Originally Published 18 February 2021
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for He Who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.
6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.
By this we know the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4)
There is a question that is seldom ever asked anymore by people, when someone shows up claiming they have had visions from God, or angels, or saints:
Did you ask the spirit if they confess Jesus is God come in the flesh?
No record exists that anyone asked this of the apparition at La Salette, or at Fatima, Garabandal, Medjugorje, Bayside, or many other modern apparitions alleged to be Mary the Mother of God, angels, saints or Jesus Christ. If it was asked of the apparition, there is no record of it where the public can see it.
And that is both a grave error and a serious problem.
This problem has been growing in magnitude since the days of Pope Leo XIII, and although the details are too much to go into here, chief among them is that the average person has a badly diminished capability to discern what is the genuine truth from actual, divinely sanctioned apparitions, as opposed to what is false.
It’s no longer a matter of just checking to see whether the Church has approved a particular apparition or not. Since the 1920’s, the people put in charge of these matters have been using unsound methods of investigation, and as the decades have passed, their training, development and theology have deteriorated in quality and capability.
Aside from rarely asking if the apparition actually confesses that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God, the other problem is just as serious.
There are two kinds of false apparitions.
The first one, and the most common, arises one way or another from the kingdom of darkness directly, or indirectly as the consequence of mortal sin and poor mental health.
The other kind is less common, but even more dangerous, because there is a kind of false Apparition that comes from heaven to deliver judgment and justice. The Church authorities have been an utter failure at identifying these, especially in the post Vatican 2 era.
This is not going to be a rant against false apparitions, false prophecy, and false teaching.
You, the reader already know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. You already have the natural ability to tell the difference, and if the messages or other types of utterance from a seer seem to be contradictory to the Gospels, the catechism or the dogmatic teachings of the Church, then you should have nothing else to do with them, regardless of whether they have the imprimatur of the Church or not.
You have to put away the games and Christian ghost stories that were so wonderful and thrilling in your life as a child, for the life you knew as a child in the fallen world is no more.
The world we knew is dying. And the world we as Catholics are entered into is about to be born.
It’s a little scary at first, but there’s no need to fear. Just like entering young adulthood, it’s easier to move forward confidently when we find our feet.
Childhood is over now.
When we were children, a time came when we no longer had as much interest playing our favorite games, and we put our favorite toys and things away more often than we held them and played with them. We began taking interest in other things.
One day, without any signs warning us, and before we even realized it, our toys and playthings from childhood had been put away for years, and we were young adults.
At a certain point in their training, young soldiers, having passed Basic training and the beginning of their trades or specialty training, are told by older soldiers like me that their childhood is over, and the serious work of their lives is about to begin.
I usually found myself saying this in a formal classroom setting to young soldiers fresh out of the schools, when the selection and training process for another Tour of Duty somewhere was about to start.
Of course, most of them already knew that. But formally saying the words, ‘Childhood is over’ out loud need to be said. Then the student-soldiers know that we, their trainers, no longer see them as children incapable of handling trust and responsibilities, but as young men and young women who can and will be given trust, responsibility -- and where merited, our respect.
The words herald an act of Faith that we, the older soldiers make to younger, trained but as-yet untried soldiers.
When training is complete, if they earn that trust and merit the chance, we will take them with us into a war zone, and trust them with our lives.
So, yeah, it is a big deal.
And there were always some in every group of young soldiers who were a bit shocked when I told them those words.
They needed to hear them the most, because they were the last ones in the group to know.
Let’s get into a few things that every Catholic adult needs to know.
Within us – inside our souls – there is a kind of secret entrance.
Some have described it as a door or portal, others have called it a gate. We do not know if it is large or small, singular or double.
This entrance is believed to be the gate that the Kingdom of Heaven uses to enter into us when we are free of sin, and in a state of grace.
It is also thought that, if we are in a state of sin, this portal can be used to enter us by the kingdom of Darkness.
We are the watchmen of the secret door, as such. Our will grants entrance and forbids it, either to the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of darkness.
Against the forces of Heaven or hell, our wills would be like tissue paper in a wildfire if it were not for the fact that God Himself protects it with His own strength. No matter how weak our will is, the gates can not be entered by evil spirits to possess us without our permission.
They cannot touch our souls. But they are permitted to communicate in a limited manner and even within the strict limits enforced by Heaven this can be devastating enough.
The communication is usually without spoken words, using emotional impulses and mental imagery instead to tempt and manipulate a potential victim into sin.
The attacker is hidden in the spiritual realm and is beyond the detection of the five senses. The attacker can strike out either day or night, and while the victim is awake or asleep.
Remaining in a state of Grace severely diminishes the ability of evil spirits to communicate, cause temptations and unwanted infestations. And avoiding proximate occasions and causes of scandal and sin is everyone’s responsibility and duty.
