What end-times?

Prophecies of the end-times are of course alarming. That is their point. They raise an alarm that threatens the un-redeemed. Those with the light welcome the alarm that the bridegroom comes at midnight. Paul in I Thessalonians welcomes the idea that the whole Church is “lifted up” in the air to welcome Christ. In Revelation the un-numbered saints in white rejoice in the presence of the Divine. Revelation 11:15 “kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord.” The prophecies of the end-times which precede all these gloriously redemptive events are meant to raise an alarm. However, having done that they fade away. The reason? Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning and the end. The End is nothing other and nothing less than the Beginning which has come to claim what is His. The End is the Beginning returning to Itself. There is never an Omega that does not already contain, that is not already, the Alpha. Consequently, the end-times do not ever precede an End. The prophecies of the end-times are always and only the announcement of the New Times. If one sees only “end” and not “times” one fails to see in the prophecies of the end-times the Kairos (the redeemed Time of the baptized) that has dawned, that is always dawning, and that will always dawn for the redeemed. The period between All Saints and Christ the King is not an interlude of darkness. It is an active, recurring rebuke of that darkness. In the loudest, strongest of voices the Church announces, “We renounce the devil, and all his works, and all his ways!” while at the same time saying, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.”