Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
One of the most destructive heresies of the early Church was the heresy of Marcion who denied the divine origin of the Old Testament and set up an opposition between the alleged evil god of the Old Testament and the good God of the New Testament. Although Marcion’s errors were rejected and condemned in his lifetime, Marcion predicted that his heresy would divide the Church until the end of time, a prediction that history has unfortunately borne out to a great extent. Indeed, the interpretations of Genesis 1-3 commonly offered by contemporary Catholic theologians can only be described as neo-Marcionite in their failure to recognize or affirm a consistent, continuous doctrine of creation in Genesis, in the writings of the Apostles, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and in the conciliar teaching of Lateran IV and Vatican I and other authoritative Magisterial teachings on creation from the time of the Apostles. Moreover, many contemporary Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals but even some Catholics, now justify the subservience of United States foreign policy to the dictates of the Israeli government by making a perverse analogy between the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal approach to dealing with real or perceived enemies in the Middle East and Joshua’s conquest of the land of Canaan. Rightly interpreted, the Biblical account of the conquest of Canaan provides no support whatsoever for the Israeli regime’s brutal treatment of its Middle Eastern neighbors. That account ought to be viewed by our generation not as an occasion to assert our moral superiority over St. Joshua, but as a call to repentance, not only for our own failure to protect the physical, moral and spiritual wellbeing of our own children but also because of the cruel way that the once-Christian nations of the world have waged war in modern times without regard to the basic rights of innocent civilians.
Thankfully, those who continue to trust in the Word of God as believed in the Church from the beginning can find good reason to hope for the preservation, salvation and sanctification of innocent children throughout the world in the very chronological data that most of the “wise and prudent” of the world today hold in contempt because of their scientistic belief in naturalism and uniformitarianism. In this newsletter, I will give some of my reasons for believing that the traditional Biblical chronology points to a way of reconciling the perfect goodness of God’s character with the command to completely remove the Amalekites and other depraved peoples from the land of Canaan. I have posted a more complete defense of my thesis on the Kolbe website. In all that I have written on this topic, I submit to the final judgment of Holy Mother Church.
The Holy Innocents and Unbaptized Infants
The greatest weakness in Neo-Marcionite critiques of God’s dealings with the Canaanite tribes during the conquest of Canaan lies in their failure to acknowledge Our Lord’s individual love for every single human being, past, present and future, and the way in which Our Lord—as God and Man—was present to each and every human being from Adam to the last man. A second weakness lies in the way that these critiques deny the possibility that the execution of Canaanite children not only delivered them from a demonic pagan upbringing but also delivered them into the arms of a loving God, as were the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem after their murder at the decree of Herod the Great.
Before moving on to a consideration of the possibility of salvation for unbaptized children in light of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, it may be helpful to reflect on the way that parents can abuse their God-given authority over their children to inflict spiritual harm. This author recently had the opportunity to speak with a psychiatric social worker who counsels the criminally insane in the California prison system. This counselor converted to the Catholic Faith because he encountered so many patients whose parents had been involved in satanism, including not a few whose parents had consecrated them to satan from the womb. After fruitlessly seeking for guidance everywhere else, the counselor finally found helpful knowledge, wisdom, and guidance in the Catholic Church. He learned that the effects of a satanic consecration of a child by his parents were unimaginably severe. Yet the criminally insane patients that he counseled in the California prison system were only second-generation victims of demonic consecration—as compared with Canaanite children whose ancestors had practiced demonic consecration for more than 400 years!
The Holy Innocents are recognized as martyrs because they died in place of the Infant Jesus, but they were only able to do this because God gave them the gift of reason, infused into them the knowledge of the Incarnation and of Herod’s intention to murder the Incarnate Word and Savior of the world, and offered them the grace—which they all accepted—to unite their sufferings with the sufferings of Christ. It has been argued that children who die before the normal age of reason, by miscarriage, abortion, infant disease or infanticide cannot be considered martyrs like the Holy Innocents, because they do not die in the place of Jesus. However, Jesus teaches that the devil was a “murderer” from the beginning, and that every death is the result, directly or indirectly, of his envious malice. Thus, the children who die from miscarriage, abortion, infant disease or infanticide are in every instance the victims of the devil’s murderous malice—every bit as much as the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem.
Theistic evolutionists regard physical death as a “normal” part of the world prior to the Original Sin, denying God’s own Word where He states clearly that “God made not death” (Wisdom 1:13). Those who hold to this view easily become desensitized to abortion and abortifacient contraception through their acceptance of death as a “normal” part of God’s original plan. For example, theistic evolutionist Sister Joan Acker in a letter published in America magazine wrote that “death and disease were always part of God’s plan” for us! When we adopt the perspective of all of the Fathers of the Church and acknowledge that God “made not death and takes no pleasure in the destruction of the living” (Wisdom 1:13), we can better understand that the taking of human life is always the consequence of man’s sin and the devil’s envy, but that God never wills or permits the death of any human being except in accordance with His perfect wisdom and Divine Mercy.
Can the Possibility of God’s Mercy upon Innocent Victims be Excluded?
Like the Holy Innocents, the souls of the victims of miscarriage, abortion, infant disease, and infanticide came directly and immediately from God. And, like the Holy Innocents, these little victims committed no actual sin in thought, word or deed. Thus, they would present no obstacle to the grace of God. Commenting on the examples of saints who were sanctified by God in the womb, Fr. Aidan Nichols writes:
‘Children in their mothers’ wombs cannot be subjected to the actions of humans in such a way that through their ministry they may receive the sacraments of salvation. But they can be subject to the work of God, in whose presence they live, that by a privilege of grace they may obtain sanctification, as is evident from those who have been sanctified in the womb’. [63] According to St Thomas, ‘Sanctification in the womb is Baptism of the Spirit (Baptismus flaminis).’ (Aquinas, In IV Sent., dist. 6, q. 1, art. ic, sed contra 2). St. Thomas mentions the Blessed Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah as prime examples of persons who have been sanctified ‘outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mothers’ wombs’ (Aquinas, In IV Sent., dist. 6, q. 1, art. ib, corp). An act of the mind can extend equally to the born or to the preborn. If, therefore, faith ever were sufficient for wiping out original sin, why cannot those in the womb be cleansed from original sin through the faith of another? St Thomas replies:
A child living in the womb of his mother does not, as far as human knowledge can tell (quantum ad humanam cognitionem pertinet), have being that is separate (distinctum) from his mother, and, therefore, cannot be reached by an act of man, whether in these times to be cleansed from original sin through Baptism, or in those [ancient] times to be cleansed through the faith of his parents, but he can be divinely cleansed, as appears in the case of those who have been sanctified in the womb (Aquinas, In IV Sent., dist. 1, q. 2, art. 6b, ad 2).
In the lives of certain saints, like St. Joan of Arc, we read of occasions when they raised unbaptized infants from the dead so that the children could be baptized. However, these incidents do not invalidate the thesis of this article. For example, God may have preserved certain young boys living in the vicinity of Bethlehem from being murdered through providential circumstances which prevented their mothers from taking them to the gathering place where the Holy Innocents were executed on Herod’s orders. Those same boys could then have grown up, embraced the Gospel, been baptized, and gone to Heaven, arriving at the same destination as the Holy Innocents by different pathways according to God’s Providential design. The fact that the Holy Innocents were sanctified in an extraordinary way would not change the Church’s norm for sanctification through Holy Baptism. Similarly, the raising of babies from the dead who died without Holy Baptism by certain saints like St. Joan of Arc so that the children could be baptized does not exclude the possibility that other children who died without Holy Baptism before the age of reason could have been “divinely cleansed,” as explained by the Angelic Doctor in the passage quoted above.
It makes perfect sense that the Holy Ghost would not have inspired the Magisterium to teach the salvation of all children who die before the age of reason before now, since such a teaching could easily be abused and used as an excuse for human beings to be even more cavalier about the abuse and murder of children than we already are. Nevertheless, in light of the Angelic Doctor’s teaching on “divine cleansing” in the womb and the fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered His Passion and Death on behalf of every soul, past, present and future, is it inconceivable that any Canaanite children executed by the Hebrew forces were redeemed and sanctified by Our Lord and welcomed into eternal life?
The Contraceptive Holocaust, Vacant Thrones, and the Malice of Demons
It has been argued that one of the reasons why the demonic forces do all that they can to promote abortion is that by means of the global abortion holocaust they deprive the slaughtered innocents of the Beatific Vision. Converted Satanists testify to the fact that abortion is a sacrifice to satan.
