Charlie Johnston

I thought I would share a few of the blogs from Charlie which I have enjoyed reading:

20 May 2013

Some have contacted me to see what I have to say about the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma yesterday. Very long ago I accepted that God does not tell me what I want to know, only what He wants me to know. So there are many things that are, and will remain, a mystery to me until I am born to heaven, God willing.
But there are a few things I have seen that may help. In the fall of 1997, after giving my definitive yes that, if these things really were going to happen, I would publicly go and do whatever God required of me, the angel who instructs me was sent and took me through the whole of creation and the universe. It was stunning. Most of it I did not understand. It was like trying to explain to a four-year-old how the engine in a car works. But if the child is incapable of grasping the intricacies and wonder of the engine, he can understand that it makes the car go. I have written of it obliquely in a piece I wrote on the Book of Job, which perhaps sometime I will put up here as an attachment for those who are interested. A key that I did understand is that, without interfering in our free will, God orders all things – and I literally mean everything – to call us to salvation. At one point during that visitation I was shown some natural disasters – and the incredible grace that God sends when they come. For a time, people behave as God intends us to, working together to help each other without regard for the things that normally divide us. Incredible graces are extended during these times and many souls that were lost are reclaimed to eternity. People see each other as God intends – as true brothers and sisters who are all in it together. Though some are more heroic than others, any who try to act as if they are the titans, dispensing mercy like some petty god, are usually brought back to the reality that, for that time, all in it are the less fortunate. People live solidarity. I saw that most souls in a disaster are reclaimed to eternity through that extraordinary grace. But there are some so wholly given over to satan that they exploit tragedy flamboyantly. These are the looters and thieves. Woe to them, but they do not touch the souls of those reclaimed to God. Satan rejoices in the temporal suffering inflicted on man during these times, yet rages over all the souls lost to him.

Just after the turn of the millennium I was warned to expect a noticeable increase in the number of untimely deaths leading up to the storm. It was explained to me that this was a mercy, not a punishment. Some are not strong enough to weather the storm with their soul intact, so among these God was waiting for them to enter what would be their last state of grace, then plucking them so they would not be lost to eternity.

None of this can beguile anyone from grief. My mother died the day before Mother’s Day last year and I was devastated. For decades we had a strained relationship, then in the last few years of her life it became sweet and unstrained again, like when I was a little boy and she would tell me stories or take me to concerts or hold my hand while showing me the fish ponds. I confess that, as often as I tell people no one is exempt from the consequences of the storm, part of me thought I was. I was not. There were many miracles in the last week of her life – and all who were there came to know there is heaven. Having had the mercy of the sweetness returning between Mom and me, I am grateful that the night she died, I sang her to sleep. And I weep as I write this, for it is a great grief.

Those of us who have not lost a child cannot grasp the unfathomable grief of those who have – and that is a mercy. But the horror is that we can imagine it. When my dear son was just a year old, he exhibited symptoms of a very rare, but invariably fatal disease. He had to be taken into the hospital for testing for a few days to determine if that was the cause. He already had his magnetic cheerfulness, a charisma that sparks joy in those he encounters. Those few days were perhaps the darkest night of the soul I have ever lived. At the hospital, before we knew he was going to be okay, we were there and he was eagerly laughing with his nurse then playing vigorously with a balloon. I could not hold back the sobs when his nurse had to turn away because she had broken into tears over the “sweet little guy.”

I am always uncomfortable when survivors of a tragedy speak of God’s grace to explain their survival. I have certainly seen the grace that abounds in such situations in a unique way. But I worry that thanking God for mere physical survival somehow discounts the more terrible grace that those who have suffered loss have to bear – and theirs is often a greater grace. Better to thank God for the grace of all working together as true brothers and sisters for a short time, I think. I don’t know.

Grief is a mystery and there are many sorrows to be borne in these shadowlands that are prelude to eternity. I know with certainty that heaven is – and despite that knowledge have grieved mightily. Yet I also know that Jesus, who is God and holds the keys of life and death, upon hearing that His friend Lazarus had died, well, Jesus wept.

After having toured all of creation, I do not understand whether natural disasters are something God allows or whether satan inflicts them on us for the transient pleasure he gets from our suffering – or whether they serve some other purpose altogether. Certainly it seems that terrible physical storms have, over the last decade, foreshadowed the great spiritual storm that is upon us. I only know that grace abounds in them in the midst of terrible sorrow in some mysterious partnership.
And I also know that when the tornadoes swept across the plains of Oklahoma yesterday, Jesus wept.

 

14 June 2013

When I was a teenager it struck me once, after listening to about a dozen people speak of what the Holy Spirit had ‘told’ them, that either the Holy Spirit was the author of confusion or many were deceiving themselves, for many of these solemn proclamations were mutually contradictory. We all have a desire to appeal to authority – and what better authority to appeal to than God, Himself? Yet when we attribute to God what we merely want to believe ourselves, it is the worst form of bearing false witness – bearing false witness against God, which is a form of blasphemy.

When I was just a little tyke and first became aware of how odd my locutions and visitations were, it was a lot of fun. My angel would tell me something that was going to happen and happen it would. How cool is that? But he warned me that this would involve a lifetime of training. Soon enough he began telling me things that would happen – and when I looked back I would see the words were precisely accurate, but it was not at all what I had expected. At one point, in tearful anger I demanded to know why my angel bothered to tell me anything if I wasn’t going to understand it until after it had already happened. He let me sweat for many months before he explained that the primary purpose of these things was not to share in God’s secret plan, but so I would see the heavenly reality behind certain earthly events…they were a kind of milestone alerting me to pay attention. I learned very early to make a clear distinction to the substance of a message and my interpretation of it, particularly when the language or imagery involved was enigmatic.

Even the best, most pious people err on this, because our minds are so limited and short-sighted. We so love a show that we are always looking for God in the thunder when He most often appears in a little whisper. Even Jesus’ disciples asked how He could be the Messiah when it was written that Elijah must come again first as the Messiah’s harbinger. (Matt. 17:10) The Jews of the time were expecting Elijah to appear in the sky, fiery chariot and all, then point to the Messiah and say, “This is the Guy!” What they were not expecting was that a prophet would rise in the form of Elijah, unyielding in his courage, integrity, and boldness in service to the truth – and that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of this prophecy. The Jews of the time, knowing that the Messiah would establish the Kingdom, expected a political and military man, who would overthrow the Romans and re-establish Israel as a great kingdom. Even the Baptist had this expectation, which is why he sent from prison to ask Jesus, “Are you he is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt 11:3 – if you read this, make sure to read Jesus’ beautiful reply, which I know gave John much comfort in his last days).

Now sometimes we actually do get the show. At the final apparition of Fatima, everyone there; Christian, atheist, secular reporters, everyone, saw the miraculous dance of the sun. Healings at Lourdes have often been spectacular and immediate. When the French naturalist, Emile Zola, took a young woman whose face was ravaged by lupus, he did it with the intent to discredit Lourdes. When she was healed, Zola was enraged and proclaimed that no matter what he saw, he would never believe in a miracle (though his writings for the rest of his life were haunted by his unexplainable encounter with the divine at Lourdes). But God has His purposes for HOW He does all things – and one of His purposes is to ever remind us that we are not the titans – that only He is creator.

Some very pious Catholics, profoundly deep in their faith, believe things cannot go completely south until we have had “The Warning.” This is a prophecy from some mystics out of Garabandal, Spain, who say that before the storm comes, God will put a great sign in the sky which will show us the state of our souls and offer us a chance to amend our consciences. Though the Church has not confirmed Garabandal (nor condemned it), I personally believe it to be entirely authentic. I am familiar with such vivid, apocalyptic imagery in some of my own visions, particularly the biggest ones that give the greatest detail. But Jesus taught us that God likes to speak to us in parables, to tell us a story to illustrate a great truth. It may very well be that the Warning will come as a fiery sign in the sky just as the sun visibly danced in the sky at Fatima. But I think of what its effects are to be – that the state of our souls will be laid bare to us. Then I think of things like Philadelphia’s abortion doctor, Gosnell, who routinely murdered live babies and saved parts of their bodies as souvenirs – or the Texas abortion doctor who is even more grisly, gleefully twisting the heads off living babies who survive abortion. I see these things and think that people may hold to their pro-abortion mentality, but when they stand before God, they won’t be able to say they didn’t know what they are doing. I see how diversity and hate crimes laws are being visibly used as a spear point against Christians and Jews today. Anti-discrimination laws are now the most effective means of discriminating against any sort of moral conscience. People can continue the assault on faith, but when they stand before God, they won’t be able to say they did not know what they were doing. In so many events of the last decade has come an unmasking, the hideous, aggressive reality behind a mask of benign-sounding words and policies. This unmasking reveals to all the state of their souls. When I think of that, I wonder if some of us, like the pious ancient Jews, are going to be so busy looking for the fiery chariot in the sky that we miss the significance of the peculiar, homely prophet baptizing people in the desert.

It has always struck me how absurdly delighted my angel is when talking about the things we have gotten right. It is striking because his delight is so endearing – and because it is so rare. A few examples…when I first understood how unusual my experiences were at the age of seven or eight, I told him that I would continue with the training, but the moment he told me to harm anyone I would confess all to a doctor and the jig would be up. I expected him to be mad at the way I was speaking to him, but he was utterly delighted, exclaiming what a marvelous student I was. I halfway expected him to take me out for some ice cream. On Christmas Eve of 1997, he showed up to celebrate midnight Mass with me, and was absolutely vibrating with excitement. He told me with great enthusiasm that the random date we chose to celebrate Christ’s birth actually is the right date – but that it happened three years earlier than our calendars show, so that night was actually the 2,000th anniversary of the Lord’s birth. He chatted about a bunch of things that night, including that our fears over Y2K were all a bunch of nonsense. In the most incredible experience of my life, he once took me on a tour of all creation. We talked during the prelude to it and he told me, with the pride of a man talking about his son’s Little League home run, that our scientists had gotten it fundamentally right on the Big Bang theory, though it happened much quicker than we understood (and by quicker, he made clear he meant about a third of the time we estimate).

The sum of all the training has been to fill me with great confidence in what God says, both in Scripture and in my personal encounters. But I ever question my interpretation of what it means, for unless it is given in very plain, unmistakable terms, it usually turns out different than I expected. I have always been careful with my priests to carefully separate what is what I am told from what I merely interpret it to mean. All this is part of why I insist that the key, for myself as for everyone else, is, acknowledging God, to just take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around you. For God is always startling, fresh and new – and whenever I start to think I know His mind, He wastes no time in correcting me, sometimes embarrassingly so. Trust me, He will be glad to do you the same favor if you think you know His mind.

 

3 July 2013

Yesterday there was a military coup in Egypt, overthrowing Pres. Mohammed Morsi. Former Pres. Hosni Mubarak was overthrown on Feb. 11, 2011. That was the day I left on my year-and-a-half, 3,200-mile pilgrimage across the U.S.

Today is Independence Day. Across the country, fireworks celebrations have been dimmed – shut down completely at military bases because the president says we can no longer afford such entertainments for the troops. In other areas, such shows are suspended because of the heightened risk of fire this summer.

In Texas yesterday at the Capitol Building, pro-life supporters began a chorus of the song, “Amazing Grace.” In one of the most blood-curdling moments I have ever seen, pro-abortion activists responded by chanting, en masse, “Hail Satan!” over and over again. They don’t even bother with the mask any more.

In Colorado and Arizona, fires rage with unnatural fury. As soon as one is contained, another breaks out. It is the third summer of unnaturally widespread and destructive wildfires.

Many of my Protestant friends don’t know this, but the Bible readings in Catholic Churches throughout the world are set on a cycle by the Vatican – so in every Catholic Church throughout the world, the readings on any particular day are the same. The last week, daily readings have been from Genesis, specifically about Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed by fire because of widespread and gross sexual perversion and the violent execution of many, including young children, as a blood sacrifice to strange gods. “Hail Satan!”, indeed. Timely readings.

Let me summarize hundreds (perhaps thousands by now) of pages of what I have written for the priests I began speaking with over 18 years ago on what I was being shown of what was coming for us. I wrote that, as prelude to the storm, a period of rumblings would begin. In these, there would come a great crisis. Men would be shaken, then there would be a false dawn – a return to a seeming period of normalcy. Then suddenly, even greater and deeper crisis. This cycle would continue spiraling down. Its purpose was to soften us up, to begin to shake us from our certain resolve that we are sufficient to ourselves – and the delusion that we have everything under control. After the final false dawn would come the complete collapse into economic chaos and global civil war, with governments toppling throughout the world with regularity.

In early 2000, I reported that something was terribly wrong with the presidential election that year, so wrong that there might not even be an election. I did not know the precise nature of it until, of course, it came. One of the most important days in human history was Sept. 20, 2000. Satan had long been exercising the power of seduction – that is, making people think that what was objectively good was actually evil and that what was objectively evil was actually good. On that day, God would revoke the power of seduction from satan – and the devil’s most important power in the short term would be that of large-scale, institutionalized terror. I was careful to explain that this did not mean that the effects of seduction would disappear from the world, rather, that they would produce such diminishing returns that terror would become his most fruitful tool. One effect of the rumblings would be to progressively unmask the hideous reality behind the banal platitudes, which is why they would produce such diminishing returns. I warned those I told about this not to expect anything flashy that day; that, indeed, I had been told that a little-noticed event of the day would, in later ages come to be seen as the beginning of our descent into the maelstrom.

I spent the entire day in prayer, walking the grounds of Our Lady of Snows Shrine in Belleville, Illinois. Later, I did identify one seemingly minor event that struck me, which I will not identify here. But I told my director that I thought it signified the beginning of what would be a shockingly rapid degeneration of the rule of law, a detachment from the very moorings of it, and soon we would be governed by the passions of the moment and the rule of raw power…and while it would seem to be good for a time, it would break down civil comity until it utterly collapsed.

After Sept. 11, 2001, I was directed to write a summary of the world situation and the basic outline of what specific nations would do in coming years. So I did. I will not repeat the fairly lengthy thing here, except to say it has been a subject of deepening conversion – and in a few cases, sudden conversion – for those who have read it or significant parts of it. (I couldn’t quote from it anyway – except in one case, I keep no copies of those things I have written out for those who direct me).
Now when you pay attention, you hear five or six stories each week that, in my youth, would have been a shocking addition to “Life” Magazine’s year-end edition. Just in the past month, we have had three countries explode into wide-scale rioting and revolution that we had not foreseen even a week ahead of time. Turkey, Brazil and Egypt are not outliers – they are canaries in the toxic coal mine of what our world has become.

As with the onset of all sudden, epochal change, few in the world want to acknowledge it. Pity people who are rich in things, honors, titles or reputation. These people work the hardest to blind themselves to the signs of the times, even as they are charged with leadership – for they have so much they fear losing. Give thanks if you have little in the way of these things – for they are things satan uses as spiritual terrorists, always trying to take our resolve and clarity of vision hostage for fear of their loss. Yet, more and more, I meet people who understand the fragile beauty of modern life. We still enjoy the remnant of a glorious culture even as it has become as brittle as the most delicate crystal – and many already understand how easily it can be shattered by the convulsions that continually rock us now.

I have told you before that this storm is of our making, not God’s…and that without His intervention, it would be the end. But He is intervening once more in human history to rescue us. Remember, His instructions are clear and simple. Acknowledge Him, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around you. When chaos surrounds your neighbors, know that God has not abandoned us, even though we have made the ancient Israelis look like pikers with the hardness of our hearts and the fury of our rebellion. Though I do not know, I have long thought that the last false dawn would be the hope that the political system that served us so well for two centuries was still capable of addressing the disorders that surround us. If I am right about that, then all the prerequisites I described to my priests have been fulfilled. All that is left is the final spiral into chaos.
And so, despite the cutbacks for our soldiers and the fears of fire throughout the west, I think this summer will bring more than its share of fireworks before the fall begins.

 

5 July 2013

Right around the turn of the millennium, my heavenly visitors often began speaking to me without the use of language at all. It is breathtaking when they do, much quicker and purer and more complete – but it is very intense. Thick, I might say. Until today, they have continued to use language for the most important messages I am to convey. But now, I am instructed to give you a message from the Father, specifically for America but also for the whole world, that was given me without the use of language. In short, I am expected to translate.
When they speak to me in this way, I often ponder for days to understand in my way what was given in an instant to me. When I have tried to explain to someone – usually one of my priests – what was said, the translation invariably comes out impoverished. I can’t help that…language, itself, is necessary to us in this world but is an impoverished form of communication – and I am just a little fellow, trying to get it right but not all that capable. There is always the temptation to add something I think important or to omit something that embarrasses or troubles me. When I avoid these temptations, it still comes out impoverished; a very poor, tarnished copy of the pure original message. But it pleases the Lord that I both convey as truly as I can what I am told and take full responsibility for the telling of it, including the warts that crop up in my little effort. So, I write this in obedience – and remind you that, despite the quotation marks, it is a feeble translation:

Thus says the Father:
“My children, I have not withdrawn the hand of My mercy from you, despite the depth and breadth of your rebellion against Me. I gave you a land, a nation formed in My image, to be a light to the nations. For all your foolishness, you began well. Like My Church, it was a nation to which anyone who accepted the principles it espoused could belong fully, not as a guest or a stranger, but as an heir. In your struggling way you lived the principles of fruitfulness, dignity, charity, fortitude and courage. You even lived a great civil war to extend those virtues to all my children, recognizing both your reliance on me and that there are no children of a lesser god. And so I blessed you, that My light might shine through you with brilliant clarity as a sign of hope for all the nations for what I intend for My children.
“But with prosperity and pre-eminence, your love grew cold. You say, ‘Look what we have wrought,’ rather than ‘Look what God has wrought.’ So for the last few decades, I have restrained My hand of mercy that you might, indeed, see what you have wrought. Your hearts have only grown harder and more defiant. Now I stay My hand for a time that you may know the bitter fruit of the evil harvest you have sown. It is only for a short season, but the terror and despair will be like none you have ever known before.
“I send to you my most favored daughter, Mary, the woman cloaked with the sun, to guide and defend you during the terrible pains of birth of the new world I shall give you once more. She spends her entire heaven praying on your behalf, acting as true mother to all of you as she is to the Incarnation of My Divine and Holy Son, yet many of you who call on Me treat her with loathing and contempt. I will no longer hear you if you do not honor my most favored daughter in your heart. Ask her to pray to me for you and I will forgive you.
“Now, even the leaders of your rebellion against Me are shaken – not so much as to acknowledge me, but enough to wonder if their plans are perhaps not as elegant and well-crafted as they thought. This is the beginning of wisdom for those who will accept it. You must know that I love each of you with a true Father’s heart. Which of you, having a rebellious, self-destructive child, wishes for your child’s destruction? You wish, with passionate sorrow, for their reclamation because you love your child. Your love for your child is merely a pale reflection of My love for you. Remember, then, the tale of the prodigal son and welcome those who return with fullness, gratitude and celebration rather than resentment. I rejoice when any of My children are restored to the life I intend for them. So shall you.
“Know that you will be held to account for every soul that you could have given effective witness to but did not because of anger, resentment or fear. Know also that you will be held to account for every servant of the evil one that you did not defend my people against out of a false sense of compassion or indulgence. I know this is impossible to you. You are well told to acknowledge Me in all things, then take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around you. If you do that, I will draw fruit even from your errors and you may walk in humble confidence of my mercy.
“Do not think that any of you can exempt yourself from the bitter fruit of the harvest you have sown. Do you pride yourself on your intellect? It is not even a grain of sand in the ocean of My universe. Your wealth? Mere paper and paste that is passing away. Your position? Not as substantial as a puff of smoke on a windy day. I am your only source of security and hope. Defend My honor with the resolve of My Holy and Divine Son at the temple and I will send My most favored daughter to begin the re-conversion of the world. Minister to your brothers and sisters even from the midst of your sorrow and want and, at the moment you think all is lost, I will send My most favored daughter to rescue you once more.
“Know this, though. I allow your disorder to strike with terrible, prolonged fury so that you will remember the consequences of relying on yourselves without acknowledging me or seeking My blessing and guidance. After you are rescued this time, when you fall away again, the only respite you will have is the respite of the grave. I sent my Archangel Gabriel to my servant, Charlie, 13 years ago with instructions that he must ‘…tell you true and you must choose or perish.’ Though he, too, is a vain and foolish child, he has been faithful in this and has told you true. Now the time of harvest has arrived and you must choose or perish.”

 

9 Sept 2013

We have reached and crossed the border into chaos. The worst is yet to come, but we can see the plume of smoke rising in the distance and smell the sulfur now. From now until the moment of shock that dispels the last illusions of denial, I will post here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I have sent video segments from a talk I gave last month to my son in hopes that he can get them formatted and loaded on here. There were four segments, but only three came out in a form that could be copied.

In the last few weeks I have spent time talking constantly with people who are under great stress, struggling with decisions and trials that challenge their very sense of who they are. These things must come; do not be overly disturbed by them. When I was walking, I reached a point where I rarely thought about how difficult the immediate course ahead of me was. Some days I had a basically level path and could make 15, 20 or even 25 miles. Some days it was so steeply uphill in the mountains that I could barely make more than a mile for the whole day. It didn’t matter – and I was never daunted. All I did was what I could with what was right in front of me – and that was enough. I did not worry when I had only made a mile – that was often more of an accomplishment than making 20 because of the hurdles of the day. I knew it was a long journey, so I did not worry about having to make so many miles each day…was content to do what I could. I was not caught up in any macho delusions…I was a crippled old man when I began and I ended the same way. Didn’t try to prove how tough I was, because I just am not. What sustained me throughout was the sense that I would do what was right in front of me, rest whenever I needed to, and keep at it until it was finished. Now, as the trials grow in intensity, please bring that mindset to your own life. You can’t control whether you walk under sunny skies or through driving rain, on a level path or up a bleak mountain. I was always amused when someone I met along my way asked me what I did when it rained. With a cheery grin I would invariably say, “Usually, I get wet.” You’re going to get wet. But you will discover as you go that when you do, you always dry out again. When you are too weary to go on, stop and rest. I sometimes rested for several days at a time, holing up in some nice clearing I found.

 

9 Sept 2013 continued

In my heart, I thought my friends and family had a point; that I really might die or be killed out there. Someone asked me not long ago how many times I thought of giving up. It startled me. I was often uncomfortable, frequently hungry, occasionally deeply fearful – but never, not a single time, did I think of giving up. In Mississippi I walked for a week and a half with a sprained ankle. In Dallas, I walked for several days on bleeding, blistered feet. There was a time in the mountains of California and then again in the high plains of Colorado that I thought I might faint from hunger and heat exhaustion. A few times I listened desperately for the faint rush of a stream when I was in the wilderness and out of water. But this was my course, set, I believed, by God. I would walk until I finished what I promised or until I was dead. Had I been badly injured, I would have resumed when I could. I thought of some of the Old Testament prophets who were said to have “set their jaws like flint”…and I now knew something about what that meant. I was incompetent, physically unimpressive, but determined to go until I reached my end.

There were two critical points in the journey that ultimately shaped its character. Early on, while coming southwest out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I was stricken with a panic attack (something I never get). It was a rough area. Every day I did not know where I would sleep that night. Food and water were steady, but kind of dicey. I feared discovery at night. I was worried about the coming heat of summer in the deep south (I worried about coming 90+ temps, not knowing that I would have 100 days of 100+ temps culminating in seven days in Austin, Texas where it got over 110 each day. At the time, I was still waking up with frost in my hair and eyebrows sometimes). I worried about getting to areas that were barren, lacking cover to make camp for the night. I worried constantly about many things, though I did not reveal it on this page. But I worried. I was so rattled coming out of Tuscaloosa I sat down to gather myself, even though dark was coming and there was no cover in sight. I heard something behind me and looked in panic. With wonder, I saw a huge cohort of angels and saints, all walking with me. At the front was my late paternal grandfather. He said nothing, but his smile was absolutely bursting with pride and joy. It soothed me. I got up and began walking again. It did not get any less hard after that, but I rarely worried any more. I was not alone.

The second critical point came in slow motion through Louisiana. I did not think I was even going to like the state. I fell in love with it. It seemed in every town I walked through, I met more and more wonderful people. All seemed incredibly inspired by what I was doing. I was kind of puzzled about that, for I did not see what was so inspiring about an old man walking. But there it was. I fell in love with the people I was meeting – and more and more were following this Facebook Page. In the heart of things, I was astonished to discover that though there were only a few hundred overt likes, the page was getting 15,000 to 30,000 hits each week. I had prayed that this could somehow be a sign of hope and mysteriously, it had. I had so fallen in love with the people who I met and who walked with me virtually, that I began to fear for my safety in a very different way than I had at the start. I feared that if I was so injured that I could not finish the journey or were killed, it could shake the faith of the tens of thousands that were literally checking in each week. So I prayed that the Lord not let me become disabled in any way that would prevent me from finishing this pilgrimage. Thanks be to God, He obliged.
I learned many things along my way. We are such creatures of habit that, even when we have nothing, we want to hold on to what we know. Sleeping in the woods, when I came upon a nice spot, well-sheltered, near a stream, I was loathe to leave. It is sometimes a fearsome thing to get up each morning and not know where you will sleep that night. But I rarely stayed in the pleasant little oases I found for more than a couple of days, laughing at myself for my covetousness of a pleasant spot of woods. Not knowing the constellations beyond the big and little dippers, I began making my own, by which I would orient myself at night. I marked time by the changes in the moon. I began to see the night sky in a way similar to what our forebears must have…as a real friend and comforting companion. How I loved the soft rush of a nearby stream when I could find one to make camp near. In Houston, a family of rabbits slept near me where I made camp. In California, a wolf let me pet him. In northeastern Colorado, a fawn bounded up to me and set with me for a spell. In the mountains of Los Padres National Forest, I spent nine days where nearly all I heard was the soft whisper of the wind and the gentle rush of some streams (punctuated by the rumbling of my stomach). As I told a Mariposa County Sheriff’s Deputy who spoke of his love for the beauty of his county, I learned that beauty, when you are walking, is hard…you must pay a price to enjoy such beauty, but it is well worth it. I came to see a surpassing beauty all around me, and God always with me in ordinary things. (People think it would be so nice for God to speak to them directly. It is an honor, but an intense one. We are so fragile and heavenly things are so solid…I appreciate the honor but I love the ordinary. It is more my size.)

In retrospect, I have come to appreciate better why so many were so moved. We live in a cynical, gilded age where everything has an angle. I think this homely proof that something simple, but hard, could be done just for love, with purity and joy, ignited hope in some I met that goodness was still possible, even in this jaded age. And certainly, after living the vanities of politics and media all my life, I saw the simple goodness in so many across this great land who reached out to me and shared part of my journey. I saw the hunger for what is true – and how deeply people want to reach out to each other, but not be played. I thank all of you who walked virtually with me during that year and a half. It is something that I treasure, that can never be taken from me. Oh yes, it was often fearful, much harder than I let on, and occasionally downright miserable. One of the most important things anyone ever said to me was when a wise priest, Monsignor William Stetson, told me many years ago that “faith is an act of the will.” We can’t always feel it, but we can always live it. And if we do, we will often be surprised that the periods of our greatest spiritual growth came while we scarcely felt it at all, but lived it nonetheless.

We are all embarking on a great pilgrimage now. I know the prospect must be frightful to most of you. It will transform us all, it will often be brutally hard, but if you set your jaw like flint, take care of what is right in front of you and rest when you need to, you will find that as terrible as things are, we are also entering a time of surpassing beauty, a time when things are restored to their rightful order. And for all of you with children, who have the most reason to fear, know that your children will grow up and inhabit a world of real peace, prosperity and joy under the tender hand of our loving God. As you set your jaw for this pilgrimage, know that you are co-operating in giving those children a profound gift for which they will honor you and this generation until the end of time. As so many of you walked with me on my journey, I will walk constantly with you on the larger journey we have now begun.

 

28 Sept 2013

Do not be caught unawares.
Most of the things I have written here have been intended to soothe people who can read the signs of the times and are frightened of what they portend. That is right and proper, for one of the three prime duties I was given from the beginning is to “hearten the faithful.” But if I soothe to the point of lulling anyone away from the reality of what is upon us, I will have failed in my duty.

Of late, people talk to me who are astonished at some of the things happening in the world and how everything seems to be going from bad to worse – that even when it seems a corner has been turned it is only to lead to an even darker place than the crisis we just passed. These things must come. When I tell you that things will be okay, I do not mean it in the sense that everything is all going calm down and work out. I say it in the sense that after the greatest, most sustained, brutal crisis in over 2,000 years; a global civil war that will wage with scarcely a respite, we will nonetheless endure. God has decreed that this is not to be the end, that He will call His people back to Him yet one more time. You can be a part of that reclamation, but when it is over you will know the rest of your life that you survived one of the most brutal scourgings humanity has ever suffered – and you will know that it is we who scourged ourselves and God who rescued us from our self-inflicted brutalization.

Know this: collapse will come suddenly, like a cat on an inattentive sparrow. It will come at a moment I do not expect. The times when it seems danger is receding are actually the most dangerous times. A friend of mine, with great insight from simply temporal analysis, says he expects that a time will come when, on a Monday, the stock market ticker will be as normal and pundits will pompously give both their short and long-term analyses. Then by Friday, everything will be ashes – it is not that the market will have tanked, but there will no longer be a market. Panic and chaos will envelop the globe. He has it as close to the mark as any I have heard.

I continue to hear people speak of things being pretty much as they always have been, only very difficult. These are the people who are well prepared and informed. I indulge that, as I know that the fundamental nature of what is coming upon us is beyond most of our imaginations. I suspect it would be beyond mine if I had not spent a lifetime being taught – and in a very real sense, living – what is to come. Do not worry how you will pay your mortgage. It will not matter when all the banks are belly up and would be in foreclosure themselves if there were anyone left to do the foreclosing. I see people putting great hope in politicians who desperately try to put their finger in the dyke to hold back the flood. But it is too late. The flood will come. I talk to friends who worry about the next election cycle and I indulge them, even advise them…but I roll my eyes almost every time. It will be a long time before we have another regular election cycle; at least five or six years. I hear people talking about putting social issues on the back burner in order to get the financial issues back to rights. Here’s the reality: financial prosperity is not the substance of a virtuous people; it is the residue.

Back in 2007 I was ordered by my heavenly visitors to begin making plans and preparations for putting a shattered people back on its feet; to give them confidence enough again to rise up and, in humble submission to God, yet to gird their loins and prepare for the genuine war to end all wars, and to endure. I was instructed that we would NOT prevail and that before it was over everyone, including me, would lose hope. The objective is to endure, trying to prevail, but endure nonetheless. I have said that when the time comes that I lose hope, I will pretend to have hope until rescue comes. Here is a mystery: unless you are so determined to live a godly course that you will accept death rather than turn to trivial things again, you cannot endure. You must set your jaw like flint. I have spent these last six years making very specific and detailed plans and quietly amassing names of who can help in the reclamation – when I am plagued with doubt, I treat it as an intellectual exercise, that I may remain obedient despite myself. I do not speak even to the priests of the details of that, though they know what I am doing.

This is a spiritual battle, which is why those who continue to seek a political solution are merely chopping away at the branches of what ails us while leaving the root untouched. But they do what they know, even as the terrible suspicion haunts them that, this time, it is not enough. Each soul is the battleground, but do not think that because it is primarily spiritual, it does not involve real warfare, real strife, real terror. Cozy little formulas, the indulgence of an affluent, powerful society, are not going to do in the midst of the existential crisis that is upon us. People who don’t like to get their hands dirty are going to watch those they love die as the price of their fastidiousness.

I do not know the moment that collapse will come. I will be surprised if we get to the end of the year and it is not fully engaged. I am not sure it would even be a mercy to delay it much longer. When it does come, if communication is lost, I will make my way to Mt. Meeker, my mountain. I am situated now so that even in the worst of circumstances, I could walk there in little more than a week. I will make it known to everyone I encounter where I am. Take that for what it is worth.

Next week, I will go back to soothing, practical things you can do. But today, I feel it urgent that you understand that none of those things will hold the storm at bay. I tell them so you may prepare, as I do, to help a shattered people get to their feet again and serve God by serving each other. I will speak of how to know what the next right step is, the nature of satan’s deception, the purpose of the many signs and portents that are appearing far and wide. But for now, I wish you would contemplate very deeply the three duties I have been taught, that have been hammered into my sluggish mind since the beginning. They are much deeper and more fundamental than a superficial view of them will reveal – and they are both spiritual and temporal commands. If you would be a part of the reclamation, you will live them with me. They are:
1) Defend the Faith
2) Hearten the Faithful
3) Defend the Faithful

 

12 Oct 2013 marks the 96th anniversary of the penultimate apparition in Fatima, Portugal. It is the beginning of what history will record as one of the most tumultuous, convulsive years in the history of the world. Governments will topple around the globe as economies tank and large-scale civil unrest erupts throughout the world. Do not give in to panic or fear as these things unfold. Satan has had his way with the world, running roughshod for almost a century now, a century in which souls are being lost at an unprecedented rate. After having almost unimpeded sway for that long, this marks the beginning of the end - not for us, but for satan’s reign of terror over the world. God is moving actively again in human history.

A few weeks ago I put up video of the rock and mudslides at the site where the Shrine will be built at Mt. Meeker. It looked devastating, but things are not always as they look. Since men have dawdled God, Himself, has cleared away the ground – not in a paroxysm of destruction, but both as a sign and a practical beginning to what we should have done, ourselves. That is exactly what is about to happen in the world. We did not live faith, so a great deal of fetid, tangled undergrowth has snarled modern society – and God, Himself, is about to clear the ground for what is to come, to build what we should have preserved and what He intends for us. But we are the tools He will use to build with.

To put it in pop culture terms, the last year has marked the opening credits for the movie that will unfold over the next four – and that movie is not, “The Empire Strikes Back;” it is “Return of the Jedi.” Both, you will recall, had fearsome battles and trials but in the latter, as it has ever been appointed, it is the true that prevails. So do not lose your balance as you see fearsome things unfold. It is just satan screaming and fighting as he is sent back to lock-up to await the end. Do not deceive yourself that you are a fearsome warrior who must do extraordinary things. That is one of satan’s more subtle seductions. Just acknowledge God, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around you. Live the ordinary with extraordinary love and simplicity – and you will be a most useful tool in the Master’s hands.

Beware of people like me, people who claim to have visions or to be prophets. Many of satan’s minions have risen trying to draw people away from their faith to something new, something different. There is no new revelation: Christ is Lord of all and God reigns in heaven and has dominion over the earth. He is not dead, nor does He sleep. Christ did not say that the “gates of hell will not prevail over Charlie Johnston” or of any of the other purported prophets out there. He said the “gates of hell will not prevail against My Church.” So any who try to lead you away from the Church, from Christ, is an obvious fraud doing satan’s work. Do not follow them. Follow the Church. As for me, whether you believe me or not is a matter of indifference to me. It IS very important to me that you acknowledge God, take the next right step and act as a sign of hope to those around you. In the times of Christ, the purpose of even an authentic prophet is to point you back to Christ, to clean away the disfiguring marks that people and the world have put on His image, so that you may see Him with fresh eyes and fall in love all over again. Satan’s minions are working triple shifts. Do not be deceived by them.

Do not be one of those in whom the love of Christ has grown cold with complacency. God is always fresh, startling and new. If you are a ‘social-climber’ Christian, one who prays with the Pharisee that, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men…” (Luke 18:11) you will get the same response the Pharisee did (spoiler alert – Christ was not amused). Be grateful when the Lord of Hosts knocks you on your duff, for it is for your salvation. Beware of formulaic legalism. I have had many wonderful, deeply insightful discussions with men and women of faith, both in the Catholic Church and among my Protestant brethren. But I find the deepest most fruitful conversations where I learn the most are with people who are marked with a spirit of genuine humility and service. When I encounter someone who imperiously informs me they only go by what the Church or what the Bible says, I have yet to discover one who actually knows much about what either the Church or the Bible says.

Do not treat God the Father as some sort of distant, forbidding alien. He is your Dad. He loves you, will laugh with you if you let Him, and wants you to treat Him with the intimacy of a real Father. If you are hurting, if you are mad, if you are frustrated and don’t understand, say so. He knows our strength and our frailty. I read how Samuel said, when God spoke to Him, “Here I am, Lord.” I admire it, but my response has usually been more like, “You again? Couldn’t you give me a break?” I identify with the complaining prophets, Jeremiah and Jonah. I console myself (and hope) that my griping and grumbling amuse the Almighty…that He gets a kick out of the histrionics knowing full well that I will get up and do what He says, likely grumbling most of the way. That does not need to be your style of dealing with God, but I would that the same sort of confident intimacy, expressed with the unique unrepeatability of the personality that is yours, would mark your dealings with Him. How I wish everyone would know that God is a fun and a cool guy – demanding, absolutely, but what a genuine Friend He is if you just let Him!

