Article 7 (will not change in Advent 2011):
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end
If you haven’t already, you should really take some time to read the Bible…but for our purposes in this post, you should at least read the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24. There’s some pretty amazing stuff in there. Here are verses 29-31:
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.”
Jesus is talking in this passage, and he’s referencing the concept illustrated in this 7th Article from the Nicene Creed. We’ve all heard of “Judgment Day,” right? 1991 movie starring The Governator? Second Terminator movie?? No? Not following? It’s ok, my wife studied Psychology in college and still can’t figure out what’s wrong with me. No, I’m not REALLY talking about Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I’m talking about “Judgment Day” in the sense of the end of time. The Book of Revelation tells the story of what will happen when the world comes to an end. Whether the words of the Book of Revelation are literal or figurative/symbolic is up for debate. But the basic idea behind the words is solid truth.
When the physical world as we know it comes to an end, God will call all souls, living and dead, to himself to live in Heaven. Those who choose to completely reject God’s love and mercy at that point will spend all of eternity rejecting the love of God in a state of what we refer to as hell. Those who DO accept God’s love and mercy will be called home to be one with God in heaven. This separation of good people and evil people is known as Judgment Day, and will be carried out by the Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is what the first part of the 7th Article says.
Now, you may be familiar with the recent news story about the preacher who predicted that “the rapture” would happen May 21, 2011. The problem for us in the Catholic Faith is that “the rapture” is NOT a Catholic teaching. The idea of the rapture seems to have been invented by a protestant some time in the early 1800s, so the idea is less than 200 years old. Best we (Catholics) can tell, is that this idea comes from a misinterpretation of Revelation 20:6 which says, “Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over these; they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for (the) thousand years.” Protestants who believe in the rapture believe that at the end of the world, believers who have died will be raised up to heaven, then the believers who are alive will also be raised up to heaven. The raising up of the believers who are alive is what is referred to as “the rapture.” However, we need to remember that God exists outside of time. Remember the Book of Genesis, and the story of creation? Did God create the world in 7 days? If so, how do you explain dinosaurs? As comedian Lewis Black says, “Whenever anyone tries to tell me that the world was created in 7 days, I immediately reach for a fossil, and say, ‘Fossil.’”
Time for us is simply the measure of the sequence of events. The most significant event we point to is the rotation of the earth around the sun. We break up rotations of the earth around the sun into days—365.25 days to be exact. These days are broken up into 24 hour periods. Hours are broken up into 60 minutes, which are further broken into 60-second periods, and you get the idea. But those measurements are for OUR purposes. God just IS. He has no need for measuring time, because he simply IS. Time lets us measure change. God does not change. Therefore he has no need to measure change for himself. Catching on yet? The 1,000 year thing is (probably) not meant to signify a LITERAL thousand years as we know it, just like 7 days of creation (probably) didn’t mean a LITERAL seven days. So now that this nut of a preacher guy has revised his original prediction, and made a (failed) attempt to “save face,” by saying that May 21, 2011 was a “spiritual judgment day,” and that October 21, 2011 will be the date of the physical rapture, you can probably be that much more certain that you’ll wake up bright and early on the morning of October 22, 2011. …just sayin’.
Now for that last part of this 7th Article: “…and his kingdom will have no end.” We’ve pretty much summed this up already here, but God exists outside of time. While it’s difficult, if not entirely impossible for us to grasp the concept of eternity, it’s entirely natural for God, because he DOES live in eternity. There is no past, present, or future for God, only the ever-present now. Chew on that for a while. Seriously, it’ll probably give you a headache after you try thinking about it for a while. Eventually, you’ll probably be like me, and just let it be one of those “faith things.”
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