Transcript

Okay.

Last week, we studied the, uh, first 10 verses of Revelation 20.

That was very long and involved because we had to cover lot of diff- a, a lot of different images from the Old Testament and a lot of different viewpoints as well.

The main thesis was that Revelation 20:1-10 corresponds in some manner to the first century and to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the thousand-year period known as the millennium.

In my view, and also based upon the study of, uh, Eugenio Corsini, this thousand-year period points not to some future era of peace, but to a period in the past that concluded the Old Testament.

From the time that Jerusalem was first established by David as God's earthly center for His kingdom until it was sacked and destroyed by the Romans in the first century, for a thousand years, the earthly Jerusalem served as a prototype of the kingdom of God, the real McCoy, the kingdom of heaven that Christ established with the new covenant.

I have here a statement from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, second edition, volume one, from a, an article on the theology of the city.

He says, um, The millennium that followed the period of David and Solomon was filled with the drama of Israel's apostasy and revival.

Jerusalem was sacked, its temple destroyed, and its people carried away captive to Babylon, only to be rebuilt later under God's leadership.

Finally, Jerusalem's status as holy city was ended with the arrival, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

The earthly temple is destroyed and replaced by the body of Christ as the resurrected temple of God, John 2:19 and First Peter 2.

Jesus' death and resurrection are the desacralization of the earthly Jerusalem and the sacralization of the people of God.

Yet that is by no means the end of the city.

The coming eschatological reality is described in terms of the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21.

In this city, there is no temple, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb.

Babylon has been destroyed completely.

All things are new, and the new Jerusalem is all in all.

The old Jerusalem then takes its place in history as a witness and pointer to the new.

That summarizes, I think, what I was trying to say last week when we were considering that millennium.

Then in, we saw in verses 11 through 15, the great white throne judgment.

Let's consider these verses right now, beginning in verse 11.

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it.

From His presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books were opened.

Also, another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.

Now, what does this prophecy point to?

Something past in the first century or something future?

I think at this point we have to admit that we have the eternal breaking into the historical, or the end of time now breaking into a, a prophetic account of what happened in the middle of time.

This is the principle of compenetration.

I may have mentioned this a few weeks ago.

I wanna mention it again.

I'm drawing now from a book, uh, uh, a commenter in the book of Daniel by, uh, Father Cuthbert Lady, a Jesuit.

And on page 106, he describes this principle of compenetration, of how prophets can often describe a present event or an event that is imminent in terms that transcend the event that's about to happen because the event that's about to happen prefigures events that will occur at the end of time.

And so as the prophet describes events that are about to happen, he uses terms that are drawn from the end of time because the event he's des- just describing or predicting prefigures the end of time.

Here's what Saint Thomas says.

Oh, I'm sorry, Saint Jerome.

Uh, no, actually Saint Thomas commenting on Saint Jerome.

Saint Jer- Thomas puts more clearly what appears to be in Saint Jerome's mind when he writes in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, Prophecies are sometimes uttered about things which existed at the time in question, but are not uttered primarily with reference to them, but insofar as they are a figure of things to come.

And therefore, the Holy Ghost has provided that when such prophecies are uttered, some details should be inserted which go beyond the actual thing done so that the mind may be raised to the thing signified.

So what is it that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD prefigures or signifies?

The end of the world.

Thus, Israel's history in the Old Testament is a prototype of the history of every nation, of all the gentile nations which subsequently are to receive the word of God, the gospel of Christ, in this New Testament age.

So Israel's conversion and renewal and then subsequent lapse and apostasy and eventual judgment and destruction, all of that foreshadows what happens to Germany, what happens to Russia, what happened to Ephesus, what will happen, I'm sure, to the United States of America.

And to every other nation which hears the gospel and responds partially, sincerely, but not completely, it seals its own fate.

So, this is why a prophecy in the book of Revelation that describes God's judgment of Old Testament Jerusalem can contain within itself many elements that point beyond itself.

And that's what we're looking at in verses 11, 12, and 13.

The great white throne judgment, this is clearly pointing to the end of the ages, where all of the dead at the end of the New Testament age are called before the throne of Christ .

there's a sudden movement then from the middle of history to the endpoint of history where the destruction of Jerusalem becomes more than a political event.

We s- we see now it's becoming a theological pattern or a picture.

The destruction of Jerusalem prefigures the end of the world.

The judgment of God upon Israel prefigures the judgment of God upon every nation.

So that at the end of the New Testament age after the nations have been converted, after the Jewish people have come back to Christ, after then the nations have lapsed into apostasy and sin, and then when Christ is coming to bring about the ultimate and complete judgment, at this point, we have all the world's trappings stripped away.

Everything lays bare before Christ upon the throne.

Then I saw a great white throne and, and him who sat upon it.

From his presence, earth and sky fled away.

So everything transient, all things transitory vanish now.

Every soul is laid bare before Christ.

This is what Jesus speaks about when He says that every idle word will be called into judgment.

The books will be opened and every deed, every thought, every word that's been spoken will be reviewed by Christ in an absolutely holy and just way.

So everything everybody's done is now coming into judgment at the end of time.

That's a thought that should just fill us with a sense of awe and terror because our love is so imperfect and our attachment to this world is so strong.

When we realize that we're attached to things so utterly transient, we should realize how foolish we are and pray accordingly.

That's what this vision is meant to give us, what we're gonna speak of even more when we come to Revelation 21, an eternal perspective for living in the present.

That's what's so hard to maintain in the struggle of daily life in the world.

But here we see it.

Let's move on.

And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done, and the sea gave up the dead in it.

Notice in verse 13, we read, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death.

What does that refer to?

It goes back to verse 6, verse 5 and 6, which speaks about the first resurrection.

The first resurrection is experienced by martyrs who experience the first death in time, but they experience the first death in a holy manner, so they experience the first resurrection.

Whereas people who undergo the first death in an unholy manner do not experience the first resurrection that's described in verses 5 and 6.

They don't come to life until the second resurrection.

What is the second resurrection?

It follows upon closely on the heels of the second death.

The second death is the ultimate destruction that comes at the end of time.

When Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire, this is the second death.

So we see that Death and Hades represent a kind of temporal expression that death takes in history, but that everlasting judgment is the reality of death.

It's the reality of what death signifies, absolute, complete, everlasting separation from God.

This means that Hades is not hell in the sense of eternal fire.

This underscores a point that we've repeatedly made throughout our weeks of studying Revelation, that Hades is a Greek word that corresponds to the Hebrew notion of Sheol, the shadowy underworld where saints and sinners go if they're not prepared at death to enter com- into the presence of the Holy God.

The Latin term that we use, of course, is purgatorio, a place of purgation, a place where we're purged of the residual sin which remains.

This underscores, I think, the Catholic truth of purgatory, that it is a, a biblical teaching.

At the end of time, there will be no Sheol, no Hades, no purgatory, but most assuredly, there will still be hell, Gehenna, the lake of fire.

The lake of fire is what receives Death and Hades.

So people who go to Hades who are righteous will end up going to heaven in the second resurrection.

People who go to Hades who are unrighteous will end up in the lake of fire for the ultimate, in s- the second death.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire.

And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Notice there's nothing in this vision nor anything else in biblical revelation to lend credence to this false hope of universal salvation for every man, woman, and child.

There is nothing in scripture that gives us any hope that Satan and the fallen angels will be saved or those that they've ensnared and deceived.

Instead, there's every reason to believe that if we don't preach the gospel in season and out of season, if we don't bear witness to Jesus Christ, we are going to face the results when we see the people that we live with, the people we rub shoulders with, the- the people whose lives we touch every day, those lives ending up in the lake of fire.

And most assuredly, we will experience something associated with that because we will be in part responsible for not getting the gospel out.

We will lose at least a part of our reward if our disobedience doesn't lead us into the lake of fire itself.

The stakes are that high, eternal and cosmic, and there's just no way we can justify playing around with universalism.

It's contrary to scripture.

It's contrary to the che- teachings of the church councils.

It's contrary, I think, just to a sense of justice that we all have.

Somebody pointed out to me recently that even in Plato's Republic, there's this idea of eternal damnation, as well as a notion of purgatorial punishment for those who do not necessarily end up destroyed for eternity.

Let's move along.

Chapter 21 .

in chapter 21, beginning in verse 1, we have the final scene of the apocalyptic visions of John.

From Re- uh, chapter 21, verse 1, going all the way to chapter 22, verse 5, that's where the scene ends.

The verses of the Bible, of course, are not original.

They were added later on by monks in the Middle Ages.

On this, in this section, it's almost a little bit unfortunate that chapter 22 begins where it does, because in a certain sense, the epilogue or the afterword begins in Revelation 22, verse 6, and continues to the end, verse 21.

That is the conclusion of the vision, and I think it really stands out as such.

So we're gonna consider first the section beginning in Revelation 21, verse 1, extending to Revelation 22, verse 5, and then we will also consider the concluding section, beginning Revelation 22, verse 6, and going to the end.

The question I want you to ask yourself as we turn to consider the New Jerusalem described in Revelation 21 is: What does this describe?

Heaven and eternity, or the Church and history?

And I think you already know what I'm gonna say, and that is both.

Because the Church and history is a prefiguration and a participation in heaven and eternity.

Let's just see, though, whether or not the, the data in this chapter bears that out.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

That, I think, makes it seem as though we're dealing with eternity.

The creation itself has vanished, and it's been replaced by a new heavens and new earth which has no sea.

The sea, of course, is a symbol of confusion.

It's also the source for the Gentile world powers.

For instance, in Daniel 7, the four Gentile empires are described as, Four beasts that come up out of the sea, and so with the conversion of nations, in a certain sense, we can speak symbolically of there being no sea any longer.

But the description here in verse 1 certainly suggests that we're looking at eternity and what life will be like in the new creation and in heaven.

But look at verse 2: And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, in contrast to what?

The old Jerusalem.

Coming down out of heaven from God.

Now, this is interesting because in many Jewish sources, we have teachings concerning an earthly Jerusalem and a corresponding heavenly Jerusalem, but nowhere in any extant Jewish source do we have a suggestion that the heavenly Jerusalem actually descends and comes down to Earth.

This is utterly unique in contrast to all the Jewish sources we have that describe a heavenly Jerusalem and an earthly Jerusalem.

For the first time in Jewish-Christian literature, we have the notion that the heavenly Jerusalem is coming down and breaking into the sphere or the space that we know as Earth.

It's coming down.

It's descending.

Coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Now, that also suggests, I think, the Church in the New Testament age, because we are not simply Christ's fiance; the Church in the New Testament is truly the bride of Christ.

And so, we must be willing to speak of the New Jerusalem as corresponding to the Church in this age in some manner, although here, we see the Church prepared as a bride adorned for her husband in its splendor, in holiness and righteousness, very similar to what we saw earlier in Revelation 19, verse 7 and 8: Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.

It was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

So, this suggests the Church here and now as the bride of Christ, and also the Church then and there, at the end of time, when the Church is pure and without spot, perfectly righteous and holy.

By the way, isn't it significant when we realize that every righteous deed contributes to the splendor of ch- of, of, of the Church?

Every holy work we do in Christ and for Christ becomes part of the splendor of Christ's bride, the Church, and ultimately then of Christ as well?

We have something to contribute to the glory of Christ.

It isn't as though He's lacking in glory, but the glory which is His, with all fullness, is manifest in us, and we share that.

Let's continue on.

Verse 3: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.

He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them.' Now, what does this correspond to?

Eternity or history?

Heaven or Earth?

The Church age or the eternal age?

Well, I think we'd have to reali- we have to say it corresponds to both.

What are the closing words of our Lord when He, right before He ascends into heaven?

In Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, it says, 'All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

And lo,' what are His parting words?

'I am with you always, to the close of the age.' This is the fulfillment of the Emmanuel prophecy, God with us.

God is now with us in the Holy Spirit .

God is now with us through the Holy Spirit in a way that God was not present in the Old Testament.

We have a super abundance.

We have a power.

We have a fullness.

We have a reality now that they didn't have then.

God truly dwells in the midst of His people now in a way that He only promised to back in the Old Testament.

But the reality now is a fulfillment of the old but a foreshadowing of something far greater in the end for eternity.

So in effect, we have a paradigm here that we have to keep in mind.

The Old Testament is promise, the New Testament is fulfillment, but eternity is completion or consummation.

But we must not underestimate the reality of fulfillment.

Even if the reality is invisible, even if the reality is spiritual, nevertheless, the New Jerusalem is now coming down from heaven, descending to Earth in the church, triumphant especially, as we commune with them in the liturgy.

Especially, this takes place in the mass, through the holy Eucharist.

All right, let's continue with, uh, examination of these verses just to see how time and eternity intersect.

And by the way, this, this saying here, Behold the dwelling of God is with men.

He will dwell with them and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them, that is perhaps the most succinct summary of the covenant.

That's the meaning of what it means for God and man to be in covenant relation.

Over and over again in the Old Testament, the formula of the covenant is, I shall be your God and you shall be my people.

Only here it is they are, we are His people and He is dwelling in our midst.

Verse four: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

Now what does that sound like?

Eternity or time?

Certainly sounds like eternity to me, doesn't it?

Death shall be no more.

How can we say that this pertains to time, to history, to the church?

We want, we'll work through this section, but in First Corinthians 15 we have Paul exclaiming at the end of his discussion on the resurrection, The sting of death Uh, no, verse, uh, 54: Death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh death, where is thy victory?

Oh death, where is thy sting?

The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

So he speaks here of a victory which is already in our possession.

Likewise, in Ephesians two we read a very interesting thing in verse, uh, four and following.

Uh, But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were s- dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you've been saved.

Verse six: And He's raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Notice that Ephesians 2:6 does not say, He will make us sit in heavenly places at the end of time.

