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There are so many absolutely bizarre and politically diastrous ideas concerning
the nature of the Parousia (Christ's Second Coming) in the Christian world
today, ideas that are absolutely alien to orthodox Christianity as it's been
taught for 2,000 years. There are those who make sport and profit out of
trying to figure out who the Antichrist is and setting dates for the last
day. Books like Hal Lindsay's "Late Great Planet Earth," movies like "Left
Behind," panic over Y2K seen in an apocalyptic light -- where does all this
stuff come from? What does the Catholic Church say about it?
Let's start with the last question first, because the orthodox position is
very simple: when the end is near, the Gospel will have been preached to
all nations, many Jews will be converted, and we will see the "signs of the
times," an apostasy from the true faith, and an Antichrist, whom many will
see as a man of peace and wonders. The elect (His Church, true Israel) will
suffer a great Tribulation and many will be martyred. Then Jesus will come
again in glory to judge the living and the dead in His final judgement of
the world, the "Last Judgement." Our bodies will be glorified, and we will
reign with Him, as heirs of our Father, forever and ever. It's not up to
us to conjecture and speculate as to when this will happen, though we have
eyes to see the signs of the times; it is ours to preach the Gospel and put
on Christ. That's pretty much all there is to Catholic dogma on the matter,
though the earliest Christians leave their personal opinions in various writings,
most of which is in direct opposition to the common fundamentalist,
dispensationalist views.
Though the Church hasn't said much more than this as to the whens and whos
and wheres of the end of time, we can show that much of what many Christians
believe can't possibly be true and is extremely dangerous. Let's start
with:
The Naming of the Antichrist
Aside from the
moral evil of the calumny involved in naming people as the Antichrist when
they are indeed not the Antichrist -- especially when the person named
is an innocent successor of Peter, an accusation that keeps people away from
the Sacraments of the Catholic Church -- attempts to determine who is the
Antichrist are almost funny, a parlor game run amok: "Reagan's name adds
up to 666! No, it's Gorbachev! It's every Pope that's ever lived!" It's an
old game, one that Irenaeus of Lyons wrote about 1,800 years ago in Book
5, Chapter 30 of his Adversus haereses:
"It is therefore
more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy,
than to be making surmises, and casting about for any names that may present
themselves, inasmuch as many names can be found possessing the number mentioned;
and the same question will, after all, remain unsolved. For if there are
many names found possessing this number, it will be asked which among them
shall the coming man bear."
He then goes on
to show how the numerical values of three different contemporary names, Latin
and Greek, all added up to 666 and how it proved nothing.
One of the worst things to come out of this "Name That Antichrist" fun are
the accusations against the Pope. But let's see what Scripture says about
Antichrist and the papacy:
Matthew 16:18-19
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
1 John 2:22
"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist,
that denieth the Father and the Son."
1 John 4:3
"And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard
that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."
Now, has any Pope
ever denied that Christ has come in the flesh? Ever? Is the Church
that has proclaimed the Gospel for two millennia; the Church that gave us
Sacred Scripture; the Church that defined the dogma of the Trinity; the Church
that defeated the heresies of Arianism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism, Marcionism,
Sabellianism, and Manichæanism; the Church that has produced thousands
and thousands of Saints -- from St. Francis to Maximillian Kolbe to
Thérèse de Lisieux; the Church that is the greatest caregiver
of the poor in the world; the Church that has built hospitals, orphanages,
schools, and soup kitchens all over this planet; the Church that cares for
one out of four of the world's AIDS patients; the Church that is the single
greatest defender of life -- all life -- in the entire world -- is
this the Church of Antichrist? Come on! The Church of The Bells
of St. Mary and Angels with Dirty Faces -- the Antichrist?
The Church that proclaims not only did Messiah come in the first century,
but that He comes at each and every Catholic Mass -- in the flesh (it is
Protestants who deny this!) -- and will come again in glory to judge the
living and the dead? People who spew venom at the Catholic Church
need to think long and hard about what they are doing, because to slander
the Catholic Church is to blaspheme the Body of Christ. If you are one of
these people, pray about it, ask yourself why you believe what you believe,
and find out for sure whether or not things you believe about the Catholic
Church are true, using unbiased resources (including true Catholic ones).
Please.
And one other thing before I move on: if the Catholic Church has been headed
by the Antichrist, and since the Catholic Church decided the Canon of the
New Testament, then why would it leave the Book of Revelation and those relevant
Gospel verses in there to warn the world of Herself? Now does that make
any sense to you? (hey, there are some who think we "added books"
to the canon in the 16th century, the period of time Luther was calling the
Pope "Antichrist"; if that's so -- which it isn't,
actually -- we could just have easily removed some like the Protestants
did)
Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots
Now, what does
Revelation say about the Great Whore? Look at the following verses:
"How is the faithful
city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it;
but now murderers."
"For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst,
I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree
thou wanderest, playing the harlot."
"They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another
man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted?
but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me,
saith the LORD. Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou
hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian
in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and
with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there
hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst
to be ashamed."
"But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because
of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed
by; his it was. And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high
places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the like things
shall not come, neither shall it be so. Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels
of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself
images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them, And tookest thy broidered
garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense
before them."
OK, so I tricked
you. Those verses aren't from Revelation; they are Isaiah 1:21, Jeremiah
2:20, Jeremiah 3:1-3, and Ezekiel 16:15-18 respectively. And the identity
of the harlot? It is Jerusalem.
And this is really what Revelation says about the Whore:
Revelation 17:15-18
And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth,
are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns
which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make
her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give
their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
and the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth
over the kings of the earth.
"Great city"? Which
city is "the great city"?
Revelation 11:8
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which
spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was
crucified..
Now, was Jesus
Christ crucified in Rome -- or in Jerusalem?
But -- but -- it says stuff like "jewels" and "golden cup" and "scarlet"
and "purple" -- that's just gotta be the "Romish Church"! Well, considering
that Catholicism is the Old Covenant fulfilled, it shouldn't be too surprising
to find in it liturgical colors, vestments, and implements that are partly
rooted in the Old Testament (see Exodus 28). But the Jerusalem Temple is
undoubtedly what Revelation is referring to, and Flavius Josephus left us
writings that tell us what the Jerusalem Temple looked like at the time of
its destruction by pagan Rome in A.D. 70. Here are a few tidbits:
The holiest
part of the Temple:
"Its front was covered with gold all over... But that gate which was at this
end of the first part of the house was, as we have already observed, all
over covered with gold, as was its whole wall about it; it had also golden
vines above it, from which clusters of grapes hung as tall as a man's height.
But then this house... had golden doors of fifty-five cubits altitude, and
sixteen in breadth; but before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness
with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine
linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful."
The exterior of the Temple:
"...the outward face of the temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely
to surprise either men's minds or their eyes; for it was covered all over
with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun,
reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves
to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at
the sun's own rays."
The priests' vestments:
"But that girdle that tied the garment to the breast was embroidered with
five rows of various colors, of gold, and purple, and scarlet, as also of
fine linen and blue, with which colors we told you before the veils of the
temple were embroidered also. The like embroidery was upon the ephod; but
the quantity of gold therein was greater. Its figure was that of a stomacher
for the breast. There were upon it two golden buttons like small shields,
which buttoned the ephod to the garment; in these buttons were enclosed two
very large and very excellent sardonyxes, having the names of the tribes
of that nation engraved upon them: on the other part there hung twelve stones,
three in a row one way, and four in the other; a sardius, a topaz, and an
emerald; a carbuncle, a jasper, and a sapphire; an agate, an amethyst, and
a ligure; an onyx, a beryl, and a chrysolite; upon every one of which was
again engraved one of the forementioned names of the tribes."
