Countdown to the Kingdom

Praying that Our Mother guides all of us to the truth.

 

isn't Fr M's predictions supposed to come true this fall? Won't we KNOW very soon? Charlie Johnson pops to mind...he had a hard set date and it came and went and proved him false.

 

Thats EXACTLY what I am doing!!! If someone claims that a particular idea is true and it obviously only an OPINION..then I do not "attack" that opinion because they have every right to hold that point of view... I try to point out that the OPINION is merely that and not a fact!
BTW... I think most of us on this forum are truly seeking the will of God. Thats why we are here. But... some of us ..me included, get caught up in our weaknesses and say things that are not in the best interests of that search for God. I am just as guilty as anyone else.

 

It came across differently to me. A lot of interesting points were raised and instead people are focusing on Jimmy Akin like it changes the church guidelines they discussed.

 

I am curious on people’s thoughts as to whether or not it’s ok for the contributors to profit off of the alleged messages through book sales, MLM essential oil sales, and less direct financial means such as increased profiles/branding? Does this impact the way you view the messages?

 

Hello Donna259,
What I remember specifically is his mentioning the Month of the Rosary, ie this October (?). Something about a big surprise, I don't know the exact wording. Nor the exact video where he said this.

 

Oil? What oil? Blessed oil? Who is selling oil, WTW?

 

On the natural remedy posts there are links to buy essential oils in the middle of the page. Daniel O’Connor also made a blog post about how he has nothing to do with the oils and blessed grapes.

https://www.countdowntothekingdom.com/protection-from-the-coronavirus-and-future-pandemics/

https://www.countdowntothekingdom.com/protection-from-the-coronavirus-and-future-pandemics/

I know I’ve seen mixed thoughts on it when Susan Brinkman posted her article on Thieves oil.

 

Ellen,
I have been here and read most of this before you ever posted it here, so I’m guessing we both wanted to do our background check of sorts.

Interestingly, I am a traditionalist and should have been eating up the Remnant’s article. It did have its good points, I might add. But, regardless of this closer look at Jimmy Akin from the other side, he did a bang-up job of skillfully parsing the Fr. Rodrigue dilemma, hands down.

 

FR. Rodrigue March 2020...
My dear people of God, we are now passing a test. The great events of purification will begin this fall. Be ready with the Rosary to disarm Satan and to protect our people. Make sure that you are in the state of grace by having made your general confession to a Catholic priest. The spiritual battle will begin. Remember these words: THE MONTH OF THE ROSARY WILL SEE GREAT [meaning substantial] THINGS!

—Dom Michel Rodrigue

He also told everyone to stock up with 3 months of food and water, there would be time this summer (2020) to do so.

Around the same time Fr. Mark Goring said in a video that he (Fr. Goring) believes a (not nessesarily THE) illumination of consciences will occur in 2020.


That's why many confuse/combine the two.

 

Right. We have to be careful not to shoot the messenger sometimes.

 

Exactly.

Thank you so much, Non sum dignus, that is what I remember as well. Him mentioning the month of the Rosary, or October, Now I wonder, did he mean this October 2020, or an October in the future? Can we assume that it's this year?

You are right about the confusion adding to the controversy of this visionary.

 

These days, it seems that every other Catholic with internet access is a "professional" Catholic. I would be very surprised if the Catholic Answers apologists are not being paid. And I'm sure that the people running the Countdown to the Kingdom website expect it to generate a profit. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the increase in Catholic websites aimed at faithful Catholics is having an effect on CA's profit margin. CTTK messed up, giving CA an opening and CA seized the opportunity.

What matters is that Fr. Rodrigue's messages have no church approval. And it doesn't take a degree in theology to figure that out. Some of the worst heretics in the Church have been theologians dripping degrees.

 

Wow.... Thank you AN..I do appreciate the "softer" tone! I think Ill back out of this thread...not conducive to "peace of mind"and I am prone to sinful anger

 

Keeping my fingers crossed but not going to hold my breath. I don't want to be disappointed if Blessed Mother does not deliver a quick response.

That un Catholic response from Julia is how frustrated reading comments from people who are convinced no one but themselves are capable of discerning alleged messages or locutions for their possible authenticity or lack of. I wish they would get a life.

 

This is a very safe place to be, this forum. You’ll be in my prayers. Please keep me in yours just for today, if you find a moment!

 

Julia,
I would love to take your advice but where are we going to go? It’s a pandemic!

On a more serious note - isn’t a forum for discussing? When someone doesn’t agree with someone they can post or move on. Telling people to shut up seems counterproductive.

 

Some coverage of the Jimmy Akin podcasts. Still no transcripts.

