The John-Henry Westen Show - July 30, 2019


Episode 19： Are the end-times predicted in the Scriptures upon us？ (Part 2 of 2)


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

119.96751

Word Count

2,658

Sentence Count

174

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

In this episode we discuss the end times and why Michael D. O'Brien feels that the great apostasy predicted in the scriptures has indeed begun. And let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.


Transcript

00:00:00.280 Hello and welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show.
00:00:03.740 I'm excited to bring you part two of our interview with author, novelist, painter and speaker Michael D. O'Brien, a true prophet of our times.
00:00:12.920 In this episode we discuss the end times and why Michael feels that the great apostasy predicted in the scriptures has indeed begun.
00:00:21.620 And let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:24.860 In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
00:00:28.860 It's going to be an exciting show. Stay tuned.
00:00:32.240 So, one of the things you just mentioned is probably the heart of the confusion.
00:01:02.040 Or at least for many.
00:01:03.720 It's also one of the hardest things for the common non-Christian men to accept about Christianity, about faith generally.
00:01:14.020 That's the concept of hell.
00:01:15.340 You were mentioning how our Lord said you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
00:01:19.660 And probably the most famous question.
00:01:21.940 I ask you this also because you've been on the other side in flirting with or into atheism and then come out of it.
00:01:29.940 You've also argued with some of the intellectual greats of this world.
00:01:35.160 And how do you, you're a lover of Jesus that's so evident, and yet you believe in this possibility of hell, eternal hell, or eternal damnation as they call it.
00:01:50.380 And the big question from the world always on this thing is, well, if you believe in a loving God, how can a loving God send people to hell?
00:01:58.400 Well, what would you respond to that?
00:01:59.780 Oh, hell is real.
00:02:05.540 Well, Jesus speaks about the reality and the risk for all of us of ending up there.
00:02:15.140 He speaks of it several times.
00:02:19.700 The book of Revelation, he is speaking again of the great risk.
00:02:25.620 Look towards the final chapter of Revelation.
00:02:27.900 Revelation, it's very clear.
00:02:30.300 There is no ambiguity.
00:02:33.840 The problem with our contemporary consciousness, our ears, so to speak, our ears which have been tickled by so many alternative voices, loud voices, brilliant voices,
00:02:50.060 is that we can no longer hear the voice of love speaking to us in these warnings.
00:02:57.900 Revelation, this is love speaking.
00:03:02.000 The Lord is saying, I desire that all man be saved.
00:03:06.940 He desires this.
00:03:09.040 But he cannot force faith upon anyone.
00:03:12.980 He cannot force salvation on anyone.
00:03:15.540 To do so would be a violation of his own nature.
00:03:19.600 It would be a violation of love and the moral order of the universe that he has created.
00:03:25.640 So, what are we to do when we meet people who simply dispense references to eternal suffering, eternal exile from God as an ancient myth,
00:03:44.120 a dishonored, discredited myth which we in the modern age have evolved beyond?
00:03:50.840 What do you say to such people?
00:03:54.300 Well, personally, I look at my own psychology as an individual during my years of agnosticism and atheism.
00:04:06.740 I look at the pride which blinded me.
00:04:10.960 I'm an intelligent guy.
00:04:12.940 So, I can read really, really intelligent books and regurgitate massive rationalist thought, massive amount of it.
00:04:23.520 I can sound pretty convincing.
00:04:26.580 And in those years, I sounded pretty convincing.
00:04:28.920 But I was blind.
00:04:33.020 And the very nature of such blindness is that you cannot see your own blindness.
00:04:41.140 You're inside yourself and you're especially unable to see reality if you're convinced of your own superiority, your own superior vision.
