2023/12/11

121. The Fifth 'Blessedness'

As the 21st century is now a quarter of a century old, the Church grapples with the 'Babylon the Great' of Revelation 17-18. Revelation does not put a 'blessedness' in these verses, but instead puts the following words: "They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful" (Revelation 17:14). This statement coincides with the words in the fourth 'blessedness': "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war" (19:11) and "On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords" (19:16), and urges the Church towards the perfection of the liturgy of the Mass. 

That is because, in the prophecy of Revelation, the 'great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication' has already been judged, and the Mass Liturgy has been completed (cf. 19:1-10). In the prophecy, many believers who were purified at the 'great supper of God' (cf. blog № 99-№ 105) and have been guided as heirs of the Apostles (cf. blog № 106-№ 117) were led to discern the human accidental information compared to "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan"(20:2) (cf. 20:4). 

The description goes on. "Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection" (20:4-5). 

Here, the statement "I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God" is paired with that in chapter 6: "When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne" (6:9). These are the only two places where 'souls' appear in Revelation. 

Of the salvation of these 'souls', the fifth 'blessedness' states: "Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years" (20:6). Then, it mentions the accidental information (cf. 20:7-10) and the rest of the dead who 'did not come back to life until the end of the thousand years' (cf. 20:11-15), and the 'Prophecy of the Completion of the Liturgy of the Mass' completes. 

From the next issue on, I will change the angle of consideration and approach the fifth 'blessedness', which concerns the first resurrection and the second death, and the seventh prophecy, 'Prophecy of the Spirituality of the Holy Spirit' (see figure in blog № 120).

Maria K. M.

 2023/12/04

120. Prophetic Composition of Revelation 3/3

A prophecy naturally prepares those who hear it for what it tells. Hence, the prophetic composition of Revelation has the character of a training book that prepares the disciples for the Holy Spirit who testifies about Jesus (cf. John 15:26) (cf. Revelation 1:3). It is written that when the Holy Spirit descended, "there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them" (Acts 2:3). This describes how the Holy Spirit connected with the realm of consciousness in the individual's brain to declare what he has taken from Jesus to the disciples and to train them. 

In the realm of their consciousness emerged an area of habituated and unconscious through their constant and close contact with Jesus, where the worldview of Jesus Christ was placed. The remarkable behaviour of the disciples after Pentecost shows that the worldview of Jesus Christ, which they held in their unconscious area, was brought out into the realm of consciousness by the Holy Spirit at this time. For those of the next generation to share this experience, they needed to have the worldview of Jesus Christ. For this reason, the Book of Revelation was written. 

The figure above shows that through the daily practice of reciting and listening to Revelation, a habitual and unconscious area emerges within the believer's realm of consciousness, where the worldview of Jesus Christ can be placed and maintained. The green zone above represents the realm of human consciousness, while the orange one represents the area of unconsciousness. The established 'New Testament' and the 'Essential Requirements for the Completion of the Mass Liturgy' (cf. blog № 116) derived from it are placed in the realm of consciousness. 

The seven 'blessednesses' that appear at pivotal points in Revelation awaken the trainees each time to the fact that this training is taking place in their realm of consciousness. In addition, the sixth and seventh 'blessednesses' in the Spirituality of the Holy Spirit are one of the motivating forces for the believers who enter here to return to their daily routine with the training of the Book of Revelation and the Mass liturgy (cf. blog№ 94). 

On the other hand, in the 'Prophecy of the Fall of the Church' (chapters 17-18), not 'blessedness' but the words of the victory of 'the Lamb' and 'those with him' (cf. Revelation 17:14) are placed. These words correspond to the words in the 'Prophecy of the Completion of the Mass Liturgy' (cf. Revelation 19:11-16) and draw the Church to the completion of the Mass Liturgy.

Maria K. M.

 2023/11/27

119. Prophetic Composition of Revelation 2/3

The figure above shows the prophetic structure of the Book of Revelation. The first prophecy, "Prophecy about Jesus Christ, who is with the Church" (chapter 1), and the second prophecy, "Prophecy about the problems faced by the Church community and their solutions" (chapters 2-3), lead us to the third prophecy, "Prophecy of the establishment of the New Testament" (chapters 4-11). From the prophecy of the establishment of the New Testament on, after undergoing the fourth prophecy, "Prophecy of the fate of the Church with the priesthood and the Sacrament of the Eucharist hidden in the wilderness and heaven" (chapters 12-16), and the fifth prophecy, "Prophecy of the fall of the Church" (chapters 17-18), we reach the sixth prophecy, "Prophecy of the completion of the liturgy of the Mass" (chapters 19-20), and then enter the midst of the seventh prophecy, "Prophecy of the spirituality of the Holy Spirit" (chapters 21-22). 

As shown in the figure above, 'Babylon the great' appears in the fourth and fifth prophecies. In the fifth prophecy, 'Babylon the great' is depicted as follows: "On her forehead was written a name of mystery: 'Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations'" (Revelation 17:5); "It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird" (18:2). As we have examined, these are the pictures of the Church as it has been demonstrated in history. 

