Three Great Woes of Catholic History, of Apocalypse: Protestantism, Enlightenment, and Godless Apostasy

Three Great Woes of Catholic History, of Apocalypse: Protestantism, Enlightenment, and Godless Apostasy; Sola-Scriptura, Solo-Ratio, and Anti-Ratio

Yessirree, in the Communism/Fascism article on Christian extremes, we saw that the associated Biblical numbers and theology place all these spiritual disorders in their proper place and with their own anti-Sacramental imagery and theology for take out and beyond.

More specifically, what did we find there in summary? Let us recap.

Well, we saw that, firstly, the loaves and fishes reveal sacramental mysteries. We saw that five loaves and two fish were am image of how heretics, or conservative Protestants, are split up. More specifically, we saw that heretics lose five loaves, five sacraments, and retain only two fish, baptism and marriage. Further, we saw that baptism and marriage are like basic sacraments in that they shew forth the basic essence of our faith: to know and love God and to be happy with Him forever in the next, or that is, to have faith [knowing truth] and repentance [love, or turning from sin] (the proper disposition of baptism or its vows), and to marry Jesus forever in heaven (we will have a spiritual spousal relationship with God eternally in heaven).

Godlessness in Apocalypse

Too, building on this, we saw that to totally mock these two basic principles of all goodness, or, that is, the basic sacramental signs of that same goodness, was to set up the total principles of evil, of the fall:

• The Anti-Baptismal Lie of the Fall: no faith and no repentance; believe as you wish, and do as you wish, and you will be fine, better off.

• The Anti-Marital Lie of the Fall: here, we speak not of literal unchastity; per se, as much as apocalyptic anti-marriage: rejecting the spousal ecstasy of spiritual union with the CreaTOR forever in the NEXT life in exchange for the superficial, figurative fornication with the CreaTION in THIS life, or materialism: living for the Creation instead of the Creator, or living for this world rather than the next.

This was also anti-sacramental imagery: the world asks a “father,” in fact, the father of lies, for two fish, baptism and marriage, and is given two serpents, the lies of the fall above. This takes care of godlessness in apocalypse: the lamb has seven horns, and the false prophet has two horns, like a lamb, but speaks as a dragon, who is, incidentally, also the serpent. Indeed, horns in Daniel many times denoted rulers, which means power. So if the Lamb has seven horns, it could easily mean he has infinite power, just as his seven eyes, which see all that is, means he has infinite knowledge. However, the false prophet is mocking two of Jesus’ horns, so there must be more to this. Long story short, Christ’s power is in redemption and in grace. His grace prevails in seven supreme sources, the sacraments. Now then, which two sacraments is the devil mocking in the two horns? Bingo, use what we have, seeing as it perfectly fulfills all evil.

This, enables us to see any godless age of the world’s history through this lense in the apocalypse, the beast then being the age of sin itself, and the devil the one who breathes into the sinful age these very lies of the diabolical prophet.

What else did we see?

Conservative Protestantism Locusts of Battle in Apocalypse

Yes, the heretics, we know from history, opened the Scriptures, which are—God forbid we say, but we must—a can of worms without the Church to guide you by Bishops and Tradition and created a torrent from the dragon’s mouth to carry away the faithful woman into oblivion and error. But the solid earth of the Magisterium answered all these lies, swallowed them, and thereby saved the Church from peril.

This we saw, in that same article, was the meaning of the locusts in the first great woe:

In Apocalypse Chapters 7-9, there are the seven trumpets that bring with them various calamities, and those Sealed by God in the forehead are not harmed by them. We can see the “trumpets” as the “proclamations” of the Church in her major doctrinal development over her history. When persons do not heed the Church, they are “spiritually harmed” in the same manner as their rejection of teaching. But good Catholics are spiritually protected in their minds from false teaching, protected in their forehead from heresy and error. Hence, the Seal is faithful Catholicism.

The last three trumpets are great woes. Considering this, we consider, too, that the last phases of attack on the Church and the fall from Catholic Christendom were three great negative chapters in the history of the Church:

• Protestantism

• Enlightenment, age of worldly reason

• Secular Apostasy

Protestantism unleashed an unfathomable geometric progression of mutating and mutually conflicting factions of heresy that tortured innocent heretics by leaving them in uncertainty. The loss of five of the seven Catholic sacraments, the ones that require the Episcopate, served as torture and fear in their hearts. But Catholics, who have the stability of the Church, were protected from this great age of sorrow and confusion. This was how we interpreted the five months of scorpion sting on those without the Seal of God: this was the spiritual torture from the uncertain and dreadful void that the five sacraments that were lost left.

Regarding the Enlightenment, or age of Reason, we note that Protestantism left its victims spiritually tortured but still supernaturally alive with Scripture and Baptism and Marriage. But in the Enlightenment and general age of worldliness, supernatural religion was cast aside in favor of merely natural knowledge and goodness, or Reason. Because supernatural truth and life was extinguished, it was a “death” of a great portion of mankind, a supernatural death, even as the warriors of the second great woe “kill” a third of mankind. We will cover this momentarily in much more detail.

