Prophecy: Has The U.S. Seen A 'Disruption'  -- Or Is Big 'Lash' Looming In The Future?  

By Michael H. Brown

I keep getting the word that America will soon experience a "disruption." That's the exact word. It has been coming for the past several months. I have no idea what it means. Could we have seen this with the Iraqi scandal?

Perhaps. It's a huge scandal, a searing scar on a great nation. I've never seen anything come so quickly and cause such damage. And in some ways it is certainly a "disruption." There are many meanings for words, and besides the usual way we use it, "disruption" can be heavy duty. It can mean to break up, to "rend asunder," to split apart.

Another word for what is occurring is "tragedy," and this is the term used by Maria Esperanza, the seer and stigmatic from Betania, Venezuela. She has been warning the U.S. about going to war since that fateful September in 2001, and more than 17 months ago, around Christmas 2002, she said that doing so would lead to a "tragedy."

Does the scandal in Iraq -- and events like the dreadful beheading of an American -- fit that definition?

Or is there more?

The word "tragedy" can mean disasters, calamity, affliction, adversity, grief, or catastrophe. Affliction. It's another word (for what it's worth) that I have been receiving: that something is about to occur that will afflict everyone, no matter where they live.

I suppose the prison scandal qualifies under these definitions. It is enough to fulfill the prophecy. And yet I feel there is something else on the way, something larger. A tragedy is an unhappy ending. The war is not yet over. When it is, we will perhaps see the full landscape. And other events, including ones in nature, may better fit the bill.

I pay close attention to Esperanza because she foresaw the attacks on the World Trade Center. I remember that just two days after the famous attack she told me a "roaring lion" was behind it, and we later learned that "osama" means "lion."

She's human. Humans are never 100 percent. But that's impressive. I went to see her last Friday and despite hospice care, a dire prognosis, and a tracheotomy, she was radiant and there was an upbeat mood in those around her. She smiled widely from her gurney, which is in a bedroom overlooking an inlet of the ocean in southern New Jersey. Her family hovers around her, not wanting to be more than a few steps away and kissing her at every opportunity.

Obviously, we didn't talk. But her family recalls what she has said and a daughter reconstructed one of her last conversations around New Year's in which the famous seer, now 75, saw a "lash" in store for the U.S. -- a nation she dearly loves. She has often said that the U.S. is the hope of the world. She maintains that belief.

Still, it is in need of cleansing. We have to be careful because words have many meanings but according to Webster's, "lash" means to incite by "appealing to the emotions, to attack violently with words, to censure, rebuke, or ridicule, to be whipped or scourged, to switch as with a lion's tail [my emphasis]."

America is at a crossroads, so expect the unexpected. Had the Iraq prison scandal not come along, something else would. A corner will soon be turned. Our nation is changing in rapid fashion, and the challenge is to keep it from morally and politically disintegrating.

Might we see our infrastructure fail, and gasoline be something we literally fight each other over?

We are being granted a final chance -- final mercy -- and according to folks like Maria Esperanza, we must take advantage of it.

Esperanza: the greatest mystic since Padre Pio. And her very name means hope. I have to hold out hope that we will come to our senses. I have to hold hope in God's mercy. I have to hope that we will avoid major calamities that now rise on the near horizon.

May 2004