The Unforgiving Servant Parable, All of Human History, the Enlightenment, and More (What the?!) [It's all in the Numbers!]

I decided to write this in a dialog format to make it more entertaining: TEACHER vs STUDENT;

Then came Peter unto him and said: Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? [22] Jesus saith to him: I say not to thee, till seven times; but till seventy times seven times. [23] Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a king, who would take an account of his servants. [24] And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him, that owed him ten thousand talents. [25] And as he had not wherewith to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.

[26] But that servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. [27] And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt. [28] But when that servant was gone out, he found one of his fellow servants that owed him an hundred pence: and laying hold of him, throttled him, saying: Pay what thou owest. [29] And his fellow servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. [30] And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.

TEACHER: Ok, so we are looking deeper into the parable of the unforgiving servant today.

STUDENT: Yes!

TEACHER: Ok, so the man owes the king basically the highest debt.  The numbers, however, have profound meaning. In fact they relate to several other Gospel numbers, and an Apocalypse set.

STUDENT: Really?

TEACHER: Yes, in fact we will see that theologically, the profundity includes parallels and corroboration.  The numbers related are basically these:

• 10,000 talents
• = 10,000 x 6,000 days’ wages
• = 10,000 x 20 years’ wages
• = 200,000 years’ wages
• 20,000 x 10,000 troops that kill the third of mankind (Apocalypse 9, 6^th trumpet, or 2^nd Great Woe)
• 10,000 army troops going against 20,000 (parable of count the cost; if you have a tower, make sure you can complete it…)
• 200 days’ wages (the five loaves and two fish discourse)
• 6 ages of labor for God’s People (the days of Creation as allegory of God’s REcreation of the world)
• 6,000 years of labor for God’s People (apply principle of a day = a thousand years)
• 10,000 x 100,000 ministering to the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7 about the Kingdom of God and its adherents)

Let us start by working out the 10,000 talents.

STUDENT: Ok. How much is a talent?

TEACHER: Great question! A talent in ancient times was 6,000 days’ wages. How many years might that be? Well, in a year, you obviously don’t work every day.  Remember Sabbaths?

STUDENT:  Ah, yes!  Every seventh day. Plus, didn’t the Jews have special yearly Sabbaths?

TEACHER: You are absolutely right!  For starters, the Jewish year is not 365 days like Roman years.  Rather, it had only 360 days exactly. If you take 360 and divide by 7 to get the regular Sabbaths, you have around 51, with three days remainder.  Then, there are like around 10 special annual Jewish Sabbaths. When we approximate, especially since 51 varies because there are 3 left over days, we can say 51 + 10 is basically 60 total Sabbaths.  So the Jewish year is:

360 days – 60 Sabbaths

= 300 days of actual work

So

6,000 days wages / 300 days’/year

= 20 years’ wages

That is, 6,000 days’ labor is 20 years of labor. But this is just ONE talent.  The man owes 10,000 talents!!!! 

STUDENT: Wow!

TEACHER: Yeah!  So our total debt then, in terms of years of labor, is:

10,000 talents

= 10,000 x 20 years’ wages

= 10 x 1,000 x 20

= 20 x 10 x 1,000

= 200,000 years’ wages

STUDENT: The man owes 200,000 years of labor!  Holy you know what!

TEACHER: Yes, but the raw numbers are not the issue; it is the symbolism. And this number actually is implied allegorically in another Gospel Scripture, a supreme Gospel Scripture.

STUDENT: Ok, where?

TEACHER: The loaves and fishes! 

STUDENT: What do you mean?  I only remember five loaves and two fish, seven loaves and a few fish, or, at best, 12 or 7 wicker baskets.  Where the heck is 200,000?

TEACHER: Aha!  We don’t know this verse very well in the five loaves story. It sneaks in. St Philip says, in one Gospel, “Lord, even with 200 days wages, we could not afford to feed these people even a little food.”

STUDENT: Well, ok, but that is 200, not 200,000.

TEACHER: True, but hang tight; it’ll work out.

STUDENT: I’ll believe it when I see it!

TEACHER: I will make you a believer, I promise!

STUDENT: OK, well, the burden of proof is on you!

