Noah, the Dove, and the Blasphemy of the Holy Divine Persons*

Noah, the Dove, and the Blasphemy of the Holy Divine Persons*

It was around the mid 1990’s. I was in the hospital for mental difficulties.  There, as I sat in the break room, there was a young man who was being counseled by what would seem to be a “female clergy member” of a mainline Protestant denomination regarding the  “infamous sin”, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit [Matthew 12:22-32]. The poor man felt that he had committed this sin and been in mental facilities multiple times for treatment, also claiming that he was repeatedly attacked and assaulted by demons.

I felt such great compassion for him, and I spoke across the table to tell him that as a Catholic, we know that this sin cannot be committed before death by the very virtue of the sacraments of confession and anointing of the sick.  God will always take you back, unto the last millionth of a second. This is one revelation that was given to St. Faustina in the Divine Mercy Appartiions.  Jesus tells her that three times before the death of the serious sinner, He calls the person, “Accept My Mercy.” And as above, the final is effectively the millionth of a second  before death. And Jesus tells her that if there is even a hint of good will, God can save the sinner.

Moreover, Saint John Paul II discussed this in his encyclical on the Holy Spirit: “Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable? How should this blasphemy be understood? St. Thomas Aquinas replies that it is a question of a sin that is 'unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place.”[i]; for St. John Paul, the one who blasphemes the Holy Spirit is in fact rejecting the very action of the Holy Spirit to “[convince] concerning sin.” Such a person is “[radically refusing] to accept forgiveness,” “claiming to have a right to persist in any evil,” and considering conversion and remission of sins inessential to one’s life.[ii] Ultimately, St. John Paul attributes this sin to final impenitence, hence, making Christ’s words hyperbolic.

But the mystery persists: why would Jesus say, “in this age will not be forgiven!” Here, for the purposes of this article, I suggest an apocalyptic solution, that is, a greater ages historical interpretation, which I have been pondering for many years now. How might this work?  Well, for the intentions of summary, I conjecture that just as Christ speaks progressively in the passage above of blasphemies that will be forgiven, until the last, the Holy Spirit, I suggest that humanity, in the ages of the Church, will progressively blaspheme the Persons of the Holy Trinity , the first two of which are forgiven, as Christ suggests in the same Scripture, and the last, the Third Person, is not. 

Now the first question is what are these stages or sub-ages of Church history.  Toward that end, we are lead to believe there is only one Church age, the New Dispensation:  “Children, it is the last hour.” [1 John] However, per some Sacred Tradition, there are five sub-ages of the Old Testament, per St Augustine and St Methodius.  For Augustine,

Five ages of the world, accordingly, having been now completed (there has entered the sixth). Of these ages the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the Flood. Then the second extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations which should follow the example of his faith, but who at the same time in the way of natural descent from his own flesh was the father of the destined people of the Jews; which people, previous to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Christian faith, was the one people among all the nations of all lands that worshipped the one true God: from which people also Christ the Savior was decreed to come according to the flesh. For these turning-points of those two ages occupy an eminent place in the ancient books.

On the other hand, those of the other three ages are also declared in the Gospel, where the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh is likewise mentioned. For the third age extends from Abraham on to David the king; the fourth from David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia; and the fifth from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

With His coming the sixth age has entered on its process; so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations; to the intent that no man should worship God but freely, fondly desiring of Him not the visible rewards of His services and the happiness of this present life, but that eternal life alone in which he is to enjoy God Himself: in order that in this sixth age the mind of man may be renewed after the image of God, even as on the sixth day man was made after the image of God.[iii]

Here, obviously, the OT is but one whole dispensation only, the Old Dispensation.  However, five sub-ages are seen.  Well, admittedly, Augustine only sees a sixth age for the Church alone.  However. St Methodius suggests a deeper level, if we can avoid a chiliastic interpretation, three sub-ages:

Surprisingly, St Methodius of Olympus gives us a similar, but slightly altered layout: “Five are the ages of the old law, the sixth age is designated to the Church, the seventh is the millennium of rest, and the eighth designates the eternity of heaven. [iv]

Now we must digress. For those who understand how Augustine interprets the famous millennium passage of Apocalypse 19-20, the chaining of the dragon—a supposed period where his activity is rendered effectively null—Augustine basically sees this period as the time of the Church’s evangelization of the world between pagan Rome and the Antichrist. Here, in this imperfect light, there is a field of wheat and tares.  As the Great Apostasy approaches, humanity is sorted into maturity, either totally good Catholics, or totally bad children of the devil, like secularists.  The intermediate categories will have migrated into one of the two camps:  Islamics, Protestants, Orthodox, Hindus, Buddhists, nominal Christians, etc. Then at some point, the tares will suddenly lead ahead into the great apostasy, the time of the end.

