The Sixth Day

Photo by EPA, at 6pm in Rome, February 11th, 2013

FOR some reason, a deep sorrow came over me in April of 2012, which was immediately after the Pope’s trip to Cuba. That sorrow culminated in a writing three weeks later called Removing the Restrainer. It speaks in part about how the Pope and the Church are a force restraining the “lawless one,” the Antichrist. Little did I or hardly anyone know that the Holy Father decided then, after that trip, to renounce his office, which he did this past February 11th of 2013.

This resignation has brought us closer to the threshold of the Day of the Lord…

THE DAY OF THE LORD

The Church Fathers also referred to the Day of the Lord as the “seventh day,” a day of rest that would come for the Church when all of creation would rest and experience some kind of renewal. ^[1]cf. Creation Reborn The Fathers equated this Day or “seventh day” to Chapter 20 of St. John’s Apocalypse when the Antichrist would be defeated, Satan chained, and the saints would reign with Christ for a “thousand years.”

Behold, the Day of the Lord shall be a thousand years. —Letter of Barnabas, The Fathers of the Church, Ch. 15

Thus, the Day of the Lord, that eventually culminates in the Return of Jesus in Glory at the end of time, is not to be thought of as a single, twenty-four period but one that, nonetheless, follows the pattern of a solar day:

…this 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. —Lactantius, Fathers of the Church: The Divine Institutes, Book VII, Chapter 14, Catholic Encyclopedia; www.newadvent.org

That is to say that the Day of the Lord begins in a vigil… the darkness of night…  ^[2]read Two More Days for a basic chronology

ONE DAY, A THOUSAND YEARS

The Church Fathers made the seven days of God’s creation in Genesis analgous to the seven thousand years following creation, according to the biblical account.

With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. (2 Pt 3:8)

Thus, they took the four thousand years leading up to Christ’s birth to represent the first “four days” of the “work” of the People of God. The following two thousand years since Christ’s birth they deemed to refer to the last two days of the labour of the Church. Thus, with the turn of the millennium we have, according to the Father’s teachings, arrived at the end of the Sixth Day and the threshold of the Seventh Day—a day of rest from all the labours of God’s people.

Therefore, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God. And whoever enters into Gods rest, rests from his own works as God did from his. (Heb 4:8)

Scripture says: ‘And God rested upon the seventh day from all His works’… And in six days created things were completed; it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year… But when The Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from Heaven in the clouds… sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire; but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, the hallowed seventh day… These are to take place in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day… the true Sabbath of the righteous.  —St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Church Father (140–202 A.D.); Adversus Haereses, Irenaeus of Lyons, V.33.3.4, The Fathers of the Church, CIMA Publishing Co.; (St. Irenaeus was a student of St. Polycarp, who knew and learned from the Apostle John and was later consecrated bishop of Smyrna by John.)

Oh! when in every city and village the law of the Lord is faithfully observed, when respect is shown for sacred things, when the Sacraments are frequented, and the ordinances of Christian life fulfilled, there will certainly be no more need for us to labor further to see all things restored in Christ… And then? Then, at last, it will be clear to all that the Church, such as it was instituted by Christ, must enjoy full and entire liberty and independence from all foreign dominion…  “He shall break the heads of his enemies,” that all may know “that God is the king of all the earth,” “that the Gentiles may know themselves to be men.” All this, Venerable Brethren, We believe and expect with unshakable faith. —POPE PIUS X, E Supremi, Encyclical “On the Restoration of All Things”, n.14, 6-7

Again, the Fathers of the Church are not referring to the end of the world, but the end of the age, and dawning of a new era before the Last Judgment at the end of time:

…we understand that a period of one thousand years is indicated in symbolic language… A man among us named John, one of Christ’s Apostles, received and foretold that the followers of Christ would dwell in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and that afterwards the universal and, in short, everlasting resurrection and judgment would take place. —St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, The Fathers of the Church, Christian Heritage

If we are at the end of the Sixth Day, then we should also see a corresponding “darkness” or “night.”

ON THE SIXTH DAY

I have dozens upon dozens of writings here and also in my book, which describe in careful detail—in the words of the popes themselves—the spiritual darkness that has descended upon the world. ^[3]If you are a new reader, you can find several of these quotes summarized in the writing, Why Aren’t the Popes Shouting?

What happened on the actual “sixth day” of creation? Scripture says:

God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness… God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it… God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food… And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed — the sixth day.

What is happening in our Sixth Day?

We have begun to recreate man in our own image, or what we think our image should be. As I just wrote in The Heart of the New Revolution, we have come in our times to a remarkable turning point: the belief that our biological sex, genetic makeup, and moral fabric can be completely re-ordered, re-engineered, and replaced. We have put our hope almost solely into science and technology to deliver us into a new epoch of human enlightenment and freedom. We have chemically and mechanically made ourselves infertile. We have begun programmes to dramatically reduce the human population. The very heart of this anthropological revolution is satanic. It is Satan’s final attack upon the Creator by undoing what God created and initiated on the sixth day. ^[4]cf. Back to Eden?

