Muslims Create International Furor Over Pope Benedict's Speech...

"The battle, My child, will accelerate very shortly for there will not only be a great war of weapons of mankind, but it will be known soon throughout the world as a religious war. It will be the war against the antichrist, who is here now!” - Our Lady, August 21, 1974

Veronica - And I can see now Jesus and Our Lady are going high up into the sky, and there's forming directly over Our Lady's statue, high in the sky—it is a cross, a very large cross. The handle, though, of a . . . dagger—it looks like a dagger, a knife. It's a strange-looking dagger with a loop at the bottom, like. It's a symbol. And Jesus is nodding.
Jesus - "You will understand, My child, soon."
Veronica - Yes, it is a, like a saber. Gee, it, it's a very strange-looking, dagger-like saber, with a cross on a handle. Like—it's not the kind that you see—it looks almost like Arabian or something. I can't explain it—like a very strange-looking Arabic, or something. I don't know where I have seen that before, but it's a very odd-looking type of dagger-like sword, with a hook on the end of it, though. That's strange. Oh, now it's beginning to fade; I can't see it anymore. - December 24, 1979

"The emperor Manuel II Paleologus... said,” quoted Pope Benedict XVI, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

POPE Benedict was condemned by Islamic leaders across the world yesterday for remarks they said encouraged the belief that early Muslims spread their religion by violence.

Some said the Pontiff was trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades in a speech he gave during his tour of Germany on Tuesday, when he quoted a conversation between the 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the Pope said.

“He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached’.”

The most bitter denunciation came from Turkey – a moderate democracy seeking EU membership, which Benedict plans to visit in November.

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of the Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict’s remarks were “the result of pitiful ignorance” about Islam and its prophet, or, worse, a deliberate distortion of the truth.

“He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,” Mr Kapusuz told Turkish state media. “It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.

“Benedict is going down in history for his words,” he said. “He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

At least one Muslim leader, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the chief cleric of New Delhi’s Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, urged Muslims to “respond in a manner which forces the Pope to apologise”. He did not elaborate.

Condemnations came from Muslim leaders in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt and a host of other countries, including some in Europe.

A Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, defended the Pope’s lecture and said he did not mean to offend Muslims.

A high-ranking Church source expressed fears for the Pope’s safety, saying: “While I think the controversy will go away, it has done damage and if I were a security expert I would be worried.”

About 100 worshippers demonstrated after Friday prayers at Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque, the Sunni Arab world’s most prominent institution.

Many attributed the Pope’s comments to a larger political bias against Muslims.

“This is part of the whole war against Islam. Whenever we close a door on evil, they open another,” said an Egyptian man.

“These Christians are all infidels. Benedict himself is an infidel and a blind man. Doesn’t he see that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places were waged by Christians?” another worshipper said.

“The Pope joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam,” said the leading Moroccan daily, the Islamist Attajdid.

“We demand that he apologises personally, and not through [Vatican] sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation,” said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world’s top Shiite Muslim clerics.

The most recent mass outpouring of Islamic anger at the West came in February, over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. The drawings of the Prophet Muhammad sparked violent – and sometimes deadly – protests in almost every Muslim nation in the world.

Some experts said the perceived provocation by the spiritual leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics could leave even deeper scars.

“The declarations from the Pope are more dangerous than the cartoons, because they come from the most important Christian authority in the world,” said Diaa Rashwan, a Cairo-based analyst of Islamic militancy.

As the Pope’s historical reference showed, the dispute between Muslim and Christian leaders over conditions for the use of violence is ancient.

The Koran endorses the concept of jihad, often translated as holy war, but Muslims differ on conditions for it, with some saying it applies only for self-
defence against external attack.

Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany’s Muslim council, said he found it hard to believe that the Pope really saw a difference between Islam and Christianity in attitudes towards violence.

“One only need think of the Crusades or the forced conversions of Jews and Muslims in Spain,” he said.

Hundreds of years of hostility
WHILE John Paul II was anxious to engender better relations between Catholicism and Islam, meeting with Muslims more than 60 times, his successor, Benedict XVI has an attitude towards them that can best be described as hawkish.

He believes there should be a more muscular challenge to religious restrictions in Muslim countries.

It was only in the 1960s that the relationship between Catholicism and Islam escape from the bloody mire of the Crusades, the wars of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, which saw atrocities committed by both sides. A turning point in western attitudes towards the east came in the year 1009, when the Fatimid caliph of Cairo, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed. In 1099 when crusaders re-took Jerusalem they massacred the population.

An end to mutual hostility began with the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) when the Vatican acknowledged that Muslims "are related in various ways to the People of God". It was said Muslims hold "first place" among those who "acknowledge the creator". The Catholic Church agreed that God looked upon Muslims "with esteem".

In the Muslim faith, Jesus is held in high esteem, along with his mother, Mary, although they do not recognise the divinity of Jesus.

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Following is the complete speech given by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany on September 12, 2006:

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium.

I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn.

That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves.

We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties.

Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole.

This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.

The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an.

It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation [text unclear] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion".

According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident.

