Saturday, May 21, 2011

The end of the world; not my idea of a fun Saturday

According to the latest end of the world prediction; the end is here.  Today is the day.  The end of the world has been declaratively predicted by Harold Camping, another self appointed religious leader who has it all figured out.  Now today's big end of the world is not your normal run of the mill end of the world it's a rolling time zone by time zone end of the world for 6 p.m. local time.

If that be the case, I think the first devestated time zone is on the clock so we should know inside the hour how this is working out.  I also find it hard to take that this development obviously means the end of this year's spring horse racing excitement as the Preakness may or may not make it to the finish line.

This is the problem with the on-going movement of anybody/everybody rock and roll feel good religions.  Don't like what the Church teaches or believes, start your own.  Camping and thousands upon thousands of others fit this bill.  He says the world ends today and presto he has more 15 minutes of fame than Kate Gosselin.

This is of course the whole hocus pocus that is rapture theology; another man made misread of Sacred Scripture, taught out of context and with no belief in Sacred Tradition.  So the Catholic Church, which was given the fullness of truth by Her founder Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, present when the Church was born at Pentecost, teaches a little something about the rapture.  While not the greatest of articles I'll post what I have tonight because, well it's late.  And I do want to wake up early and see which time zones are still with us.

My advice, enjoy the day.  Do what you would normally do and give thanks to God above and Jesus our only mediator between us and Him that we don't need to listen to Camping or believe in the rapture to achieve eternal life with them in Heaven.

Read on:

Catholic Church Teaches About the Rapture
An area of Catholic theology that is often misunderstood by non-Catholics and Catholics alike is that of the end times and the rapture. The concepts of the end of the world and death are very dramatized and in many ways mysterious in our current society. Because of this, much fiction has been mixed in with truth, blurring the lines between what has been revealed in scripture, and what are simply fanatical ideas.

When many people, Protestant and Catholic alike, think of the end times, they automatically think of the rapture, a type of “Left Behind” event. In this event, those who are right with God are mysteriously taken up into heaven, and those who are living in sin, remain on Earth during a time of tribulation and chaos. The Catholic teaching on the end times however, does not support this type of event.

The word “rapture” comes from the Latin word meaning “to be caught up” or “taken up”. This refers to the passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians 4:17 which states, “then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.” The Catholic understanding of this passage is that those believers who are alive during Christ’s second coming will not experience death, but rather, will be gloriously transformed and join the saints already with Christ. Nowhere in 1 Thessalonians does St. Paul teach a secret coming of Christ. Furthermore, St. Paul states that Christ’s coming will be announced by the cry of an archangel and by a trumpet blast. St. Paul is describing the resurrection of the dead that will take place at Christ’s second coming. It appears, when reading 1 Thessalonians that Christians at the time were worried that those who died before Christ’s second coming would not share in His triumphant return. Paul assures them that when the time comes, they will join the resurrected to meet the Lord and will share in Christ’s triumphant descent from heaven to earth.

And for more help:

http://www.catholic.com/library/Rapture.asphttp://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac1005.asp

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