Jezebel as Protestantism Revisited: Fourth Apocalypse Letter
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On St. Peter Feast and Christian Unity Week | The Papacy doctrine in the Apocalypse?
On the feast of St Peter to spearhead Christian unity week, we should recall an article that I posted recently a while back on Trent and Protestantism being in apocalypse [Probing Deeper into Scripture : Could Protestantism and Trent be in Apocalypse? ...], with Jezebel symbolizing Protestantism in the 4th of the seven letters of the beginning of the Apocalypse.
Well now, I wish to introduce , as it were, another idea that's something profound in the apocalypse, which is also related to ecclesiology, and that is in the previous letter of the Apocalypse before Jezebel, which, of course, would be letter three. In this analysis, which I am developing in the book I wish to complete, the third letter is the Middle ages.
Moreover, it actually turns out that within my theology, the partitioning of the ages of the church largely follows the way that the church would separate them, and this is similarly what many secular historians would do in partitioning of the history after Christ. Also, they have some rather common sense breakups. It is just that, of course, what the Catholic Church would view as good phases, the secular historians would call bad, and vice versa, seeing as the secular world and the Catholic Church are very much at odds with one another in this day and age.
In this vein, if letter three is in fact the Middle ages, then there is this mystical mentioning of a person named quote on quote “Antipas.” It is said that he is martyred quote on quote “in those days” and is considered a faithful witness.
Long story short, we must ask, who is the greatest quote on quote “Witness” to the truths of God in Catholic teaching?
Obviously, it is the petrine successor, since, on earth, he is given the ultimate charism of the Holy Spirit, the charism of infallibility in teaching when he speaks ex Cathedra from the chair, which he can do of his own volition without even consulting the other patriarchs or bishops. He also has the authority to settle debates within councils.
These characteristics of the petrine office, which are part of Catholic dogmatic teaching, clearly set up the petrine office as in fact the ultimate quote unquote “witness” to truth on Earth.
Subsequently we might ask, since the Christ speaks of this event happening somewhat in the past, it might imply that this quote on quote “apocalyptic martyrdom” of Peter in a figurative sense, happens towards the beginning of the Middle ages. And this, is in fact, what happened if we view the so-called martyrdom of Antipas to be spiritual in nature, which is to say a massive rejection of his office in terms of its spiritual authority in essence.
That event was clearly the great schism, which did in fact occur early in the Middle Ages, as we know around 1050 AD or so.
Antipas
Also, one further observation: Why “Antipas?” Here, the answer is rather simple from, like we are going to do, use other Scriptures to interpret when there is no immediate context. Toward that end, we can remember that King Herod of the NT had a suffix name of, you guessed it, “Antipas.”
However, at first glance, this is not good. The pope, we have seen, although sometimes a great sinner, nevertheless is the greatest spiritual repository for the Church in terms of its testimony of teaching. So we seem to have a dichotomy. And, to make things worse, the devil many times takes things that God made to be good and plagiarizes them, mocks them, into false and gravely misleading caricatures of what the thing should really be. For example, the devil, especially in our own day of the sexual revolution, has taken what should be one of the most beautiful visible signs God’s love for His Church, and of the Trinity imaging the human family, and twisted it into the perversion of seeking only pleasure and distorting the language of total love, life long commitment, the blessing of multiple children, the total gift of man to woman with no barriers or corruptions, and now the deviancies, etc.
Well, the solution is kewl here! God can play that game! He can take what is bad and reshape it into something good.
Subsequently, here, God uses the wicked title of a literal king, quote on quote, Antipas, a king who has dominion over a literal physical place, to create a mystical type in apocalypse, of a good king, or spiritual ruler, of the ultimage blessed and good spiritual kingdom, the Church! And that, again, is the papa, who “stands in for Christ,”, the Vicar of Christ, who has the “keys to the kingdom of heaven,” the keys to all the “rooms of the Inn,” and who cares for the wounded man, or Adam, the sinful and sick faithful of God’s community, in the "Inn", which is the Church, until the One who was rejected by His own, “returns to pay him back anything that he spends”, from the communion of saints, as the treasury of indulgences and prayer!
How will we derive the seven letters?
Ok, well, yes, this is all kewl in some sense, but as we hinted at earlier, all this can seem merely reading into this something that God may never had intended, and just wishful eisegesis, as theologians would call it. Yes, this conjecture only makes sense if we have a context of arguing [rigorously!] what the ages of the church are in terms of the letters.
Satan, meet the Dragon!
Well, the way which I use to do the correlation is simply to correlate the devil with the devil!
And what do we mean?
We mean that the “devil,” as it were, is only mentioned in two greater sections of the Apocalypse: in the beginning in the letters, and then in the latter half of the Apocalypse with the dragon scenes.
The reason I believe that we can draw the correlation is that the description of the devil is different between the two greater sections.
In the first greater section, again, the letters, the devil is exclusively referred to as quote unquote “Satan.”
In the latter half of the book, we are much more familiar with the reality: he is represented exclusively as the quote unquote “dragon” mainly.
Therefore, I argue that there really couldn't be any other context to do the association that seems so evident.
The dragon scenes
And, in fact, when we start looking at the dragon scenes of the latter half of the book of revelation, which was an extensive view of mine way back in 365 [The Dragon and the Woman], we regarded the collection of major dragon developments in that course of the writing as a chronolical trajectory of all of Church history [from just after the Ascension of the Christ child to rule the nations with a rod of iron unto the very end of the casting of the dragon into the fire forever]. In this vein, the partitioning of the history of the Church is basically easy to see in those scenes, firrstly, by common sense and, secondly, by interpreting a lot of the physcial things, activity, and the like from Biblical metaphors already established in other Scriptures or Tradition.
