Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. [Apoc. 12:4]
It is explained in The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter by Steven Paul that this scene depicts the apostasy of one third of the college of cardinals. They are drawn to the False Prophet by his irresistible force. He has a charism that they are unable to resist and are willing to turn their backs on the Holy Pontiff, The Pope, in order to follow him.
In our own times, we see how easily the faithful are willing to cast aside the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ in order to follow their own desires. In the linked article, it says there is a new way of looking at the abortion issue in light of the overall Catholic teaching that allows Catholics to vote for a candidate who is "pro-choice".
This story is false on many levels, not the least of which is that the theory is not new at all. The idea of the "seamless garment" was used by Catholics 30 years ago for the same reason - they wanted to vote pro-abortion because the pro-abortion candidate reflected their ideals more closely.
The second big lie in this article is the idea that the pro-abortion candidate's policies would actually reduce the number of abortions. Can he defy gravity as well? In fact, his policies include support for the Freedom of Choice Act, which rescinds all restrictions on abortion-on-demand including parental notification, late term abortion, born alive act, and interstate restrictions.
The third big lie is that all pro-life Catholics want to is outlaw abortion but won't help young women with prevention of unwanted pregnancies or with prenatal and post natal care. In fact traditional, church-going Catholics have been feeding the poor, placing children for adoption, opening crisis pregnancy centers like Spring House, Visitation House and Birthright for years. While primary political emphasis is placed on voting pro-life, it is wholly consistent with everything the Church teaches that to care for the poor and to work against violence and social justice starts with the right to life.
Catholic teaching and pronouncements from the leadership also condemn the death penalty and war so long as there is a just alternative. No political party perfectly embodies Catholic moral teaching but certainly there is open hostility to the unborn, traditional marriage, abstinence programs, adoption with traditional families, and conscience protection for Catholic physicians and businesses in one party.
Catholics are free to vote for whomever they choose. But to claim that the pro-abortion candidate better fits Catholic moral teaching is just plain false. Since the people making this claim seem sincere, there is a possible reason for this. They have been pulled away from the Church by an irresistible force, a charism so strong they could not do otherwise. They were too weak to overcome it. This charism comes from a fresh, well spoken politician who has learned the power of his trade. Some have even asked if he is the Antichrist himself. That is not likely, but the ease with which he has swept Catholics away from their Church should be a dire warning.
The difference between how the Pope is treated in Europe compared to the cheering crowds and affection he finds in the USA has been on full display this week.
Only a few weeks ago, a university in Rome that was founded by a past pope effectively protested his impending visit there. Pope Benedict XVI cancelled and stayed home. And while there have been a few protesters along the route or outside the different venues this week, they have been few and largely marginalized.
In a particularly decent gesture, the Pope met with five people who had been caught up in clergy sexual abuse in Boston. He did so out of the spotlight and as a pastor and shepherd. It was no media event and was not announced ahead of time.
His meeting with Catholic college presidents likewise was much anticipated, especially by moretraditional catholics who have lamented for some time that the Catholic colleges had drifted too far from orthodoxy and actually were stunting the growth of religious faith. Details on that can be found at our sister site Ivory Tower Heretics and at The Cardinal Newman Society web page.
Everywhere the Pope went, you could hear affection from the crowds, from the thousands at the White House singing Happy Birthday, to the huge crowd at Mass at National's Stadium.
Contrast that with the reception he receives in Europe. When the Pope speaks there it is met with a yawn, indifference or scorn. Europe has lost its soul. The most striking rebuke was when the European Union Constitution was written and credited Greek and Roman civilizations for their contributions but omitted all mention of the Catholic Church and her 2,000 year imprint on Europe.
In the book Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, by Steven Paul, the author describes how the Book of Revelation speaks of a time when the forces of Antichrist will close in on the Vatican in Rome forcing the hierarchy to flee. She is the "Woman Clothed With The Sun." The "Woman" flees with the aid of the "Two Wings of the Eagle, The Great One" to the "Wilderness."
Paul explains that wilderness is a term for a non-Catholic country. Why would the "Woman" flee to a non-Catholic country? Perhaps because the Catholic countries have either apostatized or are under the control or influence of Antichrist.
This week's events make it seem more plausible that the USA would and will perform such an act of mercy as the rescue of the Woman. That team helped end Soviet communist domination over a billion people and will work again to keep the world free.
