Realizing that St. Nilus is scarcely known to a large part of the Church, a brief sketch of his life, taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911 copyright edition), is related below:
St. Nilus was one of the many disciples and fervent defenders of St. John Chrysostom. He was an officer at the Court of Constantinople, married, with two sons. While St. John Chrysostom was patriarch, before his exile (398-403), he directed Nilus in the study of Scripture and in works of piety. St. Nilus left his wife and one son and took the other, Theodulos, with him to Mount Sinai to be a monk. The Bishop of Eleusa ordained both St. Nilus and his son to the priesthood. The mother and other son also embraced the religious life in Egypt.
From his monastery at Sinai, St. Nilus was a well-known person throughout the Eastern Church. Through his writings and correspondence, he played an important part in the history of his time. He was known as a theologian, Biblical scholar and ascetic writer, so people of all kinds, from the Emperor down wrote to consult him.
His numerous works, including a multitude of letters, consist of denunciations of heresy, paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes. He also wrote about rules and principles of asceticism, especially maxims on the religious life. He warns and threatens people in high places, Abbots and Bishops, Governors and Princes, even the Emperor himself, without fear. He kept up a correspondence with Gaina, a leader of the Goths, endeavoring to convert him from Arianism. He denounced vigorously the persecution of St. John Chrysostom both to the Emperor Arcadius and to his courtiers.
St. Nilus must be counted as one of the leading ascetic writers of the 5th century. His feast is kept on November 12th in the Byzantine Calendar; he is commemorated also in the Roman Martyrology on the same date. St. Nilus probably died around the year 430, as there is no evidence of his life after that.
After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people’s minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable.
People’s appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, Bishops and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left.
At that time, the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society.
Apostasy
At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse.
The Churches of God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints. And all this will result from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs.
