The trumpets, finally!
This culminates all of my ecclesiology in the journey of the church through her history until now.
And now what would we consider the trumpets to be? Well, use common sense! Are they not simply the great declarations of the church throughout history, trumpeting her doctrines as she goes through the Ages? Of course!
What therefore do the trumpets mean? Well, I have been arguing that the ultimate mystery of the trumpets fulfills the musical scale of ascending sorrow, which is to say the doctrinal development of the church, and which is perfectly correlated to the parable of laborers, as we have seen with my previous articles as prerequisites.
Here we will see the doctoral development of the church through the great ages as she journeys from pagan Rome down to the modern apostasy.
Toward this end, let us recap what has been argued up until now
Remember that the musical scale of ascending sorrow perfectly images the ages of doctrinal development of the church as follows.
Firstly, we see that as the church grows in her doctoral development ;she is effectively ascending the mountain of Truth, growing ever deeper in in her understanding of Revelation. Again, an ascent of knowledge.
However, on the other hand, this process of the church is sorrowful in nature, because, at each juncture of her development of doctrine from the sources of truth, it is sad because the world rejects her teachings at those times in the various ways, such as schism, heresy, infidelity, apostasy etc
Moreover, we saw that when we look at the scale and we consider the pure notes of the key of the minor to be the pure steps of attack on the sources of truths, and the five flats in the scale to be the five notes of discord, that is, to be the sources of Truth of discord that separates the Catholic Church from the religions that come out from her or attack her., ?
Then the result was that the scale perfectly aligns with the steps of doctrinal development that we worked on theologically independently on Our own.
And finally then, we saw that when the parable of the laborers were examined in such a manner that we correlated the 12 hours of the day with the 12 notes of music, there was also a perfect correlation between the sending out of the laborers at the various successive times, with the timing of the flats or sources of Truth or sources of discord in the musical scale!
In conclusion then we are arguing that all of this predicts what the trumpets are theologically , since they are themselves musical.
And hence again, since trumpets are musical and they have been used to proclaim things such as the victory of the Jews over Jericho, heralding triumph of their armies, so the trumpets can be the great proclamations of the Church of our truths down through the ages , bringing the gospel to renew a fallen world
Here then we must also ask immediately, why do bad things happen in the trumpets if they are proclamations of good things?
Well, this brings us back to the question of the protection of the 144,000.
For, now we have an immediate question which is this:
Particularly, there is this bizarre 144,000 Jewish virgins as it were who are protected from the effects of the trumpets. This obviously represents or draws into question the notion of allegory, and in what sense?
If these presumably good persons, whoever they might be, symbolized here, are quote on lquote protected from the bad things that follow the trumpets, we must really conclude that these trumpets do not represent literal physical calamities but rather spiritual.
And why?
Because obviously bad things happen to good people on the physical sense; it?s just a law of life.
There there are no categories or kinds of Christianity in which all of the members never suffer physically in any sense.
None!
Therefore initially we see that the protection is clearly spiritual and not physical.
But now what is that spiritual protection? Well, for either the Orthodox or the Catholic churches, there is no absolute spiritual protection against sin since because of our free will, we can resist Grace and fall into grievous sin. Effectively more or less both Orthodox and Catholic believe this, so that therefore, in our analysis, the protection cannot guarantee that these good men will never become enemies of God in their will.
This therefore leaves us with the only other faculty of soul which is the intellect
So then We have graduated to the conclusion that the spiritual protection cannot be of the will but of the intellect.
And since the subject of the intellect is to ponder and accept the truth as best as one understands it, the only reasonable conclusion we can make about the seal of God that protects these 144,000 is that it renders them protected in their intellect regarding the truth.
What then might be the harm to the intellect regarding the truth? Well, clearly we would think that this protection would mean that these good men do not believe in things that are false , since that would harm their intellect and mislead them.
That would then be nothing other than an immunity to accepting error in their mind s, since that is the primary way that the intellect is harmed.
Consequently, the seal of God in the forehead of these men these mysterious group of 144,000 must be a seal protecting their mind behind the forehead from false teaching.
Here then we will simply ask ourselves what forms of Christianity can claim to protect persons from error?
Only the top two forms of Christianity can claim this form, which is to say the Catholic or the Orthodox churches! And why?
