“As the early Christians, in obedience to our Lord's words, were ever looking out for His second coming, and for the signs of it, they associated it with every prominent disturbance, external or internal, which interfered with the peace of the Church; with every successive persecution, heretical outbreak, or schism which befell it. In this, too, they were only following the guidance of our Lord and His Apostles, who told them that ‘great tribulation,’ ‘false prophets,’ disunion, and ‘apostasy’ and at length ‘Antichrist,’ should be His forerunners.”    - St. Athanasius