MANILA, Philippines—The triple disasters—earthquake-tsunami-nuclear emergency—visited on Japan earlier this month call attention to Akita prefecture in the country’s north, the hardest hit region that is still struggling to control the spread of radiation from its crippled nuclear reactors.
Akita, the site of the apparitions in 1973 in which the Blessed Virgin warned about a worldwide disaster that could afflict humanity, is situated in the Diocese of Niigata near Sendai, the city in the northeast that was the epicenter of the 9-magnitude quake and where the death toll is estimated to have reached thousands.
Initial reports indicate that Akita, located on the western coast facing the Sea of Japan 145 kilometers from Sendai, received significantly less damage than other parts of northern Japan, despite its proximity to the epicenter. However, residents did report power outages, burst pipes and fires.
The prefecture capital of Akita is a place of veneration and pilgrimage for Japanese Catholics because of the apparitions.
In 1973, the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa, a cloistered nun of the Handmaids of the Eucharist, a religious congregation founded by the late Bishop John Shojiro Ito of the Diocese of Niigata.
The extraordinary events began one day in June 1973, when Sister Agnes saw brilliant mysterious rays emanate suddenly from the statue of Mary in the chapel where she was praying. The same thing happened on each of the two days that followed.
Mary predicted a number of future cataclysmic events, including natural disasters, if humanity does not change, during three appearances to Sister Agnes.
“If men do not repent and better themselves, God the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity, it will be a punishment greater than the (biblical) flood, such as never seen before,” Mary told Sister Agnes.
Fire from sky
“Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead,” she said.
The messages warned of chaos within the Church, “one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops.”
“Churches and altars will be sacked. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises, and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord,” Mary said.
The only way for humanity is to recite the prayers of the rosary each day, Mary said.
“With the rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests,” she said.
Two years after the last message, the statue in the chapel where the apparitions had occurred began to emit tears and drops of blood. The occurrence continued for more than six years.
Bishop Ito had commissioned the statue, using as a model a picture of the oil painting of Our Lady of All Nations who appeared in Amsterdam in 1945, also warning of a time of tribulation and purification. Mary is depicted as standing on the globe in front of a wooden cross, her arms outstretched and hands open, in a warm gesture of welcome.
After her last message to Sister Agnes, given on Oct. 13, 1973, the wooden statue, now known as Our Lady of Akita, began to emit tears and drops of blood from a cross-shaped wound in the palm of her right hand. At the same time, Sister Agnes’ left hand started to bleed. The statue wept a total of 101 times.
10-year investigation
In 1988, I was posted at the Vatican and writing my second book on Our Lady’s messages to mankind, when I learned about the apparitions in Akita from John Haffert, the founder of the Worldwide Apostolate of Fatima.
I got in touch with Bishop Ito for more information and he told me that he had undertaken a 10-year investigation into the Akita events, including independent laboratory tests on the tears and blood from the Akita image, which proved they were of human origin.
The bishop said he had brought a pastoral letter that he had written to the Holy See, seeking approval from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (prior to his election as Pope Benedict XVI). The letter declared the events of Akita to be of supernatural origin and authorized the veneration of Our Lady of Akita throughout the entire diocese.
He told me he expected Cardinal Ratzinger to give his pastoral letter to his staff of experts for study. Instead the Cardinal told the bishop to wait while he read the letter. After which, he gave him approval to disseminate the pastoral letter, thus giving his judgment on the Akita events and messages as reliable and worthy of belief.
I had occasion to inquire from the president of the Catholic Conference of Bishops of Japan when he later visited Manila what the conference’s position was on the Akita events. He said Bishop Ito had undertaken a thorough investigation of the events and they found no necessity for altering his conclusions that these events were indeed supernatural in origin.
Similarity of Akita and Fatima
From the swiftness of Cardinal Ratzinger’s positive response, Bishop Ito told me he surmised that the Cardinal who was at the time the custodian of the Third Secret of Fatima, must have recognized the similarity of the Akita messages with that of Fatima, of which authenticity there was no doubt, and therefore approved his pastoral letter for immediate dissemination to the faithful.
To better appreciate this connection between these messages, between that of Fatima in 1917 and Amsterdam in 1945 and Akita in 1973, note their dates: Amsterdam occurred 28 years after Fatima and Akita 28 years after Amsterdam. And 28 years after Akita would be 2001, the first year of the third millennium. The late Pope John Paul II wrote in his book, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” that it seemed to him, that as we approach the third millennium, the prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima given to the shepherd children would be fulfilled.
The second correlation is the connection provided by heaven: Sister Agnes was taught by her guardian angel the Fatima prayers which were dictated to the children of Fatima, also by the angel of Portugal. The appearances of Our Lady of Akita and those at Fatima occurred on the 13th of the month. Her last appearance to Sister Agnes was on Oct. 13, 1973 on the anniversary of the miracle of the sun at Fatima. This led Bishop Ito to conclude that the Akita message was a continuation of the Fatima message.
