Luke65: In reference to the center paragraph of your reply, “This will be during the Springtime…” Is this your explanation or is this an actual Biblical quote?
My daughter is having a discussion on this topic with a protestant and, while we believe that we will all be one in the Catholic church under one shepherd, she is looking for something in black and white. Thanks and blessings to all who are trying to help me with this!
Hi Mimi, you’re not going to get something like this explicitly spelled out in Scripture, but I’ll go ahead and put some of the pieces together from the Bible. But someone would probably need to believe the prophecies of our Saints to confirm all of this, and so here is a good place to start:
“Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21)
And if you study Catholic prophecy, you’ll see that the Springtime for the Church (aka the Triumph of the Catholic Church, aka the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who is the “destroyer of all heresies”) under the Holy Pope and the Great Monarch, is the most common prophesied event that isn’t explained in the Bible, and for good reason. So when St. Paul admonishes us to not despise prophecy, then I take that to be referring especially to these prophecies, since God knows the end from the beginning and wouldn’t tell us that if the most common prophecies from His Saints were false. And here we see it prophesied in the Bible:
“Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer [the Lord] waits for the land [the Church] to yield its valuable crop [bear fruit] and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.” (James 5:7)
Literally the “autumn” is the “early” rains, and the “spring” is the “late” rains - NIV takes the liberty of spelling it out for the reader. And “rain” is a metaphor for God’s grace from the Holy Spirit:
“Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the LORD your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before… And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.” (Joel 2:23,28)
St. Peter quoted that prophecy (v.28) as being fulfilled at that time (Acts 2:17). He was referring to the “early” rain when God poured out His Spirit on the early Church, when there were many prophecies and miracles, and the Church spread like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire and eventually conquered it, as Daniel prophesied (Dan. 2:40-44), renaming it the Holy Roman Empire. And so the “late” rain will come, as any Bible-believer would believe. The Springtime for the Church will come before the “summer harvest” (Jer. 8:20). God will pour out His Spirit, as before, and His Church will conquer, as before, only this time the Church will be “more magnificent than ever before” (Blessed Sr. Emmerich). And here is the Great Monarch in the Bible:
“I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” (Revelation 6:2)
The problem here is for Protestants who think the Catholic Church is apostate. Some of them see our prophecies about the Holy Pope and Great Monarch and believe that they are really about the False Prophet and the Antichrist, respectively. But they don’t come until later, and they take the place of the good Pope and the good King. So don’t worry about that. Just show your Protestant friends that the Springtime for the Church is a Biblical certainty, and if they want to live to see it then they better repent of their sins because the Chastisement comes first. And if they or you are interested, you can also find these prophecies all over the internet. The best and most reliable website for Catholic prophecy is
Unity Publishing. They usually have info on which apparitions are Church approved and which ones aren’t, as well as many reliable prophecies with orthodox commentary. God bless.
), there are actually two other verses that, according to our saintly prophets, will literally be fulfilled - one good, and one bad. The first will be the good one: