Remnant Archipelago (eBook)

Part II: The Paschal Mystery of the Church

A Marian Priest (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
420 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-1636-0 (ISBN)

Infos

After certain harrowing exorcisms, providential encounters, and a gradual uncovering of systemic demonic infiltration, the E-Team could not help but wonder whether God was unveiling the reality of the apocalypse, the epoch prophesied in the Book of Revelation, and preparing them to fight in the great battle between the woman clothed with the sun and the ghastly red dragon lurking to devour her children. Was everything now converging, aligning to fulfill the scriptural prophecies? Based on manifold terrestrial, celestial, and diabolical indicators, it seemed increasingly likely that 'time' had arrived...

This Marian Priest is a traditional Catholic priest ordained nearly twenty years. An exorcist for more than a decade, he has worked on hundreds of cases successfully. Believing that we live in apocalyptic times, he currently ministers to a remnant flock that seeks to preserve the fullness of the Catholic faith.

---

After certain harrowing exorcisms, providential encounters, and a gradual uncovering of systemic demonic infiltration, the E-Team could not help but wonder whether God was unveiling the reality of the apocalypse, the epoch prophesied in the Book of Revelation, and preparing them to fight in the great battle between the woman clothed with the sun and the ghastly red dragon lurking to devour her children. Saint John the Apostle foresaw the events of that age having been instructed by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and an angel from heaven and wrote them down so the Christians living during those days would be able to read the signs of the times, allowing them to faithfully and courageously endure their reality. Was everything now converging, aligning to fulfill the scriptural prophecies? Would the Church face her final Passover with the ascendence of the Antichrist? And was God, therefore, readying a remnant? Based on manifold terrestrial, celestial, and diabolical indicators, it seemed increasingly likely that "e;time"e; had arrived...

Textauszug

Chapter 2

Signs of the Times

1. Going All the Way

Two days after the conversation with Jonathan, Emilia, the only other non-team member to whom Father Peter had mailed a copy of his book, likewise, reached out by phone. Emilia was a screenwriter, a few of whose works had been turned into major Hollywood film productions. Her husband, a successful businessman, happened to be a “retired” deacon of the Catholic Church, who had essentially been forced out of office because he knew too much behind-the-scenes information. On both accounts, Father Peter had eagerly awaited her call, believing her feedback consequential, given her line of work and literary acuity as well as her family’s history and involvement with the Catholic Church.

“Father, wow! I mean WOW!” Emilia exclaimed fervently.

Knowing Emilia was not the type who told people what they wanted to hear, Father Peter was moved and touched. A straight shooter, and honest as the day is long, thankfully, Emilia was equally as charitable, one who fulfilled Saint Paul’s admonition of “speaking the truth in love”46 to a “T.”

Having prepared himself for Emilia’s assessment, Father Peter was expecting constructive criticism, but Emilia had found the draft predominantly praiseworthy. She called it “a page-turner” that she “could not put down.” A dutifully prayerful woman, and so not a throwaway comment, she acclaimed the text as “divinely inspired.” She even bantered about turning the book into a screenplay!

Applause and jesting aside, Emilia levelled one weighty critique, far from immaterial. She posited in earnest, “Father, I don’t think you take the book far enough.”

Quite certain he knew exactly to what Emilia was alluding, Father Peter hoped to be misinterpreting her implication or hoped that Emilia had not really meant what he thought she meant. He queried hesitantly, “What do you mean, Emilia?”

“You need to go all the way,” she deadpanned.

He knew it.

Father Peter took a long hard swallow as Emilia spelled out her meaning in plain English.

“Father, I think the book is fantastic. I truly do. You have a gift. I was hanging on your words, anxious for the next line. But my questions are, ‘who is the book for?’ and ‘why are you writing it?’” she probed incisively.

Knowing in what direction she was headed, Father Peter stammered, “Well, uh, if I ever actually look into publishing, I think the book could benefit the ministry of exorcism, as well as be a means of evangelization. In an ideal world, readers additionally would be encouraged to seek out healing and deliverance for themselves.”

“Father,” Emilia rejoined in a no-nonsense tenor, “my sense is, in a follow-up book, you are to apply what you have learned from your exorcism ministry to the times we live in, presenting a tell-all about what you have unearthed. People are desperate for the truth. They hardly receive it anywhere, especially not when it comes to the truth about what is happening in and to the Catholic Church.”