It says, He made us sit with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

There's a sense in which we now share in heavenly glory.

We now share Christ's divine authority.

Now, we don't wield that authority very often, but we possess it.

And if we attempted to wield it more, we would discover more and more what in fact is ours.

So even here in Revelation 21, describing how death is overcome, pain and mourning and crying, these things are overcome in a certain sense here now because for the first time in history, the new covenant introduces to us a principle of life which is so strong that it vanquishes anything that pertains to natural death.

This is what made the early saints in the ancient church so eager for martyrdom, because they knew they had nothing to fear.

Death had become a glorious door, a simple passageway into the glory which was already theirs sacramentally, already in their own possession by faith.

It became theirs in the fullest realization through death.

So in that sense, death was conquered.

But again we should lament how infrequently we live with this understanding.

We should also consider how powerful our lives would be if these thoughts controlled and dominated our decisions, if these thoughts con- controlled the way we graduated seniors so that their anxieties would be, in a sense, just subsumed under the kind of living faith that recognizes that whatever I face, whatever struggle, whatever unemployment, whatever hard times I have in terms of finding a job and, and so on and so forth, all these things are part of God's plan to, to manifest Christ's glory through me.

Revelation 21:5.

And He who sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' Now, when is it that Christ renews all things?

At the end of time you'd expect Christ to say, Behold, I have made all things new.

But now, the Greek tense is present.

I make all things new.

This reminds us of what Paul says in Second Corinthians 5 when he, he says in verse 16: From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh.

We regard Him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, behold, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Be- behold, the new will come?

No.

The new has come.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

So Christ is now making all things new.

And we have the complete renewal of the universe, of course, waiting at the end, but here again we have this compenetration of eternity into time.

Also, he said, write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

And He said to me, 'It is done.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end-This is the reason why Christ, who is the Word, gives to His prophets a prophetic word that describes the alpha, the beginning of the new covenant, in terms of the omega, the end of the new covenant: because for Christ, it's all one eternally simultaneous moment.

In Christ's own divine wisdom, He sees the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end.

A thousand years are but a day, and a day is but a thousand years.

So, It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega.

From Christ's perspective, everything is completed, so why do we have to struggle on Earth to enter into this victory?

We should realize then, that ultimately the victory is won.

We're just simply, w- we're just simply involved in some minor skirmishes, the mop-up operations, you know?

D-Day has arrived.

We're working for VE Day, as Oscar Cullmann put it.

We've invaded Satan's territory.

It's just a matter of time before every single outpost falls into our hands.

It's still a struggle, but the outcome is assured.

And again, this injects us with the kind of confidence and hope and optimism that should s- sh- that sh- that, that should suffuse Catholic missionary outreach and evangelization, instead of a, the pessimillennialism that paralyzes so many fundamentalists who believe that all we, all we are doing is simply, you know, pulling brands out of the fire, saving souls.

We're not discipling them, necessarily.

We're not training them in the Word of God.

We're not introducing them to the sacraments and the Church and the tradition.

So much evangelization which goes on around us actually puts us to shame, but really it's a superficial type because all it's doing is saving souls.

It isn't maturing those souls in holiness.

Well, shame on them, but greater shame on us, because we're not even doing that.

They're caught up in a pessimis- this pessimistic view.

I, you know, I like to call it pessimillennialism, because their own millennial interpretation of Revelation makes them think that, you know, why bother trying to bring God's justice and holiness to this world?

You know, Why polish brass on a sinking ship?

as one radio evangelist put it.

Why rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?

If everything's just getting worse and worse and worse, and it has to before Christ comes again, why bother taking these souls and introducing them into higher education and so on?

Just save them, pluck them as brands from the fire, and teach him to pluck other brands from the fire.

Okay, that's, that's superficial, that's pessimistic, but so often, it, it outstrips what Catholics do.

We should be suffused with confidence, with hope, with optimism, with a, with a loving, gentle, patient, militancy that should just send us forth.

But we don't, because we don't think and live from an eternal perspective.

To the thirsty, I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.

Verse six.

Eternal or historical?

Eternal or temporal?

I would argue that verse six is more temporal than eternal.

It reminds me of the language Jesus uses in John's Gospel, chapter four.

When He's speaking to the woman at the well, He says to her, let's see here, John four, around verse 10, I believe, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.

And then again in verse 13, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.

The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Likewise in John 7, verses 37 through 39, On the last day of the feast, the great day.

This is the end of the week of celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, but it's interesting how the Feast of Tabernacles anticipates the ultimate tabernacle at the end of time.

So here in the first century, Jesus is saying something which is true then, it will become truer and truer as the new, new covenant goes on, until it realizes its ultimate truth at the end of time.

That's why it's so significant, verse 37, John 7:37, On the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the great day.

Well, I'm sure it means the last day of that week, but it also points to the last day, the great day, of the real Feast of Tabernacles.

Jesus stood up, just as He will stand up, and proclaimed, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and let him, him who believes in me drink.

As the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this He said about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were to receive.

For as yet the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

So when is this water given?

When is the Spirit dispensed?

In John 19 when Jesus' side is pierced with a spear and the blood and the water flow from His side, symbolizing the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of the new covenant.

So, Jesus is talking about giving us water which will well up as a fountain for eternal life.

This pertains to the Holy Spirit.

This pertains to the new covenant.

This pertains to the temporal reality which we experience now sacramentally.

But we ain't seen nothin' yet, you know?

Because the greater reality, the completion, the consummation of the sacraments is yet to come.

So, To the thirsty, I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.

He who conquers shall have this heritage.

I think this is about my favorite verse in the whole Bible.

He who conquers shall have this heritage.

I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Notice how we move away from the collective language of the old covenant.

I shall be your God, y'all, your God, and you shall be my people.

Now, God is speaking to each and every individual who makes up the collectivity, I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

It's interesting that John uses the word ʻoíos here, whereas usually in the Gospel and in the Epistles, the word that John uses for son is tekna, which means child .

but at the end of ch- at the end of time, as we face our Lord in eternity, we will be given the complete maturity of the children of God.

We will no longer be children; we will be sons and daughters of the Most High.

We will glow with the glory of Christ.

I will be as God and He shall be my son.

That language is drawn straight from 2 Samuel 7:14, where the promise and covenant that God makes with David is declared and summarized in one statement, I will be his father and he will be my son.

And that's speaking of the Son of David, the King of Israel who will sit enthroned, ruling the kingdom of God and now the language is applied to who?

To Christ, the Son of David?

To all of us as sons of David, because all of us are now sons of God.

He who conquers shall have this heritage and I will be as God and he shall be my son.

But as for the cowardly, ask yourself this question: what does verse eight pertain to, the eternal or the temporal?

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

So Christ is speaking about how sinners will be dealt with, but He's faced with sinners, but they're faced with the eternal punishment.

So once again, we have the compenetration of the eternal with the temporal.

Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me saying, 'Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.' We have repetition in the first couple verses in this chapter.

And in the Spirit, he carried me away to a great high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

When does John have this experience?

