Taken from our book Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah
We can Change the World!
We must Change the World!
Most beloved family, we have traveled a rough road together and we are nearing the end of this book and this Century. If we truly believe in Holy Scripture, that the Lord has used prophets down through the ages to speak to us, we have reason to be frightened. There is every indication, we may very well be speeding headlong toward the last days. Our concern should be not necessarily for ourselves (if we have been traveling the straight and narrow path which leads us to the Kingdom), but for our children and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the future generations who deserve to live in a world free from plagues, nuclear holocausts and cataclysmic disasters of one kind or another. We need to pray for our Church, our country, and our world, and then do something about it!
"Take back our country; we must take back our world!"
The church was filled with mourners, people of all faiths, all backgrounds, including not only members and friends of the students who had been killed, but people from this small peaceful village, where peace once reigned and was taken for granted. The townspeople cried, "This doesn't happen in our village!" As we heard those cries, we remembered crying out much the same thing when we lost our son to an overdose of drugs. But it does happen, and there are no border guards to keep it from striking anywhere, where God is not the Supreme Head.
During the writing of this book, a massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado took place, Tuesday, April 20, 1999, where fifteen lives were lost and thirteen others wounded, not to count the countless others who will be scarred by this holocaust. It was pointed out that this having been the anniversary of the birthday of Adolf Hitler, the youthful terrorists planned their bloodbath for that day, in some twisted sense of honor to him.
Like most Americans, and probably a good deal of the population of the world, we sat shocked in front of our television sets as the story of this American disgrace unfolded. It reminded us of the Assassination of President Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. We stayed glued to the television sets the entire weekend, right up to the funeral.
In Littleton, on Saturday night, at the funeral of one of the girls murdered in the High School, a minister preached to the young people, dazed and weeping uncontrollably for their classmate whose only crime was she loved Jesus, and she passed that love on to every one she met; she was everyone's favorite. When the killers approached her, they asked, "Do you believe in God? and when she replied, "I believe in God!" they shot her! A godless act against God and His little messenger on earth.
"I believe in God!" One pastor said that Prayer had returned to the schools! As we watched the scenes over and over again, almost praying it was not real, but another one of television's gory programs, we could hear the students crying out, "God! Oh my God!" as they ran for cover, their hands on their heads (instructions from the police who were afraid the gunmen would change their clothes and mix with the other students).
One minister told the students and the parents, "You must take back your schools!" He repeated it many times, "You must take back your schools!" This entire tragedy has had a great impact on us and our family. Our book, not yet finished, we were given an inspiration to go one step further and cry out to you, "We must take back our country; we must take back our world!" And how shall we do that?
A man of God had the courage to say, "Prayer has returned to the schools!" No one tried to stop those children from reaching out to the only real Help - God! And we believe, with all our hearts, that there will be a new beginning in Littleton, Colorado--God has entered the school and they are not about to let Him be shoved out!
This horrible negative, the killing of innocent children and teacher, is destined, like the killing of the Innocent One on the Cross, to become a positive; as Salvation came about on the Cross and Jesus rose from the dead, so these beautiful souls whose life was snuffed out prematurely will not have died in vain! Through the death of these martyrs, who had been earmarked to die (by possessed gunmen from their own school), prayer has returned to Littleton, Colorado and that will snowball until Prayer and God is resurrected in our schools, in our land, returned to a nation called to holiness by Pope John Paul II! Our Pope called upon us as a Continent of Hope to be a Nation of Life with Dignity for all.
Who is to blame for what happened last week in Colorado?
...or for that matter, the ten other high school shootings which have taken place within the last sixteen months in the United States?
We have to answer that with a question:
Who took God out of our schools?
Who ordered the ban on voluntary prayer by students in schools? (Will the next thing, as in Nazi Germany, be in homes?)
Who ordered teachers and coaches in schools to not allow, nor support or encourage prayer by students in school, under penalty of imprisonment or loss of jobs or both?
Who ordered, that the religious rights of the many be suppressed, for the agenda of even one atheist? The question you have a right to ask is, Why does one atheist have more rights than thousands of believers?
Do we have a system of checks and balances as our Constitution calls for, or is our country ruled by the Supreme Court, which is just an extension of the president who appointed the Justices for life?