Zachary King, a former high wizard in a satanic church who converted through the miraculous intervention of the Blessed Mother, says abortion is a spiritual battle that must be fought with spiritual weapons.
“I know abortion is a satanic sacrifice,” King said at a conference on spiritual warfare organized by Toronto-based Serviam Ministries. “Why is the devil intent on killing the unborn?” he said. “Satan does fear certain things. Innocence is one. You can’t get more innocent than the baby in the womb.”
King, who is blind as a result of diabetes, told 800 people at the October 28 conference of his remarkable journey to the Catholic Church.
Raised in a Baptist home, King was addicted to magic at age 10, sexually assaulted by a woman teacher at age 11, and formally joined a satanic coven and sold his soul to the devil at age 13.
Three months before he turned 15, he assisted in his first ritual abortion, where the objective was to get blood on his hands.
At age 21, he was in a satanic church as high wizard, one of only a few in the world, and who are rumoured to be hand-picked by Satan.
By the time he converted, King had assisted in 146 abortions.
“Every hex, we used an abortion,” he told the conference.
“The bigger thing you request from the devil, the more you have to do for the devil to get it. … A hex requires an aborted baby.”
While it might seem unreasonable to argue that satan and the demons would promote a practice on a global scale that hastens their ultimate defeat, the perverse psychology of the demons resolves this apparent contradiction. To understand why this is so, it will be helpful to recall the Fall of the Angels as it was shown to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich:
I saw spreading out before me a boundless, resplendent space, above which floated a globe of light shining like a sun. I felt that It was the Unity of the Trinity. In my own mind, I named It the ONE VOICE, and I watched It producing Its effects. Below the globe of light arose concentric circles of radiant choirs of spirits, wondrously bright and strong and beautiful. This second world of light floated like a sun under that higher Sun.
These choirs came forth from the higher Sun, as if born of love. Suddenly I saw some of them pause, rapt in the contemplation of their own beauty. They took complacency in self, they sought the highest beauty in self, they thought but of self, they existed but in self.
At first all were lost in contemplation out of self, but soon some of them rested in self. At that instant, I saw this part of the glittering choirs hurled down, their beauty sunk in darkness, while the others, thronging quickly together, filled up their vacant places. And now the good angels occupied a smaller space. I did not see them leaving their places to pursue and combat the fallen choirs. The bad angels rested in self and fell away, while those that did not follow their example thronged into their vacant places. All this was instantaneous.
Then rising from below, I saw a dark disc, the future abode of the fallen spirits. I saw that they took possession of it against their will. It was much smaller than the sphere from which they had fallen, and they appeared to me to be closely crowded together.
I saw the Fall of the angels in my childhood and ever after, day and night, I dreaded their influence. I thought they must do great harm to the earth, for they are always around it. It is well they have no bodies, else they would obscure the light of the sun. We should see them floating around us like shadows.
Immediately after the Fall, I saw the spirits in the shining circles humbling themselves before God. They did homage to Him and implored pardon for the fallen angels.
At that moment I saw a movement in the luminous sphere in which God dwelt. Until then it had been motionless and, as I felt, awaiting that prayer.
After that action on the part of the angelic choirs, I felt assured that they would remain steadfast, that they would never fall away. It was made known to me that God in His judgment, in His eternal sentence against the rebel angels, decreed the reign of strife until their vacant thrones are filled. But to fill those thrones seemed to me almost impossible, for it would take so long. The strife will, however, be upon the earth. There will be no strife above, for God has so ordained.
It is worth pondering those words of Blessed Anne Catherine:
It was made known to me that God in His judgment, in His eternal sentence against the rebel angels, decreed the reign of strife until their vacant thrones are filled. But to fill those thrones seemed to me almost impossible, for it would take so long.
According to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, the number of angels exceeds the comprehension of the human mind:
Imagine how great in number is the Roman people, imagine how great in number are the other barbarian peoples that now exist, and how many must have died even! In a century, imagine how many have been buried in a thousand years, imagine all mankind, from Adam to the present day. Great is their multitude, but it is small in comparison with the angels, whose numbers are greater. They are the ninety-nine sheep, whereas the human race is the one lost sheep. By the greatness of a place one can judge the numbers of those who dwell in it. The earth we inhabit is a mere dot in the heavens, thus the heaven that surrounds it must have a much greater number of inhabitants. As it has greater space, the heavens of heavens hold their innumerable number. If it is written that ‘a thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousands of myriads attended upon Him’ this is only because the prophet could express no greater number.
