The Prophetic Pulse: Dire Visions Of U.S.

If you want dire — though it’s not necessarily the time of year for dire! — there’s a new book by a fellow named Michael Snyder that provides plenty of it.

It’s called Lost Prophecies of the Future of America, and it’s chock full of predictions, chiefly from non-denominational Christians, often fascinating, chiefly dismal, that present a future with all the disasters you could imagine and some you can’t for these United (or once united) States.

Is it simply “tickling the ears” (2 Timothy 4:4)?

We don’t despise prophecies here (see yesterday’s Mass reading), and so we’ll explore some of them, with the caveat that they are certainly not gospel; they should be discerned. None are from the Virgin Mary.

But dramatic?

At turns, hard to put down. “For example,” writes Snyder, “while he was still alive a wonderful man of God named John Paul Jackson, founder of Streams Ministries International, was shown that the world would soon enter a time of great chaos.

“He described this period of time as ‘the perfect storm,’ and he warned that it would be unlike anything we have ever faced before. During this ‘perfect storm,’ he was shown that we would have to deal with more than one pandemic.” What Jackson, now deceased, predicted was that “the first [pandemic] would prove to be little but fear. But the second one that comes would be serious.” This time, he said, it would involve “a lot of people — I didn’t see but in a way it looked like a chickenpox type of thing again or like a smallpox type of thing again, where there are sores of the skin that take place.” If true, are we in the first or second one? (The current one, up till now, seemed largely fear, but the death toll in the U.S. has surpassed 300,000.)

The coming pandemic, a woman named Sarah Menet likewise had said — some years ago — she was shown, would include a disease affecting the skin and another causing bleeding from the nose, mouth, and ears. Not a pretty picture: to be read near a fireplace with eggnog, not.

But perhaps one pokes fun at it at the risk of it coming back to haunt. It will start as blisters, said Menet, and “puffy sores” she supposedly “saw.” The cities most afflicted would be “New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Salt Lake.” Perhaps most intriguingly, she saw some diseases originating “from small containers like quart jars and I was impressed that the people carrying them would just drop them on the ground in large crowds of people and the people would become infected without realizing it.” Biological warfare?

Others, such as a woman named Heidi Baker, saw the situation devolving to the point where people “wearing beautiful clothing” and driving “beautiful cars, 4 by 4s and Lexus, Mercedes, BMWs, Toyotas,” nonetheless were forced to stand in bread lines. There would be a sudden, unexpected need for basic necessities, she indicated — and others go so far as to warn of a coming famine in the U.S., once the “breadbasket” of the world.

Now, Snyder, not always a friend of Catholics, warns there can be “false prophets,” and that if someone quotes the Lord in prophecy and the prediction does not come to be, the person should no longer be followed. We have seen this, for several decades now, in Marian circles, to be sure.

What about if prophecies are too harrowing? Are those also disregarded? Or are they simply reporting what could come?

Cutting to the chase, in a section about the economy, Snyder sees, from the compilation of various other prophecies, what he says is not a recession or even a depression but worse. “Ultimately,” he says, “we will get to a point where we won’t have a functioning economy at all.” He quotes a fellow named John Fenn who was “shown” that the putative collapse would begin when conservatives were in charge, but would have its germination for years before. “Because prosperity and pleasure have become the god of America, she shall suffer the consequences of her rejection of Me,” a locutionist named Daniel Rodes quotes the Lord as telling him.

Snyder himself seems to get “prompts” in the spirit, for our further reckoning. There will be an explosion of anger, he warns. Even elderly white men, not the type who usually riot, will take to the streets with weapons, he believes. “In all my years, I have never seen as much hatred in America as I am seeing today, and the economic collapse is only going to intensify societal tensions,” he argues.

To wit: clashes between various ethnic gangs and marauding mobs robbing and in many cases the pillaging homes and physical attacks on the owners — poor and middle-income and rich alike. Food and other items in short supply will be taken. “Rich houses and neighborhoods are going to be invaded,” warns the author — again, for our scrutinizing eyes.

Police forces won’t be able to handle it. “I saw inner cities blazing with fires and teams of gangs of all races and creeds and ethnicities banding together,” said “seer” Marty Breeden. Added Sonja Craighead, “An internal war will take place first. Mobs of people will roam, rob, brutalize, murder, set fires. The hatred and rage of all these roaming mobs are beyond human explanation, and they are demonic with intense hatred.”

Do we already see the glimmerings of this?

And that’s just part of it!

Others have yet more terrifying visions of earthquakes causing collapses of coastal land in California, with attendant tsunamis, and multiple other natural disasters in the U.S. such as a gigantic “sea” or “lake” in the middle of America as a quake literally tears it apart (a physical manifestation of what for now has been societal and cultural; huge waves too on the East Coast, especially bad news for southern Florida, New York, and places like Virginia Beach; persecution (though this is seen as strengthening and uniting Christians); and of course a world war of various depictions.

Whew! You can see the book for much more detail — as stated, for discernment only. Bring both an open mind and skepticism to it. Not despising it but neither accepting it all; rather, “testing” it. In the end, there will be the Christian remnant that largely will be protected. “God is raising up a remnant that is going to shake the world, and you do not want to miss out on the great move of God that is coming,” writes the author. “It is going to be unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.”

As for prophecy, we’ll admit this: the Lord does nothing, says Joel, with warning His prophets.

We’ll conclude here with one Catholic Snyder does quote — from the 1100s, Saint Hildegard.

“Before the comet comes, many nations, the good excepted, will be scoured with want and famine,” she allegedly intoned. “The great nation in the ocean that is inhabited by people of different tribes and descent by an earthquake, storm, and tidal waves will be devastated. It will be divided, and in great part submerged. That nation will also have many misfortunes at sea, and lose its colonies in the east part submerged. That nation will also have misfortunes at sea, and lose its colonies in the east through a Tiger and a Lion. The comet by its tremendous pressure, will force much out of the ocean and flood many countries, causing much want and many plagues. All coastal cities will be fearful and many of them will be destroyed by tidal waves, and most living creatures will be killed and even those who escape will die from a horrible disease. For in none of these cities does a person live according to the laws of God.”