At the end of time?

No.

He's having the experience of the bride, the wife of the Lamb, the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven while he's having the vision.

John is having the vision back in the first century when he was in the Spirit, and what is he seeing?

He's seeing the eternal breaking into the temporal.

The reality of the new Jerusalem is a temporal reality.

That's why John sees it in his vision.

It isn't something that he's simply being told about; it's something that he's actually witnessing and testifying to in the here and now.

But notice how it is that John sees it, verse 10.

In the Spirit.

From a temporal perspective, we can only discern the eternal realities that belong in the new covenant when we see them in- with the eyes of faith, when we see them in the Spirit.

When we see them in the Spirit, then and only then do we see eternity.

When was the other time we saw this phrase used, in the Spirit?

When else was John in the Spirit?

Go way back to the beginning of Revelation, chapter one.

There in chapter one, verse 10, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.

What does it mean to be in the Spirit on the Lord's day?

Mm-hmm.

Hey,

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

In this article written by Leonard Thompson, Cult and Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John, and appeared in the Journal of Religion back in 1969, on, uh, page 343, Thompson says, 'Hey kuriakon hemera,' the Lord's Day, is surely a reference to the first day of the week, the day that Christians gather together for worship and breaking of bread, even though the clear association of the Lord's Day with the first day in early Christian literature is made by the later Ignatius, goes on to say some other things.

He goes on to insist that the Lord's Day should be understood in two senses, liturgically and eschatologically.

Because we're talking about what?

The day of the Lord.

What do we experience every time we gather to celebrate mass on the- the Lord's Day?

We experience the Lord's Day, the day of the Lord.

We experience in liturgy what will be experienced before all of our eyes at the end of time.

When the Lamb is enthroned and He is giving Himself and all of His life to us who believe, at the same time, coming forth from His throne are the judgments upon those who have spurned His mercy and grace.

This is why Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 11, in a sense that sounds both liturgical and eschatological when he says, Whoever then eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a man examine himself.

The word there for examine is judge, kriseis, where we get the word crisis.

Let a man put himself in judgment, in crisis.

Let a man discern.

And so he to the bread and drink of the cup, For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.

But if we judge ourselves truly, we should not be judged.

So on the Lord's day, we receive in time what everybody will receive at the end of time.

Mm-hmm.

The parousia of Christ.

Now transubstantiation is a marvelous word to describe what takes place when the priest pronounce the words of consecration, but I think we have in the Bible an even better word than transubstantiation.

We have the parousia.

Because the word parousia in Greek does not mean primarily the coming of the Lord.

If you look it up in any Greek dictionary, the word means primarily the presence of the Lord.

We have a proleptic parousia every time the word- the words of consecration are pronounced .

the Lamb, enthroned, calls us all into this glorious temple, into the new Jerusalem, into the holy communion of the saints, to join with the bride in this glorious nuptial union with Christ.

But if we enter that in sin, we bring down upon ourselves a foretaste of the last judgment.

Go back.

And in the Spirit he carried me away to great, to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal.

It had a great high wall with 12 gates, and at the gates, 12 angels.

And on the gates, the names of the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel were des- were inscribed.

So notice, what is the new Jerusalem?

It corresponds to Israel.

The sons of Israel have their names inscribed on the gates, the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel.

And on the east, three gates, and on the north, three gates, on the south, three gates, on the west, three gates, and the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them, the 12 names of, what?

The 12 foundations have on them the 12 names of the 12 sons of Jacob?

The 12 apostles of the Lamb.

There is absolutely no reason in the world why Catholics should be hoodwinked by this fundamentalist error that there is Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament.

Spiritually, we are one and the same.

There's discontinuity, there's dissimilarity, but in reality, the Church is Israel now, and Old Testament Israel was the Church then.

We are spiritually all Semites, Pope Pius XII says.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, we read about the Church of Abel, of which we're a part.

When we read the Old Testament, we're reading our own family history.

We are wild olive branches that have been grafted onto this natural olive tree.

And all the Gentiles of the old covenant, you see when you study Genesis, the first 11 chapters, all the nations are the scattered descendants of the sons of Noah.

So all the Gentiles are runaways, are prodigals, who at one point belonged to the covenant family of Yahweh.

And so Israel was the covenant family, and still is, only now we call it the Church.

And the foundation has the names of the 12 apostles, and so Jesus can say to the 12 in Matthew 19, You will sit on 12 thrones and rule, over what?

The 12 diocese of the Church?

The 12 tribes of Israel.

That's why it's, it's horrifying for me to hear somebody like Father Eugene Fischer, who is the head of the United States Catholic Conference Commission on Jewish-Catholic Dialogue, it's, it's just unbelievable for me to hear Father Fischer say that for Jews to refuse to convert to Christianity, for them to refuse Christ as the Messiah is actually bearing faithful and heroic witness to the Jewish covenant.

And those are his words.

That kind of stuff is pure heresy, and yet it pervades people's thinking today because we don't know how the new fulfills the old.

We don't know how to interpret the new in light of the old.

The Church has its gates with the names of the 12 sons of Israel and the foundations with the names of the 12 apostles.

It's organically one.

And he who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls.

The city lies four square.

Its length the same as its breadth.

And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia, which is about 1,500 miles.

Its length and breadth and height are equal.

So it's a cube.

He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by a man's measure.

That is, an angel's.

The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.

The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every jewel.

The fort- the first was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, agate; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, onyx; the sixth, carnelian; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst.

And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.

Now, are we talking about a literal city here?

Hardly.

This is symbolic language describing the glory and splendor of the new Jerusalem.

There is so much Old Testament imagery embedded in this section of Scripture, beginning in verses 15 go- extending down to verse 21, it's hard to know exactly where to begin.

What that means is, of course, that the length, the breadth, and the depth, the length, the breadth, and the height are all equal.

Now, that is an important clue as to the symbolic significance of the new Jerusalem here.

The bride is a cube.

Now, I've seen overweight brides before, but I mean, you know- this is ridiculous.

Hardly literal here, right?

I mean, this is the bride of the Lamb.

This is Christ and the Church, and a description of the bride, the new Jerusalem, and it's a cube.

What is the symbolic meaning of the square or the cube here?

You go back in the old covenant, there's only one cube.

It's the Holy of Holies, the inner shrine, the place where God dwelt.

The Shekinah glory of God was manifest in the Holy of Holies, the inner shrine.

Remember back in Revelation chapter 11, John was also given a measuring rod, like a staff.

Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple.

Leave that out.

Then it goes on.

There we have a distinction between the outer court and the inner shrine.

And in the center, in the innermost section of the inner shrine, you have the Holy of Holies, shaped like a perfect cube.

By the time-So, God is done.

Having sent Christ to establish a new covenant, having established this intimate fellowship with His people, the temple is no longer meaningful because all the partitions, all the curtains, all the divisions are meaningless because we have now f- intimate face-to-face fellowship with Christ.

Sacramentally, of course, in the Holy Eucharist.

Invisibly, but actually through the Holy Spirit as well.

Let's turn to Ephesians 4.

We can see how this language pertains to the Church here and now.

In the Book of Ephesians, we have what I think is an allusion to the Church as the Holy of Holies, similar to the language that we have in Revelation 21.

I'm sorry, in Ephesians 3.

In Ephesians 3, Paul is talking about the mystery of Christ.

Verse 4: When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to this, to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

And what is the mystery of Christ?

That God became man?

That the God man was crucified?

That He was raised from the dead?

That He was ascended and enthroned in heaven?

No, the mystery of Christ is how Gentiles are now fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the same promise, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

That's the plan, and that's the mystery of Christ.

That God would reunite the Gentiles with the Jews to form one worldwide family.

Verse 9.

Verse 8: To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given.

To preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make all men see what is the plan and the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

That through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.

I remember back in '82 and '83 when I first began studying Ephesians, and I remember in '83 and '84 when I was teaching as a Protestant youth minister the Book of Ephesians to college students.

Coming across this passage, realizing that the mystery of Christ is not simply the plan of salvation.

It is more than simply the Gospel.

The Gospel, in its fullness, is the Church.

And in the Church, not just in Christ, but through the Church, through the Church as the body of Christ, the manifold wisdom of God might be, might now be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.

The Church is one of the most important doctrines in Paulian theology.

I remember reading a, uh, uh, an article by a Lutheran who was arguing that Paul was not the author of Ephesians, which is now a majority opinion among most liberal New Testament scholars.

In fact, a majority report among many, probably the majority of Catholic Scripture scholars as well.

The main argument given by this professor was that in Paul's authentic epistles, the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of salvation is central, whereas in Ephesians, we have something much later.

Deutero-Pauline, a devolution from the pure Gospel.

We have the Church supplanting Christ.

Well, I think that's a tragic misinterpretation, but it's profound and honest because it sees the place of the Church in Paul's thought.

It's through the Church that the wisdom of Christ is dispensed to the angels.

This was according to the eternal purpose which is realized in Christ Jesus, realized now in the present.

And he just goes on and on describing this.

In verse 14, he just stops, For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named.

That's probably the best translation for that.

From whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.

What is the family of God in heaven and earth?

That's what the Church is.

That according to the riches of His glory, He may grant you to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints.

What?

What does Paul want us to comprehend with all the saints?

The mystery of Christ, the plan hidden for the ages, the manifold wisdom of God.

But how now does he describe the Church?

The family of God in heaven and earth.

He describes the Church That you may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.

Of what?

All the commentators of this, on this verse say that it's like an incomplete sentence or a fragment.

Paul, what do you want us to comprehend?

You want us to have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.

Well, what is the breadth and length and height and depth?

What is he talking about?

He doesn't tell us.

Well, he already has.

He doesn't think he needs to again.

What is it?

It's the Church, the family of God in heaven and earth.

The mystery of Christ, the one body consisting of Jews and Gentiles.

And he describes it as the breadth and length and height and depth because those are terms drawn from a description of a cube.

We don't have to say, The breadth is this, the height is that, the depth is this.

All four terms are used quickly in succession because they're equal.

He's describing the Church in the same terms that an ancient Jew would describe the Holy of Holies at the center of the temple, the thing which made the temple the holiest of anything on earth.

So, the city lies four square, 12,000 stadia by 12,000 by 12,000.

Now, what about all the gold?

The streets of gold?

And the whole city is gold.

Why?

You go back to the Holy of Holies, and you discover that in contrast to the Holy Place, in the Holy Place in the outer court, you had silver, and you had bronze.

You had some other things too, but when you got into the Holy of Holies, everything was gold.

Turn to Hebrews 9.

You see the contrast here.

In Hebrews 9, the opening verses describe the tabernacle and the temple.Now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly sanctuary.

For a tent was prepared, the outer one, in which the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence, it is called the Holy Place.

Behind the second curtain stood a ca- tent called the Holy of Holies, having the golden altar of incense, the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden urn holding the manna, et cetera.

So the things in the Holy of Holies are characterized by gold because they prefigure heaven.

So when Heaven is described, heaven is a cube, a city made of pure gold, because in heaven, the New Jerusalem is the Holy of Holies.

Unmediated, immediate fellowship with God.

What about all of these precious stones?

The jasper, the sapphire, the agate, the emerald, the onyx, the carnelian, and so on.

If you study these twelve stones, you discover that these were the twelve stones worn by the high priest on his breastplate whenever he went into the Holy of Holies to minister and to, uh, procure divine mercy for Israel and its sins on the Day of Atonement.

So the high priest would go in to represent Israel and to atone for his own sins, but because his sacrifice in the Old Testament was merely an animal sacrifice, it was only a prefiguring of Christ, it was only a foreshadowing, he had to quickly leave.

Because ultimately, God only let him in for a short time so that his action would prefigure the perpetual presence of Christ, our high priest, on the throne, before the face of the Father, representing us, all of the twelve tribes of the Church, the new Israel, because He presents Himself as a living sacrifice for us, a sacrifice that far surpasses all of the sacrifices made by the Old Testament high priests.

So there, in the new Jerusalem, there in the bride of Christ, there in the Holy of Holies, we have the same twelve precious stones that were there, uh, upon the high priest as well.

Verse 22.

And I saw no temple in the city.

That's odd.

And notice that the word there is naon, the word for inner shrine, not just hieron, the word for the temple in general.

It's the same word used back in Revelation 11.

So there's no temple.

But then again, there is a temple.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb.

By its light Wait, stop.

Verse 22 and 23.

Temporal or eternal?

Sure sounds eternal to me, right?

And yet, it's also temporal, because sacramentally, the Church is empowered to realize in time and space the reality of the new creation.

Look at verse 24.

By its light shall the nations walk, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day, and there shall be no night there.

They shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

But nothing unclean shall enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Now, wait a second.

Verses 24 through 27 would almost be confusing, alm- if not meaningless, if it only pertained to the eternity.

It says, Nothing unclean shall enter it.

Well, nothing unclean could enter it if everything unclean is burned up in the lake of fire.

But look also, By its light shall the nations walk and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it.

That's a quotation from Isaiah 60.

Go back to Isaiah 60 and see what prophecy is described there, and you descri- discover that its primary reference is to the new covenant.

In Isaiah 60, verse one, Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and a thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you and His glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Who is the you in your light and your rising?

It's Jerusalem being recreated after it's been judged.

Lift up your eyes round about and see.

They all gather together, they come to you.

Your sons shall come from afar and your daughters shall be carried in the arms.

Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

Notice in verse six what they bring.

When they come to the Lord, they shall bring gold and frankincense to the Lord.

Verse 10.

Foreigners shall build up your walls and their kings shall minister to you.

For in my wrath I smote you, but in my favor I've had mercy on you.

Your gates shall be opened continually; day and night they shall not be shut, that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations with their kings led in procession.

For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish.

Those nations shall be utterly laid waste.

