Read it about a year ago. It is pretty amazing the various predictions from times past re: the future such as it is.
Well that was according to the person I was listening to, but I can't verify what the book actually contains, that's why I was asking. I believe that is correct though.
I read the book several years ago and I would definitely recommend it. It's so close to a blueprint of the end times it was chilling. I can't remember if the icon that they end up worshipping is Mother Earth but it sure isn't the Blessed Mother. I found a link to an online version if you are interested in reading it. https://americanliterature.com/author/robert-hugh-benson/book/lord-of-the-world/summary
Thanks DJM. I'll take a look. It sounds like they were worshipping some female icon though. Scary stuff
There is a moment in the book, after Rome has fallen, that this Felsenburgh appears for THE moment when the frenzied and overcome crowds declare him to be Lord and God. Just prior to that he goes to some altar type throne w/ some shrouded image behind it and declares it to be some representative of "maternity".....it parodies the "mother of us all" and he declares "mother of me"..... this new god the child of this "mother".....being born from her. And then he gives her all of the names likened to the Mother of God....like gate of heaven, wisdom of the most high, comforter of the afflicted, etc. He was a new type of superhuman son born of a human mother, etc. who would wear a crown rather than be crucified! So in such an "endearing" way he mesmerizes the crowds, hailing whatever this image was at this altar as "mother and queen"... And from that point of declared "lord and god" begins the plan to decimate any Christians who are left.....and onward to find and destroy the one whom he has heard has been made pope and is somewhere in hiding w/ a group of 12, I think, new cardinals. Pretty wild!!
There is an apostate priest named fr francis who becomes entranced with Julian Felsenberg the antichrist and rises quickly. He becomes head of the new religion and creates a new liturgy. Very rich in colors and symbolism and celebrating man rather than God until ultimately he arranges a liturgy to adore the antichrist. I found the name francis a very interesting choice in 2013.
Monseigneur Benson is one of my all time favorite authors. I think he was prophetic in that book. No doubt. His imaginings of our world are striking--especially the ready availability of euthanasia.
I'd been following the 'Jesus was not a god' thread the last few days, which was abominable and I've just looked into this one to find it nearly worse. God help us all. Benedict and Francis both recommend Monsignor Benson's book, but it is becoming all too clear that they are on opposite sides. We now have immodest idolatry at the very highest level of the Church, with the apparent approval of our pope. Those of us who attempt to persevere with the Faith are condemned, without even an explanation, as attacking Our Lord. To not go along with idolatry, to oppose adultery and sodomy, is now to be an 'ideologue'. To evangelise is to be a proselytiser. The fastest collapse of the Church is in the Pope's own country, particularly his diocese (quite different to how Poland has responded to St Pope John Paul II, isn't it?). And isn't all this evil so unoriginal, so predictable, so banal? Well, we also know that the Response to it is very predictable. Warning, Chastisement, Parousia, whichever it is Lord, bring it on...and quickly.
I don't think it's a simple as the American political right like to portray it. Communism tends to gain ground in countries where Capitalist politicians lose their Christian perspective and money becomes their god. Priests working on the ground with the poor are bound to be affected when they see their flock beaten down by poverty and a system which often works against them in favour of the rich and powerful. When the people's political choices are between corrupt capitalists paying lip service to religion or communists telling them initially that their religion and social justice are intertwined, it makes sense that the poor would choose the side which promises them a voice in government. Alienation from the faith comes later, especially when the Bishops are cast in the role of collaborators with corrupt capitalism and "forcing" parents to have more children than they can afford to feed. It seems to me that Evangelicals are adept at exploiting the resulting polarised situation. They tell the poor that the big, bad, Satanic Roman Church corrupted Christianity to hold on to wealth and power. While the Evangelicals oppose abortion, that's about the only family value they haven't compromised. They're not so vocal in opposing divorce and artificial birth control, making them an easy choice for badly catechised, uneducated poor Catholics. Backed by rich Americans, it's no surprise that Pentecostal/Evangelical evangelism has made a big impact. The pattern seems to be the same across the different Latin American countries with variations according to the local political situation.
And that is what is so scary for me in this push for women priests! We already have the feminists' "earth mother" crusade and it's all about power. Fitting too since women are the first targets to work through by Satan ever since he learned of the One Who was to come would come through the perfect woman. He always seems to work through the perversion of the natural order.