1 And a great sign was seen [ophthe] in the heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown [stephanos] of twelve stars, 2 and holding in womb, and she cried out having birth pangs and being put to the test to bring forth. 3 and there was seen another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fire-colored dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems, 4 and its tail dragged by force [syrei] the third of the stars of the heaven and cast out them unto the earth, and the dragon took his stand in the presence of the woman the one about to bear, so that when she bore it might devour the thing born of her [to teknon autës]. 5 and she bore a son virile [yion arsen], who was about to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. and snatched away was the thing born of her to the God and to his throne. 6 and the woman fled unto the wilderness, where she has therein a place prepared by the God, so that therein they may nourish her [trephosin auten] for days one thousand two hundred sixty.
A long time ago, in a mind far, far away, there sprang an opinion. Since then, many hundreds of millions of people have propagated that opinion and perpetuated it into an inveterate tradition throughout the Church, to wit, that the "woman clothed with the sun" is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I would gladly agree with the many hundreds of millions who assert that 12:1 describes Mary, if I could with impunity take that verse out of its context. But, John warned rue not to add one word to the prophecy and not to subtract one word from it, as stated in 22:18-19; and, surely, what applies to one word in the prophecy must apply to a whole verse.
Let the reader please note the little comma after the noun "stars" at the end of verse 1; that comma is followed by the connective kai at the beginning of verse 2; and the "period," which ends the sentence composed of verses 1 & 2, comes after the infinitive "to bear" or "to bring forth" [tekein]. This all means that the contents of verse 2 are connected to and simultaneous with the contents of verse 1. Hence, according to the many hundreds of millions, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has already died and been assumed, body and soul, into the glorified state and has been crowned Queen of Heaven, is again pregnant--in heaven above, no less!--where, according to Christ, there is no marriage.
Perhaps, the many millions are tacitly asserting that Mary became Queen of Heaven before Jesus was born, and that, therefore, either Mary or Saint Dominic confused the order of the glorious mysteries in the Rosary, so that the Coronation should precede the Assumption. Frankly, I find it a mystery that such an opinion about 12:1 has become the first reading in the Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption. In Apocalypse 1:19, Christ told John,
"Now write the things that you saw and the things that are and the things about to come into existence after these things."
In 4:1, John is told,
"Come up hither, and I will show you the things that must come into existence after these things."
In 1:19, the term, "after these things" [meta tauta], refers to "the things that you saw and the things that are..." in 4:1; the term, "after these things," refers to the seven letters, i.e., 'the things that are." Hence, the term, 'the things that are about to come into existence," or, 'the things that must come into existence,' unmistakably refers to future things, things that would happen after the Apocalypse was copied and circulated by the year, say, 100 AD. Chapter 12 belongs to those future things, and, therefore, it has absolutely nothing to do with describing the birth and death and ascension of Jesus, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, etc. So, the argument up to this point, alone, suffices to refute the opinion that the woman is Mary.
Now I will reason from the given information in the text to the woman's real identity, keeping alert to John's practice of using physical things as symbols of spiritual things, and paying attention to context, the context that does not extend merely to the whole Apocalypse, but to the whole Bible. After all, the Apocalypse is the culmination of Biblical prophecy. John could have begun Chapter 12, typically, thus,
"And I saw a woman clothed with the sun, ..."
Instead, he wrote,
"And a great sign was seen in the heaven, ..."
With this introduction, John immediately gave the reader general instruction concerning the particulars that would follow. To call the reader's attention to this instruction, he repeated it in verse 3,
"and another sign was seen in the heaven, ..." [I trust the reader has learned that John did not employ idle repetition.]
Now, the prophetic term "sign" was mentioned often in the New Testament:
(1) The Apostles asked Jesus about the "sign" of his coming. [Mt. 24:3] (2) The Pharisees demanded that Christ prove his divinity by a 'sign from heaven." [Mt. 16:1] (3) Saint Paul warned about 'signs and false wonders" worked by evil powers. [2 Thes. 2:9] (4) Saint John mentioned signs performed by the False Prophet. [Apoc. 13:13, 16:14] (5) Simeon in the Temple prophesied of the infant Jesus: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." [Lk. 2:34-35]
From the aforegiven instances may be drawn the idea that "a sign is someone or something VISIBLE to the naked human eye." Therefore, according to John's instruction, the woman in Chapter 12 will be an entity that people CAN SEE; thus, the phrase, "in the heaven," must signify 'in the Church as VISIBLE organization."
