Category Archives: End times

Reading Revelation

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Early Church, End times, Faith

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revelation

I know there were some who wondered why Bosco’s post was allowed up. The answer is simple – the point of view he comes from is not an uncommon one, and there is very little point complaining his comments are sometimes off the point, and then not allowing him to post. There is another reason this post was worth publishing – it illustrates vividly why some in the early Church did not think that the book should become canonical, arguing that it was a book which the faithful might well misunderstand, and from which they might draw misleading lessons – quod erat demonstrandum by Bosco.

The book belongs to a genre common at the time known as apocalyptic literature – this genre is characterised by the use of symbolic and allegorical language. To read such a genre literally, insisting that because it was inspired by the Spirit it means what it says would be absurd – Jesus is quite clearly not a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. Read aright, we get the intended message. Jesus is, of course, the sacrificial lamb, the final offering for our sins. The number 7, symbolises perfection – that was the number of days of the Creation and the day God rested. We see seven proclamations to seven churches (chapters 2–3), and three sets of seven-part visionary narratives: the seven seals (4:1–8:1), the seven trumpets (8:2–11:18), and the seven bowls (15:5–16:21). So when we are told he letter is to 7 churches, that doe not mean (as Bosco appears to think) there were only 7 churches in the world – were that so then we should have to wonder what happened to the church in Jerusalem in Acts. The book is written to the seven churches in Asia – it actually states that – so there’s no excuse for reading it and thinking what Bosco does.

Its message in that we find in all apocalyptic literature – that God is coming to judge and to redeem, and that the powers of evil and empires will clash before God establishes the fullness of his kingdom. There are about 700 references in the book to the Old Testament – and the implications of this are well set out in an excellent post here, which is very good on numerology and the identity of ‘the beast’:

the number of ‘the beast’ is the same as a the number of a man’s name (in this case Nero Caesar) since both add up to 666. This ‘solution’ to the puzzle of Rev 13.18 has been known in academic circles since the 1840s, but sadly has still not filtered down into popular reading

As for the identity of the Great Whore of Babylon, the clue to the answer is in the text: ‘The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.’ This is a clear reference to the seven hills of Rome. John’s readers would have understood this, it was only with the toxic anti-Catholicism of the early Reformation that men identified that with the occupant of the Vatican rather than, as John meant, the Pagan Emperor who was persecuting Christians.

We have lost the art of reading the book in the way its first hearers would have done so, though modern scholars have done a good job of reconstructing it. As the same expert has written:

three features—of possible literalism, of transferability, and of power—are writ large on the history of the interpretation of Revelation. Some have read it thinking there really will be beasts emerging from the sea, that there are living creatures and rainbows in heaven, that our destiny is to sit on clouds playing harps (chapter 14), and that we will pass through pearly gates. Others have been able to identify people and institutions in their own world quite happily with the beasts and dragons, the woman clothed with the sun and the harlot riding the beast. And every generation has found this to be a text of extraordinary power—for good or otherwise

The idea that it can be read literally is not confined to Bosco, and his contribution yesterday suggests the limitations of that approach. Those who want to understand the book – and its importance, might like to follow this link.

Anti Christ. Who is He?

05 Thursday May 2016

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The term ‘anti Christ’ is Greek – anti being the Greek for ‘another’, or a ‘substitute’. We see plenty of those now. Anti Christ isn’t the term for the Man of Sin. But people use the word ‘anti ‘Christ for the reign of Satan. So , lets get away from using the term anti Christ.

Lets start with some background material.

Jesus spoke of Jacob’s trouble, a time never seen before, or that will be seen again. Let he who is on the roof top not come  into the house. Let he who is in the field not return home, but flee directly to the mountains. I don’t want to get too far off field, so suffice it to say the mountain is Petra, a place prepared in advance for the Jews to find sanctuary from the Man of Sin. During the holocaust , 1 out of 3 jews on the planet were killed. Scripture says that 2 out of 3 jews will be killed durning Jacob’s trouble. So in fact, it will be much worse than the holocaust. How do we know this pertains to the Jews? – because Jesus said that those in Jerusalem flee to the mountains…not those in Anaheim or Hollywood or Berlin or New York. But for the elect, those days will be shortened. Rev, cp 4 vs 1….the church is taken up. It doesn’t go thru the tribulation. How do we know? The church isn’t mentioned again until cp 18 or 19.

