I don’t want to speculate as to Mr. Hickman’s faith, but from the opening line of his piece below it may be safe to assume he’s a Roman Catholic. However, assuming usually leads to errors and problems. Okay. If so, he still writes an excellent article regarding how lost men and women are and in need of the Lord Jesus Christ, and eventually some will turn to Him. Let’s not judge him by the denomination he may associate with if he is proclaiming Jesus is Lord and turning to Jesus is what is missing in this dark sin-filled world.
I would never attach a number of years, months, or days until the Lord returns, until the Rapture of the Church, and when the seven-year Great Tribulation begins. We are clearly told by God in His holy Word no one knows the time. Except Him.
Anyone — anyone — declaring a year, a month, a day, an hour is a heretic. Why else would they directly go against the inerrant infallible unchanging living and active Word of God?
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Matthew 24:36-37
As in the Days of Noah. Have you read, do you know what those days were like [see Genesis 6 through Genesis 11]? Like today only now there are more people on earth to perish, more violence, more idolatry, more sexual debauchery, perversion, and immorality. More lying. More mocking of God. Especially now as in Noah’s day, the people knew of God in their hearts because God places that knowledge in every heart of every person ever born — but they did not know of Jesus as we do.
As this world writhes and groans in the sins of man, as people openly turn from God and evil no longer attempts to cloak itself, hide in darkness but now boldly inhabits every institution and dominates the human landscape, the West has been in rapid decline since turning from God, turning from Jesus, turning from the Holy Spirit [if they ever knew Him], and turning from the whole Holy Bible the days grow darker, shorter, and hasten the return of the Lord and the fulfillment of the last few remaining Biblical prophecies.
Why do I mention this? Mr. Hickman makes the statements;
“Perhaps my most outrageous opinion on anything is this: The West will see mass conversions to Roman Catholicism within the next century.”
No one knows the day, the hour, the month, or the year but I can’t imagine what this corrupted world would be like to attempt to live daily life on if it goes on within the NEXT century. And that the Church of Rome would somehow be the beacon of faith and revival in the West.
Hummm…
If you’ve been here before and spent any time here then you know I extol the need for individual revival. Group revival is a misnomer, deceiving, as if unless a large group is gathered in a place revival can’t occur. Even in the places where large groups are gathered and the true clear Word of God is preached, the gospel is heard and reaches into hearts, spirits, minds, and lives are changed — the Holy Spirit is entering individual hearts, spirits, minds, and lives. There is no group salvation. Only individual salvation. One on One with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, I would never attach any time to when the Lord is coming to gather us, His Church, and then the seven-year Great Tribulation begins, but even being a part-time observer, a nonchalant watcher a person cannot truly imagine or believe this world at its current pace of decay, depravity, decline and delusion entering into the NEXT century.
Not with the technology already present. The geo-political situation. The Middle East. The decline and falling away within the church and the rise of unsound doctrines and their approval by many.
We live in the Biblical times of Romans 1 and Jude 1:4 to mention just two of the many references pointing to our present time. And those words were written during and to the first-century church. It’s all coming to an end, dear ones, friends and foes. What is transpiring and escalating cannot be sustained endlessly. It is going to reach a climax. Sooner than later. Do not get caught with your lamps empty of oil, unprepared.
Mr. Hickman writes an excellent article. A sincere faithful man racing out to the world and to other believers. As we are all to do.
Read on…
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024
The Church calls out even to those mired in the farthest depths of secular nihilism.
August 04, 2024
by A.M. Hickman
Reprinted from Blaze Media
Perhaps my most outrageous opinion on anything is this: The West will see mass conversions to Roman Catholicism within the next century.
I say this having traveled to the farthest depths of secular nihilism myself — and having been jilted by the its false promise. The world of pure rationality posited by the “secular fundamentalist” is a dead world in which life’s universal drive to live — and to live beautifully — is silenced, buried, and disposed of.
Men cannot live in such a world for long. Eventually, human beings observe the ugliness produced by this manner of thinking, living, and believing — and they experience their “moment.”
They pull back, they get canceled, they become disgusted and disillusioned with the very beliefs they once so fervently shouted in the streets. Such a man knows by what he has observed that the fall of man could well be true — and if he has any wits about him, he recognizes that every soul on earth needs guidance to contend with his own fallen nature.
Where better to find such guidance than from an institution that has weathered every storm of the tumultuous history of the West — a contiguous lineage of wisdom that has never been broken since the time of Christ? Its authority was not invented or improvised; it was not created on the fly by false prophets at such and such a date — it was born by the word of the Lord, and it lives.
And what is the antidote to man’s wayward nature but selfless love of the other? Was this not, in many cases, the original impetus that brought many human beings to crave “social justice”? Was the secular vision of this thing complete? Was it effective?
It was not — and one finds quickly that it is only by laying down one’s life for one’s friends that one unlocks the beauty of human life and delves into a flavor of divinity denied by the secular, rational world and its rabid faith.
In short, the astute begin to register that Christ’s life and holy sacrifice must represent the ideal vision of human life — that his way has survived as doggedly as it has for a very good reason. Once a man finds himself standing naked, his faith in modern trivialities shaken and lost, he cannot help but draw near to the cathedral and to Christ in the flesh. He cannot help but crave to bear witness to the miracle of the Holy Eucharist — and, in time, to accept the Lord into his own body as completely as a man could.
I do not believe that I am especially biased in making this assessment. I simply think that if history is any metric, solid, lasting, contiguous lineages of faith and wisdom rise from the ashes of false systems as those systems meet their merciful deaths. Spurious cults and sects are flashes in the pan; feverish attempts at rational mastery of life fall flat — and ceaseless hedonism deadens the heart.
When it is all over, the Church is there, and she will receive all who come. You may not believe that what I am writing here is true; you may imagine that it could never be true, but I have an unshakable faith that it will be proven true in due time. Perhaps there is nothing else in my life that I am as sure about.
A.M. Hickman is an itinerant geographer from the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. He writes at Hickman’s Hinterlands on Substack.
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