In light of this testimony from a great Father and Doctor of the Church, it would seem as if the sanctified souls of children who die before the age of reason would be necessary to fill up the innumerable thrones of the fallen angels within the divinely-ordained chronological framework that God has revealed through Sacred Scripture and Tradition. According to Infant Homicides through Contraceptives, written and published by the Ad Hoc Commission to Study Abortion Deaths 1994, revised 1998 and 2003:
In the U.S., between 1973 and 1996, the total number of abortions caused each year by the use of OCs, Depo-Provera, Norplant (Implanon), and IUDs ranges between 6,555,000 and 11,625,000. This figure is significantly higher than the total number of surgical, prostaglandin, and saline abortions committed each year during the same time period (1,350,000–1,400,000, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Guttmacher Institute).
Thus, it is reasonable to estimate the total number of surgical and non-surgical abortions, including those caused by abortifacient contraceptives all over the world during the last 50 years, at 40 to 50 billion!
Satan’s Pride Hastens the Day of Judgment
From one point of view, the demons should want to stop killing babies in such huge numbers through abortion and contraception because in their vast multitudes these innocent children are rapidly filling up the unimaginably great number of thrones vacated by the fallen angels and so hastening the Day of Judgment. But the malice of the demons drives them to inflict the maximum harm, and especially to commit the maximum sacrilege here and now, even when doing so hastens their final defeat. Satan, their master, encourages this, because each abortion is a sacrifice to him, appealing to his pride, and granting to him the closest thing to worship that he can receive as a creature. Thus, for all his intelligence, one can see why satan would fan the flames of the abortion holocaust, even if he knows that it is one of the principal ways—if not the principal way—that God fills up the thrones that he and his minions abandoned when they fell. Moreover, God’s mandate to Joshua to drive the Canaanite peoples out of the land cannot be understood apart from the malice of satan and his minions and the depths of spiritual and moral depravity to which the Canaanite peoples had sunk under their influence over many generations. An article on the “Knowing the Bible” website documents this depravity in detail:
Idolatry
The idolatry and the worship of pagan gods would not seem like a sin to most people other than Jews and Christians. But in order to understand why they lived the way they did, one must understand the gods that the people of the ancient Near East worshiped. Anyone who has ever studied the mythology or religions of ancient people knows that their gods were not moral beings, according to anyone’s standard in the modern world. The gods were always betraying and fighting against each other. Ba’al, the Canaanite storm god, became the high god by defeating Yamm, the sea god. Later, Mot, the god of the grave, attacked Ba’al in order to gain power. Anat, Ba’al’s wife and goddess of war and love, fought her way into the grave to rescue her husband. Ugaritic Ba’al myth describes Anat as taking joy in slaughtering her enemies, cutting off their heads and hands and wearing them as a necklace and belt. She is described as killing so many that she was wading through their blood. The death of Yamm and Mot involved cutting them in half, grinding them up, and sifting them in the wind.
Incest and adultery were also part of the gods’ lives. El, the father of the gods, was married to Asherah, by whom he had seventy children. Ba’al, one of his sons, was married to his sister Anat. One day Ba’al reported to his father that his mother had tried to seduce him. El told him to go ahead and have sex with her in order to humiliate her, which Ba’al did. One of Ba’al’s wives was his daughter Pidray. These are just a few examples, and none of these behaviors of the gods are portrayed with contempt in the texts of their religions.
These are the gods that the Canaanites worship, which means that the people thought and behaved as the gods did. Not only did they worship these gods, but they worshiped these gods with acts of sex in the temples and called it holy and righteous. In fact, temple prostitution was a large part of worship in the Canaanite culture. Asherah or Ishtar, also known as the Queen of Heaven, was a female fertility goddess who was worshiped through sexual acts, including orgies. Temple prostitutes were male and female priests who had dedicated their bodies to the gods and were considered holy priests. People would go to the temples and have sex with these prostitutes as an act of worship. The people of the ancient Near East viewed a sexual act with these priests as sexual union with the goddess herself.
