Pope reassures that alarmist readings foretelling the end of the world are false
"The closing days of 2008 may be marked by floods, terrorism and global financial collapse - but Pope Benedict XVI has assured believers that the end of the world is not nigh.
"...the Pope said there had been "alarmism" about the end of the world since the days of St Paul, who in his Letter to the Philippians had told early Christians to rejoice because "The Lord is at hand" (Phil. 4:4-5). This had been wrongly taken to mean the imminent approach of the Last Judgement.
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"St Paul had also made clear in his first letter to the Thessalonians that 'no-one can know the moment of the Lord's coming' (1 Thes. 5:1-2), the Pope said.
[also: Matt. 24:36 and Mark 13:32]
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"Last year the Pope dismissed recurring "Messianical" predictions of the imminent end of the world, saying "history is ongoing, and involves human tragedies and natural calamities." He added, echoing Pope John Paul II, his predecessor, 'Do not be afraid'."
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(www.timesonline.co.uk)
As at July 2012, the article is no longer on the Times-Online website.
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Monday, December 15, 2008
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3 comments:
No doubt, he's familiar with the prophecies of St. Malachy, and realizes that the end will not come during his (Benedict's) watch.
According to St Malachy, the final pope's name will be Peter II, or Petrus Romanus. Personally, I've been burned already by the plethora of WCG false prophets sufficiently to prevent my taking another church's prophet seriously. For those who need an apocalypse to feel comfortable, though, Petrus Romanus is supposed to be the next pope.
BB
Catholics often remind people that the alleged Prophecies of St. Malachy are the origin of the word “malarkey.” These prophecies were completely unknown until about five centuries after St. Malachy’s death, and Catholic scholars have long noted that the prophecies are remarkably precise and detail until they reach the exact papal reign in which these prophecies first came to light, after which all the prophecies become much more brief and vague. Hmm, wonder why that would be. In addition, this guy pretending to be St. Malachy numbered an antipope in his papal succession --- you’d think that if the prophecies were genuine, God would know better than to include a criminal pretender to the papal throne in the succession. These so-called prophecies were actually a political manifesto designed to get people to support the author’s own take on what the Church back then should do and who the pope should be. Unfortunately there are still a lot of dumb, uninformed Catholics who take the St. Malachy forgeries seriously. Sure, I’ll grant that it’s not impossible that the prophecies are genuine: if they are, we should know one way or another in less than 20 years, probably less than 10 years, since the current pope is supposedly the one immediately before Peter the Roman. It’s doubtful Pope Benedict will still be alive 10 years from now. If Christ comes back in the next pope’s reign, well then. . . but don’t hold your breath.
My point in raising St. Malachy was that there are other churches that have prophets who may or may not be reliable. The Mayan Indians even get in on this act. The apocalypse is a very popular topic, and has been for millennia.
Amongst all of the factors stimulating Christians, two similar ones are the apocalypse, which could occur at any given time, and our own personal deaths, which could also occur seemingly at random.
Mainstream Christian churches generally concentrate on the latter, because death will always, 100% of the time, occur sometime during an individual's lifetime. That the WCG concentrated on the former, and perpetually threatened us with specific dates, is purely a control mechanism. It serves no useful purpose other than to artificially manipulate members' lives. Warn the world? Heh. All you're doing through that message is telling people they'd better get into YOUR church, pronto! That's just a huge membership drive, and is so self serving that it has no spiritual value to the individual.
Mainstream evangelists are much more honest with their altar calls, because the message is not so much "join our church", as it is "invite Jesus Christ into your life".
BB
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