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And this has always been a cross:<\/span> the lumping of anyone involved with anything to do with indications about the future with those who indeed go to the extent of declaring the end of the world.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n While we can never be sure that isn’t the case, we never have gone there — not in\u00a0The Final Hour<\/em>, not in recent books or articles: we have always spoken about major coming events as a purification, about the end of an\u00a0era<\/em>, not a planet.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We do not strut about Times Square with an “End Is Near” sandwich board. <\/strong><\/span>But we live in major times.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n We live in a time of chaos: terrorist attacks, threats from North Korea and Iran, political rancor — divide — and in general a sense of upheaval that even has the ultra-rich building safe houses and bunkers.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Flee to Saint Joseph,<\/span> and the Blessed Mother of the holm oak who tells us that brightness can be found only by those who practice the diligence of prayer amid consternation,” <\/i>said a word of knowledge we quoted recently in a Special Report. “Those who framed the future in accordance with their own time tables now find disbelief in prophecies though they unfold around you.”<\/i><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n At Fatima, Our Lady appeared above a holm-oak tree.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n As for time-tables: a previous “word” from the same source had said, “<\/span>In this time, expect the error of premature expectation, but not [error in] the truth of the expectation itself.<\/span> For these times, you have the Rosary, and even more so, the praise. In union with God comes all protection, as the dark spirits are now allowed to materialize in full due to the pretense and aspirations of man. Not until the initial event will the curtain be drawn that reveals the entirety of the plan, and even then, it will be parted only slowly, in the woes of purification.”<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n One looks south,<\/span> to Venezuela, and remembers the words of the great mystic Maria Esperanza, who once curtly and cryptically said, “It will begin here,” or words to that effect.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n She was from Caracas, and in fact her homeland is now the epicenter of upheaval, with open rebellion, demonstrations crushed by government agents, police rule, dire food shortages (cats and dogs are being killed for food), and economic collapse.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “When Ana, a five-year veteran of the national police, finishes her night shift patrolling this city\u2019s dangerous slums, she often arrives home only to pick up her riot gear and head out again to confront rollicking protests against Venezuela\u2019s embattled government,” said the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em> recently.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Mayhem. Is it a simple forerunner — a harbinger?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n It will begin here.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The situation is so desperate that the nation’s bishops have pleaded with the Pope to intervene.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Venezuelans sought the emergency intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, traveling to Portugal for the centenary to plead for heavenly help. We see it in the photo that came over Catholic News Service. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The same type of shortages now plaguing Venezuelans — a replay of history.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n And just two weeks ago, a priest who is close to Maria Esperanza’s family at the Church-sanctioned apparition site of Betania (about an hour or two outside of Caracas) conveyed a note from her family that said: “Dear Betania family: We ask today that you pray for all of us here in Venezuela in a special way because the situation is getting more and more tense, today the conflicts between the people and the military have actually reached our own streets, tear gas around our homes, pray for us in a special and urgent way please! We thank you all!”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Added the priest, “I would like to ask that everyone pray Psalm 91 seven times and a special Rosary for the family and all the people of Caracas and Venezuela in general, as soon as possible. Also the following prayers that Maria was given from Heaven: ‘God living and palpitating, beat in my heart. God alive and present, stay with me. My God is my life. My Lord and my God. Father in Heaven give us a glance of your love.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In 2002, the Ukrainian mystic, Josyp Terelya, wrote, “America is filled with fear and instability. The American people will soon see the destruction of a capitalist system initiated by the Iraq crisis. America and her politics have antagonized the world, and that is why Russia will be able to point at globalization as America’s downfall, thus be able to successfully build up armaments.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Since the beginning of the world there has not been such a war with Lucifer. <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “We now bear witness<\/span> to the fact that God stands with the Heavenly powers as well the faithful of the world. The prophecies\u00a0 are being fulfilled. You see how professional politics in the ten developed nations of the capitalist world are too busy with secular issues — how to control the people and hold unto power. These politicians do not create material or spiritual valuables.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Their political activity is an amoral acquisition of power and money — and these attract sinners. God guards humanity against any wars or killings. The time of God’s civilization is near. With the blessing of the Holy Mother, standing here before you at the gates of Heaven, America and its people will become the image of goodness and enter through the gates of the New Jerusalem and the 21st century with peace and love. Amen.”<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n And so we pray — and also for the world; the underhandedness, the seething anger, and cauldron of hatred not just there but in our own nation, on our own airwaves, in even our Church.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n — Michael H. Brown<\/em><\/p>\n [resources: retreat New Jersey<\/a><\/span>, Fear of Fire<\/a><\/span>, Tower of Light<\/a><\/span>, and Where the Cross Stands<\/a><\/span>]<\/em><\/p>\n![\"American](\"http:\/\/catholicregister.org\/media\/k2\/items\/cache\/78c9c6155ae4998be92fcaf983954f1c_XL.jpg\")
After our recent retreat<\/a><\/span>, with five hundred of our Canadian brethren in Toronto — a terrific group to spend the day with — we received a note saying, “My fianc\u00e9e met you yesterday. You stood in the same elevator together at the college. She told me a very good thing about you, which made me sad that I didn’t go. I heard that you were calm, non-sensational, recollected sort of person. I didn’t go to hear your talk because I feared that the [advertised] ‘prophetic pulse’ was one which, like some prophets do these days, spoke about end times.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.catholicworldreport.com\/Content\/Site140\/Articles\/04_01_2017\/5648venezuelapr_00000005550.jpg\")
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Newsmen point out<\/strong><\/span>, “<\/strong><\/span>When Mary appeared to three young shepherd children in 1917, she came in the midst of a world embroiled in war \u2013 both on a global scale during World War I, and on a more local scale in Portugal itself, which was in a period of instability after the revolution and coup d\u2019\u00e9tat leading to the establishment of the First Portuguese Republic in 1910.\u00a0Roughly 220,000 Portuguese civilians died during the war, thousands due to food shortages, and thousands more from the Spanish flu. ‘Now the same thing is happening in Venezuela,’ Jose Antonio Dos Santos said, explaining that as he participates in the centenary celebrations of the Fatima Marian apparitions, he brings with him the petition for ‘a solution, above all for a country that is without medicine, without food.’\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n