Well, because it is absolutely absurd to think that Protestantism fits this category!
How?
Well, just face the plain reality and facts about the rebellion!
The the situation is kind of like this, the funny movie silent movie with Mel Brooks.
Here, when mel fun, the character of Mel Brooks, is at the peak of making his movie that will save his career, the dreadf.ul antagonist s Engulf and Devour set out to stop mel with a decept ive romance leading to heartbreak.
Toward this end, Mel is in a bar with his cronies and a great crowd of men. What he doesn't know is that on the agenda is a very sexy dance and teaser by the woman who will be the deceptive romance played by Bernadette Peters.
After she completes the ordeal all of the men are on their edge.
Then she exclaims, I need to talk to Mel fun is he here?
Of course, at that instant, all of the men stand up vigorously and shout out I am mel fun I am mel fun!! Mel Brooks of course had to shout out violently sit down and declare I am the real mel fun!
This is exactly what protestantism is.
Someone asks 100 denominations which of you is the true church which of you really has the infallible Holy Spirit?
And they all stand up and cry we do!
But which of them really is?
Of course Mel Brooks character could pull out his driver's license and prove it because his driver's license is a formal identification in the world.
But the problem is Protestant denominations don't have any formal credentials to distinguish one from another.
They are only informally claiming to have the infallible spirit, and ends one must try to sort this out logically by oneself as to who may have the fullness.
And even then there is no guarantee because there are no formal credentials.
And so we graduate once again to the Catholic and Orthodox churches
Both of these churches are the only forms of Christianity that do have positively formal credentials!
And from where? From none other than the great and infallible apostolic succession and the sacred tradition which it guards by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Here, the only question about which of the dimensions of Christianity holds the fullness of Truth is whether there is a supreme apostolic successor to binder things into himself or whether there is only general apostolic succession to settle doctrinals disputes.
Either way the Patriarchs and bishops of these churches can trace their lineage formally back to the apostles whether anyone wants to accept it or not .
But there is absolutely no Protestant minister who can claim to have formal credentials that makes him formally ordained by God to speak on behalf of God infallibly. none!
All Protestant ministers effectively simply come out of nowhere and say hi I think I?m called to preach I think God is calling me to preach so please ordain me.
But Christ did not make it work that way.
Only a truly validly ordained Bishop successor of the apostles has the power to sacramentally confer holy orders on a man to make him a true man of God in the eyes of God.
This is the only way that a man can be truly considered a man of God
This doesn't mean that any particular Protestant minister is a bad person or even if they don?t mean well out of their ignorance
But it does mean that objectively they simply have no power to infect the five sacraments that require apostolic succession
they only have the power to confect baptism and marriage
And they absolutely have no authority to speak for God on what is the truth even if they sincerely believe they are.
Hence this seal of God in the forehead could really only apply to protecting the intellect behind the forehead of error, and again, this can only be had by authentic bishops and patriarchs who gather together to settle doctrines.
It is only possible that either the Catholic or the Orthodox churches are ultimately guided by the spirit to do these things
And hear the debate is whether there is an ultimate binding settler of the of the disputes or not
Hence we conclude that the 144,000 represent the true society of Christ that is protected infallibly from error so that the children of the church will not be harmed in their intellect by false teaching.
One more question that we need before we move on to the trumpets themselves, is the issue of why bad things happen when the trumpets blow, seeing as the good news of the Gospel is good?
Here we can conjecture that the negative things that happen from the trumpets are not because the proclamations are bad but that those persons who do not heed the proclamations of Truth are harmed spiritually by their very nature of rejection
And this is precisely what happens to those who effectively quote on quote do not listen to the church . They are harmed spiritually in their intellect by the very degree in nature of their errors.
And then, by corralary, the faithful who accept the teachings of the church, the ones with the seal of God, are not harmed since they are kept in the truth.
By the way what is 144,000?
Well factored this is 12 * 12 * 1000
There were 12 tribes of Israel there are 12 apostles and the thousand can be a great multitude countless.
Obviously the true Church of Christ fulfills the old covenant and it is founded on apostolic succession in the 12 apostles and it has a man of nations of every race and tongue on the Earth.
We are now in a position to try to traverse the trumpets and in this case I will interpret them from a Catholic perspective since I am a Catholic.
