“
The
year 2000 will always be remembered as the year of the Millennium, the Holy
Year, the great Jubilee. It was, for those who believe in the power of
Prophecy, the beginning of a new Aeon in the history of mankind, the dawn of a
glorious age which would witness the return of the Messiah and the founding of the New Jerusalem. Sometime within the first century of this
Millennium, we will come to the Day that marks the 6000th
anniversary of the Fall of Adam. That
fateful Day will signal the passage of six millennia of our collective Exile
from
The
anticipation that preceded the Millennium was fulfilled by the occurrence of a
number of prodigious events during the “y2k”.
On September 28th, the last day of the Hebrew year 5760 and
the eve of Rosh HaShanah, a man who
was to become the Prime Minister of Israel led a contingent of his people onto
the
A
few months before the Rosh HaShanah
War broke out on the geopolitical frontier that separates the Jews and the
Moslems, another prodigious event had occurred on the historical frontier
between Islam and Christianity. From an
obscure village in Portugal, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of
State, announced to the World that the Church would at last disclose the
mysterious Third Secret of Fatima. He chose to make this sensational
announcement on the 13th of May, commemorating the date in 1917 when
three shepherd children had a vision of the Blessed Virgin. Ironically, the religious role of Mary, the
mother of Jesus, in Catholicism very much corresponds to that of Fatima, the
daughter of Mohammed, in Islam. The name
of the Portuguese
In
Cardinal Sodano’s remarks that day, he
disclosed the
Given
Sodano’s prefatory gloss and his
skewed rendering of the vision itself, the conclusion appeared
unavoidable: The Third Secret was nothing more than a precognition of the
shooting of John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981 ― an
event which had also transpired on the 13th of May. The Vatican=s
official reading of the Third Secret, with its reference to
“atheistic systems”, implicitly endorsed the long-discredited conspiracy theory
that saw Bulgarian spies, acting on behalf of the Soviet KGB, behind the lone
Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca. Interestingly, Agca ―
the original source of the so-called “Bulgarian Connection” story ―
has, since his release from Italian prison in June 2000, accused forces within
the Vatican itself of orchestrating the attack on the Pope in 1981. He has also charged that the
Ten
weeks later, on
Many
of those who had long studied the apparitions of Fatima and lobbied the Vatican for disclosure of the
Third Secret reacted with skepticism, directed at both the
official exegesis and the bonafides
of the text itself. The notion that the
Third Secret relates only to the 1981 shooting in
For those familiar with the published memoirs of Sister Lucy, moreover, it was apparent that the text released by the Vatican was incomplete, insofar as it lacked the actual words spoken by the Blessed Mother to the three shepherd children. In her memoirs, Lucia mentions that she and her cousin Jacinta both saw the apparitions and heard the words of the Lady of Fatima. Her cousin Francisco, the youngest of the three, on the other hand, could see the visions but was deaf to the Lady’s speech. After she disclosed the Third Secret, the Virgin Mary instructed Lucy: “Do not tell this to anyone. Francisco? Yes, you may tell him.”[4] Therefore, the Third Secret must have been explained in words spoken by the Blessed Mother, words which Francisco was unable to hear.
Like
the incident on the Temple Mount, the events unfolding around the
purported release of the Third Secret of Fatima in the year 2000 represent the crossing of yet
another fateful threshold. If the real
Secret, as so many informed sources have reported, foresees the accelerating
moral corruption of the Church hierarchy, then here was living proof its
prophetic truth. The
Beyond
her account of Jacinta=s
visions of the beleaguered “Holy Pope”, Lucia has dropped other “hints” as to the contents
of the Third Secret. In one interview with a
If the Third Secret of Fatima does speak about the death of the Polish Pontiff, and perhaps also about his brush with death in 1981, it does so only as a prelude to the warning of what is to follow. John=s Apocalypse envisions the Woman who is Ecclesia ― the true Church ― fleeing with her son, the true Pope, into the “wilderness” for a period of 1260 days, or about three-and-a-half years. During that dark period, a false Pope imposes the universal worship of the Beast=s image.[6] Sister Lucy has said that the contents of the Third Secret deal precisely with these events, the events prophesied in Revelation Chapters 12 and 13. It follows that the version that has been sanitized for public consumption by the Vatican=s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ― formerly known as the Inquisition and now thoroughly dominated by Opus Dei ― must be a radical abridgement. If the Third Secret does speak about a temporary take-over of the Church hierarchy by the forces of darkness, and if those forces are already at work and close to attaining their goals, then the reason for the bogus Fatima “disclosure” is quite apparent.
The
malevolent forces now vying for control of the Church hierarchy consist of
several factions. But the dominant one
among them is Opus Dei, and the tentacles of the
“Octopus” extend further with each passing day.