We have already seen the Secular Apostasy, which rejects even Reason that the Enlightenment and general age of worldly reason retained, is finally completely godless: atheism, relativism, hedonism, violation of all natural law, and materialism. It is veritably “the false prophet and beast”.

So, then, we have that Protestantism and utter godlessness are in apocalypse as the first and third woes. This leaves, as we have just seen above briefly, the middle woe as the general age of worldly reason, which encompasses the conglomerate movements that have rejected a supernatural conception of reality: Enlightenment, deism, rationalism, the French Revolution, Masonry, and the endless versions of the worldly sciences that use mere natural intellect to try and solve human problems without God.

Because this middle age bears so much complexity and profundity, we will now treat of it in depth fully:

The Enlightenment

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, Saying to the sixth angel, who had the trumpet: Loose the four angels, who are bound in the great river Euphrates. 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.

And the number of the army of horsemen was twenty thousand times ten thousand. And I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision: and they that sat on them, had breastplates of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone, and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions: and from their mouths proceeded fire, and smoke, and brimstone. And by these three plagues was slain the third part of men, by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For, their tails are like to serpents, and have heads: and with them they hurt. And the rest of the men, who were not slain by these plagues, did not do penance from the works of their hands, that they should not adore devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

Neither did they penance from their murders, nor from their sorceries, nor from their fornication, nor from their thefts.

First, an interesting digression of how we get the number 20,000 times 10,000. In this Scripture, the Greek is rendered literally myriads of myriads. Now a myriad is either an uncountable number or 10,000 in Biblical theology. Secondly, when a number is mentioned in the plural (as in a time, times, and a half time) and no quantifier is given, we assume the smallest countable plural, 2 (that is, “a time, times and a half time” is … “a time, TWO times, and a half time”). Hence, myriads of myriads is literally "two ten thousands of ten thousands", as rendered by the Catholic Scripture Douhay Rheims version.

Now, remember how we factored 144,000 as 12 x 12 x 1000 to make the fullness of the People of God, of Old [12 Tribes] and New [12 Apostles], the Catholic Church [1000, a countless multitude].

Now, in biblical theology, 10 can be established as a symbol of the world, or worldliness (Daniel's fourth beast of chapter 7 has ten horns, the dragon and first beast of apocalypse 12 and 13 each have ten horns.)

Remember also, 2 can be a symbol of heresy and basic religion [heretics retain basic religion, 2 sacraments, 2 fish, baptism and marriage]. Therefore, the first number, 20,000 becomes...

Heresies or basic religion [2] of the World [10] Multiplied or Confounded [1000]

2 x 10 x 1000

The second number is pure worldliness [10] multiplied or confounded [1000]

10 x 1000

What we will actually find is that, more or less, the Enlightenment has two sub-stages, or dimensions, that match these characteristics. Let us probe it.

In the first stage, its adherents are still religious but only naturally so, in that they believe that religion is on the level of the world, meaning, that religion is never supernatural, that is, never on the level of heaven, never God coming down to meet man from above. Rather, they believe religion is on the level of the world, that is, man tries from below to find God above. In other words, man strives on his own to find the truth and the ability to live virtuously. The belief that man must find the truth on his own, from merely Reason, is called rationalism, and the idea that God does not intervene with this world, leaving man to his own devices for happiness, is called deism. Hence, for the deists and rationalists, religion is, again, of the world [10], and since all their ideologies are heresies [2], this first stage of Enlightenment is worldly heresy [2 x 10]. Further, these worldly heresies were just as confounded as the multitudes of Protestantism, in that there were as many opinions in deism and rationalism as there were deists and rationalists (just as there were as many forms of Protestantism as Protestants) [1000].

In the second phase of Enlightenment, the philosophies were no longer regarding religion, if even natural religion. They were purely worldly. For, the social and political ideologies of the 1800's and first half of 1900's were strictly worldly, trying to solve the problems of human life with only reason, or the base knowledge of the world, without regard for God. In fact, the world wars brought back neo-pagan nationalism, which is itself worldly, as it was in pagan kingdoms of rivalry in ancient times. Nazism and Fascism were regarded as the peak of Enlightenment thoughts, and they were purely worldly, asserting superiority of race and dictatorship of the states, again, like the pagan kingdoms of ancient times. Hence, this was, again, purely worldly [10] thought confounded [1000].

And what did these two phases of worldly religion and purely worldly philosophies do to the world? They only killed a great portion of man supernaturally, in that they stripped man of his role as dependent upon a Creator for supernatural intervention and revelation. They caused a supernatural death in those who were deceived by them.

