It was back in 1975 at the Vatican during an historic charismatic conference that an American evangelist named Dr. Ralph Martin -- recently named by the Pope as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization -- was given a "word of knowledge" (a locution, allegedly) that had to do with a melting down of what is around us.

As his website explains, "Dr. Martin is an internationally known evangelist. He is the founder and president of Renewal Ministries, which he established in 1980 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to renew the faith of Catholics through retreats, publications, conferences, and through television and radio. He has published numerous books, articles, pamphlets and videos on living out the Christian faith in a more effective way. Dr. Martin’s television program, The Choices We Face, has been airing on the Eternal Word Television Network since 1985, and is the longest running Catholic television program in the world. He holds a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome."

What Martin felt "told" by the Lord, back in 1975, was that "days of darkness are coming on the world, days of tribulation…

"Buildings that are now standing will not be standing. Supports that are there for my people will not be there. I want you to be prepared, My people, to know only Me and to cleave to me and to have me in a way deeper than ever before.

"I will lead you into the desert… I will strip you of everything that you are depending on now, so you depend just on Me. A time of darkness is coming on the world, but a time of glory is coming for My Church, a time of glory is coming for My people. Because I love you I want to show you what I am doing in the world today. I want to prepare you for what is to come."

That was more than forty years ago, and at the time, those who heard it expected it to occur, if true, rather quickly. It seemed imminent ("soon" in human time). It did not thus transpire -- at least not in obvious terms.

But Martin's prophecy arguably unfolded in subsequent decades. Whether or not it was an intuition or actual locution is left up to our individual reckonings. Looking back, one could even perceive that it did begin to take shape around 1975 -- subtly, as the evil from the Sixties became institutionalized (and refined) during the Seventies and then the Eighties (see the Wall Street scandals back then) and through to the present, as never before.  In 2010, a writer for Time began an article on the fall of trust in the U.S. by saying -- as if in affirmation of the prediction -- that "in the past decade, nearly every institution in American society -- whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Church, or the mainstream media --  has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent, or both."

A meltdown.

We beg to differ about the Church (though it too, for sure, has had its failings). But in general the assessment was correct, if incomplete, for to the list we can add our systems and structures of education, justice, health care, scientific research, college athletics, state governments, bureaucratic Washington, global corporations, law enforcement, and just about any other field, as we have seen an almost across-the-board downgrade in quality and morals.

That meltdown has preceded what seems like the political and economic degradation of the West as well.

We have only to see what is occurring in places like Greece, Ireland, and Italy -- in Europe, where, like the U.S., credit ratings are being downgraded.

In an article called "After America," former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recently wrote: "Not so long ago, a high-ranking Chinese official, who obviously had concluded that America's decline and China's rise were both inevitable, noted in a burst of candor to a senior U.S. official: 'But, please, let America not decline too quickly.' Although the inevitability of the Chinese leader's expectation is still far from certain, he was right to be cautious when looking forward to America's demise. For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes. While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -- would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order."

While it has certain upticks, the economic landscape -- and the standing of various nations -- are profoundly rearranging. Even if we don't subscribe to locutions, we are hearing "logical" down-to-earth secular voices saying much the same: institutions long regarded as bedrocks are disintegrating. Might this translate into social unrest that eventually leads to division in the U.S.? Will the demise of the U.S. -- if a demise is its destiny -- be, as one mystical priest warned in the 1990s, not so much a sudden collapse but more "like the snow in the spring" (due to sins like abortion)? Will it become -- as another mystical revelation foresaw (this the famous near-death experience of Dr. Howard Storm) -- a third-world country?

Might it even splinter into regions or republics?

What if one day the U.S. became a conglomeration of, say, the republic of the "Northeast" (from New England to North Carolina, and westward to western Pennsylvania); the Great South (or "Oceania," including Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Louisiana as far north as Tennessee and as far west as Dallas), "Espanola" (the rest of Texas with Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Nevada); "Dakota" (the Northwest plus Montana, the Dakotas, and Idaho down through Wyoming and Colorado); and the "Great Midwest" (from Nebraska to Ohio, Oklahoma to Minnesota)?