There is a godlessness taking over this once Godly land. A godless people have infiltrated our country, our government, our courts. The words of our sacred Constitution, to accommodate a godless agenda, have been systematically and blatantly twisted so that the meaning of the original framers of the Constitution has now been disputed and ridiculed, accusing the Founding Fathers who wrote it, of being ignorant of its true intent when they drafted it.
Once that was accomplished, and the uproar died down sufficiently, there was no stopping evil from sucking the life out of our country. This plague has gotten so out of hand that laws and morality are virtually non-existent in this country. But the right to be as immoral as we please, and to impose that immorality on our neighbor is protected by various civil rights groups. They will defend anyone's rights as long as they are not pro-church, pro-religion or pro-God. And these organizations are funded by our government. What can we do?
Put them out of business!
Next time you vote, vote your conscience, your Catholic
conscience.
Stop supporting violent and immoral films. Don't go to them and don't let your children see them. Protest to
your congressman.
Stop supporting violence, sex and immorality on television.
Find out who the sponsors of these programs are, and
write to them, telling them you will boycott their
products as long as they support those type of
programs. Then if that doesn't help, stop buying their
products and tell your friends not to!
Stop supporting violence and immorality in songs, musical
groups and rap groups.
Do not buy their products.
Do not give your children money to support these
groups.
Do not go to their concerts.
Do not watch these types of music video programs;
contact the sponsors and tell them why
you're boycotting them.
Vote your conscience! Stop supporting politicians and
public officials whose voting record is anti-Christian,
anti-life, pro-violence.
Don't keep voting a favorite son/daughter into office whose
voting record is not Christian.
Don't buy into the philosophy that his/her personal life
does not affect his/her performance in office.
Campaign against godlessness.
Speak up when decisions are made under the cloak of being
constitutional and they are not.
Vote for reform.
Insist that these Constitutional rights which have been
taken away from us be given back to us; make your
voice heard by your franchise as an American, to vote!
Insist on laws governing material being put on the Internet.
Does your child have his/her own website?
Does he or she go online without any supervision?
Are they getting into violence - neo-Nazism?
Is your child hiding para-military material in his rooms,
including weapons?
Are your children taking drugs?
Are they adopting secretive habits?
Are they blocking you out of their lives?
Be aware of what your child is doing.
Support your child.
Offset the godlessness which is being taught,
with the truths of God.
Most importantly, pray!
Pray, as a family,
pray as a community,
pray as a country!
Pray! Pray! Pray!
Pray constantly!
Take Back Your Country - Take Back Your World!
We are a part of the whole. All the evil that man does echoes throughout the atmosphere, reverberating, affecting the entire world. Mother Nature has joined her Creator, bringing about vengeance upon the world, throughout the history of our universe. In the "Roaring Twenties," the height of decadence in 1927, men and women in the United States were wildly enjoying a false prosperity - no limit to recklessness, irreverence, decadence, amorality - their souls decaying into wastelands where flowers of purity once bloomed.
Churches were being closed, priests murdered, martyrs by the tens of thousands piling one on top of the other, our cousins to the South in Mexico pleading for help; and we did nothing! The Lord was angry! Something had to be done about it! It had to be stopped - this wanton waste of lives and more importantly souls. Mother Nature joined her Creator and in 1927, the Mississippi River, which is usually one mile wide flooded, causing its banks to stretch to three hundred miles wide, flooding most of Arkansas and all of Mississippi.
Flappers kept dancing wildly, men kept drinking intemperately, and husbands and wives continued sinning against their Sacraments of Matrimony, adultery an accepted given! Something had to be done! 1929 came and with it the Stock Market on Wall Street crashed! Suddenly the frenzy halted; the never-ending flow of money, drink, drugs, dancing, infidelity, and immorality were no more! Yes, and irreverence became reverence!
The mask was off! Satan had exposed his ugly countenance. There was an air of desperation and despair in the air; the banks failed, the stocks were not worth the paper they were written on and bread lines started to form! Those who remembered there was a God Who loved them, returned to church, and fell on their knees. Those who had sold out their souls, to the gods of power, wealth, licentiousness, and wanton evil, jumped out of windows; their gods had betrayed them.