This has been the way the Church has tended to look at this passage for centuries. I however am suggesting that it is time to update our consideration.  Firstly, in Augustine’s time, regarding the ways of the saint (the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive), the Church thought that the illuminative and unitive ways were basically mixed between the dark night of the senses of the purgative way and the martyrdom of the unitive way.  This is a good reflection of Augustine’s apocalyptic analysis. The Church has a purgative dark night of the senses [pagan Rome], then a general period of mixed light and darkness [imperfect illumination and union, or evangelism and labor to convert the world and fight against heresy and errors], then the darkness of martyrdom [the  conclusion of unitive way, the Great Apostasy and Antichrist].

However, in our modern day, we now understand that the illuminative and unitive ways are not evenly mixed, but rather mostly separate, namely as follows:  there is a primary illuminative way with some minor union and purgation present, then are a dark night of the soul, and then a beautiful unitve way, where the saint walks the path of holiness practically perfectly, almost every step with God. Some minor illumination occurs, but no real purgation.  This updates the apocalyptic model if we are to consider the way of the individual saint as a historical way of the Peoples of God, both Old and New.  Actually, this works.

Also, why not?  The Scriptures portray the People of God, and in particular the Church, as an individual person in symbolism: the Woman of the Apocalypse 12 (admittedly, it is the Virgin in immediate context, however, once the Christ Child ascends to rule the nations with a rod of iron, clearly the Ascension has occurred, and since Mary is not part of Public Revelation after her assumption, clearly the woman must be the Church after this blatant Ascension). Also, St. Paul attributes the Church as the Body of Christ.  Too, the Church considers Herself as the sacrament of Christ to the world. Consequently, if the individual saint necessarily walks these ways according to the updated modern version of the ways, then so do the People of Old and New as well.

I work these out here[v], but let us briefly discuss.

1. Darkness: the purgative dark night of the senses.  When the saint converts, the Spirit enters to not annihilate the flesh but correct it. The flesh resists and so stings the saint.  Similarly, the Peoples of God enter the world around them, and they  are there to bless the world around them. But this evil world sees them as a threat and so lashes out against them.  In the OT way, Egypt’s enslavement of the Hebrews, and in the NT, pagan Rome’s persecutions.

2. Light: Just as the saint eventually beats the flesh into subjection and gains victory over primary sins and enters upon a way to know God better and grow in proficient holiness, so the People of God escape the purgation and enter illumination. In the OT, since man is in no wise prepared to be impressed with good persons praying for enemies, as with the Roman martyrs, God must end the purgation by force: the Exodus.  But in the NT, the love and courage of the martyrs converts the Empire:

Tertullian: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.

[Apoc 12: 10-11]And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of the testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.

Now, in the way of light, the Peoples are illumined. The OT, by the Prophets. The NT, by the Church, the Magisterium that develops doctrine. There are consolations and desolations:

[Apoc 10:8-10]: And I heard a voice from heaven again speaking to me, and saying: Go, and take the book that is open, from the hand of the angel who standeth upon the sea, and upon the earth.  9 And I went to the angel, saying unto him, that he should give me the book. And he said to me: Take the book, and eat it up: and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey.  10 And I took the book from the hand of the angel, and ate it up: and it was in my mouth, sweet as honey: and when I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

Indeed, like the illuminative way, the consolations and desolations. The truths and mysteries of God are sweet to taste in our spiritual mouths, but to digest them by living them out and attempting to share them with world brings trials and suffering. The world does not want to hear these depths.  Hence, the Jews resist the prophets, and the Gentiles resist the Church in doctrinal development by heresy, schism,  infidelity. Etc.

 3. Darkness: Finally, in the dark night of the soul, the saint has all wisdom and knowledge, but God seems far and absent.  Too, at the peak of Jewish infidelity, the prophets must have felt despondent.  Similarly, in today’s godless age of atheism and relativism in the former Christian lands, the Church is in a great dark time.