00:04:50.480 So blind was I that it took a divine mercy of extraordinary mercy from our Lord to shatter in an instant all my conceptions,
00:05:04.300 which I had carefully built up in the 1960s by reading existential philosophy and new age thought and all the modern rationalists,
00:05:14.160 Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus, all these other brilliant minds, sometimes very creative minds.
00:05:23.300 But dead letters, dead words, ultimately not reality.
00:05:29.560 How do you speak through, as one who has met the Lord, who has seen the nature of the great war in the heavens,
00:05:40.760 who has seen the malice and deceits of the enemy infesting even your own heart, mind?
00:05:50.780 How do you speak to those still trapped in that?
00:05:53.540 It's a great dilemma for me, because everyone is at different stages of perceptual consciousness
00:06:03.360 and psychological openness and also intellectual entrapment or freedom.
00:06:13.380 At the very least, you have to see each of us, each of us who follow Christ, who seek to follow him wholeheartedly,
00:06:23.100 have to say to Jesus in prayer,
00:06:28.380 be within me this moment, Lord, meeting this person,
00:06:33.060 this person who's screaming in my face or this person who is downloading endless rationalism in brilliant language.
00:06:45.600 How do you penetrate through those force fields?
00:06:49.720 You are the Word.
00:06:51.400 You are a living member of the body of Christ.
00:06:57.040 And if you invoke him to be within your heart, soul, mind, and the Holy Spirit,
00:07:02.220 he will give you the words to say.
00:07:04.440 They may be very simple.
00:07:07.280 They may be, in the face of a tsunami of rationalism, only this.
00:07:14.800 I once thought of you.
00:07:16.780 I know your arguments.
00:07:19.740 But then I met Jesus.
00:07:21.420 He who loves you with a love you can't fathom right now.
00:07:29.020 He loves you.
00:07:30.580 You don't know him yet.
00:07:33.520 One day you'll know him.
00:07:35.040 One day you'll meet him.
00:07:37.460 And that's my belief.
00:07:38.840 I think our task, our missionary task at this time of history is primarily,
00:07:45.380 without negating all the other dimensions of evangelization,
00:07:48.740 is primarily to pray for souls.
00:07:51.420 To pray and sacrifice for souls, with much fasting as well.
00:07:59.020 Where this ends up, and it's many pastors that now do this,
00:08:03.380 they teach and or preach the concept of an empty hell.
00:08:10.200 Or their answer to that question is to basically abandon the question,
00:08:14.000 just to say, oh, it's all nonsense anyway.
00:08:15.900 But this is now not only, it's very common among pastors, among prelates even,
00:08:23.560 to make this suggestion, to teach this suggestion.
00:08:27.120 One of the things Pope Benedict said recently was, even in retirement,
00:08:33.320 that was that, you know, without that impetus to save people from hell,
00:08:37.340 what would have happened to the impetus for the martyrs who came to evangelize and got killed?
00:08:43.600 What would you say to a pastor who is given to this theory of,
00:08:48.900 or hope of an empty hell, and who's preaching this?
00:08:51.720 I would say, dear pastor, you are trying to reassure your flock,
00:09:00.280 but you are trying to reassure them with a placebo.
00:09:05.700 They need the fullness of the truth.
00:09:07.680 They need the words of Christ.
00:09:09.240 They need the words and the witness of the martyrs and apostles.
00:09:12.440 They need to be warned.
00:09:15.980 They need to be awakened.
00:09:18.200 You can do it with sensitive pastoral language if you wish,
00:09:21.640 but they do need to be awakened.
00:09:25.280 It is a heresy to say that there is no eternal damnation.
00:09:30.120 It's the heresy of universalism.
00:09:35.320 To go halfway and say, well, there is hell.
00:09:39.300 Well, the Lord says there's a hell, but there's probably no one in that.
00:09:44.000 It is presuming far too much, and it is also counter-scriptural.
