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To: Jvette

Rome does not take a comprehensive dogmatic position on the end times beyond some basics, but here is some of what the Catechism teaches.

670 Since the Ascension God’s plan has entered into its fulfillment. We are already at “the last hour”.554 “Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect.”555 Christ’s kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church.556

673 Since the Ascension Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent,566 even though “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.”567. This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are “delayed”.568

674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus.

The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”,572 will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.573

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.576

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,577 especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.578 [fill in blank]

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.579 The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.580 God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.581

988 The Christian Creed - the profession of our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in God’s creative, saving, and sanctifying action - culminates in the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead on the last day and in life everlasting.

989 We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.534 Our resurrection, like his own, will be the work of the Most Holy Trinity:

1001 When? Definitively “at the last day,” “at the end of the world.”557 Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ’s Parousia:

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.558

1053 “We believe that the multitude of those gathered around Jesus and Mary in Paradise forms the Church of heaven, where in eternal blessedness they see God as he is and where they are also, to various degrees, associated with the holy angels in the divine governance exercised by Christ in glory, by interceding for us and helping our weakness by their fraternal concern” (Paul VI, CPG § 29).

Prophesy is not much my focus, but I tend to see the Lord coming for his own toward the end of the Tribulation, the faithful having been protected during it, during which God shall reverse the curse of blindness, the fullness of the Gentiles having entered in, with Jews believing then witnessing and entering into the Millennial reign of Christ, and so “all Israel - the natural branches now granted repentance, and the “Israel of God” - shall be saved. Israel’s repentance is what i see Rm. 11 teaching. (http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/israel-chosenorforgotten.html).

The resurrected saints (resurrection of life: Jn. 5:29; first resurrection: Rv. 20:5) come with the Lord in judgment at Armageddon, (Jude. 1:14,15) and reign with Christ for a 1,00 years before the final war, and then judge angels as well as men (resurrection of damnation: Jn. 5:29; Rv. 20:12)


2,132 posted on 09/08/2011 6:41:11 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Our sinful deeds condemn us, but Christ's death and resurrection gains salvation. Repent +Believe)
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To: daniel1212

Will have to read this later.


2,173 posted on 09/08/2011 8:33:34 PM PDT by Jvette
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