![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/awakeningstorm.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I HAVE <\/strong>received numerous letters over the years from people saying, “My grandmother talked about these times decades ago.” But many of those grandmothers have long since passed on. And then there was the explosion of the prophetic in the 1990’s with the messages of Fr. Stefano Gobbi<\/a>, Medjugorje<\/a>, and other prominent seers. But as the turn of the millennium came and went and expectations of imminent apocalyptic changes never materialized, a certain sleepiness to the times<\/a>, if not cynicism, set in. Prophecy in the Church became a point of suspicion; bishops were quick to marginalize private revelation; and those who did follow it seemed to be on the fringe of the Church’s life in shrinking Marian and Charismatic circles.<\/p>\n Today, the greatest scoffers of prophecy come, not from without, but within the Church. Any notion of even considering\u00a0<\/em>these times in the light of private revelation, much less “end times” Scripture, is met with disinterest, if not derision. Which is not at all the attitude of the early Church. Not only did Jesus openly and readily speak about the signs that would accompany the so-called “end times,” but the writings of Peter, Paul, John, and Jude are saturated <\/em>with the anticipation of the return of Jesus. It wasn’t until that generation of believers began to pass away that the first pope began to direct the budding Church’s eyes to a long-term vision of God’s salvific plan.<\/p>\n Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come [to] scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, \u201cWhere is the promise of his coming? (2 Pet 3:3-4)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And then he explains:<\/p>\n But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard \u201cdelay,\u201d but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (v. 8-9)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Early Church Fathers picked up on this and merged it with St. John’s Revelation in 20:6:<\/p>\n …they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for [the] thousand years.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Thus, they taught, the “day of the Lord” would not be a 24 hour day, but that symbolic period of “a thousand years”:<\/p>\n \u2026this day of ours, which is bounded by the rising and the setting of the sun, is a representation of that great day to which the circuit of a thousand years affixes its limits. <\/strong>\u2014Lactantius, Fathers of the Church:<\/em> The Divine Institutes, Book VII, <\/em>Chapter 14, Catholic Encyclopedia; <\/em>www.newadvent.org<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That is, the Day of the Lord will have a vigil, a dawn, a midday, and conclude at the end of time with a final clash at twilight (Rev 20:7-10; see the Timeline here<\/a>). And here’s where it gets really interesting. The Church fathers saw, roughly, that the four thousand years prior to Christ (from the time of Adam) and the two thousand years after Christ, <\/em>to be symbolic of the six days of creation. Therefore, the “seventh day” or “day of the Lord” would be a day of rest for the Church:<\/p>\n \u2026as if it were a fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest during that period, a holy leisure after the labors of six thousand years since man was created\u2026 (and) there should follow on the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years\u2026 And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints, in that Sabbath, shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God\u2026<\/strong> \u2014St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.; Church Doctor), De Civitate Dei, Bk. XX, Ch. 7, Catholic University of America Press<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n St. Paul taught as much:<\/p>\n And God rested on the seventh day from all his works\u2026 Therefore, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God.\u00a0(Heb 4:4, 9)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, the Early Church was already pointing to this millennium, <\/em>the period after 2000 A.D., to inaugurate the Day of the Lord. (Note: while the Church condemned the idea that Jesus would return in this time period to reign on earth “in the flesh,” the Church has never <\/em>condemned precisely what St. Augustine taught: that the joys of the saints in this period “shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God” in the Eucharist and interiorly within His People. See Millenarianism – What It is and Isn’t<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n [John Paul II] does indeed cherish a great expectation that the millennium of divisions will be followed by a millennium of unifications\u2026 that all the catastrophes of our century, all its tears, as the Pope says, will be caught up at the end and turned into a new beginning.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2014Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI), Salt of the Earth, An Interview With Peter Seewald, <\/em> p. 237<\/span><\/p>\n After purification through trial and suffering, the dawn of a new era is about to break.<\/b> \u2014<\/b>POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II, General Audience, September 10, 2003<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The point is this: we do not know the “day or the hour” when Christ will come to reign in us<\/em> His Church in an Era of Peace,[1]<\/sup><\/a>cf. Mark 13:32<\/span><\/span>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n