4. Light: But, finally, the vindication. The Babylonian exile showed the prophets correct, and the Jews reverted back to God, and softened their hearts.  Too, we are led to believe what lies ahead for our modern age:

Approved Catholic mystics (Venerables, Blessed and Saints, approved apparitions) throw considerable light on this order, by prophesying a minor apostasy and tribulation toward the end of the world, after which will occur the reunion of Christians. Only later will the entire world fall away from Christ (the great apostasy) and the personal Antichrist arise and the Tribulation of the End occur.

Although this is not Catholic doctrine, arising as it does from private revelation, it conforms to what is occurring in our time, especially in light of Our Lady of Fátima's promise of an "Era of Peace." This "Triumph of the Immaculate Heart" (other saints have spoken of a social reign of Jesus Christ when Jesus will reign in the hearts of men) would seem to occur prior to the rise of the Antichrist. The optimism of the Pope for the "New Evangelization" and a "Civilization of Love" in the Third Millennium of Christianity fits here, as well. This would place us, therefore, in the period just before the events spoken of in the Catechism, that is, on the verge of the evangelization of the entire world. Other interpretations are possible, but none seem to fit the facts as well, especially when approved mystics are studied, instead of merely alleged ones[vi]

With these things in mind, a new perspective arises.  Today is the not the end, though it is dark.  A possible minor chastisement awaits us, just as the Jews were facing Babylon if they didn’t repent. Nonetheless, Our Lady promises a great renewal either way.  As above, the prophecies seem to indicate a reunion of the faithful of all Christians to Rome.  This is a question of Public Revelation unresolved, but the prophecies fit the saint model best: after a dark night of soul, the untive way follows:  all steps with God in a near perfect light. Echoing the social reign of Jesus above and Era of Peace of Our Lady referenced above. Now, St Methodius can give us the three sub ages of the Church rather than just one or two with Augustine: the millennium of rest is the age of peace, and the eighth day starts with the evening or darkness of the great apostasy and ends with the  morning or light of eternity, the New Creation and Second Coming. This obviously, then, associates the unitive way of light with the Age of Peace.  The martyrdom that  concludes all is then clearly the great apostasy and persecution.

Note also how the Old People went through similar phases after the exile. The Exile renewed them to God, they returned and rebuilt the temple, and they were closer to God than before and resisted much pagan influence  until the time roughly of the Maccabees, the final struggle that emulates martyrdom, Antiochus IV Epiphanies being a type of the NT Antichrist, the blasphemous Seleucid King who brutally persecuted the Jewish People in their final age before the Christ:

It is not until the end of the 4th century, however, that Jews are first mentioned by Greek writers, who praise them as brave, self-disciplined, and philosophical.

After being conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), Palestine became part of the Hellenistic kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt, the policy of which was to permit the Jews considerable cultural and religious freedom. When in 198 Palestine was conquered by King Antiochus III (reigned 223–187 BCE) of the Syrian Seleucid dynasty, the Jews were treated even more liberally, being granted a charter to govern themselves by their own constitution—namely, the Torah. Greek influence, however, was already apparent.

...The Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who initially granted exemptions and privileges to the Jews, intervened at the request of Menelaus’s party. Antiochus’s promulgation of decrees against the practice of Judaism led in 167 BCE to the successful revolt of the priest Mattathias (died 166 BCE) and his five sons—the Maccabees.[vii]

Now to apply the ages to the Persons of the Trinity.  Once again, there are three primary darknesses of Church history.  First, the dark night of the senses of the purgative way, or Pagan Rome, then the dark night of the soul of the iluminative way, or our modern godless age, then finally, the great apostasy and persecution of the end, or martyrdom.

We will argue that in pagan Rome, the world blasphemes the Father, in our own age, the Son, and at the Antichrist and Great Apostasy, the Spirit.

In addition, we will argue a profound analogy of this mystery exists in the Scriptures, namely with Noah and the Dove.  How?  Let us probe it:

Genesis 8

Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

The Christ draws profound parallels between Noah's day and that of the end of the world.  Too, St. Peter compares the beginning world destroyed by water with the final world destroyed by fire. Indeed, this is indicative of the Flood and the eschatological fire that consumes the cosmos at the Second Coming.  We might expect, then, that at least some elements of these profound allegorical Scriptures in the beginning of the Bible might have analogy to what we have been discussing. I truly believe they do.  Let us explore it and, in particular, the above story of the dove that flies away and returns at Noah's command. 