Incest and Adultery
The earliest Canaanite laws did prescribe the death penalty for those caught in incest or adultery, but by the fourteenth century BC the penalty had been reduced to a financial fine. However, incestuous fantasies were looked upon with favor and seen as a good omen. The Egyptian Dream book has a section for men that begins with:
“If a man sees himself in a dream…
… having intercourse with his mother: Good. His companions will stick to him.
… having intercourse with his sister: Good. It means that he will inherit something.
… having intercourse with a woman: Bad. It means mourning.”
Remember, the gods themselves were involved in incestuous relationships. This was so prevalent in the Canaanite culture that Lot’s daughters, after growing up in and being influenced by Sodom, both slept with their father and thought nothing of it (Gen. 19:30–8). Adultery was forbidden by law but only for a married woman. There were no restrictions on the man.
Homosexuality
Just as fantasies of incest were seen as good omens, so was homosexuality. Some statements in the Babylonian magical text (pre-seventh-century BC) say:
“If a man has intercourse with the hindquarters of his equal [male], that man will be foremost among his brothers and colleagues. If a man yearns to express his manhood while in prison and thus, like a male cult-prostitute, mating with men becomes his desire, he will experience evil. If a man has intercourse with a cult prostitute, care [troubles] will leave him.”
There was also a form of homosexuality that was far more violent and subjugating than what we know today. It was not uncommon for a man who wanted to demonstrate his authority and power to rape another man. This act of dominance was seen as a sign of power, and other men looked at this with high regard. The way that one proved his worth to lead others in politics or in the military was through dominating rape. To be the rape victim was so humiliating that no one would ever show respect to that person. The closest thing to this that exists today is when a group of prisoners corner a newcomer in the showers and the alpha male rapes him in order to put him in his place (Gen. 19:4-9; Judg. 19:22).
Bestiality
Not only was bestiality practiced and dreams about it seen as good omens, but it was also practiced as a form of worship. Remember, if the gods did it, then certainly the people who worship them would do it.
“Mightiest Baal hears; He makes love with a heifer in the outback, A cow in the field of Death’s Realm. He lies with her seventy times seven, Mounts eighty times eight; She conceives and bears a boy.”
There were laws against bestiality but only for certain animals. The Hittite law states:
“If anyone has intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a man has intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment.”
There were even ritualistic practices involving animals tied to the bed of a woman in order to bring some kind of blessing. The ritual describes the woman not only doing grotesque things with the animal but enjoying it.
The Egyptian dream book also describes which animals bring good omens when you have a dream about having sex with them. What is most interesting is that it goes on and states that if a woman has a dream where she embraces her own husband, she is doomed.
Child Sacrifice
Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity that required child sacrifice in order to prove devotion to him (Lev. 18:21; 20:5; 2 Kgs. 16:3; 21:6; 23:10; 2 Chr. 33:6; Ezk. 16:21; 20:31; 23:37; Jer. 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; Isa. 30:33; 57:9). Molech was portrayed as a man with the head of a bull standing upright with his arms outstretched. Inside his stomach was a fire, and children would be placed in his arms for burning. Molech required that you sacrifice your firstborn son to him in order to ensure the blessings of the gods. Infants and children as old as four were offered up to him. If you built a house, you were to lay one of your sacrificed children as the cornerstone to the building to ensure that the gods blessed the house and family all of its days. If someone wanted to guarantee a victory in battle, they could sacrifice one of their children to ensure the gods fought on their behalf (Judg. 11:30-40; 2 Kgs. 3: 26-27).
“In fact, we have independent evidence that child sacrifice was practiced in the Canaanite (Carthaginian and Phoenician) world from many classical sources, Punic inscriptions and archaeological evidence, as well as Egyptian depictions of the ritual occurring in Syria- Palestine, and from a recently discovered Phoenician inscription in Turkey. There is therefore no reason to doubt the biblical testimony to Canaanite child sacrifice.”
“No other ancient people, however, regularly chose their own children as sacrificial victims, or equated them with animals which could sometimes be substituted for them. The Phoenician practice indicates a definition of the ‘family’ and the boundaries belonging to it and alienation from it that was incomprehensible to others in the ancient Mediterranean.”
