End times?

[Shoshana]

scylla:

If you would like to talk about the rapture beliefs, feel free to start a thread.

Rapture is not part of Catholic theology…

 

[scylla]

Your right that it isn’t a part of Catholic belief, I am happy to discuss all the different beliefs that have come up from Darby about the rapture though.

I just didn’t want to start a discussion in this thread.

God Bless
Scylla

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

seetiger33:

Well i see everything going on in this world and you would be a dummy to dismiss all this stuff. It seems the birth pangs are getting closer and closer. I just pray that anyone on this earth that doesnt know Jesus Christ as there Lord and Savior do it now before its to late.

Jews and then Christians have been saying that in one form or another for 2500 years - and they have a 100% rate of being wrong.​

A lot of the modern doom-saying would not be said if people realised that every age is full of problems.

In the 16th century the Turks were perceived as a threat to Western Europe - so their power was perceived as a sign that the end was near.

In 1403, St.Vincent Ferrer said that Antichrist had just been born

The fall of Rome in 410 was seen in the same way

St.Cyprian thought the world was near its end in 250.

Zechariah & Haggai, in about 520 BC, thought that the Persian empire would collapse, to be replaced by the Messianic kingdom.

People have been looking at the events of the world around them and seeing only evil and chaos, and saying these things, and been wrong every time - there is no reason at all to think that our own age is notably worse than any other. In all likelihood, Christians in 5000 will be looking back at 2005 and wishing they could have lived then, instead of with the problems of their own time; just as so many in 2005 look back longingly to the 1200s or some other period, and overlook the problems that Christians had in those times. Our own times seem to be unusually bad only because we compare them with others: but the same was said of those other times too, when they were the present.

IIRC, the earliest complaint about about the dreadfulness of “the younger generation” goes back to about 2000 BC - all of 4000 years ago People seem always to have complained about how awful their times are - but the world has not come to an end.

IMHO, these scares and prophecies come from a desire for exciting, spectacular, and public manifestations of God’s power. But that is often just how God does not work. When God became a man, there was nothing spectacular about His coming: for almost all His earthly Life - which He spent in an obscure backwater of an insignificant province of an enormous empire - was spent as a craftsman: not as a preacher. “The Kingdom of God does not come by being observed” - it acts silently and invisibly, like yeast in dough or seed in the ground. So to go seeking for signs and spectacle, is not a good idea, but a diversion from living for Him.

If the earliest followers of Jesus did not know when He would return - I assume that your question is about that return: are we going to know ? I doubt it. ISTM that while we can and should pray for Him to come; that, until He does, we should get on as usual living for Him and our neighbours, without being distracted by rumours and guesses - just as St.Paul advised the Thessalonians in his second letter. If we needed to know - He would tell us. He has not told us - therefore, we don’t need to know. We do need to heed what He has told us. ##

 

[fix]

## Jews and then Christians have been saying that in one form or another for 2500 years - and they have a 100% rate of being wrong.

A lot of the modern doom-saying would not be said if people realised that every age is full of problems.

**ARE WE LIVING IN APOCALYPTIC TIMES?

**Much of the apocalyptic commentary issuing from academic circles these days is limited to the shibboleth of the first millennium. “Ah, yes,” we are told over and over, “in the tenth century there was a mass hysteria about the approaching millennium, and you see, the date passed and the world recovered its balance.” In preparation for his address to the bishops of France, Gilson studied that period carefully and found little evidence to support the theory of tenth century millennial fever. The tradition regarding a supposed widespread hysteria was so grossly inflated as to be ludicrous, and was in fact due largely to the writings of a single cleric. While there were isolated incidents, Gilson admits, mass hysteria was definitely not the temper of those times…

Human psychology is such that we tend to perceive our own times as normal. We are born and raised in a given culture with certain spiritual and material realities all around us. People of every generation experience the world as an imperfect environment, but it is still their world. At some point in history, however, a generation is going to go through the final stage of the apocalypse, yet to them it will appear to be a normal world. It will have problems, and its citizens may even admit that the problems are grave, but it will be difficult for most to understand it in terms of the absolute crisis presented in the Book of Revelation. This is precisely the condition which Jesus warns us about in Matthew 24. That generation which is least awake, least able to recognize what is happening, perhaps even a most comfortable and confident generation, will be the one in which the spirit of Antichrist will manifest itself fully. Are we the long-foretold generation?studiobrien.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=77

 

[wcknight]

As Catholics, we welcome the second coming of Our Lord and Savior. IF Christ were to be here in the next few moments today, tomorrow or ten years from now, I’ll be ready.

We should not be living in fear as if we were all doomed to some horrible end. The coming of Christ, means an end to death and suffering and sin. I pray He arrives sooner rather than later.

WC