You can read the
entire 5th Chapter of the 5th Book of
Josephus' War here.
Exodus 28:36-38 tells us that the Temple High Priest was to have worn on
his forehead an insignia:
"And thou shalt
make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet,
HOLINESS TO THE LORD. And thou shalt put it on a blue lace, that it may be
upon the mitre; upon the forefront of the mitre it shall be. And it shall
be upon Aaron's forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things,
which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it
shall be always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the LORD."
But Jerusalem
apostasized and failed to recognize and then killed (with Roman power) the
Messiah of prophecy. St. John the Divine tells us what "the woman," Jerusalem,
came to have upon her forehead:
"And upon her forehead
was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." (Revelation 17:5)
But -- but -- it
says something about seven mountains! Glad you noticed. Because:
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even if "the Seven
Mountains" are a reference to Rome (see "The Beasts" below) -- which some
of the Church Fathers, thinking of godless Rome, thought -- that city, with
its Caesar-gods, was thoroughly pagan at the time and certainly part of a
cruel, evil empire. The Jews of Jerusalem (the Mother of Harlots) used Rome
("rides the beast") all throughout the New Testament, using Roman power to
kill the Messiah and try to destroy the People of God, the Church
(see the entire Book of Acts).
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even though they're
usually lumped together and "Rome" is used as shorthand for the Roman Catholic
Church, even by Catholics, Vatican City is its own city state and isn't "Rome";
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Rome isn't built
on seven mountains, anyway; it's built on seven hills, as are Constaninople,
Edinburgh, San Francisco, and Cincinnati, for that matter. Mountains are
big, hills are small. There are two separate words for them and Scripture
is familiar with both (see Luke 3:5 and Luke 23:30). Rome's seven hills are
Palatine, Aventine, Capitoline, Quarinal, Viminal, Esquiline and Caelian
(hey, how come Vatican Hill is never listed?).
Jerusalem, however,
is built on seven mountains: Mt. Goath, Mt. Gareb, Mt. Acra, Mt. Bezetha,
Mt. Zion, Mt. Ophel, and Mt. Moriah. There are even Psalms about them, "As
the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people
from henceforth even for ever." {Psalms 125:2)
The Beasts
As said, the Beast
from the waters, the one with the seven heads (Revelation 13:1) that represent
seven kings (Revelation 17:10) is in all probability pagan Rome and seven
of its emperors. Revelation 17:10 says, "And there are seven kings: five
are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh,
he must continue a short space." That sixth "king," the "one that is,"
was the infamous Nero (part of the "beast from the land"), a man who killed
his own parents, brother, and aunt, who kicked his pregnant wife to death,
who delighted in torture and homosexual rape, who used the burning bodies
of Christians as "torches" at his garden parties and who commanded complete
obedience. Wrote Apollinius of Tyana who lived in Nero's time:
"In my travels,
which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen many, many
wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, that is commonly called
a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw,
and armed with horrible fangs. . . . And of wild beasts you cannot say that
they were ever known to eat their own mother, but Nero has gorged himself
on this diet."
It was Nero who
began the persecution of Christians (undoubtedly at the instigation of his
Jewish wife, Poppea) 1 because they
refused to participate in the "cult of the Caesars"; it was under him that
Peter, Paul and a legion of Christians were martyred in Rome. After Nero's
reign came the "Year of the Four Emperors," a crisis of succession that was
resolved when Vespasian finally took the throne. To understand the bit in
Revelation 13:3 about the healed fatal wound, pick up a history book and
read about the wars in Rome between the reigns of Nero and Galba -- wars
that almost brought the empire to its knees, and from which it recovered.
Nero and the other Roman emperors are the beast from the land. It was Titus
who led the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (under his father, Vespasian).
He is known for the catastrophes that struck during his reign: the eruption
of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, fires that swept Rome for three days, one of the
worst epidemics of plague on record... He reigned for two years.