That's true. And there's no one-size-fits-all category for people in the region. It varies from country to country. Here's a documentary of a river journey up the Amazon in Brazil. It's not the usual documentary of the "white" explorer getting a few local guides to help him immerse himself in the culture. This is a big riverboat transporting Brazilians up the Amazon river much the same as we would use trains or buses. It gives a little snapshot of the history of the region and the different settlements along the river. According to the documentary commentary, there are less than 150,000 Indians left in Brazil and most of them have been moved on to reservations. I would take that figure with a grain of salt because it doesn't seem to take account of Indians who have settled in cities like Rio. At about the 13:40 mark, they show an Evangelical pastor and his children returning to his village. He's full of enthusiasm for evangelising everyone to his faith in Jesus Christ. His method of evangelism begins with showing a Jesus film to villagers. No mention of ancestral faith from him. At the 23:00 mark, there's a piece about a radio station in one of the riverside cities. Evidently, it's a station run by Catholics. The radio station is a means of keeping the Indians in contact with each other and standing up for their rights and it has some educational programmes. According to the radio employee, they strive to speak for all of their communities; they concentrate mainly on leisure and educational programmes; they give advice on how the inland communities can improve their lives with special programmes to help them farm better, improve their local production, teach them how to cook a good meal with local products. The radio station's mission is "to educate the communities, to lend them support and to even defend them". The video then goes on to show a local community (Catholic). There's a young man who has returned from the big city to live among his people after receiving what he describes as a religious education. He's the village Head Man. He uses the same kind of language we are hearing from the Amazon Synod with heavy emphasis on their religious traditions such as a dolphin's link with mysterious pregnancy. At about the 28 minute mark, he describes how outsiders look down on them because they believe in the old legends, yet it is through the legends that their culture stays alive. At the 33 minute mark you can see the empty church while the villagers celebrate the local team winning a football match. The celebrations are more typical Brazilian influence than Amazonian native. Not a feather to be seen. At about the 45:20 mark, you see an Indian man in a city slum "preserving the scraps of his culture". He has set up a business where he and others work and live off the crafts of their culture. Plenty of feathers and face paint in this section. I expect the feathers and pagan symbols help sell the beads and other crafts. Money makes a difference. And the end of the video shows the results of poor Catechesis in Brazil - no different than the result in our own countries. That's the real crisis in the Church.
Thanks ETA and AED! This is basically what I wanted to know. So very eerie stuff indeed. I'll have to read it as soon as I am able.
I have not read the book but I read some of the Wikipedia page about it and it has the following which appears to confirm what you stated about a ritual with a statue of a woman and a Mr. Francis provides the opening remarks for this ritual. That afternoon, the Brands and all the people of London enter St. Paul's Cathedral for the Feast of Maternity, over which Felsenburgh will preside. After procession with incense and a few opening remarks by turncoat Mr. John Francis, Felsenburgh enters the Cathedral dressed in the red and black robes of a British High Court judge. As the crowd listens with rapt admiration, Felsenburgh speaks of the destruction of Rome and the recent pogroms against Christians. He explains that future generations of men must flush with shame to remember that mankind had once turned its back on the risen light. Then, a curtain is torn aside, revealing a statue of a naked mother and child. Felsenburgh leads all the assembled worshipers in prayer to the "Mother of us all." All those present hail the statue as Queen and Mother. The chapter ends with the words, "Then in the heavenly light, to the crash of drums, above the screaming of the women and the battering of feet, in one thunder peal of worship ten thousand voices hailed Him Lord and God."[49] The worship of the statue inside St. Paul's Cathedral is inspired by the veneration of the Goddess of Reason inside Notre Dame Cathedral following the French Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_World
Frankly, when I was reading this portion of the book I thought to myself that it would take a lot more to convince me that this character was some kind of a new god figure instead of some disturbed or narcissistic or even possessed man doing one of these satanic type ceremonies that we even are reading about today. But the description seems mostly to emphasize that there is some deeper "talent" in Felsenburgh that has some kind of hypnotic/diabolic quality that can enter into weakened/hysterical type personalities because they believe that they have been transported to some other level of existence....and then, once there, they will follow such a person anywhere. The point is though that it would appear that we have reached that time when, due to the effect upon the masses of AI or just saturation of perverted info, large parts of the population are willing to give themselves over to such substitute "gods" (anti-god) due to the true ignorance of revelation. So it looks like it won't take that much to quickly hook the masses esp. those who've already given themselves over to regular or addicted type of sinful behaviors since that will all be rationalized as something good.
At my hour of Adoration this morning I found an eye opener of a scripture passage. I didn't go looking for it. It basically jumped out at me. Isaiah 1 the last ( or close to last paragraph) accusing the Jews of making a pagan garden with pagan gods and deeply offending God. It is worth a look. I gasped and looked up at Our Lord and then promptly wrote down the chapter and verse but I dont have it by me right now.