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Word".

This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, [text unclear] with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis.

In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy.

Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am".

This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature.

Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity.

A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.

This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.

As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language.

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul [text unclear] worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system.

The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.

The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization.

Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message.

Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific.

What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences.

This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology.

On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature.

On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.

A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self.

But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical.

In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.

The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age.

The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.

The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit.

The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.

In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions.

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.

Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology.

For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo.

In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss".

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.

It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Our Lady of the Roses' Awesome Bayside Prophecies... https://www.tldm.org/Bayside/
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995:

WORLD WAR III
Veronica - . . . Our Lady now is looking down sadly. And I see She's pointing now to what looks like a map. Oh, my!
Now as I am watching—it's a map of... oh, I can see Jerusalem, and Egypt, Arabia, French Morocco, Africa. Oh, my goodness! There seems to be a very dense darkness now settling upon those countries. Oh, my!
And Our Lady is saying:
Our Lady - "The start of the Third World War, My child." - March 29, 1975

ISRAEL IN FLAMES
Veronica - ... and there's another map. And I see Israel, and countries about it; they're all aflame....
"The wars shall increase, and the carnage shall increase, and those who are living will often envy the dead, so great will be the suffering of mankind.... When he left the Eternal Father he turned to satan, and this is his reward." - Our Lady, June 30, 1984

AN ARABIAN SABER
Veronica - And I can see now Jesus and Our Lady are going high up into the sky, and there's forming directly over Our Lady's statue, high in the sky—it is a cross, a very large cross. The handle, though, of a . . . dagger—it looks like a dagger, a knife. It's a strange-looking dagger with a loop at the bottom, like. It's a symbol. And Jesus is nodding.
Jesus - "You will understand, My child, soon."
Veronica - Yes, it is a, like a saber. Gee, it, it's a very strange-looking, dagger-like saber, with a cross on a handle. Like—it's not the kind that you see—it looks almost like Arabian or something. I can't explain it—like a very strange-looking Arabic, or something. I don't know where I have seen that before, but it's a very odd-looking type of dagger-like sword, with a hook on the end of it, though. That's strange. Oh, now it's beginning to fade; I can't see it anymore. - December 24, 1979

SYRIA HOLDS THE KEY
Our Lady - "Wars are a punishment for man's sins. Syria holds the key to peace at this time. However, I place in front of you, My children, a graphic picture for you to understand. It will be a parable for some, and some will turn away not willing to hear what Heaven has to say in these desperate times."
Veronica - Our Lady is pointing up with Her finger, like this, to Her right side, and high above Her the sky is opening up—all the clouds are floating away and the sky is opening up and I see a map of the Mideast. And then Our Lady is pointing up farther and that's another map of China and Russia. Our Lady is turning back now: She was looking upward also.
Our Lady - "My child and My children, there are scoffers who will say there shall not be a Third World War. They do not know and cannot conceive of the plan of the Eternal Father. Be it known now that the Father has great heart for all His children, but when the sin reaches a peak only known to the Father the amount of sin among mankind, then the Father will take action." - May 28, 1983

A WORLD AFLAME
"Syria has the key to the solution of world peace or the Third World War. It will be the destruction of three-quarters of the world. A world aflame, with also the Ball of Redemption." - Our Lady, May 30, 1981

"MY HOME"
"Wars are a punishment for man's sins. My children, My heart is torn. I stand with you observing your road, the path you are traveling. Many lives shall be lost in the great War.
"The forces of evil are gathering about the city of Jerusalem. I walked there, My children. My home will be destroyed. There shall be much blood shed upon My home." - Our Lady, June 24, 1976

A WORLD AFLAME
"Syria has the key to the solution of world peace or the Third World War. It will be the destruction of three-quarters of the world. A world aflame, with also the Ball of Redemption." - Our Lady, May 30, 1981

JERUSALEM & PALESTINE
Our Lady - "You ask, My child, how this situation evolved. It was not in the plan of God to bring the great Chastisement upon you at this time. It is the will of man that has forced His hand upon you.
     "The great plague and darkness will come before the Ball of Redemption.
     "Gradually you will find the extinction of man evolving from the earth. The Father does not plan to completely eradicate man from earth as He did during the time of Noah, choosing only a few to set up the Kingdom.
     "There will be a great War..."
Veronica - And over to the left side of the flagpole there's written a word: "YELLOW AGAINST WHITE - WHITE AGAINST BLACK", and then there's a large cross over the world. It's a globe of the world, and there's blood dripping over on one side. And there's a pool of blood; it's like a river. And now the word comes out from inside the blood, and it says: "PALESTINE" P - A - L - E - S - T - I - N - E, and underneath, "JERUSALEM." - March 25, 1973

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D136 - Visions of the Great War: The Mideast PDF
D156 - Terrorism PDF

Links

Lieberman Warns of Global Religious War, Newsday, November 30, 2003
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-democrats-lieberman,0,4990434.story

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There are 4 Things You Must Have to Survive the End Times:

1.) The Douay-Rheims Holy Bible...

