Christian unity and fellowship
18 October 2000 08:43
Copied here is the introduction by Silvia Evans, given at a TLIG conference held in Michigan, USA, on September 22nd, 2000.
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We are gathered here to give Glory to God in the spirit of Christian unity and fellowship. In preparation for a fruitful gathering, I would like to build some bridges to better communication and understanding of our various Christian traditions. Too often our humanity and divisions make it difficult to get together like this, and when we do, it appears like the Tower of Babel, where we don’t understand one another. Some of the topics we will cover tonight will use terminology that you may not be familiar with, or that may trigger some connotations or preconceived notions that are blocks to communication and mutual understanding. If at any time tonight you hear terms you want explained, please ask during the question & answer period. All these terms will be useful in our discussions and to appreciate all Christian traditions.
Let’s begin by defining what it means when a Catholic talks about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Protestants could listen to it from their own experience where they typically think of “Jesus is in my heart”, Catholics see themselves as being in Jesus’ heart and Protestants think more in terms of Jesus being in their hearts. Imagine the symbolism of a red heart on Valentine’s day as a symbol of love. So really the Sacred Heart of Jesus represents His infinite Love and Mercy. The heart represents our feelings of love and emotion, we love our spouse from the heart, not the brain, we love the Lord with our whole heart. The heart is the symbol of the emotions, feelings, love and mercy.
When we talk about the Love of the Lord, we think that it is something that emanates from His heart in a metaphorical sense and because He is Holy His heart is called the Sacred Heart. So tonight, when we refer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we mean all the abundance of His emotions, feelings, Love, and grace that he has for humanity. Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus simply means that we make vows of love and union to Jesus and we surrender to HIM.
Let’s now define a few End-times terms. The first one is that End-Times does not mean the end-of-the-world. It means the end of an epoch or era!
- The term
- “Chastisements” is a Catholic term that Protestants can understand in terms of “tribulations”. When Orthodox and Catholics talk about the “era of peace and love”, Protestants can translate “ah, the millennium, the 1000 years of the reign of Christ”. When Protestants talk about God speaking to our hearts, guiding, leading us, and even sending His angels”, Catholics can translate that to the term “private revelation”. When Catholics say “tradition”, Protestants may translate it as referring to all the accumulated guidance from the Holy Spirit through the centuries, since He guides His Church. When Protestants talk about the “Rapture” Catholics can translate it to “The Warning” and the Orthodox can think “Purification Day”.
And last but certainly not least, we have to discuss one stumbling block to this dialog, and that is the importance of the Virgin Mary in the history of salvation. We cannot discuss End Times without meditating on the role that God has her playing now, at the End Times. The Blessed Virgin Mary, by the act of submitting to the will of God and carrying in her womb Holiness Himself (Jesus), achieved holiness. She received complete sanctification and she lives with God. As the angel said, Mary full of grace.
In Lk 1:49, Mary prophesied “from now onwards all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me”.
The Mother of God, and of us, is deeply united to her Son Jesus and she is sent by God to guide, and exhort humanity. Millions believe that she appeared at Fatima, in 1917. At that time during the apparition 70,000 people saw the miracle of the sun, where the sun was seen to spin and then fall towards them. Mary called for conversion, prayer and fasting, and unsealed the book of Revelation. Consider that in Rev. chapter 12 it says: “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads…..She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne….” Both Catholics and Orthodox believe that this refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Today, there are many US Protestants who are paying attention to End Time events. They are searching for the Two Witnesses mentioned in the book of Revelation (Moses and Elijah), who are expected to sometime start preaching in Jerusalem. This would indicate that the time of the Antichrist is at hand. How did this belief come about? We will talk about this later.
Many Catholics believe that the two witnesses, prophesied in Revelations, are really the two hearts of Jesus and Mary in the apparitions and private revelations. This has Biblical precedent, in Matt 11:12, Jesus, referring to John the Baptist says, “Because it was towards John that all the prophecies of the prophets and of the Law were leading; and he, if you will believe me, is the Elijah, who was to return. Anyone who has ears should listen!”
Please consider that the two witnesses may not be the bodies of Moses and Elijah come back to earth to preach, but may represent the SPIRIT of prophecy. If now at the End-Times, it is happening as it did with John the Baptist, how deceitful it is to look for two old men in the streets of Jerusalem to know if we are entering the time of tribulations! We might miss the 2 witnesses if we do not discern properly. Remember, the majority of the Jews misinterpreted prophecies and missed that John the Baptist was the expected Elijah!
The Orthodox always portray Mary, together with Jesus, in the icons, so they already believe in these two witnesses. The origin of these icons is traced directly to St. Luke (of the Gospels) who painted Jesus with Mary. One of his paintings survives today in Greece. It is this view – that the two witnesses are talking already, and have “unsealed” the book of Revelation – which makes it possible to understand and interpret the events that we are living through. If we try to interpret the book of Rev. and the events in the world with our own mind, instead of listening to the two witnesses, we can easily fall prey to deception….. and who is the master of all deception?