The Mark of the Beast
The "mark of the
beast" is easily understood if one understands the command given by God to
His People in Deuteronomy 6:4-8:
"Hear, O Israel:
The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words,
which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach
them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest
in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down,
and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand,
and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes."
The Christian sign
is that indelible mark given when we are sealed to the Holy Spirit, a mark
made by the laying on of hands and signing a Cross with oil on the forehead
(Catholics and Orthodox call this Sacrament "Confirmation" or "Chrismation."
See Acts 8:14-17, Acts 19:5-6, Hebrews 1:9 and the page on
Statues, Icons, Sacramentals, and the Sign of the
Cross) The mark of the Beast is the "negative" of this sign of God, and
it belonged to those who bowed down in idolatry to pagan emperors, those
self-proclaimed gods.
What Jesus said and how, of course, He was right
Jesus was very,
very clear in saying that Jerusalem would suffer a judgement:
Matthew 23:34-24:2
"Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes:
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge
in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may
come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the
temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come
upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus went out, and departed
from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings
of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily
I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that
shall not be thrown down."
Or as Luke puts
it:
"...the blood of
all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be
required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood
of Zacharias which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say
unto you, It shall be required of this generation."
And as the Jews
rallied to send Christ to the Romans for execution, what did they say? They
said, "His blood be on us, and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25). The judgement
that they called down upon themselves, that Jesus warned them about, that
the Old Testament Prophets warned them about, happened in A.D. 70, when the
Temple was destroyed by the Beast (the pagan Roman empire and/or its emperors)
and the Jews were scattered into the Diaspora. It was devastation, the end
of Jerusalem, the "last day" of the Old Covenant! Josephus described it:
"Now the number
of those that were carried captive during this whole war was collected to
be ninety-seven thousand; as was the number of those that perished during
the whole siege eleven hundred thousand, the greater part of whom were indeed
of the same nation [with the citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to
the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast
of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army, which, at the
very first, occasioned so great a straitness among them, that there came
a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a
famine, as destroyed them more suddenly. And that this city could
contain so many people in it, is manifest by that number of them which was
taken under Cestius, who being desirous of informing Nero of the power of
the city, who otherwise was disposed to contemn that nation, entreated the
high priests, if the thing were possible, to take the number of their whole
multitude....
...Now this vast multitude is indeed collected out of remote places, but
the entire nation was now shut up by fate as in prison, and the Roman army
encompassed the city when it was crowded with inhabitants. Accordingly, the
multitude of those that therein perished exceeded all the destructions that
either men or God ever brought upon the world; for, to speak only of what
was publicly known, the Romans slew some of them, some they carried captives,
and others they made a search for under ground, and when they found where
they were, they broke up the ground and slew all they met with. There were
also found slain there above two thousand persons, partly by their own hands,
and partly by one another, but chiefly destroyed by the famine; but then
the ill savor of the dead bodies was most offensive to those that lighted
upon them, insomuch that some were obliged to get away immediately, while
others were so greedy of gain, that they would go in among the dead bodies
that lay on heaps, and tread upon them; for a great deal of treasure was
found in these caverns, and the hope of gain made every way of getting it
to be esteemed lawful...And now the Romans set fire to the extreme parts
of the city, and burnt them down, and entirely demolished its walls.
In The Jewish
War he writes,
The countryside
like the City was a pitiful sight; for where once there had been a lovely
vista of woods and parks there was nothing but desert and stumps of trees.
No one - not even a foreigner - who had seen the Old Judea and the glorious
suburbs of the City, and now set eyes on her present desolation, could have
helped sighing and groaning at so terrible a change; for every trace of beauty
had been blotted out by war, and nobody who had known it in the past and
came upon it suddenly would have recognized the place: when he was already
there he would still have been looking for the City.
"Babylon, the great
city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer" (Revelation
18:21). But "Jerusalem" is still there in eretz Israel now, right? Yes --
but it is no longer the great holy city. The New Jerusalem is the
holy city, and its nature is spiritual. John 18:36 tells us that Jesus
said:'
"My kingdom is
not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom
not from hence."
