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FIRE, FIRE: RECENT BLAZES BRING TO MIND PROPHECIES AS WELL AS BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS TO FIRE, OR FEAR OF IT

Fire, fire, fire.

Have you not noted it in the news?

There are wildfires. There are fires in Egypt (where churches have been torched). There are "fiery" lights in the night sky (the aurora borealis).

It comes at a time when we have released a book called Fear of Fire.

Its premise: that something to do with fire or fear of it is in the cards for future events.

And should we be surprised?

Fire is mentioned throughout both testaments of the Bible.

At Fatima, on October 13, 1917, tens of thousands screamed as the sun seemed to plunge to the earth; fear of fire.

In Akita, Japan, was a warning of fire falling.

Wildfires: Idaho, Colorado, Florida, Canada, Arizona, now big-time in California -- threatening ancient Sequoias, as well as thousands of residences

The map at the left shows major wildfires between 1980 and 2003.

They have stepped up. They grow, they set records, they get ever closer to creating a major cataclysm -- threatening to burn major electrical trunk lines, or contaminate the reservoir for a huge city, or incinerate entire communities -- and then recede just before that happens.

This is mercy.

This is warning.

There have been fiery crashes. There have been bombings.

Volcanoes?

We don't even know how many there are (we do know, however, that they can alter global weather patterns).

Just this week, a volcanic vent poured forth vapor near the airport in Rome.

Comets?

Or will it perhaps be a new kind of "fire" -- something from the cosmos, such as a gaseous arc between cometary fragments (some believe this caused the greatest wildfire in U.S. history -- near Champion, Wisconsin, where, twelve years before, the Blessed Mother, in a Church-sanctioned apparition, had warned of a coming punishment).

Isn't it interesting how many deny the possibility that God chastises -- even though this is through the Bible and also at approved sites of apparition?

During Church-sanctioned apparitions in Rwanda, the Blessed Mother supposedly asked, "Where will you go when the fire is everywhere?"

Asked about the future, Padre Pio once allegedly was quoted as saying, "Can't you see the fire?"

Fire too is throughout the Bible (see the examples below this story).

It can be an "illumination."

Perhaps most relevant, Joel 2:30: [The Day of the Lord ] “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire and columns of smoke."

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!  There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-54).

Yet, in Daniel, we see how angels can protect us even in a furnace.

In Medjugorje, strange fires have been seen on Apparition Hill -- fires that, when firemen approached, turned out to have scorched nothing.

They were told it was a "forerunner" of a "great sign" promised there.

There also have been natural fires there that burned right up to the spot of apparitions (then halted).

Notice fire in the news.

It can be bad, for sure. But it can also be good. It can be natural. It can be supernatural. Fire can destroy; but it also can give warmth and light.

Our spiritual state will determine how it affects us.