In recent years, a silent coup has been unfolding inside the
It’s
ironic that the Opus Dei owes its current stranglehold on the Vatican
to the very event that its apostles are now using to explain away the Third
Secret of Fatima. It was during the long convalescence of John
Paul II from the gunshot wound he received in May 1981
that Opus Dei outmaneuvered the papacy’s erstwhile financier Roberto Calvi and came away with total control over the
Vatican Bank. During the Pontiff’s prolonged
hospitalization, then-Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli took the helm of
Consequently,
the assault on the Pope in 1981 paved the way for Opus Dei to achieve its current hegemony over the
Church. So much so, in fact, that it’s
impossible to dismiss Agca’s recent claims that forces
within the
From
the standpoint of Opus Dei’s public relations, the
timing of the Fatima “revelations” may have been aimed in part at
overshadowing Agca’s accusations and pointing
the finger of blame back at the Soviet Communists, who are no longer around to
defend themselves. Beyond that, the sham
disclosure indicates that the Great Schism foretold by the Third Secret is extremely imminent. This Schism will lead
to the exile of the Holy Pope of Jacinta=s
vision and the rise of the Antipope depicted in the Book of Revelation. With each passing day of the
John Paul=s
progressive deterioration we move closer to the point when the papal throne is
functionally vacant. The power vacuum
created by a vacant Holy See is, according to
One
indicator of the degree of this power vacuum is the infighting between the
Such a conclave would likely be boycotted by the most extreme of the “conservative” Cardinals. In their absence, and in one last effort to stave off a schism, the opposing factions of the conclave would perhaps settle on someone perceived to be a harmless non-entity, as Albino Luciani was when he was elected in 1978. Nonetheless, such a man might, like Pope John Paul I, show himself to be more interested in serving God than the Mammon of power. When that became apparent, his election would be “nullified” on some procedural basis, perhaps the lack of fully attended conclave. Now it would be the turn of the “liberal” faction to walk out of the conclave, which in their absence would surely elect the candidate hand-picked by Opus Dei. The end result would be an Antipope enthroned in Rome, while the Holy Pope flees for his life, perhaps across the sea of clerical carnage envisioned by Pius X and the partially disclosed Third Secret.
If
we can believe St. Malachy=s
prognostications, which seem to have been flawlessly prescient up to now, this
Antipope will be of
Jewish heritage. Malachy calls him “the Glory of the Olive Tree”, and in Scripture the Olive
Tree is consistently a symbol of the people of
In the wake of the Antipope=s election, the vast majority of Roman Catholics, drilled from early youth in sheepish obedience to the Church hierarchy, will be inclined to follow him unreservedly. This is why the dissemination of the real content of the Third Secret of Fatima is now more urgent than ever. The greater the number of the faithful who know of the Blessed Virgin=s warning about this false shepherd, the greater the number who stand some chance of being saved.
But
if these events begin to unfold before the falsehood of the
It
is not only the messengers of Fatima who are to be belittled and demeaned, but also
the message itself. Already the Vatican=s Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Ratzinger, has relegated the secrets of
Fatima to the status of a “private revelation”, playing no essential role in
God=s overall plan for mankind=s salvation. Catholics may believe in the
“If what I say to
you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace... if not, the good will be martyred, the Holy
Pope will have much to suffer, and various nations
will be annihilated.”[12]
This
hardly sounds like the inconsequential stuff of a “private revelation” does
it? The
To
those whose positions of power depend on the maintenance of the status quo,
however, the Virgin=s words,
and the epochal realignment of the Faith they portend, cannot be readily embraced. Rather than “embrace” her message, the
In spite of the Vatican=s distortion of the Fatima message, their disclosure of June 26, 2000, does provide us with important new information as to the true content of the Third Secret. Although the text released on that date does not disclose the words spoken by Our Lady, it does apparently contain Sister Lucy=s account of the vision that immediately preceded the spoken revelation. Consequently, it=s worth our effort to examine the vision and attempt to decipher its symbolism. Lucy=s diary entry describes the vision as follows:
After
the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a
little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing,
it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire, but
they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him
from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried
out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, penance, penance!’ And we saw in an immense
light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when
they pass in front of it,’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression
that it was the Holy Father.’ Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious
going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of
rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the
Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with
halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the
corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees
at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired
bullets and arrows at him, and
in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men
and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal
aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
For the time being, let’s skip over the preliminaries concerning the “Angel with a flaming sword” and go directly to the portion of the vision dealing with the “Bishop dressed in White”. In the context of all we’ve learned about the Third Secret, it’s quite clear that this Bishop is the persecuted Angelic Pastor who is to succeed John Paul II. Sister Lucy’s account identifies him as the “Holy Father”, a title which may also be translated from the Portuguese as the “Holy Pope”. As we’ve seen, the Holy Pope is the name by which Our Lady of Fatima refers to the Angelic Pastor who will renew the Church and usher in the Millennial reign of the Son of Man. He is the future Pontiff whom St. Malachy’s prophecy names “Peter of Rome”.
Continuing
with Lucy’s vision, the Holy Pope is accompanied by a retinue of bishops,
priests, as well as men and women
clerics. The latter suggests that Pope
Peter will defy the conservative bias of the
Next Pope Peter and his band of faithful clergy ascend a steep
mountain, at the top of which is a large Cross made of rough-hewn tree
trunks. Putting aside the Cross symbol
for the moment, let’s consider the significance of the mountain. There are actually two layers of meaning
superimposed here ― meanings which “cross” each other like the two arms
of the Crucifix atop the mountain. In
Scripture, we are familiar with both holy mountains and profane mountains.
… they have built the high places of Tophet…
to burn their sons and daughters in the fire; … Therefore, behold, the days
come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, … but the valley
of slaughter: for they shall bury in
Tophet, till there be no place. And the
carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and for the
beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away.[13]
Jeremiah’s frightful image of piles of unburied carcasses is mirrored in Sister Lucy’s vision of the corpses lying in the streets of the half-ruined city through which the Holy Pope passes on his way to the mountain. We’ll have more to say about the import of these corpses shortly, but for now we should note Jeremiah’s use of the Hebrew word nebelah. While nebelah literally means “carcass”, used figuratively the word can also connote an idol. It is derived from the root nabel, which means to make vile or unclean. Under Jewish law, contact with a carrion corpse renders a person or place “defiled”. The Hebrew word for “defiled” is chillul, which is derived from chalal, meaning “slain man”. The Torah directs that a person who is defiled by coming into contact with a corpse must be separated from the rest of the community until he/she undergoes a ritual of purification. In light of that background, we can already infer that Lucy’s vision speaks to the need for purification of the Church and its Pontificate, which have become defiled and have fallen into idolatry.
