Reading the Signs of The Times
The
prophets of ancient times were not very popular, because they saw the
way the people were turning away from God and His Laws, and sometimes
they had to be “prophets of doom”. Our Lord Himself disappointed many of
His hearers when He said that they must choose between the love of God
and the love of this world:
“You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt.6:24b).
This
explains why He was not very popular among the Jewish leadership of the
time, who looked forward to establishing an earthly kingdom of Israel.
They were very careful not to offend their Roman occupiers lest they
lose what authority they still had.
And
so we come to our own times, in which we find the world drifting far
from God, contradicting His Commandments, and making up its own rules.
The signs of the times, which Our Lord said we should read, indicate
that we may be witnessing the Great Apostasy, the great falling away
from the faith:
“And
there will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and upon the
earth distress of nations bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the
waves; men fainting for fear and expectation of the things that are
coming on the world; for the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then
they will see the Son of Man coming upon a cloud with great power and
majesty” (Lk.11:25-27).
Those
who stay close to God will be able to understand the significance of
these signs, but the pagans and the fallen-away will not understand that
the judgment of God is near. We who have already witnessed two
catastrophic hurricanes in recent weeks should prepare ourselves for
more disasters to come, because the Lord wants us to wake up and make
ourselves ready for His coming:
“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Mt.25:13).
Why
are these things happening? Because human society has become corrupt.
The doom visited upon Sodom and Gomorrah was insignificant when compared
with the enormity of present evils. The terrible crime of abortion is
the legalized murder of the innocent. No government of this world has
the authority to make laws which contradict the laws of God, in this
case, “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex.20:13). The same applies to the
legalization of gay and lesbian marriages. The minds of the public have
been dulled by parades and rainbow flags, and even the rainbow colors
projected upon the façade of the Whitehouse in Obama’s time.
How could we blame God for being angry? As Jesus said of the Pharisees:
“Hypocrites,
well did Isaias prophesy of you, saying, ‘This people honors me with
their lips, but their heart is far from me; and in vain do they worship
me, teaching as doctrine the precepts of men’” (Mt.15:7-9).
The solar eclipse of this August 21st
appears to have signaled the time of the “beginning of sorrows” spoken
of by Our Lord. The eclipse was followed soon after by two great
hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, the likes of which have seldom, if ever,
been seen.
During
or after World War II, the famous German mystic, Therese Neumann, was
said to have told visiting American soldiers that the United States
would be brought to its knees by a series of natural disasters, and that
one disaster would scarcely be over before being followed by the next.
Perhaps this is what we have witnessed in the case of the two great
recent hurricanes, Harvey and Irma. We must continue to observe the
signs of the times.
Our daily trials and struggles must tell us that we are on a journey that will lead to Heaven. On
this journey we cannot afford to be sidetracked or disabled by the
pursuit of other goals that become ends in themselves rather than
steppingstones to our ultimate goal.
“No
man can serve two masters,” says Our Lord, “for either he will hate the
one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt.6:24).
Our calling is to a life of holiness, which is described by St. Paul:
“The
fruit of the spirit is: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faith, modesty, continency. Against such things there is no
law. And they who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its
passions and desires” (Gal.5:22-25).
On the other hand, St. Paul describes the works of the flesh:
“Now
the works of the flesh are manifest, which are immorality, uncleanness,
licentiousness, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions,
jealousies, anger, quarrels, factions, parties, envies, murders,
drunkenness, carousings, and suchlike. And concerning these I warn you,
as I have warned you, that they who do such things will not attain the
kingdom of God” (Gal.5:19-21).
Paul writes to Timothy: