To Hear the Prophets is to Hear God

David Martin | The Daily Knight

A deplorable evil seen throughout the ages is that people reject the prophets that God sends for their instruction and eternal happiness. Whether it was Jeremias the prophet, or Christ, the King of prophets, or New Testament prophets like those at Fatima and La Salette, they were persecuted because people placed their small-minded pursuits above things eternal.

When society turns a cold shoulder to heavenly prophecies like those given at Fatima and Garabandal, it is a clear indication that society is not attuned to God. It indeed is a good litmus test for assessing the spirituality of society.

In St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion to Mary,” he describes the slaves of fallen human nature as being “more proud than demons” and “more worldly than toads.” That is, they cleave to the earth and to the things of this world while casting off the true gold of Heaven. Many loath prophecy because they see it as an unwanted interference into their pursuits of fake success, money, and acclaim, but what good does it do a man if he has $billions and multi-PhDs, or he is CEO of multi-organizations? Will that save his soul in the end?

Beware of Fool’s Gold

The desire for acclaim or riches is the very thing that corrupts a person. It’s like heroin addiction or sexual obsession, it’s dung, yet people see it as some sort of valued treasure. They waste their life trying to impress others so that in the end they are left with no merits to cover their sins when they must stand in judgment before God. As they say, we can’t take our possessions to Heaven in a U-Haul; all that remains behind. Only love and prayers can follow us into the next life.

It was for reason that Christ said, “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.” (Luke 13:24) That is, their possessions and worldly attachments will prevent them from passing through that narrow gate.

God in His Mercy Sends us Prophets

In our confused age when humanity at large is veering off the straight and narrow, God in his mercy has sent latter-day prophets to warn us of a divine intervention that now looms on the horizon. And this he does not to scold us but to give us every chance to live better lives and avert the coming chastisement. The prophecies of Garabandal, Bayside, and Akita especially warn of the hand of justice that will soon be set upon humanity. The table is being set for World War III because the sins of man now cry to heaven for vengeance, especially the sins of homosexuality and abortion.

That God would speak directly to man seems too good to be true, yet it is true, but people murmur at this and turn a deaf ear to these tokens of mercy because they are preoccupied with ‘other things,’ namely, the world and not God.

Ecclesial Change Steeped in Ingratitude

This is reflected in the many changes and innovations that have subverted the Church since Vatican II. Rome’s latest liturgical abomination, Pro Custodia Creationis or Mass for the Care of Creation, is grounded in Pope Francis’ 2015 green encyclical Laudato Si. This newest invention seeks to make the planet and not God our focal point, even referring to earth as “our common home,” which Christ never taught. The Catholic Church teaches that Heaven is our common home, not earth, and that we are to take care of our souls, not the earth. Christ never exhorted us to pamper “Mother Earth” but to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling.” (Phil. 2:12) Under the pretext of appreciating God’s creation, Vatican innovators are engaging in idolatrous planet worship, which is steeped in Ingratitude.

Christ gave us his Church, which knows no change, yet we see man today trying to change his Church only because they don’t like the one that he gave us. What Christ told the Pharisees he would tell today’s bishops and cardinals: “You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.” (John 8:23) Secularized bishops are calling for “change,” “change,” change,” and then they call their change “reform.” And when God sends his messengers to enlighten their path, they throw a fit and call their tantrum “obedience.”

Christ Spoke through a Prophet of our Time

Bringing it home, we again quote from Christ’s message to his clergy as given through the late seer Veronica of Bayside, who was a prophet of our time.

“I come once more with an urgent and pleading message to the hierarchy in the Church, My Church upon earth. I want you to know now that We look upon you and find many that do not fall into grace. They are falling out of grace and misleading many of Our sheep.

"Therefore, I warn you now as your God: You will stop your intricacies within My Church. You will stop experimenting. I gave you the rules to follow many years ago, two thousand years approximately. And why now, two thousand years later, do you deem it necessary to change My Church upon earth? I, your God, say to you, you will be judged accordingly. You will return My Church to its former glory, and in that manner you will have more vocations and more entering the seminaries, and not fleeing from them as they hear the heresies and all other innovations that are going on within My Church. This is My last and final word to My clergy: Change now or suffer a just punishment and banishment.” (June 18, 1986)

Seers like Veronica or the four children of Garabandal are called seers but they in fact were prophets sent by God to correct our path. The post-conciliar teaching that we don’t have to obey revelations and prophecies holds no water. St. Paul exhorts us to “Despise not prophecies” (1 Thess: 5:20), which means we are to heed them.

The First Vatican Council teaches:

God has willed that external proofs of his revelation, namely divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies, should be added to the internal aids given by the Holy Spirit. Since these proofs so excellently display God’s omnipotence and limitless knowledge, they constitute the surest signs of divine revelation, signs that are suitable to everyone’s understanding.

The Lesson of Lazarus and the Rich Man

The sixteenth chapter of St. Luke provides a valuable lesson on the value of suffering and also the necessity of hearing the prophets that God sends us. Therein we read of a certain rich man clothed in fine linen who feasted sumptuously every day, and a certain beggar named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores, who no one so much as gave a crumb of bread from the rich man’s table to eat. The beggar eventually died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom, after which the rich man also died and was buried in hell.

“And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom: And he cried, and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted; and thou art tormented….

“And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance.

“And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.” (Luke 16:23-31)

One Must Hear the Prophets to Hear God

The lesson: he who hears the prophets hears God, and he who rejects the prophets rejects God. One who hears not the prophets will neither hear Christ even if one were to rise from the dead. The Pharisees and the Jews rejected Moses and the prophets and refused to hear them so that they neither heard Christ when he came into the world. They rather killed him. Had they honored Moses and the prophets they perhaps would have had the grace to honor Christ, but their rejection of the prophets left them blind and deficient because it is through the prophets that God speaks to us.

As Scripture says:

“For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)