Now what signalled this event? The Man of Sin erects an idol, or statue, of someone, in the Holies of Holies. Graven images piss God off really bad, yet there are some who think they are wonderful. So, when you see the abomination that makes desolate stand where it ought not, head for the hills Jerusalem. This implies that, number 1…the temple has been rebuilt. Number 2…that we shall see the abomination in the Holy of Holies.  Now, how will we see the Holy of Holies…only the high priest goes in once or twice a year….no one else.

Any guesses?….TV. A camera in the Holy of Holies. Well, next item on the docket is the Man of Sin declares he is God. So, who is this Man of Sin?

Actually, the war between God and the Devil started in the garden of Eden.

Gen cp 3…The Seed of the Woman is a name for Christ…and the Seed of the Serpent is the name for the Man of Sin. He shall bruise his heel…so forth and so on.

The Idol Shepherd, is another description of the Man of Sin. The word Idol is used, not Idyl, as some think. We see shepherds today that are surrounded by idols, and they have their flocks on their knees before them. Idol Shepherd..Zech 11;16, 17

The Man of Sin is identifies as the Little Horn in Dan 7; 8,-11…..21;26   Dan 8; 9-12…2 3-25

The Man of Sin is described as the Prince that shall come. Dan 9; 26. This Prince is a descendant of the general that was in charge of sacking Jerusalem. So many think that he is going to be from Rome. But people forget that the Holy Roman Empire had a eastern leg, and this eastern leg outlived the western leg by a thousand years. Constantinople, where Constantine relocated to because of the  backbiting and political corruption that is the very nature of Rome.

The Willful King is another name for the Man of Sin, Dan 11; 36

The bible give a physical description of the Man of Sin.

Woe to the idle shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened…Zech 11;17 Its clear what it says. His arm, one of them, is lame from a wound, or is gone, and his right eye is blind from a wound. God is to be praised because he told us from the beginning what is to happen. Who is like unto god?

He is identified as the Assyrian in Ezek 31. Jews think he will be jewish, which is a very good guess, because they receive hi in his own name, whereas they didn’t receive Jesus who came in the name of the Lord.

The new test has many names for him that I wont get into, because, well, I think I have covered the most exact  descriptions of him.

Almost. He is also a great political leader, and a military leader and a financial genius. Now lets remember that we are dealing with two entities here….the Beast and his Image…these are two distinct entities, and Satan up on top make it a trinity which mimics the holy trinity. Satan up above as God,  The Beast as the Christ and the Image as the holy spirit. The unholy trinity.

Will this help anyone? Yes. For those readers who are left behind, now they have no excuse for   following the Man of Sin. If you do take his Mark, your salvation is gone. God leaves and takes his body, the church with him. No more easy salvation. To have salvation, one must die somehow, and the preferred method is beheading, according to scripture. God will come back when the jews have had enough and petition him to come back, after they realize their  BIG mistake in not accepting Him.

We see the stage being set now, with this Muslim rabble going around killing everyone, wars in every corner of the globe, political unrest everywhere, earthquakes, famines, floods. The people of the earth are becoming conditioned to looking for a man to help them. A few giant religious systems even now look at a man to be their guide.  The man of Sin wont have much problem with them. They will welcome him.

Reflections on hell

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Bible, End times, Faith, Reading the BIble, Salvation

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gehenna1We have been discussing hell a lot here, and I have been doing a bit of reading on the subject. Dave Smith and I (and Ginny) have had something of a back and forth on this (300 comments and rising!) and rather than leave everything in the comboxes, I thought I’d share some thoughts. Right up front, let me say I am not denying the reality of hell, but what I am doing is interrogating the view that it is a place where souls, or souls and bodies, burn for eternity.

So, let us have a little look at that four-letter word – hell. It is not used in the Greek or the Septuagint – so we do not find it anywhere in the original Bible. What do we find? We get four words (the links are to Strong’s concordance so you can check I am not making this up as I go along):

  1. Sheol (Hebrew)
  2. Hades (Greek)
  3. Tartarus (Greek)
  4. Gehenna (Greek)

It depends, of course, on which English translation you use. The most common one, the King James Version, has the most uses of the word ‘hell’ – some 54 occurrences – you can see from the link that others have far fewer. To put it into perspective, the Bible uses the word ‘heaven’ 664 times – in whatever version you choose. It may mean nothing that in most versions heaven is mentioned more times, but in most modern versions ‘hell’ gets 14 mentions, and the original word is one of those used above. So where does this get us?