Many a "sign" is prophetic. In Chapter 12, the woman, as 'sign," is also prophetic, for she is herself and points to something else: she is the 'GREAT sign" that alludes forward to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD. But this 'great sign" is not just the woman. Understand that this "sign" includes the son she will bring forth, and, thus, also the activity he will initiate in the Church.
Note: The hostility shown the Pope right in Rome itself portends bigger things to come. This may be a small group of radicals and academics now but their numbers will grow as a sterilized Italy rails against God. In the book, 'Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation', the author describes a time when the Church is forced to flee Rome.Watch the signs of the times... Vatican calls for rally backing pope in science row
Agence France-Presse Posted date: January 16, 2008
ROME -- The Catholic diocese of Rome called on the city's faithful Wednesday to back Pope Benedict XVI against academics who fault the Church leader for positions seen as anti-science. A burgeoning protest against a planned appearance by the pope, who is also the bishop of Rome, at the secular La Sapienza university here prompted Benedict to cancel the engagement, which had been set for Thursday.
Lamenting the "sad events" that led to the cancellation, Rome's vicar Camillo Ruini urged "all believers, but also all Romans," to stage a show of support during the pope's Angelus prayer on Sunday in St Peter's Square.
Already on Wednesday some 5,000 pilgrims attended the pope's weekly general audience, many chanting "freedom."
"The Church of Rome expresses its solidarity with its bishop, the pope, and bears witness to the love, confidence, admiration and gratitude of the people of Rome towards Benedict XVI," Ruini said.
Many scientists criticize the intellectual, conservative pope, a respected theologian, for a series of positions he has taken that they say subordinate science and reason to faith.
The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of La Sapienza, who wrote to rector Renato Guarini complaining of an "incredible violation" of the university's autonomy.
Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the sprawling university's physics department, as well as radical students, joined in the call for the pope to stay away on Thursday, the start of the university's academic year.
Students opposed to the visit kicked off "an anti-clergy week" on Monday by showing a film on Galileo, the 17th-century physicist who ran afoul of Church doctrine by insisting that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi led unanimous denunciations of the protest by Italy's political class, echoed widely Wednesday by the country's main dailies.
Radical students launched a series of protest events, showing a film on Monday about Galileo, the 17th-century physicist convicted by the Inquisition -- the predecessor of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog that the pope formerly headed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
It was the first cancellation in the pope's diary since his election in April 2005.
The daily La Repubblica devoted its front page to the issue, bemoaning the fact the pope "can no longer speak to his home-town university in this mediocre Italy of 2008."
Benedict's predecessor John Paul II was loudly heckled when he spoke at La Sapienza in 1991.
On this fourth of July, America, the greatest nation on earth, celebrates its founding. Though a non-Catholic country, it remains a mostly Christian one and Christian principles still are valued.
In the Book of Revelation, Chapter 12, a woman is forced to flee to the wilderness. She is aided by the two wings of the eagle, the great one. Providence ensured that the national symbol of the United States of America would feature a great eagle. In the Bible, the eagle is used in prophetic writings to symbolize a nation. And as explained in a previous post, the woman is the Church, the Roman Catholic Church.
The Eagle will come to the aid of the woman because they share common history and values, as well as a common enemy.
At times, it seems as if all goodness is being sucked out of our great nation. But Providence has made it that the United States will come to the aid of a persecuted Church hierarchy and evacuate Rome using two military transports - the two wings of the great eagle.
This is all explained further (and better) in The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter. All that remains to be seen is if enough good people will be left in government to do the right thing when the time comes.
Who cares? Well in Chapter 12 of Revelation, there is a scene described as "The Great Sign". In it a woman clothed with the sun is in great travail to bring forth a son. A dragon is depicted as sweeping away 1/3 of the stars with his tail. In Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, the author claims that the "woman" is the Church and the tail of the dragon is the False Prophet that will cause many in the Church to apostatize. The third of the stars is one third of the episcopate. God will allow one third of the College of Cardinals to throw in with the False Prophet but will never let enough of them be able to control a papal election.
Pope Benedict, by reestablishing the 2/3 majority rule, sets the stage for the final battle, and the Great Sign, a papal election.
