March 28, 2024

The Two Women of the Apocalypse

Two key figures that are mentioned in the book of the Apocalypse are two women, one of them “clothed with the sun”, and the other which is the “great whore”.

“And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head, who, being with child, cried out...and the Dragon stood before the woman who was about to be delivered, so as to devour her Son as soon as she gave birth...When the Dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the man child, and there were given to the Woman two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly into the desert, to a place where she is nourished for a time and (two) times and half a time, from the face of the serpent...” (Apoc. 12, 1-4; 13-14).

The other woman of the Apocalypse, the great whore:

And there came one of the seven angels, who had the seven vials, and spoke with me, saying: come here; I will show you the condemnation of the great whore, who sits upon many waters; with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication; and they who inhabit the earth, have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom. And he took me away in spirit into the desert; and I saw a woman sitting on a beast who had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and covered in gold and precious stones and pearls, and she had in her hand (on one side) a golden chalice full of abominations and (on the other side) the filthiness of her fornications. And on her forehead a name was written, a mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornicators and the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and I wondered, when I had seen her, with great admiration”. (Apoc. 17, 1-6).

In the Old Testament, the “woman” in Scripture constantly means Israel, i.e. the religion of the Jewish people. In the New Testament, St. Paul represented the Church with the figure of a maiden, a virgin who gives herself in marriage to Christ.

In other words, the two women of the Apocalypse represent religion in its two extreme poles, the corrupted religion and the faithful religion; the false Church and the true Church: the great whore on the beast is the false Church and the woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet who is about to give birth, and crowned with a crown of twelve stars is the faithful Church. The “dressed with the sun” is the true faith, and the moon under her feet is the changing world; the crown of twelve stars is the plenitude of doctrine and its preachers, following the inspirations of the first twelve preachers, the apostles.

These two aspects of religion are perfectly distinguishable for God, but not necessarily for us. The darnel looks like corn, and these are not separated until the day of harvesting. For this reason there are two angels who harvest on the Day of the Great Wrath of God: one will cut the ripe corn, and the other the clusters which must be trodden on in the great Day of the Wrath of Yahvé. The Holy and Immaculate Church and the pharisaic and adulterated Church have been and are intimately intermingled and confused; the carnal part of the Church, formed by the darnel, by those who have been called but have not been chosen.

Therefore the great whore has on her forehead the name of Babylon the great, the Rome which represents the distorted Church of the End Times (Apoc. 17, 9), the false Church which is no longer the Church of Christ, because Rome will be conniving with the false prophet and at the service of the antichrist after the True Church has been gathered together and taken to the desert, i.e., when the corn has been stored in the granary and the straw is then ready to be burned.

The prostitute can neither be distinguished in nature nor in the external form of an honest woman. She continues to be a woman. But the bad woman, the Great Whore, is sitting on the Beast.

This then is what the false prophet means. He will lead the false Church and will be at the service of the antichrist, who also appears like Christ. That is why Scripture says that “the false prophet spoke like the dragon, but he had two horns like the lamb” (Apoc. 13, 11).

In short, the Great Whore is essentially a distorted Christianity.

To better understand what has gone before, let us remember that when Christ came the times were confusing and sad. Religion was perverted among its leaders and consequently in part among the Jewish people. Therefore Christ said to His apostles “do what they tell you but don’t do what they do”.

The same is happening today, the carnal aspect of religion is propagated, hiding, adulterating and even persecuting the truth. The mystery of iniquity has been installed in the holy place; it is the Great Whore getting drunk on the blood of the martyrs who will spill their blood in these End Times.

Therefore, the faithful part of religion, i.e. the Woman clothed with the sun, the true Church, will suffer “labour pains”, and the Dragon will be about to swallow her Son. But the woman will be saved because she will be taken to the solitude of the desert with the two wings of an eagle; and even there she will be persecuted by this huge wave of filthy and torrential water which the Dragon will throw against her. But the new spouse, with the crucible of suffering and purification, will remain without blemish, conceived once again in an immaculate way. In other words: the true Church, the New Church, will survive for its glorious and definitive triumph.

The fundamental mistake of our time is that they want to amalgamate the Kingdom of God and of the Church with the criteria of the world, which is exactly what Sacred Scripture calls “prostitution”.

The two women are sisters, born of the same mother, religion, religiosity, the deep religious instinct of man and of the Christian, but one of these two women has prostituted herself with worldly naturalism.

The Beast of the earth (the false prophet) is like the Lamb, because he performs miracles and deceitful prodigies, promises happiness and speaks beautiful words full of flattery; he preaches love, democracy, human rights and peace. He promises the kingdom and happiness like Christ but in the kingdom of this world, with the efforts of man alone, without God, just as the Dragon promised Christ all the kingdoms of this world in the temptations on the mount.

The Woman clothed with the sun is the small faithful remnant that resists the violent blows of the Dragon and of the “second beast”, the false prophet.

“Katejon”: the restrainer

However, for the apostasy to crystallise (because the apostasy and the schism have not formally crystallised yet) it is necessary that the obstacle that holds it back be removed.

The mystery of this “obstacle” (“katejon” in Greek) is revealed by St. Paul in the second letter to the Thessalonians: “Only that he who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way, then the wicked one shall be revealed” (Thess. 2, 3-8).

St. Paul establishes that before the antichrist and his false prophet be revealed publicly, a person who “restrains” or delays his manifestation must be taken out of the way.