Apocalyptic
The third correlation is the apocalyptic content of all the three messages: At Fatima, with its third secret now fully disclosed, we see an angel with a flaming sword about to scorch the earth when stopped by Our Lady in her splendor which caused the angel to shout three times: penance, penance, penance while pointing to the world.
Sister Lucia, when asked by the late Pope John Paul II, to elucidate on this vision, said that it is not God who is punishing us in this manner, but mankind, by its transgressions, bringing upon itself this scorching of the earth. Lucia said further that if it has not yet happened, mankind, by its sins of immorality, injustice, especially against the poor, is slowly but with great strides approaching this eventuality.
While Our Lady had warned about great disasters befalling mankind, there was no mention of a massive earthquake that would hit Japan, unlike in Rwanda where Our Lady appeared in Kibeho to warn its people of rivers of blood that would flow in their midst, which actually happened 10 years later when civil strife broke out, resulting in the slaughter that wiped out a great part of the population.
Fire falling from the sky
Our Lady of Akita had warned that “fire will fall from the sky.” John Haffert of the Blue Army has produced a video document with the help of Dr J. Rand McNally, a nuclear scientist, to show how this could literally happen.
McNally theorized: “Should a nuclear tornado triggered by a strong nuclear explosion possess strong enough E x B drive, it might permit the ignition of the atmosphere in a powerful, annihilating nuclear fusion fire which could burn up whole nations, if not the earth.”
When the third secret of Fatima was disclosed in 2000, it was accompanied by a commentary from Cardinal Ratzinger. Commenting on the vision of the angel with a flaming sword about to scorch the earth, Ratzinger wrote that the possibility of the earth would be engulfed in fire is no longer in the realm of fantasy, as man, by his inventions of weapons of mass destruction, has made this possible.
Nuclear fusion fire
McNally, using scientific methods, demonstrated how this could actually happen, that fire will literally fall from the sky as the atmosphere is ignited with nuclear fusion fire, feeding on the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, in a nuclear hurricane that could envelop nations in fire, even span continents.
The present danger from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station, if the radiation leaks continue unabated, may pose a similar risk as the highly contaminated waters flow into the ocean and are carried across continents. What was alarming was the report last Sunday that the radiation reached 10 million times the normal level. This was later corrected to 100,000 times, which is still cause for alarm.
The latest reports confirm that the Fukushima contaminated waters have reached Florida and Massachusetts. As of this writing, the valiant battle to contain radiation leakage in the plant has been abandoned. The effort has been switched to decommissioning the six reactors which will take 30 years at an estimated cost of one trillion yen ($12 billion).
A rosary a day
As Our Lady of Akita told Sister Agnes, we need to pray. A Marian group is requesting all Filipino Catholics to pray a rosary a day for Japan that this nuclear danger may be averted and the country be on its way to full recovery.
Our Lady of Akita, pray for the Japanese people!
(The author served as ambassador to the Vatican from 1986 to 1990 and chaired the government negotiating panel for peace talks with communist insurgents from 1993 to 1996. He is president of the Family Rosary Crusade and heads the Assisi Development Foundation.)
Visit this article from the Inquirer here
Note:
The picture above is actually from Our Lady of All Nation. Here is the story:
THE LADY OF ALL NATIONS
CO-REDEMPTRIX, MEDIATRIX, AND ADVOCATE
On March 25, 1945, at the close of World War II, the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ began appearing in Amsterdam to a very humble and devout, ordinary Dutch woman. At the time, the seer, Miss Isje Johanna Peerdeman, known as Ida, was 40 years of age and under the spiritual guidance of a Dominican priest, Fr. Joseph Frehe, O.P. (Later she became a member of the Third Order Dominicans.) Fr. Frehe was present during the majority of these apparitions; at times, one or two of Miss Peerdeman's sisters was present. Although neither they nor Fr. Frehe were able to see or hear anything, they recorded the messages as they were repeated slowly by the seer.
These apparitions of Our Lady continued until 1959. In 1958, Miss Peerdeman began experiencing Eucharistic visions and locutions which ended on March 25, 1984. The apparitions occurred for the most part in either her home, or in what is now known as the Chapel of the Apparitions in Amsterdam. Occasionally messages were given at the nearby Dominican church of St. Thomas. Approximately, one third of the apparitions, also, took place in Germany. Two locutions were, also, received in 1966 and 1969 at the chapel of the Miraculous Medal on the Rue du Bac in Paris, France. In summation, there were fifty-six apparitions and one hundred and fifty one mystical experiences associated with the Holy Eucharist! The Eucharistic episodes are without equal not only because of the extraodinary messages but because the divine communications were given by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit! On certain occassions only One Divine Person spoke and on others All Three Divine Persons of God spoke! Many, although not all, of these "Eucharistic experiences" as they are now commonly referred to, took place during the celebration of the Mass. Currently, there is a general misconception that the Eucharistic experiences began on July 17, 1958 however after careful examination one realizes that they actually began on the feast of the Visitation, May 31, 1958. This is very significant. To understand the relevance of this date, refer to the section entitled, The Lady & May 31.