I am struck by the specific words God spoke millennia ago when He said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant… and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food…” Today, we have scientists and corporations that are directly altering these life-giving seeds. Many are even working behind the scenes on “Traitor Technologies.” ^[5]cf. http://rense.com/politics6/seedfr.htm This enables them to patent and sell genetically modified seeds that, through chemical reaction, can be “turned off”, thereby sterilizing the seed so that it can no longer reproduce. It no longer becomes a fecund seed-bearing plant, and the seeds must then be re-purchasesd the following season. Corporations like Monsanto, while claiming to have abandoned such “suicide seeds,” admitted that they are continuing research that could still permit them to turn on-or-off certain genetic traits of plants. ^[6]cf. http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/seeds-cn.htm The harm already done to corn, cotton, and other seed crops through genetic modification continues to come to the forefront. From driving third world farmers into poverty and suicide ^[7]cf. www.infowars.com to spawning “super weeds”, ^[8]http://www.reuters.com/ to depriving humans of essential nutrients in the soil, ^[9]cf. http://www.globalresearch.ca/ to causing disease and death by associated chemicals needed to grow the crops. ^[10]cf. http://www.naturalnews.com/ Thus, the Sixth Day of mankind is really the antithesis of the sixth day of creation!

In His parables, Jesus compared the Word of God to seed that is spread on various soils. The attack upon the seed of man and the seed of plants is ultimately an attack upon Jesus, the “Word made flesh” who is “the Life.” For it violates in the first place the Father’s word to “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it…” ^[11]Gen 1:28 Secondly, it violates the commandment “to cultivate and care for” creation. ^[12]Gen 2:15 Lastly, it overturns the natural and moral law established by God concerning relationship to Him and to one another, for: “a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” ^[13]Gen 2:24

THE SMOLDERING CANDLE…

We are entering the night of the Sixth Day. The Pope’s resignation is more a sign than anything—a chess move of the Divine Hand to position his Queen. Coincidentally, a few hours after the Pope’s announcement, lightning struck the dome of St. Peter’s at exactly 6pm—the beginning of evening.

Pope Benedict himself warned:

…in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel… The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.—Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to All the Bishops of the World, March 10, 2009; Catholic Online

I have shared with readers a powerful interior vision I received of a smoldering candle (read The Smoldering Candle). In it, the candle represented the light of truth that is going out in the world. But Our Lady, our Queen of Peace, has been preparing and nurturing that light in the hearts of a remnant of believers. I believe that flame of truth is about to go out in the world… and it is linked to this papacy in some way. Pope Benedict XVI in many ways is the last “gift” of a generation of giant theologians who have guided the Church through the Storm of Apostasy that is now going to break out in all its force upon the world. The next pope will guide us too… ^[14]cf. A Black Pope? but he is ascending a throne that the world wishes to overturn. That is the threshold of which I am speaking.

In an interview when he was still a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI said:

Abraham, the father of faith, is by his faith the rock that holds back chaos, the onrushing primordial flood of destruction, and thus sustains creation. Simon, the first to confess Jesus as the Christ… now becomes by virtue of his Abrahamic faith, which is renewed in Christ, the rock that stands against the impure tide of unbelief and its destruction of man. —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Called to Communion, Understanding the Church Today, Adrian Walker, Tr., p. 55-56

St. Paul spoke about a restrainer that holds back this “impure tide of unbelief and its destruction of man” that is incarnated in one called “the lawless one” or Antichrist.

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed… (2 Thess 2:7-8)

In one of his last book interviews, Pope Benedict XVI said:

The Church is always called upon to do what God asked of Abraham, which is to see to it that there are enough righteous men to repress evil and destruction. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Light of the World, A Conversation with Peter Seewald, p. 166

Are there enough? What are the signs of the times telling us? War drums are beating all over the world… ^[15]cf. http://news.nationalpost.com/; http://www.defence.pk/ …economies are hanging on by a thread… ^[16]cf. www.youtube.com currency wars are beginning… ^[17]cf. http://www.reuters.com/ food and water shortages are increasing… ^[18]cf. http://www.businessinsider.com/ nature and oceans are groaning… ^[19]cf. http://www.aljazeera.com/ sexually transmitted diseases are exploding… ^[20]cf. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ drug-resistant bacteria are threatening a global epidemic… ^[21]cf. www.thenationalpost.com the earth is shaking and waking up… ^[22]cf. http://www.spiegel.de/ the sun is reaching it’s active solar peak… ^[23]cf. http://www.foxnews.com/ asteroids are nearly missing the earth…. ^[24]cf. http://en.rian.ru/ and if all that weren’t enough, a comet will appear this year that may be as bright as the moon, what scientists are calling a “once in a civilization” event. ^[25]cf. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/

You will hear of wars and reports of wars… Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom… There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place… There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay… (Matt 24:6-7; Luke 21:11, 25)

But most importantly, Our Lady, the woman clothed in the sun, is here, appearing and walking among us, preparing a Bride for her Son. We are not alone as we face the final confrontation of our times. Heaven is arrayed, prepared, and engaged.

Just as creation “in the beginning” began in darkness, so too, the new creation to come in the Era of Peace begins in darkness. But the Light is coming…

And then that wicked one shall be revealed whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of his mouth; and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming,… (2 Thess 2:8)

St. Thomas and St. John Chrysostom explain the words quem Dominus Jesus destruet illustratione adventus sui (“whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the brightness of His coming”) in the sense that Christ will strike the Antichrist by dazzling him with a brightness that will be like an omen and sign of His Second Coming… The most authoritative view, and the one that appears to be most in harmony with Holy Scripture, is that, after the fall of the Antichrist, the Catholic Church will once again enter upon a period of prosperity and triumph. —The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, Fr. Charles Arminjon (1824-1885), p. 56-57; Sophia Institute Press

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