Jimmy Akin on The Warning and Fr. Michel Rodrigue
by Mike Lewis · October 17, 2020

Here’s a Saturday night special —

In recent months, we’ve written about an unusually popular Catholic apocalyptic movement based in a modified version of millenarian beliefs (the idea that there will soon be a literal 1,000-year period of peace, when Christ will reign “spiritually” on earth), and we have highlighted two key figures in this movement: Christine Watkins, the Sacramento-based author of the bestselling book, The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies the Illumination of Conscience, and Fr. Michel Rodrigue, a French Canadian priest whose “prophecies” are central to the beliefs of the adherents of this movement.

Despite Fr. Rodrigue being publicly disavowed by the two bishops who have authority over him, and despite being forced into retirement from public ministry, many of his promoters have continued to insist that his alleged private revelations are still valid.

Yesterday a reader let me know that the well-known Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli recently explored The Warning and Fr. Rodrigue on the podcast, “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World.” Akin does a good job of charitably and systematically working his way through each of the issues and problems raised by both the book and Fr. Rodrigue’s claims.

What he does particularly well is analyse the claims made by Watkins and Rodrigue in light of Canon Law, Church teaching, and the guidelines on private revelation provided by the CDF. Also, in the episode on Fr. Rodrigue, he enlisted help from his listeners to review Fr. Rodrigue’s videos, and in that way he was able to compile a wide variety of audio clips that he used to help illustrate some of his more problematic statements.

Just one key omission I’ll note: In the first episode, Jimmy seemed to be laying the groundwork to explain how The Warning‘s imprimatur appears to have been obtained illicitly, but unless I missed it, he doesn’t actually get around to talking about it. Kevin Symonds explains that issue in this blog post.

https://wherepeteris.com/jimmy-akin-on-the-warning-and-fr-michel-rodrigue/

 

Another article, on the ideas underlying the Countdown timeline and more. For discernment:

Apocalypse When? Catholic millenarianism rising
by Emmett O'Regan · Published September 7, 2020 · Updated September 7, 2020

With the recent condemnation of the alleged private revelations of the Canadian priest Fr. Michel Rodrigue (whose claims were recently discussed by DW Lafferty and Mike Lewis for WPI) by his responsible ordinary, Bishop Gilles Lemay of the Diocese of Amos, Québec, the sudden popularity of Countdown to the Kingdom has once again brought into the public spotlight. Countdown to the Kingdom is a website that claims to be “a place for the Body of Christ to discern credible voices of prophecy,” hosted by several well-known Catholic authors, including Christine Watkins, Mark Mallett and Daniel O’Connor. The site promotes the alleged private revelations of an array of unapproved and highly questionable “seers” such as Fr. Rodrigue and Edson Glauber, a Brazilian whose alleged apparitions and messages from Mary and Joseph were declared not authentic by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 2017, which was publicized in an open letter by the administrator of his diocese.

There is a common thread underpinning the apocalyptic overtones of Countdown to the Kingdom, in that most of the contemporary alleged visionaries it promotes all warn of an imminent chastisement that will be swiftly followed by the rise of the Antichrist and the subsequent arrival of a universal “era of peace,” during which Satan will be chained for the duration of the “thousand years” described in Revelation 20:1-3. Although the authors of Countdown to the Kingdom base their ideas on the “period of peace” promised in the second part of the secret of Fatima, the version of apocalypticism promulgated by this website is much more closely related to the millenarian (or Chiliast) heresy that was condemned by the Early Church Fathers.

Being acutely aware of the similarity of their ideas with the Chiliast heresy, the proponents of the “era of peace” attempt to distance themselves from the charge of millenarianism by asserting that the use of the word in paragraph 676 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a condemnation of the notion that Christ will be coming in the Flesh and reigning on earth for the “thousand years” described in Revelation 20. Instead of proposing a physical return of Christ in the Flesh, they argue instead that Jesus will return to rule invisibly in a spiritual “Middle Coming,” in order to establish a millennial Eucharistic reign. In doing so, they attempt to argue that their brand of apocalypticism is closer to an interpretation of the Millennium endorsed by some of the most influential figures in the Early Church, such as St. Irenaeus, St. Hippolytus, St. Justin Martyr and Lactantius.

During the first three centuries of Christianity, some of the Early Church Fathers did hold to the theory of Chiliasm, stemming from a chronologically linear reading of the events described in chapters 19 and 20 of the Book of Revelation. According to this interpretation, Jesus would physically return to reign on earth for a thousand years, along with the saints who would be raised from the dead during the “first resurrection” of Revelation 20:4. As St. Justin Martyr points out in chapter 80 of his Dialogue with Trypho, the Chiliast interpretation of the Apocalypse was by no means universally accepted during the first centuries of the Church. In fact, this teaching was actively opposed from the very earliest days of the Church, by influential figures such as Origen. At the Council of Constantinople (381), the Nicene Creed of 325 was revised to emphasise the fact that Christ’s kingdom would have no end, thus rejecting the idea of a temporal millennial kingdom which would be interrupted by the rise of “Gog and Magog” at the end of the thousand years of Revelation 20:

