A Great Smoke

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Do you pray enough to discern at this time when there are issues to discern on a daily or hourly basis, at all turns? The Mass is obviously crucial. It is advised daily, if possible. Like all prayers, the power that flows from it, in addition to the inherent Power of the Eucharist, depends on how much one puts into it.
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Prayer must come from the heart. The heart is a muscle. It is not time for politics. It is a time for muscular Christianity. Only in Truth is there true strength.
Praying a Rosary first thing every morning and deep prayer asking for the Holy Spirit paves the path for discernment, as does fasting — which clears brain, mind, and spirit, building not false strength but spiritual musculature. Otherwise, be cautious not to be sucked into the whirlwinds around you. The deceptions may be where you do not expect them. Be sure of nothing without taking it to extensive, deep, tranquil prayer, a mind that has the peace of clarity. This goes also and especially for prophetic “words of knowledge.” 
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Let’s look at another, from that series we have called the “1990 Prophecy.” We wrote of it in February [see here]. “When you see the great smoke rise,” it said, “Satan will have touched the earth.” Some viewers had an interpretation of this. One was from Will Burke of Mechanicsville, Virginia, who asked, “Could it be the smoke is tied to the smoke of the torments, not a smoke of physical burning, but a smoke of spiritual burning, as in Apocalypse 14:8-20. [That’s where] the destruction of Babylon is described as a great smoke.
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“In Apocalypse 11, I am struck with Verse 6, which calls to my mind the ‘Testimony of the Two Witnesses.’ [In that verse, the two witnesses are given special authority] “and have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.”
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“In verse 10 of Apocalypse 14,” adds Will, “the smoke arises from the pit and becomes physically present (is my impression) as earth can see the tormented and what they have done by worshiping the beast.” The smoke of hell.
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Which brought to this viewer’s mind the famous line from Pope Paul VI, when he said that the “smoke of Satan” had entered through a fissure in the Church.
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“There is doubt, uncertainty, problematic, restlessness, dissatisfaction, confrontation,” said one translation of the Pontiff’s talk. “We no longer trust the Church; we trust the first profane prophet who comes to talk to us from some newspaper or from some social movement to chase after him and ask him if he has the formula of real life. Doubt entered our consciences through windows which had been opened for light. From science, which is made to give us truths that do not detach us from God, but make us seek Him even more, and celebrate with greater intensity, criticism came, doubt came instead. They end up teaching: ‘I don’t know, we don’t know, we can’t know.’
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“The school becomes a gym of confusion and sometimes absurd contradictions. Progress is celebrated in order to then be able to demolish it with the strangest and most radical revolutions, to deny everything that has been conquered, to return to being primitive after having so much exalted the progress of the modern world.”
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To quote and repeat from a different translation: “Instead, science gives us criticism and doubt. Scientists are those who more thoughtfully and painfully exert their minds. But they end up teaching us: ‘I don’t know; we don’t know; we cannot know.’ The school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes absurd contradictions.”

This denial of the supernatural — the “state of uncertainty” — was now holding sway in the Church, lamented the pontiff in his talk (the entire text of which never made it into the Vatican record).

“The denial of the supernatural.”+

Fast-forward to another in the series of “1990” that in 2004, among other things, warned: “Heed this too. The politics of denial will be struck as with a plague.”+

To further quote Pope Paul VI: “There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty” [our italics].+

Instead of faith, there was now skepticism. Instead of exorcism, there was psychology. Nothing was accepted unless it could meet the narrow protocol of a laboratory. When Vatican II opened the windows of the Church, it was looking to the sunshine of deep past Christian faith — but instead science and its philosophy of doubt was allowed, like dark smoke, to enter.+

“How has this come about?” said the summary of his remarks. “The Pope entrusts one of his thoughts to those who are present: that there has been an intervention of an adverse power. Its name is the devil, this mysterious being that the Letter of St. Paul refers to.” Observed the Holy Father: “We believe that something preternatural has come into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to impede the Church from breaking into the hymn of joy at having renewed in fullness its awareness of itself.”+

Added Will: “Going back to the 1990’s prophecy addenda, ‘When you see the great smoke rise, Satan will have touched the earth. His manifestation will be near. He will seek to destroy what Christ has built, as Jesus came to destroy the work of the devil. In the end, the Cross will predominate, but not before the end of an era that has strayed.’ There is the comparison of the smoke rising; Pope Paul VI noticing it; Chapter 14 showing the torments of the afflicted who did worship the Beast; and then in verse 14 of Chapter 14, the appearance of the reaping. I don’t know how to conclude but it brings forward an impression to me. Discernment always, as you say.”
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And so we’re back to discernment.
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Aren’t we always?
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–MHB
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[resources: Tower of Light and Fear of Fire]