Returning to the symbolism of the mountains in the negative vein of “high places”, we find that it’s consistently linked in Jewish prophecy with idolatry and defilement:
And the word of the
Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of
Then shall ye know
that I am the Lord, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about
their altars, … in all the tops of the mountains, … and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet
savour to all their idols.[14]
Once again, this passage from Ezekiel’s prophetic imagery shares
many of the same symbolic elements as we find in the vision of the Third Secret. There are obvious parallels between the
devouring sword of the Lord here and the flaming sword wielded by the Angel of
the Fatima apparition.
In both scenarios we see a city laid waste, with the slain lying all
around. Through his use of the Hebrew
words chalal, for “slain men”, and peger, for “carcasses”, Ezekiel invokes
their figurative connotations of “polluted” and “idolatrous image”,
respectively. Ezekiel’s vision also
shares with Sister Lucy’s the central feature of the
mountain: On the prophet’s mountaintop
we encounter an oak tree,
while on Lucia’s we see a Cross fashioned
from the rough-hewn trunks of a “cork-tree”.
A “cork-tree” is simply a variety of oak that happens to be common in
In our interpretation of the vision of the Third Secret, we must always bear in mind
that the symbolism of the apparition is being influenced by the consciousness
of the seer ― in this case Sister Lucy. In her description of oak trunks forming the mountaintop Cross, for
example, she associates them with “cork-tree” oak of her native land. While Lucia was Portuguese, she lived over 20 years of her
life ― from age 18 to 39 ― in
Cloistered in
“… don’t
forget that that Cross is your Cross … the Cross which is waiting for the
Crucified it lacks; and that Crucified must be you.”[16]
Bearing in mind that Sister Lucy wrote her memoirs of the Fatima apparitions in 1944, it’s quite plausible that the image of the rough-hewn wooden Cross in her vision is an unconscious reflection of the characteristic plain wooden Crucifix of Opus Dei. If so, then the symbolic themes of idolatry and defilement associated with the oak tree trunks on the mountaintop fall into place perfectly, since Opus Dei epitomizes the idolatry of power and wealth which has defiled the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
Insofar as we typically speak of the Church hierarchy as the
“
It’s no accident that this historical background resonates
with so many of the symbolic themes of Sister Lucy’s vision: the mountain, the city of corpses, the wanton
slaughter of the faithful … and, most importantly, the figure of a martyred
Pope, a Pope who will have a special connection to Simon Peter. Just as Catholic tradition teaches that Peter
was the first Pontiff, it also teaches that the next Pope Peter will be the last of the line. This tradition is echoed in St. Malachy’s prophecy, which names the
last Pontiff “Peter of Rome”. Based on Lucia’s
vision, we can now conclude that the Third Secret reveals still another parallel between the two
Peters: the future Pontiff will be martyred on Mons Vaticanus just as the Fisherman was reputed to have been. The image of Pope Peter’s martyrdom on
One whom neither plague nor sword could
finish,
Death on the hill/mountain summit, struck
from the sky:
The abbot will die when he will envision
ruining
Those of the shipwreck seeking to seize the rock.[18]
We note here the prophet’s use of the “rock” as a double entendre for Peter. As we’ve seen, Nostradamus ― ever wary of incurring the wrath of
the Inquisition ― often uses “code words” for the Church, like the “rock”
and the “boat/bark/ship” (alluding to the Fisherman’s vessel). Hence, “those of the shipwreck seeking to seize the rock” translates as
“those who would destroy the Church in their attempt to seize control of
it”. In the context of our analysis thus
far, this obviously refers to Opus Dei and its allies within the Church
hierarchy. The mention of “plague” also
catches our attention, since the spread of plague has often been depicted allegorically
as shooting of arrows. That’s
why, for example, the image of St. Sebastian pierced with arrows was believed to offer protection against the
Black Death in medieval
Archery is the basis of many metaphors in Scripture. Perhaps the most familiar is the Bow that God put in the sky as a token of His covenant with Noah after the Flood. The Covenant of the Bow guaranteed Noah and his descendants ― in other words, the whole human race as it’s now constituted ― that God would never again resort to the near-extermination of our species. Instead, God opted to deal with the general corruption of mankind by selecting a “chosen people”, a consecrated Nation to be His agent for redeeming the rest of humanity. According to Jewish tradition, when the people of God are righteously fulfilling their role, the Bow remains hidden in the clouds. But when they stray into idolatry, the Bow appears in the sky as a warning of God’s imminent wrath and a reminder of His covenant with Noah ― and through Noah with all of us.
Bearing that in mind, let’s turn to a passage from Psalms which sheds more light on the metaphor of the Bow:
The
children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of
battle. They kept not the covenant of God,
and refused to walk in the law; …But he [God], being full of compassion,
forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his
anger way, and did not stir up all his wrath. …And he brought them to the
border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had
purchased. …But [they] turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers:
they were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to
jealousy with their graven images.