Although the messages of the Most Blessed Trinity are very serious and command attention, they are for the most part dramatically uplifting and hopeful. As a matter of fact, during the holy Sacrifice of the Mass which Ida Peerdeman was attending on May 31, 1977 Our Lord announced at the elevation of the Sacred Host: "Thus it shall remain for all eternity, tell this to your theologians...There is a great event in store for the Church!" Listen to the following messages which are absolutely wonderful. "Rejoice, My people. My hour has come" (September 8, 1979). Referring to Pope John Paul II on February 2, 1980: "And you, My Supreme Pastor, I shall open your eyes and ears still more. You will be the Master-builder of the present time and the coming generation!" Throughout these messages the True Presence of Our Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist and true devotion to Mary, the Mother of the Catholic Church, "the true Community of nations," is stressed. On October 7, 1978 Our Lord, alluding to the forthcoming vanquishment of Satan, declared to the seer, Ida Peerdeman: "This is the victory of Her whom I have sent. Be comforted, My people. I am with you all."
Miss Peerdeman died on June 17, 1996 shortly before her birthdate of August 13. She would have been 91 years old. However, Ida lived to see that the Prayer, the image, and devotions to the Lady of All Nations were granted full ecclesiastical approval by the late Bishop Henrik Bomers and the Auxiliary Bishop Josef Punt, both of the Haarlem-Amsterdam diocese, on May 31, 1996. This was a great gift of solace for Ida who had suffered much ridicule and persecution during her life time. It was the fulfillment of a prophecy given by Our Lady on Ida's behalf many years before. Such was the loving compassion and gratitude of Mary for her child, Ida. The approval means that public veneration to Our Mother under the title of The Lady of All Nations is permitted with the Church's blessings.
The first message that Ida received was short and cryptic. It referred basically to dates coinciding with the end of the war in Europe. Some of the messages were very symbolic and pertained to either the number of dogmas at the time or to the Apostasy or to similar events in the Old Testament or to the prophetic writings of Revelations or to Mary's unique role in salvation history. None of the messages were of a personal nature; all the messages were for mankind, the salvation of souls and the glory of God. Most were prophetic; that is to say, certain events that would or could occur with the passage of time. Certain prophecies were and are contingent upon mankinds' response to various requests from the Mother of God, the Mother of All Nations. In particular, a heavy responsibility now lies with Catholics. To whom much is given, much is expected (Mt 25:29)! The "longer [Catholics] wait [to fulfill the Lady's requests], the more the Faith will decline; the greater the number of years, the greater the apostasy" (August 15, 1951). Eventually, the whole of God's kingdom on earth will respond that is if Catholics do their duty first! To be precise, Our Lady said on November 16, 1950: "There must be a great drive among Catholics." For "no Church in the world is constituted like yours" (February 11, 1951). "'The Lady of All Nations' can and will bestow on all the peoples of the world who have recourse to Her - grace, redemption and peace. To you all [Catholics], however, falls the task of introducing 'the Lady of All Nations' to the whole world" (February 17, 1952). "Go about with great ardour and zeal; set about this work of redemption and peace and you will see the miracle" (April 1, 1951). "The sign of 'the Lady of All Nations' will later be seen over the whole world. Let them understand this well! Sham powers will fall" (February 17, 1952).
It is interesting to note that the span of time between the prediction of an event and its actual occurrence is quite extraordinary. For example, on December 3, 1949 and on February 11, 1951 Ida Peerdeman was given a vision of the Second Vatican Council which actually took place many years later in 1962. Another noteworthy aspect of the apparitions is that much of the content of the messages either parallel holy Scripture perfectly or allegorically refer to the essence and meaning of certain scriptural passages. As a result of this uncanny juxtaposition of the messages to scripture, the historic relevance of scripture to the present is underscored while at the same time the truth is illuminated. This is a very unusual quality, an extraordinary grace. In this sense, the apparitions of the Lady of All Nations are unique. In addition, all the apparitions of Our Lady to Ida are preceded by a "bright light." Just as at La Salette, Fatima and Akita, there is always a significant mentioning of light, a prelude, if you will, to the actual visitation of Our Lady. Now listen to John 1, 5 - 9: "The light shines on in darkness, a darkness that did not overcome it. There was a man named John sent by God, who came as witness to testify to the light, so that through him all men might believe - but only to testify to the light, for he himself was not the light. The real light which gives light to every man was coming into the world." Therefore, the "bright light" that Ida describes infers the presence of God; Mary, Our Mother, is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit "sent by Her Lord and Creator," (May 10, 1953), to attest to the will of God; Ida, like John, is only the messenger "to testify to the light" (Jn 1,8). Upon reflection of the above mentioned facts - the time factor, the fulfillment of the prophecies and the accurate scriptural analogies - the significance of the Lady of All Nations' declaration, "My signs are inherent in my words" (April 4, 1954), becomes crystal clear!
