END-TIMES, END-WORLD
In Romans read how Paul saw the events.
It belongs to the Wisdom of God to leave us human beings ignorant of His exact calendar or programme for the events leading up to the end of the world, but in the most immediate of those events all of us are involved, and it is not forbidden to speculate about them. On the contrary, for the saving of my soul it may be prudent to think about what Almighty God has in mind, in order to avoid certain major errors.
For instance, God may guide us human beings to do what He wants, but He will never take away our free-will for us to do it, and that is why a Golden Age of one thousand years between now and the end of the world is impossible – for it to last, He would have to be constantly nullifying men’s choices. Luther (1483–1546) knew that he was destroying Christendom. It took him 450 years until Vatican II, so to speak (1517–1965), but by the end of that time men had grown steadily more corrupt. There may now be a short Golden Age such as the Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, but it cannot last long. At La Salette in 1846 Our Lady said that just 25 years of good harvests would see sin coming back, i.e. the close of the Golden Age and the beginning of the descent to the Antichrist. Millennarism, a supposed 1000-year Golden Age before the end of the world, is an error condemned by the Church.
Another major error to be avoided is that the Church will come to its end on earth in a blaze of human glory. A single quotation of Our Lord Himself puts paid to that illusion – Lk. XVIII, 8: “When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?” In other words, at world’s end the Church will almost have disappeared from sight, presumably as a result of its persecution by the Antichrist, the most ferocious persecution of all its history. That world which has the Devil for its ruler (Jn. XIV, 29) will see in that persecution a tremendous defeat for the Church, but God will see in it the last drops of sanctity being squeezed from it in the form of some of the greatest martyrs and saints in all of its history, in other words one of its greatest victories. It should be no surprise if the Church’s end most resembles Our Lord’s Cross.
The Church’s universal victory follows immediately in the General, or universal, Judgment.
Another error surely to be avoided is to confuse the end of “times” (see Lk. XXI, 24) with the end of the world. In terms of the Venerable Holzhauser’s commentary on Chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, where he divides Church history into Seven Ages, the “end times,” or end of the times for the Gentiles to be entering God’s Church, to replace all the former Chosen Race choosing no longer to be God’s own people (Mt. XXVII, 25), comes at the end of the Fifth Age. On the contrary, world’s end comes at the end of the Seventh Age. For indeed the former Chosen Race will convert back to Our Lord, their own Messiah, at world’s end (Rom. XI, 26), but until then Jewish converts will still be the exception rather than the rule, in other words they will be too few for God’s purpose of populating His Heaven. Hence God’s whole plan for salvation by the two Testaments – see Romans, Chapters IX, X, XI.
Here is why the New Testament had to replace the Old; why the richly natured Chosen Race by race had to give way to the supernaturally gifted Chosen Race by faith; why the Jews have had for so long to give way to the Gentiles; and why they have made war upon them ever since (I Thess. II, 14–16) – especially on the Palestinians. But Catholics must never forget how much we owe to God’s own heroes of old – of the Old Testament. Without them we would have had no Incarnation of Jesus.
Kyrie eleison.