Firstly, and profoundly, the dove departs from the ark three times in the midst of the waters, and of these three episodes, it returns in the first two, but not the third. How might we see these vivid pictures in allegory?  Well, clearly, the Ark is the Church, is it not? The Barque of Peter, per Scripture and Tradition. And is not the Ark that essence that redeems humanity firmly situated within the world but not of it? Yes.  And is not the dove, per the wondrous imagery of the Baptism of the Lord a picture the Holy Spirit?  And what then of the departure of the same Spirit?  Would it not mean that spiritual darkness, or the primary absence of the Spirit, would encompass the world around the Church three pivotal and punctuated times in her history?

It fits, for recall, per our theology developed unto now, the Church, the New People of God, indeed walks a path of three stages, like the way of the saint.  Too, they indeed involve three darknesses, as we have seen in earlier considerations:

1.The Purgative Dark Night of Senses: Pagan Rome

2.The Dark Night of the Soul: Our Modern Minor Secular Apostasy

3.Martyrdom: The Great Apostasy and Persecution of the End of the World.

Hence, each of these darknesses clearly represents the Holy Spirit "departing," since when a great age of sin enters, man dispels the Holy Spirit. In two of these darknesses, the first two to be exact, the dove returns, that is, the Holy Spirit comes back, bringing renewal, and in the last one, does not return.  Let us work through it:

I. The Holy Spirit Returns after Pagan Rome

In Pagan Rome, the Holy Spirit went out the first time in Church History, and man blasphemed the Father because they said Caesar was greater than God almighty. At this point, the Empire did not understand Christians. They were somewhat ignorant.  They didn’t have full culpability.  “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!” And God forgave them, showing that Jesus leads the way:  Constantine, Catholic Christendom. But the dove did not return with an olive branch, a symbol of peace, since in this first great age of Christianity, there has been no peace, no place for Christ to rest His head; bloodshed and division have been the lot of Christianity from its outset:  Islamics killing Christians and Christians killing Islamics.  Catholics killing Orthodox.  Catholics burning heretics at the stake.  Protestants killing Catholics and Catholics killing Protestants, and Protestants killing other types of Protestants. Protestants dividing into myriads of competing factions that mutually excommunicate all the others to hell.

So again, there was no place for Jesus to rest his head in this first 1700 years of Catholic history.  Hence, the dove returns with no peace, no olive branch.

II. The Holy Spirit Will Return after our Modern Minor, Godless Apostasy, with Peace, an Olive Branch

In our modern Minor Apostasy, the Holy Spirit went out again, man blaspheming not the Father but the Son, saying, again,

“See, the Son's disciples are all divided and against one another, with competing doctrines and worship and hatred toward one another, with their hypocrisy--crooked TV Evangelists, pedophile priests, and merciless Inquisitors. We need not the Son. All we need is science and material development.”

And God shall forgive this in the possible coming minor chastisement of the mystics, where humanity will realize its need for the Son, showing them the true fruits of their errors and sins. They will realize their need for natural law (they will realize that abortion, euthanasia, drugs, fornication, cohabitation, artificial birth control, divorce and remarriage, sodomy, and materialism are all grave moral evils that spell doom for the stability of society.). They will realize their need for a supernatural God (the deists and rationalists will realize that they cannot be fully moral without God’s help, even Jesus’). The Protestants will realize their need for central formal, visible authority to interpret doctrine, Bishops and Sacred Tradition, dispelling their countless factions of confusion with sola-scriptura. The Orthodox will realize they need the rock of Peter and forgive him his many sins in order to allow him to serve them with the fullness of truth. And the Islamics will realize their need for the Trinity and Incarnation, to dispel their tendency to violence and Old Testament harshness.

And the process whereby this will be attained, if the chastisement comes, will be apocalyptic, terrible.  One prophet of the Church, per  a great many mystics, as above in the quote from EWTN,  said that those people who are not familiar with the fully approved Apparitions of the Church, which tell us that today is not the end and will be healed, will think the world is ending. It will be that bad.  Perhaps, God forbid, nuclear war or other weapons of mass destruction, and war everywhere, as in “entire nations shall be annihilated” [Fatima, Our Lady, or Our Lady of Kibeho, who implied that the horror of Rwanda would happen in each nation in the world without repentance].

But again, when it is through, through this terrible cross on humanity, many non-Catholics in the world, saving most Jews [the en-masse conversion of the Jews is reserved for the very end of the world, per Public Revelation], will come home to Rome, and there will be peace, an olive branch. The dove will have found the olive branch of peace, the age of peace, when the Immaculate Virgin will reign, and bring it back to Noah. Then shall all men live with the best of both worlds: spiritual and material.

