They said the very same thing about Jesus; I would be very,very careful about using such an argument, it seems to me perilously close to the sin against the Holy Spirit: Matthew 9:34 Jesus Heals a Mute Man …33After the demon was cast out, the mute man spoke; and the crowds were amazed, and were saying, "Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel." 34But the Pharisees were saying, "He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons."
How about this? The cleft of the rock or ....... 7 The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’;[a] and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” 21 And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
I don't think this is very good. http://crownofstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/vicka-to-witness-in-brazil-again.html Canon Law Q&A cathy caridi j.c.l. http://catholicexchange.com/when-a-shrine-isnt Q: Some years ago, a man in my diocese built a Catholic shrine, and it was visited by many Catholics. But the bishop ordered it to be shut down, and said that it was not a shrine and that Catholics weren’t supposed to go there. The man said that it wasn’t a parish church and the bishop had no right to stop Catholics from praying there, but the bishop won. Did the bishop have authority to do this? —Jan A: Yes. In casual parlance we often speak of shrines very loosely, when we describe a statue of Saint Francis in someone’s yard, or perhaps a Lourdes grotto on the campus of a Catholic school. But the term “shrine” is actually defined in a precise way by the Code of Canon Law. Canon 1230 is quite straightforward: a shrine is a church or other sacred place which has the approval of the bishop and which is visited by the faithful as pilgrims. There are a couple of key elements in this definition which merit a closer look. Firstly, while a shrine is most commonly a church, it is not a parish church. Since it is frequented by people who come on pilgrimage, a shrine has some particular focus of devotion. Sometimes it is the burial place of a canonized saint, like the famous shrine of Saint Anthony in Padua, Italy; other shrines have been established at the sites of Marian apparitions, like the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris. More commonly, however, a shrine is established as a center for some particular devotion, like the shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, or that of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Unlike a parish church, which is built for the regular pastoral care of all the Catholics living within a particular territory (cf. c. 515.1), a shrine is erected with special pilgrimages in mind. Secondly, the diocesan bishop necessarily plays a critical role in the erection of an official shrine. After all, making a pilgrimage is an external, public form of spiritual devotion. Since the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful of the diocese is entrusted to the bishop’s care (cf. c. 835.1), it is only logical that a bishop should have not only the power, but also the responsibility to ensure that if the Catholics of his diocese are making pilgrimages to a particular place to engage in a particular devotion, that devotion is theologically sound. It is, unfortunately, all too easy to see what can potentially happen when a devotional practice that has not been properly vetted by church authorities starts to spread. Most of us are probably familiar with ongoing cases in our own day and age, of alleged visionaries who claim to convey to the faithful messages that were given to them by the Virgin Mary or even Christ Himself. When word gets out, such extraordinary claims inevitably attract crowds of devout, sincere Catholics. It doesn’t take long for busloads of “pilgrims” to show up, maybe at the home of the alleged seer, or at the location where the apparitions reportedly take place. Erecting some sort of shrine is the next logical step! As was already discussed in a different context in the March 24, 2011 column, it is for the diocesan bishops of these purported mystics to try to determine what exactly is going on. Is the seer really being visited by the Blessed Virgin? or is this a case of fraud, mental illness, or even diabolical influence? The bishop naturally has to be involved, since this is an obvious instance where the spiritual wellbeing of his flock is directly affected. While the investigation is ongoing, a bishop will almost invariably urge caution in a very public way. He will warn the people of his diocese that it has not yet been established that this is indeed a supernatural occurrence that takes place due to divine intervention—and he will understandably discourage (if not forbid outright) Catholics from visiting the person and/or place in question. There is certainly nothing procedurally new about this. We all know, for example, that the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima are officially recognized by the Catholic Church to have been authentic. But they were approved by the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima, Portugal, more than ten years after they had taken place. In the interim, an exhaustive investigation was being conducted and there was no officially sanctioned devotion—much less an approved shrine—at the sites of these Marian apparitions. When the bishop finally gave his approval, he permitted the construction of a proper shrine, commemorating the visits of the Blessed Virgin to the three children of Fátima. Not all such claims of purported visionaries get the bishop’s approval, of course. To cite only one example, some years ago the Archbishop of Baltimore put a halt to gatherings in a church in Emmitsburg, Maryland, that centered around a woman claiming to be visited there by the Virgin Mary. Originally the woman had merely been attending the church on a regular basis, as is the right of any Catholic; but when word spread that the Blessed Mother was coming to speak to her there, throngs of well-meaning Catholics began showing up at the church too. Before anyone realized it, the church had become a place of pilgrimage for Catholics who believed that this woman was relaying messages from the Mother of God herself—and the archbishop was completely correct to put a halt to it, so that an investigation into the authenticity of these alleged mystical visits could be done first. The church had inadvertently been turned into a sort of shrine, but without the approval of the diocesan bishop. Eventually the archbishop concluded that these purported visions were notsupernatural, which put an official end to any possibility of establishing a shrine in Emmitsburg that might have been devoted to Our Lady and her messages to this woman. Without the archbishop’s intervention, many Catholics could conceivably have been led astray in some way by their devout adherence to the content of these inauthentic apparitions. "How many Catholics realize that there is no approved Catholic shrine whatsoever in