Learn not just to have faith in God, but to trust Him as well. Some say that all you need do to be saved is confess that Jesus is Lord. Well, in his Epistle, St. James says different. He says that the demons in hell do not need to be convinced of it: they KNOW Jesus is Lord and tremble because of it. If you are merely a hearer or a speaker or a knower of the Word, it avails you nothing. You must be a doer of the Word. Once you genuinely give yourself into God’s hands, do not deceive yourself that prayer is a means to bind God to your will, persuading Him to give you wealth, power or even good health. God’s purpose is always to save you, to heal you. But the healing is always for eternity – and sometimes to save your soul, it is necessary to afflict you in this life. Those of you with children know what I mean. We are the Master’s children. So trust, when you give yourself to God, that what He allows to befall you is for the benefit of your or another’s immortal soul. Do not ask, “Why me?” when afflicted: rather ask, “What do You intend for me in this trial, Lord?” He will usually let you know, will not give you more than you can bear, and will give you strength to bear what He allows. That does not mean you should not ask for healing or help in your needs. You should. But you should also accept His answer, especially when it is not what you had wanted or hoped for.

Later today, at 3:30, I will participate in a Rosary release of balloons by children at St. Anne’s in Arvada, Colorado. The children will sing the song of gratitude for our rescue that the angels taught me. I am so thrilled that it will first be sung publicly as the year of convulsions leading into the fullness of the Storm begins. It is a profound act of faith – and a repudiation of the devil. To give thanks now for a rescue that will come a little over four years from now, it overjoys me. I tell you that strife and explosions will seem to overtake the world now. As you see them, do not panic. Rather rejoice, for it is the sound of our deliverance that you hear. Gird your loins, acknowledge God, take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around you. Then you will participate with God in our deliverance.

“The people in darkness have seen a great light…” (Isaiah 9:2)

 

2 Nov 2013
This post is the center of a triduum of messages that are vital to understand what lies before us. My previous post on the Third Secret of Fatima and the one that will follow this, whether you find them interesting or not, contain everything you need to contemplate to prepare for the Storm. Do not treat them lightly.
I have been told that, as things unfold, faithful Christians (be they Catholic or Protestant) and faithful Jews are to be treated as full partners in the works of mercy, of reclamation and struggle that are ours. I am told that one of the great fruits of the Storm is that the divisions in Christianity will end and we will once again all be one. I get frustrated sometimes trying to explain that, as so many assume that, like a football game, there will be a winner and a loser. It is far more like the reconciliation of a great family that has long been divided against itself. Protestants will once again enjoy the unity they have so long lacked as Catholics regain many charisms that have long been lost to them. I do not know how the Jews play in, save that they were the first people of the One God. I was at a presentation given by a Messianic Jew (one who has embraced Christ as the Messiah) recently and he pointed out something very interesting. He said that if the Jews had not rejected Christ, the faith might well have been contained to the Middle East; but because of that rejection, it spread throughout the world by evangelical necessity, a need that would not have existed had the people to whom Christ was first sent accepted Him immediately. There is a mystery there, and one worthy of contemplation.

Having been, in my life, first Protestant, then Catholic, I am intimate with many of the virtues and vices of adherents of both. The divisions are now of such long-standing (496 years) that the label is of little use in assessing the holiness of the individual adherent. In both faiths, there are many who claim the title as a mere adornment, a type of cultural identification with no more significance than the color of their hair or eyes. Then there are the self-righteous prigs, who use their self-identification as the base from which to blast away at others. Seeing through the eyes of satan, they live to find the flaw, to accuse, those around them. And like satan, they have their reward.

God draws good even from evil. In my lifetime, the pro-life movement has been a prime example of that profound truth. Abortion is one of the greatest evils in history. But God used the occasion of this evil to bring Catholics and Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, into close collaboration with each other for His purposes. In the process, they have found a deep appreciation for the authentic Christianity of the other – and come to see each other as fellow workers in the Lord’s vineyard rather than ancient antagonists. I know few seriously faithful Catholics who do not have great esteem for the Rev. Billy Graham, nor do I know many seriously faithful Protestants who do not have great esteem for the late John Paul II.

Knowing what a stumbling block Mary is for most Protestants (including me, once) I have often been reticent about speaking candidly about her role in this Storm. But the Lord has instructed me firmly on the matter. The first Protestants – Martin Luther and later, even Calvin, did not abandon veneration of Mary. It wasn’t until the movement was about 150 – 200 years old that the first hints of real hostility to her arose, and only in the last few centuries has it become ubiquitous. It really didn’t even have much to do with her. In order to tar those who had held fast to the ancient apostolic teachings and sacraments, some branches of Protestants attacked them as idolators. Since Mary was the most venerated of all saints, she became the prime target of such venom, despite the Biblical assurance that all generations would call her blessed (Luke 1:48).

When the Lord came the first time, He took up residence among us. He may visit, but when He comes again to take up residence among us, it will be right at the end of time and to bring those of the saved who remain on earth to take up residence with Him and the saints in heaven. Because He will grant the mercy of reclamation from a mass apostasy one more time, He sends His mother this time to bring us back to Him and rescue us.
I know some get confused at all of the different “Our Lady” titles. They are all the same person, Mary, but they signify different things. It is the same with each of us. I am the same person, but I am sometimes son, sometimes father, sometimes boss and sometimes subordinate among many other roles. One of the most commonly known forms is that of Our Lady of Tepeyac, who is commonly (but mistakenly) called Guadalupe, and whose image appears with this post.

In 1531, the poor peasant, St. Juan Diego, was visited by her several times on Tepeyac Hill, near what is now Mexico City. Most of the missionaries in the Americas were well-intended, but they had utterly failed to convert the Aztec Indians. The average Aztec was caught between a rock and a grinding stone. Their indigenous faith, the cult of Quexalcoatl (the infamous feathered serpent) required constant human sacrifice. The pyramids always ran red with human blood. The Spanish and Portuguese explorers frequently enslaved native peoples. The problem was so bad that, in 1430, Pope Eugene VII had made enslaving a native of the Canary Islands a matter of excommunication. In 1537, Pope Paul III explicitly extended the punishment to the enslaving of American Indians, as well.

The Aztec culture had long prophesied of a woman who would free them from the bloody requirements of Quexalcoatl. When Juan Diego tried to report the messages of Our Lady to his bishop, the bishop quite reasonably demanded some proof. On his last visit to Our Lady, a bunch of wild roses were blooming at the hilltop out of season. Our Lady told Juan Diego to gather them up in his tilma (an apron made of cactus fibers, commonly worn by working peasants) and take the flowers to the bishop. When he dropped them from his apron in front of the bishop, the image with this post appeared on his apron. (Interestingly, tilmas rot, usually within 20 years – and never last more than 40. Diego’s tilma, with the image of Our Lady on it, still stands in the cathedral in Mexico City, vibrant almost 500 years later). The titles of Our Lady are always related to where she appeared or to what her primary role in that appearance is. Diego explained to the bishop that this woman was, in Aztec (phonetically) tuh-quad-luh-SHOE-pay, which roughly translated means “she who crushes the serpent.” The bishop heard the name of the European Spanish City, Guadalupe, rather than the Aztec phrase, which is how the misnomer came about.

The miraculous image spoke simultaneously to two cultures. I could go into detail on what it meant to the Aztecs, but suffice it to say it was recognized as the deliverance from the bloody cult of Quexalcoatl. Within a decade, 10 million Indians converted and the Cult of Quexalcoatl was consigned to the ash heap of history. When the missionaries failed, Our Lady came herself and accomplished the conversion to the worship of Her Son.

I know that she wants to be called by what she says is her proper title, Our Lady of Tepeyac, because she told me so. She is the Mother of Conversion and her work is not finished. Through her guidance, the Church will be renewed, the Old World will be re-evangelized from the New World, and; taking root in the heart of the women, Islam will be converted to Christianity. (Sadly, the latter will not be completed until we have met Islam in a great and bloody clash). This was a prophecy given to me 15 or 16 years ago – and I regarded the election of Francis, the first pope from the Americas, the New World, as the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophecy. She has instructed me to spread devotion to her under that proper title. I have done so privately and some miracles have been attached to it. I now do so publicly. I urge you, when you seek relief from some great illness, sorrow or calamity, go to Our Lady of Tepeyac and ask her to speak to her Son on your behalf.

As the Storm rages to a time when all despair, rescue will come through Our Lady in the form of the Immaculate Conception. I am told that it is in that fundamental form that she has appeared in Lourdes, Fatima and now Medjugorje. Interestingly, two of my most important Novenas each year, that to Our Lady the Immaculate Conception (Feast Day, December 8) and Our Lady of Tepeyac (Feast Day, December 12) overlap right in the center. The work of the two forms is inextricably intertwined, conversion and rescue.

As I converted, reverence for Mary was a big stumbling block for me. I knew that veneration of her had been part of Christianity for an almost unbroken 1600 years before some Protestants started derogating her. I knew that she was the one case in history where the parent proceeded from the child rather than the child proceeding from the parent. Yet the aversion was so ingrained, I had trouble with it and just avoided it. On the occasion of my reception into the Church, someone gave me a beautiful Rosary. With no little trembling, I prayed that God would show me – that I was going to pray this Rosary for one month without telling anyone, walking with Mary through the mysteries of Christ’s life. I asked the Lord to show me. If it was wrong I would quietly put it aside and never say a word about it. If it was right, I would never put it down. I would trust God to show me. I entered into one of the most astonishing periods of sustained blessing in my life during that month. So I joined Pope John Paul II in proclaiming joyfully, “Totus Tuus!”

 

6 Nov 2013

Today, I speak of some very specific things, a little taste of what is regularly placed on my plate. I thought to leave all these sorts of specifics for the record to be opened after the Storm is over and I have passed from the scene. But Ithink speaking of a few of them may help steel you to the reality of the whirlwind of chaos about to make landfall, to steady you, and prepare you to receive with magnanimity and grace the tsunami of penitent prodigal sons who participated in conjuring the chaos. All of this to be done even as you defend the faithful with steady resolve against the assaults of those bitter-enders who are beyond repentance.

For over 150 years political factionalism could co-exist peacefully, if often uneasily, in America because politics was an important, but minor, part of civil discourse and society. Like a traffic light, it was designed to maintain order as you made your way to the destination of your choosing in the vehicle of your choice. If, over time, traffic officials presumed to prescribe both your destination and vehicle, you would work to set things right. You would be furious if, while they poked their nose into what is exclusively your business, they simultaneously quit maintaining traffic lights and allowed roads to fall into ruin. If those traffic officials described your efforts to defend your proper prerogatives as ‘…injecting politics into traffic law…’ you would recognize it for rank insolence. It is the same rank insolence that characterizes faithful citizens’ defense of rights endowed by their creator as ‘injecting religion into politics’ and vice versa. Rights enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and defined in the Bill of Rights are not the proper subject of political debate. They are the very foundation of the social contract in America. Now the confrontation between advocates of faith and rights and the advocates of governmental supremacy has become an irrepressible conflict.

When the advocates of governmental intrusion into every corner of daily life complain that any defense against the intrusion is political, they are both right and disingenuous. When everything is politicized, everything said or done is political. But who politicized it? The question now is: are we to be a free people, under God, bearing both moral rights and moral obligations to each other? Or are we to be a subservient people, under government, assigning to it both our rights and our obligations? Don’t call me Ishmael. The two worldviews cannot be reconciled. The latter believes that winning an election confers the power to impose your will on everyone. The former believes that winning an election merely confronts you with the obligation to maintain the traffic lights.

In January of this year, while walking through a Georgia wood after dark, my angel visited me. He had two things to tell me. He was quite amused over the first. He told me I was, indeed, being monitored by government entities, but that I should not be alarmed. I was one of many – and then he broke into a broad grin and told me that while I was a subject of particular interest, they did not take me seriously because I am mostly involved with that superstitious religious stuff. He was much more somber about the second matter. I had long been baffled by the seeming incompetence at the highest levels of government that seemed to be bumbling towards confrontation and crisis. I have been a partisan, but I have also worked with people in both parties at the state and federal level – and much of the internal maneuvering just no longer made sense to me from any perspective. My angel told me it is not bumbling: that there are sinister forces in high seats of power that are bent on triggering an internal conflict. Before I go on, I have to note that Barack Obama is not one of them. He is shallow, vain and petty – qualities that make a man in political life very easy to manipulate. But he is also utterly sincere. That is not a helpful public quality in a man marked by the former three traits, but he genuinely does believe he is doing good. I was told in midsummer of 2008 that he would win the election, that he was the man chosen by God to lead us into the Storm. But I was also told then about his sincerity – and instructed to pray for him each day - for, in the end, long after he has left power leaving the country and world in ashes, he will have a true conversion. He is not destined to be pharaoh, but a sort of Paul, but only after it no longer makes any difference to anyone but him.