“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”

After St. Victorinus of Pettau had established that the structure of the Apocalypse was recapitulatory rather than linear, the amillennialist interpretation of the Book of Revelation was further developed by Tyconius and St. Augustine of Hippo. In City of God 20:7, St. Augustine argued that the binding of Satan had already taken place during the sacrificial death of Christ, and that the “first resurrection” of the just represented the immediate resurrection of the souls of individual believers during the Sacrament of Baptism. According to St. Augustine, Christ’s reign had already been established in the Church, and would last until Jesus returns in Glory at end of the world. Chiliasm was thus rejected and condemned by the Early Church as a dangerous heresy, which places regard for the material world over the quest for a spiritual perfection which will only be rewarded in the afterlife. In his Commentary on Daniel, St. Jerome famously railed against the idea of the future establishment of a terrestrial paradise, stating that “the saints shall never possess an earthly kingdom, but only a heavenly. Away, then, with the fable about a millennium!” (St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, Chap 7 v 17).

Following the errant version of eschatology presented in Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi’s book The Splendor of Creation: The Triumph of the Divine Will on Earth and the Era of Peace in the Writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors and Mystics, the authors of Countdown to the Kingdom falsely claim that the Early Church Fathers who taught the doctrine of Chiliasm actually believed in a “spiritual” Middle Coming of Christ to establish a millennial reign. They erroneously assert that before St. Augustine devised his amillennial interpretation of the Apocalypse, he held to this mooted “spiritual” Middle Coming, which he apparently regarded as an acceptable version of Chiliasm:

“And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion.” (St. Augustine, City of God, Book 20, Chap.7)

The idea that St. Augustine taught that a “spiritual” version of the Chiliast heresy was an acceptable teaching passed down from the Church Fathers is patently false, however. St. Augustine clearly suggests that Chiliasm would not be objectionable if the joys of the saints were spiritual rather than carnal in nature and consequent on the presence of God—i.e. the physical return of Christ in the Flesh. As such, St. Augustine most certainly does not suggest that it is acceptable to espouse the Chiliast doctrine if the coming of Christ to establish a millennial reign was said to be spiritual in nature, rather than a physical return to rule in the Flesh.

The authors of Countdown to the Kingdom thus attempt to bypass the charge of millenarianism by confining the doctrinal error to the idea of Jesus physically returning in the Flesh, and assert that a spiritual version of Chiliasm is an acceptable teaching that was held by the Early Church Fathers. When we look to the Catechism of the Catholic Church however, the word millenarianism is used to cover a much broader array of eschatological teachings. It refers to the creation of any sort of terrestrial paradise. The type of millenarianism most vigorously condemned in the Catechism, in fact, is “secular messianism”—the idea that a secular state can fulfil the role of “messiah” through the creation of an earthly utopia:

The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism… (CCC 676)

It is clear that the Catechism most certainly isn’t condemning merely the idea of a return of Christ in the Flesh to establish a millennial kingdom on earth, but also the secular type of millenarianism which gave birth to the communist and fascist movements of the 20th century. By attempting to blend their version of Catholic apocalypticism with the postmillennial teachings espoused in Protestant “Rapture” theology, the authors of Countdown to the Kingdom attempt to validate the false prophecies of fantasists such as Fr. Michel Rodrigue. Such ideas foster a worldview that can give rise to even more dangerous and fanatical worldviews than the one they promote. Given the sudden popularity of this movement, the bizarre eschatological theories they present to faithful Catholics as an authentic interpretation of the Book of Revelation needs to be explicitly condemned by the competent Church authorities.

 

Edson – Receive the Flame of My Heart

Queen of the Rosary and of Peace to Edson Glauber on October 17th, 2020:

Peace, my beloved children, peace! My children, I, your Mother, come from Heaven to warm your hearts with the flame of love from my Immaculate Heart. Many hearts are cold in faith, hardened and closed to God. Many of my children no longer believe in eternal truths, due to the many scandals, because of the lack of faith, love and zeal of the many Ministers of God who are acting more like worldly people than as true servants of my Son Jesus Christ. Cruel and terrible times, when Satan is leading many souls to the path of perdition, who without realizing it, blind and without light, are heading towards the fire of hell.

Pray, pray many Rosaries for the conversion of sinners and for the salvation of souls. Terrible times are ravaging the Holy Church in these days, and many families will be persecuted in a cruel and painful way, because they have not been faithful to the Lord and His Divine Commandments. They are living like pagan families rather than Christian families. Ask for the intercession of Saint Joseph, honor His Most Chaste Heart and take refuge under His Sacred Mantle, and He will lead you along the safe path that leads to the Lord, protecting you and helping you to be faithful to God until the end.
Do not lose faith. Believe more and more, and the Lord will come to the aid of all those who cry out for His Holy Name and His divine protection. I love and bless you: in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!