TEACHER: Challenge accepted. Ok, but first, we need to have a sense of what 200 days wages symbolize; in a literal sense, St Philip is showing the futility of the mere natural order to feed the people physically. That is, even if, in some crazy abundance, Jesus and the Apostles had had 200 days wages, it’d never have been enough to feed these people literally.

STUDENT: OK, and the point is?

TEACHER: The point is, how much more is this true spiritually, in that, if it was true that the apostles had no natural way to feed the people literally, how much more impossible is it for humanity to be fed spiritually on a natural level. No amount of work in our natural state can merit a single grace.  Until we have sanctifying grace, we have nothing to wager with with God. For, we could try and try and try to do what is right in our natural condition of Original Sin, but we would never be in a position to demand a single grace, a single sacrament.  Too, if we thought and thought and thought and pondered for ages without end in our mind to find the mysteries of God, we would never find even a morsel of Divine Revelation.

And it is these supernatural essences that alone can fulfill our intellect and will, the insatiable longing of our hearts. Too, we would never please God one iota no matter how long we slaved in our natural condition to do that which is good. In the end, the soul that labors merely naturally and that has never received Baptism, is in Original sin, and therefore has simply earned the “wages of sin”, which is “death,” which is also the end result of literal starvation.

STUDENT: Wow! So let me get this straight: you are saying that without God’s help and life, we could never fulfill ourselves nor please God. That only He can give us the things to fulfill us and to enable us to love Him as He loves us! That only Jesus can create grace from within the Trinity and give it us, just like his miracle of the loaves and fishes.  And that this is what the 200 days’ wages mean: that in Original sin, all our efforts, unto ages and ages, would only be sin and merit death, and offer to us nothing of true substance, of true fulfillment.

TEACHER: Exactly!

STUDENT: Ok, good, but you said you would correlate this number 200 days to 200,000 years of labor, or 10,000 talents.  200 days is not quite 200,000 years.

TEACHER: Right, but, ”With the Lord, a day is as a thousand years, and thousand years as a day.”

STUDENT: Aha!  I can see where you are going.  We could foresee an extrapolation on the Gospel: 

St Philip could say, “Lord, together we have 200 days wages. Will this be enough to feed the people?”

And the Lord would say, “Phillip, do you remember what My Father said about a day in His eyes?”

“Yes, Lord,” would say Philip, “YWYH said that with Him, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a day.”

“Very good, Philip,” Our Lord would respond, “Therefore I say unto you, not only is it impossible to feed My children with 200 days wages, but not even with 200 thousand, thousand years of wages in My Father’s vineyard without His help!”

TEACHER: Excellent, you nailed it.  This actually gives us a correlation to almost all the other numbers:

200,000 years of labor have been drawn by extrapolation from the loaves and fishes, since they are already the fulfillment of 200 days wages (a day is as a thousand years and thousand years as a day). This matches the debt of the unforgiving servant, 10,000 talents, or 10,000 x 20 years’ labor, = 200,000 years labor.

Too, the other magnitude of number fills in the gap of 20,000 times 10,000:

200,000 x 1000 years, or

200,000 x 1,000

= 20 x 10 x 1,000 x 1,000

= 20,000 x 10,000

The above number is in Apocalypse 9, sixth trumpet, or,  the Second Great Woe.

STUDENT: Ok, so now what?

TEACHER: Now, we are in a position to return to the parable.  Again, the wicked servant owes the king 200,000 years of wages. Again, from the loaves and fishes, 200,000 years of labor symbolizes the futility of man in his natural spiritual condition: when we are unjustified, that is, in the state of Original Sin, and therefore only natural at best, what we owe God is death: death in this life, death eternally in the next [and if any man saith that one can be saved apart from baptism or the desire thereof, let him be anathema!  Trent]. Hence, the wicked man is all of us.  We all owe God death, and then hell.  We can never repay it.  We cannot slave endlessly to pay back God with Himself. So God forgives us, through Baptism and the Gospel. Who are we, then to say we cannot forgive our brother his small debt?

Now, what about this small debt?  This fellow brother has a good symbolism, a symbolism that will help us with residual 20 and 10 numbers. 

STUDENT: Ok, what number is that?  100 days’ wages, right?

TEACHER: Yes, 100.  Here, the number can be factored as 10 x 10.  Question would be, how can we view 10?