But back to now. President Obama is not in command of the government he nominally heads. My angel continued. The darker forces around him, though systematically purging as many men of traditional faith from the top levels of military leadership as they could, still did not trust the military; as the culture of God, duty, honor and country are so long and deeply ingrained there. Neither did they trust local police forces, which have deep ties to the communities they police. So they had vastly expanded, armed and militarized the federal police forces. (It was after I was told this that I saw Homeland Security boasting on its website of having bought 2,600 new armored vehicles for domestic use and its plans to have 30,000 domestic drones in the sky by the end of this decade). Those dark forces had calculated they will win any confrontation – and they need it to secure the gains in authoritarian command. The Constitution, feeble as it has become, is a serious impediment to long-term control. Severe crisis is the only way to topple it entirely. But the darker forces also need to be seen as responding to crisis rather than provoking it, in order to freeze the great mass of people long enough to secure the new order. And so, violent internal conflict will come to America, not because it is inevitable, but because some dark advocates of the supremacy of the state who hold transient power are bent on it.

If they have a plan, so does God. In fact, they are unwitting players in His Divine plan. The most seductive, corrosive evil in mankind is vanity, the belief that we are sufficient to ourselves and masters of all we survey. In the last century, vanity has ascended to power even in this, the former home of the free. If God had forsaken us, He would just let it take its course and it would be the end. But in His love and decision to reclaim us once more, it is God who has brought things to a head, that we may turn back to Him. Those who would supplant God with the state will succeed in calling forth the maelstrom. But it will not go as they plan.

There will be great upheaval – and perhaps two or three transitional “leaders” as various governments fall here and we are reduced to the stability of a banana republic. I know what the entry to the fullness of the Storm looks like and I know what it looks like when we start to pull free from the wreckage, but I am only given a few details of the period of transition from collapse to the beginning of renewal.

The purpose of all the rumblings that surround us now has been to unmask the reality of the assault on God. You can continue to be an advocate for government supremacy, but when the day of judgment comes, you will not be able to say you did not know it was really about overturning God and had nothing to do with compassion or charity. God extends the period so that as many as possible who have been honestly duped because of their lack of wisdom may return to the fold – and so those bitter-enders who are more in love with their own sense of superiority will have no excuse left. It is a drawing of the battle lines.

There is a peculiar pause in people’s attitude of outrage now. It is not a pause in events, which continue to disintegrate with stunning fury, but an awakening of wisdom that we will not be able to skate by serious crisis this time. People are girding their minds and spirits as well as their loins. I tell you it is the beginning of our reclamation – and as the terror envelops the world, know that you will be judged simply by how well you took the next, right step and acted as a sign of hope to those around you. Do not be alarmed or frightened – be focused and understand that some of the heroes of the storm will be called from among those who are now enemies of the faith – and some who are now regarded as examples of piety will quickly become betrayers of their neighbor. There are many surprises ahead as Our Lord separates the sheep from the goats.

 

29 Dec 2013

At Thanksgiving I received a brief visitation from Our Lord. In the time since then I have been alternately sick and contemplating the meaning of His message. On several occasions I have started to write something here and then pulled back.

We have now celebrated the last traditional Christmas of the old era. People worry that America is passing away. It is not - it already has. The question is no longer whether or not the patient can be saved, but whether resurrection is possible.

The period of rumblings is over, the period when events would serve to unmask the ugly realities behind the state's assault on the throne of God. If you don't see it for what it is now, you will not see it without the fullness of the storm, so there is no one left to be rescued by delaying the onset.

Next year the world enters its passion, the time when the old order fully passes away. We have three Christmas seasons of deep and desperate strife ahead of us. And then, if the Son of Man finds a few who still have faith on earth, the Christmas after that, in 2017, will be a joyful celebration of resurrection - joy that what seemed the end was actually prelude to a new beginning. Acknowledge God, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around you. If you set your jaw and do this things with faithful resolve, even when you don't feel it, during the great crisis that now is upon us, your children and grandchildren will call you blessed.

 

7 Jan 2014

The people of Europe, as the Nazi threat rose, were able to deceive themselves for a terribly long time that if they just pretended nothing was wrong, everything would turn out okay and they would not have to fight a great struggle. There was a moment when everyone finally knew that it was not going to go away this time; a time all knew they must rouse themselves to action or watch liberty forever perish on their continent. That moment was when Hitler invaded Poland. It stripped away all illusions about this being business as usual.

People constantly ask me for more or new information on what is coming and when it is coming. I know it is frustrating. I have lived that for many decades - often asking God why He would not just tell me more things plainly. I learned the reason He often does not speak plainly is because He is not interested in giving us information that would allow us to deceive ourselves with one of our many clumsy battle plans, thinking if we just knew what was coming and when, we could prepare for it. We cannot...the fact is, even at our best, we are largely incompetent dunderheads. Rather, He seeks to inculcate in us a mindset - a real abandonment to Him and trust in Him. Under the best of circumstances, things are often going to look hopeless and our best-laid plans are going to explode in our faces. We cling to the idea that if we only knew, then we could handle it. It is, in many ways, the last deception preventing us from truly being useful instruments in the Lord's hands. So while I understand the frustration because I lived it for decades, I have very little curiosity about any details God does not tell me anymore - for I know that knowing specifics will not do me any good. I will still screw it up - and am far more likely to if I trust to my own competence.

Paradoxically, since I have gotten rigorously comfortable in that discipline, the Lord has given me more details. But He does not allow me to share most of those details with anyone else. The last few weeks, on several occasions, I have started to tell someone something that I thought would be useful to them and get them off an unproductive track and then been stopped - shown that they would use the information as I once would have, getting off the unproductive track, but immediately thinking their own intellect would allow them to change things that must be while diminishing, rather than augmenting, their abandonment to God's will. It is not the toughest thing I have ever dealt with, but it's pretty tough.

I believe that I know, through interpretation, the day we will all have our own 'invasion of Poland' moment, the moment when collapse is obvious to all. But once I realized it, I was sternly ordered not to tell anyone, even my priests. I have struggled for over a month, wondering what I can say that would help and what I must not say. So I have said very little. I will now do my best, as the need is urgent and I cannot honorably wait much longer.

The last year has been very good and instructive for me. As usual, though, it has not been in the way I suspected it would be. Often I have been disheartened, thinking as Chief Brody did when he first saw the shark in 'Jaws,' that we are going to need a bigger boat. I fear that some of the most religious people are going to have a harder going in the early days of complete chaos than some secular types who have just lost hope - because many of the religious people, like Job's 'pious' friends, have more illusions to be stripped away before they can be useful. Many pastors and theologians have reduced Christ to an intellectual box they can handle and so have little real fundamental interaction with Him at all. Thank God for Pope Francis, who is waging absolute war on the deception of clericalism. Many souls will be rescued because of the pope's vigilance on this. Some think that by piling devotion on top of devotion, they can exempt themselves, but the Pharisees and Saducees did the same, wearing long phylacteries and constantly enacting visible displays of devotion - and Jesus contemptuously said they had their reward already. I am grateful to have been deeply immersed in both fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic movements, for I have been fascinated to see how both use different things to commit the same abuses. Protestants love to try to decipher the 'secret codes' in the Bible to get an edge up while Catholics often treat sacramentals as power-ups in a video game, magic totems filled with power. Bible study, sacramentals and devotions are all good in themselves - but only to the extent that you use them to focus on Christ. I am dismayed at how many I see arming themselves with plastic swords and cardboard shields and fancying themselves spiritual warriors. They are about to face troops more brutal and powerful than the most crack SS troops. The only warfare worthy of the name is that of relentlessly holding on to Christ, for He is the only force powerful enough to conquer the demons. These demons love to cower before men in hopes of persuading us that they are subject to us. The moment our pride persuades us of our power, we let go of Christ and are in mortal trouble. But, these things must come.

I constantly tell people to, acknowledging God, take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around them. People ask how to know they are taking the next, right step. It is easy. Just acknowledge God and do the most right thing you can think of. Act. You will screw up a lot, but so long as you acknowledge God, He will draw fruit even from your errors. When you cease to acknowledge Him, even your seeming triumphs will turn to ashes. So you can act with complete confidence, even knowing that you are not competent and will screw many things up. Think of a child that takes on a project too big for him and asks your help. You help him and correct his errors, even as you take pride in his initiative. Your child is still not competent to do it on his own. If he tried, it would be disaster - but he trusts you to guide him and correct the many mistakes he makes. Do you think God is any less of a loving Father? God wants your initiative. When you acknowledge Him, He will baptize your incompetent efforts with abundant fruit. But you must both act and acknowledge Him. Do not wait for certain knowledge. Choose the most right thing you can think of, then act. Trust God, not yourself. But He wants you to act, not to cower like the man who buried his talent and told the master he was too scared to risk it.

People ask how to prepare. I mix some facts with soothing words because people just can't get their mind around how radically different things are about to be. Faith, family, a defensible shelter and food are the only real assets you can bring to bear. For a short time, it will be primarily a barter economy - and if your handshake and your word are not good, you will perish. Those who have enriched themselves through double-talk and cleverness are going to have a real shock coming as they are shut out.
I will speak more in the coming days and weeks. Know this: the invasion of Poland was not the moment that sickness struck Europe. The sickness had been building for well over a decade, even as little men claimed it was actually health and prosperity. The invasion of Poland was actually the moment the Continent began to heal. Traumatic as it was, it cut out the cancerous illusions that were killing Europe. There will be no more delay. The time is set and the healing will soon begin.

(Sorry, I just had to make that sentence bold because it made me laugh out loud & because it is so true)

 

19 Feb 2014
I have been quiet for a few weeks now. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, the weight of everything presses in on me. That has been the case for a few weeks.

I had literally been going through a countdown in my head. I have put that out of my mind. It can easily become a dark obsession. To worry obsessively about what you can't change draws you away from taking care of the things you can. If your job is to organize the ambulance corps - and instead you become mesmerized by the unfolding disaster before you, more will die because of the ambulances you did not prepare because of your obsession. The approach of the crash was compounded by the death of Sr. Lucille. She was one of a handful of people who could invariably soothe and calm me. How I loved to laugh with her! I got to feeling like the Storm is coming at breakneck speed and here I am being left alone.

Two things happened to help bring me back down to a steady calm. First, the weekend before last, my sister called, very upset and worried. We talk frequently, so that was not unusual. What was unusual was that she said she had been oppressed for several days, worried about me - that she could feel immense sorrow overpowering me. She was right, and so I was grateful to know she had been praying for me. Then, last week, a woman was in near-panic about everything she sees happening in the world. With my game face on, I told her to calm down, that even after crash comes, there will be time. People will be paralyzed in shock. It will be as if the world is covered in a shroud for a time, and everyone will be in great fear. For those who do not lose their heads, there will be time to make decisions about what to do and where to go or whether to stay. Even if the government begins rounding people up (and there are high officials who have been planning this for over a year and a half), they have no clue of what they will unleash. They think they know; they think they will flush real opponents out and quickly subjugate all opposition. But they will reap the whirlwind. It is the moment they decide to utterly crush the opposition that their downfall begins. Know this: one of satan's more clever gambits has been to convince people that what is intensely spiritual is merely political. So even in the unlikely event one is high on their target list, the sudden fury will be so great the very people who unleash it will be paralyzed for a time, horrified at the magnitude of what they have set loose. You will have time to decide and act. After giving that very good advice, I told myself to heed my own counsel. And so I have.

I don't regret the paralysis I have felt the last few weeks. The good God knows how foolish we are - and that sometimes the only way for us to learn is to let us run through our dumber plans. When we fail miserably, we are ready to take the lesson. I have learned things I would rather not know. From that, I know that there are certain things necessary for me to know, but are just to help me prepare - and not obsess over nor share, or even hint at, to others. And I must act as I would if I did not know. I know that sounds impossible, but I have had a lifetime of practice living a rather dramatically different interior and exterior life. With the Storm upon us, God just wants me to up my game. I have been absolutely frustrated that people generally worry incessantly over things of no account - while obstinately remaining almost unaware of things that matter. And that is the good, sharp people. I am utterly incapable of changing that. But so it should be. The world will not be rescued because I, the great and powerful, manage to show it what matters. Rather, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Lord Christ of hosts, will rescue it. All I, in my little way, am called to or can do is to help give it hope and resolve to endure until our rescue from above. While I was busy obsessing over how little people can see, the Lord was very kindly showing me how very little I see in His grand scheme. If I, who have benefitted so much from the Lord's patience, should be impatient with others who have not been shown the things and lessons I have, how could I possibly hope to continue in the Master's grace? So, I am grateful for the intense lesson of these last few weeks and humbled by the rebuke, but heartened by the further instructions He has given me as I came out of my fugue. The Master has not abandoned me, just directed me.