When
God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred
Before we can begin to comprehend
these verses, we need to understand the “strategy” that God pursued after the
Covenant of the Bow with Noah. God’s essential aim remained unchanged: to restore the condition of the Garden of
Eden that had existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve. What defines
The Covenant of the Bow signified a change of divine strategy after
the Flood, insofar as God did not initially seek to establish this sanctified
domain over the entire face of the Earth, but instead confined it to a specific
dwelling-place. Once established in such
a dwelling, the Presence of God would then extend itself over the whole
World. As the foregoing passage from
Psalms explains,
God’s dwelling-place among men must remain pure and undefiled. Therefore, when some of his chosen people
turn aside into idolatry, God transfers His Sanctuary to the domain of the
remnant that remained faithful. And,
ultimately, this process of God’s progressive in-dwelling among men culminates
in His establishing his consummate
The Psalmist refers to certain
historical facts concerning God’s Presence among the Twelve Tribes of
Israel. After the Exodus from
In the Old Testament, the names
Ephraim and Joseph
(Ephraim’s father) were often used as a short-hand way of referring to the ten
northern Tribes. Accordingly, the Psalm
we’re looking at speaks of “Ephraim” ― that is, the ten northern Tribes
― falling into idolatry, which is in fact what happened historically. As a result of the schism among God’s people
and the apostasy of “Ephraim”, God withdrew His protection from the northern
Tribes. As the Psalm relates, He forsook
the Tabernacle of Shiloh and relocated His Sanctuary to
In this Psalm, Ephraim is likened to a “deceitful bow”, i.e., one that is not strung properly and shoots its arrows errantly. The Psalmist speaks of these Tribes having “turned aside” and “turned back”, using Hebrew terms that figuratively connote apostasy. Out of their apostasy grew a schism among God’s people and a relocation of God’s Sanctuary. All of these themes are viscerally connected with the imagery of the archers in the vision of the Third Secret. As in the Psalm, the malevolent bowmen are a metaphor for those among God’s people ― in this case the Church hierarchy ― who have “turned aside” into idolatry. These archers also symbolize the captivity into which these errant shepherds will lead much of their flock. In this condition of captivity, there will be a false Catholic Church presided over by an Antipope and in league with an Antichrist.
The “arrows” shot by the apostates at the true Pope Peter will consist for the most part of lies and slanders. Again, we find this same metaphor in another passage of Psalms:
Hide me from the
secret counsel of the wicked … Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend
their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter
words: That they may shoot in secret at
the perfect … [20]
As in Jacinta’s vision, this campaign of
calumny against the Holy Pope will incite people to violence against him and
force him to flee for his life. In this
respect,
How say ye to my
soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?
For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot
at the upright in heart. [21]
Thus far, we’ve seen that each of the symbols in Sister Lucy’s vision has a both a negative and a positive meaning. This is so because the Fatima message warns of an impending catastrophe for Catholicism, but one which ultimately results in the renewal of the Church and the restoration of its true mission on Earth. Therefore, just as the image of the mountaintop has both malevolent and divine connotations, so does the imagery of the archers. Accordingly, the Prophet Zechariah speaks of an end-Time scenario in which the “bow” ceases to represent an instrument of divine wrath against idolaters and apostates, but instead is transformed into a token of the reunification of God’s people.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of
And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, … and the battle bow shall be cut off …
by the blood of thy covenant I have sent
forth thy prisoners out of the pit …
When I have bent
the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning[22]
In Psalms we saw the bow used as a metaphor for the
historical schism that developed between the ten northern Tribes, represented
by Ephraim, and the two southern Tribes,
represented by
The prophesied reunification of the Twelve Tribes of Israel will usher in the Kingdom of the Messiah. That’s why the “Woman clothed with the Sun” in Revelation Chapter 12 wears a crown of twelve stars. But why should the Fatima prophecies ― prophecies dealing with the fate of the Church of Rome ― have anything to do with the Tribes of Israel? The answer to that question, of course, relates to “Ephraim”, that is, to the ten “lost Tribes” who were scattered among the Gentile Nations. If we pick up where we left off in Zechariah, the next chapter speaks to the return of Ephraim from exile at the end of Time:
…and I will save the house of Joseph, and I
will bring them again to place them … and they shall be as though I had not
cast them off …
And they of Ephraim shall
be like a mighty man, and their heart shall rejoice as through wine … I will
hiss for them, and gather them, for I have redeemed them …
And I will sow them among the people: and
they shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their
children, and turn again.
I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon … and the deeps of the river shall dry up: and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down … [23]
Since the ten lost Tribes were
“sown” among the Gentile Nations, the reunification of the Twelve Tribes of
Israel necessarily involves the reintegration of Christianity and Judaism. Saint Paul spoke of this in terms of the ultimate
grafting of the Gentile “branches” back onto the “olive tree” of
Zechariah likens the end-Time return of Ephraim from exile to the Exodus of the Israelites from
If we continue reading into the next
chapter of Jeremiah, we come upon the very images
that
The symbolic removal of that
impediment to the unity of God’s people is expressed ― by both the Jewish
and Christian prophets ― as the “drying up” of the
In Hebrew, the Gentile Nations are
the goyim ― a word that can
alternately refer to locusts. Jewish commentary on the Torah also
associates Amalek ― Esau’s eldest son whose name
denotes “a swarm of locusts” ― with
The Jews considered the idolatrous
Gentile Nations to be spiritually “dead” ― as reflected in the fact that goyim comes from the same root as geviyah “corpse”. Consequently, when the ten northern Tribes
― aka “Ephraim” ― were scattered among
the goyim, they too were reduced to a
condition of spiritual “death”. Ezekiel describes this morbid state of affairs in his
vision of the
…Son of man, these bones are the whole house
of
…Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my
people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves,
and bring you into the
… And shall put my spirit in you, and you
shall live, and I shall place you in your own land …[31]
The prophet is speaking here of a
great awakening that will take place in the Gentile Nations at the same time as
the Empire of Antichrist is unleashing its “locust army”. The spiritual progeny of the lost Tribes of
Israel ― represented by the “dry bones” ― will be aroused by a
powerful “spirit wind”. In Hebrew, this
“spirit wind” is the Ruach, the
“breath of life” or “holy spirit” that uniquely confers upon Man a God-like
Consciousness. The Ruach is the precursor in the human soul of the Neshamah,
the integrated collective Consciousness of mankind for which the unified Twelve
Tribes of Israel is a metaphor. As we’ve
said before, the attainment of the Neshamah
will usher in the Kingdom of the Messiah on Earth.