STUDENT: How?

TEACHER: Well, in short, we can view 10 as a symbol of the world, or worldliness.

STUDENT: Really?  How so.

TEACHER: Well, for starters, two beasts and a dragon in the Apocalypses of Old and New Testaments have 10 horns.  We know these beasts image great, evil manifestations of worldliness opposed to God in history. They are purely of the world, of the flesh.  Too, the ten horns have been seen as the Ten Commandments, which the devil and his kingdoms fight with. When you throw out the Ten Commandments, you become solely of the world, the enemy of God’s People, and the fullest expression of the fall in human history.  The best you can hope for in terms of goodness is merely natural.  So it is fitting to see 10 as a symbol of the world or worldliness.

STUDENT: That makes sense.  How then will we apply it to the number 100 above, or 10 x 10?

TEACHER: Here, I argue that the world, or the fallen world, has two dimensions of evil, like the two factors of 10 [10 x 10] that we should be able to forgive, seeing as God forgave us an immeasurable debt. The two dimensions are moral evil and physical evil. The unforgiving servant, then, cannot forgive others their trespasses against him, or moral evil, and he cannot forgive nature its wrath. More specifically, nature does not discriminate between the righteousness of the recipients of its wrath. Natural disasters and disease strike the good and bad alike. Rain falls on holy and unholy alike.  No arbitration is made.  This other dimension, then, of persons who cannot forgive the fallen creation, are those who cannot let go of wounds because of sickness or disease—natural tragedies, accidents, and the like, that have harmed or taken them or their loved ones.  My son died of cancer at age 5!  GIVE HIM BACK!  My mom and dad died in a plane crash, and now I am an orphan.  GIVE ME BACK MY PARENTS!  I CANNOT FORGIVE THIS FALLEN CREATION.

STUDENT: Ok, that is good, now what?

TEACHER: Now! Believe it or not, there is a mind blowing APOCALYPTIC level to the unforgiving servant! In this view, the king is still God, but the man is Adam, or derivatively, humanity!

STUDENT: No way! That is radical and most excellent! If it is true!

TEACHER: Well, just hang on, here we go! First, we factor the great debt back to the original form:

1 talent = 6,000 day’s wages

That is one talent.  We need 10,000 talents:

10,000 x 6,000 days’ wages

Now!

In the bible

10,000 is like a great uncountable number; similar numbers are used in Daniel 7:

I beheld till thrones were placed, and the Ancient of days sat: his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like clean wool: his throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. [10] A swift stream of fire issued forth from before him: thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him: the judgment sat, and the books were opened.

So 10,000 as an uncountable number can image the People of God, those who stand before the Lord throughout all of history.

STUDENT: Ok.  Good, what of the 6,000 days?

TEACHER: Here, we need to build to tit: for 6 days God labored to create the world and rested on the seventh. Too, by allegory, God will labor through His People for 6 great ages to work against sin and error. Moreover, a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. So 6 days can be 6000 years that God’s People labor to work out the Redemption of the world.

STUDENT: What are these six ages, might I ask?

Here they are, per this article, the Beast and Days of Creation

Ages of the Fall - Digested

Day 1:

Darkness: The Fall, Anti-Baptism, Noah's Day 
Light: The Flood, God Baptizes the world

Day 2:

Darkness: Anti-Marriage toward God, Tower of Babel 
Light: Confounding of tongues and formation of Prefiguring People, Abraham

Way of the Pilgrim for Prefiguring People (the Jews)

Day 3:

Darkness: Purgative Way, Egypt Enslaves 
Light: Illuminative way of Light, Exodus, Old Testament Kingdom, Prophets

Day 4:

Darkness: Illuminative Dark Night of Soul, Intermediate pre-Exile Apostasy of Jews 
Light: Unitive Way of Light, Exile, Repentance of Jews, Restoration to Holy Land

Day 5:

Darkness: Untive way Martyrdom: Maccabees, Old Testament Antichrist Antiochus 
Light: First Coming of Christ, formation of Church

-- Coming of Incarnate One --

Way of the Pilgrim for Church

Day 6:

Darkness: Purgative way, Pagan Rome persecutes 
Light: Illuminative way of light of Church, Catholic Christendom and Development of Church doctrine, 300 - 1950

STUDENT: Ok, but unfortunately, we have 6,000 days wages in the great debt, not years.

TEACHER: Right!  But don’t be square, mon frere, Biblical numbers is magic!  As follows: in Daniel, in the 70 weeks of chapter 9, which led up to First Coming, a day was a year, in that the meaning of the seventy weeks were not seven weeks of days but of years. So a day was a year.  Too, since our model above is apocalyptic of all human history, that is, the ages of man, it involves the Second Coming, relating to, again, Daniel’s timing of the First Coming.

Therefore, we can apply that to 6,000 days in the debt number:

Now, it is 6,000 years

So now we have, 10,000 [People of God of all history] x 6000 years of labor

= the labor of the People of God for the first six ages of human history

Moreover, this is only labor in a spiritual sense in human history, seeing as after these six ages of distress and strain, the world and God rest in the seventh age, the imperfect Sabbath, the Age of Our Lady’s Peace. And after that, there is then the only Sabbath left, the eighth age, the New Creation that shall never end.

Day 7:

Darkness: Illuminative Dark Night of Soul, intermediate Apostasy of Gentiles, 1950 - present 
Light: Unitive way of light: Minor Chastisement, Restoration of Catholicism, Fullness of Gentiles, Age of Peace

Day 8:

Darkness: Unitive Way Martyrdom, Great Apostasy, New Testament Antichrist 
Light: Second Coming of Christ, end of world, General Resurrection, New Creation

But then, this labor, apocalyptic spiritual labor--because all of its power comes from God’s grace--HUMANITY COORPORATELY, at the time of transition between the sixth and seventh ages, will owe God this debt! THE ENTIRE LABOR OF HIS RIGHTEOUS FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD UNTIL THEN!! For it will have merited man's rest from sin in the Age of Peace of Our Lady. Luckily, God will forgive sinful man the debt and give him a day of rest, again, the Age of our Lady; but eventually, after the age of peace, humanity will not be able to forgive nature. He will want heaven on earth. He will want no cross, neither moral nor physical, like the individual unforgiving servant above.

And that will be unforgivable from God, when man falls away after the age of Our Lady, the great apostasy.  God will have done all he could for them. They will be without excuse.

STUDENT: That is really awesome, I never thought of it that way.  Now, may I ask, the number six above you interpreted as the ages of man.  But this number 2, and 20 and 10 and 200, have not been interpreted, only to say that they are applicable to mere natural labor and goodness, and sin.  Is there any meaning to these?

TEACHER: Great question! This is actually where we will really dig deep.  Let us go.  Firstly, we can realize that we already have the meaning of 10. 10 is a symbol of the world, or worldliness.  So really, that only leaves us with 2.  For that, we need to dig deep into my archive of writings.

STUDENT: Where in the archives would these be?

TEACHER: Well, here and here:

Loaves and Fishes

False Prophet has Two Horns

Remember, in the loaves and fishes, heretics lost five loaves, the five sacraments that absolutely require the Episcopate, and retained only two fish, the two sacraments that don’t require the Episcopate, Baptism and Marriage.

STUDENT: Yes, I remember now.  Hence, if heretics retain only TWO Sacraments, then possibly TWO can be a symbol of heresy!

TEACHER: Absolutely! Very good!  Also, we saw that these two sacraments are like basic sacraments, sacraments that in their ultimate signs, summarize all that is good. More specifically, Baptism is faith and repentance, which means to know and to love God [the first great, general reason we exist, per Catechism], and Marriage shows what will be: we are called to strive for the Marriage that will never end in heaven [to be happy with God forever in the next life, the second great reason we exist]. As a consequence, with these two remnant sacraments as symbol of all that is good, or general religion, 2 can also symbolize brute religion, or base religion.

STUDENT: Excellent. I bet now you will use this to interpret most of the numbers we have left.

TEACHER: You bet. Let us start with the Apocalypse 9, and go from there.  Remember, here, the army of 20,000 times 10,000 kills a third part of men.  Do you remember how we saw that in the context of Protestantism as the antecedent to Enlightenment?

STUDENT:  Yes.   You explained that here:

Protestantism and Enlightenment in Apocalypse

Why don’t you refresh for our readers.

