JUST when we think God should throw in the towel, He throws in another few centuries. This is why predictions as specific as “this October” have to be regarded with prudence and caution. But we also know the Lord has a plan that is being brought to fulfillment, a plan that is culminating in these times, according to not only numerous seers but, in fact, the Early Church Fathers.
An Apostolic Timeline
Following the Scriptural maxim that “one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day,”[1]2 Pet 3:8 the Church Fathers broke history into the four thousand years from Adam to the birth of Christ, and then the two thousand years that follow. To them, this timeline was akin to the six days of creation, which would be followed by a “seventh day” of rest:
…as 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… (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… 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… —St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.; Church Doctor), De Civitate Dei, Bk. XX, Ch. 7, Catholic University of America Press
So doing the simple math, six thousand years leads us to the Great Jubilee celebrated by Pope John Paul II in 2000 A.D. essentially bringing us to the evening of the “sixth day” in the apostolic timeline. According to Sacred Tradition, then, we are “crossing the threshold of hope” into The Coming Sabbath Rest or “Day of the Lord” and what mystics have called an “era of peace.” This has been confirmed in the ecclesiastically-approved writings of Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta whose core message is the fulfillment of the “Our Father” — Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven — in these times.
In Creation, My ideal was to form the Kingdom of My Will in My creature’s soul. My primary purpose was to make each man the image of the Divine Trinity by virtue of the fulfilment of My Will in him. But by man’s withdrawl from My Will, I lost My Kingdom in him, and for 6000 long years I have had to battle. —from Luisa’s diaries, Vol. XIV, November 6th, 1922; Saints in the Divine Will by Fr. Sergio Pellegrini, with the approval of the Archbishop of Trani, Giovan Battista Pichierri
There’s that 6000-year or six-day timeline again after which Jesus and Scripture promises, not the end of the world, but a renewal:
My beloved daughter, I want to let you know the order of My Providence. Every two thousand years I have renewed the world. In the first two thousand years I renewed it with the Deluge; in the second two thousand I renewed it with My coming upon earth when I manifested My Humanity, from which, as if from many fissures, my Divinity shone forth. The good ones and the very Saints of the following two thousand years have lived from the fruits of My Humanity and, in drops, they have enjoyed My Divinity. Now we are around the third two thousand years, and there will be a third renewal. This is the reason for the general confusion: it is nothing other than the preparation of the third renewal… [2]Jesus continues, “If in the second renewal I manifested what My Humanity did and suffered, and very little of what My Divinity was operating, now, in this third renewal, after the earth will be purged and a great part of the current generation destroyed, I will be even more generous with creatures, and I will accomplish the renewal by manifesting what My Divinity did within my Humanity; how My Divine Will acted with My human will; how everything remained linked within Me; how I did and redid everything, and how even each thought of each creature was redone by Me, and sealed with My Divine Volition.” —Jesus to Luisa, January 29, 1919, Volume 12
The general timeline has been in front of our eyes the whole time.
We are on the threshold of a new birth. But new births are always preceded by labor pains, and that is what are experiencing now, though, for how long, no one knows. What is certain is that we are the generation(s) whom the Church Fathers spoke about, the ones who would pass from the sixth into the seventh day ushering in the Kingdom of the Divine Will…
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… Those who saw John, the Lord’s disciple, [tell us] that they heard from him how the Lord taught and spoke about these times… —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.)
…followed by the “eighth” and eternal day:
And God made in six days the works of His hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it. Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, “He finished in six days.” This implies that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for “a day is with Him a thousand years.” And He Himself testifies, saying, “Behold, today will be as a thousand years.” Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished. “And He rested on the seventh day.” This means: when His Son, coming [again], shall destroy the time of the wicked man, and judge the ungodly, and change the sun, and the moon, and the stars, then shall He truly rest on the seventh day. Moreover, He says… when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. —Epistle of Barnabas (70-79 A.D.), Ch. 15, written by a second century Apostolic Father
Related Reading
Millenarianism — What it is and is Not
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Footnotes
| ↑1 | 2 Pet 3:8 |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Jesus continues, “If in the second renewal I manifested what My Humanity did and suffered, and very little of what My Divinity was operating, now, in this third renewal, after the earth will be purged and a great part of the current generation destroyed, I will be even more generous with creatures, and I will accomplish the renewal by manifesting what My Divinity did within my Humanity; how My Divine Will acted with My human will; how everything remained linked within Me; how I did and redid everything, and how even each thought of each creature was redone by Me, and sealed with My Divine Volition.” |