Perhaps an orthodox person, if they wanted to pursue this line of reasoning, could give their own rendering, but I?m going to give the Catholic one that I believe to be the truth.
Here we go!
Toward this end, we need to remind ourselves of the Catholic view of doctrinal history in terms of the succession of Ages which descends the pyramid of truths
Let us represent it here so as to make the correlation to the trumpets:
0. Pagan Rome
F: Source of discord: Trinity and incarnation
1. Trinity and incarnation in part
2. Trinity and incarnation in full, Islam
F: Source of discord: the petrine see, supreme apostolic successor
3. Supreme apostolic successor in full, Great schism
F: Source of discord: general apostolic succession and sacred tradition
4. Sacred tradition and apostolic succession in part, great moral fall of hierarchy
5. Sacred tradition and apostolic succession in full, Great heretical rebellion, Protestantism
F: Source of discord: scripture and all divine revelation
6. Scripture and all divine revelation in full: The great supernatural death of the world: enlightenment deism rationalism French revolution Masons countless worldly philosophies science and psychology... Humanity trying to find the meaning of life without supernatural Revelation and Grace and merely by natural means or reason and stoic efforts
F: Source of discord, reason
7. Reason in full, The minor apostasy, pagan rome returns in type, godlessness, no reason no natural law, atheism relativism hedonism
Now in modular 7, 7 is actually the Octave of zero
So that the parallel of pagan Rome to modern civilization, the 20th century, the minor apostasy, are like the same note, only one great scale separating them
Meaning the world started out in full darkness with pagan Rome and in the history of the church until now, it has returned to the same position, which is full darkness in the European civilization, godlessness
It has come full circle like the Octave
So now let?s go through the trumpets
Apocalypse 8
First two trumpets
And the seven angels, who had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound the trumpet. 7 And the first angel sounded the trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and it was cast on the earth, and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
8 And the second angel sounded the trumpet: and as it were a great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood: 9 And the third part of those creatures died, which had life in the sea, and the third part of the ships was destroyed.
If this is to fit from our model, these two trumpets must correlate with the Trinity and Incarnation attacked in part and then in full with Islam
More or less it fits for the following reasons
The main reason that the first theology fits is because the harm of fire and such comes from heaven and is cast down to earth
In a similar vein the ones who reject the initial heresies against the Trinity and Incarnation before Islam are effectively assaulting the trion and incarnate God and hence the harm of their errors comes down upon them from heaven. This is because also Heaven is the dwelling place of the Trinity and incarnation.
The next trumpet would perfectly imply in Islam as follows
We see a great mountain on fire cast into the sea harming many things.
In Daniel chapter 2, tthe Catholic church was seen as a great mountain that filled the Earth. In the Gospels , Jesus declares that if you had the faith of a mustard seed you should sing this mountain be cast into the sea and it would be done.
Indeed Islam is a great religion that persists unto this day even rivaling the population of the Catholic church in Christianity that has caused Great spiritual harm in the world because of its errors, which are primarily a total assault in the Incarnation and Trinity.
How?
Because not only like arianism, which completely denied the Trinity and the Incarnation and reduced Christ to just a finite logos, arianism did not go on to say that there was further Revelation beyond Christ.
But Islam did make their attack on the Christ complete.
This is because the final element of Christ in dogma more or less is that he is the definitive and final Revelation to humanity.
As it is spoken, we await no new revelation.
To suggest that Christ was not the final word to humanity and that there aret in fact prophecy that moves beyond him, more specifically the Quran Muhammad, is to attack the Christ in full since because he is God there can be nothing that surpasses him.
Consequently the Great mountain as Islam is very apropos.
Moving on is the great phase of the great schism which assaults Peter
Once again we return to the theology of jealousy.
When there is a small collection of entities or persons and one of them is very special, it is human nature and fallen nature that will tend to leave the others to be jealous and to leave or harm the chosen one the special one.
Hence Judah was the true Kingdom yet almost all of the other tribes left him because he was a sinner.
Joseph was favored because of his coat his colorful coat and most of his other brothers hated him and were jealous and sold him into slavery
So is it really surprising that in the New covenant, seeing as Peter is the special one, his other patriarch brothers are jealous and leave him.