TEACHER: Good, here goes.  If we recall, after Protestantism, the bible was confounded ad infinitum, and Christians were terribly divided. The result was rejection of Christianity, of the Bible, and of all supernatural religion; religion was no longer God coming down to meet man, not about God revealing Himself to man, nor about God helping man through intervention, miracles, or grace. Rather, in the aftermath of Protestantism, religion became supernaturally dead: no grace, no intervention, and no revelation; only Reason and human effort. God winds up the world like a watch; then it runs on its own; God does not tell us things; God does not intervene; God does not help.

So religion is now man trying to find God; man tries to find the answers by himself; man tries himself to be good without divine assistance; so it was, as it were, a supernatural death!

Remember Jezebel?

STUDENT:  Yes, you had a whole level of meaning there. In Apocalypse, Jezebel was seen by you as the Protestant Rebellion.

TEACHER: Exactly. She styles herself a prophetess. She seduces Jesus' true servants to fornicate and worship idols. Jesus said He would kill her children with death! 

STUDENT: Wait a minute!  How could Jesus KILL little ones with death!  That sounds like Fundamentalism and some wacked out stuff!

TEACHER: True. It is a figure of speech.  Jesus doesn’t want to kill anyone: not only physically, much less spiritually.  Rather, most likely here, Jesus is communicating that a terrible consequence will come of the spiritual Jezebel, an aftermath, if you will. He makes it sound He will cause it by using harsh, hyperbolic language, but it is really that this aftermath is simply coming down the pike; it cannot be stopped because humanity is now going into a nose dive away from grace.

STUDENT: So then who are the children and what does “kill mean”?

TEACHER:  This is what happened: the children, or afterbirth of Protestantism, was supernatural death: disillusionment with supernatural religion. When you become disillusioned with the supernatural, like Christianity, you kill yourself supernaturally.

STUDENT: That is pretty deep, and it makes sense.

TEACHER: Yes. So returning to the sixth trumpet, or Enlightenment, let us read it:

And the sixth angel sounded the trumpet: and I heard a voice from the four horns of the great altar, which is before the eyes of God, [14] Saying to the sixth angel, who had the trumpet: Loose the four angels, who are bound in the great river Euphrates. [15] And the four angels were loosed, who were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year: for to kill the third part of men.

[16] And the number of the army of horsemen was twenty thousand times ten thousand. And I heard the number of them.

So the army “kills” the third part of men. Again, the death is not literal but spiritual, supernatural. The Enlightenment and general age of solo-Ratio, or reason only.

STUDENT: What about the 20,000 times 10,000

TEACHER: Well, it might be easier to give a high level assertion first, and then develop it. In short, I see 20,000 as the first sub-phase of Enlightenment as age of solo-Ratio, then 10,000, the second. More specifically, I see the first sub-phase of Enlightenment as basic, worldly heresy and religion confounded, and then the second sub-phase as purely worldly thought confounded.

STUDENT: Sounds a little convoluted. How do you get that?

TEACHER: Well, first, I think a strong argument can be made that in its early phase, Enlightenment and age of solo-Ratio, or reason alone, saw many persons trying to find religious truth with reason only, as in the myriads of deists and rationalists.  Too, TAN Books Church History states that natural religion was practically as much confounded as Protestantism had been. Hence, worldly and basic religion and heresy confounded can be symbolized by:

2 [basic religion or heresy] x 10 [worldly] x 1,000 [confounded]

STUDENT: I see, actually, that is pretty profound. The religion WAS basic because it had nothing but reason to guide it, even less than Protestantism, which still had Scripture and was already basic, with its 2 SUPERNATURAL sacraments. Too, it was worldly, since it denied God’s involvement in history and the individual. The religion had truly descended to earth.  And it was confounded, as to be expected.

TEACHER: Yes. The second phase is like it, but not religious. Indeed, if it is true that the confounding of supernatural religion led to its rejection and descent into merely natural religion, then the confounding of natural religion led to the rejection of religion altogether. This means that Reason, the sole source of truth remaining in Salvation history at that time, was no longer used to find spiritual and moral law, but simply purely secular, worldly!  That is, the thought of man is purely worldly in the second phase of Enlightenment, and to be sure, confounded all the more as Protestantism and natural religion were. Hence,

10 [purely worldly thought] x 1,000 [confounded]

STUDENT: Kewl! I think I can put it together. By the power of an army of first worldly, basic religion and heresy confounded, or 20,000, compounded with an army of purely worldly thought confounded, or 10,000, was a great portion of humanity “killed” spiritually, supernaturally.