Let’s deal with ‘Tartarus’ first and its one mention in 2 Peter 2:4. This, we are told, is a holding place for fallen angels before they are judged – so I think we can say with some confidence it isn’t any place anyone is going to spend eternity. That leaves us with the other three words which the older English translations call ‘hell’.

In the Old Testament, every translation is from the Hebrew ‘Sheol’. It means the abode of the dead. I cannot trace any mention in the Jewish sources to which I have access of anyone burning there for eternity. In English, ‘Sheol’ is translated variously as ‘hell’, ‘the pit’ and ‘the grave’ – and it is a place people can go into when they are alive, but in which they then perish. It is a place of the dead – there is no mention of anyone in it having any consciousness – or of them burning. Hades is mentioned 11 times in the NT, mostly as hell, but once as grave. But what sort of place is it? If we look at Acts we see a place which looks like Sheol – a place where the dead go and their bodies rot.

The only word used in the NT which has any connotation of burning is Gehenna. It is used 12 times in the NASB: Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29; Matthew 5:30; Matthew 10:28; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6. Gehenna was a real place – it is the Hinnom valley just outside Jerusalem. It was the place where the Pagan Jews erected their altar to Moloch. As a result, later generations used it as a rubbish pit into which all the refuse of the city was thrown, and where the bodies of those crucified were also thrown – and fires would burn perpetually to burn the remains and stop germs spreading. So, when Jesus refers to it in Mark 9 as the place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched he is speaking literally – those hearing him knew the place. There is no reference here to it being a place where any conscious being would dwell in eternal torment. Of course, for a Jew, the defilement of the corpse in such a place was a dreadful thing, and Christ is saying that even that would be better than sinning – but the idea that he is saying that those who sin are going to spend eternity suffering there is not in the text. If we look at the Lukan reference, where Jesus talks about ‘Him’ who destroys the body and soul in Gehenna, then that is a reference to God destroying us – not letting us live forever in torment.

Paul tells us the wages of sin is death, which he contrasts with the eternal life to those who believe. He does not say ‘the wages of sin is to burn in hell forever. Paul was steeped in Jewish teaching, and what he inherited was the idea of Sheol as a place of death and extinction. Psalm 1:6 told Paul and his fellow Jews that the Lord would know the righteous, but the ungodly would perish; it did not say they would burn in Gehenna. Psalm 37:20 made the same point – the wicked would perish, they would vanish away, and Psalm 69:28 underlines that – they will be ‘blotted out’ – not burnt in any lake of fire. They will be (Psalm 92:7) ‘destroyed forever’. This was standard Jewish teaching as we see not only from the Psalmists, but from Isaiah too. Malachai certainly mentions fire, but does so to say that the wicked will be burnt up and no trace of them will be left.

This was what the Jews believed, so if Jesus was telling them something new, one might expect much to have been made of this by Paul and the others – after all, if, as disobedience to God actually means spending eternity in a lake of fire, then that’s a message to get out there urgently, not least to the People of the Covenant who had no such concept. Yet we find St John, who certainly combatted heretical ideas in his Gospel and letters, telling us that those who do not believe in Jesus will perish, whilst those who do will have everlasting life; he does not say those who do not believe will burn in Gehenna. Paul makes the same point to the Philippians that the evil will be destroyed. The same message was sent to the Thessalonians (unless one takes the view that everlasting destruction does not mean that you are destroyed for evermore, but are subject to being destroyed for ever, and I can’t see why Paul would have meant that when there was no Jewish teaching to that effect) the Corinthians and, as I have already mentioned, to the Romans.

Paul seems to have known nothing of this Gehenna where the wicked would burn eternally, and neither he, nor James nor Jude nor Peter mention it. It would have been a big departure from what they had been taught, and one might reasonably have expected it to be emphasised. Instead there is a continuity with the Jewish teaching on Sheol. We shall be raised at the last and judged, and then, death and hell (Sheol) are cast into the lake of fire. They cease to exist, that is the second death.

How we read Revelation is always a moot point, and is one of the reasons the early Church fathers hesitated before accepting it into the Canon. ‘As late as 633, the Spanish Council of Toledo remarked how many people still opposed the use of John’s Revelation, and commanded that it must be read in church liturgies, under heavy penalty’, whilst to this day the Greeks do not use it in their liturgical worship. But it is there (although Luther had his doubts) and it tells us that hell and death are to be cast into the lake, as are those whose name is not written in the book of life, but only ‘the devil’ ‘the Beast’ and the ‘false prophet’ are condemned to eternal torment. One could certainly insist that everyone else in the lake would also suffer, but that would be a lot of weight to place on a notoriously difficult text.

Well, there it is, ‘heresy corner’ as Chalcedon has called it. I shall don my helmet and retire to my trenches with just one note. I am not denying the resurrection (pace ginny), neither am I saying hell is not real. I am simply trying to see how what the Scriptures say aligns with the Western belief that hell is a place of eternal torment. Yes, I am happier to think that God has so arranged things so that no one suffers for eternity; the faithless go down to the pit and are known no more; the faithful rise to life eternal.

 

 

 

The end is nigh?

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bible, End times

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End times

Sunday’s Gospel focussed on the end times. It is natural that we should take an interest in the subject, for the one thing we all have in common is that we shall all die – and I think most men and women would like it if it were otherwise; there is, in most of us, a longing for immortality: but there is also a fascination with end times and disasters – as any review of popular culture shows. Jesus reminds us today that only the Father knows ‘the time’. This has not stopped fallen man from trying to draw aside the curtain and take a peek, and the Bible has been misued many times by numerologists anxious to crack some ‘code’ they claim to find therein. How typical of mankind: on the one hand a definite Biblical statement – God alone knows the time – and on the other an attempt to use the inspired book for a purpose of our own; how often do we seek to put there what we want to find, whilst ignoring that which is there and from which we flinch because it cuts across our sinful urges?

For each of us the end time is within our own life time – indeed it will coincide with the end of our mortal life. That we know for sure; it is all we need to know, as well as all we can know. That being so, then everything Christ talks about will come to pass for each of us. We are assured of mercy – which pleases us; but we are also assured of judgment – which does not. It does not because we know in our hearts that we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. God forgives us if we repent and embrace Him, and that actually requires a huge leap of faith. This is not least because we know how hard we can find it to forgive those who have sinned against us, jusr as we know how hard it can be for us to find such forgiveness. Measuring things, as we do, by human standards, we are, nonetheless, invited by God into the huge mystery of His judgment of us.

At his homily this morning, our parish priest said that it is a core part of his own faith that unless we are truly evil, then God will not reject us. That seemed to some present a kind of universalism – but was not so. It was an expression of the belief that God has made each of us for salvation, to live with Him for eternity, and that if we come to Him through the Son, and if we follow the teachings of the Church, then whatever our failing – which will always be many in the eyes of God – then we shall come, at last, to the Beatific Vision at the end of all mortal things.

We do not need to search the oracles of time and space, or seek to know what not even the Son knows, because we know our end is nigh. If we act on that, and if we respnd to His love with love, then, in the words of Mother Julian of Norwich, ‘all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’

Gospel 33rd Sunday in OT: Year B

15 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bible, Commentaries, Early Church, End times, St Mark's Gospel

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Second Coming of Chirst

This is the last of our readings from Mark for Year B of the Lectionary Cycle, and in the new liturgical year, C, where we go after Advent, we shall be reading St Luke, who offers quite a contrast for the Patristic commentator. There will be a reflection on Mark’s Gospel as our second post today. C 451.

Mark 13:24-32

It is, Victorinus of Petrovium reminds us, a mistake to think of this passage as an exact chronology, apocalyptic visions are to be read for their meaning, not used to terrify the credulous. St Ambrose sees in the image of the moon one of the churhch, which, when the vices of the flesh stand in the way of celestial light, can no longer borrow the splendour of its light from the sun of Christ; the stars are an image of the leaders of the church who will fall as the bitterness of persecution mounts.

St Augustine comments that when impious persecutors rage beyond measure, and when the fortunes of this world seem to smile upon them and fear leaves them and they say “peace and security” then the powers of heaven shall be moved the stars will fall, and many who had shone brightly as leaders will yeild to the persecutors, and even the strongest will be shaken.

Tertullian reminds us that the Son of Man will come again in the midst of calamities and promises – to the grief of nations and according to the promises he has made to the saints.

It is no wonder, Bede tells us, that ordinary men and women will be troubled at the judgment, the very sight of which makes even the angels tremble. At this last advent he will come, Augustine reminds us, to judge the quick and the dead – and as he told us:

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

We shall not be able to resist the second coming, so let us not resist his first coming, and let us seek the Lord whilst he is to be found.

Tertullian comments that just as we know from the sproutings of the tree that the summer is coming, so do the great conflicts of the world point towards the end times. But we must not presume we know the hour, for he tells us no one but the Father knows the hour.

Methodius and Origen both remind us that the world will not end, but rather the present order of things will pass away and then the word of God will prevail. God has ordained these things from the beginning, and his faithful should have no fear.

Then shall the end come

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

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And then shall the end come, St Matthew tells us. Everytime we recite the Creed we confess our belief in that second coming, when he will return in glory to raise the quick and the dead. Perhaps because of the excesses of those who claim to have found in Revelation, or in the measurements of the Great Pyramid, or the signs of the times, infallible portents that the end is near, this is something many Christian say little about. If that is our motive – not to appear foolish and to be talking about something which only the Father knows – then fair enough. But if it is to be ‘fashionable’ and out of fear of seeming to be ‘old fashioned’, then we might remind ourselves that it is in the Creed and we believe it to be so; but what is it we believe to be so?

Although far from averse to the notion, Christianity does not preach the gradual improvement of society and the creation of a more just social order where something called ‘social justice’ will prevail; it was not to achieve this He hung and suffered there. Neither does our faith provide any mechanisms or plans by which such an earthly paradise might be constructed. If anything, we are taught that the things of this world are passing away, and that before they do, conditions in this world will get worse for followers of Christ. Moreover, the end, when it comes, will be sudden – apocalyptic.

This was a radical Christian revisioning of the Jewish revelation, which had a Messiah coming to establish a theocracy in which swords would be beaten into ploughshares and all the kings of the world would come bringing their tribute to the holy mountain if Zion. Christians do not see this as the end time. Our nature is marred by sin, we cannot redeem ourselves, neither can we create a paradise, even under a great new king like David. It is good that we help the widow and the orphan – that is ‘true religion’ – but there is, in our faith, no mandate for creating some perfect political system where ‘social justice’ will prevail. You cannot believe that the creation of a particular system will save mankind – Christ, and Christ alone does that.

It is fashionable to suppose that as Christians we have a duty to favour this or that political system, but this is wrong. The Gospel has naught to say about what rate of VAT or tax is ‘just’, any more than it does about the merits of one electoral system over another – or, dare one say it, about whether carbon taxes are sensible. It is human nature to call God into aid for our political preferences – but then human nature is fallen, and that is the sort of thing it does; it does not make it correct.

I glory in naught save the Cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I to the world. The end of the world will come when the Father has willed it. My own ending could be at any time, and if I am sensible, I will be trimming my wick now and laying aisde enough oil for my lamp.

Trans-itional thoughts: a curmudgeon’s guide

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in End times, Satire

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Future

Trans-Racism

Yes, I’m coming out of the closet. I am actually a Chinese man trapped in a white caucasian body. This is a genetic mixup and though objectively I may look white to those who meet me, I am actually an oriental man struggling with my identity by some unknown genetic mixup.

Nobody knows how devastating it is for me to suffer this malady and I demand the same rights as Bruce Jenner, Bradley Manning and others to have the necessary operations and treatments that are necessary to alleviate this condition and return me to my proper role, stolen from me at birth. Hang the cost and don’t try to use common sense about this either. For only I who am experiencing this malady is qualified to comment upon it. Why else would I crave egg rolls?

But I am not selfish. I am also on a quest to shine the light on other injustices within our society as well. This brings me to the condition of Trans-Personism.

Trans-Personism

Do you know how many of our brothers and sisters have been locked away in psychiatric wards simply because they suffer from trans-personism? Yes, many thousands who think they are Santa, Joan of Arc, Jesus, Hitler, Satan, the Easter Bunny, and Elmer Fudd are wasting away while we do nothing to alleviate their suffering and pain. It is cruel and unusual punishment and we should end this incarceration as soon as possible. If they know deep inside that they are one of these other people it is not their fault that they were born looking nothing like them; it is a freak of nature after all. Again, it is our duty and it is their right that they get the medical aid and treatments necessary to transform them into the persons that they know they truly are. Incarceration of such people is inhumane to say the least.

And what about those people who suffer from Trans-Specieism?

Trans-Specieism

This is the awful situation that we see at many of the piercing shops where these poor souls are spending all of their own money to transform themselves into aliens from another planet, crocodiles, wolves or vampires and so forth. Imagine their depression having been born into a human body when deep down they are certain that this is not who they really are. Enough said . . . I think you get my point. We owe it to these poor unfortunates to find happiness in their life so that they too can find fulfillment for the true person that resides inside and struggles with their identity.

I know of what they suffer. Recently a wolf in a man’s body was arrested for heisting his leg on a fire hydrant in public and was subjected to great embarrassment and humiliation by being arrested. If they want such things to be done privately then every public restroom should be equipped with a fire hydrant or at least a nice sized tree or bush. Its a fundamental question of tolerance and accessibility for Pete’s sake.

We have made some good progress lately in our battle against intolerance but I hope that by this writing you will see that we have much more work to do before we become the tolerant nation that we aspire to be. Please support me in my effort to get out the word and make this world a better place for all of us. Let us end, once an for all, this prejudicial ignorance that still prevails in our society.

Hurt People

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in End times, Faith, Islam

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In reviving the Protestant side of dialogue on AATW, I fear that I have let loose a great deal of asperity to mar what remains of the Lenten season, for which I apologise. The desire to defend one’s position and unburden oneself of thoughts and feelings should not come at the expense of peace, especially other people’s peace.

Arguments and debates can become heated even concerning trivial things – how much more matters of faith that concern the welfare of our very souls? I was grieved to be reminded of Jess’ suffering, and I hope that this time of retreat will allow her to find comfort in Abba’s arms. He is the only one who can help.

Each of us brings his own heartache to the communion table. I may not have been through marriage, but I know what it is to have family problems and to doubt my own identity and my own self-worth. Strange as it may sound, I find a couple of lines in the old Catholic catechism helpful:

“Who made me?”

“God made me.”

“Why did God make me?”

“God made me to know Him, and to love Him.”

Achilles tells Priam in Iliad XXIV that there is a limit to grief, and he bids him take thought for food. They share a meal together, and in the morning Priam departs with the body of his son, Hector, to carry out the due funeral rites for him in Ilium. After the ordained time is fulfilled, battle will begin again.

We must not spend too much time in our sorrow, but at the same time, due space must be allotted to it. We are all in our own way mourning Jess’ departure from AATW, but we are also trying to find a way to have meaningful dialogue. As an Anglo-Catholic who loved the East, she stands at the cross-roads of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism: John, Peter, and Paul. Chalcedon is her worthy successor – and also her predecessor.

“Just love them.” This is the Lord’s commandment. The differences are real, but so is the harm: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (Gal. 5:15). Now, more than ever, we need to present a united front to those who are perishing. The End Times Church faces the consummation of all things: the Mystery of Iniquity approaches and so does the Final Judgement. Our Crusade is coming. The fall of Jerusalem means also the salvation of all Israel, and we shall be judged according to how we treated the children of Jacob and our own brothers and sisters in Christ: “Whatsoever you did to the least of these, my brothers, you did also to Me.”

We must strive to liberate our brothers and sisters who labour in bondage in Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, and we must strive to be at peace with each other. We live in a time of great challenge, and we can meet this challenge: God never calls us without equipping us. But we have to face this challenge together; we’ve got to learn to trust each other. This time must be different: dare to be a Hezekiah and not an Ahaz.

 

Jerome on Eschatology

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Commentaries, Early Church, End times

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St. Jerome (his actual name, Hieronymos, is Greek) lived c.347-420 AD; he is a Post-Nicene Father (the Council of Nicaea was held in 325). He wrote a number of commentaries, letters, and tracts. His views on eschatology are scattered throughout his writings. Seeing as some of these are less accessible than others, I have elected to take quotations from his Commentary on Daniel, which is an obviously eschatological text. I have accessed Gleason L. Archer’s translation of 1958 at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_daniel_01_intro.htm . Continue reading →

The decline of the West?