We came out of the Depression; things began to slowly look up. Then twenty years later, we had World War II and with it more jobs and more money; too much time and too much money, service men came home to wives who had found others to help them in their loneliness. All those who had gone to church daily began to go only on Sundays; and then not knowing they still needed God, they stopped going altogether. Again prosperity and all that goes with it.
Our world has gone through two world wars and we have lost young lives in countless others! God has spared our country from attack on our land. And what have we done, we have stood by and allowed Him to be slighted, maligned, and forgotten! And with Him, we have forsaken all that we once held dear - new gods filling our lives! Do you wonder, for one moment if the Lord is angry with the world and especially the United States, a country He has plainly favored with untold gifts and mercy? Never has a people had so much opportunity, and means, to spread the Good News to the world; and we citizens of the last decades of the Second Millennium, have said, We are too busy...Later Lord, I have to work seven days a week to live in the best neighborhood, to give my family what I never had. Was what you never had - murder in schools, children killing each other, mothers killing their own flesh and blood in their wombs, grandparents who were once the story-tellers and passers-down of tradition and heritage being locked away in homes?
What can we do? We can change the world!
How can we abate or lessen the tribulation and chastisement that is sure to come? We can pray; we can beg Jesus to "change His Mind." Many of us have been told intercessory prayer is not worth anything. God has already made up His Mind. Nothing we do is going to change it. But the Lord teaches us differently, in His Word....
"Have faith in God. In truth I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain `Be pulled up and thrown into the sea' with no doubt in his heart, but believing that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. I tell you, therefore, everything you ask for, believe that you have it already and it will be yours. And when you stand in prayer, forgive whatever you have against anybody, so that your Father in Heaven may forgive your failings too."
"Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; everyone who knocks will have the door opened."
"Then He told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.
"`There was a judge in a certain town,' He said, `who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to Him and saying, `I want justice from you against my enemy!'
"`For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, `Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and do me harm.'
"And the Lord said, `You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to His elect if they keep calling on Him day and night even though He still delays to help them? I promise you, He will see justice done to them, and done speedily."
We've been in churches where St. Luke's Gospel, above, was proclaimed, and right after it, in the homily, the priest discredited the very Gospel he had just read, by saying God has already made up His Mind. Yet, St. Paul tells us, "Pray, without ceasing!" "...we do not cease praying for you..."
Pray and believe! There is hope! We can change the world!
This brings us to the heart of this chapter, and of this book. While we believe that all the prophecies we have written about in this book are true, and there will be chastisement and tribulation, it can be lessened and minimized by our fasting, our prayers - especially before the Blessed Sacrament, and our supplications.
Whereas Jesus predicts the Last Days, He also assures us of hope in the wake of hopelessness, Light to cut through the darkness:
"...He said to them, `Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.'"
"Then they asked Him, `Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?' He answered, `See that you are not deceived, for many will come in My name, saying `I am He' and `The time has come.' Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end."
Jesus prophesied the Second Coming, speaking of the fright before His Coming and the joy which would follow:
"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
"`People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
"`And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.'"
Basically, everything you read in the Bible regarding tribulation and chastisement, you can pretty well count on happening, if it has not already. By the same token, however, all the benefits Our Lord has given us through Scripture and Tradition, especially with regard to praying for intercessory help, Angelic intercession and Our Lady's help are also there for us.
However, even prophecies which are Scriptural, can be conditional. The punishment can be lessened, or completely eliminated by the actions of the Faithful. A perfect example would be:
Jonah and the people of Nineveh.
The Lord told Jonah to walk through the city of Nineveh, and preach a chastisement against it. At first, Jonah fled from the Lord and wound up in the belly of a whale for three days. Then he set out to fulfill the Lord's command. He walked through the city of Nineveh, proclaiming "Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed." Nineveh was a big city, and it took three days to walk through the entire city. Now this was not a situation where the Lord had Jonah say to the people of Nineveh, "If you don't repent, I'll do this. But if you change your ways, I'll do that." No. It was a straight statement. "Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed."
But without any bargain from the Lord, the people of Nineveh reacted to the Lord's Word as given them by the prophet Jonah. They proclaimed a fast, and every one of them put on sackcloth and ashes.
Word got to the king of Nineveh. He tore his clothes, a sign of repentance, and made a proclamation:
"Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call out loudly to God; every man shall turn from his evil ways and from the violence he has in hand. Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold His blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish.
