``Where the
Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
End Times
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."
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:
even if "the
Seven Mountains" are a reference to Rome (see "The Beasts" below) --
which some of the Church Fathers, thinking of the then pagan, 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).
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";
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 what are referred to in the Bible as 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. The
faithful will not be spared persecution by any "Rapture," but will
follow Christ in His Passion. In the end, though, Jesus will come again
to judge the living and the dead, 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 institution of the Catholic Church or a re-built
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.
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:
"international
Jewry's" support, along with that of the "Gentile" elite, of global
Communism and usurious Capitalism -- i.e, as opposed to fair and free
trade, "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 an unjust amount
power and wealth in the hands of the few. Note that inequality is a
fact of nature; it's not unequal distribution in se that's
problematic; it's the unfair natures of fiat currencies, usury,
fractional reserve banking, cronyism, corporatism, etc., that make for
inequality not based on
merit, but which is derived from unjust schemes. 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;
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;
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 Crusades were
horrible, unjust wars that prove 'Christian' aggression, "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 also "Who is the Son of G-d?" (offsite link. Will open
in new browser window)
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 possibility 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)
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, the clerical
sexual abuse scandals, 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. To
learn more about the differences between authentic, traditional
Catholicism and what you're likely to find in far too many purportedly
Catholic
parishes, see the page Traditional
Catholicism 101.
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.'"