The full sense of verse 7 of the second chapter of this letter seems to indicate that St. Paul sets one person, the antichrist, against another person who delays or hinders his public manifestation. In other words, we find ourselves between a concrete human person, and one that is not historical, but in the future.

The relationship between these two people is situated in the context of faith, as the manifestation of the “wicked one” is linked to apostasy, the abandonment or negation of the true religion. That’s to say, the restrainer is a spiritual leader whose performance avoids or delays the apostate doctrine in attaining superiority.

With these two elements, and given that Jesus Christ promised the assistance of the Holy Spirit to one person only, to the apostle St. Peter and his legitimate successors, to guarantee the preservation of the faith against the different forms of apostasy, one can conclude that the “restrainer” will be a legitimate Pope who is reigning when doctrinal dissolution reaches such a level that the antichrist and the false prophet can fool and captivate the world, from the war of Ezequiel onwards. This person could well be Pope Benedict XVI.

The Pauline prophecy of “katejon” is the scriptural foundation of the revelation that St. Pius X and other catholic mystics had, who speak of a violent persecution that awaits a legitimate Pope, while at the same time an antipope occupies the seat of Peter.

In fact, in 1909, Pope St. Pius X confided to his private secretary and other close ecclesiastics a very special revelation: “I have had a terrible vision: I do not know if it is I or one of my successors, but I saw a Pope fleeing Rome among the corpses of his brothers. He will take refuge incognito somewhere and after a short time he will die a cruel death”.

This event, which hasn’t happened yet, coincides almost literally with the content of the vision the children of Fatima had eight years later. The Blessed Virgin had shown them the vision of a bishop dressed in white fleeing from a city in ruins, over the corpses of many priests and lay people, to be murdered later.

The first thing that comes to mind is that this schism and the flight of a legitimate Pope from Rome have not happened yet, and that it doesn’t refer, as the Vatican tried to make us believe on the 26th of June 2000, to the assault that John Paul II suffered on the 13th of May 1981, as the Pope did not flee Rome, this city was not in ruins, there were no corpses of priests or lay people on the way, and he wasn’t later murdered.

No. The explanation the Virgin gave to that vision is that there would be a schism in the Church, in which a legitimate Pope would confront an illegitimate Pope, and that the apostasy or adulterated faith would come out of the top of the Church, i.e. from the Papacy.

In the words of Cardinal Luigi Ciappi, personal theologian to Pope John Paul II: “The third secret of Fatima refers to the loss of faith in the Church, i.e. the apostasy, it will come from the top of the Church”.

In the words of Fr. Paul Kramer, “The Antipope and his collaborators will be apostates, as Sister Lucy said, followers of the devil, they will work on the side of evil without fearing anything”.

Conclusion

Mexico is more than four and a half centuries under the mysterious gaze of the “Lady of Guadalupe”. But the full extent of this predilection will shine forth in the Great Tribulation, when its spiritual role among the nations will stand out.

It is our destiny to live in a time in which the supreme battle between the “Woman clothed with the sun” and the serpent and his “great whore” materialises, a battle which culminates with the final and peremptory victory of the true church of Christ, and with the admirable renovation of the whole cosmic and human order.

The special Marian intervention that occurred on the mountain of Tepeyac, in December 1531, brought about the admirable effect of merging two races under the common denominator of the Christian faith. But not only that. The presence of the Blessed Mother also had the goal of preparing the people of Mexico for their End Times mission, that of announcing the return of Jesus Christ and bearing witness with their fidelity to the legitimate Pope.

This nation, whose independence was gained by way of a sacred war which raised the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in whose religious persecution the help of the supreme Pontiff was always near, managed to forge an intuition and a special charisma of adhesion to the Pope, which will spontaneously sprout again when chaos and division strike.

The heart of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Mexico will be revealed in its fullness when the Woman, persecuted by the serpent, flees to the desert to take refuge and prepare the victory of her Son, i.e. while the world accepts the antipope, the majority of Mexicans – and of the Portuguese, as the Virgin made known in the revelations of Fatima – will remain faithful to the legitimate Pope and will then be persecuted and have to hide themselves, the “katejon” of St. Paul. As the role of the Virgin will be determinant in the End Times, so also will the role of Mexico.

In his book “Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe”, Jacques Lafaye takes up a couple of Guadalupian works corresponding to sermons from the XVIII century. In them one reads: “The Virgin Mary, appearing in her image of Guadalupe, bestowed on the Mexicans a charisma of identification with the Woman of the Apocalypse. Referring to the prophecies attributed to the apostle St. John, she showed in the mariophany of Tepeyac the announcement of the End of the Times, which the Church of the Parousia of Mary would survive. In the same way that God had chosen the Hebrews for the incarnation of his Son Jesus, in the same way Mary, the redemptress of the End of Times, the one who will triumph over the reign of the antichrist, wished to choose the Mexicans”.

Rate this item
(3 votes)
Last modified on Friday, 02 November 2018 19:10
José Alberto Villasana Munguía

José Alberto Villasana Munguía is a Writer and analyst of political, economic and religious international affairs.

He studied Theology in the Gregorian University in Rome, Philosophy in the Angelicum University in Rome, Classical Humanities in the Centre for Higher Studies in Salamanca, Spain and International Communications in the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), specialising in Eschatology since 1995.

He is Academic Adviser to the International Institute of Human Rights.

He is a director member of the Journalist’s Club of Mexico.

He is President of the pro life civil association “Life to be Born” (Vida para Nacer).

He has received the National Award for Journalism on three occasions in the categories of in-depth investigation.