spauline;4162228:
I dont believe you were really angry at me! LOL, I think you were rightly defending your ideas and sometimes our ideas become close to our very selves.
But, as much hope as I have in Revelation the martyrs anxiously await the end, but are told not until the full number of them are taken up…
With the rates these children are being taken up, if they really are martyrs, I am having to fight with myself mentally all the time to stop thinking the end may be closer than I like to think.
So, I like to explore all the options, and think about it in more depth.
Which, I dont see many do here, so your threads are interesting.
You pose a good question, but have you thought of any answers to why we are not seeing this glorious time veiled in history somehow?
i agree, sometimes our beliefs can be so dear to ourselves that attacks on our beliefs can be perceived as attacks on ourselves. Thank you for this insight, this is probably why I tend to be so harsh and defensive. I am passionate about what I believe to the point I see myself in my ideas, and forget that I transcend my ideas, as well as the fact that right now, they are only personal opinion, and not Church teaching.
As far as why persons are not seeing this glorious time veiled, I would say much of it the CC tendency since Augustine. The Church has TENDED to think that this glorious age will never come because of the wheat and tares parable: there, it is presumed that there must always be significant weeds, and hence, there can never a period in which the near whole of man lives in grace with God.
for this reason, my theology is against the grain, as it were, for I am positing a radical shift in the view of history: for me, the wheat and tares is only a peripheral parable whose primary purpose is more to simply show that Christ’s kingdom will include wickedness along with goodness, and not that it is to be enshrined as the be all tell all of the meaning of Church history.
Toward that end, what i suggest is a different model, the Beast and days of Creation, and a similar analogy in Christ’s falls as he carried the cross. I argue, that rather than history being a field mixed with good and evil, that progressively matures toward an ultimate confrontation, I see history as alternating in prevalence between evil and good, so that…
First comes a punctuated stage of evil,
then comes a punctuated stage of Redemption, *then *a stage of evil,
then a stage of Redemption, etc., from the beginning of the world to its end, inclusive.
This is clearly the metaphor suggested by the days of creation: first comes evening, then morning. A day. then evening, then morning, another day. And so forth.
In a similar vein, the beast rises up in one of its heads, then a head is wounded, then it rise up again, then it is wounded, etc.
Seven days of creation extended to eight in Tradition. Seven heads of the beast extended to eight in Apocalypse 17.
Similarly, I see analogy in Christ’s way of the cross: he falls, he gets up, he falls, he gets up, and finally he falls and cannot get up.
In a similar vein, this conveys the meaning of the end of the world: when the Gentiles fall the final time in history, they will not be able to “get up”, their apostasy being irrevocable. IOW, even when the consequences of their apostasy come, they will not be practically able to repent. It will represent a darkness that is incurable.
This mimmicks the condition of the demons: They knew everything about God, presumably all that Catholicism will know, and still chose to tell God to shove it.
In a similar vein, after the world has fully digested Catholicism, they will fall the ultimate time, and tell God to shove it.
The brunt of the mystery is rather then this:
what will be the degree of the capacity that the world digests Catholicism?
Augustinianism sees a progressive maturation of good and evil, then the evil overtakes, and the world ends.
My model is radically different: the age of the Church is rather modelled precisely after the stages of her saints, and the history of the Jews. the saint passes through three primary stages of darkness, from which follow three lights: the purgative dark night of the sense, the illuminative dark night of the soul, and untive way of martyrdom.
The Jews similarly had three ways of darkness: the purgation of Egypt, the illuminative dark night of pre-Exile Apostasy from the OT cov, and the unitive phase of martyrdom under the OT Antichrist Antiochus.
For me, then, the mystery of the way of the Church is self same:
the purgative dark night of sense, Pagan Rome
the illuminative dark night of the soul, the modern Minor Apostasy
the unitive way of martyrdom, great apostasy and NT Antichrist.
But then, to get to the point, three times Christ falls, only in the third can he not get up.
The Gentiles who fell in pagan Rome, were raised up in Catholic Christendom.
The Gentiles have today fallen again, fallen into apostasy. The minor chastisement shall raise them up, so that, much unlike Augustinianism, the redemption that is coming shall restore nearly as a whole to faith. hence, for me, the fullness of the Gentiles is truly the near whole of the world accepting Catholicism and living in peace.
The final fall of the Gentiles is then the great apostasy, in which they can no longer be raised spiritually. So the world ends.
I think this is precisely the problem with why persons cannot see it. They are so programmed into Augustinianism, the tendency of the Church, they see the ideas as dangerous and “all but opposed to Church teaching”.
I don’t know if this answers your question to any degree, notsmart?
I thank you for at least paying attention to my rants!
)