I am writing much less these days due to some health problems that I hope to resolve as the months go by. For reasons that would be long to explain, I must stay long hours in bed to ease the recovery process. That has kept me away from my computer but at the same time allowed me to revisit certain books and read in depth other works that I had not touched at all before. Please be patient and forgive this meandering article.
One can say that God is neat. He orders things in a particular way. One can see them better after the fact. Prophets are sometimes given a glimpse of the future. However, the vision is always clouded enough so no one can cash in a sure bet. The more one tries to plan the future according to prophecy the more one fails. Prophetic realities are there only for contemplation until they enter our mind as realities confirmed.
This month of December 2021, will complete the cycle of 70 weeks of years since the apparition at Tepeyac (December 12, 1531). There is a difference of nine days (approximately) between the Julian Calendar (used at the time of the Tepeyac apparitions) and our Gregorian Calendar. Perhaps we should adjust accordingly. That would move the 490th anniversary date exactly to the solstice: December 21, 2021.
The world has changed a lot since 1531 but the actors identified in A Prophetic Model for Our Days still exist. Those were the Revolutionaries that never accepted the Messiah; the Civil Order (represented in Jesus’ time by the Roman Empire;) and the Church.
In the beginning of our story, right after the Crucifixion, the Church grew miraculously. Missionaries moved from Ireland in the Atlantic to China and the islands of the Pacific converting million upon million to their faith until the story of Christian redemption became known all over the world. The Civil Order once imagined in the Greco-Roman world, extended worldwide also. The Revolutionaries were forced into the shadows but never gave up. Their method of expansion was gradually perfected until it allowed them to infiltrate both the Civil Order and Church. Their system resembled the successful evangelization of the world but without the Christian truth. What the Revolutionaries have built is a formidable weapon designed to destroy in particular the combination of Christianity and Civil Order that was once called the West.
The situation was described by Victor Davis Hanson in this way:
“What is most upsetting is this civilization that gives us such freedom, such material bounty, security, luxury and also created such disdain for it. It is almost as if we want all of the bounties of this civilization, we want all of these golden eggs, and we want to strangle the goose. I want to suggest to you next the only reassuring thing: that’s not new.” Western Civilization, the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, and Today discourse at Pacifica Christian High School, Orange County, California; October 27, 2020.
Of course, that is not new. The Revolutionaries are not interested in the preservation neither of the Church nor of the Civil Order. Their main aim is to infiltrate and debilitate every institution keeping order in the world and impede the arrival in power of the Kingdom of God. (Revelation 12:3-4) Jesus told the revolutionaries of his day –the very ones that later promoted his assassination— how they were going to enter the pen (the Church) only to be rejected by the sheep (the faithful) that will never follow a stranger. These are sobering words when heard in the context of the Church today.
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them. (John 10:1-5 NIV)
The revolutionaries of Jesus’ day “did not understand” basically because they were not part of Jesus’ flock. Understanding history comes after listening to the Word, the Logos and His voice that no one can imitate.
In the beginning was Logos, and Logos was with God, and Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
This very Greek concept of Logos had developed over many centuries of thought. The Greeks were groping in the dark without the light of Mosaic Law but they managed to contribute the idea of Logos. That idea mysteriously existed somewhat separate from divine revelation until St. John wrote his Gospel. The Jews of the first century knew nothing about Logos, perhaps the concept was known to some Hellenized Jews (like St. Paul before his conversion) but it was the Christians who associated Logos with the being and work of the true God.
The Greeks had experimented with the creation of a civil order based on reason instead of mere power. Later the Romans tried to spread the power of the State across various institutions: a Consul or two to conform the executive power, the Tribunes representing the various tribes were the original House of Representatives, and the Senators conformed the most august body of government: the Senate of the People of Rome. Ideas like jurisprudence, tribunals, codified laws, etc. evolved through pagan times first and Christian times later. Those same Civil Order institutions continue to this day in one form or another. That order is the gradual triumph of the light of reason over the darkness of barbarism. Flawed as it is, it has served mankind well. Our Lord was born into the Roman order. The Gospel travelled to the ends of the Empire on Roman roads. When the West became Christian, they carried the Roman laws and social organization to distant lands. The Church and the existing Civil Order worked together to organize the world we know. A perfect system it never was but it was good enough to lead us up to this point in history.
While Western Civilization was growing, the revolutionaries were working in the shadows to gradually infiltrate certain institutions and take over the world. The Church was divided in 1054. Islam continued to grow in power and influence pressing more and more against the borders of the ancient Empire. Eventually the Roman Church was hit with a violent schism in 1517. Modernism advanced within the Church. Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared at the day of the Solstice of Winter of 1531. She visited the fringes of the Spanish Empire in time to prevent the dissolution of newly conquered Mexico. (See, Guadalupe: A River of Light: The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe From the First Century to Our Days). Those are the external material signs of underlying spiritual realities.
Time has passed and now seventy weeks of years have elapsed since the Virgin Mary talked to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill. Back then, the forces of darkness were moving different factions into a civil war. That moved the then Archbishop of Mexico to write a secret message to his sovereign (Charles V) in Spain: “Unless there is supernatural intervention, the country is lost!” The situation of our entire world is quite similar today. I wonder if Our Lady of Guadalupe is going to intervene again to save mankind from self-destruction. Because, unless there is supernatural intervention, this world is doomed to be completely controlled and destroyed by the anti-Christian Revolutionaries.