"When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, He repented of the evil that He had threatened to do to them; He did not carry it out."
Now this is amazing! They believed in God's anger and punishment, as witnessed by how seriously they took the word of His prophet that Nineveh would be destroyed. But they also had great faith in God's Love and Mercy. There were no guarantees. As far as they knew, the punishment was coming. But they trusted that maybe God would relent and forgive, and in so doing withhold His wrath. And that's just what happened.
So here's a situation, where the Lord did not make any commitment to the people of Nineveh, but He did reward them for turning away from their evil ways.
There are prophecies of the end times which cause us to cringe - chastisements resulting from man's cold, callous, stubborn, hard heart, but on the other hand, there are prophecies speaking of God's Mercy, as a result of man relinquishing control of his destiny, softening his heart, converting and coming back to the Lord. As man's actions can be the catalyst for destruction of himself and the world, a reversal of those actions can bring about peace and harmony, Redemption of body and soul as was planned for us, by God, in the Garden of Eden:
"But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.
"The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and of understanding.
"A Spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.
"Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to guide them.
"The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra's den, and the child lay his hand on the adder's lair.
"There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea."
We prayed a great deal writing this book. We had an urgency to write it and get it to you. Be not afraid, God is with us! As we bring to an end this book on Prophecies and Promises, we would like to quote St. Paul's letter to the Romans. It has to do with remnant, the key word in this prophecy and in this book. We believe that we all are called to be that raggedy remnant of the Lord, of which St. Paul and Isaiah before him, spoke. The Lord has called us, at this time and place, to be heralds of His coming, and with our words and actions, to help bring others to the Kingdom on the Last Day; because, remember and believe my brothers and sisters, we have truly been chosen; the responsibility is ours to spend each waking moment carrying out this mission.
"...Isaiah cries out, referring to Israel, `Though the number of the Israelites should be as the sands of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, for quickly and decisively will the Lord execute sentence upon the earth.'
"It is just as Isaiah predicted: `Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a remnant, we should have become as Sodom, we should be like Gomorrah.'"
Remember we are called to be that remnant! See you on the battlefield! We can change the world! We will change the world! And then, we'll see you in Heaven...
For more information about this book click here
We can Change the World!
We must Change the World!
Most beloved family, we have traveled a rough road together and we are nearing the end of this book and this Century. If we truly believe in Holy Scripture, that the Lord has used prophets down through the ages to speak to us, we have reason to be frightened. There is every indication, we may very well be speeding headlong toward the last days. Our concern should be not necessarily for ourselves (if we have been traveling the straight and narrow path which leads us to the Kingdom), but for our children and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the future generations who deserve to live in a world free from plagues, nuclear holocausts and cataclysmic disasters of one kind or another. We need to pray for our Church, our country, and our world, and then do something about it!
"Take back our country; we must take back our world!"
The church was filled with mourners, people of all faiths, all backgrounds, including not only members and friends of the students who had been killed, but people from this small peaceful village, where peace once reigned and was taken for granted. The townspeople cried, "This doesn't happen in our village!" As we heard those cries, we remembered crying out much the same thing when we lost our son to an overdose of drugs. But it does happen, and there are no border guards to keep it from striking anywhere, where God is not the Supreme Head.
During the writing of this book, a massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado took place, Tuesday, April 20, 1999, where fifteen lives were lost and thirteen others wounded, not to count the countless others who will be scarred by this holocaust. It was pointed out that this having been the anniversary of the birthday of Adolf Hitler, the youthful terrorists planned their bloodbath for that day, in some twisted sense of honor to him.
Like most Americans, and probably a good deal of the population of the world, we sat shocked in front of our television sets as the story of this American disgrace unfolded. It reminded us of the Assassination of President Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. We stayed glued to the television sets the entire weekend, right up to the funeral.
In Littleton, on Saturday night, at the funeral of one of the girls murdered in the High School, a minister preached to the young people, dazed and weeping uncontrollably for their classmate whose only crime was she loved Jesus, and she passed that love on to every one she met; she was everyone's favorite. When the killers approached her, they asked, "Do you believe in God? and when she replied, "I believe in God!" they shot her! A godless act against God and His little messenger on earth.
