By Michael H. Brown

The drama had been building since 1917. That was the year that Lucia dos Santos was given a secret in three parts by the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal. The first two parts were revealed in 1941, but it was only last summer, on June 26, that we learned the third secret, and what we saw was stark: a vision of an angel holding a flaming sword.

“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand,” wrote Lucia. “Flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'”

Why the flames? What does the image mean? What does it imply for the world?

It was a prophecy, I believe, of nuclear war. I believe that it relates to the other two secrets, which warned of Russia and Communism. I believe that it fits precisely with the rest of the Fatima message. While many think that there had to be something else – that the real third secret must have said something about the end of the world, or the collapse of the Church – I believe that the secret as presented last June is the full one and dramatic enough.

Why do I say it pertains to nuclear war?

First of all, the obvious: the vision implies falling fire, which is exactly what would occur during a nuclear holocaust. Lucia mentioned more than one flame – she used the plural – which in my mind conjures the image of a multi-tipped warhead. Without the Rosary and first Saturday devotion – without conversion, said the Virgin of Fatima -- there would be the rise of Russia and the “annihilation” of nations – which may have meant the political absorption of surrounding countries like Ukraine but may also have meant atomic destruction. Fatima was largely a prophecy about the dangers of Communism, and the greatest temporal danger was confrontation between the superpowers. Such a confrontation would indeed have caused (and may still) flames to fall “as though they would set the world on fire.”

But there’s even more reason to believe that interpretation than the obvious ones I mention above, and some of the reasons are mysterious. Let’s take a quick look at those now. According to Sister Lucia, the “great sign” prophesied at Fatima was an unusual display of the aurora borealis that occurred in 1938. This is fascinating because there are some who say the aurora caused atmospheric reflections identical to those caused by nuclear mushroom clouds. If that’s true there is a direct connection between nuclear war and the Fatima warning.

Now let’s get even more mysterious. In 1969, when a photographer took a picture of French nuclear testing on the Pacific island of Mururoa, images of Christ Crucified and the Blessed Virgin appeared in the stem and left of the rising cloud. Once more, the miraculous manifestation of Mary was connected with a nuclear warning.

Sister Lucia had said that it was up to the Pope as to when to publicly release the secret, but it was her opinion that it would be best to wait at least until after 1960. The reason, she said, was that the third secret would become mas claro -- “clearer” – after that year.

And so it was. Looking back, the Sixties were a time of great evil and the decade in which the threat of nuclear annihilation was driven home by the Cuban missile crisis.

Now let’s look at the 1970s. Four years after Mururoa, in 1973, were the revelations of Akita, Japan. There, a nun named Sister Sasagawa claimed she was told by the Virgin that if men did not repent – if we didn’t get back to God and in a hurry -- fire would “fall from the sky and wipe out a great part of humanity.”

How does this relate to Fatima? The date of one of the Akita revelation was October 13 -- anniversary of the great miracle at Fatima – and occurred in the only nation ever to sustain the devastation of an atomic bomb!

Nor does it stop there. Seven years after that, on the very same day, October 13, in 1980, in Cuapa, Nicaragua, a seer named Bernardo Martinez saw the Blessed Mother. She appeared in a way that reminded him of a Fatima statue. And according to Martinez, who is now a priest, she told him that if mankind didn’t change, it would “ hasten the arrival of a third world war.”

The next year, in 1981, as if to further stress the point, Mary began to appear as the Queen of Peace in Communist Yugoslavia at Medjugorje, saying that peace was in a state of “crisis.” That same year, on May 13 – anniversary of the first Fatima apparition – the Pope was shot in a way that brings to mind another part of the third secret that showed a “bishop in white” falling to gunfire (John Paul wore white the day he was shot and is technically “bishop of Rome”). What was the connection to Russia? Many believe the assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, was part of a plot conducted by the Bulgarian KGB.

Now the plot thickens and the connections between Fatima, Communism, and nuclear war become even clearer. On March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II consecrated the world and implicitly Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as requested in the first two secrets of Fatima. Less than two months after that consecration -- on May 13, 1984, once more anniversary of the first Fatima apparition -- one of the largest crowds in the history of Fatima gathered to celebrate and pray for Russia. That very day a massive explosion occurred in the Soviet Union -- at Severomorsk -- and destroyed a third of the Northern Fleet’s stock of surface-to-air missiles -- greatly lessening Russia’s ability to strike and cause precisely what the secret warned about: falling fire!

If that isn’t enough, years later, in 1993, Sister Lucia told a visiting Filipino cardinal, Ricardo Vidal, that the 1984 consecration by John Paul “prevented an atomic war that would have occurred in 1985.” Prevented an atomic war! (This was the era when tensions were at a peak between the U.S. and Soviet hardliners such as Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.)

The odds thus grow overwhelming that the third secret indeed had to do with Russia and nuclear warfare. As was shown in the vision, the flames of the sword were doused by the light of Mary, who was empowered by the 1984 consecration as well as prayers around the world, including at Fatima itself. Immediately after the consecration, there was the stunning, miraculous fall of Communism.

And so the bottom line is that the secret was a bit more dramatic -- in fact much more dramatic -- than what the secular media reported. What could be more dramatic than fire that sets the world aflame? What could be more serious? The third secret of Fatima predicted the shooting of the Pope and even more incredibly it showed an angel of chastisement hovering over our wayward planet.

Does this mean that the secret is totally fulfilled, that we’re out of the woods? Hardly. Russia is showing signs of returning to its Cold War ways, and there is also China, the “red dragon.” Communism is alive and all too well and so the image of Fatima – an image more than all else of heavenly fire, of purification, an image that pertains both to the past, present, and future -- may well prove to be timeless.

Return to Day's Headline

Enter Archive

You are at spiritdaily.org

Please spread the word about us by passing this out at your parish or function