We're told the
same in Revelation 21:2:
"And I John saw
the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband."
The people of this
Heavenly New Jerusalem, this great holy city, are true Israel; they are those:
who are born again into the New Covenant through Baptism of water and Spirit
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; who proclaim that
Moshiach (Messiah) has come as the Prophets foretold; and who keep the Father's
commandments as given to us through His Church that is guided by the Holy
Ghost. In addition to these are those people who are not formal children
of this Covenant due to ignorance but on whom Christ has compassion (Romans
9:15).
We are in "the Millennium" (that symbolic "1,000 years" of Revelation 20)
now and all the prophecies in Revelation up to chapter 19 have been fulfilled.
The 144,000 of the 12 Tribes of Israel, the remnant, have been redeemed (Read
Revelation 7). Satan was bound -- but he will be loosed "for a season"
(Revelation 20:3), if he hasn't already been (and it's my personal
opinion that he has).
There will be (there already is, if you ask me) a Great Apostasy from
the true faith, as is evident in the spread of the values of freemasonry,
materialism, heretical theologies (dispensationalism, Protestantism, Christian
Zionism, neo-Gnosticism, modernism, ecumenism at the expense of Truth, etc..)
Though the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, these
things have invaded the Holy See itself, as the Prophets intimated and as
Pope St. Pius X of blessed memory warned in his encyclical
Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
The Antichrist will come and will lead many to believe he is a man
of peace, justice and great supernatural power. The faithful will suffer
many persecutions as we follow the Lord in His death and Resurrection; the
battle of Gog and Magog is yet to come. But Jesus will come again to judge
the living and the dead (this is when the so-called "Rapture," will take
place; this will not be separate from the end of time and will not spare
Christians from the Tribulation), and the Heavenly Jerusalem will be ours
as heirs of the Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ.
However!
All that said,
however, the Bible is to be read typologically, as the earliest Christians
read it, and a specific Babylonian type of system with all of the major qualities
of the old one -- or as a striking, poetic inverse of it -- and an end time
scenario like that of the last days of the Temple but only on a global scale,
wouldn't be surprising in the least. I find evidence for this in the spread
of the heresies mentioned above -- even inside the human element of the Church
-- and the existence of sovereignty-killing globalist institutions that violate
the principle of subsidiarity and spread the culture of death.
If the Final Antichrist will head a religious system or a global institution
as possibly pre-figured by the events which have already happened in the
1st c., I see only two options for where he will be seated: I see the
institutions of the Catholic Church or Jerusalem Temple as the only two
possibilities that could fulfill Scripture read in this way (or the both,
if its leaders were to ever to have the same purposes, a scenario not unlikely
considering the recent
heretical
documents from certain American Bishops which states that the Jews don't
need Jesus to convert. (this link is offsite and will open in a new browser
window).
The first possibility -- that Antichrist will seat himself in the Church
-- is supported by St. Jerome, who wrote, "He will enthrone himself in the
Temple of God, that is to say, either in Jerusalem as some think, or in the
Church, which seems to me most likely."
St. John Chrysostom also supports the idea that it will be in the Temple
of the Church (better described as that which poses as the Temple of the
Church) and not the Temple of Jerusalem where Antichrist will take his place.
Bolstering this view are the facts that the Church is a world-wide institution,
that it is the Temple of God in the true sense, and that Satan has been at
war with Her for 2,000 years now and does have a certain power over Her human
element since the Apostates have gained power inside Her, as Pope Pius X
warned, practically destroying the Mass and spreading heterodoxy.
Against this view are: the Truth of Catholic dogma; the fact that, despite
recent lapses in judgement and out and out apostate acts of certain prelates,
no statements presented as infallible and denying Christ have been issued;
the fact that the Catholic Church, thanks to Marxist and other propaganda
(Jewish, Protestant, and secular), is reviled throughout the world from all
sides (by Jews, Protestants, Muslims, pagans, atheists, seculars), such that
few outside Her take Her seriously and far too many inside Her don't know
what She teaches; and the fact that the Church is too powerless to even govern
Her own wayward Bishops, let alone "the world."
