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The Great Apostasy: The Sign That Comes First
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When the Christians of Thessalonica were told that the day of the Lord had already come, St. Paul answered with one fixed point in the order of events: “Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god—” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4). Before the lawless one, the apostasy. A great falling away from the faith prepares his way.
What Scripture says
St. Paul is not alone. The Lord himself warned: “Many false prophets will arise and deceive many; and because of the increase of evildoing, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:11–13). And he asked a question that has troubled believers ever since: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
The apostles describe the same falling away. “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and demonic instructions” (1 Timothy 4:1). “For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4).
And St. John notes where apostasy begins: inside the Church, not outside it. “They went out from us, but they were not really of our number” (1 John 2:19).
What the Church teaches
The Catechism gathers these warnings into one teaching: “Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.” The persecution that accompanies her will unveil “the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth” (CCC 675).
Notice the shape of the deception. It does not first ask people to deny God outright. It offers them an apparent solution to their problems, and asks only that they let go of the truth in exchange. That is how love grows cold: not all at once, but by trading truth for comfort, one compromise at a time.
What the Fathers and later writers saw
St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on St. Paul, considered that the apostasy might be a falling away from the faith, from the Roman Empire, or from the faith of the Roman Church. Newman, gathering the Fathers' teaching, held with them that the Antichrist would be preceded by, and born of, a general apostasy.
Fr. Charles Arminjon described the trial in strong terms: “Apostasies will be numerous, and courage will become rare.” He went on: “the leaders of peoples will be seen to bend the knee before the reigning idol,” and, “what is still more lamentable,” many of the learned, the theologians and the preachers will abandon the truth (The End of the Present World, pp. 48–49). The apostasy he foresaw is not only of ordinary believers. It reaches those who are meant to lead them.
What the figures show
Numbers cannot measure faith, and the apostasy St. Paul describes is more than a statistic. But the fall in belief and practice in our own country is real, and it can be checked. Here is what the most careful surveys report.
| Measure | Finding | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Americans who identify as Christian | 78% in 2007; about 62% in 2023–24. The decline “appears to have leveled off, at least temporarily.” | Pew Religious Landscape Study (nearly 37,000 adults, 2023–24) |
| Americans with no religion | 29% of adults in 2023–24 | Same study |
| Americans who belong to a church, synagogue or mosque | 73% in 1937; 47% in 2020, the first time below half | Gallup, 2021 |
| U.S. Catholics at Mass in a typical week | About 24% before the pandemic (2019); about 15% from March 2020 to May 2023; about 24% on average from mid-2023 to early 2025 | CARA estimates, February 2025 |
| U.S. Catholics who believe in the Real Presence | 31% when asked one direct question (2019); 64% when asked several questions and the answers assessed together (2023) | Pew, 2019; CARA for Notre Dame, 2023 |
| Catholics worldwide | About 1.39 billion at the end of 2022; 1.406 billion at the end of 2023. Growth of 3.31% in Africa, 0.2% in Europe. | Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae (Vatican News, March 2025) |
Two cautions keep these numbers honest. First, the picture is not the same everywhere. In the United States and Europe, belief and practice have fallen over decades. In Africa and parts of Asia, the Church is growing. Second, the two surveys on the Real Presence asked different questions and found very different answers, so neither should be quoted alone.
What the figures do show is the pattern Scripture describes: many who were baptized have drifted from the faith, often without ever deciding to leave it. Love has grown cold more often than it has been rejected.
Reading the sign without despair
Every age has seen falling away. St. Cyprian and Tertullian, facing the persecutions, thought the end was near, and so did many around the year 1000 (Arminjon, pp. 39–40). The apostasy of our time is a sign to read carefully, not proof that the end has come. And whatever its scale, it does not have the last word. “The one who perseveres to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13).
The Ephesus Challenge takes its name from the Lord's warning to a church that had lost “the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:4). The remedy he gave is the remedy for apostasy in every age: “Repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). St. Paul gave the same counsel to the Thessalonians after warning them of the apostasy: “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).
That is what Stand Firm is for.