It is blog-type talk but there are times the blogs seem to be ahead of the game and the point is that things are changing and fading as Martin and others predicted -- and continue to prognosticate. In a talk last June, a seer from the famous apparition site of Medjugorje (currently under Vatican investigation), speaking to throngs during its thirtieth anniversary, said, "Many people ask me if Our Lady has ever talked about the Second Coming of Jesus. No. Has Our Lady talked about the end of the world? No. Our Lady hasn’t come because of that. One day when the time comes, when some things get revealed, you will understand why the apparitions are such a long time and why every day. Later on, we will understand some things. Later on, our eyes will be opened. When we see physical changes that are going to happen in the world."

It brought to mind the part of the 1990 prophecy that foresees "the inevitable onset of the change of era" and categorically stated (presumably in the words of the Lord in another locution after a highly unusual dream): "Your era is ending. Soon the world will not be the world you know. I am not speaking of a barren world, or one depopulated, but of the end of your technological era. Many inventions of mankind will be broken down and there will be more of a peasant attitude and way of life everywhere."

In the realm of phenomena (and phenomenology), many are those who believe they are seeing -- or hearing -- "signs" of what is to come. Not a week goes by without the secular media reporting on inexplicable lights in the sky somewhere. In the 1990 prophecy, it said events would be foreshadowed by a "strange loud rumbling" as well. Undeniably, there are strange reports out there. A recent example came from Costa Rica, where, said a news site, there were "rumblings and what appeared to be thunder or explosions that awoke many Costa Ricans shortly after midnight" on January 9. The reports have come from all over.

"For its part the Instituto Metereológico Nacional (IMN) -- national weather service -- reports that the night was cloudless, with moderate wind and there was no significant cloud formation or anything that might create the thunder," said a news filing. "The Sección de Vigilancia Aérea (air monitoring service) said they observed nothing unusual in their radar, ruling out any aircraft. The social media sites -- Facebook and Twitter, for example -- are full of theories and explanations, that include the rumblings were made by the closing fireworks at the Zapote Fair. However, many are still skeptical and believe that the noise, thunder, explosion or rumblings were different that those produced by fireworks. And the fact that no flashing lights usually accompanying fireworks were not seen."

Is something going on deep within the earth?

Will natural events parallel socioeconomic ones?

Asked another report (Costa Rica Newspaper Online):

"Is it the mysterious sound of the so-called coming Apocalypse? Some think that the mysterious sound heard in Costa Rica at around 12:30 a.m. this morning is exactly that. Ronny Quintero, a seismologist said the event should be studied at the exact time and location of the anomalies to determine with certainty that there was no earthquake. He added that depending on the location of those who claim they heard the rumble or ”The Hum” it is easy to dismiss the possibility of tectonic movements.

"This news has rattled the social web whereas Costa Ricans and the world over are scrambling to figure out what this mysterious sound could have been. Authorities have yet to comment on the subject although OVSICORI, the Costa Rica Volcanologist and Seismologist Organization is saying there is no Earth movements recorded at the time of the strange sound.

"There is a YouTube video showing how it sounded. A second video was filmed in Kiev, Ukraine where the sound has also appeared.

"It is important to note that this is not the wind nor was it filmed anywhere near the ocean. The sound was heard throughout the entire country from Heredia to Perez Zeledon."

All of it gets added attention because it is the year 2012. Constant are such reports -- pointing either to a unique time in history or to the influence of that information superhighway called the internet, which may make things seem more frequent than back in the days before there was such widespread, pervasive reportage.

[see also: 'Dr. Doom' warns on World War III; Mexican Mayan region launches countdown, 2011's weather records, Will 2012 be apocalyptic game-changer?, NASA: apocalypse not yet, and 2011: the year the world was supposed to end, twice]