That Antichrist will seat himself in the rebuilt Jerusalem Temple was held
by St. Irenaeus, St. Hippolytus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Damascene,
and others, who based their opinion on the fact that when Paul spoke of the
"Temple," he spoke of the only Temple existing at that time (literal Christian
"Temples" did not exist until after we were kicked out of the synagogues
and after Nero's yoke was lifted from us). Bolstering this view are:
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"international
Jewry's" support, along with that of the "Gentile" elite, of global Communism
and usurious Capitalism -- i.e, "Capitalism" which allows usury and fiat
money (Communism and usurious Capitalism are not at odds with each other
under their apparently contradictory surfaces, as both lead to power and
wealth in the hands of the few. At this point in History, we have cultural
Marxism in terms of ethics, and usurious Capitalism in terms of economics
-- the worst of both worlds);
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the very nature
of the anti-Christian, Pharisaic Talmudic religion, which is what modern
"Judaism" is and which not only denies Christ, but reviles Him;
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the neo-Judaizing
of Christianity among many sects and the "Christian Zionist" idolizing of
Eretz Israel, most often coupled with ridiculous anti-Catholic ideas ("the
Church has been out to get the Jews since the beginning," -- quite the opposite!
-- "the Inquisition was about the Jews and the Church killed hundreds of
thousands of them," "the Jewish Holocaust happened because of Catholicism,"
etc. See this site's On Jewish-Catholic
Relations)
This neo-Judaizing is manifest in the increased willingness of "Christians"
to put aside the Gospel of Grace and succumb to the Law -- not even "the
Old Testament Law," but the Pharisaic Talmudic interpretation of it, which
includes the
Noahide
Laws. The Lubavitch and "Hebrew Roots" movements to which some "Christians"
are in thrall would make the worship of Christ punishable by death (see paragraph
15 of first link at the Noahide website above). See also
"Who is the Son
of G-d?" (offsite links. Will open in new browser window)
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Jewish power over
various media, economies, and governments -- especially the United States
and Great Britain, the most powerful countries in the world;
-
the return of the
Jews to Palestine -- accomplished not by some miracle of God as a blessing
on the people who deny His Son, but by sheer political manipulation of the
United States and Britain by Jewish bankers and Zionists, resulting in the
Balfour Declaration;
-
the Jewish and
Masonic efforts, aided by Protestant funding and energy, to rebuild the Temple
that Christ tore down;
-
the fact that Jews
await a "Messiah" who will have an earthly kingdom, while the Church
awaits the return of the true Messiah Who already came and Who was, is, and
forever will be, ages unto ages, The Second Person of the Trinity Who took
on flesh and became Jesus the Christ, Whose Kingdom is not of this
world but which is to be reflected in the world through obedience to His
Church and in considering Natural Law;
-
the aforementioned
attacks against the Church from every corner -- attacks which leave the first
possibilty unlikely -- coupled with an appalling ignorance of the truth of
relations between Jews and non-Jews over the centuries (e.g., knowledge of:
the reasons for the expulsions from about every country they've ever lived,
be they pagan, Christian, or otherwise; the effects of usury; the contents
of the Talmud; the reasons for and true nature of the Spanish Inquisition;
Jewish leadership's role in anti-Christian revolutionary and liberal movements
and in the development and promulgation of Communism which slaughtered millions
and millions of Christians from Russia to Poland to Mexico to Spain, etc.).
This ignorance combined with anti-Catholic propaganda, false history, true
Christian empathy for the Jewish people for their sufferings during the Shoah,
and Jewish leadership's almost absolute inability to withstand any criticism
or historical Truth as evident by their constant cries of "anti-semite!"