So here are a few things that are important. First, do not worry about whether those you love are Catholic, Protestant or Jew. The Lord, Himself, will settle those matters over the course of the Storm. Treat all who call on the name of Christ or the God of Abraham as brothers and full partners, for this is the will of God. Do not despise the Lord's mother, for if you do, He will not hear your prayers. He is adamant about this. Take the next, right step and be a sign of hope to those around you. This is the sum of all that is necessary. Do not seek to aggrandize yourself (and oh, we can do that so subtly we even deceive ourselves); neither avoid your duty by whimpering that you are not worthy (just a perverse form of pride); go where the Lord sends you and stretch out your hand to those around you, even as you defend them from assault from the evil one. Trust God.

After I had calmed down, while driving on the Interstate, an ominous sign caught my eye. With dramatic shades of grey and clouds in a swirl, it read, "A Storm is coming." Yeah, I thought. Tell me about it.

 

22 Feb 2014

Sometimes God tells me to do something. Other times He shows me.

Last Wednesday I did a post asking for prayer after a week and a half of wrestling with a blind spot in the same place in the same eye. Because of that, I feared it might not be the normal spotting I get when a get a really bad cold. Many of you responded online to my request. I know others of you were praying. Within about 15 minutes, the blind spot had migrated out of my left eye into my right. That gave immediate relief, for I figured it really was just one of the normal cold symptoms I get rather than an eye problem. Within about an hour, it was gone entirely. It was there again the next morning, but only for about an hour. It made one more brief appearance when I got a bout of dizziness related to the cold (I don't make sudden moves when I have a bad cold - if I do, the cold likes to remind me it is there). Since then, the blind spot is gone and the cold is noticeably abating.

We all need prayer. In Catholicism, we speak of the communion of the saints, which means that all the faithful - both here and departed - are fully alive to God, and we have access to the faithful departed's prayers if we only ask. (for those who have any theological doubts on this point, please see Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:27 and Luke 20:38). But the prayers of the Church Militant, that is the faithful still on earth, for each other are crucial - and even more crucial in these times.

Right around the turn of the millennium, the archangel, Gabriel, gave me a prayer and told me the time would come when we would need miracles - and many miracles would be wrought through the faithful use of the prayer.

Right now, our medical system is collapsing before our very eyes. We have more people uninsured than ever because Obamacare is forcing their cancellation. The early round of hospital closures has begun (four in Georgia, alone), people are being denied coverage - an eastern children's hospital treated over 100 children with special needs for free because, under Obamacare, they had lost their specialty coverage. But of course, the hospital can't continue to do that because both supplies and personnel are being lost. You know many of the horror stories, but it is far worse than you know, as both the media and officials are frantically trying to dismiss these realities. But with each new blow, more pieces of the system collapse.

When the normal means of healing are easily available, you should always take advantage of them. When God has provided abundant means of normal medicine, it is a presumption to demand only His supernatural medicine. Ideally, it is best to take advantage of both. But soon (and it is happening far more rapidly than I expected when this was enacted) availability of normal services will be spotty - and if you have something chronic or are elderly, much will not be available at all as surviving doctors start working under an implicit triage mentality because of the shortages of supplies and equipment. God will not leave you bereft.

Along with this posting I have linked to a religious supply house that has printed up thousands of prayer cards containing this prayer and instructions on how to use it. The woman who owns it gave me most of them to give away. I always carry a supply with me. I asked her to carry them in her inventory, so that as many as possible might have access to them. If you are in the Colorado area, I am always at the 7:30 a.m. Mass on Tuesday at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden - and always at the 8:30 a.m. Mass at St. Joan's in Arvada on Thursdays. I am frequently at the Cabrini Shrine, but always on Tuesdays. If you are at Mass and look me up, I will be glad to give you a handful of the cards. If not, you can order the cards through the Full of Grace USA Supply House.

Now, if you treat these as some magic object, I have utterly failed my duty to you. There is no magic in the card, nor magic in the prayer. Rather, the instructions for the prayer teach you how to align your will with that of God. Having said that, there have been many startling results from the proper use of this prayer. Let me explain.

First, the Lord often acts to confirm His intentions. I tell you to acknowledge Our Lady of Tepeyac, which is Our Lady's proper title in this image, though she is commonly called Our Lady of Guadalupe. I know this because she told me long ago. She is sent as the Mother of Conversion in these terrible times. It pleases Our Lord that you acknowledge, then spread devotion to His servant and mother in this role He has given her for these times.

Second, prayer must begin with faith, the knowledge that God is in control of all things. But it must not end there. The demons in hell know that Christ is Lord, they know Scripture better than you and all the greatest theologians combined and, as James said, they tremble because of that knowledge. If all you have is faith, you have nothing more than the demons in hell.

Faith must lead to trust, the trust that once you acknowledge and follow Him, whatever the Lord allows to befall you is for your benefit or instruction or that of another that you may give witness to, perhaps never knowing until judgment the witness you have given by your trust. Many Christians treat prayer as the cloth with which they rub the magic lamp to bind God to their will. Prayer is to bind you to God's will - and to begin to understand it. That cannot happen unless you trust, knowing that His ways are not your ways. Some purported faith healers teach that God will always heal those who trust Him. They are right, but not in the way they think. Their imaginations are so impoverished that, whatever they say, the only good they can envision is of this world. God always heals for eternity - that you may have abundant life with Him in heaven. If that means you must suffer some here to quell your rebellious yearnings, than suffer you will - if you trust God. If you are a particularly useful soul, God may allow you to suffer in penance for others who do not know they need penance, that more might be saved. Trust.

Trust will lead to abandonment. That is giving yourself entirely and willingly to whatever God wants of you. Gabriel came to Our Lady, Holy Mary, and told her she would get a great honor if she accepted - become the mother of Our Lord in His human incarnation. But there was a catch, This would happen in a way that would subject her to shame and, perhaps even a brutal execution. What incredible faith, trust and abandonment she lived to be able to say almost immediately, "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to your word." Of course, as Gabriel noted when he first spoke to her, she is "full of grace." It is hard to get outside yourself. Some years ago, I was undergoing some serious suffering - and it would not go away. I begged and begged to know what I was doing wrong so I could correct it and escape my sorrows. Finally, the Lord, Himself came and said, "This is not about you." Then He told me who it was about - someone I dearly loved who, unbeknownst to me, was in great spiritual danger. The Lord asked was I willing to accept this penance on the person's behalf, for he desperately needed it. Foolish and self-centered as I was, I am proud I said yes - and soon was rewarded by seeing how much it was needed. Abandon yourself to His will - and don't feel bad when He shows you what a silly, little fool you are. He only does that to those in whom He sees great promise. Be glad of your rebukes.

Finally, it is good to have prayer partners. It is even better to have one who already beholds the Face of God, for the saints' faith is assured and will not fail. Take full advantage of the communion of the faithful. We are really going to need all hands on deck.

Know that with God, the intention is the action. Keep your prayers of petition short. It is not the length of them that aligns you with God, but the trust behind it. If you had perfect trust, all your intentions would merely be stated and then you would accept perfectly what God sends you. If you pray long in petition, you risk deluding yourself it is the Herculean nature of your efforts rather than the effortless grace of God that brings light, and thus become vainglorious. And yet, do not begrudge those who must make long, moaning prayers of petition. It is their lack of faith warring with their hope that makes it necessary. Such brevity is not for all prayer. Prayers of worship, praise and thanksgiving may be said at great length, either privately or in community. Also, when a demon is involved, prayers of intercession may go for weeks, but that is best left to priests under most circumstances.

I saw a pithy saying last week I will end with: "Don't worry about tomorrow. God is already there."

 

5 March 2014

When I was very young I noticed that the more comically impotent a blustery dictator was in world affairs, the more relentlessly he bullied his own people. I wondered whether the bluster on foreign affairs and the bullying domestically was some weird psychological effort to convince himself of his relevance and importance despite the evidence of his failure and smallness. Something I have been thinking of lately.

As Lent begins, people are focused on upheaval and unrest throughout the world. The conflict in Ukraine has distracted attention away from provocations from North Korea and Iran that would normally be headline news. I don't know why commentators were so surprised at Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Crimean peninsula is Russia's access point to Sevastopol and their warm water naval port. Without reliable access to it, Russia is crippled as a maritime power. It is not important to Russia: it is vital. So even if conflict is Russia's fault (and it is) she must hold onto the Crimea. That is an absolute. Only one who has no concept of national interest could think otherwise. But the things that must come will come.

In America, the health care system continues to unravel - and it is far worse than you think - as officials blame and actually sue dying cancer patients for daring to tell their story. A California high school bans the American flag so as not to offend Mexican students. Boston Children's Hospital conspires with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) to kidnap and torture a young girl because they disagree with Tufts Hospital's diagnosis of her illness, while getting a court to enforce a gag order on her parents to keep them from telling what was done.. Now that the once lively young girl is in a wheelchair and in deep decline, officials suggest they are willing to give her back. Hey, when you kidnap and torture a child and are caught, you do not just give her back, no harm, no foul. The officials of both the hospital and DCF who perpetrated this outrage need prison sentences - with an immediate order to return the girl to her parents and back into the successful treatment regimen she was receiving at Tufts. The administration seeks to deport a German home-schooling family who came here to escape oppression AND followed all the legal rules...goes all out, in fact...even as it labels anyone who calls for enforcement of immigration law a bigot. The game is obvious: if you are Christian and scrupulously follow all the rules, this government will do everything to punish you. If you are flout every rule and law, demand that the American flag be banned, demand that benefits be denied military families so that you can get yours, but can be counted on to vote for leftists, you're good to go. In Arizona, the language of tolerance is used to enact new Jim Crow laws, forcing Christians to actively participate in celebrating homosexual unions or be fined, go to jail or lose their business. Yes, the world has gone mad. But the things that must come will come.

The world economic system is at the verge of collapse even as the markets, inebriated by vast amounts of newly printed money, party like there is no tomorrow. Party on, but tomorrow is almost here. The social fabric is being shredded; people who merely want to be left alone under unrelenting assault from those who insist on politicizing everything. Alas, one of satan's most successful gambits of the last few decades has been to persuade otherwise good people that weighty spiritual matters are merely political. In every corner of the globe, violent tensions rise. The very air crackles with dark foreboding. Your chest tightens in anticipation of the concussion to come. The things that must come will come.

Meantime, an air of unreality is the constant companion of the spectre of disaster haunting these times. Financiers and investors go about their business of churning out the illusion of profit, even as termites hollow out the foundation of the money supply. Politicians go about the business of making solemn pronouncements and jockeying for position like passengers of the Titanic scrambling for the best seats on deck from which to watch the sinking. The chattering classes relentlessly tell us the NSA is our friend, Christians and conservatives ought to be targeted by the IRS and that discrimination is tolerance and tolerance discrimination. Some pursue these inanities in relentless denial of the doom even they can smell weighing down on us. Others do it because they don't really know what else to do.

It is a great secular conflagration and spiritual awakening that is upon us. But even the faithful are deceived. Erudite churchmen and theologians confine Christ to the box of their intellectual musings, thinking they have got it. Charismatics and fundamentalists chase restlessly after the latest apparition or new decoder ring to translate the Bible and know God's secret plan, thinking they have got it. People who rarely crack a Bible open except to look at the 20 or 30 passages they know by heart look with contempt on anything that challenges their conception - even if it is directly from the Scripture they claim to follow. A lot of folks who, like Job's pious companions, think they are God's best friends, search eagerly for splinters to remove from other Christian's eyes. Many will get the same surprise Job's companions did when God lifts the veil.

I have written here about the sometimes radical shock I had when I walked across the country on my pilgrimage. When you give up everything, the simplest things become a chore, a hardship and an adventure. I met a few people who tried something similar, but gave it up because the hardships and uncertainty were too much. I met one who persisted.

For this Lent, instead of giving up chocolate or meat or whatever, try this: if you get your security from your money and possessions, imagine what you would do if all were gone. Don't just shudder and dismiss it. Think deeply on it. If it is your power and position, think about the same thing. If you are theologically erudite, spend some time with charismatics or fundamentalists - not to turn up your nose; but to see the real virtues they have that you are missing. If you are charismatic or fundamentalist, set aside the prophecy and apparitions and read some hard theology or church history, to see the foundation they offer. What I am suggesting is that you give up what gives you security and look at things from a different perspective. If it is religion, go in not to prove it wrong, but to see if for what it is instead of the caricature we usually make of those things we don't personally subscribe to.

If you deny yourself now, it will be great preparation for those things that must come. Beat the rush.