Well, if we take these dragon scene interpretations, which are, once again, quite sensible and straightfoward, and match them up one-to-one with the letters, the mapping works out practically perfectly and wonderfully, and even provides in the letters astounding supplemental elements of the ages that were not present with the dragon.
Now, for reference from the dragon writing, let me just list the seven stages of the dragon which were attained there, without the explanations, for brevity, since we merely need the basic essence of these stages to compare to the seven letters:
Deriving the seven letters
The correlation then follows, again, as we look upon the descriptions of the letters and try to see what will be going on, noting that we must assume that all the letters references are mainly of spritual realities and such, and not literal things. Although, of course, the spiritual problems may digress to physical realities, but the root cause is the spiritual issues. Hence, for example, when Jesus says to the effect, in the 1st letter, “I know thy works and thy patience, and though hath persevered,” or such, it will be shownn to mean the first era of the pagan Roman persecutions.
For example, when the Christ says something to the effect of “I know thy works,” He does not mean helping the poor, but rather, spiritual conditions of the age and of His Kingdom. Any negative elements then become spiritual disturbances to the ages, and not literal things like physical evil, or literal wars, and such.
And now similarly, since a full discourse on the dragon is beyond our time and scope, so likewise a full expansion on the connections of the letterss to the dragon cannot be given here. Suffice it say, I have largely provided such analysis in a large writing from way back as well here:
The Apocalypse Letters to the Seven Churches and Seven Ages of the Church
From this reference, like with the dragon, we can still give brief exegtical summary to each step to show how the corresponces really work wonderfully.
7 Letters Summaries:
I. Pagan Rome: Here, the Christians are praised for persevering. Two rebukes however. “they have lost their first love.” Well, for St Paul in 1 Cor, the ultimate and first love of all simply charity. “paraphrase, and if I have all charism and gifts and knowledge and sacrifice and penance, if I have not love, I am nothing.” Within the persecution times, there were several heretical cults that exalted themselves for possessing charactierists or abilities over charity: Gnostics favor knowledge as salvation, and not ultimate love. The donatists and the montanists thougt they were the true church cuz the had the greater miracles.A similar community I think was named the Miletians, and they had overly strict austerities and believed themselves superior because they evidently had inside into into eschatology and such. The Nicolatians? In Wikipedia, it is conjectured that Nicolia was a deacon who encouraged licentiousness and hedonism like the Corinthians, as if to cheapen grace of the indulgenceo of the physical. I argue that opposite becomes subsumed here: ones who emphasive a radical rejection of the physical as evil, in exchange for severe austerities like above and spiritual errors. This was kind of like dualsim: once again, the Gnostics, the Marcions, the Manichains, etc.
2. [“The Dark Ages“], Trinitarian and Christological heresies: the world thinks the Church is poor and left its mark on earth with a collapse of all the civ that pagan rome had, and so filthy poor. Nevertheless, the Church is ascending in marvelous dogmatic contemplation of the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, from the Arian Heresy, unto the lesser ones above, then Islam, and even Iconoclasm, which assaults the visible God in Christ, making sacred images acceptable and glorfying our Maker. Quote on quote, Jesus says the Church is being blasphemed? Well, to blaspheme God as Trinity and Incarnation, blasphemes His Church, since Jesus associates himself with his brothers: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute ME?… I am Jesus, WHOM YOU PERSECUTE.” And again, “when you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.”
3. Middle Ages: we have seen Antipas as great schism. Christ is pleased with their works, could be the councils, the spiritual flourishing of the Church to large extent. Nicolatians are back. This is accurate: the Albigensians and Catharsis are dualists, like the ones in pagan Rome. There is also a baal and balak: proto-Protestantism. In the next letter comes Protestantism
4. Protestantism and solo-ratio age unto modern godlessness of last century to us, exclusivve. Again, as above: See
5. Our Modern Minor Apostasy: the Church is wretched poor and about to die. Duh. Liberalism has all but destroyed the Western Catholicism. Jesus says nonetheless, there is a remannt here who are not stained by it. THAT IS US. We are true Catholics. We believe ALL the CCC. We at least to sunday mass, and many cases, daily, we pray the rosary, we love Mary, and know we despise our spiritual effeminate and bankrupt community. We will shine in white garments if we but persevere in our holiness.
6. The age of peace: Christ has no rebukes at all and speaks of a vindication: the ones in error will come “and worship at our feet.” Hyperbolic: the Church’s teaching were vindicated in the coming chastisement. They learned that we have the truth, and if they would stop resisting, we can have peace spiritually and temporally. “The world will know that I have loved thee and also my father”. Straight from the Eucharistic prayer of John Gospel on unity. This church will be spared the great test that is coming. Obviously, the age of peace has no persecutin or spiritual difficulties, but the phase after it is seven, the last: the great apostasy and persecution.
7. The complacency antecdent to the Great Apostasy and persecution: parents stop confirming their chilren per some mystics’ prophecies, they are lazy, lukewarm, leading to great apostasy.
The correlations then work quite well. Gives very good evidence on Antipas, the faithful witness, to mean the papacy doctrine that was “slain spiritually” in the great schism where the other brothers of Peter deserted him for dead!
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!
