It’s a time when we are thinking of unusual aspects of this place we call earth and raise the question: what if many of our conceptions of convenience and technology are not in accordance (as one prophecy asserted, the “1990” one) with the Will of God? What if the basic approach of science — and modernity — is in error?

Look around at how we have changed and rearranged and continue (microscopically and macroscopically) to rearrange God’s Creation!

It’s a radical, extraordinary thought, even for those who can escape the worldly mindset: that in many of our inventions we have been off-base. When we think of technology, energy comes to mind. For example, is oil the way to go — or were and are we meant to discover more renewable sources?

In this vein was the alleged Catholic Serbian “prophet” named Mitar Tarabich (1829-1899), an illiterate peasant from a small village called Kremna, who, it was said, had experienced occasional prophetic visions. Being a religious person and having a local Serbian orthodox priest for a godfather, he told this priest about his episodes of “seeing into the future,” according to a website devoted to him.

The priest, Zaharije Zaharich (1836-1918), wrote down everything in a small notebook, which was damaged by fire in 1943 when his family house was destroyed by the occupying Bulgarian army. This text is now in the possession of the family of Zaharich’s great-grandson, Mr. Dejan Malenkovich. Anyway, one excerpt:

 “People will drill wells deep in the ground and dig out gold, which will give them light, speed, and power, and the earth will shed tears of sorrow, because there will be much more gold and light on its surface than in its interior. The earth will suffer because of these open wounds. Instead of working in the fields, people will dig everywhere, in right and wrong places, but the real power will be all around them, not being able to tell them, ‘Come on, take me, don’t you see that I am here, all around you.’ Only after many a summer, people will remember this real power, and then they will realize how unintelligent it was to dig all those holes. This power will also be present in people but it will take a long time before they discover it and use it. Thus man will live for a long, long time, not being able to know himself. There will be many learned men who will think through their books that they know and can do everything. They will be the great obstacle for this realization [self-knowledge], but once men get this knowledge, then people will see what kind of delusion it was when they listened to their learned men. When that happens, people will be so sorry that they didn’t discover it before, because this knowledge is so simple.”

That is interesting in light of what a more recent mystic — the great one of Caracas, Maria Esperanza — once, surprisingly, predicted herself.

In an unusual message in 1981, the Venezuelan stigmatic who was associated with the fully Church-approved site of Betania presented a vision of the future that saw great improvements for mankind, including stunning new inventions to do with energy — but only after science and religion join forces, eliminating the separation that has turned science into a religion unto itself. She saw great breakthroughs as coming in concert with Christ-centered scientific endeavors.

In a world where science is in tune with spirituality, Esperanza claimed — in a message she said came from the Lord — there will be “great events” and a “conquest” of what she called the “spatial era.”

One example: a new technology that will allow a powerful new means of illumination, turning dark into day.

She foresaw that as tapping into a “stellar curvature.”

She also saw forces of light and music combined together in ways that currently are unimaginable. In surprising language (she was not a scientist), Esperanza, who died in 2004, foresaw “the registration of equations to their final expression” and computer devices that will replace many of the functions of a doctor. She describes such inventions as coming from “secret forces” hidden in rhythms of nature and what she calls the “sacred canticles.”

“You must know that if you obey, the fullness of a wonderful light shall reflect upon you,” she quoted Jesus as saying. “Great luminaries will work lively splendors that you may see next to you, guiding your footsteps because of your love for Me. Great events are near and the next one will shake the world of science.”

Esperanza maintained that a “wonderful reality” will come if science embraces humility, respects God, and opens itself to the Holy Spirit — Whom she claimed will unleash hitherto unimagined inventions, including technology that will eventually neutralize radioactivity.

Such developments will come only at the end of the current era, which she has warned will undergo a purification this century, especially during the next twenty years, due to our sinfulness, especially our lack of humility, charity, and love and a lack of devotion to the Eucharist.

In language strikingly uncharacteristic for Esperanza — whose messages are usually simpler ones of devotional Catholic inspiration — Maria used technical terms such as “nuclear electronic science, thermonuclear science, and transistonuclear science.” The message, now 28 years old, also seems to have foreseen the internet.

“Electronic computers will [cause] the utmost revolution people could imagine,” she quoted a message from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on March 18, 1981, as saying. “This is why the society of the future is called to establish great reforms, so the unbridled whirlpool of mankind may not become unbalanced in trust, so everything will be in order.”

Did Esperanza — and Mitar– really see into the far future? Could such marvels actually be on the way?

As always, we offer this with the admonishment that we must constantly test the spirits and discern messages and sometimes even lines within messages individually, so as to guard against deception; there is often a thin line between what is futuristic and what strays into the New Age.

But we also remain open toward a mystic who drew the strong support of her local bishops.

She said a new source of power “will come about with the sun and with the drive of magnetic forces of earthly energies: volcanic forces, wind, water, certain kinds of seaweed because phosphorus will be better assimilated. In short, no element will be wasted, everything will be used.”

“It will be the key to nuclear energy, which will be shocked,” she said, quoting the alleged message about the device that she says will eliminate harmful radiation. “Its reactions will grind to a halt, and then the time will come in which it will be used for pacific purposes, for man’s well-being and for the probable happiness of better days.”

After that cleansing, however — if mankind reverts back to the Lord, and lives in a simpler, more harmonious way, as He did, in concert with nature — will come what she describes as devices far more revolutionary than even computers.

There will be “amazing devices,” she claims, with far more capacity to diagnose and heal human sickness — if science and religion join forces in God’s plan.

“Be courageous,” she claims Christ told her. “Jesus, your instructor, He Who reveals a better tomorrow: my daughter, I love you!”

[see also: Esperanza’s incredible prophecy and A new energy source?]

[resources: The Bridge to Heaven and Tower of Light]