III. The Holy Spirit will NOT return at the Great Apostasy, Blasphemy against the Spirit

St. Vincent Ferrer foresees that  eventually humanity will be get tired of their puny, little, pathetic crosses toward the close of the age of peace. They shall want complete heaven on earth. So they will forget that their world almost ended with materialistic power and science divorced from God, His truth, and His grace. They shall return to their vomit like the dog. Parents, writes St. Vincent, will stop confirming their children[viii]

The dove, then, shall go out a final time from the ark, the bark of the Church: the Great Apostasy.  .  They will return to their former ways of our days--just like Pagan Rome, just like the wicked Jews before the Babylonian exile, just like the blasphemous grandeur of Egypt in her pyramids, or Babel with its tower. And they shall have the wickedness of Noah’s day, before the Flood. They will be like today: disrespectful of parents and authority, indifferent toward God and religion, complacent, superficial, drunken, using drugs, gossiping, bullying, slandering, vulgar, allowing abortion and euthanasia, sexually immoral in all ways—cohabitation, promiscuous, artificial birth control, divorce, sodomy---theft, greed, dishonesty, fraud. 

But they will have no excuse. For God will have shown them, in what could immediately come in our time, the full fruits of such godlessness, of turning away from God, a dress rehearsal for the end of the world! And that, with the powers of this world, they will have seen that science and materialistic grandeur, when divorced from knowledge and love of God, leads to an apocalyptic precipice!

Hence, when, as this great apostasy starts to bring back what was a thing of the past: war and tribulation, I conjecture the following that will happen when at that time, per the mystics, Antichrist shall arise.  This one man, the most wicked man of all existence, will rise up and say, ‘I can solve your problems, I can give you heaven on earth. You just need to hand yourselves over to me and check your faith and morals at the door.”

And at that time, the Catholic Church shall rise up and challenge this ultimate Antichrist and say, “Sir, if we can solve, as you say, all world problems with just science, technology, and materialistic grandeur and wonder and, at the same time, without God and religion, and, if you say, in fact, that religion actually has to be utterly removed from public life to secure peace and prosperity, how do you explain that an age ago the world almost ended with the great worldly power without God, but that with great worldly power and religion, the world flourished in peace?

And here, I foresee this: the Antichrist shall commit the ultimate blasphemy ever uttered by man and humanity, an unforgivable, apocalyptic sin:  He shall say, “That the world almost ended without religion is purely circumstance. Humanity got into a rut. The secularism wasn’t tried right. But it didn’t have anything to with lack of your Church, to whatever degree.  The reason there was peace in your so-called age of Our Lady’s Triumph was only because of the worldly power, science, and prosperity. It had nothing to do with your religion!”

Blasphemy of blasphemies!  The Lord will forgive our current blasphemy of the Son because the Son is admittedly messed up. There are 102 versions of Jesus, currently:  one form of Jesus with a supreme apostolic successor, general apostolic succession, and the bible; one form of Jesus with all that but a supreme successor; and a hundred primary forms of Jesus with just the bible. Not to mention moral scandals galore, hatred, bloodshed. So God says, I can forgive this: the image of My Son has been tainted by My wayward children. I will fix it. Then shall the world know that I am the searcher of hearts, and the vindicator of My People.

But if God shows the world the incomprehensible horror of what happens with materialistic wonder and complexity when it leaves all religion in the dust, and, if that were not enough, brings them all back to His Sacred Heart and His Mother’s Immaculate Heart, bringing peace and love and unity, and  with the materialistic wonder and complexity restored—one faith, one Lord, one Baptism, and faith and science reconciled—then if after all that, the world spits in God’s face, and says they they don’t need religion and worse, that the peace and prosperity of this great age that is coming from Our Lady’s Bosom had nothing to do with our Lady, with Her Heart, and the Spirit, the Dove, that animates it, Can God forgive that?

Apocalyptically, no! For the world will be blaspheming the Spirit.

Saying that all along, the only reason there was peace was because of the powers of this world, that is, that peace, or the absence of murder, was cast out of the world by the powers of this world, begs the question:  Who is the  prince of this world, except the devil? And who is the devil but the murderer from the beginning, testifies the Christ to the ones that accused him?  For he replied, you are of your father, the devil, the murderer from the beginning!  So by the power of the prince of this world was murder cast out of the world.  Hence, by the power of the murderer from the beginning was murder cast out of the world.