TEACHER: You got it!  And guess what? This can be applied to the mere 200 from our days’ wages in the loaves and fishes.  Are you up for the exercise to solve it!

STUDENT: Yes!  Here goes.  We already saw that the 200 days wages, or derivatively 200,000 years wages, or even 200,000,000 years wages, symbolized the futility of the natural order: that no matter how hard we try with mere natural condition and efforts, we will never find the fulfillment we are looking for, nor will we ever merit even a grace toward salvation.  So, 200 days wages, then becomes, like our Enlightenment factoring:

2 [basic, religion] x 10 [of the world] x 10 [purely worldly activity]

Can in the end never gain us anything fulfilling, and will only leave us supernaturally dead!

TEACHER: You got it bro. And here’s an extra tidbit.  Jesus said earlier in the parable, not 7 times, but 70 times 7. See how, he extrapolates the original number by two factors, 7 and 10.  This is exactly what we anticipated with the 200 days wages.  Jesus could have veritably said, “not only with 200 days wages, but not even with 200 THOUSAND years OF a thousand years of wages.” That is, add the factor of a thousand and then another for hyperbole.

This incidentally, leads to the apocalyptic numbers we have seen:

200 thousand years OF a thousand years =

200 x 1,000 x 1,000 =

20 x 10 x 1,000 x 1,000 =

20,000 x 10,000

STUDENT: Kewl!  That enables us to see a possible connection between the 200 days wages of the loaves and fishes, the 200,000 years of the talent debt, and the 20,000 times 10,000 of the Apocalypse Scritpure.

TEACHER: Yep!  Another amazing thing, while we are here, is that when St Peter asks, how many times must I forgive my brother?  7 times?

This is interesting apocalyptically: from the article that just came out, the Dove and Our Lady’s Age of Peace, humanity is actually UNFORGIVABLE in the final darkness of human history, which, by my Beast Theology, based on Tradition, is the eighth darkness. Which makes the seventh darkness the last forgivable age of sin in human history. Bingo, Lord, should I forgive seven times?  We are to forgive until our dying breath, but apocalyptically, humanity shall be unforgivable in the end.  There are no limits to the mercy of God, as the CCC states, but the demons’ sin was so wretched, complete, and depraved in its insult, that the sin’s nature was unforgivable.  As Jesus told St Faustina, who petitioned Him about it, He told her, “[I did not forgive them (the demons)] Because they knew so much.”  Indeed, after our coming age of peace, the world will experience the fullness of all blessings, spiritual and temporal. Humanity will have the fullness of knowledge and experience of God’s Love. A subsequent rejection will be unforgivable.

Too, the number, 70 x 7 is actually 490.  For 490 years, the Jews did not keep the Sabbaths for the land of Israel, that is, 70 cumulative years.   They were forgiven through exile and restored, although not without a chastisement in Babylonian exile for the same 70 years they gave not the land a Sabbath.  It was the greatest story of en-masse repentance and forgiveness by God in all the Old Testament.  Derivatively, if you follow my theology of the Jewish history fulfilled by the Church, we are now at the time just before the derivative “exile”, and it is interesting: just as the Jews did not keep the major discipline for 490 years [The Sabbaths are disciplinary laws, not intrinsic morality], then entering into chastisement in Babylon, so now, to this year, 500 years ago, the Gentiles outside the Catholic and Orthodox churches have not kept the New Testament disciplines:  NT Discipline is exercised by the Bishops. In 1517, the mass exodus of Christians from Apostolic faith occurred, the radical rejection of the Episcopate and the retention of merely Scripture. When you leave the Episcopate, you leave authentic discipline, like keeping the Sabbath, and fasting and abstaining.

STUDENT: Really?

