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Popular eschatology, consisting of a firm faith in the predictions of events that please the prince of this world, and an equally firm disbelief in promises that are hateful to him, must finally receive the deserved assessment as a defeat inflicted on the holy (People of God)
“seed of the serpent”, which in The Apocalypse of John is contemplated in the form of “the beast 666”
(Rev 13:7),
and in the book of prophet Daniel in the form of the “little horn of the 4th beast”
(Dan 7:21).
Defeatist eschatology, identifying “the end of this age” with the end of “half-week of times,” one of the humiliating manifestations of the predicted defeat, was born already in the first generation of Church Fathers, spiritual sons and “grandchildren” of the Apostles themselves. “Time, times, half time”, “42 months”, “1260 days” — all three variants of one symbol were interpreted by them as the last 3.5 calendar years before the Second Coming. But if in all three cases the same period of time is predicted, then the difference in the units by which it is calculated: “times”, “months”, “days”, becomes superfluous, idle. And in the sacred text, not a single iota or line can be idle. Consequently, in these three variants, not a temporal duration is predicted, but something more significant.
“Until a time, times and half a time” means “until the half (up to half)
of days”,
until the moment at which the enemy of the Church brings the People of God to complete exhaustion, according to the prophet Daniel
(7:25,
12:7)
and to complete mortification, according to the Apocalypse of John
(13:15).
But this mortification has nothing in common with the death by which the Apostles and martyrs glorified God
(John 21:19).
“For since they possessed Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and wholly destroyed the demons' strengthless presumption.”
The subject of special envy and malice of the ancient serpent is that New Testament Israel receives in birth from “Jerusalem above, the Mother of us all”
(Gal 4:26),
according to the initial establishment of enmity between the serpent and its seed, on the one hand, and the Woman (clothed in the Sun)
and Her seed, on the other
(Gen 3:15,
Rev 12:13-17).
By the end of the “half-week of times”, the enemy manages to kill in the People of the Church everything that makes them the seed of the Woman clothed in the Sun, the offspring of the Highest Jerusalem, the Mother of us all.
If the Coming One, judging the living and the dead, found us in this state then the historical process loses its meaning.
According to the parables of the Savior, the end of this age will follow only when not only the tares of Satan, but also the Wheat of God grows to harvest maturity
(Mark 4:29).
By the end of the “half-week of times”, God’s Providence prepares a crushing defeat, completely unexpected for the enemy, which the Holy Spirit predicts through the mouth of the Psalmist: “Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days”
(Psa 55:23).
It (defeat)
is being prepared by the Woman clothed in the Sun and Her seed in the events that are predicted in the second half of the
19th chapter
of the Apocalypse and at the beginning of the
20th chapter.
It prepares the People of God for the Marriage of the Lamb
(Rev 19:7),
the “first resurrection”, the beginning of the co-reign with the ever-reigning Christ
(Rev 20:3-6).
But these events are preceded by a difficult hard time of the humiliating trampling of the Holy City (the hierarchical and teaching center of the New Israel)
by enemies, whose power extends to the outer courtyard of the Solomon Temple, the place where the praying people were in Old Testament times
(Rev 11:2).
This trampling continues all the “42 months”, all the time for which the beast, the conqueror of the saints, is allowed to rule
(Rev 13:5,7).
This circumstance clearly indicates that the murder of Christians who rejected all forms of beast-worship is not physical. The blood of physical slaughter would wash away the sin of defeat and restore the freedom lost in it
(2 Pet 2:19
“… for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage”).
In the Gospel prophecy about the trampling of Jerusalem by Gentiles
(Luke 21:24),
the fate of both Israel is predicted in one text: the old, as a result of the defeat from Rome, and the New, as a result of the defeat from the beast 666. The centuries-old trampling of Jerusalem-city, and “42-month” Trampling of Jerusalem-Church. The translation
“until they are finished…”
is dictated by the victor “the beast 666”, who especially hates the promise of the “millennium”, i.e. “sanctified
Seventh Day” (St. Irenaeus of Lyon).
Translation:
“until the destined times are fulfilled”
restores faith in the brightest promises of the Holy Spirit, the promises of the times in which the People of God, first the New Testament, then the Old, will come to life in the “first resurrection” to forever reign with the ever-reigning Christ.
The Egyptian appearances of the Mother of God, which began in a mystical connection with the return of Jerusalem under the rule of Israel, are signs of the predestined, promised in this
(Luke 21:24)
prophecy, times. The most eloquent sign is the olive branch of the Mother of God of Zeytun, repeatedly observed by thousands of eyewitnesses. “O Lord, Who of old for Thy divine token
that the flood had ceased,
didst show forth an olive branch, by Thy mercy save those who suffer” (3rd ode
of the canon of the Unction). This means that the “half-week of times”, the time of the flood of wickedness, the time of punishment, is coming to an end, and not at all to the beginning, as those who disobey the Governor-Guide of the People of God think, for Her guiding ministry is especially hated by the beast, the conqueror of the saints.
If the times or dates established by the authority of the Father were not given to the Apostles themselves
(Acts 1:7),
then who knows them, if not a completely deified Person, in whom the Church from her very birth received her eschatological completion (Lamb Marriage), to which She both leads and prepares the People of God?
The absolute inattention to the guiding ministry of the Mother of God, especially at historical frontiers, unforeseen by the Fathers of the Church, is also one of the manifestations of the predicted defeat from the “beast 666”. Numerical this name contains a triple, i.e. complete denial of the promise of the Seventh Day, faith in which the church people have been killed. The prophet Daniel also hints at this hole in the shield of faith: “(The small horn of the 4th beast — the power of Antichrist)
dreams of canceling their (the saints of the Most High)
holiday times …”
(Dan 7:25).
Of these, the most festive will be the time in which the seductive energy of the devil will be completely paralyzed.
I really want to arouse your interest in this topic. At least to the question: “Why the Egyptian apparitions of the Mother of God cannot be considered as signs of the predestined times (καιροί)
promised in the Gospel prophecy
Luke 21:24?”
See also
-
Sergij Bulgakov,
The Apocalypse of John
-
Hippolytus of Rome,
TREATISE ON CHRIST AND ANTICHRIST
-
Ιωάννης Χρυσόστομος,
Λόγοι Κατά Ιουδαίων/5
-
Saint John Chrysostom,
HOMILIES ON FIRST THESSALONIANS
[pdf]
-
Saint John Chrysostom,
Adversos Judaeos
[pdf]
-
Серафим (Роуз),
Православие и религия будущего
-
Seraphim Rose,
Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future
-
Blessed Augustine,
The City of God
-
Irenaeus of Lyons,
Against Heresies
-
Metropolitan Macarius,
Orthodox Dogmatic Theology
-
Vladimir Nikolaevich Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
-
"Vladimir Lossky"
on
Google Books
-
Early Church Fathers
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