For, if it was true that the Protestants did not fully die supernaturally, seeing as they retained supernatural Christian religion, so the Enlightenment brought about supernatural death. The Protestants who were scrupulous surely wished they could die spiritually, in the sense that they did not want to cower in fear of hell through uncertain spiritual torture. But they did not die, for they retained supernatural fear of God, the base sacraments of Baptism and Marriage.

The Futility of the Merely Natural Means for Salvation

Now, let us probe some further Scriptures related to our analysis. In a Gospel narrative, Christ says count the cost. Do not build a tower if you cannot complete it. If you have an army of 10,000 and you are going against 20,000, better to send a delegate and call a truce, as if to imply that the 10,000 and 20,000 should unite and compound their armies for a greater cooperative victory (even as the Enlightenment has two great armies in alliance, worldly heresies and purely worldly philosophies).

In the preceding section, Christ says, you must be ready to hate even your own flesh and blood family to inherit the kingdom.

A deeper meaning is present: supernatural love of God must take precedence over everything in this world. For, you can never refuse to convert to the Gospel to save your family peace. If your family threatens to disown you and turn you in to die by the state if you convert to Christianity, you must convert and be left for dead by your family.

And why? One, you will go to hell if you choose natural relationship with physical kin over supernatural relationship with God and spiritual kin.

And secondly, it is because no merely natural goodness, even the love of physical family, can fulfill you. Only the supernatural possession of God and the saints' fellowship in heaven can fully satiate what you long for in the recession of your hearts.

Also, the tower of the Gospel here can parallel the tower of Babel. Recall the tower of Babel: man is trying to find his fulfillment in the material world, joined as one human race, but not in love of God. Rather, man is infatuated with himself and material glory. But the point is, THIS CAN NEVER FULFILL HIM. No amount of materialistic grandeur can ever satiate the human heart. The lie is materialism: that pleasures, possessions, and egotistical accomplishments can ultimately fulfill what you are looking for, and not immeasurable love forever in the next life. Hence, at Babel, the world is pursuing an end that will never give it rest and true beatitude, but it is too early for early man to understand. So God must interrupt the construction of the tower and divide humanity against itself, as in the kingdoms that wage war with one another, the aftermath of the fall of Babel: war, divisiveness, strife. The conquering of kingdoms, one upon another is the lot of man who fails at utopia. For even after Babel, humanity still strives to regain it, and does regain it by the time of Christ. Eventually, all the armies of the best of the world called a truce and were ruled by the great king of Rome.

But now, here is the lesson: natural goodness, even the relationships of family members, the highest good of the natural world, can never inherit the kingdom of God (“for even the heathens love those who love them, and what good is that?”, and, “for with man, it is impossible, but with God [supernatural life and revelation], ALL things are possible.”)

Even with 200 Days Wages

Therefore, it is written of St. Phillip in the same story of five loaves and two fish: Lord, even with 200 days wages, we could not afford to give these families even a little food.

What is 200 except 2 x 10 x 10? And what is a day except a thousand years? And what is the wage of a day of natural goodness except simply a day of natural goodness, which can never approach God or please Him. But a day of natural goodness is also a thousand years of natural goodness.

And also, what are the wages, if even natural goodness, of a fallen man in this world? Is it not death? “For the wages of sin is death!” Therefore, the wages of 200 days is 200 thousand years of death;yet, each of those days in that amount is a thousand years. Hence, the wages are also 200 thousand years of a thousand years of natural labor, which is simply death, even as the army of the second woe, which was 2 x 10 x 10 x 1000 x 1000, was the supernatural death of many in this world.

And also, what can we say about all the goodness and knowledge of this world alone? For, the totality of worldly religion, the army of man trying to find God on his own and to please him on his own power, is merely 2 x 10 x 1000, that is, heresies [2] of the world [10] confounded and multiplies innumerably [1000]. And even less powerful is the army of man in all purely worldly knowledge, that is, 10 x 1000, strictly worldly ideologies without regard to religion [10] multiplied innumerably [1000].

And in the end, none of these great armies' fruits, even if they call a truce, will ever purchase a single coin of merit in God's eyes, because only grace and revelation can do this. Rather, the fruits of such armies will only kill their victims spiritually, cutting them off from supernatural grace and revelation, which is the very thing these armies cast aside!

Hence, again, we read with St. Phillip to Jesus our Savior, "Lord, even with 200 days wages [2 [heresies] x 10 [of the world] x 10 [and purely worldly ideologies] x 1000 x 1000], we could not afford to give all these children of thy Father even a little food (no efforts of this world [10], be they religious [2, or heretical, since they reject God's supernatural involvement], much less pure efforts of the world [10], can ever bring us any ounce of supernatural goodness, no life from God, no truth that transcends our human minds, without which none of us can be saved. And therefore, only Jesus can fix this problem with His supernatural life, which, in the greatest form, is indeed the seven sacraments, as we have seen, the loaves and fishes of the Sacraments that Christ feeds us, the children of His Father, unto eternal life.)”