns them away from God, focuses them on themselves, destroys the image of the Lord in them, and thus makes them open and accessible to the eternal enemy of God. Self-love is the sign of the Antichrist, the way and means of his activity in history.

2. THE PERCEPTION OF CHRIST BY THE FORERUNNER

Self-love determines the relationship of the Antichrist not only with God, not only with the world and man, but also with Christ. The Antichrist, as has been said, is turned away from God by the whole direction of his being. However, superficially, he appears to be a believer, for he believes in goodness, God and the Messiah. He even patronizes religion: he tries to unite the divided churches, grants them rights and privileges, supports them financially, and keeps with him Bishop Apollonius, whom he later even elects pope. The outward relationship of the Antichrist with God and with religion seems to be quite positive.

It is precisely this superficial positivity that obscures the true spirit of the Antichrist. Not a single one, seeing the Antichrist believing in God, admiring his amazing generosity to religion, does not notice the essential godlessness hidden in him, and therefore is deceived by these external manifestations. Not alone, having experienced a shock, goes over to his side, considering the defenders of Christ to be stubborn, narrow-minded, not understanding the spirit of the times and therefore losing. Let us agree that there are such people in the company of the Lamb, that they try to hide their limitations under the need to preserve the heritage of doctrine (cf. 1 Timothy 6:20) and therefore do not move forward in their activities, thus distorting the character of the Church itself, for the Church is always in development, like that mustard seed. It is not a petrified antiquity, but an ever-living force. But the real petrification of these people in no way justifies their superficiality, with which, opening their arms, they meet the help of the Antichrist of religion, considering those who provide this help to be supporters of the Lamb, and willingly help them. This downright tragic misunderstanding runs like a red thread through the entire story. The temptation of earthly rights, opportunities, privileges and benefits is so great that few can resist it. The majority succumb to it, thus yielding to the hidden will of the Antichrist.

So it is not without reason that Solovyov depicts this falling away from God, mentioned in Holy Scripture (cf. 2 Thess. 2:9), in the image of this temptation. His Antichrist, having become the ruler of the world, returns the exiled popes to Rome, restoring them to all the rights and privileges that they have possessed since the time of Constantine the Great. Indeed, this act of his is a significant support for the Church. True, the Church is essentially not connected with any space of our land, nor with any rights or opportunities granted to it by people in history. It exists in the world, but it is not of the world. Therefore, any gift of the world cannot enrich its essence. The Church is enriched only by the Holy Spirit, who truly spreads divine Revelation and exalts her eternal values, who calls the saints into the vineyards of Christ, who spreads the Gospel throughout the world, and who builds and gives meaning to the forms of divine worship. These are the true riches of the Church and its true values. However, since these values must be spread throughout the world, the world's assistance in their implementation also becomes significant. It makes it so that divine values are perceived by people in different ways – some more easily, others with difficulty, in one place they can be realized, in another – not. Worldly help either helps the Kingdom of God or hinders it.

Knowing this, Solovyov's Antichrist dares to offer his help to the Church. He chooses the highest form of this assistance, rights and privileges, and gives them in the highest place of the Church, in the institution of the Pope, in its very center. So, maybe he should be supported? Perhaps he himself should be recognized as the guardian of the Church, as was Constantine the Great and a number of subsequent holy and non-holy kings? Most representatives of the Church do so. "And with joyful exclamations: 'Gratiasagimus! Domine, salvum fac magnum imperatorem!" — almost all the princes of the Catholic Church, cardinals and bishops, most of the lay believers and more than half of the monks ascended the stage and, after low bows in the direction of the emperor, took their seats. The same thing happened with representatives of two other confessions: the Orthodox and the Protestants. The former were tempted by the museum of Christian archaeology established by the emperor, the latter by the World Institute for the Free Study of the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, most of the first and second ascended the stage together with their bishops and leaders and took the benches at the throne of the emperor.