How Jesus will manifest

[adapted from Tower of Light]

Jesus is going to show Himself in some way, one day, and the only sure thing is that it will be in a way that in form and details will be unanticipated.

True supernatural phenomena are always like that: surprises that made so much sense that they should not have been surprises, but for the limitations of human intellect. Who would have foreseen that the Blessed Mother would leave a tilma with her image at Guadalupe in Mexico as a means of converting Indians by the millions to Christianity? Or that His first coming would be in a manger?

It made sense only in retrospect.

Now, there are rumblings that there is something similar on the horizon and yet something that in its surprise would have to be dissimilar to Guadalupe or any previous event. One prophecy we follow says that there is going to be a powerful presentation of some sort and this is certainly in keeping with the Bible, which holds no contradiction to the idea of towering light, whatever the final or intermediate character of an appearance. "It was not by way of cleverly concocted myths that we taught you about the coming in power of Our Lord Jesus Christ," said 2 Peter 1:16, and Jesus Himself promised that He would show Himself "on a cloud with great power and glory" (Luke 21:27), which was similar to what was recorded in Matthew 23:30, whereby Jesus said the Son of Man would come "on the clouds of Heaven, with power and great glory."

When something is supernatural, that is a term that has been used through the centuries: Glory. She was glorious, with a crown of stars around her head as in Chapter 12 of the Apocalypse and she came with three angels, standing on a small cloud, sometimes holding the Infant.

And now in wondering what a manifestation might be like, we are called not only to see the parallel with the angels Christ Himself said would be with Him (at least in the Final Judgment), but also the dramatic way He would arrive. "As the lightning from the east flashes to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be," said Matthew (24:27),

"I will come in towering light," said the prophecy. "My mother held me in her arms at Medjugorje, as an infant. I will come as she has come, in light."

Is this what would happen? Would word suddenly spread that seers in some remote part of the world were suddenly experiencing a corporeal apparition of Christ (not Mary, but Jesus)?

That's the view from here: There will one day be a manifestation, and it will be believed by many, but also doubted by many -- especially those who don't go to the place.

[resources: Tower of Light]