End of the World
arcura asked this question on 11/16/2000:
Have you ever visited this site?
http://www.webcom.com/enddays/enddays/html
It has a lot of information. I'd like to get your variety of opinions on what you find there.
Because I ask for opinions and not facts all answers will be rated high.
Peace and kindness,
arcura
Greetings
The joy of the Lord be in your heart.
Heeding your advice I looked at the pages. I went even to the links in Spanish. There is certainly something fascinating about prophecies. More so if you can identify the antichrist! I'm sure you can begin an endless discussion regarding the coming of the Lord. The multiplicity of pages at the Url you mentioned is the proof.
My opinion? All this complicated enumeration of signs and comparing them is one gigantic digression. It's talking about secondary things. It's like those giant Bible commentaries that offer a admirably wealth of pertinent information and enormous assets of hypothesis but the readers are like those who have no electricity while living near an atomic driven facility. There is no personal connection.
These pages are like a type of analgesics. You want to be assured facing the uncertainty of future. Persons should learn to have faith and hope and what do they get? Diversion. You can say that this is a serious earnest investigation. It's a digression all the same. At best people are mildly interested in some type of guessing game and at worst they enter into panic. If someone told me that tomorrow the world will come to an end I would answer: So what? But man, there is the antichrist, there are the signs that the prophecies a fulfilled� So what? Suppose it happens to be true. Well, you have the satisfaction of being right in your calculus. Nothing more. It is like describing the color, the dimensions and the weight of a pill instead of taking it and getting well.
I envy the early Christians. They hoped really the Lord would come back pronto. The commentaries say that these poor Christians were deluded. Not so. They had hope and the urgency of their hope came from love. If you expect someone you love you want him to come quickly. They wanted Him to come at once. Look at the Didache: "Perish the world and let the grace come!" And when their wish didn't get the answer they expected they knew all the same that it was pure love waiting a little more. Remember 2 Peter 3: " 9 The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance". That's the reason. God wait for us to come to repentance. Now we are at the real point of the waiting of the end of the world.
Now it's true, those pages talk about repentance. But you are frightened into repentance. They don't teach you to grow in love so that you might expect the coming of the Lord ever more ardently so.
The liturgy of the 33 Sunday talks about all this. You should read the whole chapter 13 of Mark where the Sunday Gospel is taken from. The signs of the fall of Jerusalem are entwined with the signs of the world's end. Conclusion of Jesus and the first Christians? 35
"Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming�in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning� 36"lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. 37"And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!" That's the finality of Jesus talk about the end of the world. "Watch out!" For what?For the coming of the Lord.
Saint Bernard says that there is a coming of the Lord in between His first coming and His coming at the end: He's coming every day, in every event big or small. So I should be watching for His presence now and here in my life. Why should we ask the Lord that His kingdom come. There is one potent reason. When the Lord comes you will not sin any more. So let's hurry Him up.
In order to understand each other. I'm not against analyzing the signs of the end. Do so by all means. But if your investigation doesn't culminate in repentance, it's sterile. There will be no life.
A question to you people: how many of you hope that the Lord will come soon?
A disciple asked his master: "When should I repent and change my life?" "One day before death". "But Sir, I don't know when I will die". "You are right; you could die tomorrow, couldn't you? Well then, change your life today".
Resume: those pages are putting a biggest effort in what is secondary, God bless them.
vale
mscperu