What's Ahead for the World?

As we watch the world scene, and all the turmoil rising up everywhere, it is time to get our heads out of the sand and take a stand that says we care regarding the ultimate predictions that confront people of peace.

Joining with those who are concerned with a peaceful existence might seem to be impossible. However, we must try to overturn the negative approach towards allowing signs of fear to take hold of our common sense. If all of us, who graduated from grammar school ready to become adults in learning, took on the stress of life’s reality, let’s get back to that sense of tackling the world’s problems and grow up.

Where should we begin? Washington, Russia, or Rome and the annals of prophecies that hold much more than just political decisions. Is it a possibility of nuclear war or a take-over of the probability of Satanic control over Christ’s followers? Is there a difference for those who trust in Sacred Scripture and our God who created everything at our hands?

Of course, we have the controversial opinion of a 12th century saint, St. Malachy, who had a vision that from that point in time there would be 112 popes before the end of the world would occur. If that is correct the occurrences in modern day world events could actually muster in the fact of nuclear war and the battle of Armageddon coming at a time of final judgment. This could be another indication of either hopes or fears of what humanity has assisted in bringing about the prediction of Revelation and Daniel.

Reading the thoughts and/or predictions of prophecy one must be careful to not put too much allegiance in everything that is written. There is an old cliche that says, “Believe nothing you hear and only one half of what you see.” Edgar Allen Poe used this but was not the first to say it. So, what should we do concerning the pending predictions concerning, a prophecy from an Irish priest who became a saint, the possibility of nuclear war during this 21st century, or the final tribulation that is not too far into a current world where everything is on a one-touch in someone’s hands to release thousands of human-ending life on this planet?

None of us can give a positive response to these questions, but we must be aware that God is not a purveyor of mistakes and having a change of mind in a final judgment that will affect all humans, living and dead. If we believe in and trust the words of Sacred Scripture, we must put the truth of Christ’s Passion that opened the entrance to an Eternal Paradise that sin originally closed. Who and what will become the final strokes of the world’s new creation (as found in Revelation of a new Heaven and the new Earth) (Rev 21: 1 - 23). Is anybody’s idea? But time will answer all of these questions.

God has said Everything in his Word: (CCC 65).

“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1: 1 - 2:

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say…because what he spoke before the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son.. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty. (St John of the Cross, the ascent of Mt Carmel).

Ralph B. Hathaway