So all the prophecies concerning Jerusalem in the Old Testament are fulfilled in the Church.

Well, wait a second.

That isn't a real fulfillment.

That isn't literal fulfillment.

Well, by now we should see that literalism is a misinterpretation.

When Jesus said, Destroy this temple and in three days rebuild it, what did He mean?

Well, I'm not really going to rebuild it in my resurrected body, because that would only be a symbolic fulfillment.

The literal fulfillment of My words would await an architectural establishment sometime later when a building is erected.

Of course not.

No building can ever supplant the reality of the temple that is Christ's resurrected body.

Christ's resurrected body is the temple, because a temple is defined as a dwelling place of God and the Spirit.

That makes Christ the temple par excellence, the temple of temples.

That makes you and me a temple far more than the old temple in the old Jerusalem of the old covenant ever was.

So we move from the physical to spiritual.

When we move from the material to the sacramental, or when we move from the visible to the invisible, we don't move from the more real to the less real.What a shame 20th century materialism has so affected Christian interpreters.

When we move from the visible to the invisible, from the material to the spiritual, we're moving from the real to the more real, not the less real.

What we see is what we get, according to Tina Turner, but not according to Jesus Christ.

What we see is but a small part of what we get.

What we don't see is the greater sum of what we get, especially in the New Jerusalem.

So when we speak of Jerusalem in Old Testament prophecies being rebuilt, when we speak of the new temple, what we're speaking about is the body of Christ, which was rebuilt in three days.

And the mystical body of Christ is the Church, the bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem, the new temple, in which all of these earthly, material, physical realities are consummated, realized, perfected, fulfilled on a much greater scale.

Now, could Old Testament Jews be expected to see this?

Yes.

The prophets themselves were sent to train them to see it.

You go back to Haggai.

And Haggai the prophet was urging the Jews to rebuild the temple after it had been destroyed the first time, and when they were looking at it, they were crying because the old folks were saying, This temple can't compare to the old temple.

And Haggai said, Wrong-o.

The glory of the second temple, in the Lord's eyes, far surpasses the glory of the first temple.

Well, not physically, because the first temple was, was built with Solomon's great wealth, with much greater splendor.

But the second temple was built by very humble and poor folk who were rich in faith.

So, what was physically small in comparison to something greater was spiritually much greater than the f- first temple.

So the prophets were training the Jewish people, and through them, the Gentiles, to see the physical material realities as signs, sacraments pointing to greater realities that will only be seen when we have our new eyes in our new resurrected bodies.

For now, we only see and we walk by faith.

That's why Revelation 21 describes all of our realities in eternal and temporal terms, to train us to live by faith.

Let's go on here.

By the way, I should mention something else here.

In Isaiah 60, we have a description of the New Jerusalem.

We also find that enlarged upon in Isaiah 65.

Turn to Isaiah 65, beginning in verse 17.

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

This is where John gets his words, or Jesus gets his words, Behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth.

What is it like in the new heaven and the new earth?

Is this eternity, or is this also temporal?

Verse 18, But be glad and rejoice forever, and then at which I create, for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.

No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.

Sounds like heaven so far, doesn't it?

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old man who does not sell out his days.

Why?

For the child shall die 100 years old, so there shall be death.

And the sinner 100 years old shall be accursed, and there will be sinners.

They shall build houses and inhabit them, so they're building houses.

They are planting vineyards and eating the fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit.

They shall not plant and another eat.

Verse 23, They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.

They're still getting married and having babies.

For they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their children with them.

Before they call, I will answer while they are yet speaking, I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together.

The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food.

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

Once again, we see what Jerome and Thomas were describing at the beginning of our Bible study, how temporal realities are described in terms that borrow from eternal realities so as to remind us that temporal realities are signs that signify greater realities that are yet to come.

So we don't have to choose between the eternal or the temporal.

The temporal is shot through and suffused with the eternal, just as the eternal is signified and prefigured by the temporal.

All right, let's move on.

Revelation 22:1, Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.

Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit.

It's interesting that this tree of life is growing on both sides of the river.

Picture that, if you will.

This must be a, a, a forest or a grove or something.

But the word for tree of life is singular, again, to suggest that this is not meant to be taken with a false literalism.

This is to be taken with a sacramental literalism.

I mean, I, I, I should say a, a sacramental literary touch.

We should see this in terms of sacramental symbolism.

The tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

What is this talking about?

Baptism and the Eucharist, the early fathers said.

Baptism is the river of life.

The Eucharist is the tree of life, the antidote to mortality.

This was used in all the liturgies.

This is found in all the homilies.

This is found in the training of the catechumens, that they could realize by faith the reality of baptism, that they could live out the reality of the Eucharist by faith.

If we could only see through the eyes of our guardian angels, we would realize that the language used in Revelation 22 is more real in the sacraments than anything that we could ever discover or experience on Earth.

The throne of God and the Lamb, the river of life, the tree of life, the leaves of the tree healing the nations, the fruit being yielded every month of the year.

There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him.

I've been avoiding up until now the section in Ezekiel that describes the new temple.

But let's turn to Ezekiel 40 and consider it now.

We can only spend just a brief time, a brief amount of time dealing with it.

But we saw last week the battle of Gog and Magog described in Ezekiel 38 and 39, leading right up to Ezekiel's vision of the new Jerusalem and the new temple.

I believe that Ezekiel, as much as any prophet, trained his readers to interpret his prophecies spiritually and not literalistically.

But in Ezekiel 40, as soon as the Messiah has come, and as soon as he has conquered in the great battle of Gog and Magog, at that point, Jerusalem is renewed and the temple is restored, and it's built by the Lord.

In Ezekiel 43, the glory of the Lord enters the temple, in contrast to the glory of the Lord departing from the temple way back when Ezekiel witnessed the, uh, the Spirit departing prior to Babylon destroying it.

In Ezekiel 47, we have the river of life flowing out of the temple.

I won't read the whole thing.

I think we know this prophecy well.

We've also considered it in previous weeks.

There, Ezekiel is brought back to the door of the temple and he notices water issuing forth from below the threshold of the temple toward the east.

This would be, in effect, the water that gushes out from under the rock, you know, the Dome of the Rock, where all these fountains are found.

And as he measures the water, he first discovers it to be ankle-deep, and then knee-deep, and then it's up to his loins, and then it's so deep that you can swim in it, and then it eventually becomes so deep that you can barely pass through it.

And it the waters flow out toward all the nations.

And wherever the river goes, in verse nine, every living creature which swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, for this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh, so that everything will live where the river goes.

Now, is this meant to be taken literally, that the oceans will no longer have salt water?

No.

The idea is wherever there's salt or brackishness, or wherever there's anything that takes away from life, the life of Christ will overcome it.

When Jesus said, If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

As the scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water, as the scriptures say.

Where do the scriptures say, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water?

Scripture scholars are baffled because there is no scripture that says, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

The only scripture they can produce there is Ezekiel 47.

But the water, the river of life, the river of living water, does not come from a belly in Ezekiel 47.