On the other hand, the 'Babylon the great' in the fourth prophecy is the city, "she who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion" (14:8). This blog has focused on the images and traditions held by the people waiting for the saviour in the time Jesus lived. At the time, they had an image of the saviour as a king with the power to free his people from Roman rule. They also had an epithalamium tradition that interpreted the relationship between God and his people through the allegory of marriage, even though they knew that God wanted to establish a parent-child relationship with his people (cf. blog № 43). When the disciples who had been trained directly by Jesus Christ died, a current arose in the Church that incorporated this tradition into its theology. That is the 'Babylon the great' of the fourth prophecy. 

The 'seven bowls' of the fourth prophecy, shown in the above figure, are said to be "seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives for ever and ever" (15:7) and signify the potency of the New Testament, which was established just at that era. This power, while compelling the Church to go through an agonising time, drives her towards the perfection of the liturgy of the Mass. 

Maria K. M.

 2023/11/20

(Note 1) For the first and second seals, see blog № 13. For the third and fourth seals, see blog № 14. For the fifth and sixth seals, see blog № 15. For the seventh seal, see blog no. 16.  (Note 2) See blog no. 16.  (Note 3) See blog № 12.

118. Prophetic Composition of Revelation 1/3

Previously, we have examined the theme of the Successors of the Apostles painstakingly, from slightly different angles, referring to Revelation and the biblical writings. From this examination, we can see that the verses about the fourth Blessedness, of which the angel announced, "'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are true words of God.'" (Revelation 19:9), are a prophecy of the completion of the liturgy of the Mass. We will now move on to further examination of Revelation after identifying its structure from a prophetic point of view.

At the outset, Revelation writes that Jesus Christ is "the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth" (1:5), "who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood" (1:5), and who "made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father" (1:6). And it describes him as the one who "have the keys of Death and Hades" (1:18) in an image that causes fear in the viewer (cf. Revelation1:13-16).

That is because the earthly life of Jesus was a day of constant encounters with adversaries as God desired to erase the memory of sin from the Bible and decided to fulfil his desire by God's becoming humanity. Jesus trained his disciples as 'a kingdom, priests to his God and Father' and made them a new people of God who proclaimed the Gospel. The Holy Spirit testified to these facts with a new Bible (cf. blog №117). Within it, the Book of Revelation was also written as a training book which infuses post-Pentecostal believers, who do not know Jesus, with the worldview of Jesus Christ and directs them towards the liturgy of the Mass.

It depicted the prophecy about Jesus Christ, who is with the Church, in Chapter 1, the prophecy about the problems faced by the church community and their solutions in Chapters 2-3, and the prophecy of the establishment of the New Testament in Chapters 4-11. It had a unique structure because it assumed that Revelation was to be contained within the New Testament (cf. figure above; blog № 87).

These prophecies protect the Church and direct it towards the prophecy of the completion of the liturgy of the Mass (chapters 19-20) amid the prophecies of the fate of the Church with the priesthood and the sacrament of the Eucharist hidden in the wilderness and heaven (chapters 12-16) and of the fall of the Church (chapters 17-18). Hence, the Church is now in the vortex of chapters 17-18 (cf. blog № 89).

Maria K. M.

 2023/11/13

117. Successors to the Apostles Part 12

The words of the 'serpent' of Genesis, "You will not die" (Genesis 3:4), became the source of all faults, ending up with a murder committed by Adam and Eve's firstborn Cain that God called 'sin' for the first time (cf. Genesis 4:6-8). However, through the work of the 'enmity God had placed' (cf. Genesis 3:15), which he inherited from his mother, Cain was awakened to God's words of persuasion (cf. Genesis 4:6-12), and he could say, "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (Genesis 4:13). 

At that time, he was terrified by God's announced words, assuming their consequence, and confessed to God as follows. "Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me" (Genesis 4:14). He, for himself, assumed that the punishment would come. When God heard his confession, he took pity on him and put a mark on him so that no one would kill him. Cain left the presence of the Lord and lived in the land of Nod and built a city there (cf. Genesis 4:10-17). 

However, because Lamech, a descendant of Cain, had interpreted Cain's experience to suit himself and declared it to his wives (cf. Genesis 4:23-24), his words recorded in the Bible soon became real, then people began to slay "a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me" (Genesis 4:23). Vengeance infested the earth. And the memory of the murders and their sins that spread across the world never disappeared. Thus, God wished to erase the memory of the sin of murder committed by Cain, which was the beginning of all the sin history in the Bible, by atoning for it just as Cain had confessed and to testify to that fact with a new Bible. 

In the fullness of time, God became the only-begotten Son and left his Father in heaven and descended to earth, hiding, so to speak, in his mother's womb as if he were an outcast, born and coming of age in the world and wandering the earth as a missionary, like a fugitive (cf. Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58), he was finally arrested because whoever found him wanted to kill him, underwent many sufferings and was killed by crucifixion. By these events, the moment Jesus said, "It is finished" (John 19:30), all sins were gone forever and ever. 

