John of Jerusalem – Prophecy Number 25

25

 

When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins

The animals which Noah had embarked on his Ark

Will be no more in Man’s hands

Than beasts transformed according to his will

And who will worry about their lifetime of suffering?

 

Man will have made each species into what he wanted

And he will have destroyed numerous ones

What will the man have become who will have changed the laws of life

Who will have made the living animal a piece of clay

Will he be the equal of God or the child of the Devil?

 

For thousands of years we have been transforming our domestic animals.  We have now reached the point where we no longer see our animals as anything more than meat or milk on the hoof.

This has resulted in some “food” species, like pigs and chickens, spending their entire lives locked up in tiny spaces where they can barely move.

We are also introducing human genes into pigs, so that they can grow us “spare parts”, and spiders have now been co-opted for the industrial production of their silk in goat’s milk.

While we have been doing all this, we have managed to wipe out an enormous quantity of other species, either because we wanted their habitat, or because they killed the occasional animal “belonging” to us for food.

Our pollution of the Earth’s air, soil and water has rapidly helped things along too, not to mention over-intensive fishing or other forms of hunting.

While we are on the subject of fishing, is the torture of fish for the pleasure of the human animal really something we should be promoting as a “wholesome family sport”?  Shouldn’t we be teaching our children a bit more compassion, if empathy is too much to ask?

We are immediately up-in-arms when someone tortures a kitten, but fish don’t seem to matter.  Is it because we can’t hear them screaming?  Is it because they don’t have fur?  Is it because they are just too different from us?  It can’t be because they are food;  we don’t need to torture our food to death.

Have we become “the equal of God or the child of the Devil”?

Twenty-sixth prophecy tomorrow.

John of Jerusalem – Prophecy Number 24

24

 

When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins

Men will know how to make mirages live

The senses will be deceived and they will believe they are touching that which is not

They will follow paths which are seen only by the eyes

And in this way dreams will be able to come alive.

 

But man will no longer know how to separate

That which is from that which is not

He will be lost inside false labyrinths

Those who will know how to make the mirages live

Will take advantage of the naive man by deceiving him

And a lot of men will become grovelling dogs.

 

Here, John has trouble putting into words our modern technology of image manipulation.  He gives a recognizable description of Wii:  “The senses will be deceived and they will believe they are touching that which is not”.

They will follow paths which are seen only by the eyes

This appears to refer to video games, with their virtual worlds and avatars, allowing humans to live a dream life.

And in this way dreams will be able to come alive

Then John warns us that we will not be able to distinguish what is real from what is just imagery.

He will be lost inside false labyrinths

Apart from the virtual worlds, there is also image manipulation in the media.  Even without using synthetic images, the media often practise misinformation, some of it originating from politicians, but not all of it.

Methods of mind manipulation are becoming more and more sophisticated, and are constant.  False images and the resulting irreality created by them, are particularly influencing our children and young people.

Some are even becoming addicted to the imaginary worlds created on-line, and are completely disconnected from the real world.  It is another sort of drug.

Once hooked, it is easy to deceive them into believing whatever those who control the technology want them to believe.  Imagine this power in the hands of politicians.

The breakdown of family life leaves our young without the framework necessary for them to be able to distinguish between what might be allowed them in their virtual world, and what is acceptable behaviour in the real world.

Twenty-fifth prophecy tomorrow.

John of Jerusalem – Prophecy Number 21

21

 

When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins

Illnesses from the water from the sky and from the earth

Will attack man and endanger him

He will want to revive that which he has destroyed

And protect that which remains

He will be afraid of the days to come.

 

But it will be very late

The desert will swallow up the land

And water will be deeper and deeper

It will flow some days

Taking everything like a flood

And the next day there won’t be enough for the land

And the air will eat away the bodies of the weakest.

 

John is speaking of pollution in this prophecy.  The Earth is a living cell.  We are poisoning it as well as ourselves.

We now realize what we are doing and want to fix it, but we have left it very late.  Multiple species who shared the planet with us have been wiped out.  Others are disappearing every day in spite of the efforts of some of us to save them.

