What Did the Imam Really Say? [At the Vatican with the Pope]

Peter B said....received by approved visionary Ida Peerdeman of Amsterdam specifically have Our Lady calling for a Council in the 1950s)

Perhaps we should take a look at these messages Peter, since you must believe them sound?
5. Objections against the Messages of Amsterdam

A. The "Lady" said that Pope Pius XII would, before his death, proclaim the dogma asked for ("message" of 31.05.1954). Yet this did NOT happen.

B. The "Lady" said that the successor of Pius XII would proclaim the dogma ("message" of 19.02.1958). Pope John XXIII REFUSED to do so.

C. The "Lady" said Ida Peerdeman's bishop (at that time bishop Huibers) would give his consent to build the church the "Lady" had shown to Ida. ("message" of 31.05.1954). This did NOT happen.

D. On 29.03.1946, the "Lady" clenched her FIST. On 10.12.1950 the "Lady" obliged Ida to clench her FIST and it is as if the "Lady" herself banged on the table with her fist. (the humble Virgin as a rebellious feminist?)

E. The "Lady" says: "In Manchuria a terrible insurrection will break out ("message" of 10.12.1950)

F. The "Lady" says: "The Oder is red with blood" (idem)

G. In the new church to be built, the "Lady" shows Ida the altar of the "Lady of all Nations," which must be on the SAME height as the main altar ("message" of 20.03.1953).

CONCLUSION. Those are only a few examples of the so-called "messages" of Amsterdam which are sensational, and full of absurd things and false predictions.

 

i) I don't see any need to apologize for citing an apparition officially approved as 'supernatural' in origin by the local bishop (Jozef Punt of Haarlem-Amsterdam in 2002) and supported by several cardinals including Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne.

The source of the material in the previous post opposing Ida Peerdeman is Mark Waterinckx (who has acquired a certain notoriety for campaigning against Medjugorje along with Unity Publishing, E Michael Jones et al). Those who choose to treat this camp as a credible source of information do so at their own risk. For example, if you read on, his objection 6 - that Ida Peerdeman was a supporter of the false visionary Marie-Paule Gigeure - (an accusation also propagated by Joachim Bouflet) has been comprehensively debunked. Likewise, their attempt to 'de-link' the approved apparitions of Akita and those of Amsterdam is illogical: the fact is that the statue that wept a hundred times in Akita was sculpted as a copy of the image of Our Lady of Amsterdam, a connection not lost on Bishop Ito - who approved Sr Agnes Sasagawa - in 1988 he made a pilgrimage to Amsterdam where he celebrated Mass in the presence of the Dutch visionary.
http://www.de-vrouwe.info/en/amsterdam--akita

Naturally nobody is compelled to regard Ida Peerdeman's visions as authentic if they choose not to. Deciding to ignore them is a perfectly valid option. However, for those who want to take a position, whom do you believe: Unity Publishing or the representatives of the Magisterium?

ii) While it is true that Bishop Jozef Punt's approval of the Our Lady of Amsterdam apparitions does not necessarily mean that the messages are to be regarded as infallible (the Church never says that regarding private revelation), reading them in their entirety - which I have done - gives a totally different impression from the lines taken out of context by Waterinckx. As Mark Miravalle and others have pointed out, the amount of evidently fulfilled prophecy allegedly received by Ida Peerdeman is quite remarkable, and the phenomenon is not necessarily finished yet.
Take a look, for example, at E, the message of December 12, 1950, which Waterinckx tries to use as evidence against I.P. Read as a whole, it doesn't look so stupid to me (quite apart from the fact that if an event prophesied without a timeline has not occurred yet, this is neither here nor there - otherwise much Biblical prophecy ought to be declared false!):
http://www.amsterdamapparitions.com/25th-message-december-10-1950/
The passage about the 'East' is particularly haunting in the light of current events:

The Cross laid upon the world

To my left I see a light appearing. I have to fold my hands. Then suddenly I see the Lady, standing upon the globe again. After that it is as if the Lady takes me along, and now I see her spreading out the globe before me like a flat map. Then she places something on the map, and a terrible pain comes over me. I then see that the Lady has laid a very large, heavy Cross upon that map. While looking at it, I feel terrible pain in my hands and head. It is as if all the muscles in my body are contracting. The Lady says,
“This is the beam that is being laid upon the world”,
and she points at the long beam. Then the Lady points at the cross-beam and then again at the whole Cross, saying,
“I am letting you feel the pains of that beam.”

After this a feverish sensation comes into my head, and it is as if I have a violent thirst, so terrible that I can hardly bear it. Then the Lady makes me lift my right hand, with two fingers and my thumb raised. I have to make my left hand into a fist. The Lady says,
“The right hand is Truth and the other is the fist. You have to hold them up so that everyone can see them.”

While doing so, I suddenly see all kinds of people from all nations appear behind the globe with the Cross. Then I have to hold my fist in front of my eyes. At that such terrible pain seizes me that I double over and begin to cry. Again it is as if all the muscles of my body were contracting. “That fist hurts so much”, I tell the Lady. Then the pains slowly disappear. I fold my hands again.