FULFILLED OR ONGOING PROPHECIES
In addition to the 1951 prophetic announcement of the Second Vatican Council II, there are a number of other prophecies which were fulfilled. The following is an incomplete list of some of them.
1. The prediction of events taking place today with the Muslim nations and a warning to nations in reference to possible missle attacks armed with bacteriological warheads containing Yersinia pestis, more commonly known as Black Plague. According to Our Lady these bacteriological weapons were prepared by Russia as well as other nations. Prophecy dated: December 26, 1947
2. The warning to America against possible attack with weapons of chemical warfare which were produced by Russia in underground labs with rogue scientists from various nations such as France, Germany, and Poland. Prophecy dated: October 1, 1949
3. An alarming announcement of "another great catastrophe for the world" against the West and coming from the East. This is followed by a vision of "a great number of stars in the air" apparently in reference to the United States of America. This could be pertaining to the recent September 11, 2001 attack on America. Prophecy dated: June 9, 1946
4. The war in the Balkans (Yugoslavia and the surrounding areas). Also the ominous prediction of "a great disaster" which will occur either in the Balkans or emanate from there and is apparently connected with Eastern peoples (possibly Muslims) whom "he (the devil) will rouse". This prediction involves Europe and "the middle of North America" (obviously the U.S.A.). There are other similar predictions which also involve Greece and Turkey. Prophecies dated: May 7, 1949, October 1,1949, May 27,1950, August 15, 1950, August 27, 1977
5. Forewarning of a "terrible pain coming over India". Prophecy dated: February 14, 1950
6. An emphatic caution for "Rome to be on the alert"! This is followed by a declaration that "Rome is in danger" from false ecumenism emanating especially from the Anglican Church, Russian Church and the Armenian Church as well as others. Our Lady forewarns of atheists. Prophecy dated: March 29, 1946; January 4, 1947 and May 7, 1949
7. The prediction of a "struggle in Rome against the Pope". Prophecy dated: June 9, 1946
8. A warning against the European Market. "Europe take warning, unite in the good cause." Prophecy dated: December 16, 1949
9. The Chenobyl meltdown of the nuclear plant in the Ukraine (USSR) which at the time of Our Lady's revelation wasn't even built yet! (The word 'chenobyl' means wormwood. See scripture: Revelations 9:11) Prophecy dated: December 10, 1950
10. The dissent regarding celibacy. Prophecies dated: May 31, 1956 and May 31,1957
11. The Apostasy (referring either to the abandonment of the faith or to the infiltration and treachery ) within the Church. Prophecies dated: August 29, 1945, March 29, 1946, May 7, 1949, May 27, 1950, March 28, 1951, February 19, 1958, May 31, 1965, May 31, 1978 and January 6, 1980
12. The October 1, 1949 Communist takeover of China. Prophecies dated: October 7, 1945
13. The division of Korea into North and South by the demarcation of the 38th parallel which occurred in 1953, "an omen and the beginning of great distress" referring to the eventual sufferings of the Korean people, the future plans of the aggressive North Korean government and its nuclear arsenal, and the rapid spread of Communism from this period on. Prophecy dated: August 15, 1950 and December 10, 1950
14. The changing of the fasting requirement to receive the Holy Eucharist. Prophecy dated: January 25, 1951
15. The revelations regarding the deaths of three popes. Prophecies dated: February 19, 1958 - the death of Pope Pius XII in October of the same year; June 11, 1978 - the death of Pope Paul VI, less than two months later; September 28, 1978 - the death of Pope John Paul I, the following day. In addition to these revelations, Ida also was also made aware of the identity of two future Popes on two separate occassions, namely: Pope Paul VI "Montini" on May 31, 1963; and Pope John Paul II on October 15, 1978!
16. The construction of the Berlin Wall. Prophecies dated:February 14,1950, August 15, 1950, December 10, 1950
17. The turmoil and battles within Jerusalem. Prophecies dated: December 26, 1947, March 28, 1948
18. Reference to the eventual victory of Israel as a nation. Prophecy dated: April 21, 1945
19. The prediction of troubled times for Formosa (Taiwan). Prophecies dated: August 15, 1950, December 10, 1950
20. Some other prophecies involve trouble for the Philippines, China's past invasion of Tibet and the degeneration of the Netherlands. There are just too many to enumerate.
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