Posted on 06/29/2016 6:32:09 AM PDT by Salvation
Though he lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the prophet Amos was sent north by God to preach to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Perhaps no other prophet was as searing in his condemnation and as demanding in his call as was Amos. His prophecies of doom largely came true in the form of a huge earthquake that struck the region in 760 B.C. (two years after his death) and forty years later in the utter conquest and destruction of Israel in 721 B.C. The message is clear: unrepented sin brings dire consequences. When a nation refuses to repent it seals its own doom.
This theme was clearly announced by Amos in the reading from daily Mass (Tuesday of the 13th Week), excerpted here:
Hear this word, O children of Israel, that the LORD pronounces over you,
over the whole family that I brought up from the land of Egypt:
You alone have I favored,
more than all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you
for all your crimes. …
If the trumpet sounds in a city,
will the people not be frightened?
If evil befalls a city,
has not the LORD caused it?
Indeed, the Lord GOD does nothing
without revealing his plan
to his servants, the prophets.
The lion roars—
who will not be afraid!
The Lord GOD speaks—
who will not prophesy! …
I brought upon you such upheaval
as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah:
you were like a brand plucked from the fire;
Yet you returned not to me,
says the LORD. …
So now I will deal with you in my own way, O Israel!
and since I will deal thus with you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel. …
Therefore, thus says the Lord God:
… An adversary shall surround the land
and bring down your defenses from you,
and your strongholds shall be plundered. (Amos 3:1-8; 4:11-12; 3:11-12)
Within a generation, Assyria did in fact invade and destroy the ten Northern tribes that made up Israel, leaving only Judah in the South, along with some Levites and Benjaminites. The “Ten Lost Tribes” were effectively gone and not heard from again.
What of a nation and culture such as ours? As political entities, the United States and the countries of Europe are not covenanted with the Lord. But surely Western culture (once called Christendom) has a special relationship with God through faith in Christ and in the moral vision that once united us, albeit imperfectly. What of us? Do readings like this speak to us?
There has come upon the West a hardening and unrepentant spirit. Even having been warned to pray (e.g., through the proclamation of the Gospel and through special apparitions such as at Lourdes and Fatima), we collectively refuse to repent, instead doubling down on sin. Rates of unbelief have skyrocketed and there has been a massive falling away from the practice of the faith. The “right” to the grave injustice of abortion continues to sail through the courts. Families are in ruins; sexual promiscuity, confusion, and the celebration of every sort of disorder grow daily.
As early as the 1940s, C.S. Lewis lamented the loss of the faith in Europe and observed that it was worse than a return to paganism: At least pagans and barbarians had belief in deities and some respect for Natural Law. Whereas pagan Europe was like a virgin awaiting her groom, modern Europe of the 1940s was an angry divorcee, a bad scene. And things have only further declined in what we call the West.
Amos reminds us that our sins and injustices cannot go on forever. God hears the cries of the poor, the aborted, the victims of the sexual revolution, the children who suffer from their parents’ misbehavior, those who suffer on account of our greed, and many others.
I am not able to see the future in detail, but it is biblically and historically true that indulged evil and sin cannot last. They carry the seeds of destruction because they are rooted in selfishness. And selfishness does not build families, nations, or cultures. While evil has its day, it also has its end, which is destruction.
There seem to be two models (in antiquity and in Scripture) through which this collapse that Amos and others describe occurs.
I. The Disease Model – As unrepented sin accumulates in a person and in a culture, its effects grow in stages like a cancer; eventually the condition becomes irreversible. The punishment for sin is more sin. The darkness grows ever deeper. The light seems obnoxious and is rejected. Hope for a cure fades as the very medicine necessary (faith) is rejected and scoffed at. Disorders of every kind multiply. Systems like the family start to fail, falling under the burden of growing sin and selfishness. Low birth rates and abortion reflect this selfishness and destroy one of most basic instincts: survival. Under the load of sin, fewer and fewer people in such a culture can rouse themselves to make the necessary changes.
People and cultures like this just fade away, replaced by others who still have basic virtues and values that make for a culture. Even if the replacing people have those virtues in a fierce and unrefined way, they do at least have them.
In many ways, this is what happened to the Greco-Roman world. Rome was not so much conquered as it faded away. (Yes, there were skirmishes with the barbarians, but no big, final showdown.) The Romans became soft; they lost family virtues and a solid work ethic. They declined into sexual immorality and infanticide. They depended on imported slave labor to do their work and took to an increasingly decadent leisure. Little by little Rome faded as Europe was overtaken by barbarians, who though fierce, still had the natural virtues needed to form a culture.
This also seems to be happening to Europe today as they are simply being replaced by Muslims and others from the south. And though sadly they are not Christians, they do actually believe in something. Though often fierce, they are at least passionate and willing to make sacrifices for their vision, however flawed. Let us pray that the Church can convert them to Jesus, as happened with the barbarians of old.
This is the disease model, in which God seems to sit back and allow sin to run its course, bringing an end to an unrepentant culture and nation.