This is what Ezekiel means when he says that God will return the
lost Tribes to the “
According to Ezekiel, the unprecedented influx of Ruach will awaken a multitude of the
spiritually “dead” among the Nations of the Gentiles. These awakened ones will assume the legacy of
“Ephraim”, the ten lost Tribes. And the prophet sees them assembling
themselves into a great army ― one which will ultimately crush the
“locust army” of Antichrist’s
…Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of
man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the
breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an
exceeding great army.[32]
After his vision of the
Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph,
which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him,
even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be
one in my hand.
And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord
God; Behold, I will take the children of
And I will make them one nation in the land
upon the mountains of
Neither shall they defile themselves any
more with their idols …
And David my servant shall be king over
them; and they shall have one shepherd…[33]
One of the limitations of the English translation of these verses is that we lose the word play of the original Hebrew. Since the word for “stick” ‘ets sounds like the word for “bone” ‘etsem, a connection is made between the Two Sticks of Ephraim and Judah and the Dry Bones of Ezekiel’s vision. It also helps to know that ‘ets, in addition to meaning “stick”, can also mean “wood” or “tree”. So the two “sticks” joined together in Ezekiel’s allegory can also be viewed as two “trees” joined together. The latter image, of course, is exactly what Sister Lucy saw in the form of the Cross made of two tree trunks on the mountaintop. We’ve noted before that the imagery of Lucy’s vision has both a dark side and a redemptive side. On the dark side, the mountaintop oak Cross relates to the high places of idolatry. But now we see that the same symbol also embodies the promise of a Messianic Kingdom ― a Kingdom based on the merger of Gentile Christians back into their Jewish roots.
Seen from the redemptive standpoint,
therefore, the treacherous ascent up the mountain toward the wooden Crucifix
represents the Holy Pope striving toward a goal. The nature of that goal is revealed in the
peculiar structure of the Cross, comprising two rough-hewn tree trunks joined
together, just like the two sticks/trees of Ezekiel’s allegory. But the last Pontiff’s aim to reunite God’s
people and tear down the doctrinal wall between Christianity and Judaism is
violently opposed by those among the goyim
who are not awakened by the Ruach and
do not take on the role of Ephraim. The latter correspond to the soldiers who
shoot the Pope on the mountaintop. In
this symbolic tableau, the historic mission of Christianity is accomplished: The lost Tribes are shepherded back into the
fold of
Now the stage is set for the purgation,
for the purification of God’s people. In
the final part of Lucia’s vision of the Third Secret, she sees two Angels
sprinkling sacrificial blood on the Holy Pope and his disciples as they make their way to
the summit of the mountain. As we’ll
discuss in our next chapter, these are the same two Angels who were sent by God
to destroy the wicked city of Sodom but to save the family of Abraham’s brother
But the same day that
Similarly, in the Book of Revelation Sodom is used to represent
As we said earlier, the initial
image of the Angel with the Flaming Sword reveals that spiritual purification is the
central theme of Lucy’s vision. The
process of purification is represented by the aspersion of God’s people with
blood performed by the Angels Gabriel and Raphael at the end of the
vision. It remains for us to interpret,
therefore, what this blood signifies. We
are reminded of the remarks of John Paul II in
Our analysis thus far suggests that
this renewal of the Church will involve a two-step process: first, the reunion of the Eastern and Western
branches of Christianity, and then the “grafting” of the Christian branches
back onto the tree of Judaism, from whence they sprung. While both of these steps will be opposed by
the Catholic hierarchy, their resistance to the Judeo-Christian merger will be
particularly fierce. And it is this
resistance that will lead to bloodshed.
In this scenario, the
In Isaiah’s famous prophecy concerning
the advent of the Messiah ― “there shall come forth a rod out of
the stem of Jesse” ― he speaks of the
Earth restored to the primeval innocence of
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and
the leopard shall
lie down with the kid … They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea. …
And in that day there shall be a root of
Jesse, which will stand for an ensign of the
people; to it shall the Gentiles seek … [37]
In terms of the imagery of the Third Secret, we have now progressed from the profane mountaintop of idolatry to the “holy mountain” where the Messiah will plant His battle ensign, the banner beneath which Jews and Gentiles are to be united.
And it shall come to pass in that day that
the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his
people, which shall be left, from Assyria … And he shall set up an ensign for
the nations [goyim], and shall
assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from
the four corners of the earth.
The envy also of Ephraim shall
depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall
not envy
And the Lord shall … shake his hand over the
river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over
dryshod. And there shall be a highway
for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from
Isaiah’s prophecy thus gives us the
formula for the World’s final conflict, with the reunited “Tribes of
Israel” arrayed against Edom/
Who is this that cometh from
I have trodden in the winepress alone; and
of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and
trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon
my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.[39]
It’s certainly no coincidence that
the disciples of Pope Peter in Lucia’s vision are seen being
“sprinkled” with blood in the same way
as is Isaiah’s avenging Messiah. In both instances the Messiah’s adversaries
are the same ― Edom aka
Particularly worth noting is the
connotation of “sprinkle” nazah associated with expiation of sins. Thus in Exodus we read of how Moses, upon receiving the Torah on
Behold the blood of the covenant, which the
Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.[40]
The Jewish Midrashim teach that the community of
Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews makes the connection between the ritual of sprinkled blood performed by Moses on Mt. Sinai and the purification of the collective human Soul needed to usher in the Millennial Kingdom.
