Nearing Midnight: Jesus Won't Return
After All - Terry James - http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html
The past week I received a purported news item. The e-mailer wrote that he didn't know if the report-actually, one that was nearly a month old-was legitimate. I could see that it most likely wasn't, right off the proverbial bat. I asked Todd to check it out, as he is good at fact checking on phony-baloney news prompts we get. The story indicated that the Vatican had apparently gone completely bonkers. One of its highly positioned spokesmen had reported, according to the "news blog," that Jesus was reneging on His promise to come back for his "people."
Perhaps you saw this item long ago. I just heard about it early in the week.
The "news source" reported that Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore told Waterford Whispers News (WWN) that Jesus was perhaps not coming back to get His people after all, although He had promised to do so as recorded in the Bible, John 14:1-3.
The Vatican defended Jesus' broken promise, claiming "he was probably drinking wine" at the time when he made the comments. "Having the ability to turn water into wine had its ups and its downs," added Cardinal [Giorgio] Salvadore. "We all make promises we can't keep when we're drunk. Jesus was no different."
The church said it will now focus attentions on rebuilding its reputation around the world, but will keep an optimistic mind for the savior's second coming. ("'Jesus Not Coming Back by The Looks Of It'" Admits Vatican," Waterford Whispers News, April 18, 2014)
Now, I know that Catholics for the most part see nothing wrong with imbibing a bit on occasion--that includes the priestly class. However, for a potential pope to say that Jesus used His supernatural ability to turn water into wine, then saying that Jesus imbibed a bit too much, Himself, thus making Himself a liar, is something I knew was beyond the pale for even a Catholic. It would be especially astonishing for one of such high rank in that church to state--publicly, at least.
Sure enough, Todd informed me that this was pointed to in his research as a phony- baloney report. Of course, based upon the water-to-wine reference, where the Lord Jesus Christ was suspected of being drunk, promising to return, although He never intended to return, I was certain this was a false accusation against Catholicism. No one in such a position as a cardinal would ever publicly make such a charge, even if he himself was snookered. At least, I don't think such a cardinal exists...
Another thing that rang hollow about the story was the so-called cardinal implying the church now believes Jesus won't really return, and urging all parishioners everywhere to just live life in a satisfactory way, according to church dictates. The fact is that the Catholic system of eschatology has never expected Christ to return -at least not in the sense the Protestant Bible puts forth. It is up to that system-the Catholic Church-to build the kingdom for Christ to one day come back and rule. Jesus will just have to wait until then, is the way I take their belief system. That is why, they claim, Peter was given the "keys to the kingdom."
Now, I know that some Catholics believe in Christ's return in much the way that even we Pre-Trib adherents believe. Some even embrace the imminent coming of Jesus in the Rapture. But, these are by far in the minority within the Catholic system.
That system has infected Protestantism with the humanistic, Kingdom-Now theological travesty. Reform theology clutches tightly to this view of how God will, through the papal system and humanistic effort--bring all things to culmination and rid humanity of sin and death. And now, at this late hour in this Age of Grace or Church Age, it seems that every Protestant denomination, even the formerly most stalwart of the Pre-Trib Rapture-teaching churches, are, overtly or through attrition of sound doctrinal belief, beginning to deny that Christ might return at any moment. They are too busy building their elaborate edifices and multi-thousand-member congregations during this Laodicean generation to look up and recognize the signals of Christ's return that are exploding around them.
We are in the time of denying that Christ will return as promised, as given in this most relevant Scripture for our day: "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Pet. 3:3-4).
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