II. The Destruction Model – In this model, God brings a swifter and more decisive end to sin and unrepentance; it is largely what Amos describes in the passage above. There is a general weakness that is introduced into a nation or culture. Through unrepentance that weakness grows, making that nation an easy target for its enemies. A nation that is sinful becomes conflicted within because, as already noted, sin is rooted in selfishness. Thus, in a nation of unchecked and unrepented sin, there is diminishing unity. As enemies begin to attack, there is no agreed upon strategy or even resolve to repel the threats.
In Ancient Israel God sent prophets to secure a repentance that would strengthen it. Most of the reforms undertaken, however, were fleeting and tepid. God then sent final warnings of imminent destruction, as we saw in the Amos text above.
Over time, but also with a suddenness, Israel and Judah suffered stunning defeats, first in 721 B.C., and later in 587 B.C.
Jesus also warned the Jewish people of His day of the looming destruction of their country if they did not repent and come to faith in Him. Forty years later Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple burned (never again to be rebuilt), and 1.2 million Jews lost their lives in the war.
This is the destruction model, which begins a bit like the disease model but ends in a sudden crisis (brought on by sin) rather than a gradual fading away and replacement.
In our times, the disease model seems more evident. In terms of our moral condition, it is “Zero Dark Thirty” in the West. Just when we think things can’t get any stranger, they do; disorders are multiplied. But instead of being addressed as problems, they are celebrated. The decadence of leisure and the selfishness of sin are progressing, and things that make for a solid culture and nation are lacking. A kind of replacement seems to be underway in Europe despite a certain awakening by some in terms of concern for low birthrates, etc.
In the United States, it is less clear what will happen. Politically, our Constitution, rooted in biblical values, once guided us. But it has become the personal plaything of judges and seems doomed to be interpreted out of existence. On the moral front, Americans no longer look collectively to the Judeo-Christian heritage that birthed our nation and sustained in its citizens the virtues necessary to support a republic. A nation cannot withstand such trends. Exactly how it will play out is less clear to me, but that it will play out is without doubt.
Consider carefully the words of Amos as relevant for us all, not just the Church, but also the nation!
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Things will get rolling once people understand who they are. There's always a remnant. Purim: first for the Jews, then for the Northern tribes. God is missing from the narrative, yet is on every page. It's like that. Divine orchestration. America isn't exactly the corpse that she appears to be. The bodies of Joseph and Israel were preserved (embalmed) in Egypt.
Msgr. Pope is a prophet. Not like Amos but one of the minor prophets that repeat and herald what others have said. Bless you Msgr.!
He said a couple days ago that we are at "end Times". I told him with what is going on here and around the world I'm inclined to believe him.
I think we are.
It's hard to come to any other conclusion at this stage of the game.
Odd, I find myself agreeing with this fellow - are you sure he’s Catholic?
(kidding)
Actually, quite a timely message. I was praying for our nation a while back, and was reminded of a passage from Isaiah, I think, which stated, “As you have turned your back on me, so I have turned my back on you.” Paraphrasing from memory there.
Quite chilling.
|
Are you still killing your unborn? -- GOD |
"The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem,
no matter how difficult it is, wheter temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families...that cannot be solved by the Rosary.
There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary."
Sister Lucia dos Santos
(Given to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan de la Roche)
| 1 | Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive powerful graces. |
| 2. | I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. |
| 3. | The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies |
| 4. | It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means. |
| 5. | The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish. |
| 6. | Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying Himself to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise Him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. |
| 7. | Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church. |
| 8. | Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise. |
| 9. | I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. |
| 10. | The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven. |
| 11. | You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. |
| 12. | All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities. |
| 13. | I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death |
| 14. | All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 15. | Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination. |
This my handle “Syncro”
I have been studying this phenomona for decades.
(thypo intentional, highlight below)
Got that from Dr. Zoo at the Institute of Phenomonology
Sadly, we are now residing in a predominantly secularist society that shuns anything religious. They consider themselves to be intellectuals who have risen above the plebes who still subscribe to religious texts. In a letter by Fatima seer Sister Lucia to Cardinal Caffara, she revealed Our Lady’s warning that “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” Looking around, it doesn't take a degree in theology to recognize how this is playing out in contemporary society.
In my grandfather's world, killing an alive unborn child was an abomination, regardless of how that child came to be in the womb.
A man abandoning his wife and children was anathema and such a man was fully ostracized by the community and if he tried to re-enter same was run off as a bad risk for community cohesion.
The societal taboo system allowed the community to deal with the taboo shunners, the dangerous and rebellious. The modern demonic society shelters these same and encourages more of their kind, hence the primary democrat is sucking into America as much of the degenerate class as he can accomplish, with sexual degenerates, drug addicted thugs, and murderous muslims high on his welcoming list.
Another good one, However I would point out this one line:
“In the United States, it is less clear what will happen. Politically, our Constitution, rooted in biblical values, once guided us. But it has become the personal plaything of judges and seems doomed to be interpreted out of existence”
The Constitution has been gone a Long time and America is Evil fully in its acts and words. Thus its time to
Secede or Die!
God Bless
Amen! However we are so far from Truth and so many are not seeking Grace that what you say here:
“The societal taboo system allowed the community to deal with the taboo shunners, the dangerous and rebellious”
is now called Bulling... My how the minds have been deceived and diluted from Truth!
Pray for so many Lost Soul’s...
God Bless
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