FROM Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina to Tapao in Vietnam, from Garabandal in Spain to Akita in Japan, from Kibeho in Rwanda to Bacolod in the Philippines, and many other places all over the world, there have been apparitions of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary to credible people, many of them simple and hardly aware of each other's existence.
These mystics have either relayed only recently or continue to issue seemingly frantic messages and warnings to mankind. In some cases, the supernatural manifestations in these apparitions are sensational, dwarfing UFO events but, surprisingly, not generating as much media interest. But their reality is hard to deny: witnesses are cumulatively by the hundreds of thousands amid enough documentation that befuddles even science.
However, most people, even Catholics, opt to put off supernatural events for various reasons. Some consciously evade fear, some simply do not believe (it is not, after all, obligatory to believe private revelations), while others are just not interested because there's a "real" world to bother with.
This, despite the immediate fulfillment of some prophecies in a matter of months, if not weeks.
The messages from Our Lord Jesus and the Blessed Mother are for all, Catholics and non-Catholics. They call for responses to ease, if not draw back, the tribulations called for by Divine Justice. To ignore them would be to the court what lack of conversion, nay, continued defiance of God, deserves.
Thus, the messages from Heaven continue, with warnings so serious as to convert more fervently any believer.
Such was the message of, Our Blessed Mother told mystic Eduardo Ferreira last October 13, the anniversary of the Fatima apparitions. She gave a prophecy intimating that the days of Pope Francis are numbered. She said:
"Peace. On this special day, I invite you to prayer, fasting, sacrifices and penance with one voice, asking the Father for clemency and so that there would be repentance. No country will escape Divine Justice. Pray for priests and missionaries. The time of the successor of Peter is coming to an end. Pray much for the one who is coming. Mercy is at your door. Never doubt."
There's another living mystic named Iveta Cleophas Fernandes, a Canadian of Indian origin, who has been receiving messages from Our Lord Jesus and the Blessed Mother since June 27, 1993. Some of these messages have been compiled into a book titled Suffering and the Thesis of Purgatory to which I lend credence if only because its introduction was written by Bishop Antholy Alwyns Barreto of Sindhudurg, India.
Apart from the subject of Purgatory, Evita also wrote in the book some prophecies. For example, she wrote about her vision of what is to happen to the Church, as follows:
"They come marching closer and closer. Every Church door is closed. They have barred the Church doors, and yet they march. They have a warrant. They have some kind of a document that they can enter. Every city in the World is in an uproar. The Military kicks the doors open and they find so many Priests. They do not even speak to them, they just grab them and they... Oh My God, My God, asking them to denounce Jesus of Nazareth as True God in the presence of The Holy Eucharist.
"A beautiful vision: Each of these Holy Priests look up to Heaven, they see the beautiful Face of Our Holy Mother in The Eucharist, holding The Monstrance close to Her Heart and they look back at the Military guards, they say not a word. They will not denounce Jesus...Those that will not open the doors and in Third World countries, their churches are set ablaze! I see Sacred Statues and religious articles brought outside and battered and broken as though to put fear in the faithful. You see rejoicing in those who are following the antipope, the antichrist. They shout out that the ‘Gods have come down on Earth and peace and prosperity is ours.’" (End of quote)
I have already shared with readers the prophecies regarding the fate of the Church as conveyed to Canadian mystic Fr. Michel Rodrigue. He foretold the collapse of the world economy and persecution of the Church, a world war, the descent of tongues of fire to guide believers to designated refuges for protection, the Warning similar to that which were revealed to the visionaries of Garabandal, Spain in the 1960s, etc.
He said that many will be converted by the Warning wherein all, without exception, will see their souls as God sees them, but that after a few weeks, scientists would try to give a "scientific" explanation of what had happened. This, he said, would be followed by the ascent of the antichrist.
I must warn readers that I am not putting Fr. Michel's prophecies chronologically, since the mystic-priest was not exactly explicit on this.
It is worth recalling what Bishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote about the antichrist in 1951. He said:
"The Antichrist will not be so called; otherwise he would have no followers... he will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves... He will tempt Christians with the same three temptations with which he tempted Christ... He will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.
"He will set up a counter church... It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ."
As dire prophecies pour, Our Blessed Mother also continues to give us counsel on what to do. Last October 15, she told mystic Martin Gavenda of Slovakia as follows:
"My beloved children! Remain gathered around my Immaculate Heart, praying the Holy Rosary, for the great desolation has begun. Heresies and errors are spreading. This is the final struggle for the preservation of the true Catholic faith: it has nothing to do with the New Spring of the Holy Spirit. That will come after the great desolation. Stay protected in our Sacred Hearts. I immerse you in the love of Jesus and my Heart."