00:09:50.580 The Lord warns us, many fall into it.
00:09:55.220 Wide is the road that leads to perdition, and many fall into it.
00:09:59.620 Narrow is the gate that leads to paradise.
00:10:04.640 These are hard sayings of Jesus.
00:10:07.540 We've always called them hard sayings.
00:10:10.300 But what heart of a father would say to their child,
00:10:20.120 oh, I love you so much.
00:10:22.380 I love you tenderly.
00:10:23.640 I want to see you happy and peaceful.
00:10:26.780 I want to see you exercise your own freedom.
00:10:29.540 Yes, if you feel convinced that you wish to play ball in the middle of the 401 freeway,
00:10:39.880 if you wish to run into traffic,
00:10:43.040 I want you to know that I always support you.
00:10:47.740 What does a true father do?
00:10:49.500 My child, if you do that, if you run into traffic again, you will die.
00:11:02.100 You will be harmed, at the very least, severely harmed.
00:11:05.600 I love you so much, but I'm not going to let you do that.
00:11:10.640 And if the will to radical autonomy is such in a child,
00:11:20.600 understandable in little children,
00:11:22.920 understandable to a degree in adolescence,
00:11:26.200 but with grown adults,
00:11:29.460 can you wrap your arms around them and pull them away from the traffic
00:11:34.840 when they say,
00:11:37.260 there's no danger, there's no traffic,
00:11:40.000 I won't die.
00:11:45.340 What does one do?
00:11:47.120 If it's your own children,
00:11:48.300 you can wrap your arms around them and drag them away.
00:11:51.740 What do you do with the human race in general?
00:11:54.360 I think all you can do is be faithful to the word that says,
00:11:58.660 wait, do not go there.
00:12:03.640 You will die.
00:12:06.380 Pretty simple.
00:12:07.740 Some would say simplistic,
00:12:09.300 but it's reality.
00:12:12.200 So with all of this situation,
00:12:15.180 the situation of,
00:12:17.520 as you were saying,
00:12:18.240 the great apostasy,
00:12:19.600 of the massive confusion in the church,
00:12:23.580 even among the prelates who govern the church,
00:12:28.560 where do you get your hope?
00:12:29.920 Now you're an Irishman,
00:12:31.260 and you're a melancholic Irishman,
00:12:33.180 but nevertheless,
00:12:34.900 hopeful,
00:12:35.460 you can still smile.
00:12:36.640 You still pray with joy.
00:12:40.120 And I know,
00:12:41.040 in your own life,
00:12:42.340 you're having all sorts of difficulties,
00:12:44.560 yet you can smile,
00:12:46.500 yet you don't lose the faith.
00:12:48.420 You cling even more and more and more
00:12:50.300 to our Lord,
00:12:51.500 especially His Holy Mother.
00:12:53.320 Where does that hope come from?
00:12:55.340 How do we convey that hope to people?
00:12:57.640 And especially for the Catholics today,
00:13:01.420 who are living in a church replete with confusion,
00:13:04.080 even when they actually see it.
00:13:05.460 So for the few who are actually seeing what's happening,
00:13:08.740 and just suffering because of it,
00:13:11.340 where are they to draw their hope from?
00:13:13.060 Where we always draw it from,
00:13:15.340 that is,
00:13:15.920 from the springs of living water,
00:13:19.300 that is,
00:13:19.920 from the source of the springs,
00:13:21.300 who is the Lord Himself,
00:13:22.900 the life within the Holy Trinity,
00:13:25.180 poured out for mankind
00:13:26.200 through Jesus Christ,
00:13:28.780 who is with us,
00:13:30.520 who was,
00:13:32.080 who is,
00:13:32.620 and who is coming.
00:13:33.680 But He is with us right now.
00:13:37.440 I derive my own sense of hope
00:13:39.500 through primarily the Eucharist
00:13:43.460 and the sacrament of reconciliation,
00:13:46.640 confession,
00:13:48.380 by an ongoing
00:13:49.200 faithfulness to constant conversion.
00:13:56.660 And I am in constant need of conversion.
00:14:00.400 And living in that poverty,
00:14:02.240 accepting to be poor,
00:14:04.220 that I really need a Savior
00:14:05.680 every day of the life.
00:14:07.700 So little by little,
00:14:08.720 as one matures in the Holy Spirit,
00:14:11.480 you can come to an inner condition
00:14:16.360 where you say,
00:14:17.180 I cannot save mankind,
