The Joyful Mysteries: a Symbol of All Human History? - Part V - The Preeminent Ages: the Flood and Babel
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A Meditation On The Papacy And The Apocalypse
In light of the conclave and doctrine of the papacy, I'm just rehashing this from earlier in the year, haha.
I have an idea like this. There's a lot of backdrop you need, but here goes the gist of it if you had the larger background theology for the apocalypse letters.
On The Feast Of The Office Of St Peter, The Ultimate Witness To The Gospel In All Ages
One of the Herod kings was called Antipas.
Interestingly, in the Apocalypse third letter to the churches, a mystical person named Antipas is called a faithful witness and is put to death or is martyred, quote unquote, “in those days,” as it is said.
There is no space here to give a rigorous treatment of the Apocalypse letters as a symbol of the great ages of the church, which has been done by some Catholic theologians or Saints of the past in speculation or conjecture, but in a delineation that I use which correlates the seven letters as seven primary scenes of the dragon in the latter portion of apocalypse, suffice it to say that the third letter in this rendition turns out to be the Middle Ages. Consequently, if we flip-flop the negative Antipas of Herod into a positive figure, then the pope is in fact the ultimate earthly king of the Church, standing in place of Christ not to usurp his role but to be quote on quote the supreme witness to the gospel, hence mirroring that the mystical Antipas is the faithful witness of Christ, the ultimate faithful witness.
His martyrdom in that apocalypse letter can then symbolize a spiritual martyrdom, which is to say, to reject the doctrine of his supreme witness as the ultimate apostolic successor and guardian of the truth for the entire Church of the Incarnate One, which happened in the Great Schism, where all of the other four great Patriarchal brothers of Peter murdered him spiritually by considering his spiritual office to be false, hence “slaying the doctrine of the papacy”, as it were.
For a far greater and deeper analysis that supports these arguments, you can see my introductory treatment of the Apocalypse seven letters in the link below:
http://theologyoftheages.org/content/apocalypse/synthesis/apocalypse-letters-i.php
Thank you if you have read this far and God bless you, and may the Holy Spirit guide us to have a beloved Pope who will bring the gospel to the world in all its fullness, Amen!
I am a Catholic revert. I desire to share deeper theology about the Catholic Church that is admittedly speculative but that makes perfect sense from Catholic doctrine and church teaching.
The Catholic Church shows us that we are all priceless regardless of what anything the world may say about us. We can hold our heads high and know that God loves us no matter what and desires us to be with him forever if we but persevere in love with him unto the end.
To know these things gives me great joy and I am just a poor sinner striving to become holier little by little.
May God bless all writers and readers on this site in all ways, amen!