TEACHER: Yes, only Bishops can level regulations on their diocese of when they must fast and abstain, and to what degree and in what manner.  Too, the commandment Keep Holy the Sabbath Day now means, in the NT, go to Mass.  Protestants don’t have valid Mass, so they cannot technically keep the Sabbath.  And look where we are: the last 500 years have been a steady decline in authentic religion and morals.  A chastisement like Babylon is ripe; 2017 is not only 500 years after 1517, but it is also 100 years after Fatima, 1917. And the devil’s 75-100 years’ opportunity to ruin the Church, per Pope Leo XIII’s infamous locution in the late 19^th century, supposedly began with communism, right after Fatima, so go figure.

STUDENT: You have a point.  But God will forgive this “NT type of 490 years”, like He did of Old, will He not?

TEACHER: Absolutely, in fact, it will be the greatest manifestation of God’s mercy in not only the NT, but all of human history. It will be surely be the NEW Testament fulfillment of the mercy toward the 490 episode.

STUDENT: This is great, can there possibly be anything else to cover.

TEACHER: Well, if you can handle it, one more.  Remember the 200 days wages extrapolated to 200 thousand of a thousand years, and how it extended to the Enlightenment number of Apocalypse?

STUDENT: Yes.

TEACHER: Well, we have one last incidence of this numerical theology in the parable of counting the cost, the 10,000 going against 20,000.

STUDENT: OK, but make it quick, cuz this has been really long.

TEACHER: Ok, in Jesus’ parable of counting the cost, we see that we should never put mere natural family before the Gospel [whoever loves mother, brother, … more than me is not worthy of me]; later, He extrapolates, if you ain’t got enough money to finish a tower, don't do it;  and here is the clincher: and if you have 10,000 army troops going against 20,000, better call a truce;

Here is the crux: Jesus is showing the futility of the natural dimension, like the 200 days wages. For, if it is true that we can never find our ultimate fulfillment in mere natural, familial relationships, and only in the Gospel [so that if we ever had to choose between our family and our faith, we must allow ourselves to be disowned and thrown out into the streets or to the government than be separated from Jesus], how much more impossible can material dominion fulfill us. For, if we seek ultimate satiation in material grandeur, the tower will NEVER be enough, NEVER tall enough, NEVER glorious enough. Indeed, selfish man, in apocalyptic history, attempted to build a utopia independent of God, even in blasphemy of Him, at Babel, and they thought that they would succeed. But it was never finished.  Consequently, humanity, divided by tongue and nation, then entered the never-ending arena of armies against armies, nations against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms. Inevitably, larger armies swallow up lesser ones, like 20,000 against 10,000, and so forth, in a snow-ball effect, until, finally Babel is once again attained. Yet, again, it will never be finished, since man cannot perversely unite his selfish ambitions long enough to reach so-called utopia before the pride and conflicting interests tear it down.

And we are then back to the 20,000 times 10,000.

This is then, is the lot of pagan man, man unenlightened by grace and revelation: he is ever searching yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth--driven according to selfish pride and perverse ambition to build the perfect kingdom, the kingdom that will never last, that will never be finished, that will never fulfill.

STUDENT: Ok, but how does this apply to the Enlightenment?

TEACHER: It applies to Enlightenment in the sense that Enlightenment was worldly, like our parable above: in Enlightenment, man no longer calls out to God, no longer petitions Him for help, no longer petitions Him for truth.  Man considers himself sufficient unto his own means.  Man considers the world sufficient for him. Man is worldly!

STUDENT: Got it, and then I ask, perhaps a connection can be made between the 20,000 and 10,000 of the parable and the 20,000 times 10,000 in the Apocalypse text.

TEACHER: Yes! In fact, we can argue a direct parallel. Once man died supernaturally and clung only to Reason, their existence became, again, worldly, or purely natural, and hence a reflection of the tower and armies.   Indeed, neo-pagan nationalism arose in many facets of solo-Ratio history: imperialism, nationalism.  This is indicative of the armies of 20,000 and 10,000

 A competing side of the coin was an attempt by man to try and solve the human condition with only reason, as if man might find a universal brotherhood in common, worldly principles. This mirrors the tower, as in secret societies, communism, and the like.

Hence, the supernatural death in Apocalypse, wrought by an army of “20,000 times 10,000” creates a world reflected by Jesus’ parable, the “20,000 against 10,000”.

STUDENT: That is awesome! 

TEACHER: Great! Class dismissed