Posted on 10/11/2005 6:21:07 AM PDT by NYer
At times, we lose perspective. Let us regain some of it by realizing that however bad Hurricane Katrina seemed, it was not the worst natural disaster during the past 12 months, nor even during the summer.
In fact, it may not even be the deadliest hurricane: in Central America a mudslide caused by Hurricane Stan may have cost 1,400 lives in Guatemala just last week (figures vary), as opposed to Katrina's awful but smaller toll of 1,200.
We are in a steep curve of chastisement.
And then there is the Pakistani-Indian quake: more than 40,000 dead from the weekend tremors. These are signs of the times and we do well to heed them.
The year started with the aftermath of the great Asian tsunami, which cost nearly a quarter of a million lives.
It is important at this juncture of purification to recall that a major component of what was known as the Great Medieval Chastisement involved earthquakes in Asia, just as we now see quakes and other disturbances in that part of the world. There were many parallels to our own time, with even scandal back then in the Church.
It was the time of the great bubonic plague, and just before both Asia and Europe were hit with it, there were strange, historic rumblings in Asia.
Noted an historian named Philip Ziegler, "An earthquake in the mountains of Ki-Ming-Chan formed a lake more than 100,000 leagues in circumference. In Tyche the dead were believed to number more than five million. Earthquakes and floods continued from 1337 to 1345; locusts had never been so destructive; there was 'subterranean thunder' in Canton."
The world was in a cycle of climate shifts, intense storms, quakes in places that didn't usually get quakes, melting of glaciers, meteorite activity, unusual lights in the sky, and strange clouds.
This was in the 14th century, during which many peculiar effects in nature were noted.
Most curiously, fish seemed to be dying in the seas (we will get to that later in the week), and as it says in The Last Secret, "there was a sense of miasma and malady, of a corrupted atmosphere."
Much of it centered on India.
It was claimed that there was a strange "stinking smoke" on the subcontinent, along with other "omens." This was just before the Black Death.
In the 14th century, it was mainly earthquakes and floods that seemed like harbingers. The earth shook in places where it usually did not shake (for example, Germany), and in fact one tremor in Venice set the bells of St. Mark's Basilica ringing just before arrival of plague there. In our own time, we find floods that have caused the evacuation of 500,000 in China, again just last week.
Coincidence? There are many coincidences -- and parallels. Scientists believe that during the Middle Ages, mega-hurricanes were hitting the Gulf Coast of the United States with a frequency that we have not witnessed up to now.
Then there is the miasma. As in medieval times, news accounts include reports of a stench. It would not be unusual but that it made the news simultaneously in several cities. In Southern California, residents from the Valley to the coast have complained of a rotting garbage-like odor ("like a stew of sulfur, sewage, and bad omen," remarked one observer), and as officials have sought to explain it they have speculated on everything from the effect of heavy rains on garbage to high bacteria levels in coastal waters. The odors are detected in some areas and not others.
In Washington, D.C., "unexplained" odors have been reported across the district -- seeming to come and go for no discernible reason (sulfur-like again). Firefighters received dozens of calls and responded to reports of the odor at 11 schools. What it was seemed a mystery, said The Washington Post.
At the same time residents have called authorities along Lake Erie about a similar rotten-egg-like odor.
Decaying plants and fish? A strange smell has made the news in numerous Ohio communities, according to one report (lasting up to two months), while an outbreak of red tide on Florida's west coast has caused respiratory problems -- noses that have started burning and ceaseless coughing. It is like nature rebelling.
Some of it seems related to decaying fish (in Lake Erie, the higher the waves, the more of an odor seems to be released). But it seems eerily symbolic.
Most noteworthy has been the stress observed in our seas. This we will tackle next: a great untold and perhaps prophetic story. As we enter a cycle of purification, nature seems to be making a statement.
[resources: The Last Secret, and Sent To Earth]
[see also:
The preacher man says its the end of time
and the Mississippi River she's a going dry.
The interest is up and the stock markets down
and you only get mugged if you go downtown.
I live back in the woods you see,
my woman,and the kids and the dogs and me.
I got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive
and a countryboy can survive. Country folks can survive.
LOL! We had the same thought at about the same time!
bookmark for later
I agree with the philosophy of what that priest told you, Dominick, but I think thing after thing after thing has been piling up, coupled with the outrageous level of immorality and abortion and scandal, the large number of churches that once were clearly able to agree with the apostles' creed becoming unmistakably apostate, the problems within the Catholic Church herself, made worse by over a generation of bad catechesis, the large number of apostate and moving to apostate clergy and religious within the church, that it is just natural to contemplate these things.
For the faithful, it really doesn't matter in the day to day workings of the world whether we are entering a chastisement or even the end times. Our job is to keep on keeping on.
Yet Jesus himself said "When you see these signs, lift up your head, for your time of redemption is at hand." (It's in one of the end time discourses, I'd have to look it up to find the exact passage, and the wording is from my memory.)
What that says to me is: See, the hand of God is still on the world. And this is heartening. And perhaps, it should give us a push to take our Christian duties to be light and salt, a city set on a hill more seriously.
I, as a Christian, need to be clearly doing the Lord's work, so that when he returns or calls me home, I can say honestly, I was just doing what a servant of God should have been doing.
