It was more than a week ago that African outlets informed us that two children had seen the Virgin Mary in “indescribable light” at a place called Musanze in Rwanda. The alleged new apparitions are fascinating on several counts.

One,  the location is about 140 miles north of a village called Kibeho, where Church-approved apparitions began in 1981 shortly after Medjugorje. Musanze is located near the border with the Congo. The diocese has yet to confirm any of it.

But (count two): the location places it near another significant place, this time a major city named Goma.

Just north is Mount Nyiragongo—one of the world’s more noteworthy and dangerous volcanoes.

The peril is not in convulsive frequency (though that’s an issue) but because when it does erupt, its lava can move with terrifying speed, directly toward human life.

In other words, Nyiragongo’s pyroclastic flow is not of a slow, creeping menace but one of urgent warning: Goma is a city of two million.

Thirdly, the mountain harbors a crater with a churning, fiery lava lake, one of the rarest, most dramatic sights in geology.

Fascinating it was that during the horrible 1994 civil war in Rwanda (which was predicted by the Virgin during the Kibeho apparitions), the lava lake glowed ominously.

It was a vision that looked like the earth’s inner furnace had been cracked open. Lava lakes reformed in the crater in eruptions in 1982-1983 and 1994.

Beautiful from a distance.

Deadly when it breaks its boundaries.

One day, the city hums with traffic and commerce. The next day, the sky glows red and the roads become evacuation routes.

Precisely this occurred in 2021, when a paroxysm sent lava toward Goma, triggering mass evacuations. Terrified families poured out of the city. Some fled on foot. Others crossed borders. Roads clogged. There was also a smaller eruption in 2001.

The volcano is a reminder that human civilization—so advanced, so busy, so confident—still rests on a planet that can move, split, and erupt without permission.

For the people of Goma, danger doesn’t come from one source—it comes from a whole landscape that feels alive (and deadly) beneath their feet. For nearby is also Lake Kivu, this time a lake of water but one that holds deep layers of dissolved and (if disrupted) potentially deadly gases.

Count four:

Once again this brings us back to Kibeho, where Anathalie Mukamazimpaka, one of three original seers accepted as authentic by the Vatican, says the Virgin warned that the world is headed for an “abyss”—this time a spiritual one—due to impurity and materialism. “I saw mountains crashing into each other,” she told Spirit Daily. “Stones coming out of the earth, nearly as if they were angry.

“I saw storms crashing against each other and fire coming from them.

“I don’t know what this means,” she added. “I was told that people are causing this and that it is coming.”

Fascinating this is at a time of “signs” in nature—not just winter storms and summer cyclones but geological curiosities.

One such peculiarity: a long-vanished “ghost” lake called Tulare in California’s Central Valley that has of late reappeared, submerging nearly 94,000 acres of farmland and reviving disputes over water rights, land management, and environmental justice in a region otherwise known in recent years for savage wildfires.

Small quakes are rattling California and parts of Mississippi. Other volcanoes like Vesuvius and Etna (Italy) are yielding smoke (and causing evacuations).

Stay tuned. Know the signs of our times. Watch as various natural forces interweave, as in California, where historically Tulare was the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi, returning in early 2023 following months of record-breaking precipitation.

[resources: Future Events and Our Lady of Kibeho]