An honest look at the global practice of abortion and contraception, the spread of sex trafficking and child prostitution, the explosion of internet pornography and the exposure of hundreds of millions of children to pornographic material, with little or no serious effort by most governments to protect children from corruption and exploitation, shows that mankind is in no position to pass judgment on the God of the Old Testament for ordering Joshua to put an end to the abominations of Canaan. Moreover, through Church-approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and other private revelations approved by the Church, Our Lord has warned us plainly that if we do not put an end to the physical and moral destruction of innocent children, He will send a chastisement “worse than the Flood” that will kill most of the earth’s population and cleanse the earth. On October 13, 1973, the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima and the year when the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion on demand in the United States, Our Lady of Akita told Sister Agnes Sasagawa:
If mankind does not repent, the Heavenly Father will inflict a punishment worse than the Deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky, wiping out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priest nor faithful.
Indeed, an honest look at the spiritual and moral degradation of the modern world reveals that we have much in common with the corrupt Canaanite peoples on the eve of their destruction. Thankfully, those who continue to trust in the Word of God as believed in the Church from the beginning can find good reason to hope for the preservation, salvation and sanctification of innocent children throughout the world in the very chronological data that most of the “wise and prudent” of the world today hold in contempt because of their scientistic belief in naturalism and uniformitarianism.
Filling the Vacant Thrones and the Traditional Biblical Chronology
If the age of the universe derived from the Holy Scriptures had not been an important part of Divine Revelation for the Church Fathers, they would not have risked the ridicule of the pagan intellectual elite by affirming and defending the Biblical chronology so firmly. The Fathers were very familiar with evolutionary accounts of the origins of man and the universe, such as the systems proposed in the writings of Anaximander, Epicurus and Lucretius. All of these systems involved long ages of time and denied the rapid, supernatural character of the creation of all things as revealed to Moses. Thus, all of the Fathers, including St. Augustine, upheld the fiat nature of the whole work of creation which necessarily entailed that it was completed at the beginning of time—whether that was in six 24-hour days of creation—as the overwhelming majority of the Fathers believed—or in an instant, as St. Augustine was inclined to believe in the light of Sirach 18:1.
When the extraordinary Belgian Jesuit exegete Cornelius à Lapide wrote his great commentary on Scripture, he did not hesitate to endorse the interpretation of St. Irenaeus et al. that there would be six thousand years of human history before the rise of the final Antichrist. As demonstrated in the articles “Ariadne’s Thread” and “A Question of Time,” the scientific evidence actually fits well into the traditional Creation-Fall-and-Flood framework. But there are several reasons why no Catholic should be scandalized or dismayed by this interpretation, apparently so naïve and counter to the alleged “scientific” chronology of millions and billions of years. In the first place, the numbers in the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse, are symbolic numbers, because the Apocalypse is not an historical but a prophetic book. Thus, the “seven” Churches of which St. John writes not only represent the variety of Churches in the world at the time of St. John’s revelation, but rather all of the Churches that will ever be, the number “seven” being the number of fullness or perfection. Similarly, the number “one thousand” in this context does not mean a literal thousand years, but a period that represents a certain “fullness” of time—as when the psalmist records God’s declaration that “the cattle on a thousand hills are Mine”—not as if the cattle on the thousand and first hill belonged to someone else, but as a poetic way of saying that the full number—the totality—of all of the creatures belong to Him.
This use of numbers stands in marked contrast to the way that Moses uses numbers in the sacred history of Genesis, so it is not surprising that there was a tendency to see the six literal 24-hour days of Genesis One as a foreshadowing of a literal six thousand years of human history before the rise of the final Antichrist. On the other hand, St. Bede the Venerable was one of the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church who learned Hebrew, compared the genres of Genesis and Revelation, and divided the history of the world into six ages rather than into six literal thousand-year periods. When the seventeenth century prophet Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser wrote his remarkable predictions concerning the future of the Church and of the world—so many of which have already been fulfilled—he was also inspired to divide human history into six periods, but not into a literal six millennia, thus showing his correct understanding of the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 as a “period of a fullness of time” rather than as a literal thousand years. In light of the way that St. John uses numbers symbolically in the Book of Revelation, the tendency of later Fathers, Doctors and holy authors to interpret the fulfillment of the six days of creation as six periods of history rather than a literal six thousand years suggests that, while Our Lord definitely wants us to accept a literal six-day creation and the Biblical chronology of the world, He does not want us to know the exact “day or the hour” when His plans will be fulfilled.