… when Moses had
spoken every precept to all the people according to the law [Torah], he took the blood of calves and of goats …
and sprinkled both the book, and all the people. Saying, this is the blood of the testament
which God hath joined unto you. … And almost all things are by the law [Torah] purged with blood; and without shedding of
blood is no remission. …
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins
of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time
without sin unto salvation.[42]
Paul
then proceeds to draw a parallel between mankind’s first ― albeit
temporary ― attainment of the Neshamah on
For you are not come unto the mount [Sinai] that … burned with fire, … But ye are come
unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, …
and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of
Abel.[43]
According to the vision of Jacinta Marto, the Third Secret of Fatima decrees that there shall be established a new
priesthood ― one that will be consecrated by Pope Peter as the last act of his pontificate. With this consecration, moreover, the
institution of the Roman Papacy will come to an end. The sprinkling of blood on Peter’s disciples in Lucia’s vision represents a renewal
of the priesthood of Aaron and his sons, who were sprinkled with the blood of the “ram of consecration” as
ordained by God on
They that sanctify themselves … in the
gardens behind one tree in the midst … shall be consumed together, saith the
Lord. For I know their works and their
thoughts: it shall come, that I will
gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will
send those that escape of them unto the nations [goyim] … and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles.
And they shall bring all your brethren for
an offering unto the Lord out of all the nations … to my holy mountain
Jerusalem … And I will also take of them for priests … For as the new heavens
and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord,
so shall your seed and your name remain.
And it shall come to pass, that from one new
moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to
worship before me, saith the Lord. And
they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases [peger] of the men that have transgressed against me
… [45]
The Third Secret of Fatima deals with the ultimate goal of human history,
which is to enable Man to dwell once again in the Presence of the Lord. As symbolically rendered in Sister Lucy’s vision, the Third Secret warns ―
as does Isaiah in the passage
quoted above ― that those who remain committed to the idolatry of Mammon
must perish in this process of purification.
In that sense, Lucia’s image of Pope Peter making his way
through a landscape littered with corpses matches up with Isaiah’s prophecy of
God’s purified priesthood gazing from the Holy Mountain upon the carrion
carcasses of transgressors. But the
process of purgation which leads to mankind’s redemption does not involve only
― or even primarily ― the destruction of the wicked and
corrupt. When St. Paul speaks of blood
as the medium of purification,[46] he refers to the ritual atonement of Yom
Kippur ― the one time of the year when the High Priest may enter into the
Holy of Holies. Paul observes that the
blood sacrifices of Yom Kippur provide the earthly pattern for the sacrifice of
the Lamb of God:
For Christ is not entered into
the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into
heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor that he should offer himself often, as
the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others…[47]
And so, the scenario of Redemption necessarily involves
the sacrifice of righteous men and women, as appears in Fatima’s scene of the martyrdom of the Holy Pope and his
disciples while ascending the mountain.
In the selfless sacrifice of the righteous few resides the power to
atone for the sins of the multitudes ― and to avert the wholesale
annihilation of peoples of which the Lady of Fatima warned in her Second
Secret. But what cannot be avoided is
the utter destruction of the World’s idolatry of power and greed and the
institutions that sustain it. Chief among
these institutions, as we have learned, are the Gentile Nations, which are
destined to destroy themselves in one last orgy of blind violence before the
dawn of the
If the year 2000 represented the crossing of a fateful
threshold by giving the World a glimpse into Sister Lucy’s vision of the Apocalypse, the following year
provided a chilling plunge into the icy waters of death and tribulation. Just as the vision of the Third Secret of Fatima must be viewed
as a metaphor if we are to extract its meaning, so the imploding of the Twin
Towers of Manhattan Island on September 11, 2001, must also be seen as a metaphor if we are to
avoid being sucked down into its vortex of vengeance and despair. That vortex leads us to a World of horror
which Dante explored in his Inferno:
e io senti= chiavar l=uscio di sotto
a l=orrible
torre; ond= io
guardai
nel viso a=
mie= figliuoi
sanza far motto.
and below I heard them nailing
shut the door
of the horrible tower; whereat I looked
into the faces of my children without a
word.[48]
One minute the Tower stands, a proud monument to the achievements of prosperity and technology. But in the next instant it falls like a house of cards, collapsing inward on itself, betrayed by its own latent weakness. And then, in the final defining moment, it assumes the shape of a great mound ― a burial mound, not unlike the mounds in which our ancestors of eons past interred their dead. As the dust settles, it becomes a monument once more, a monument more truthful than its proud predecessor ― a monument to human frailty and vulnerability.
The Tower was no ordinary edifice. The steel that withered so quickly in the flames supported more than just concrete and glass. It supported a whole way of life. The Tower was the collective mental edifice of an entire culture. Hanging from its girders were the dreams and aspirations of an entire civilization ― a civilization which now lay condemned in its ruins. In the days that followed, the anguished survivors would pick through the rubble, searching for the living among the dead, searching for shards of meaning amidst the howling chaos.
What is that sound high in the
air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are these hooded hordes
swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling
in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the
mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in
the violet air
Falling towers
Unreal[49]
Is there more than the echo of demonic laughter to be heard amidst these scenes of desolation? Is there not some metaphor of Redemption to cancel the metaphor of our collective Fall?