So as we gather here tonight to enter into dialog about the end times, please be open to this view of what WE believe Heaven is telling us, by appreciating documents, private revelation and tradition from all 3 classic Christian communions and anchoring it in Holy Scripture. When we are anchored in Holy Scripture and the Holy Trinity, then we can be open to appreciate one another’s gifts, which do come from the Holy Trinity and are for the good of the church.
When Jesus and Mary talk to us they do so through humans, so we must pray for discernment. Many books are written about this subject and one can listen to the testimony of respected theologians and people of God. Most people seem to have allergic reactions to modern prophecies and with good reason. After all, in the end times there will be many false prophets, but by the same token, read what the prophet said in Joel (and Acts 2:17): “I shall pour out my spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old people shall dream dreams, and your young people see visions”. It is interesting to note that almost all Marian apparitions have been to children.
How easy it is to scoff at such modern prophets! We are cynical and instead turn to the media for our daily “mind food”. If Peter Jennings says so, then it must be credible… we think! We read fictional books, which although containing Biblical passages, are still fiction, and think that we are learning about God or what He will do! We buy into the pop-psychology explaining how we are not really doing wrong or sinning because our parents did this or that to us when we were kids. There are many more examples, but is the “wisdom of the world” not perhaps a form of false prophecies and false teachers?
We say we know that the media is biased, yet we digest it constantly to know what is going on in the world. We get advanced degrees with a liberal bent so we are “open-minded”. We become scientists and learn that physical laws are “immutable”, we think we understand cause and effect and we “limit God” to work within the laws He created. Sure, we may say that he is omnipotent, but we think He doesn’t break the laws of nature He created, and that miracles are probably explainable scientifically or are very rare. We accept the outer appearance of religion but limit or deny the power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.
So many book, editorials, government programs, etc. fall in the category of “false prophecies” and “false teachings” because they promise human solutions to problems and exclude God!. We deal with “real life” using human wisdom and science, and leave God to an hour on Sunday, if that. Believe me, I know this from experience. No human solution, theory or program can substitute for the Grace of God. Jesus is the Truth, the Way, and the Life. And if He chooses to speak to us to bring us back to Him, let’s be open to prophetic voices from ALL our traditions and test them against Holy Scripture. Jesus deserves our attention more than Peter Jennings or the National Inquirer at the check out, of even the Wall Street Journal!!!!
Well tonight, we will speak of a major modern prophetic voice in the world, Vassula Ryden. Many books have been written about her and she continues to be greatly persecuted. Her mission from HEAVEN is to unify the church by just being the Echo of Jesus in taking down His messages. We will hear more about this in the second half of the evening. Her messages are faithful to the deepest sense of the Gospel and to the most authentic spirituality of the Church. We believe that Jesus will be the author of that Christian unity with the Triumph of his Sacred Heart.
Also tonight we will make the case for the “Rapture” (the Protestant term) being the same as “Purification day” (the Orthodox term) and to “The Warning” (the Catholic term). This next great event in the history of salvation is imminent and will produce unity and purity in the church.
Unity was the last prayer from Jesus to the Father before he died. In Jn 17:21, Jesus prayed “May they all be one, just as Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” All will be fulfilled when time reaches its fullness. Our being here tonight is in response to that which we believe Jesus desires. When we pray the “Our Father” or “The Lord’s prayer”, it is this kingdom of God on earth that we pray for where God’s Will is done and all our united in Christ.
No particular denomination, interest group, or organization has sponsored this gathering. We are all lay people who have organized this tonight. It is in response to individual conversion and deep conviction that Jesus is asking us to stop sinning by differentiating ourselves in Him. On September 14, 1992 Jesus told Vassula, “so long as you remain divided you are still in the dark, so long as you rejoice in your division you are still not knowing where you are going because it is too dark to see”. In Holy Scriptures, Jesus said, “if you bring an offering to the altar and are not reconciled with your brother, put it down and go and reconcile yourself with your brother”.
Jesus says that the key to Christian unity is love and humility. What does this mean? Take a man and a woman falling in love, they listen to each other, try to understand each other’s experiences, backgrounds, likes and dislikes, they are attentive and kind, loving, and patient. This is a human analogy, what is the Biblical concept that God uses? It is that of the Bridegroom ardently courting our souls for all eternity. In Is 54:5 God says “For your maker is your husband the Lord Almighty is his name, the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer.” All of God’s action in the world, throughout history, is encapsulated in this concept of the bridegroom.
Throughout history private revelations have been an important part of the life of the church. The bridegroom, by the Holy Spirit, has not left us orphans. He speaks in every century and every generation with genuine messages, they produce good fruit. For the last thousand years, the Catholic Church uses a formal process to ascertain if these prophetic voices are true. This applies to not just prophecies, but also healings and revelations, councils, catechisms, and creeds. This is all part of what Orthodox and Catholics call tradition. It does not matter whether it is the development of a miraculous spring of water at Lourdes, after an appearance of Mary; a Southern Baptist tent revival in Alabama, where healings occur; or a Pentecostal meeting where prophecies are recorded. God is constantly showing his love and mercy for his bride, the Church, and His desire is that his mystical body – the Church – be united in HIM.
