Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Warning About the Antichrist and the End of an Era
“Who is going to save the Church? It is not going to be us bishops, priests, and religious, but you the people. You have the eyes, the ears, and the minds to save the Church, and the responsibility to make sure your bishops act like bishops, priests act like priests, and your religious act like religious.” —Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
During his radio broadcast from New York City on January 26, 1947, as part of his regular program, The Catholic Hour, Father Fulton J. Sheen (he was made a bishop in 1951, and is now Venerable in the eyes of the Church, soon to be Blessed in September 2026) delivered a profoundly intuitive and far-sighted talk, as if he had peered into the 21st century. The talk is often referred to as the “Signs of Our Times” and reflections on the spirit of the Antichrist. In 1947, few would have ever imagined the concepts he introduced would be possible on the coming of the Antichrist. In every sense of the word, Sheen was a visionary. Reading below one must keep in mind his statistics are in 1947, when people speak of The Greatest Generation.
In this same broadcast, not long after the end of World War II, Sheen warned, “From now on the struggle will be…for the souls of men.” People would begin to divide into two religions of absolutes—“the God Who became man and the man who makes himself God; brothers in Christ and comrades in Antichrist.” Then, he offered a description of how he perceived the person of the Antichrist.
Setting the Stage
Far-seeing Archbishop Sheen said that the Antichrist will not be called by that name, “otherwise he would have no followers.” Same for the way he, the devil, is depicted such as in cartoons because he “will wear no red tights, nor vomit sulfur, nor carry a trident, nor wave an arrow tail as Mephistopheles in Faust.” Nowhere does Scripture give us this idea of his appearance, Sheen emphasized. But it twists into an unlikely instrument.
“This masquerade [concealing his identity] has helped the devil convince men that he does not exist,” Sheen revealed, setting the stage. The devil “knows that he is never so strong as when men believe that he does not exist. When no man recognizes, the more power he exercises. God has defined Himself as I am Who am and the devil as ‘I am who am not.’”
Has the masquerade worked since 1947? Let us look at what the Center for Research on the Apostolate (CARA) noted in 2017 by looking over past, and then current studies. CARA reported, in 1968, Gallup asked adults if they believe there is or is not a devil. 60% believed; 35% did not; and 5% were unsure. By 1982, when Gallup carried out the survey at CARA’s request, 70% believed. The same held true in 2007.
But then CARA asked what exactly people believed, and a survey four years later shockingly found that, 69% of those who believed in God, believed the devil merely a symbol. Further breakdowns showed, even more shockingly, that, amongst Catholics, roughly 83% regarded Satan a symbol. In 2011, only 53% of the Conservative Catholics believed the Devil was real; amongst Moderate Catholics, only 49% believed the devil was real.
In a 2017 newspaper interview in Spain, the new superior general of the Society of Jesus ( Jesuits) said, “We have formed symbolic figures such as the devil to express evil. Social conditioning can also represent this figure, since there are people who act [in an evil way] because they are in an environment where it is difficult to act to the contrary.”
But Sheen knew the devil is not a symbol. “Rather he is described as an angel fallen from Heaven, and as ‘“the prince of this world’ whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world,” he said, referring to Scripture. “His logic is simple: if there is no Heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no judgment then evil is good and good is evil.”
Stepping aside for a moment, we should also remember Our Lord’s words. Jesus confirmed Satan’s existence in the act of delineating his ungodly traits: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44).
Sheen then underscored that Our Lord revealed this iniquitous one, the Antichrist, “will be so much like Himself, that he would deceive even the elect—and certainly no devil we have ever seen in picture books could deceive even the elect.”
St. Paul was emphatic on this point as well. He warned the Corinthians about those false ones infiltrating their numbers, that “even Satan masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).
So how might the Antichrist look and get followers to his “anti-religion”?
False Front
“He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty not as a means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves,” Bishop Sheen warned:
“He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live; induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for sins; he will explain guilt away psychologically as inhibited eroticism, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal; he will be so broadminded as to identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong, truth and error.
He will spread the lie that men will never be better until they make society better and thus have selfishness to provide fuel for the next revolution; he will foster science but only to have armament makers use one marvel of science to destroy another; he will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is ‘vital’; he will increase love for love and decrease love for person; he will invoke religion to destroy religion; he will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived; his mission he will say will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define.”
Much of what Sheen proposes sounds familiar, does it not? That word, “tolerance,” blankets society. Pew Research reported in October 2025 that 33% of Catholics believe in astrology, 36% in reincarnation, and 46% in psychics. The research further showed, 76% of Catholics want the Church to allow birth control, 61% want cohabiting couples admitted to reception of Holy Communion, 62% for admission of the divorced and remarried to reception of Holy Communion without a declaration of nullity, 46% to recognize gay/lesbian marriages. “Love” has deteriorated to entertainment, (Hollywood/Music Industry/TV) definitions, perfectly aligning with what Sheen propounded.
Same Old Temptations and the Counter Church
Far sighted Bishop Sheen predicted how we servants are like the Master as he described the Antichrist’s using the three temptations with which he tried to tempt Christ in the desert. By the way, Jesus was not tempted in the desert by a symbolic figure as some have come to believe.
First, “the temptation to turn stones into bread as an earthly Messiah will become the temptation to sell freedom for security, as bread became a political weapon, and only those who think this way may eat.” Some dictatorships have already laid the groundwork along these lines; such that, the overlords will help countries, only if their citizens accept immoral means, systems, and ways; or, populaces will be so desperate, they will depend on the government to supply everything.
Second, “the temptation to work a miracle by recklessly throwing Himself from a steeple will become a plea to desert the lofty pinnacles of truth where faith and reason reign, for those lower depths where the masses live on slogans and propaganda.”
The Antichrist “wants no proclamation of immutable principles from the lofty heights of a Church, but mass organization through propaganda…
Opinions not truths, commentators not teachers, Gallup polls not principles, nature not grace—and to these golden calves will men toss themselves from their Christ.”
Third, asking Jesus to adore the tempter so that all the Kingdoms of the world would be His, “will become the temptation.” Sheen explained, “to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a city of man without a city of God, a religion to invoke a religion, or politics which is a religion—one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.” How many look for salvation today in and through politics? And yet, how many governments have provided the fullness of peace and unending redemption.
A Counter Church, an Ape Church
Bishop Sheen foresaw the Antichrist setting up a counter Church “which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be the mystical body of the Anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”
Since many people are lonely and frustrated and desperately need God but refuse to adore him, they will hunger for a larger purpose in life and, ironically, accept the counter-Church. The saintly bishop explained, “The Church was critically spurned in the last few centuries because it claimed that it was Catholic and universal, uniting all men on the basis of one Lord, one faith and one Baptism. It breaks down all national boundaries, laughs down patriotism, dispenses men from piety to country which the Christ enjoined, makes men proud that they are not Americans, French, or British, but members of a revolutionary class under the rule of its Vicar who rules not from the Vatican, but the Kremlin.”
Just as St. John informs, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the Antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared” (1 John 2:18), “and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist (1 John 4:3), so Sheen recognized the Kremlin’s diabolical Communism an Antichrist of modernity. Our Lady descended from Heaven to earth at Fatima to alert this very threat, and to advise how to overcome this grave evil.
Sheen continued: “in the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality,” the Anti-Christ “will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God.”
As early as 1947 Sheen saw the signs of the times and how the disorder would tie into “the wages of sin.”
The rest of this article can be found in Ted Flynn’s new book and in Signs and Wonders Summer/Fall 2026. Become a member today to receive this issue!