Where does it come from?

The middle of the temple.

Well, why would Jesus say, As the scriptures say, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water?

Because he is the temple, the new temple.

And as the crucified and resurrected temple, the living water flowed from his belly, and always will flow, bringing life to the nations as it brought baptismal regeneration to us.

All right?

That's Ezekiel's vision.

That's John's interpretation of it.

That's the reality of the river of life.

It's the baptismal regeneration that belongs to the Church and all of us as sons of God.

And the Eucharist is that tree of life which we eat, and we shall never die.

They shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.

And night shall be no more.

They shall need no light or lamp of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign forever and ever.

Let's continue on with the epilogue.

And he said to me, 'These words are trustworthy and true, and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.

And behold, I am coming soon.' Again, this restates what we've seen from the beginning, that these prophecies have an imminent and temporal reference in John's lifetime, and in the lifetime of his original readers.

But at the same time, this doesn't preclude a future eschatological fulfillment.

Indeed, the temporal fulfillment of the first century prefigures the future fulfillment at the end of time.

Likewise, this does not rule out the possibility of Revelation being fulfilled in a very real way in our own lifetime.

Because whenever you have political powers in the world joining up with apostate people from the Church, false brethren, you have the fulfillment of what Revelation describes with the harlot and the beast.

Whenever you have priests who deny the, the Church or deny the real presence of Christ, whenever you have liberation theologians who are advocating violent revolution in the name of Christ, in the name of the Church's teachings, telling people they can kill for Christ, whenever you go to South America and walk into a church and see over the sanctuary a mural of Christ with a machine gun and with bullets wrapped around his chest, there you see the makings of a present fulfillment of Revelation.

There you see the harlot.

There you see false brethren painting the works of the devil.

There you see apostasy.

There you see the harlot teaming up with the beast, political power and false religion.

So this interpretation of ours does not rule out either a future fulfillment at the end of time or a present fulfillment here and now.

In world communism or in Islam or in apostate Catholicism or in anti-biblical teachings in Protestantism or in Freemasonry or in Satanism or in the New Age, we've got more than enough candidates to pool together and bring about a real fulfillment of these prophecies.

But not so as to rule out a meaningful fulfillment back in the first century, and also not to rule out a true fulfillment at the end of time.

This is the Catholic both/and.

It isn't either/or, it's both/and.

It isn't either the first century or the end of time, it's both the first century and the end of time, and everything else in between .

because God's temple is constantly under attack.

God's people are always experiencing first pers- fierce persecution.

God's people are always tempted to throw in the towel.

God's people are always called to overcome, and overcome false brethren, overcome world powers, overcome the forces of Satan and the occult.

And so pray and contemplate as you read these, because these words are fulfilled in our time too.

Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.

I, John, am he who heard and saw these things, and when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me.

But he said to me, 'You mustn't do that.

I am a fellow servant with you and your brethren, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book.

Worship God.' Now the angels and the saints are on an equal level.

Back in the Old Testament, there was nothing wrong with people falling down before angels.

But in the new covenant, we are entering into a share of the glory that the angels enjoyed alone in the old.

So the angel says, Do not proskuneo yourself before me.

Don't prostrate yourself before me.

I'm a fellow servant.

We're now in the new covenant, so we're now on an equivalent level.

Let's worship God together.

And he said to me, 'Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.' Again, pointing to an imminent fulfillment in the first century.

'Let the evildoers still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.' Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense to repay everyone for what he has done.

There's no playing games with God when He comes in Christ in judgment.

Let the evil be evil.

Let him not, you know, fall into pretentious behavior.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

It's so, it's so Oh my, it's- it's so striking for me to hear these words, because in the Book of Revelation, we have the words of Christ, the last words of public revelation coming to us from the lips of Christ.

Not just from His public ministry, not just from His post-resurrection sayings, these are the words that Christ speaks to the church.

I am coming soon, bringing my recompense to repay everyone for what he has done.

When you leave Steubenville, and if God has you go someplace where there is a bad bishop who's doing bad things with sex education, teaching evolution as though it's a dogma of the church, denying original sin, denying that Jesus knew He was God, this stuff is rampant.

What do we have?

Hope, optimism, confidence.

They had false brethren then, we have false brethren now, but we have Jesus Christ and He's the king of kings, and He's coming soon and He brings recompense.

And it has never been easier for us to be made saints.

All we gotta do is hold fast and overcome.

We have the same assurance now that they had then.

I am coming soon to repay everyone for what he has done.

I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, and everything else in between.

Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life.

Blessed are those who are baptized and live out their new life that they might partake of the Holy Eucharist, that they might enter the city by the gates.

Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Again, outside the church there's the world with all of their ways.

He's not describing the, this, the, the, the, uh, the lake of fire there, is he?

He's describing the world outside the New Jerusalem.

I, Jesus, have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches.

I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright Morning Star.

The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let him who hears say, 'Come.' And let Him who is thirsty come.

Let him who desires take the water of life without price.

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

He who testifies to these things says, 'Surely I am coming soon.' Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.

Amen.

Now, these words are so gripping, for me especially, because I'm called by God to interpret this book for you.

Pray for me and for everyone that God calls to do that.

I hope I'm not a fool, rushing in where angels fear to tread.

But my interpretation is a sort of, you know, cover your bases.

Some people have told me that your interpretation is subtracting from the words of this book because it takes away from a future fulfillment, or because it's missing what's, you know, uh, Our Lady is saying to her beloved priests about a present fulfillment here and now.

I cover my bases.

I say, No, it was fulfilled then in the past, it's being fulfilled now in the present, and it will be fulfilled then in the future.

I don't wanna take away any of the words or the meanings of the words.

I think a Catholic hermeneutic, a Catholic system of interpreting the Bible alone, only a Catholic approach to the Book of Revelation, can find all of the insights and partial truths of the non-Catholic interpreters who plague the church today and who deceive so many people on the radio and television.

Only a Catholic approach to the Book of Revelation can draw together all of the partial truths and real but limited insights and show how they fit into an integrated framework built upon a view of reality which is, at root, sacramental, where the visible and the invisible are united, where humanity and divinity are united, where heaven and earth are united.

This is the Catholic vision.

It's the incarnational, sacramental insight that converted me, that j- It didn't convert me.

I mean, the thing knocked me off my feet.

I mean, it's, it is the most exciting way to put everything together that you find in the New Testament.

And we're losing the interpretive battle.

We're losing the big game of Bible study these days because Well, we're not losing because we're striking out, we're not losing because we're committing errors.

We're losing because we haven't even shown up to the ball field to play.

We're forfeiting the game.Again, I want to urge you to go off in this place, to read, to pray, to study, and then start Bible studies.

Utterly faithful to the Magisterium, but utterly tied to the word of God in scripture.

We should be starting neighborhood Bible studies, not just university professors, not just theologians, not just Protestant converts.

You all should begin Bible studies with your families, with your friends, wherever God sends you.

Don't just be spiritual or exegetical gluttons taking it all in here, but not, you know Take it out.