Furthermore, Jesus replaced the words of the 'serpent' in Genesis, "You will not die", with those of God. And he testified to this by rising from the dead. He then left behind the Word and the Eucharist for the Holy Spirit and believers. Believers who own the New Testament are witnesses to all this. 

Believers who now confess in the Mass liturgy to the Eucharist, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (cf. Matthew 16:16, John 11:27), will put on the name of Jesus Christ and the words, "shall never die" (John 11:26), each time they say so. "These are true words of God" (Revelation 19:9). The believers who have put on the true words of God are the heirs of the Church built on the rock of Peter's confession of faith, the successors of the Apostles.

Maria K. M.

 2023/11/06

116. Successors of the Apostles Part 11

It is in the Mass liturgy that Christians can concretely express that they have inherited Christ's redemption in its fullness. I have mentioned three essential requirements for the perfection of the Mass liturgy, two of which are probably easier to accept. 

The first is that the ministry of administering the rites of the New Covenant, i.e., the Christ's priesthood, must always be performed by a man. In Genesis, God did not command the woman, who honestly confessed her mistake to him, to do the work of atoning for it (cf. Genesis 3:13). So, women have no historical basis for assuming the priesthood of Christ, who completed the work of redemption for Adam, which God ordained to eat bread 'In the sweat of your face' (cf. blog №110, № 111). 

Second, believers must 'take and eat' the Eucharist, distributed by the priest, with their own hands. Jesus expressed, "Take, eat," because he wanted his disciples to be spontaneous (cf. Matthew 26:26). Believers, unless they have physical disabilities, by 'taking and eating' with their own hands the Holy Communion distributed by the priest, will not only inherit the work of Christ, who redeemed with his Word the acts of the first man and woman in Genesis, who, against God's command, took and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but also will concretely express their voluntary participation in it. 

On the other hand, another requirement, confessing publicly that the Eucharist is the Messiah, the Son of God, may seem irrelevant to inheriting Christ's redemption. That is because the two things cannot be connected as intuitively as the two requirements above. 

The first 'woman' in Genesis, in her interaction with the 'serpent', disobeyed God's command by being deceived by the words of the 'serpent', 'you will not die.' This fault was redeemed by the answer of a woman, Martha, led by Jesus in her conversation with him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world" (John 11:27), which was the response to the following question by Jesus: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26). 

Jesus, at this moment, by cancelling the information of the 'serpent' and replacing it with the Word, not only redeemed the fault of the 'woman' but, at the same time, corrected the information of 'death' that all humanity had received through her and revealed the truth. That was to lead the believers to eternal life and to make them partake of the first resurrection (cf. Revelation 20:5). The following words of Jesus testify to these facts: "For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:40). 

When all believers repeat these words of Martha in the presence of the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus who said, "I am the resurrection and the life," the Church will demonstrate the words of Jesus, "I will build my Church," on the words of the heavenly Father revealed to Peter, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). 

To be continued.

Maria K. M.

 2023/10/30

115. Successors of the Apostles Part 10

In the last issue, we examined the description in Revelation, "Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed" (Revelation 20:4), according to the Gospel of Matthew. On the same theme, this time we will discuss it according to the Gospel of Luke: "I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30). 

Luke's Gospel places this scene at the last supper, after the institution of the Eucharist. It thereby shows that the 'kingdom' in this scene, when Jesus said, "I assign to you," was referring to what he had commanded at the institution of the Eucharist, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19), i.e., the authority to administer the Eucharistic celebration. So, the words "sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" mean that the Apostles and their successors were to completely distinguish this new liturgy from the rite of the old covenant. That is because "new wine must be put into fresh wineskins" (Luke 5:38). 

This authority to make the kingdom of God brought by Jesus present is immediately transmitted, particularly at the Eucharistic celebration, to the believers partaking in it and reenacts the last table of Jesus, involving them. That is because the congregation, the believers, are Christians who participate in this authority, entrusted to the Apostles and their successors, as common priesthood, even though they do not preside at the rite. Jesus, therefore, commanded the Apostles and their successors, "[L]et the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves" (Luke 22:26). 

Thus, the liturgy of the Mass, which makes the place where Jesus instituted the Eucharist present, must be perfect (cf. Matthew 5:48). If it is incomplete, then even 'woe' may befall some of those who partake in it. Revelation 17-18 is a prophecy that the whole Church will suffer the plague because of this very imperfection. 

The Holy Spirit demands those who collaborate with him to discern man's accidental information. By attending the completed Mass liturgy, believers will be unconsciously well formed for the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the daily training of the Book of Revelation prepares the faithful for the Mass liturgy, i.e., the formation of the Holy Spirit. That is because, without their knowing it, the worldview of Jesus Christ will be imprinted in their memory. 

For the liturgy of the Mass to be complete, it is a prerequisite that the following points, which I have repeated many times, are realised in their fullness. Christ's redemption must be inherited in its fullness. These three points are: the person who presides at the liturgy of the New Covenant must always be a man; the believers must publicly confess that the Holy Eucharist is the Messiah, the Son of God; and they must receive with their own hands the Blessed Sacrament distributed by the priest and 'take and eat' it (cf. blog № 113).

To be continued.

Maria K. M.