And where have we seen a passage in Scripture where some evil man or men said that the devils were cast out by the powers of the devils?  The Pharisees!  And what was their sin?  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit!

And what did Jesus say regarding this?  He said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, all blasphemy and sin shall be forgiven men.  And if men blaspheme the Son, it shall be forgiven them. But whosoever shall blaspheme the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven, neither in this age, nor the age to come!”

This can then give us a meaning to this mysterious “neither in this age”. Again, The Catholic Church condemns any belief that someone can commit a sin before death that is unforgivable.

The Apocalyptic theology above enables the solution:  no individual human being will ever be unforgivable (Jesus will always take you back, right till the millionth of a second before your demise), but corporately, humanity will commit, at the end of the world, an unforgivable historical sin; for, again,  what can we say?  With all that God will have done for humanity:  give them an apocalyptic learning lesson, and then give them peace, the ultimate true fruits of His kingdom--love, unity, peace, joy, solidarity in suffering, meaning of life and history—if they deny the supreme lesson they learned, the ultimate historical horror until its times—and then deny the source of peace, what more can be done?  If they will not love God after all that, what will enable them to love God? Hebrews 6 discussed this. It is written that for those who experience of the powers of the age to come, if they fall way, it is [impossible] for them to be brought back. This is of course a general statement and not absolute, but it expresses a reality that once one receives the fullness of God’s gifts and goes back to the godless life, or as the immediate context is understood, Jews who convert and then go back to Judaism, there isn’t much left for the person, or humanity. The sin will have reached the ultimate stab wound to the Creator’s Divine Heart:  even after Jesus will have put to death sin and wickedness in human history, of mind and will, his four wounds, perishing and resting toward the earth on the cross, even as His grace will rest on the earth in men’s hearts, still humanity will rise up and pierce His Divine Side, the final jab! “Cassius, make sure he is dead,” the cry of the centurion in the passion of the Christ film.

Finally, this helps us understand the discourse on 2 Thess 2 better.  The end cannot come until a great rebellion, which of course is the great apostasy. What keeps this back is the “restrainer”. Augustine understands this as the Holy Spirit, which is exactly what we need for this discourse. Only when the Holy Spirit can no longer bring a greater good to the world, a greater redemption, is the world ready to end, is the Holy Spirit, gotten out of the way.  And who gets him out the way?  Again, I conjecture here is it not humanity and the Antichrist, the man of sin himself who “appears at that time” by blaspheming Him?

For the world blasphemed the Father in Pagan Rome, and they were forgiven.

The modern world is blaspheming the Son, and they will be forgiven.

But if humanity blasphemes the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness. The Spirit will NOT return, and humanity must then begin the process that their fallen nature has brought themselves to: annihilation, so much so, that if Jesus did not interrupt the process, “no flesh should be saved.”  But Jesus, out of love for His Church, in order that His apocalyptic promise be fulfilled to the end,  that the gates of hell should not prevail against it, shall come early, like a thief “for the sake of the elect.”

Hence, in this final time that the dove went out from Noah, he did not return, even as the Holy Spirit will not be able to return humanity to the ark of the Church in the final darkness.  Only the Second Coming can usher in the light, the light that shall never end, the fire of judgment that shall form the New Creation, even as God drew the New World out of the water of Judgment, the Flood!

“As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man!”

* Disclaimer:  There are no intentions or statements here that imply that any authors or persons cited in this article agree with its message or content in any way, shape or form. They are merely cited for objective informational purposes only.

[i] ST II—II:14:3)
[ii] Dominum et Vivificandem 46
[iii] St. Augustine, On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed, ch. 22:39, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1303.htm
[iv] New Catholic Encyclopedia, McGraw-Hill Pub., NY, 1967, Vol. IX, 742
[v]      “What History would Always be in a Fallen World, Part III: the Way of the Saint for the Peoples of God”, Scott Pauline http://theologyoftheages.org/content/apocalypse/greater-ages/ages/abstract-ages-way-of-saint.php
[vi] Susan brinkman, Are we in the Endtimes, https://www.womenofgrace.com:8443/blog/?p=24182
[vii] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judaism/Hellenistic-Judaism-4th-century-bce-2nd-century-ce
[viii]   The Prophets of Our Times, p. 155