00:14:19.340 I cannot even save myself.
00:14:21.080 I cannot save the church
00:14:22.920 in its time of severe crisis.
00:14:26.160 What I can do
00:14:27.460 is be faithful to Jesus Christ,
00:14:29.940 to be everything He teaches us
00:14:32.920 we should be
00:14:35.020 if we seek to follow Him
00:14:36.580 with our whole hearts,
00:14:38.000 to learn from the saints,
00:14:41.560 from the teachings
00:14:42.440 of our true shepherds,
00:14:45.540 the popes who've gone before,
00:14:47.380 to learn from the experiences
00:14:50.980 which divine providence
00:14:53.680 brings into our lives
00:14:56.260 and shapes us with.
00:14:58.460 By prayer,
00:15:00.140 that when we are discouraged,
00:15:01.820 when we feel angry,
00:15:04.040 when we feel tempted
00:15:05.880 to dismay or despair,
00:15:08.160 we don't curl inwards
00:15:10.500 to our own resources.
00:15:12.040 we run immediately
00:15:16.120 to the Lord
00:15:16.840 and say,
00:15:18.020 Here I am, Lord.
00:15:18.980 Here I am.
00:15:19.620 You see my anger.
00:15:20.640 You see my grief.
00:15:22.500 My grief
00:15:23.120 over the condition
00:15:24.060 of the church.
00:15:25.700 Lord, Lord,
00:15:26.660 I give you
00:15:27.180 my little sufferings
00:15:28.700 united to your cross
00:15:31.380 for the purification
00:15:32.960 and the strengthening
00:15:35.480 of the church
00:15:37.480 that we may bear the light,
00:15:39.720 that we may continue
00:15:42.020 to be salt of the earth
00:15:45.360 for other souls.
00:15:50.840 Hope is a supernatural virtue.
00:15:54.660 It's not optimism.
00:15:57.160 It's very different
00:15:57.960 from faith and love,
00:16:00.640 although there's dimensions
00:16:01.900 of supernatural gift in both.
00:16:04.980 But hope is a particularly
00:16:06.500 unique kind of grace
00:16:10.360 which we have to ask the Lord for.
00:16:15.960 If I may add,
00:16:18.600 especially we Irish melancholics
00:16:20.580 must particularly ask for.
00:16:22.940 Natural optimists?
00:16:25.860 Good for you.
00:16:26.800 I'm glad you're optimists.
00:16:28.260 But there will come a time
00:16:30.100 when all of us will be tested
00:16:31.540 in the dimension
00:16:33.660 of interior hope.
00:16:36.440 So for me,
00:16:37.960 this is a horribly long answer
00:16:39.640 to a short question,
00:16:41.140 but it's so crucial,
00:16:42.420 I think,
00:16:42.800 for the times
00:16:43.560 that we are entering
00:16:45.260 into more and more.
00:16:48.340 We will need hope
00:16:49.740 in a way we have not
00:16:51.000 until now.
00:16:54.680 We must keep our eyes
00:16:56.480 on the true horizon,
00:16:58.140 the eyes of the heart,
00:16:59.200 the eyes of the soul,
00:17:00.100 of the true horizon.
00:17:02.020 The Lord is coming,
00:17:03.700 He is near,
00:17:05.560 He will purify the Church,
00:17:08.340 He will bring mercy
00:17:10.820 and truth to mankind.
00:17:13.860 And in Him we have to trust.
00:17:17.540 Beautiful.
00:17:18.400 Let me just ask you
00:17:19.240 one last thing,
00:17:20.500 and that is about Our Lady.
00:17:23.180 I know you have
00:17:23.660 a devotion to Her,
00:17:24.740 you have beautiful icons
00:17:26.740 which to me
00:17:27.700 bespeak of your love
00:17:29.100 for Our Lady,
00:17:29.780 because I see
00:17:30.320 in Her eyes
00:17:31.140 the love with which
00:17:33.260 you created the image.
00:17:36.760 So what is Our Lady to you?
00:17:39.340 What is Our Lady
00:17:40.060 to the Church right now?
00:17:42.340 Oh, you're asking me
00:17:43.540 to condense an ocean
00:17:44.620 into a little teacup.
00:17:47.980 Our Lady.
00:17:48.760 I think she is God's great gift
00:17:52.920 to accompany Christ as Redeemer.
00:17:58.820 In a sense,
00:17:59.420 she is co-redemptrix,
00:18:01.620 in a subsidiary sense,
00:18:04.240 united to Jesus
00:18:05.120 on the cross
00:18:06.260 and in the resurrection.
00:18:09.920 But touching upon her role
00:18:11.760 in our own times,
00:18:14.580 she has always been
00:18:15.520 been our mother intercessor.
00:18:18.440 She has always been
00:18:19.520 prophetic,
00:18:21.040 bringing words of warning
00:18:22.160 to the Church