Fight in the East

The Lady says,
“Come. Let’s stop in the midst of it. I want to place my feet in the midst of the world, and I will let you see something: … That is America.”

Then she suddenly points to another part and says,
“Manchuria; a terrible uprising will happen there.”

After this I see Chinese people, and then I see a line which they are crossing.

Then I have to move my hand up and down over Formosa and Korea. I hear the Lady say,
“Child, I told you: this is a sham. By this I meant that there will be periods of apparent tranquility. But this will not last long. The Eastern peoples have been roused by a type of humanity which does not believe in the Son.”

We continue again. Now I see Great China lying before me, and I have to fold my arms in a peculiar manner. I see a great man––I mean a man of spiritual greatness––sitting on a throne. The Lady says,
“He is grieved. His empire will be divided up for the time being.”

Then the Lady points out America and moves a disapproving finger to and fro, as she says with a grave look,
“Do not push your politics too far.”

After that she lets me stroke the Cross twice with my hand. The Cross weighs heavily over America, too.

Next I see Asia. Then I see the Lady extend her hands over a certain part of it––it seems to me to be the Ukraine––as if to protect it.

Then upward to the left, in Russia, I see a glaring light, a blinding light. It is as if it explodes from the ground upward. It is a horrible sight.

“And then you no longer see anything”,
says the Lady, and I am blinded by that light. I feel something very disgusting coming over me. Then I see a scorched plain. It is a ghastly sight, just as if death had gone over it.
Next I see people in front of me with cloths around their heads and wide cloaks draped about them. They are holding their cloaks shut with their hands crossed in front of them.

The Lady points at those people and says,
“A fight for holy ground will happen again there, too. They will have a conflict over our land.”
The Lady is speaking so softly that I do not know whether she says ‘fight’ or ‘conflict’.
“Japan, too, has to be on her guard. I am telling you all of this, and you will witness it. For I am the Lady of All Nations, and you shall say this.”

 

Thank you, Peter, for providing this information about the Ida Peerdeman, 'Lady of all Nations' apparitions. I have never, previously, been able to 'get into' them. I think this is because they are unusual in various ways, not least because although presented as a series of 'messages' they are really a series of 'encounters' between Our Lady and the visionary. Ida simply describes each encounter including Our Lady's words to her. To understand the apparitions I think it is necessary to read all these encounters in chronological order. I think reading 'about' the apparitions alone, without reading the visionary's accounts of them, could be very misleading.

At the heart of the apparitions is a firm call for a new and final dogma that the Church must (and will) proclaim, the dogma of Mary, Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate. But, like Our Lady's requests in Fatima, while the Church will eventually do what Our Lady requests, it will be done late.

The link with the Akita events is simple yet notable.

 

http://www.catholicplanet.com/apparitions/false01.htm

 

To a certain degree, the same caveats apply to Ron Conte's website as to Unity Publishing: anyone who wants to treat this as an authoritative source does so at their own risk. The problem with the internet is that it is very easy for anyone simply to set up a page and present their personal opinions on an issue without the need for validation by a rigorous peer-review process (as you would go through for publication in, say, a scientific journal). As long as these are treated as personal opinions, OK, but they carry no weight in comparison to Church discernment procedures and specialist studies (such as those of René Laurentin, Niels Hvidt's Oxford University Press book on post-Biblical prophecy, prefaced by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, or the scholarly work of Joseph Iannuzzi). This is not at all to doubt R.C.'s zeal or sincerity, nor his competence as a Biblical translator, but knowledge of Hebrew/Greek/Latin is of very limited relevance here, the pertinent disciplines rather being systematic & historical theology (with a special focus on the mystical tradition), epistemology and faith-science dialogue (since we are not only dealing with text but also with phenomena).

Looking at the argumentation over at www.catholicplanet.com , my impression is that much of it is logically debatable and based on a priori assumptions of how we think God ought to speak, as well as a confusion of literary genres that assesses mystical/poetic texts as though they were a dogmatic treatise - which is to apply the wrong criteria. It is a fundamental criterion of any rational inquiry that it must employ methods which are adequate to its object , and this is where it is difficult not to feel that the 'Catholic Planet' approach is seriously flawed.

 

Yes and Mr Conte's 'discernments' are a bit of a joke. He used to promote specific dates for the Warning, etc based on those same discernments. The title of his book "The Secrets of Medjugorje and Garabandal Revealed" is tempting but the 'fourth edition' with revised dates speaks volumes! In Conte's own words - "This book proposes that the dates and events of these 13 secrets can be known from a study of the Bible, of Catholic eschatology, and of the words of the Virgin Mary in various apparitions". Oh really?

A good website with much more reliable information is at: http://www.marypages.com/
The page about the Amsterdam apparitions from that site is at: http://www.marypages.com/AmsterdamEng.htm

 

I bought Ron Conte's book 'The Frist Part of the Tribulation" a few years back. Don't waste your money or time reading it. His writtings, along with his catholicplanet web site, change course in dates, events, time-frames and what in his mind is approved and false prophecy as often as the Jehovah Witnesses church predictions did. His narcissistic personality seems to lead many much of his thinking. I would not use him as a resourse for any discernment on what is sound prophecy or not.