Even fanatics must stand affrighted before conclusions like these, and the Bezpopovtsy feel the need of some justification for their subversal of the _cultus_ and the morality of Christianity. They find but one solution for the awful enigma presented by Christ's abandonment of the Church and mankind, by the extinction of appointed sacraments and means of grace, and by the impious rupture of the tie between man and God. The downfall of Church and priesthood and the triumph of falsehood and wrong were foretold by the prophets. This is the time predicted in Holy Writ, when the very elect shall be wellnigh seduced, and when God shall seem to give up His own into the hand of the Adversary. The priestless Church is the Church in the state of widowhood foretold by Daniel in the last days. Thus, the Raskol was brought by the new path of theology to that belief in the approaching end of the world and the reign of Antichrist to which we have already seen it led by its aversion to ecclesiastical and civil reforms. That the reign of Antichrist is begun is the fundamental doctrine of the Raskol, and particularly of the Bezpopovstchin. In the light of this new dogma all the contradictions of the latter are explained and justified. This is the reason for the extinction of the priesthood, of marriage and of the family. Wherefore--many ask--wherefore continue the race when the archangel's trump is about to proclaim the end of humanity? The end of the world was announced to be nigh even before Peter the Great; and they who proclaimed it are not yet weary of awaiting it. Like Christians in the West in other periods, they are not undeceived by the delay of the destined time, and are at no loss to explain it. Many consider the reign of Antichrist to be a period or era which may last for centuries, as one of the three great epochs in religious history, and as having, like those of the old and the new dispensations, a law of its own which abrogates what went before. All of the Raskolniks, or even of the Bezpopovtsy, however, do not agree as to Antichrist; for while his reign is generally admitted, it seems to be very differently understood. Those who retain the priesthood and the more moderate of their opponents hold his reign to be spiritual and invisible, and government and established Church to be the unconscious or unwilling tools of Satan; while the extremists of the Bezpopovstchin maintain that Antichrist reigns materially and palpably. He it is, as we have seen, who occupies the throne of the czars since Peter the Great, and his Sanhedrim that usurps the name of the holy synod. Trivial as the difference is, theologically speaking, its political consequences are considerable; for the state may arrive at some understanding with sects that only regard it as blind and misled, while even a truce is out of the question with those which look upon it as the incarnate enemy of souls.