Most of us are doing nothing to fix the problem and are even continuing to add to it.  The recent Copenhagen summit was a farce, with countries bickering over their individual interests instead of knuckling down to save what is left of our collective home.

We live on a space ship hurtling through space.  This ship is alive and can adapt and re-balance itself when we damage it, but only up to a point.  Our own bodies do the same thing, also only up to a point.  When the disease is too strong, our defence system breaks down.  First we become ill, sometimes we die.  Man has become the Earth’s disease instead of being its caretaker.

We need to find a system that punishes polluters and rewards those who care for the Earth.  The Earth is our home.  We are letting it fall apart.  Once it is destroyed, we shall be homeless.

Travelling to other planets to destroy them too is not a solution.  We should employ the money spent on space exploration to fix our spaceship, before it disintegrates around our ears.

Twenty-second prophecy tomorrow.

John of Jerusalem – Prophecy Number 18

18

 

When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins

Men will no longer rely on the law of God

But will want to lead their lives like a horse

They will want to choose their children in their wives’ wombs

And will kill those that they don’t like.

 

But what sort of man takes himself for God like that?

The Powerful will seize the best lands

And the most beautiful women

The poor and the weak will be cattle

Each home will become a donjon

Fear will be in every heart like a poison.

 

The first part of this prophecy is so clear that it doesn’t need comment.  Neither does the second part.

A donjon, or keep, is a tower in a mediaeval castle where, particularly in the earlier mediaeval period, the lord, his family and his personal servants lived.  By the fifteenth century, they usually lived in more convenient houses within the high court.  However, if the castle was under attack, the family still took refuge in the donjon, which was also the last fortified place of defence for the soldiers if the castle was invaded.

In John’s time, the donjon was often the only defensive tower.  Castles grew bigger and higher as war machines and weapons became more reliable and precise in aim, and therefore more deadly.  Before that, they tended to blow up a lot, killing more of the people using them than their enemies.  Castles adapted as weapons improved.

Today, people are getting bullet-proof front doors and putting bars on the windows of their homes.  Elaborate alarm systems are being installed.  Panic rooms are appearing.  We too are adapting our castles to increased aggression.

Nineteenth prophecy tomorrow.

John of Jerusalem – Prophecy Number 17

17

 

When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins

Men will want to break down all barriers

The mother will have the hair of an old woman

The path of nature will be abandoned

And families will be like scattered grains

That nothing can unite.

 

It will therefore be another world

Each person will roam without ties like a bolted horse

Going in all directions with no guide

Unhappy the knight who mounts this steed

He will be without stirrups and will fall into the ditch.

 

The first part of this prophecy speaks again of our meddling with Nature.  Man is breaking down all barriers, both physical and moral, in the name of “right”.

The “right to have a child” is used as an excuse for the manufacture of children, by whatever means, including artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, gifts of ovules, re-implantation of frozen embryos, gifts of sperm, cloning…  We have all heard of the Italian doctor whose speciality is helping menopausal women to become mothers.

There was a case in France a few years ago where a woman nearing sixty years old gave birth to a baby girl after American doctors had reimplanted an embryo conceived in a test tube from the sperm of her own brother and from donated ovules.  At the same time, this same brother was using the services of a surrogate mother who gave birth to the “twin” of his sister’s child.  All taboos and natural obstacles had been broken down (age, incest, etc.).

The disintegration of families and the acceleration of time have created a gap between generations which is growing bigger and bigger.  Parents and children still see each other but evolve in completely different universes of comportment, language, understanding of life and of society.

Even when families remain together, each individual leads a separate life.  Most mothers work outside the family and parents no longer have time to be with their children.  They often feel guilty about this and compensate by even more leniency.

This leads to bigger and bigger gulfs between those who receive a real education and those who are left to themselves, in the hope that school will be able to fix the problem.  With no behavioural framework or set boundaries in their home life, these children often go on to reject all forms of discipline and turn into real delinquents.

Eighteenth prophecy tomorrow.