In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
History was not merely an arbitrary accumulation of unrelated events. It was rather something that God had foreseen, that was happening according to a divine plan, and permitted by divine providence. It was not primarily defined, as historians may asserted, by the technologies in plan (such as in the Bronze or Iron Age), nor by the empires that were dominant in a given era (whether the Persians, Greeks, Romans, or anyone else). History was rather marked by successive stages which progressed closer and closer to a climax and a conclusion. And this meant that at the very center was Jesus himself. As Saint John Paul the Great wrote in the first sentence of the first paragraph of his first encyclical: "Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history" (see Redemptor Hominis 1).
Thus it was that history was fundamentally divided, as is even reflected by our calendar, into that which came before Jesus and that which would follow (regardless of the acronyms we choose in order to mark those periods). The calendar attempted to base itself on the birth of Jesus but the most fundamental dividing line between the old world and the new was actually the death and resurrection of Jesus himself, when the old covenant gave way to the new, in his own Body and Blood. This was reflected by the darkening of the sun (see Luke 23:44) and by the falling from the sky like lightning of the angel (see Luke 10:18) who was once considered the morning star (see Isaiah 14:12) and the rest of the fallen angels that followed him (see Revelation 12:4).
The spiritual reality that began at the passion of Jesus was confirmed in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and by the end of the system of temple sacrifice. What Jesus did was not merely symbolic or subjective but changed the fundamental course of history forever. Of course the way history had changed was still something one would need eyes of faith to properly understand. But for those with such faith it would now be evident that the world had reached its final age, the last stage of progress before the end. And those who saw this would be able to live lives directed toward that end. Others would look at the darkness and disasters that continued to overspread the earth and see on futility. Christians would see something more. They would see that with each tribulation the final summer was increasingly near and that Jesus was ever closer to the gates. If the world was heading only toward meaningless destruction, what could be done? Or why bother to do anything at all? But if all things were indeed awaiting the coming of the savior on clouds of glory then there was indeed a clear course of much to be done, with an ever growing urgency. The more Christians were faithful in response to this reality the more it would be true that when the angels were sent to gather the elect none who were intended to be in that number would be missed.
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