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, into the void left by the fallen Tower steps the god of War, shaking his bloody javelin and calling for vengeance. His call is eagerly taken up by what remains of the Power that built the Tower and sustained it: because no Power has ever or will ever freely accept the reality that It is spent. The call to War stirs the ashes of the Tower like a vortex, sweeping up the chaff of broken hearts. Far off in the distance echoes the warning of Jeremiah ...
A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamentation, and bitter weeping;
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted for her
children,
because they were not.[50]
High above us, in anticipation of the carnage, we hear the “murmur of maternal lamentation”, as T. S. Eliot so aptly phrased it. The god of War, now standing invisibly in the place of the fallen Tower, calls upon the mothers ― of whom Rachel was the epiphany ― to offer up their children to him.
They have built the high places
of Ba’al
to burn their sons with fire
for burnt offerings unto Ba’al[51]
Ba’al
or Bel, from which we have the Latin bellum for War. The same god that was Melkarth to the
Phoenicians and Moloch to the children of
Therefore, behold the days come
that this place no more shall be
called Tophet.
... but the
to fall by the sword before
their enemies,
and by the hands of them that
seek their lives;
And their carcases will I give
as meat
to the fowls of heaven and the beasts of the earth.[52]
The
For wheresoever the carcase is,
There will the eagles be
gathered together.[53]
The
Eagle, emblem of
American youth stepping off bravely into battle, from the piers of the maritime City where the Towers fell. The City of New York, a place known to the prophet Nostradamus by the name that the explorer Giovanni da Verrazano gave it in 1524: the “land of Angoulême”.
Lamentable cries will come then
from Angoulême ...
... in the month of Sept[ember]
will come
from the sky the King of Terror:
The resurrected King of the
Angoulmois
to reign as the god of War thereafter.[54]
September
1999: Nostradamus sees the King of Terror striking first in
The Third Antichrist swiftly annihilates,
during a war that lasts 27 years
...
Blood from human corpses stains
the land and water red.[56]
Civil
war began in
Earth-shaking fire from the
World [Trade] Center
Will cause trembling around the
New [
Two great rock piles make for a
long war,
Then Arethusa will redden another river.[57]
The
name Arethusa in Greek signifies “Water Pourer”, like the
figure of Aquarius in the Zodiac.
One can imagine Nostradamus=
vision of Arethusa pouring the blood spilled on the
Five and forty degrees the sky
will burn,
Fire to approach the great
Instantly a great spreading
flame leaps up,
When proof is demanded by the
40.5°N is
the approximate longitude of the City of
Their great city stained,
pestilential deed:
Sun to plunder Moon and violate
their temples:
And two rivers to be reddened
with flowing blood.[59]
The
crescent Moon is the symbol of Islam, as the Sun is associated with the
“Sun-day” worshiping Christians. Perhaps
the second verse portends the unintended bombing of an important Moslem holy
site in the course of Anglo-American intervention in the Arab region. Such an act might provoke an attack on
another of the great cities of the Western World. Like
The blood of the just will be
demanded at
Burnt by lightening-like fire
from twenty-three the six:
The ancient lady will fall from
her high place,
And many of the same sect will
be killed.
The great plague of the maritime
city
Will not cease until they have
avenged the death
Of the just blood, taken and
condemned [though] guiltless of the crime
By which the great lady pretends to be outraged.[60]
Nostradamus seems to say there will be a modern sequel to
the Great Fire of London,
which occurred in 1666. This time the
Fire will consume the city in a matter of minutes. The deadly fallout of its atomic blast will
stretch out its arms of death to the royal
From the free city of the great
Crescent sea,
Which still bears in its stomach
the Stone,
English fleet will come under
the drizzle
To seize an [olive] branch at the opening of the great war.[61]
Here
“Crescent” connotes both the Islamic setting and the shape of the
Within the Isles where five
rivers unite as one,
By the crescent of the great
Muslim Chyren:
Through the drizzles in the air
the fury of one,
Six escape, hidden in bundles of flax.[62]
Within
the
It=s said that Nostradamus wrote each of his one thousand Quatrains on a separate piece of paper, then scattered them across the floor to scramble their sequence. If one did the same thing with a new deck of cards, one would naturally expect to find some clusters of cards still resembling their original order. We do, in fact, encounter such a cluster in Nostradamus= Century VI, from which we drew the last-quoted stanza above. Preceding it, we find the following two Quatrains:
[When]
Mars and the scepter will be found conjoined
In Cancer, [there will be a]
calamitous war:
Shortly thereafter a new King
will be anointed,
Who will pacify the earth for a
long time.
When retrograde Mars reaches opposition, the monarchy
Of the great fisherman will be
in ruinous trouble:
The junior black one [i.e.
Jesuit cardinal] will rise to the highest office,
Those who betray him will act on a drizzly day.[65]
The
scepter is the symbol of Jove or Jupiter, the monarch of the
Greco-Roman pantheon. Mars and Jupiter were conjoined in Cancer on
Consequently,
the Provençal prophecies suggest that the Final War ― the war in which the Third Antichrist will ultimately emerge as supreme leader of
the Gentile Nations ― has already begun.