I'm sure you will.

I'm confident.

I can see it in your eyes.

There's so much more to say, but we don't have the time.

Let me just summarize here our study of the Book of Revelation.

We have in the Book of Revelation a theological vision of how to live with an eternal perspective, to see God's purpose behind every crisis, and to know with faith the certainty of God's presence in history and of God's active presence here and now in my own life.

That He's sending me struggles to make me an overcomer.

He's giving me problems so that I can experience Christ's lordship.

And He's not doing this with me by myself; he's doing this with me as a cell in the mystical body.

He's doing this with me and with you and all of the brothers and sisters of Christ.

He's doing this in the Church and for the Church.

And the Church is empowered to experience these crises and to overcome evil, most especially in her liturgy and most especially in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass, where the Lamb gives to us a share of His own triumphs.

There in the liturgy, the old covenant and the new covenant are one.

There in their liturgy, heaven and earth intersect.

There in the liturgy, humanity is deified, and deity takes on humanity, and we receive the God man onto our tongues, into our bodies and souls.

In the liturgy, the seals are broken to bring about the judgments of God in history.

In our liturgy, the seven trumpets are sounded.

In the liturgy, the seven cups are poured out.

In the liturgy, we have the marriage supper of the Lamb.

In the liturgy, we experience the Lord's day, we experience the final judgment, we experience our deliverance, we experience Christ unveiling His judgments that will ultimately vindicate us against those who slander us and persecute us, both from within the Church as false brethren, as well as from outside the Church in the world.

In the liturgy we have hope.

In the liturgy, therefore, we should be throwing ourselves, body and soul, into our sing, into our praying, into our recitation of whatever lines we have.

Because invisibly, but actually all around us are the elect angels and saints, and there before us is the altar, the throne of Christ.

And history is controlled from the altar.

That's another way of just simplifying and summarizing Revelation.

History is controlled from the altar of Christ, from the throne of Christ, and His altar and throne are one.

This gives to us not just confidence, this gives to us patience.

This gives to us humility.

This gives to us a sort of tranquil and serene militancy that we can go forth embracing crosses and loving enemies.

And nothing else will give it to us, and nothing else will explain the liturgy to us as adequately or as practically or as loftily and theologically as the apocalypse.

And nothing explains the apocalypse better than our liturgy.

It's a mutually interpretive process.

It boggles the mind.

It's like tr- trying to take a sip from a fire hydrant, squeezing ocean through a funnel.

The, the Book of Revelation is one of those things that could be studied for millions and billions of years, and you would still feel as though you're, you're diving down into the Pacific Ocean where it's 1,000 feet deep and you're going maybe 15 feet at the most.

It's that deep.

It's that powerful.

But one thing else, one thing more the Book of Revelation tells us.

It shows to us the radical sources of sin, the ultimate basis for injustice.

We cannot hate our fellow man no matter how much he hates me, because ultimately he's a puppet on a string being controlled by forces much greater than himself.

In my own life, I'm experiencing heartache right now over somebody I'm close to who's in the throes of drugs right now.

And I have to realize that no matter how he lies, no matter how he slanders, no matter how he reacts, he is in the grips of something so much bigger than himself.

I'm sure that if, if I could see cocaine the way that God sees it, it would be the deepest, the darkest, the ugliest, sinister, diabolical blackness one could imagine.

And, you know, child abuse does that to other people.

The, the devil, you know, give him his due.

I mean, he is using so many things to trap and ensnare and deceive people now.

They truly are the enemies of God, to be sure, but they are so because they're deceived.

And we have the power to illuminate them with the simple truth of the Gospel, so we can just scatter the darkness very quickly and the Holy Spirit can open up their hearts just like He opened up ours to the simple truth of God's love and mercy.

So we should look behind and beyond sinners in the Church, false priests, bad sisters, trendy feminists, new ages, whatever just, you know, makes you so distressed.

Look through them, look beyond them, look behind them and see forces that they don't understand.

We should be quickly forgiving them, loving them, and helping them see instead of just writing them off.

That's the real tendency of the orthodox Catholic in the 20th century, to congratulate himself for remaining orthodox and then to condemn the heterodox.

Instead of loving them with the truth and helping them to see it and accepting the struggle of being misunderstood and being slandered within your own parish or in your own community and counting it all joy because that's what it means to overcome.

We can see through the apocalypse what are the real roots of evil .

they're not the people who oppose us.

They're the principalities and the powers that Christ, along with Michael, and all the angels and saints are responsible to overcome.

We're mopping up down here below.

We have real freedom, we have real responsibility.

We've got a true burden, a true burden, but don't exaggerate the burden.

We are free and we are responsible.

We must choose good.

We must refuse evil.

We must do more than that.

We have to do more than just avoid sin and keep the commandments.

We have to enter into Christ and His sacrifice.

We have to enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The Book of Revelation ultimately calls us then to sonship, to live out the life and the suffering love of the Divine Son.

That's what righteousness means in the Book of Revelation.

It isn't simply avoiding sin.

It isn't simply keeping the commandments.

It's bearing witness to Jesus, giving testimony, with the idea of testimony being marturia, where God has given his body so that we can stamp onto our bodies the truth of the Gospel, even to the point of martyrdom and offering up our bodies.

There's so much more we could say.

What about the Antichrist?

The word isn't used in the Book of Revelation.

The word is only used in First and Second John.

I think we can say the Antichrist corresponds to the beasts that we've seen.

First John tells us that anybody who denies that Christ has come in the flesh is of the Antichrist.

Antichrists have come, he says, and Antichrist is coming.

John's perspective in First John is what?

Past fulfillment pointing to a still greater future fulfillment.

He says, Antichrists have come.

Antichrist is coming, but whoever denies that Christ has come in the flesh is of the Antichrist.

Will there be an Antichrist in the end?

Yes, I believe so.

Was there an Antichrist back in the first century?

Yes.

Is there an Antichrist today?

Yes, whenever people are denying the truth of the gospel or the incarnation of Christ, the fact that heaven has touched to earth, that deity and humanity are now united.

What about the Rapture?

What about the Rapture?

Are we going to be taken up into heaven?

Yeah, but is this gonna usher in a thousand year reign?

No.

The Rapture is simply what happens at the end of time.

When Christ comes again, as Second Thessalonians two describes, the so-called Rapture is when Christ takes all of the saints up to the clouds, that is up into the glory of the Spirit of God, to be with the Lord forever and ever.

That's the end of time.

Again, we're not caught up with all of the misunderstandings and vagaries of fundamentalist interpretation.

But wherever you go, you're gonna hear about the Antichrist.

You're gonna hear about the Rapture.

You're gonna hear all about the Man of Sin or the Man of Lawlessness.

What I would say is stay close to your mother.

After all, this is Mother's Day.

Why don't we stay close to our mother, Mother Church?

She will guide us.

She will teach us, and she will k- keep us close to the truth.

Why don't we go now and, and offer up a prayer to our mother?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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