 

8 March 2014
This week someone close to me asked exactly the right question. It threw me for a loop, so I deflected and evaded it, not quite sure how to respond. I have been pondering it ever since - and concluded it is time to be completely candid. The question she asked was, "Has the storm already begun?" The short, candid answer is yes.

Social upheaval is a process, not a single event. It is somewhat akin to a tumor. When a tumor first appears, it is rarely noticed. As it grows, it can cause discomfort. It is a problem that needs to be addressed, but not life-threatening. There comes a point when it may go malignant. If caught early, it is still not fatal, but will grow aggressively and begin to eat away at systems that the body needs to function properly unless it is dealt with equally aggressively. Strangely enough, a malignant tumor is rarely painful in the early stages, giving it opportunity to grow even as it numbs the body to the danger it poses. If it is not caught in time, the only hope is radical surgery or treatments so aggressive that they, themselves, cause damage and distress to the body. With luck, those radical measures may defeat the malignancy, but if they fail, death follows.

I have a private vocabulary for the stages of catastrophic collapse. First there is the breaking of the storm. That is the when the tumor reaches the point where a routine examination would uncover it. The storm began in May of 2009, when North Korea ran another round of nuclear tests. I did not recognize it for what it was at the time. It was not until June of that year when Gabriel came and corrected me when I spoke of the storm breaking sometime in the future. He explained that N. Korea had not just tested nuclear weapons; it had invited observers from rogue Middle Eastern regimes to witness the test, in a bid to act as nuclear arms merchant and technical consultants to those regimes. This, he said, was the breaking of the storm. In the last year and a half, American intelligence services have repeated what Gabriel told me then; that representatives of Iran and Syria were present for those tests. It had begun raining internationally. I realize that when I speak of the Storm publicly, people think of the crash, so except with certain spiritual counselors and advisors, whenever I speak of the Storm now I say it in the context of the final crash so as to avoid confusion.

For me, collapse is when the tumor becomes malignant, the moment when the normal defensive mechanisms of the body are no longer capable of fighting it effectively. This too, is a process - and a very dangerous one. In the early stages, there is little or no pain - and the body's systems continue to work almost normally even as they are being eaten away by the cancer inside. It is perilously easy to deceive yourself that nothing is really wrong at all. Our social and political systems began the process of collapse last May - and the malignancy was complete before the end of the year. A little thought experiment for Americans: if you had gone to sleep just a year ago today and not woken up until now, you would be stunned at our new "normal." A year ago, you did not know and would not have believed that the IRS was intentionally targeting and harassing Christians and ideological conservatives. Today, the government not only concedes it, but seeks to institutionalize it as the soul of justice. A year ago you would not have believed that the NSA was intercepting every call and email anyone in America makes and storing them all in a massive data base. Today, it is the subject of jokes, but no one envisions stopping it. A year ago, if you were told that Obamacare would result in 6 million losing their insurance, at least a net gain of 4.5 million more uninsured than when it was implemented, the people who had insurance paying on average 40 percent more for the privelege with double the deductibles and fewer things covered, often losing their doctors and their hospitals, you would have considered it a right-winger's ludicrous dark paranoia. That is the reality - and federal officials threaten to sue dying cancer patients who dare to speak publicly about what has happened to them.

My first real political job was as an aide to the late Congressman Robert McClory, the second ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee in the early 70s and the only Republican author of an article of impeachment against Richard Nixon. Let me review the three articles of impeachment against Nixon.
- First was the obstruction of justice article. This accused Nixon of failing to faithfully execute the laws duly passed by the Congress - and using the justice department to try to obscure investigations rather than honestly carry them out. Both Republicans and Democrats considered that a serious matter then. Recently, our current attorney general was instructing state law officials which laws they must NOT enforce. He has been held in contempt of Congress twice for obstructing investigations.

-Second was the attempted abuse of the IRS article. This article charged that Nixon's aides attempted to use the IRS to harass major political enemies. He did not succeed because the then-honorable IRS refused. But the very attempt was considered impeachable. The IRS concedes it targeted Christians and conservatives - from 2009 on. Left-wing officials try to contradict the IRS' own admission, and now try to codify the IRS as a proper agency to police acceptable speech.

-Third was the contempt of Congress article. This was the one my old boss wrote. Neither Democrats nor Republicans shrugged with indifference when administrations officials defied lawful Congressional orders concurrent with a lawful investigation then. It was an impeachable offense. Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS enforcement arm in the targeting of Christians and conservatives has refused to co-operate with Congress. They threaten to hold her in contempt. Does anyone believe that will have any consequences? The attorney general himself has been in contempt twice and he rolls merrily along.

The internal political safeguards of our system have collapsed. Those with power do what they will and dare you to do anything about it. If you appear on the radar screen of the administration, you can expect audits from the IRS and visits from the FBI, BATF, OSHA and whatever other agencies they can think of to sic on you. National Park Rangers, once nobly non-partisan in their devotion to our national treasures, gleefully acted as genuine brownshirts last fall, harassing veterans trying to visit open-air monuments and even holding a group of foreign tourists hostage in the west. And the watchmen who are supposed to protect your rights? They may howl a bit in outrage, but you are pretty much on your own.

Socially, even prominent Republicans such as Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Sen. John McCain came out in support of legislation that would fine, imprison or take their business away from Christians who refused to actively participate in celebrations of "gay marriage." Not for refusing to serve gays, but for refusing to participate in their celebrations. The left has quite nicely hijacked the language of tolerance to enact their new Jim Crow laws against Christians. The aggressors are filled with passionate intensity while the guardians of liberty often can't even muster an objection - and never an effective defense.

Our internal defense systems have collapsed. The social compact has collapsed. We continue forward for a time, like a car whose engine seized up while coming down a mountain. We continue to move, but it is only the residual momentum of a once vigorous vitality that is now dead that propels us. It's already gone but we deny it because the car has not yet quit coasting.
About six weeks ago I went into a very deep funk for about three and a half weeks, dismayed at all that has happened and the sheer inability of even the best people to see it. I let things overwhelm me for a time.

What people are waiting for is the crash - the final stage of collapse when denial is no longer possible, even for the resolutely delusional. My friend's pointed question helped me realize that when I speak of collapse, I had best confine it only to mean the crash, the last stage, for that is what most are hearing when I speak of it. But that, too, dismays me. For if you will not believe anything seriously is wrong or has collapsed until federal agents are at your door with the paddy wagon to take you to the FEMA camps, there is really nothing I can say that will be of help to you and you should look elsewhere for solace.

If you recognize the signs of the times for what they are and are willing to help others endure this great trial that is ALREADY upon us, then I have things to say that are useful. The rain is falling ever harder, the systems that safeguard us have already collapsed. If you are disappointed that it has not yet all crashed, you will be edified before more than a few months have passed. But if you wait that long to take it seriously, you squander time you could be using. I am going vigorously about the business of helping people prepare in a variety of ways.

When I got to Colorado almost a year ago, I was frantic to get things into place. My angel told me after about a month that I could do nothing big until the crash had already struck, but that the discipline and preparation from what I was doing would lay an invaluable foundation for that moment. As always, he was right.

 

11 April 2014

Hello, my friends. After a week and a half effectively without internet, I intended to publish some things quickly. But events are moving forward almost hourly now.

In the last week and a half it has been revealed that both China and North Korea have the capability of setting off an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that would effectively shut America's technology down in an instant - and that we have known it for several years but have done nothing to prepare for it. It has been revealed that two legislators who have been claiming the investigation into the IRS is a partisan witch-hunt, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, are actually partisan witches who conspired with the IRS to target conservatives and Christians. We have a head of a company fired because he would not recant his support of traditional marriage, We have federal authorities in Nevada acting like Soviet commissars carrying out a pogrom against local citizens - and that could develop either into real insurrection or a false flag incident to justify Martial Law.

The collapse of America's social and political system became apparent last May and has been speeding up since. We are near the end of the beginning. I am wrestling with how to write about the fundamental principles you need to weather this terrible Storm that is gathering force, without getting lost in daily details.

Forgive me for my fits and starts right now. Many of you are seeing evidence of the growing chaos right in the center of your own family and circle of friends. Stay steady. It is easy to get distracted by the hourly revelations of new dysfunctions...to get so focused on specific trees that you lose sight of the dark forest that now surrounds you. I was told emphatically a decade and a half ago that I must tell you true. That did not just mean that I must tell you what is already obvious to anyone who is not in deep denial or invincibly ignorant, but that I must speak in a way that helps you build up yourself and those around you. I am praying to effectively separate the wheat from the chaff...because it is almost showtime for real. Pray for me - and as you do, know that the heart of everything you need to know is this: Acknowledge God, take the next right step, and be a sign of hope to those around you. Please contemplate that deeply, for it encompasses everything you genuinely need to endure the next few years.

 

17 April 2014
As Monday passed into Tuesday across America earlier this week, we had the first of a tetrad of 'blood moons.' A blood moon is a full eclipse of the moon. It gets its name because the moon turns a deep blood red as the earth blocks the sun's light. We will have three more in the next 18 months, all falling in tandem with a Jewish Feast Day. It is a rare phenomenon. Many Christians, mostly fundamentalist Protestants, believe it is a sign from God of great strife ahead. It is a sign from God. It is not a warning, but an acknowledgment of what has already begun.

Both the Old Testament Book of Joel and the New Testament Book of Revelations speak of blood on the moon as a sign of great upheaval on earth. In Revelations, the blood on the moon is connected to the opening of the Sixth Seal, a great shaking before an explosion of upheaval. At the Easter Vigil in 2008, the Lord appeared to me while the Church was still in darkness and said, "Now the hour of darkness comes upon the world. But be not afraid. The darkness shall not prevail." Satan's hour is upon us and his time is short. He knows it so he is in a desperate frenzy.

You often hear people say that, in America at least, we live under the rule of law, not of men. What does that mean? Our abandonment of God has perverted the original meaning of the phrase. It did not mean that statutory authority was the measure of morality. How could it? Slavery was the law at one time. The gulags in the old Soviet Union were lawful. The concentration camps in Nazi Germany (though not the genocide) were lawful. The orgy of blood at the guillotine was the height of law during the terror of the French Revolution. Most of the greatest atrocities and outrages of history have operated under the color of law where they have been perpetrated.

In America, the phrase, "the rule of law," meant that the law would be objective, applied equally to all and not perverted for use as a partisan club to bludgeon dissenters or disfavored classes. That did not mean it would always be right. It did mean it would flow from the consent of the people and that there would be no persecution for advocating change to the current law.
This was vitally important to establish confidence in justice. If both the great and the small were subject to the same law, applied in the same way; if the body of the people had the means to refine the law through amendment as injustice was found; if even the most heinous and obvious criminals received open, fair trials; if all was accomplished with dispatch so as not to ruin lives with unending delay; then the great body of the people would rest comfortably knowing that the law was not always right, but sought honestly to serve justice.

Societies without confidence in justice almost always end in revolution or violent strife. It is very simple. If the law does not provide a reliable means for self-defense, people will defend themselves - particularly if the law becomes a means to bludgeon them for partisan purposes. Today, if you are a serial murderer and the facts are crystal clear, you are more likely to die of old age on death row than to actually be executed. But if you have unfashionable political or religious beliefs, you will not be terribly surprised to find the militarized arms of government, the courts and the law ruining your life. And those who have perverted the law into a partisan bludgeon seek, with every success, to use it to enforce ever greater conformity. But victory comes at a price. Every time the law is used as a bludgeon to achieve victory rather than a means for seeking justice, it forfeits a bit of its moral legitimacy. With every loss of moral legitimacy, the closer society is to ruin and revolution.

Today is the anniversary of the day when Jesus was taken in the garden. Though He was entirely innocent, He was beaten, convicted and executed in a brutal, painful death. It is one of history's great miscarriages of justice - when we solemnly executed our own God. How did it happen? As modern partisans could tell you: It. Was. The. Law.

 

17 May 2014

I have previously briefly discussed that I was warned, before I accepted my work, that upon acceptance I would very quickly enter into a prolonged period of intense suffering. Though I was not shown details, I was fully shown how intense it would be. My visitors have always played fair with me, enough so that when they are reticent to tell me something needful, I am content to wait, knowing that I don’t even want to contemplate it until I have to bear it. I, of course, told my priests before I accepted. Shoot, what I had been shown on the intensity of it kept me from accepting for a long time. But I was told it would steel me, burn away vanity and prepare me to be strong for when the Storm came, so I would not wilt when others were counting on me.

