Following sorrow will be “the great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21), “such tribulations” (Mark 13:19), “great distress” (Luke 21:23). A seminal event in this sequence will be Jerusalem being “trodden down by the Gentiles” (21:24). “[T]he holy city they shall tread under foot two and forty months” (Apocalypse 11:2). This conquest will be undone, however, by “lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and . . . a great earthquake” (16:18): “[T]he great city [will be] divided into three parts; and the cities of the Gentiles” will fall (16:19).
Bridging the period of sorrow with that of tribulation will be Saint Michael’s expulsion of the dragon—Satan—from Heaven (Apocalypse 12:9). The dragon will empower the beast (13:4), i.e., the antichrist, who will presumably be among the “false Christs and false prophets” who emerge during the period of tribulation (Matthew 24:24).
The second coming of Jesus Christ. |
Enter Christ. He will arrive in the now-familiar form of the majesty, “coming in the clouds of heaven with much power” (Matthew 24:30; cf. Mark 13:26, Luke 21:27). During the second coming, Christ’s “eyes [will be] as a flame of fire, and on his head [will be] many diadems” (Apocalypse 19:12). He will defeat the beast and his armies, throwing the former straight into “the pool of fire” (19:19–20). Then, an angel will throw the dragon—Satan—into a bottomless pit (20:3). There Satan will remain for a thousand years, the period of Christ’s government on Earth (20:5). Constituting Christ’s holy administration will be “the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus” (20:4). However, there will be no general resurrection at this juncture, with the “rest of the dead liv[ing] not” (20:5).
Satan will be released from the bottomless pit after a thousand years and allowed to prepare for battle with Christ, only to be thrown into the pool of fire in the cosmic defeat of the ages (Apocalypse 20:7–9). There, he will “be tormented day and night for ever and ever” in the company of the beast (20:9).
After defeating Satan, Christ will resurrect everyone—both the saved and the damned. “Filled out with flesh, alive with limbs,” “this untold clutch of creatures [s]hall come before their Creator, a multitude [o]f men and women, all made young again” (Christ III, p. 347). “[T]hey will be born again at the perfect age of thirty years” (Mâle, pp. 374–75).
On behalf of the saved, Christ will bring about the end of the world, instituting in its place a “new heaven and a new earth” (Apocalypse 21:1). He will bring from the heavens to Earth a jeweled “holy city Jerusalem” (21:10), which will have streets of “pure gold, as it were transparent glass” (21:21). However, much like the worst part of Hell is not the fire but the absence of God, the best part of the New Jerusalem will be its residents’ ability to see the face of God (22:4), and not ‘merely’ through the human visage of Christ (On the Sacraments, p. 454). “[W]e shall love and we shall praise,” forecasts Hugh of St. Victor (p. 476).
The obligation of every Christian is to ensure that he is ready for the last judgment. As Christ put it, “[w]atch ye . . . because you know not the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13). Life is the only opportunity we have to win ourselves a ticket to Heaven; and, if the parables of the ten virgins and the talents make anything clear, it is that we should avoid squandering our chance at salvation.