"I believe in God!" One pastor said that Prayer had returned to the schools! As we watched the scenes over and over again, almost praying it was not real, but another one of television's gory programs, we could hear the students crying out, "God! Oh my God!" as they ran for cover, their hands on their heads (instructions from the police who were afraid the gunmen would change their clothes and mix with the other students).
One minister told the students and the parents, "You must take back your schools!" He repeated it many times, "You must take back your schools!" This entire tragedy has had a great impact on us and our family. Our book, not yet finished, we were given an inspiration to go one step further and cry out to you, "We must take back our country; we must take back our world!" And how shall we do that?
A man of God had the courage to say, "Prayer has returned to the schools!" No one tried to stop those children from reaching out to the only real Help - God! And we believe, with all our hearts, that there will be a new beginning in Littleton, Colorado--God has entered the school and they are not about to let Him be shoved out!
This horrible negative, the killing of innocent children and teacher, is destined, like the killing of the Innocent One on the Cross, to become a positive; as Salvation came about on the Cross and Jesus rose from the dead, so these beautiful souls whose life was snuffed out prematurely will not have died in vain! Through the death of these martyrs, who had been earmarked to die (by possessed gunmen from their own school), prayer has returned to Littleton, Colorado and that will snowball until Prayer and God is resurrected in our schools, in our land, returned to a nation called to holiness by Pope John Paul II! Our Pope called upon us as a Continent of Hope to be a Nation of Life with Dignity for all.
Who is to blame for what happened last week in Colorado?
...or for that matter, the ten other high school shootings which have taken place within the last sixteen months in the United States?
We have to answer that with a question:
Who took God out of our schools?
Who ordered the ban on voluntary prayer by students in schools? (Will the next thing, as in Nazi Germany, be in homes?)
Who ordered teachers and coaches in schools to not allow, nor support or encourage prayer by students in school, under penalty of imprisonment or loss of jobs or both?
Who ordered, that the religious rights of the many be suppressed, for the agenda of even one atheist? The question you have a right to ask is, Why does one atheist have more rights than thousands of believers?
Do we have a system of checks and balances as our Constitution calls for, or is our country ruled by the Supreme Court, which is just an extension of the president who appointed the Justices for life?
There is a godlessness taking over this once Godly land. A godless people have infiltrated our country, our government, our courts. The words of our sacred Constitution, to accommodate a godless agenda, have been systematically and blatantly twisted so that the meaning of the original framers of the Constitution has now been disputed and ridiculed, accusing the Founding Fathers who wrote it, of being ignorant of its true intent when they drafted it.
Once that was accomplished, and the uproar died down sufficiently, there was no stopping evil from sucking the life out of our country. This plague has gotten so out of hand that laws and morality are virtually non-existent in this country. But the right to be as immoral as we please, and to impose that immorality on our neighbor is protected by various civil rights groups. They will defend anyone's rights as long as they are not pro-church, pro-religion or pro-God. And these organizations are funded by our government. What can we do?
Put them out of business!
Next time you vote, vote your conscience, your Catholic
conscience.
Stop supporting violent and immoral films. Don't go to them and don't let your children see them. Protest to
your congressman.
Stop supporting violence, sex and immorality on television.
Find out who the sponsors of these programs are, and
write to them, telling them you will boycott their
products as long as they support those type of
programs. Then if that doesn't help, stop buying their
products and tell your friends not to!
Stop supporting violence and immorality in songs, musical
groups and rap groups.
Do not buy their products.
Do not give your children money to support these
groups.
Do not go to their concerts.
Do not watch these types of music video programs;
contact the sponsors and tell them why
you're boycotting them.
Vote your conscience! Stop supporting politicians and
public officials whose voting record is anti-Christian,
anti-life, pro-violence.
Don't keep voting a favorite son/daughter into office whose
voting record is not Christian.
Don't buy into the philosophy that his/her personal life
does not affect his/her performance in office.
Campaign against godlessness.
Speak up when decisions are made under the cloak of being
constitutional and they are not.
Vote for reform.
Insist that these Constitutional rights which have been
taken away from us be given back to us; make your
voice heard by your franchise as an American, to vote!
Insist on laws governing material being put on the Internet.
Does your child have his/her own website?
Does he or she go online without any supervision?
Are they getting into violence - neo-Nazism?
Is your child hiding para-military material in his rooms,
including weapons?
Are your children taking drugs?