They sense... THE ASTEROID.
There are birds singing here and many squirrels running around in our woods, one ran across the road right in front of me.
Just a few days ago, my kids were all at the window admiring not one but 2 lovely rainbows from our picture window.
Even if it is chastisement, and if there were earlier ones also...it doesn't really mean anything, because things keep happening. I believe it's all just part of God's plan. Besides, none of the other chastisements, have really stopped anything, have they?
I have posted on another thread about the virtual disappearce of birds from my area (Maryland/Chesapeake Bay). Birds of all types are just...gone. The silence and lack of bird song is noticeable and unusual. The usual riotous squirrel population has also gone missing. 5 posted on 10/11/2005 9:33:54 AM EDT by silverleaf
Perhaps they know something we don't. Nature's sixth sense.
The Scriptural passage you cite is found in Luke 21:28, part of the "Mini Apocalypse" of Luke 21, with paralles in Matthew 24-25 and Mark 13, along, of course, with relevant parts of the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) itself.
I think it is interesting to contemplate a "duelist" utility to these apocalypses. They have a first instance of relevance in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD; but, this, in turn, according to one school of scritural exegesis, is but a harbinger or scale-model exposition of the "real" end of the world in the future. As the destruction was complet in Jerusalem ("not one stone left upon another"), so will it seem to be at the end of the age.
Serious stuff to think about! And extremely serious to deal with for the Christian generation whose fate it will be to live through the time. Therefore, Jesus gives that generation many clues, both in the physical calamities and the spiritual ones, that the time for alertness is near.
Are WE that generation? Perhaps. It is too early within the series of *potential* warning signs to be clear about this. But God doubtless made the signs sufficiently fuzzy in their early stages so that Christians will *commonly* see a potenitality of The End that they reform their lives and their cultures. Indeed, who can know how many times The End has already been forstalled?
At any rate, there is clearly a purpose for end-generation Christians to be on guard, otherwise, Christ would never have said these things in the context that He did. And clearly, from the context, there will be a "tipping point" where the signs are no longer preliminary but unmistakable, and their usefulness for the Christians of the time will be also unmistakable. As the Jerusalem Christians saw these same kinds of signs beforehand, and escaped from Jerusalem to Petra, perhaps at least some Christians will similarly benefit.
I think it is very possible that the current geological, meteorological, astronomical and spiritual "anomalies" are the very early precursor signs to the real thing to shortly follow. BUT, it is definitely too early to be sure of this. The signs we can discern now may be merely a warning to get our act together, with a fork in the road ahead of us. If we turn back to God, we pass down the fork in the road which leads to the "new springtime" and "restoration" often spoken about of late. If we do not turn back to God, well...
The key is discernment. Let's not, like some televangelists and their followers, make a cottage industry of this sort of thing, running after every little disaster (which always happen!) and assigning them a portent they don't deserve. Between that tendency and another, of some of our Catholics, called "apparition chasing," we focus on morbid fascinations, and lose sight of the very God we should be prostrate before when signs first appear! Let us pray and be ready. We need to anyway; the End of the Age may not come for another thousand years, but our own "end" will come soon enough, regardless. That, rather than overwrought concern for the mere *potential* of the End of the World in our natural lifetimes, should be the focus of the greater part of our prayers and attention.
Well maybe a chastisement is coming.
Chastisements are part of the prophetic warnings in the messages of Fatima. And although some of the more recent ones have not been authenticated by the church, there have been alleged warnings and apparition messages since then predicting disasters and chastisements of a similar type. With the scandals in the church, mass immorality throughout society, and the diabolical abomination of embryonic stem cell slaughter, the spectre of chastisements of various proportions would tend to loom on the horizon.
Prayer, penance, reparation, and an attentive return to the Christian message would definitely be a good idea at this time. One wonders when some of the bishops will wake up and make the orthodox faith a priority for the church.
Not my fault if someone throws sense out of the window and goes chasing after unapproved or condemned apparitions....
In that case, the safest place for all of us should be right "under the Throne." (In other words, all of should make sure we are right with the Lord in all parts of our lives. "One never knows the day nor the hour...")
---That, rather than overwrought concern for the mere *potential* of the End of the World in our natural lifetimes, should be the focus of the greater part of our prayers and attention.---
Absolutely...and if we have our suspicions about the signs of the times, it ought to make us want to do what we ought to even more...
Just watched the animation of that flare. That is absolutely and incredibly AWESOME!!!
Astronomy being something of a life-long hobby of mine, I have...uh...a "few" sites bookmarked. A good one for stills and animated loops of the sun can be found at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
Click on "latest images," and you will find everything you need.
Live each day as if it is the last day of your life. Even the Boy Scouts follow the rule - "Be Prepared".
Brown is a convert .... an Evangelical convert. He is still caught up in the 'Rapture' concept and trying to factor it all into his new Catholic faith. Hey ... the cataclysms we have witnessed this year do indeed get our juices running and our minds wondering. This thread was more for fun than fact.
***The key is discernment. Let's not, like some televangelists and their followers, make a cottage industry of this sort of thing, running after every little disaster (which always happen!) and assigning them a portent they don't deserve.***
At last! Someone with common sense! Great post!
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