Medjugorje? Over the past several decades, the successive bishops of that diocese, located in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, have conducted investigations and examinations of the alleged messages of Our Lady, purportedly received by a number of young Catholics there—yet none has ever found these alleged events authentic and given them his approbation. Logically, therefore, there is no officially approved shrine to the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje either. In some cases, bishops who are faced with large numbers of Catholic faithful who willfully ignore their directives have turned to Rome and sought another ruling on the matter at a higher level. Strictly speaking, there should be no need for this sort of confirmation by the Vatican, as the bishop already has the authority to make a final determination himself! The fact that this has to be done is, in reality, a sad commentary on the lack of obedience to church authorities by many Catholics. We don’t know the full story behind the shrine that was erected in Jan’s diocese by the man she mentions, but it sounds like a similar scenario. No layperson has the authority, on his own initiative, to erect a “shrine” to be visited by the Catholic faithful on pilgrimage. No matter how good his intentions and how orthodox his theology may be, a member of the faithful who is convinced that he should establish a shrine has to defer in these matters to the bishop of his diocese." Brother al
There are too many suspicious signs surrounding this so called apparition. Neither bishops of Yugoslavia back then, nor I, see any scriptural or doctrinal evidence that supports this, now 34 year long display as genuine. Medjugorje doctrinally reeks of heresy, new ageism, there is even 'a new biography of Mary' told to one witness, etc. Scripturally it really fits the predicament of doom called Har Mageddo. Name fits really well. Circumstances fits. Number of witnesses fit. Activities fit. Fatima, compared to it, passes with flying colours and a clean bill of health. Two are incomparable. You may say, in Fatima, there were three children too. Wasn’t scripture talking of them? Two of the witnesses died young immediately after the apparition, leaving just one. Lucia, remaining witness, never got a gift to speak foreign languages out of thin air; she confessed all her experiences in Portuguese. She wrote third secret in Portuguese. Of course, we have to ascertain we live in end times, or, times before the promised second coming of Christ, to speak of Har Mageddo. The second coming, words of Gospel say, is preceded by great turmoils, wars, persecutions of Christians and natural disasters. So far, we have all of those. But, if you do not believe that we collectively live in end times, then there is also no reason to believe in anything related to the message from Medjugorje. You can ignore it and in fact must ignore it, and stop promoting it before the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) unequivocally approves of its messages. But if we live in end times, Medjugorje is a cause for alarm. Which we then come to your statement above. You mentioned that something similar happened in time of Christ's first coming, that he was doubted in his works too. Or, that he could be doubted. Do not forget that Messiah was announced to come in the Old Testament in dozens of different places and details. He was not recognised, by some, as the prophesied Messiah. They skipped reading all the signs associated with him being the true God. They did not open eyes, somehow have missed important details. That is why some schools of thought still wait for Messiah's first coming. Christians, on the other hand, patiently await his second coming. In case of his second coming, Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Revelation, all of them literally scream about his imitators, false prophets and deceiving miracles appearing in times immediately preceding his second coming. The context of first and second coming is significantly different, thus your analogy does not work — it lacks scriptural references about warnings. With second coming, we have abundant warnings about tricksters. If you ignore them, then you put yourself in position of the expectation of a first coming. There is only one clear affirmation of Christ’s real appearance in the second coming: we shall see Christ in the sky, many angels with him, and that immediately before the terrible punishment that comes with him. Which means, when we see him, for many it will be too late even to hide, if they have missed reading warning signs and know what will happen. St Paul noted, our war is against the powers and principalities. Those are seriously equipped entities who can influence nature and elements, make real miracles to our eyes, imitate columns of clouds (like on that picture), and create fire out of thin air. We would not be warned if all what principalities can do are tricks people can learn with Little Magician’s Kit and DVD you can buy in gift shop.
How about this: "And from the altar came another angel, the same that had power over the fire on it, and cried aloud to the angel with the sharp sickle, Put in thy sharp sickle, and gather the grapes from earth’s vineyard; its clusters are ripe. So the angel put in his sickle over the earth, and gathered in earth’s vintage, which he threw into the great wine-press of God’s anger; and when the wine-press was trodden out, away from the city, blood came from the wine-press, and reached as high as a horse’s bridle, sixteen hundred furlongs off." It is not clear from the passage as to which city or place St John had in mind. Some commentators say it is Jerusalem, then Babylon (city that fits the description of it), some mention Harmageddon. We know from the Old Testament and Isaiah, that wine and vineyard describe those who confess faith, who call themselves faithful or the elect. The winepress of God's anger then sounds pretty damning. It is not just an ordinary punishment by the sword. Revelation Ch 19 says Christ comes again in glory with a sword, crook of iron and also winepress — it's the third instrument that is the bloodiest of all. This angel calling to reap the grapes, is especially furious. In the context of the punishment with it, it must signify great infidelity to real faith, great pretence and deliberate deceit in the name of faith.
ZMWT, That is a furious reaping by the Lord's command. I should have been clearer, Is the 'cleft' of rock that hid Moses from God's glory the same medjugorje we are speaking of? I think you are right, we should be very careful, but that place must average 20 priests on the altar for every mass, and for me personally, it was a great sign of hope. Could you put all the biblical references to medgugorje up here? Thanks
This thread has certainly produced some of the most odd writings I have read on this forum. What a way to start my day having to decipher what is going on - Armageddon out of here