"I ask that all who hear My voice will take their Bibles, and if they do not have one, search, but find the right Bible, those printed not after 1965, My children." - Jesus, October 5, 1985
     "You must all obtain a copy of the Book of life and love, the Bible. Do not accept the new mods. Try to find in your bookstores the old Bibles, My children, for many are being changed to suit the carnal nature of man. I repeat, sin has become a way of life." - Our Lady, October 6, 1992
    "I must ask you all to read but a few short chapters a day now, the Book of life and love, your Bible. Knowledge must be gained for all the disciples of My Son, for you will be attacked by scientific minds. But do not be concerned what you will say to them when accosted, for the words will be given to you by the Spirit." - Our Lady, April 10, 1976
    The Douay-Rheims Bible was published in 1899. It is the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Almost all other Bibles have been rewritten by Satan.   See: https://www.tldm.org/directives/d33.htm , https://www.tldm.org/directives/d415.htm and https://www.tldm.org/directives/d182.htm   If you don't have a Douay-Rheims Bible order it now! (Order Form) Yours and your loved ones salvation could depend on it.
    Read the Bible cover to cover. If you read 4 chapters a day, you will complete the whole Bible in 334 days. I have read the Bible 2 times and working on the third time. A 75 year old Baptism gentleman told me that he and his wife have read the Bible nine times. Wow!

2.) The Complete Virgin Mary’s Bayside Prophesies in 6 Paperback Books..

The Virgin Mary brings directions from God, the Father in Heaven on how to survive the end times. God, the Father, through the Virgin Mary, tells what is coming, how to prepare for it, how to survive it, and how to even stop it. These six volumes along with the Bible are most important to save yourself and your loved ones. Order it now. Tomorrow may be to late. These 6 pocket size paperback books costs $33.00. (Order Form)

3.) Heaven's Home Protection Packet...

Heaven’s Home Protection Packet...
Our Lord stated we must have crucifixes upon the outside of all of our outside doors. In the "Heaven’s Home Protection Packet" there are instructions, four crucifixes, a tube of special cement for wooden or metal crucifixes. Wooden crucifixes adhere better to the doors when the aluminum strap is removed from the back. Put a light coat of cement on the back of the crucifix and then press it to the outside of the door. If you have any problems, you can call us at 616-698-6448 for assistance. This Heaven’s Home Protection Packet is available for a donation of $10.00 plus $4.00 shipping and handling. Send $14.00 to TLD Ministries, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331. Item # P15 (Order Form)

Crucifix on front and back door... The only real protection against terrorists...
Jesus - "Pray and wear your sacramentals. And, also, My children, I ask you again to place a crucifix upon your door. Both front and back doors must have a crucifix. I say this to you because there will be carnage within your areas, and this will pass you by if you keep your crucifix upon your doors." (6-30-84) (Testimonies of lives and homes saved by the crucifixes.) https://www.tldm.org/news/crucifix.htm (Order Form)

4.) Heaven's Personal Protection Packet...

Heaven’s Personal Protection Packet . . .
Our Lady tells us to be protected from all evil, we must wear the following sacramentals around our necks: a Rosary, a crucifix, the St. Benedict medal, Our Lady of the Roses medal, the Miraculous Medal, and the scapular. We have all of these sacramentals in a packet we call "Heaven's Personal Protection Packet." This packet is available for a donation of $7.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling. Send $10.00 to TLD Ministries, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331. Item # P5 (Order Form)

    Our Lady of the Roses, Mary Help of Mothers promises to help protect our children. On September 13, 1977, She said, "He has an army of ogres wandering now throughout your country and all of the countries of the world. They are in possession of great power; so wear your sacramentals, and protect your children and your households. Learn the use every day of holy water throughout your household. Insist even with obstructions, insist that your children always wear a sacramental. One day they will understand that they will repel the demons."
    On February 1, 1974, Our Lady said, "My children, know the value of these sacramentals. Guard your children well. You must awaken to the knowledge that you will not be protected without the sacramentals. Guard your children's souls. They must be surrounded with an aura of purity. Remove them if necessary from the sources of contamination, be it your schools or even false pastors."
    This Heaven’s Personal Protection Packet is available for a donation of $7.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling. Send $10.00 to TLD Ministries, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331. You may use your MasterCard, VISA, or American Express and call 1-616-698-6448. Item # P5 (Order Form)

Incredible Bayside Prophecies on the United States and Canada book . . .

We have researched the Bayside Prophecies on the United States and Canada and put these outstanding prophecies in a 360 page pocket size paperback book. Veronica said it was very good. It tells what is going to happen here and how to prepare for it. Every North American must read this book! Item #B2 Cost $5.00 (Order Form)

Your names have been written in Heaven… "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for your names have been written in Heaven.... But with this great grace you have great responsibility to send this Message from Heaven throughout the world, for if you are able to recover just one more for Heaven, an additional star shall be placed in your crown." - Jesus, August 5, 1975

My gift to help spread Our Lady of the Roses' messages to the world.

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P.O. Box 40 616-698-6448
Lowell, MI 49331-0040
Revised: August 14, 2024