“The World Is Passing Away” (1 John 2:17)
Our Lord tells us that no man knows “the day or the hour” of His Second Coming, but there are many reasons why it makes sense to believe that the Lord’s Second Advent, the Final Judgment and the end of the world will take place in the not-too-distant future. In the first place, it is highly unlikely that St. Irenaeus would have been completely wrong in his interpretation of Revelation 20, when his spiritual Father St. Polycarp, was a direct disciple of St. John the Evangelist who wrote the Book of Revelation—especially since that interpretation was confirmed by St. Justin Martyr, St. Hippolytus, St. Jerome, and St. Isidore of Seville. In view of the fact that all of the numbers of days or years in the sacred history of Genesis are intended to be taken literally, it is reasonable to hold, as St. Irenaeus did, that they foreshadow future proportionate periods of time. However, as we have just seen, since all of the numbers in the Book of Revelation are symbolic, it follows that St. Venerable Bede, St. Augustine, and Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser were correct to hold that the days of Genesis One foreshadowed six periods of roughly but not exactly a thousand years, and that the “thousand-year reign” in Revelation 20 refers to a “fullness of time” and a great flowering of holiness all over the Earth, rather than to a literal thousand-year period. This would entail that part of the seventh millennium of human history could take place prior to the Era of Peace and the world-wide flowering of holiness predicted by Our Lady of Fatima and many other saints, followed by the rise of the Final Antichrist, the return of Enoch and Elijah, the Final Judgment and the end of the world.
Another reason why it makes sense to believe that the final end times events will take place in the not-too-distant future is that genetic entropy is taking place at such a fast rate that it is unlikely that the human race can remain viable for very much longer. As plant geneticist Dr. John Sanford noted in his masterpiece Genetic Entropy:
there is now very strong evidence that man is degenerating genetically (and has been for thousands of years), due to continuously accumulating mutations. This makes it very reasonable to conclude that the systematic degeneration of man that is documented in the Bible was due to mutation accumulation and resultant “genetic entropy”. Indeed, biologically realistic numerical simulations . . . show that given our current mutation rate (about 100 new mutations per person per generation), human fitness and longevity should have historically followed a decay curve very similar to the Biblically-recorded decline in life expectancies. However, the extremely precipitous decline in lifespans recorded in the Bible, just after the Flood, is actually significantly steeper than our numerical simulations would have predicted. We have reasons to believe that the Flood was a high-radiation event, and that in the centuries immediately after the Flood, mutation rates may have been substantially higher than present.
Our primary conclusion is that the lifespan data strongly supports the historicity and veracity of the Bible, and in particular, the book of Genesis. Likewise, the Biblical data strongly indicates that the emerging scientific evidences of genetic degeneration in man are correct, and that genetic entropy is very real. Genetic entropy is the antithesis of evolution and powerfully speaks of the Biblical Fall. All of this points to the desperate need for the redemption of mankind and all creation.
Our Heavenly Father could, of course, heal the genetic defects of the whole human race in an instant, miraculously, but it does not appear to be His Will to do this, since the effects of Original Sin serve as constant reminders that we have on Earth “no lasting city,” and that our true citizenship is, or ought to be, with our heavenly Abba and the angels and saints in Heaven. Moreover, this chronological testimony from genetics to the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis points to an additional reason why the ongoing contemporary holocaust of innocent children—through abortion, abortifacient contraception, and IVF—could be satan’s way of filling up Heaven’s “empty thrones” with the souls of these child-victims within the time-frame that God has established from the beginning to the end of the world. Indeed, in light of the clear testimony of Divine Revelation in regard to the six days of creation less than ten thousand years ago and their fulfillment in six periods of time no more than a few thousand years in length, it is hard to imagine any other way that those vacant thrones can be filled within God’s divinely-ordained time-frame.
Through the prayers of the Mother of God, of St. Joseph, and of all the Saints, may the Holy Ghost guide us all into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Advisory counselor member Christian Bergsma has launched an outstanding Telegram Channel where he posts fascinating and little-known treasures from the Fathers, Doctors, and traditional theologians who testify to the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-11. Please subscribe to it at this link. (Christian also pointed out that I mixed up my Bacon’s in last week’s newsletter. Roger Bacon was the medieval theologian, philosopher and natural scientist, not Francis Bacon.)
P.P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