And is not jealousy bitterness.
Hence the third trumpet brings bitterness:
. 10 And the third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning as it were a torch, and it fell on the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of water:
And the name of the star is called Wormwood. And the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
Also telling us perhaps that the cause of the calamity is a great star from heaven with a torch
Quite quite probably the greatest star in heaven that lights are path to the truth is Peter according to the Catholic Church
Hence if the schizmatics or Orthodox assault him, they ybring the bitterness upon themselves
Moving on to Trump iv
In short, the luminaries are very much darkened and the Moon
Effectively The luminaries of God are the priests and the bishops because they preserve the truth and give it to humanity, the light of God's truth.
Obviously for the Catholic Church, the magisterium cannot be darkened in the way of the truth because as we have seen, the Christ promised to be with the church until the end of the age, protecting her teachings from error
The only other possibility is that the priest and bishops are darkened morally in their souls through corruption.
This of course was the next great step in salvation history of the church after the great schism
For, in the late Middle Ages the church descended into moral corruption in a great portion of the clergy and hierarchy
Moving to Trumpet v
For the first Great Woe
The next step is clearly protestantism and we will now see it fits perfectly
Firstly and clearly, the moral scandal of the Church was obviously the prima cause of the rebellion, and therefore it is rational to believe that this fourth trumpet precedes protestantism.
Now a small star falls from heaven and opens up a great abyss out of which come a fury storm of locusts creatures who go out to conquer
And here is the key component that draws from our ecclesial theology
Those without the seal of God experience torture from the tails of the locusts which are like scorpion tails
They are tortured for 5 months but they do not die although they wish they could die.
Again ,from previous articles that I have written , Protestant confusion truly becomes a torture for those who do not know where to turn, considering that it is like a fury hellfire and brimstone preachers going out to conquer the world for the word of God, all saying to have the truth and listen to me or you will burn
if the innocent soul does not know what to do to avoid hell because they don?t have time to read the scriptures in full and work out the gospel, they Will be in agony
Consider the horror of not knowing how to avoid hell and being thrust into the confusion of countless heresies that you cannot sort out.
Indeed the Christ gave to the apostles the power to quote on quote trample upon scorpions and serpents
Obviously this is not literal since even Orthodox bishops or priests today, if they were thrown into a pit of snakes and scorpions, they would be bitten and die, which is not any different for Catholic bishops either.
But whichever church has the truth does have the power to trample upon the scorpions of heresy
Recall that Jesus said what father would give his child a scorpion if he asked for an egg
Or a stone for bread
Or a serpent for a fish
Again in light of the ecclesial theology of the loaves and fishes, this is very apropos for Sacramento theology.
For if it is true that these poor persons without the seal of God are tortured for 5 months...
Will it not be the innocent heretics , who are the victims of the formal heretical ministers who go out preaching hellfire and brimstone (and yet no two of which can fully agree...) Who will be left with with torture in their hearts not knowing where the truth is and how to get out of hell
Which is to say, instead of being given a blessed egg from the Catholic Church, which we will deal with in a minute, they are given a scorpion of torture of doctrinal development confusion
And how?
Let let us consider that the egg is formed from the relations of the cock that crows and the female hen
Note is that the cock crows to Herald the Dawn orally
Obviously the light is the light of Christ the truth
That it is orally proclaimed by the fowl can there for mean it would be the oral word of God or the tradition.
The hen of course is female because she receives from Christ the truths both oral and written word of God , which can be a symbol of the church.
So the result of their relations is an egg, which is to say, the development of, as it were, doctrine, the oral word of God and tradition merged with the churches interpretation thereof, which alone can give the stable foundation of Truth to keep the poor souls from an unstable wavering of not knowing the way
Therefore ,when Jesus said that a father would give a scorpion in place of an egg?
It can mean a hard-hearted presumptuous heretic who tortures the innocent soul with scorpions, which is to say uncertain doctrine.
And the fact that it is 5 months would easily correlate to the five sacraments that they lose
This makes sense since we have seen that the five sacraments that Protestants lose pretty much summarize in their full theological implications all of the things that they debate more or less
. We will explore the last two trumpets later tomorrow
The second and third great woes
Thank you for reading if you have kept up this long God bless you