11. Everything in the vision was shaped by the evangelist in
connection with the design of the Lord in his incarnation—his birth, his
temptation, his teachings, the insults to him, and indeed the cross and the
resurrection, and the second coming, and in addition to these the rewards and
punishments of the saints and the sinners. But nothing had been said about the
accounts of the heralds of his second coming, so, as though by a turnabout,
these matters are now explained. (2) It is clear to everyone that the divine
Scripture predicted that Elijah the Tishbite would come, because Malachi says,
“See, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite before the great and glorious day of
the Lord comes, who will turn the heart of the father to his son, and the heart
of a man to his neighbor, lest I come and smite the land with might.” And in
Matthew’s gospel the Lord says of the Baptist, “and if you are willing to
accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.” (3) We have not heard anything at all
clear about any other herald, except that Genesis said about Enoch, “because he
was well-pleasing to God he was taken up,” and the wise apostle said about him,
“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not
found, because God had taken him.” (4) An old tradition holds sway in the
church: with Elijah the Tishbite, Enoch will also come as the precursor of the
second coming of Christ, as he prepares to take his stand against the
Antichrist; for they say that they came first and testified that the signs
which the Antichrist would perform were deception and that one should not
believe the wretch. (5) It is about these that the vision now says that they will prophesy for so many days, meaning either some mystical
number or one which will actually be the truth. (6) They will do this, he says,
clothed in sackcloth. For they will
mourn over the disobedience of humankind at that time. (Oecumenius,
Commentary on the Apocalypse [trans.
John N. Suggit; The Fathers of the Church 112; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2006], 101-2)
