“Parousia” (From the Greek παρουσία) means manifestation, to become present and designates the second coming of Jesus Christ, a public and glorious apparition announced by Himself, who will return to carry out three things: 1) Defeat the Antichrist as well as the False Prophet and those who imposed an antichristian world government for seven years; 2) Judge the Nations and carry out the first Resurrection and 3) Restore creation and elevate human nature in it’s integrity, intimately and essentially transforming it. With the Parousia, Jesus inaugurates the long period of a “Thousand years” of His Reign on the earth, which concludes with the third and last manifestation in the Final Judgement.

Jesus Himself promised to return after the Great Tribulation: “After the affliction of those days, they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory” (Mt 24, 29; Mk 13, 26; LK 21, 27)

The angels who witnessed the Ascension testified accordingly: “That same Jesus that you have seen go up to Heaven, will return just as you have seen Him ascend” (Acts 1, 11).

The Apostle Saint Paul expressed it like this: “Christ, after offering Himself up once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, no longer in relation to sin, but to those who await Him for their salvation (HB 9, 28).

And thus a good number of Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the first four centuries of the Church held and maintained, in summary: That Jesus must return to reign on this earth for a long period (“A thousand years” in Apocalyptic genre), after the Mystery of Iniquity reaches its excess during the Great Tribulation; that He will return to defeat the Antichrist and his accomplices and that the first resurrection will take place, that of all the Saints, who, after Satan has been enchained, will reign for a thousand years with Christ, together with those who were raptured in the Great Tribulation and with those who died as martyrs during this period, thus exercising the promised throne of David from a restored Jerusalem, over a totally renewed world.

The majority of Christians nowadays have forgotten the essential Dogma of the Faith, which is the second coming of Christ in his reigning state. The paradox is that they have to repeat it each time they pray the Our father: “Thy Kingdom come”.

Contrary to the Anti-millennialists, who spiritualise the Reign of Christ so much to the point of confusing it with heaven and of mixing the Parousia with the Final Judgement, it wasn’t like that for the first Christians: they had received from the Apostles and the Evangelists that Christ would return to reign in this world for a long period, after having defeated Satan, who would apparently triumph during the Great Tribulation. Then only after this long reign of Christ would come the end of the world and the Last Judgement.

The Parousia is the event that concludes the Great Tribulation and heralds the beginning of the Millennium.