__________________________________________________

FOR NOW A SUBTLE GLOW IN THE BACKDROP, STRANGE PHENOMENA MAY ONE DAY HERALD A MAJOR EVENT

It has been more interesting than usual, more so than in years: the confluence of peculiar recent events.

Not since 9/11.

You have all those strange sounds -- booms, rumblings, or an eerie pitch we so often see and comment upon; sometimes sounding alien, otherworldly, or like a trumpet. Is it a sign from the Lord (on impending matters, a "shofar") or demonic -- or simply something that has a natural explanation? The mystery: why would people be hearing the same kind of sounds -- usually inexplicable, as far as local officials can discern -- at widely separated parts of North America (and the world)?

(Just last week: strange sounds in Jersey City and mystery booms that have kept Berkeley residents up for weeks. Above Bakersfield in California, strange blue lights. In Russia, there are strange flashes in the sky.

And of course those "blood moons," including during Holy Week. Moons. Eclipses. Comets. Or asteroids. Solar storms.

They would be more easily relegated to the bin of passing curiosities were it not for what is occurring, at the same time, in the "real" world.

Take the drought in California: already, the governor has had to mandate a twenty-five percent decrease in the use of water by people across the Golden State. A drought can cripple entire regions, and a mega-drought entire nations. It has happened before.

California provides half of America's fruits and vegetables.

There was drought during a confluence of events (including storms, quakes, and astronomical phenomena) during the Middle Ages, just before bubonic plague (the Black Death) decimated Asia, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Europe [see Sent To Earth for a detailed discussion].

In England a monk named Gervase of Canterbury reported in 1178 that "on the Sunday before the Feast of St. John the Baptist after sunset when the moon had first become visible a marvelous phenomenon was witnessed by some five or more men who were sitting there facing the moon. Now there was a bright new moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east; and suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the moon throbbed like a wounded snake."

This was at a time when major quakes and weather shifts, including "horrors and unheard of tempests" in Greater India, swept across the globe. Shifts in nature led to decades of drought and floods that caused rodents to flee and carry with them plague that developed many decades later. If you don't think glaciers are shrinking, see here.

Yet, such events, in nature, often cause us to think things are coming sooner than they are and even to attempt to peg dates on a calendar; we think this moon or that comet finally spells the onset of events. Heaven works in a different and more gradual timeframe (and without our calendar; in fact Heaven has no time).

Storms and floods and desiccation always come in some measure, in the ebb and flow of meteorology, and climatology; such however does not negate the significance of signs; when there's a confluence it can take on an exquisite if subtle limning, like a soft backlight (before the flash), behind current events.

Large moons and eclipses and the like, especially during Holy Week, give one a degree of pause. Strange clouds in the sky? And also: the northern lights. Yes, those lights that served as the great sign of Fatima. But more germane: again, actual events in society, the ongoing and expanding upset throughout the Middle East and other Islamic strongholds; the saber-rattling in Russia; the "skyrocketing" economy, which seems like "deja vu all over again" (and poised for a swoon). Meantime, look at all the homosexual upheaval. One can no longer act on Christian conscience in the U.S.?

This is an incredible and likewise expanding scenario.

Incipient persecution -- in the name of tolerance, in the name of rights.

Already, real persecution haunts Africa and India and Iraq and Syria. This is a major sign.

There is the pillaging of nature. There is greed like never before. There is the genetically-modified food (controlled by huge corporations). The materialism, and technology, have no "off" switch.

Some day, some way, they will; there will be a confluence that ends what currently transpires -- the mad dash that has swept us into a frenzy -- with a screeching halt. It will come in a way that no one has prognosticated. "In this time, expect the error of premature expectation," says a word of knowledge we have quoted, "but not [error in] the truth of the expectation itself." 

[resources: Spirit Daily's Bookstore and Michael Brown retreat, Boston area, April 25 ]

E-mail questions

Tweet