Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knows not God.
Read Chapter 18
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
That these words are to be understood as speaking of the antichrist is shown when it is added, “In his days the last shall be astonished, and horror shall seize on the first.” He will then let himself loose against the righteous with such a measure of iniquity that even the hearts of the very elect shall be struck with no small consternation. Hence it is written, “Insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect,” which clearly isn’t said because the elect shall fall but because they shall tremble with terrible alarms. Now, at that time, both the latest elect and the first elect are described as maintaining the conflict for righteousness against him. They that shall be found among the elect at the end of the world are destined to be laid low in the death of the flesh. And they too who proceeded from the former times of the world, that is, Enoch and Elijah, shall be brought back among humankind and shall be exposed to the savageness of his cruelty while still in thei...
28. For he had said above; He shall drive him from fight into darkness, and translate him out of the world; and upon subjoining his miseries, he added; Surely, such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God. In that he who is now lifted up from not knowing God, is then brought to his own ‘dwellings,’ when his own wickedness plunges him into woes; and one day he finds ‘darkness his place,’ who, while he made himself glad here in the counterfeit light of righteousness, was occupying the place of another. For bad men in all that they do in dissimulation, are striving to possess themselves of the righteous man’s name of credit, as of another’s place. But they are then brought to their own place, when they are tormented with everlasting fire, as the desert of their iniquity. For here in all that they do they are ministering to their desire of winning praise, and by the semblance of good works, they are opening wider the bosom of the mind to avar...
