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A key feature of life is that every living being is looking for shelter from any possible dangers and threats. Both animals and humans want to feel safe. Unlike animals though, humans are able to manage a far future in order to grant their survival and those of their children. They even question the origin and future of humanity. The center of common human interest is to know how humanity will survive through history. All religions, both extinct and current, gave and give answers to this question. Even atheists think about the future of humanity, although they believe that there is no life after death. The biblical view on humanity’s future and salvation presented in this book turns out to be very ordered. It is not a sum of fortuitous events following one another like the water of a torrent precipitating downwards in a chaotic and unpredictable manner. In fact, salvation history is composed of five eras with a total of fourteen cycles (see Summary of salvation history). Three eras take place entirely on earth,[95] each of which contains four cycles. They are surrounded by the era of the angels and crowned by the era of the millennium, each of which comprises only one cycle. This is why salvation history reveals a symmetric order, which contradicts interpretations relegating certain seemingly improbable prophecies to the realm of symbolism. For instance, the return of Christ from heaven: St. Paul writes that the Christians would be “of all people most to be pitied” if Christ was not truly resuscitated (1 Co 15:17-19). This is closely associated with his return, for if Christ was not resuscitated, he could not have ascended to heaven and hence not return to earth. It is precisely this return on which doubt is often cast. There are theologians who claim, for example, that the apocalyptic events already have taken place and that Jesus, surrounded by a celestial army beating “the kings of the earth with their armies” (Rev 19:11-21), has returned with the fall of the Roman empire and the establishment of the State Church. Accordingly, the millennial reign would correspond, they say, to the reign of this State Church during the Middle Ages from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. They argue that the first Christians hoped for an imminent return of Christ in order to insinuate the naiveté of their faith, arguing that he has not yet come back after two thousand years. If this is true, what will happen next? Are we already on the way to eternity? Is the substitution of religion through science the final state that will solve all problems and bring us everlasting happiness and possibly eternal life in a near future? It is true that the majority of the first Christians expected the end of the world. What counts, however, is that they were not sustained by biblical prophecies predicting such imminence. The cause for this expectation was simply ignorance. They did not know when the end would come, since one cannot know it (Mark 13:32). Consequently, it can arrive at any time, and it could also have arrived during their epoch. If the second advent of Christ had taken place in the first centuries of our era, salvation history would be asymmetrical, which is improbable. In addition, the steps of salvation history reveal that two thousand years are not abnormal. The era of the patriarchs lasted thousands of years and that of the Israelite people approximately 1900 years. The logic of the cycles also allows the establishment of some proportions, with the result that the end will certainly not be delayed for thousands of years: the last two eras were composed only of four cycles each. There is nothing in the prophecies to indicate that this structure will be different during the era of spiritual kinship in which we currently live. On the contrary, they also announce four cycles, of which the last one is already almost consummated since present history goes to the end of the first phase, which is always considerably the longest as compared with the sin and judgment phases. This phase has hitherto lasted approximately one thousand five hundred years. As compared to this duration, the following phases will be very short, for Revelation 12:14 and 13:5 predict a duration of persecutions, say a phase of sin, of three and a half years. This refers to the prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan 9): like during the cycle of the Maccabees, the phase of sin will occupy the first half of the last week, at the end of which the Antichrist will set up the disastrous abomination (see The four phases contained in the seventy weeks), not in the temple but in the churches this time. The other half of the week refers to the judgment, which will also last three and a half years. At their end, Christ will return. According to Revelation, the week will probably begin with the murder of the two witnesses (Rev 11:3-13), for this beginning has to start with the murder of an anointed one (Dan 9:26). At the time of the Maccabees, this was the great priest Onias (see here). In our time, the Pope is the great priest of the Church. Therefore, he and someone from his entourage will possibly be assassinated. In this case, the lost word of Daniel 9:26: “and after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have no...” would indeed be “successor” because the pontifical succession will end or be interrupted with the return of Christ. In fact, the first Pope was St. Peter, according to Matthew 16:18-19, and his ministry consists in replacing Christ on earth.[96] After this murder, the persecutions of the Antichrist will take place and last three and a half years, according to Revelation 13:5-7. At the end of them, the disastrous abomination will be set up, that is the obligation of all people to adore the statue of the Antichrist (Rev 13:14). After that, the judgment will follow during another three and a half years. So the full time of tribulations will last seven years and be a time of war, already even during the persecutions according to Daniel 9:26-27, which describes the entire last week as follows: And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war, desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week. The four years of World War I (1914-1918) and the six years of World War II (1939-1945) show an increasing resemblance to these seven years of World War III. Seven years are relatively short compared with the first phase, which will have lasted centuries. This recalls what Jesus predicted of this “tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved” (Mt 24:21-22). Hence the last week is shortened because of the survival of the Church. This means that proportionally it does not correspond at all to the sixty-nine preceding weeks. This is why it is not possible to calculate from the seven years, which correspond to the last week, the duration of all the seventy weeks. So one knows neither the beginning of the first nor of the last week, that is to say the exact date of the end of the world. The only thing that one knows is that the war will last seven years. Unfortunately, it is nevertheless very probable that today’s generation will undergo this World War III, for since the Second World War until today already more time has passed than between the First and the Second World Wars. Furthermore, the means of massive destruction exist today. If all belligerent parties had had access to nuclear weapons during the last war, they would certainly have been used massively and the end would already have arrived seventy years ago. Today they exist in a growing number of countries. Consequently, all seems to be prepared for the end. The perspective of an end of the world is dreadful and everyone mentally healthy can only wish that it does not arrive. Some people think that only the belief in a worldwide destruction will possibly cause it. So in order to avoid it, one must just refuse to believe in it. This is of course intended to blame the Church and its beliefs. Refusing to believe in the end of the world mostly means refusing all biblical predictions, religion in general and God, or God as taught by the Bible and/or the Churches. Precisely this attitude will contribute to cause the end of the world because one is certainly better prepared to avoid dangers by taking them seriously rather than by voluntarily ignoring them. Finally, if one believes in the end of the world, one also believes in a life after it. It is like with a dying person: one tries all means to save the person but one is conscious that everyone must die one day and hopes that death is only a transition to a better life. Similarly, one believes that the end of the world is only an event among others and hopes that all will finish well because salvation history will indeed end well. So there is no reason to sink into a nihilistic pessimism by believing in the end of the world. Modern society consequently does not run towards a radiant future that will solve all its problems thanks to the continual progress of science and high technology. It does not distance itself at all from a so-called bygone time and a God presumed fictitious and constricting, but on the contrary, goes toward the encounter of God. He is at the other end of the tunnel and waits for all to be accomplished as predicted: Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? |
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This reminds us of the theory of Joachim of Fiore, according to which history succeeds to three kingdoms each representing the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future, 1999). Joachim of Fiore however believed that the reign of the Spirit would coincide with the millennium, which should have begun in 1260. According to the history of salvation presented here, however, the Trinitarian Kingdoms are subdivided quite differently: the Kingdom of the Father corresponds to the era of the patriarchs, the Kingdom of the Son to the era of the children of this patriarchs, that is to say, to the era of the Israelite people, and finally the Kingdom of the Spirit to the era of spiritual kinship (also see figure 25). See also the prophecy of St. Malachy from the year 1139 providing a list of the 112 future Popes until the end times, of whom Benedict XVI is the 111th Pope. Next page Previous page |
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