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in End times, Faith, Persecution

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Cross of Christ

Christianity sees history in teleological terms – that is as having a purpose and leading to an end; in our case the Second Coming in Glory when the living and the dead will be judged and the first world will pass away and we shall see a new one, and the dead will be resurrected. It is not the only faith, or belief system, which has a teleology. Islam has one, and it sees history as the process by which the whole world will be brought to Allah. From the rise of Islam through to the late eighteenth century, it was easy enough to see this teleology playing itself out, as, in amazing fashion, a group of nomads from the Arabian desert, and their successors, conquered the whole Roman Empire by the 1450s. It was not until 1774 that the great Islamic Empire gave up territory it had conquered; from that point on, the teleology became more a matter of faith than historical fact, as the realm of Islam shrank, and its influence dwindled. This baffled and angered many Muslims – it was not how history was supposed to play out. But it fed into another teleology which had another vision of how history was supposed to turn out – that of the Enlightenment – and today, I would suggest, we might be on the verge of having to do what Islam has had to do, which is to question that teleology.

What, for the sake of convenience we label ‘the West’, had believed, is that the Enlightenment values, of liberty, equality and fraternity, would spread across the world until the less enlightened societies become more like our own. For the last three centuries, such a narrative was not only plausible, but, like the earlier Islamic one, could be ‘proved’ from ‘history’. So, if, in the early 1970s, one looked at the old Islamic world from the point of view of the West, the story was indeed one of progress: from Algeria through Cairo, Beirut, Damascus and through to Kabul, there were universities, schools and societies modelled on our own – there was a process we called ‘modernisation’, or sometimes, more accurately, ‘westernisation’. On the campuses and in the streets of these capitals, one would see women in Western dress, driving cars, going to University, and there was a palpable sense that the future would, indeed, see the triumph of ‘Western values’. A swift survey of all those places now reveals the hollowness of those hopes. Far from, as some believed at the time, even the rigid Islamic society of Saudi Arabia eventually catching up with the West, the Islamic world has chosen to go in their direction. The teleology is no longer so clear.

In part this is because Western secular liberalism seems to have lost faith in itself. If one said that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing, our reaction as a society would be to question whether ‘evil’ existed and how one would judge, and to ask whether that was not rather elitist of us? Who, after all, are we. to define ‘good’? Someone would be sure to add that the use of the word ‘men’ was everyday sexism. If we wanted to say that ‘the worst’ were ‘full of passionate intensity’, the same relativistic reflexes would be liable to paralyse us.

Yes, faced with something like the events last week in Paris, our leaders will (well, most of them, some found the football more engrossing) seize a photo opportunity, and we still enjoy enough power in the world for others to wish to be seen to join in, but as for actually doing anything – well, that’s another matter. We can be ‘Charlie’, but that other ‘hashtag’ – ‘bring back our girls’ – well, Nigeria is a far away country about which, in reality, we know little and care less; were this not so we would do something.

Western liberal secularism has many good things to be said for it, but it lacks any animating spirituality. It does not comprehend what it sees in Islam, or, for that matter, Putin and China, and so it projects its teleology on them. These things are ‘blips’, the ‘rise of the West’ is the ‘end of history’, and the world will, surely, get back to moving in the direction ‘we’ want. That may be so, but it is no more inevitable than the Islamic teleology, and it may we that like the Muslims, we in the West may have to cope with the shock of realising history is not moving in our direction, and we are not riding its tide.

Where does the Christian sit here? On the whole, he or she tends to be in favour of ‘Western values’, which is not surprising as so many of them derive from a Judeo-Christian heritage which we are busy trying to forget. But the experiment, began in the eighteenth century and run through to now, of seeing whether those values could stand up by themselves without the spirituality which animated them has, I suspect, failed. Man was not ‘born good’ and enslaved by religion. He was born fatally flawed, and Christianity, with its offer of redemption and its moral codes underpinned by the belief they were God’s Law, helped provide not only hope of eternal life, but frameworks within which men and women could restrain the bad and encourage the good in them. It also provided, as we can see form our culture, the impetus for great music, art and literature, as well as for the impulse to evangelise the world.

Perhaps the effort of giving birth to all of that has left our society effete, in the real meaning of that word? At any rate, it is becoming clear that lacking the spirituality which once animated the society which proclaimed ‘Western values’. the West lacks the vitality and the will to spread them – and perhaps – ultimately, to defend them in the face of those who will die for their beliefs.