Triggered by the terrorist attacks of
After its war-mongering encounter with Jupiter in Cancer in July 2002, Mars proceeded on to Aquarius and in May 2003 came into opposition with Jupiter, which was then in Leo. Nostradamus sees in this opposition the signal of an incipient schism in the Church involving the election of a successor to John Paul II. Significantly, during this time period the Catholic hierarchy was rocked by the clerical pedophilia scandals, and the Pontiff’s physical condition visibly deteriorated to the point that several cardinals, including the ultra-loyalist Ratzinger, openly discussed the possibility of his resigning.[67] Our Provençal seer detects in the Mars-Jupiter opposition of May 2003 an “omen” of the assassination of John Paul’s rightful successor:
The one whose face is sprinkled with the blood
Of the victim nearly sacrificed:
Jupiter in Leo, omen through presage:
To be put to death for the Church.[68]
The sprinkling of the martyr=s face with blood is indeed an “omen through presage”, because it is a key element of the vision that preceded the Third Secret of Fatima:
... the Holy Father passed through a big
city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain
and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having
reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he
was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at
him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops,
Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and
positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a
crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the
Martyrs and with it sprinkled the
souls that were making their way to God.
If we continue to follow the
path of Mars after its opposition with Jupiter, its next major astrological
aspect was in retrograde opposition to the Sun in August 2003, when it made its
closest approach to the Earth in some 50,000 years. At that juncture, World events proceeded in
lockstep toward escalating warfare in the
When retrograde
Mars reaches opposition, the monarchy
Of the great fisherman will be in
ruinous trouble:
The junior black one will rise to
the highest office,
Those who betray him will act on a
drizzly day. [69]
As
we discussed in Chapter One, the description “junior black one” suggests a
Jesuit prelate.
According to this Quatrain, the rise of this Jesuit to
the pontificate would have begun in August 2003 ― perhaps as a result of
his elevation to a higher post within the Church. His election to the papal throne will be quickly
nullified through a betrayal “on a drizzly day”. Since we have known Nostradamus to
use the term “drizzle” to describe fallout from a nuclear explosion, we might
speculate that the time of the Jesuit Pope’s disputed election will be soon after
the terrorist attack on the city of London.
Be
that as it may, our discussion has now reached the point at which we need
explore the brief but remarkable reign of the last true Pontiff ― St.
Malachy’s “Peter of Rome”.
But to do that we need to know more about the background of his
namesake, the Apostle Peter, and his putative role as the first Pontiff
of the Catholic Church. Let us pursue
this theme in our next chapter.
[2]. Letter of
Sister Lucy to John Paul II, dated
[3]. Fr. Michel del la Sainte Trinité, The Third Secret (The Whole Truth About
[4].
[5]. Michèle
Reboul, “Le troisième secret de Fatima”, Monde et Vie, Apr/May 1992
[6]. Revelation 12:6 - 13:15
[7]. London Sunday Times,
[8]. New York Times,
[9]. Robert A.
Hutchinson, Their Kingdom Come ―
Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei (St. Martin’s Press, 1999)
[10] . In fact,
both the investigating magistrate Rosario Priore and the Italian intelligence
service SISMI concluded that Agca’s mission was to wound the Pope in the extremities,
not to kill him.
[11]. As reported
by the Associated Press,
[12].
[13] .
Jeremiah 7:31
[14] .
Ezekiel 6:1-13
[15] .
Isaiah 44:14-17
[16] . Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, The Way, Maxim 178
[17] . We will
examine this subject in more detail in Chapter 4, “The Bones of the Triumvir”
[18] .
C2Q56
[19] .
Psalms 78:9-70
[20] .
Psalms 64:2-4
[21] .
Psalms 11:1-2
[22] .
Zechariah 9:9-14
[23] .
Zechariah 10:6-11
[24] .
Romans 11:16-24
[25] .
Jeremiah 50:29-38
[26] .
Jeremiah 51:6-13 and Revelation 17:1-6
[27] .
Revelation 18:1-5
[28].
Revelation 16:12
[29].
Revelation 9:1-16
[30].
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the
Jews, Vol. 3 (John Hopkins, 1998) p. 55-57
[31].
Ezekiel 37:11-14
[32].
Ezekiel 37:9-10
[33].
Ezekiel 37:19-24
[34].
Ginzberg, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.
240
[35].
Luke 17:29-30
[36].
Revelation 11:3-13
[37].
Isaiah 11:6-10
[38].
Isaiah 11:11-16
[39].
Isaiah 63:1-3
[40].
Exodus 24:3-8
[41].
Ginzberg, op. cit., Vol 3, p.
77-92
[42].
Hebrews 9:19-28
[43].
Hebrews 12:18-24
[44].
Exodus 29:19-21
[45].
Isaiah 66:17-24
[46] . Hebrews 9:22
[47]. Hebrews
9:24-25
[48].
Dante, Inferno, XXXIII, 46-48
[49]. Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Wasteland,
[50]. Jeremiah 31:15
[51]. Jeremiah 19:5
[52]. Jeremiah 19:6-7
[53]. Matthew 24:28
[54]. C10Q17 and 72
[55].
Chechen rebels financed by Osama bin Laden carried out a series of terrorist bombings in
[56]. C8Q77
[57]. C1Q87; I explain the nexus between Antichrist and the myth of Arethusa in Chapter Seven “In Quest of the Grail” (near the end of the section called “The Dynasty of the Beast”).
[58]. C6Q97
[59]. C6Q98
[60]. C2Q51 and 53
[61]. C5Q35
[62]. C6Q27
[63]. See Chapter Seven “In Quest of the Grail”, in the section entitled “Chyren”.
[64]. Joshua 19:1-21
[65]. C6Q24 and 25
[66]. This is the longitude where the conjunction becomes exact at the Mid-Heaven, i.e. at the culmination of the Ecliptic.
[67]. New York Times,
[68]. C2Q98
[69]. C6Q25