-- an accusation that, given Jewish power over the media, amounts to a censorship
that ultimately manipulates public opinion -- these things lead to the
increasingly common, never challenged "Jews are always the innocent victim
and the Church is and always has been evil" attitude.
My personal
opinion is that this second scenario (or some blending of the two) is
the right one, and that the Apostasy in the human element of the Church,
wherein some "in" the Church deny the true Faith and support Antichrist doctrine
(which I believe is clearly happening), is just a sign of the coming of
Antichrist to the Jerusalem Temple and the return of Christ to judge the
living and the dead. The odious efforts to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple is
just "too big" to be meaningless in the Heavenlies -- and it sure doesn't
mean what dispensantionalist Protestants think it means! (See
this page for what happened the first time
they tried to rebuild the Temple, under Julian the Apostate, a successor
of Constantine)
See also: Outline of the Book of
Revelation and Dispensationalism, Israel,
the Church, and the Jews.
Some final notes on the Apostasy and dissent within the Church: we can trust
that Christ will protect His Church, that the Gates of Hell won't prevail,
and that, while the successor of Peter may err and make bad judgements, he
will not teach against the Faith in a manner which pretends to exercise his
charism of infallibility. Know that infallibility
requires that the Pope speak consistently with Tradition or, extraordinarily,
he must:
-
speak ex
cathedra, that is, he, as pastor of the entire Church (not as private
theologian, political figure, amateur scientist, celebrity, sports fan, all
around good guy)
-
clearly intend
to define and does define a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the
entire Church.
Anything less than
that or anything that is not consistent with Tradition is not infallible
and must be judged in light of Scripture and Tradition (so liberals can quit
gloating now!) -- and no teaching can contradict former teaching. He is as
bound by Scripture and Tradition as are all the faithful.
The point is this: when a Catholic hierarch says or does something that causes
-- or fails to do or say something that allows -- true scandal (support for
violations of subsidiarity, a brand of ecumenism that too easily lends itself
to indifferentism, failure to lead in orthodoxy, allowing the liturgy to
disintegrate, cowardice in the face of political correctness, etc.), Catholics
should, with great humility and charity and after educating themselves in
solid Catholic writing (especially pre-Conciliar writing), speak against
it and defend the true Faith. Catholic leaders should be given ordinary religious
assent and the benefit of the doubt in non-infallible matters; but where
there is no doubt, where their actions contradict Sacred Tradition and
Tradition's interpretations of Scripture, where the majority of the
post-Conciliar earthly hierarchy denies the ancient Mass and Sacraments,
Catholics must raise their voices. Loudly.
The Truth of Catholic doctrine is just as true now as it was 2,000 years
ago, no matter how badly it may be presented in our confusing times. Hang
on to the Faith and never let hierarchs or bad presentations of the Faith
keep you from Truth and the Sacraments.
Footnotes:
1 According to the Talmud, Nero himself converted
to post-Temple Judaism. Gittin 56a reads: "He [God] sent against them [Israel]
Nero the Caesar. As Nero was coming he shot an arrow towards the east, and
it fell in Jerusalem. He then shot one towards the west, and it again fell
in Jerusalem. He shot toward all four points of the compass, and each time
it fell in Jerusalem. He said to a certain boy, 'Repeat to me the last verse
of Scripture that you have learned.' He said, ' I will wreak My vengeance
on Edom through My people Israel.' Nero said, 'The Kadosh Barukh Hu [the
Holy One] desires to lay waste His Temple and to lay the blame on me. So
he ran away and converted to Judaism, and Rabbi Meir was descended from him.'"
Further Reading
 Book
Link: The End : a Study of the Book of Revelation, by Scott Hahn
Book
Link: Lamb's Supper : The Mass As Heaven on Earth. by Scott Hahn.
Covers the liturgical aspects of the Apocalypse
Zionists Made Deal
With the Devil fascinating article written by a self-described "assimilated
Jew" (check out his entire website!)
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