Are they adopting secretive habits?
Are they blocking you out of their lives?
Be aware of what your child is doing.
Support your child.
Offset the godlessness which is being taught,
with the truths of God.
Most importantly, pray!
Pray, as a family,
pray as a community,
pray as a country!
Pray! Pray! Pray!
Pray constantly!
Take Back Your Country - Take Back Your World!
We are a part of the whole. All the evil that man does echoes throughout the atmosphere, reverberating, affecting the entire world. Mother Nature has joined her Creator, bringing about vengeance upon the world, throughout the history of our universe. In the "Roaring Twenties," the height of decadence in 1927, men and women in the United States were wildly enjoying a false prosperity - no limit to recklessness, irreverence, decadence, amorality - their souls decaying into wastelands where flowers of purity once bloomed.
Churches were being closed, priests murdered, martyrs by the tens of thousands piling one on top of the other, our cousins to the South in Mexico pleading for help; and we did nothing! The Lord was angry! Something had to be done about it! It had to be stopped - this wanton waste of lives and more importantly souls. Mother Nature joined her Creator and in 1927, the Mississippi River, which is usually one mile wide flooded, causing its banks to stretch to three hundred miles wide, flooding most of Arkansas and all of Mississippi.
Flappers kept dancing wildly, men kept drinking intemperately, and husbands and wives continued sinning against their Sacraments of Matrimony, adultery an accepted given! Something had to be done! 1929 came and with it the Stock Market on Wall Street crashed! Suddenly the frenzy halted; the never-ending flow of money, drink, drugs, dancing, infidelity, and immorality were no more! Yes, and irreverence became reverence!
The mask was off! Satan had exposed his ugly countenance. There was an air of desperation and despair in the air; the banks failed, the stocks were not worth the paper they were written on and bread lines started to form! Those who remembered there was a God Who loved them, returned to church, and fell on their knees. Those who had sold out their souls, to the gods of power, wealth, licentiousness, and wanton evil, jumped out of windows; their gods had betrayed them.
We came out of the Depression; things began to slowly look up. Then twenty years later, we had World War II and with it more jobs and more money; too much time and too much money, service men came home to wives who had found others to help them in their loneliness. All those who had gone to church daily began to go only on Sundays; and then not knowing they still needed God, they stopped going altogether. Again prosperity and all that goes with it.
Our world has gone through two world wars and we have lost young lives in countless others! God has spared our country from attack on our land. And what have we done, we have stood by and allowed Him to be slighted, maligned, and forgotten! And with Him, we have forsaken all that we once held dear - new gods filling our lives! Do you wonder, for one moment if the Lord is angry with the world and especially the United States, a country He has plainly favored with untold gifts and mercy? Never has a people had so much opportunity, and means, to spread the Good News to the world; and we citizens of the last decades of the Second Millennium, have said, We are too busy...Later Lord, I have to work seven days a week to live in the best neighborhood, to give my family what I never had. Was what you never had - murder in schools, children killing each other, mothers killing their own flesh and blood in their wombs, grandparents who were once the story-tellers and passers-down of tradition and heritage being locked away in homes?
What can we do? We can change the world!
How can we abate or lessen the tribulation and chastisement that is sure to come? We can pray; we can beg Jesus to "change His Mind." Many of us have been told intercessory prayer is not worth anything. God has already made up His Mind. Nothing we do is going to change it. But the Lord teaches us differently, in His Word....
"Have faith in God. In truth I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain `Be pulled up and thrown into the sea' with no doubt in his heart, but believing that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. I tell you, therefore, everything you ask for, believe that you have it already and it will be yours. And when you stand in prayer, forgive whatever you have against anybody, so that your Father in Heaven may forgive your failings too."
"Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; everyone who knocks will have the door opened."
"Then He told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.
"`There was a judge in a certain town,' He said, `who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to Him and saying, `I want justice from you against my enemy!'
"`For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, `Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and do me harm.'
"And the Lord said, `You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to His elect if they keep calling on Him day and night even though He still delays to help them? I promise you, He will see justice done to them, and done speedily."
We've been in churches where St. Luke's Gospel, above, was proclaimed, and right after it, in the homily, the priest discredited the very Gospel he had just read, by saying God has already made up His Mind. Yet, St. Paul tells us, "Pray, without ceasing!" "...we do not cease praying for you..."
