Prophecies By Visionaries Who Foresaw Today’s Crisis in the Church
There have been many chosen visionaries who over preceeding centuries have forewarned us of the great turmoil and betrayals we would suffer in the Catholic Church. Are we seeing these terrible prophecies beginning to unravell in our own times today? The purpose of those heavenly warnings given long ago was to prepare us to remain in God’s good grace, steadfast and strong in the face of a diabolical onslaught. The prophecies given by Our Lady of Good Success at Quito from 1594 to 1634 to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres; those at La Salette in 1846 to Melanie and Maximin; the vision of Pope Leo XIII in 1884 that inspired him to write the prayer for protection to St Michael Archangel; the messages and secrets from Our Lady at Fatima to Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta in 1917; and finally, the prophetical messages in 1973 from Our Lady to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa at Akita are all well known. They are prophecies recognised as authentic by the Catholic Church, but how few of her children have heeded them!
But there have been other warnings too, other prophecies given to trustworthy members of the Church in recent times that are less well known. Can we not see how they all tie in together? Let us look at just a few of them…
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This is the horrifying prophecy of Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) about the condition of the Church at the time of the anti-Christ:
“[Satan] will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the [Catholic] Church … It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content.”
We are living in the days of the Apocalypse, the last days of our era. The two great forces – the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical Body of the anti-Christ – are beginning to draw battle lines for the catastrophic contest.
The False prophet will have a religion without a cross. A religion without a world to come. A religion to destroy religions. There will be a counterfeit Church.
Christ’s Church the Catholic Church will be one; and the false Prophet will create the other.
The False Church will be worldly, ecumenical, and global. It will be a loose federation of churches and religions, forming some type of global association.
A world parliament of Churches. It will be emptied of all Divine content, it will be the mystical body of the anti-christ. The Mystical Body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and he will be the false prophet. Satan will recruit him from our Bishops.
The Antichrist will not be so called; otherwise he would have no followers. He will not wear red tights, nor vomit sulphur, nor carry a trident nor wave an arrowed tail as Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade has helped the Devil convince men that he does not exist. When no man recognizes, the more power he exercises. God has defined Himself as “I am Who am,” and the Devil as “I am who am not.”
Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find warrant for the popular myth of the Devil as a buffoon who is dressed like the first “red.” Rather is he described as an angel fallen from heaven, as “the Prince of this world,” whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world. His logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no judgment then evil is good and good is evil. But above all these descriptions, Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself that he would deceive even the elect–and certainly no devil ever seen in picture books could deceive even the elect. How will he come in this new age to win followers to his religion?
The pre-Communist Russian belief is that 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.
The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion–one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.
In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, 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 counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. 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 …
But the twentieth century will join the counterchurch because it claims to be infallible when its visible head speaks ex cathedra from Moscow on the subject of economics and politics, and as chief shepherd of world communism.” (Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West)
Sheen was a man of his time and 'Moscow' was the nominal political enemy. There are more powerful ones now. The most likely anti-christ could more easily be from the far east - China? - or the middle east - Islam - or even the more powerful western world - America.
ReplyDeleteQuite so and we can only hope that it's commonly understood that "Russia" was appropriated to represent totalitarianism and Marxism from wherever it infiltrates and pervades society and politics. God's Word given to prophets is subject to human frailty when vocalized.
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