00:18:22.960 at its times
00:18:24.580 of gravest crisis.
00:18:26.740 The last 170 years
00:18:29.840 of Marian apparitions,
00:18:31.460 approved by the Church,
00:18:33.720 are a continual maternal call
00:18:36.240 to repentance,
00:18:37.700 to prayer,
00:18:38.380 to intercession,
00:18:39.240 to the conversion
00:18:40.340 of our own hearts,
00:18:42.100 lest justice fall
00:18:44.700 upon mankind.
00:18:47.000 The justice
00:18:47.700 that we have called down
00:18:50.440 upon ourselves.
00:18:52.760 Heaven desires
00:18:53.800 to pour out mercy
00:18:55.080 on mankind,
00:18:56.400 but if we do not repent,
00:18:59.460 the Lord will not allow
00:19:01.760 evil to continue
00:19:04.880 to devour the good
00:19:06.420 indefinitely.
00:19:08.380 Ad infinitum.
00:19:09.680 It is mercy
00:19:11.300 that will bring
00:19:12.780 the times
00:19:15.640 of the apocalypse
00:19:16.340 to their definitive conclusion.
00:19:18.480 It is mercy.
00:19:19.420 We tend to think
00:19:20.060 of it as justice.
00:19:21.700 It is justice,
00:19:23.220 but it is primarily mercy.
00:19:25.460 But the reign of evil
00:19:26.780 will end.
00:19:28.880 What is Our Lady's role?
00:19:31.460 There is that
00:19:32.320 most beautiful passage
00:19:33.680 in Genesis
00:19:36.540 where
00:19:38.720 the reference
00:19:41.160 is to the woman.
00:19:43.700 I will set enmity
00:19:44.820 between you
00:19:45.780 and the woman,
00:19:46.500 your offspring
00:19:47.160 and her offspring.
00:19:50.700 And she will crush
00:19:51.760 the head of the serpent.
00:19:55.080 Then in the final book
00:19:56.460 of Sacred Scriptures,
00:19:58.040 from Genesis
00:19:58.680 forward to Revelation,
00:20:01.040 we have the great
00:20:02.520 vision of St. John
00:20:04.020 of the woman
00:20:04.740 clothed with the sun,
00:20:07.680 the crown of twelve stars.
00:20:10.920 You are all familiar
00:20:11.720 with the iconography
00:20:12.800 of this
00:20:13.400 in Western
00:20:14.280 and Eastern art.
00:20:16.000 But this is the role
00:20:17.260 of not only the church,
00:20:19.440 it is a type
00:20:19.960 of the church,
00:20:20.980 but the woman
00:20:22.360 of Revelation.
00:20:23.920 But the woman
00:20:25.280 clothed with the sun,
00:20:26.760 standing on the moon,
00:20:27.940 surrounded by twelve stars.
00:20:29.400 She is also Mary.
00:20:33.020 She is our mother.
00:20:34.100 She is
00:20:34.780 the new Eve.
00:20:39.020 And in
00:20:39.720 her assistance,
00:20:43.620 assisting the redemption
00:20:44.800 of mankind
00:20:45.460 in an absolutely
00:20:47.040 unique manner,
00:20:49.180 God in his mercy
00:20:52.480 has allowed,
00:20:54.460 poor word,
00:20:55.680 the reversal
00:20:56.300 more accurately,
00:20:59.920 the restoration
00:21:00.520 of man
00:21:01.320 through Christ.
00:21:02.700 But through
00:21:03.160 Christ the new Adam,
00:21:06.060 Mary the new Eve.
00:21:08.320 This is love at work
00:21:09.600 in salvation history.
00:21:14.840 I keep in mind,
00:21:17.000 and I pray often,
00:21:19.300 the promise of Genesis,
00:21:20.640 which,
00:21:22.640 if the apocalypse
00:21:23.760 is to unfold
00:21:24.920 in its final phases
00:21:26.460 in our lifetimes,
00:21:27.960 we will see
00:21:29.200 incarnated
00:21:30.600 in her
00:21:31.920 crushing
00:21:32.600 the head
00:21:33.160 of the serpent.
00:21:34.620 What form
00:21:35.240 that will take,
00:21:35.840 I don't know.
00:21:37.520 Surely,
00:21:38.380 part of it
00:21:38.900 will be
00:21:39.440 our prayers,
00:21:42.320 assisting
00:21:42.840 her prayers
00:21:44.840 to the Father.
00:21:46.820 Amen.
00:21:48.180 Beautiful.
00:21:49.100 Thank you, Michael.
00:21:49.740 I want to be
00:21:51.760 short.
00:21:52.240 Info by the answer.
00:21:53.580 Sorry, sorry, sorry.
00:21:56.320 That's all the time
00:21:57.160 we have for this episode.
00:21:58.620 No, that's great.
00:21:59.520 That's all the time
00:22:00.220 we have for this episode
00:22:01.340 of the John Henry Weston Show
00:22:02.660 from the beautiful
00:22:04.860 Ottawa Valley.
00:22:06.100 May God bless you
00:22:06.920 and keep you,
00:22:08.080 and we'll see you next time.