Pray and believe! There is hope! We can change the world!
This brings us to the heart of this chapter, and of this book. While we believe that all the prophecies we have written about in this book are true, and there will be chastisement and tribulation, it can be lessened and minimized by our fasting, our prayers - especially before the Blessed Sacrament, and our supplications.
Whereas Jesus predicts the Last Days, He also assures us of hope in the wake of hopelessness, Light to cut through the darkness:
"...He said to them, `Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.'"
"Then they asked Him, `Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?' He answered, `See that you are not deceived, for many will come in My name, saying `I am He' and `The time has come.' Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end."
Jesus prophesied the Second Coming, speaking of the fright before His Coming and the joy which would follow:
"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
"`People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
"`And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.'"
Basically, everything you read in the Bible regarding tribulation and chastisement, you can pretty well count on happening, if it has not already. By the same token, however, all the benefits Our Lord has given us through Scripture and Tradition, especially with regard to praying for intercessory help, Angelic intercession and Our Lady's help are also there for us.
However, even prophecies which are Scriptural, can be conditional. The punishment can be lessened, or completely eliminated by the actions of the Faithful. A perfect example would be:
Jonah and the people of Nineveh.
The Lord told Jonah to walk through the city of Nineveh, and preach a chastisement against it. At first, Jonah fled from the Lord and wound up in the belly of a whale for three days. Then he set out to fulfill the Lord's command. He walked through the city of Nineveh, proclaiming "Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed." Nineveh was a big city, and it took three days to walk through the entire city. Now this was not a situation where the Lord had Jonah say to the people of Nineveh, "If you don't repent, I'll do this. But if you change your ways, I'll do that." No. It was a straight statement. "Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed."
But without any bargain from the Lord, the people of Nineveh reacted to the Lord's Word as given them by the prophet Jonah. They proclaimed a fast, and every one of them put on sackcloth and ashes.
Word got to the king of Nineveh. He tore his clothes, a sign of repentance, and made a proclamation:
"Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call out loudly to God; every man shall turn from his evil ways and from the violence he has in hand. Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold His blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish.
"When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, He repented of the evil that He had threatened to do to them; He did not carry it out."
Now this is amazing! They believed in God's anger and punishment, as witnessed by how seriously they took the word of His prophet that Nineveh would be destroyed. But they also had great faith in God's Love and Mercy. There were no guarantees. As far as they knew, the punishment was coming. But they trusted that maybe God would relent and forgive, and in so doing withhold His wrath. And that's just what happened.
So here's a situation, where the Lord did not make any commitment to the people of Nineveh, but He did reward them for turning away from their evil ways.
There are prophecies of the end times which cause us to cringe - chastisements resulting from man's cold, callous, stubborn, hard heart, but on the other hand, there are prophecies speaking of God's Mercy, as a result of man relinquishing control of his destiny, softening his heart, converting and coming back to the Lord. As man's actions can be the catalyst for destruction of himself and the world, a reversal of those actions can bring about peace and harmony, Redemption of body and soul as was planned for us, by God, in the Garden of Eden:
"But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.
"The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and of understanding.
"A Spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.
"Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to guide them.
"The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra's den, and the child lay his hand on the adder's lair.
"There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea."
We prayed a great deal writing this book. We had an urgency to write it and get it to you. Be not afraid, God is with us! As we bring to an end this book on Prophecies and Promises, we would like to quote St. Paul's letter to the Romans. It has to do with remnant, the key word in this prophecy and in this book. We believe that we all are called to be that raggedy remnant of the Lord, of which St. Paul and Isaiah before him, spoke. The Lord has called us, at this time and place, to be heralds of His coming, and with our words and actions, to help bring others to the Kingdom on the Last Day; because, remember and believe my brothers and sisters, we have truly been chosen; the responsibility is ours to spend each waking moment carrying out this mission.
"...Isaiah cries out, referring to Israel, `Though the number of the Israelites should be as the sands of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, for quickly and decisively will the Lord execute sentence upon the earth.'
"It is just as Isaiah predicted: `Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a remnant, we should have become as Sodom, we should be like Gomorrah.'"
Remember we are called to be that remnant! See you on the battlefield! We can change the world! We will change the world! And then, we'll see you in Heaven...
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