When it came, it lasted for five years. I must withhold many details, both because it is painful to relive now and because the primary (but hardly sole) instrument of my agony was my dear daughter, who was herself victim of a prolonged satanic attack. Only a handful of people know how bad it got, but hardened veterans were shaken by the whole business. One of the fruits of it was that, in a few cases, when a public figure has had a particularly intense family disorder, some who were witness to the period have occasionally quietly referred me to the figure to help counsel them through the turmoil. Sometimes I have been able to help. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. My house burned down. Every time I imagined the worst that could happen, something worse than that happened. Every time I thought we had finally hit bottom, things would get even worse. When it was finally over, I laughed with my priests and the one friend who was witness to much of it that, though the wolf was at my door for five years, snarling and howling, in the end neither of us prevailed. We both just collapsed from sheer exhaustion. That friend often joked that for five years, God threw everything but the kitchen sink at me and when none of it kept me down, finally decided to wring my stinking neck and see how I reacted to that (a reference to my spinal surgery, the onset of which completely disabled me for one spring and summer).

I do not speak of this to impress you with how much I have suffered. Rather, it is because of the deluge of contacts I am getting from people telling me what massive turmoil their families, friends and colleagues are in these days – and how it makes no sense to them. It feels like they are under siege all the time. Many of you are among them. I want to tell you that you should not be surprised, nor let yourself be terribly disturbed by these things. Satan is in a frenzy and he will create as much despair as possible, hoping to snare a few stray souls by the ferocity of the attack, to rob them of hope. When things got unbearable, when I could scarcely breathe, I would sometimes find myself begging the Lord to give me some relief. Then I would catch myself and apologize, asking instead that He give me every bit I could stand – and the strength to bear it; then give me a little more, trusting that He would give me a little more strength in the bargain. At the heart of it, I was grimly determined to endure it all and more, begging that He do all that was necessary to steel me for the Storm so that I would not faint when it counted, or when people were counting on me. Just before my surgery, when I was getting cardiac clearance, the cardiologist asked me when exactly it was that I had had my heart attack. I told him I never had one. He replied that I surely had a few years before and showed me the dead tissue on the monitor that confirmed it. I did not know you could have a heart attack and not know it – but he assured me you can and I did; that most commonly it is connected to some extreme prolonged stress. He said I had a nearly athletic heart, so I probably just felt sick for a few days, maybe stayed in bed and then trundled on.

At one point, I was so devastated that for almost two months I would work a mundane job, come home and be nearly catatonic or inconsolable in my grief. It was as close to cracking as I have ever come in my life – and it scared the daylights out of my son, who was instrumental in motivating me to carry on. After that, for a while, whenever I was gloomy he would get panicky that it was the onset of the darkness again. I told him and was able to convince him that that was gone for good, but that sometimes, we would each have a bad day because of all the stress. Boy, did he ever understand that. We worked hard to help carry others crosses and behave so as not to impose our crosses on them. Charlie was so successful at it, so cheerful and charismatic with his circle of friends, that they were always shocked when they stumbled upon evidence of the real sorrows we bore. But it is going to take a toll sometimes and you have to withdraw and gather yourself when it all closes in, as it sometimes will. So Charlie and I developed a code word. It was to be used very sparingly, but if one of us was having a really nasty day because of the stress backing up and being uncharacteristically mean or gloomy, we would just invoke the code and the other would back off and leave the sufferer be for a day. It worked well for us. Under extreme prolonged stress, you have to give each other room to be a total jerk for a day every once in a while: it drains the bile and poison out so you don’t become a jerk all the time.

So I tell you, give thanks for the struggles and attacks you are undergoing. When they wound you enough, withdraw for a while. If you were physically injured, you would rest so that you could heal and be fit for the next battle. Do the same in these struggles. Give thanks because they steel you for the times to come. I tell people that we have entered the beginning of the greatest crisis in the history of Western Civilization and their imagination fails them. About the best anyone seems able to imagine is that we are in for some intense, but scattered disorders, kind of like World War II. It is much worse than that and you will need your strength, your unshakeable faith, and the steadiest of resolve. How do you think God will engender that sort of steeliness that is nonetheless tender and charitable in you? By allowing these intense attacks. It will build your trust in Him. Few things build trust like being in serial prolonged hopeless situations and receiving the cool relief of His grace when He delivers you. Someone once thinking me to be a bit of a pollyanna asked me what if I was wrong about everything – and there was no relief from the trial I was then undergoing. I responded immediately that I would die not knowing I had been wrong – and have lived well and fruitfully in the interim – and if that was all there was, it was enough for me.

Despair is one of satan’s more subtle appeals to man’s vanity – and it is a failure of trust. Through allowing these attacks, God is teaching you to endure. He who endures to the end will be saved. God is raising you up to be a saint in these times. Don’t let the seduction of despair keep you from taking the next right step and being a sign of hope to those around you. Gove thanks that God has such confidence in you that He thinks it worthwhile to refine you through sorrow and agony, that you may become an unshakeable sign of hope when chaos holds sway over all. If you do, you will discover to your astonishment that within the most agonizing of times lie some of the most joyful consoling memories. Most of my agony was lived in Belleville, Illinois. It was with much trepidation that I visited there after a prolonged absence. To my surprise, I was overjoyed. It was in the midst of sorrows that I was the trumpet player for the women’s choir at the Catholic Cathedral there. I coached high school boys in summer baseball almost the entire time I was there and what a joy it was. It was there, forged in fire, that my son, without ever ceasing to be my little boy, became my best friend and a man I profoundly admire and rely on. We feeble men rarely recognize the hour of our visitation until it is long passed. So endure and your hour will become a sweet memory rather than a bitter regret.

I end with one of the most profound teachings on trust in the Bible. Do not be deceived by appearances or let chaos beguile you into thinking God has abandoned man. As it is written in Isaiah 55:9-11:

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
“so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

Thus says the Lord and the Lord speaks true. It may not accomplish what you purpose, but it will accomplish what He purposes – and He purposes good for your eternal soul.

 

15 May 2014
The world has reached a time of division. God is showing people the state of their souls, gently but firmly. It is easy to miss if you are in a frenzy of malice. Last year’s trial of the murderous abortionist in Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell, was an example. You may have missed it, as most of the establishment media tried to turn their head, to ignore the logical end of the abortion culture. They turned their heads because there was no defense for this gleeful bloodbath; no effective way to spin it as an aberration from the commitment to ‘care for women.’ This was God speaking to people, saying, “Behold what you have wrought.” Most will keep their heads turned; some few will repent; but none will be able to say they were not warned. How sad that people seldom recognize the hour of their visitation until it is long past.

But as God warns, satan busies himself deceiving. The spirit of anti-Christ is rampant in the world and is profoundly seductive because he deceives people that they are actually doing good. Gay marriage is all the rage today. Oppose it publicly and you will be denounced as a hater and, too often, even lose your job. I have written before that the mark of the beast is most likely an ideology – received in the hand in the form of a book or a pamphlet or in the forehead as a system of belief – and that without it the time will come when you may neither buy nor sell, to participate in ordinary commerce. In America, Christian business owners are being sued and fined for declining to cater to overtly homosexual celebrations. The health care law requires all businesses to provide for birth control and abortion, regardless of any Christian belief. Hobby Lobby is just one employer that has rolled the dice that this will be found unconstitutional while preparing to shut its doors if it is not. In parts of the western world, Christian pastors are being fined or even jailed for preaching authentic Christian doctrine on homosexuality. Even so, many Christians, even orthodox ones, in weariness or in the false hope of not being ‘discriminatory’ are dropping their opposition to homosexual unions or maintaining what they think is a prudent silence.

First, you need not share my faith to be my friend; but you must not force me to pretend to share yours. Second, irrational discrimination is what we have sought to banish, but it is the disordered result of a rational discrimination that is necessary for an ordered and mutually respectful society. If you need heart surgery, you rationally discriminate against barbers, athletes and stockbrokers in seeking a surgeon. When you are thirsty, you rationally discriminate against sand and dust as a means of quenching your thirst. We have replaced the disordered discrimination of racism with the equally disordered refusal to discriminate between what is actually good and what is actually evil. Thus our government lists evangelical Christians and orthodox Catholics as likely terrorists while dismissing Jihadists as a serious threat.

As to marriage, Christianity teaches that God respects free will at all times, so much so that He allows evil rather than rescind our free will. If two people wish to engage in such conduct, however much anyone may disapprove of it, it is not rightly the subject of criminal law. Nor is it a legitimate concern over who one chooses to make the beneficiary of a life insurance policy or to give power of attorney or visitation privileges in the case of disability. That is a solely private matter. But marriage, itself, is an entirely different matter.

First, the privileged status given traditional marriage by almost all civilized societies is not primarily for the benefit of the married: it is for the benefit of the society – and done for the same reason a farmer protects his seed corn at all costs. Marriage and the families it produces are the fundamental building blocks of society. In certain Catholic rites, notably those of Baptism and Confirmation, the celebrant calls on the assembled to publicly “…renounce the false promises of satan.” False promises…a phrase pregnant with meaning. I did not read Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, until the early 90’s, nearly a generation after he issued it. Though he was heaped with scorn from sources outside and within the Church, it is the single most prophetic modern document I have ever read. It is short; only about six pages. Read it to find a description of today’s hook-up culture, entrenched poverty and exploitation. The promises of the ‘best and brightest’ of the time were that birth control would reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing poverty. When that failed, the next step was abortion. The year after Roe v. Wade enshrined abortion as a right, the number of live deliveries to single women sky-rocketed. You read that right: the number of live births to unwed mothers skyrocketed even as we began systematically executing unborn children. The War on Poverty in the 60’s promised to eradicate poverty in our lifetimes. Instead, it extended and entrenched it, making large swaths of our inner cities unbearably violent ghettoes of poverty and despair. We have trapped people in poverty, some for over six generations. We lost sight of man’s fundamental nature. He is not a mere consumer who can be content when his betters allot him his share of Kibbles and Bits: He is made in the divine image of God almighty and is, at heart, a creator who cannot find peace until participating with God through the work of his own hands and mind. Now the same ideologues who have visited near terminal social dysfunction on us insist it is our duty to abandon the basic building block of all healthy societies since the dawn of time – because they say so. What could possibly go wrong?

America was founded on the theory of natural law. Some of the founders were Deists, that is, though they believed in a supreme God, they did not follow any particular denominational definition of Him. In some cases, Deist was a polite way of saying ‘agnostic.’ This was almost certainly the case with Jefferson and Franklin. Natural law is predicated on the notion that nature has a supreme God and that that God created man and imbued him with certain rights that precede the existence of any state. It also posits that nature’s God established certain natural institutions that precede the existence of the state, notably (heterosexual monogamous) marriage and the nuclear family. Society, itself, is one of those institutions and, though important, is not necessary to this explanation. Even those founders who were functionally agnostic did not consider this a polite fiction. Philosophically sophisticated, they knew that if fiction it was, it was a necessary one, for without God the theory of natural law collapses and without natural law, all possible forms of civil society must ultimately degenerate into a raw struggle for power.

Under natural law, power and responsibility flow from God to the individual and is exercised through the institutions He created; marriage and the family. Working through these institutions, man sets up governments to serve his needs. For the founders, the very test of legitimacy of any state was whether it acknowledged and defended the natural rights of man and social institutions which precede the state’s existence. If not, it was tyrannous or on its way to becoming so.

The matter of institutionalizing ‘gay marriage’ is not a matter of polite deference to your homosexual friends. It requires the overthrow of natural law. Instead of man defining and limiting the power of the state; it transfers to the state the power to define and limit the natural institutions of man. If the state can define what a family is, it can also define what a family is not – and is not bound by any transcendent truth. If it wishes to declare children to be community property, it can do so. If it wishes to rule that any couples who subscribe to Christian ‘superstitions’ may not maintain custody of the children they bore, it can do so. The philosophical coup necessary to enable gay marriage changes the state from servant to master, dis-enthroning both the natural law and God in the process. The state, when so enthroned, has never in history been as deferential to man’s free will as God is. It ever degenerates into a cauldron of blood and despair.

Most people today have some homosexual friends. Christianity does not require you to hector them, or to treat them with disrespect or condescension. In fact, Christianity recommends you treat all people, whether they agree with you or not, with respect and affection. Certainly homosexuality is no greater a sin than the non-marital sex I once engaged in with abandon. We are all called to treat our fellow sinners with respect and affection, even as we refuse to redefine sin as a positive good – even when it is sin we are guilty of. Above all, our affection for our fellow sinners cannot be used as an excuse to participate with them in the overthrow of those foundational institutions established by God and recognized in the natural law.

So a time of choosing has come. Joshua 24:15 describes the only choice that will bring life, and the only choice that rejects the seductive, but false, promises of satan.