By Michael H. Brown
Message From Venezuela And John Paul II Eerily Parallel Prophecy On U.S. Future
There it was in the e-mail the other day, a photo sent us from South America of the Blessed Mother weeping — allegedly weeping; oh, yes, always allegedly — in Caracas.
Tears of blood.
It’s a statue known as Rosa Mystica, and dozens of them have wept around the world.
But we were interested because this was in Venezuela. And it occurred just before the first riot-related killing.
That country, of course, is in the midst of tremendous turmoil. Listen here to yesterday’s New York Post: “American companies in riot-torn Venezuela are shutting local factories in droves and cutting off investments. The corporate fears escalated yesterday after Microsoft temporarily closed its Caracas offices after 50 days of rioting and vandalism in a national strike. Microsoft says it wants to make sure its 85 employees there aren’t in a life-threatening situation over the bloody protests. Ford Motor Co., Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Coca-Cola Co. have shut down operations and offices in wake of a spreading strike to topple President Hugo Chavez.”
Schools are closed. So are banks. People are afraid to go to work. The nation has been effectively shut down.
Beyond the economic consequences (Venezuela is one of America’s largest suppliers of oil), the chaos in Venezuela may have a prophetic component. It may be a foretaste of what will soon occur elsewhere. This is the country in which the Church-approved apparition site of Betania is located [see yesterday’s story], and it reminds us of how apparitions in Rwanda came just before civil chaos there; it recalls how Medjugorje served as a harbinger when Muslims and Christians went to war in the 1990s (as if foretelling global Muslim-Christian tensions).
Is Betania’s location likewise prophetic?
The main seer at the site, Maria Esperanza, has warned that what’s occuring in her homeland is indeed a bellwether, and we note that the societal chaos in this country has been accompanied by extremely unusual natural disasters. Mudslides after incredibly torrential rain killed tens of thousands in 1999. There have also been quakes and smaller but significant storm-related events. “Maria used to say that ‘[God’s] justice will start in Venezuela,'” Dr. Samir Gebran, a son-in-law of Maria’s and a biologist who became convinced of the unusual nature at Betania after his first visit told us last week.
The warning is that if we don’t reform — if we don’t shed our selfishness — natural disasters, still just revving up, will be joined, in the U.S. and other parts of the West, by societal disarray, if not outright chaos.
This all ties with a prophecy by Dr. Howard Storm — a former atheist who became a believer after a near-death episode in which he was allegedly dragged toward hell. Rescued when he cried out to Jesus, Dr. Storm — now a minister — claims he was placed in the presence of three angels who warned about America’s future, showing him a scenario whereby our nation would be punished for its selfishness and materialism by watching its infrastructure collapse and riots and crime break out over “a cup of gasoline.” He claims that unless there is a dramatic turnaround, this complete disintegration will occur over the course of this century.
“People get mad at me for saying it, but God’s very unhappy with what we’re doing,” asserts Storm, once a professor at Northern Kentucky University. “When I came back from the experience, I was almost out of my mind trying to convert people. God wanted a worldwide conversion thousands of years ago. God pulled out all the stops 2,000 years ago with Jesus. From God’s view, that was the definitive moment in human history. And the impact of the prophets and teachers and the Messiah has been a big disappointment to God because people have by and large rejected it. And [I was told that] God wants this conversion. And if we don’t get on the program fairly soon, God is going to have to intervene in some ways that from a human point of view are going to seem cataclysmic. God’s really tired of what we’re doing to one another and the planet and to God’s Creation. We were put in this world to be stewards and live in harmony with His creation and one another and we don’t realize the important spiritual consequences of what we do when we raise a child in a faithless society. And we’re doing it all over the world, not just this country.”
Storm says he was told no nation has ever been blessed as the U.S. has been blessed but that it was supposed to share those graces (its way of hygiene, its methods of manufacture, technology, water treatment, agriculture, and hardware) with peoples around the globe. If not — if it chose to horde what it was given, if it did not bring poor nations up to speed, says Dr. Storm — it would be purified.
Such is consonous with the Pope, who time and again has warned that wanton, out-of-control capitalism — the frenzy of consumerism — is as dangerous as socialism. The Pontiff’s most recent admonition came on January 13 in an address to representatives from 177 countries. “No to selfishness!” he thundered. “Selfishness is the indifference of prosperous nations towards nations left out in the cold. All peoples are entitled to receive a fair share of the goods of this world and of the know-how of the more advanced countries.”
This all causes us to wonder: is God happy with the waste — with the plastic and metal that we toss away after a single quick use? With the food we waste — or gorge ourselves with? Is he happy with a nation of Hummer RVs? Is He content with a country that supplies most of the world’s pornography?
“I asked how [purification] would come about, and they said it would be simple, that our society is very dependent on a lot of very fragile things — energy grid, transportation,” adds Storm about his conversation with alleged angels. “In each geographical area of the United States people used to be relatively self-sufficient as far as agricultural products. Now, how long would any state survive without the transport of food and energy?
“What would happen is these very complex and delicate grids of our economic system would begin to break down. We’ve created a society of such cruel and self-centered people that the very nature of civilization would begin to break down. They (the angels) showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hording goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos.”
Is there hope? Yes. When we are being warned — as with weeping Madonnas — there is still time; there is still hope. But those who try to twist around religion and pretend that God does not chastise, does not correct us, need to explain why the main miracles we are currently seeing involve tears.
At this point in time, that tells it all.