That was the reference Father Peter had been anticipating, which was precisely where he did not want to go. When Emilia said, “I don’t think you take the book far enough,” Father Peter had inferred that she was insinuating the importance of culminating with the Church. In her estimation, for Father Peter to simply address the spiritual state of “the world” in a second book would be insufficient. He had to venture further. To confront the spiritual state of “the Church” was to go all the way. Emilia deemed as compulsory an appraisal of the crisis within and surrounding the Catholic Church, precisely because the Church is the heart of the world.

Detecting his reticence, Emilia exhorted, “Father, if you don’t do it, who will?”

Father Peter remained taciturn.

Emilia forged ahead. “I don’t think your target audience is the big broad world but rather those who grasp what is transpiring or at least are starting to perceive the reality of what we are living through and what we are up against. To maintain their bearings and firm up their foundations, such people need their intuitions validated. They also need their eyes more fully opened. That will only occur, if someone like you were willing to fearlessly step forth and tell them the truth straight. We are shepherdless right now, Father, which means we are rudderless! The silence from most Catholic bishops is deafening. The tiny group of bishops who do speak out courageously end up marginalized, maligned, and exiled, while the far outnumbering host of dissident bishops, provided a platform by the mainstream media, are absolutely not speaking with the voice of the Good Shepherd!”47 Emilia declared vigorously.

1. The Remnant—The Elect

“Emilia, people are not ready for the truth. Besides, most are unable to hear it. Even if someone were to proclaim the truth day and night from the rooftops, who would listen? If people have not caught on by now, do you really think they can be suddenly shaken from their slumber?” Father Peter bemoaned, dejectedly.

“If for no one else, proclaim it for the sake of ‘the remnant’!” Emilia persisted unflinchingly. “Proclaim the truth for ‘the elect of God’ who are looking for affirmation and confirmation that what appears patently obvious to them is, in fact, really happening. Too many souls are at stake, Father!”

Emilia’s reference to “the remnant” did not leave Father Peter unaffected. The term “remnant,” underscored throughout the Old Testament, depicted a core of faithful believers in every era. From Christian antiquity, Jesus’ use of the term pusillus grex48 (“little flock”) has born the same connotation. Throughout all generations, God has never failed to preserve “a little flock,” a remnant. Recall the Patriarch Joseph, sold into slavery, whom God raised up to save ‘His people Israel.’49

When Joseph’s brothers, responsible for his captivity, came begging for food, Joseph replied, “God sent me on ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance.”50

Correspondingly, consider the Prophet Elijah who declared himself “the only remaining prophet of the Lord” and lamented to God, “[T]he Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.”

The Lord replied, “I will spare seven thousand in Israel [a remnant]—every knee that has not bent to Baal, every mouth that has not kissed him.”51

In like manner, each of the Major Prophets of the Old Testament—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—mention a remnant in their individual times and further prophesy about a remnant to come:

The remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall again strike root below and bear fruit above. For out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and from Mount Zion, survivors. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do this.52

All the people, from the least to the greatest, approached Jeremiah the prophet and said, “Please grant our petition; pray for us to the Lord, your God, for all this remnant. As you see, only a few of us remain, but once we were many.”53

As they were striking, I was left alone. I fell on my face, crying out, “Alas, Lord God! Will you destroy the whole remnant of Israel when you pour out your fury on Jerusalem?”54

Although Emilia’s allusion to “the remnant” was clear-cut, Father Peter distinguished that her overarching implication was more nuanced. Emilia qualified the remnant she denoted by correlating it with “the elect of God,” a term avid Christians may readily recognize because of the consistent and pervasive surge of “end times’ prophecies” in recent decades.

Jesus speaks of the “elect” within the framework of His Second Coming:55

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.56

Christ’s return in glory, which “of that day and hour no one knows,”57 marks the closure of the end times. Though no one can be certain how long the end times will perdure, those attentive to the “signs of the times”58 see various biblical passages presently coming into alignment that pertain to the commencement of those times. Because of the back-to-back-to-back industrial, technological, and electronic revolutions, the convergence of those scriptural passages is possible for the first time in history. The farthest...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-1636-0 / 9798317816360