Father Scott Brossart, a priest of Kansas City, recently wrote:
“Signs and wonders... It is an evil generation that seeks signs. Be very careful with private revelation (apparitions, locutions, etc.) as the devil lurks in hiding and is quite cunning (they are more brilliant than all of the Einsteins of every generation and have existed for millions of years) and will most often come as an angel of light (false light). We should still be open to signs and learn how to discern them and be able to tell what is good from evil (by their fruits) but we need the proper gift of discernment of spirits.
First of all, God will reveal Himself to those who are little, who believe in Him and have Faith while, at the same time, He will also hide Himself from the clever and the learned (those full of wisdom of this world and what is of it but not what matters to God). We should pay attention when He speaks or sends our Blessed Mother and not dismiss it outright for, when He speaks, He speaks for a very serious reason. But it isn't always Him or our Blessed Mother and most often not.
So, how do we know when it is Him or from Him (as in the case of authentic apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary) and when it is not? First of all, you can judge a tree by its fruit. God brings a deep inner peace, an increase in the supernatural gifts of a true and living Faith, a joyful hope, and authentic charity. Look for the fruits of the Holy Spirit for they will be present too (patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, chastity, modesty, joy, charity, faithfulness, peace, goodness and faith).
When it is of the world/flesh/demonic? Again, look at the fruits. Does it cause fear, confusion, doubt, increase in anxiety, lack of peace, etc. but you are drawn to it like a kid to candy who wants to get their "sugar fix"? If it is from God, it will be accompanied by the sign of Jonah (call to conversion) first and foremost which is a call to true repentance and turning away from all that offends God in our life and to turn back to Him humbly and authentically... a call to walk with Him daily. It will lead us back to the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Confession and worthily reception of the Holy Eucharist. It will also include a call to deeper prayer, turning away from the world and what is of it which includes a deeper spirit of fasting and mortification/acts of self-denial.
If the cross and what it means in our daily life isn't present, then I would quickly turn away. This is a mark of the antichrist.
Is it focused primarily on this world and what is happening... causing anxiety or fear? Again, run away. God really doesn't like giving time lines for He desires for us to always be converted, to always be ready and alert and to always walk with Him.
In the end, rather than seeking messages and signs which may or may not tell us what is happening in our current times, turn to Him, rest with Him, walk with Him and then you will have hope and inner joy and a deeper peace. Turn off the media and the sources of anxiety in your life, even if it seems to be coming from God.
Finally, if there is anything you are doing in your life that offends Him, stop it! Turn away and run back to Him. Confess your sins to Him in Confession and walk with Him fully. Share His goodness and kindness with others around you no matter who they are. There is no other sign of God greater than this.”
The only way out of this ruined world is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in the sunlight and under the light of the moon; all other ways lead to death. Just as the body will die without sleep, the whole human being will die without the One True Faith.
That is why it has been the practice from very ancient times to include an Act of Contrition in evening prayers before going to bed, and why we teach our children to pray at bedtime.
To go to sleep is a submission of our will to God. Whether as a willing act of humility, or as an unwilling act, we all, great and small, old and young – good or evil -- submit our will to God.
No exceptions.
Every time we go to bed, we literally put our lives in God’s hands and trust He will sustain that life for us in the night.
If you are waking up at night fearful and afraid from what you were dreaming, you did not receive it from Heaven or God. You received it from elsewhere, and God permitted it to happen. For His own reasons, He does this to test you and also to warn you when you are drifting away from Him.
If your mind is working on rebuttals and denials right now after reading that sentence, consider this: are you making an assumption that God is not listening to you, and not watching you all the time?
The God Who created everything, that knows exactly how many breaths you will take in the lifespan He has allotted you in this world, also knows every moment of you and the account of your life in a way no human accountant could ever match in precision and skill.
And as accurately as He knows us, He knows better than we ever could what is out there in the spirit realm part of the earth that could harm us. He truly protects us as a good shepherd would, ensuring that we do not stray so far out into it that we get lost out there, either while we are awake, or while we are sleeping.
Which is easy to do, considering that most people are not very lucid in the dream state, and remember few if any details of their dreams afterwards.
Our unfamiliarity with dreams and the spirit realm are a vulnerability, to be sure. Many people are gulled into false and even dangerous beliefs and practices, lured by the possibility that they may learn secret knowledge, or gain power.
Christianity is afflicted with the same crap, and from the beginning there were groups on the fringes of the early communities offering superstitions and false practices thinly disguised as Christian.
These days, it seems all you have to do is light a few votive candles and shake a Rosary or a bible under people’s noses, and they jump in with both feet, itching ears and open wallets.
But you can learn to discern the illusions and the idolatry from the real and true. And graces you receive from the Sacraments can really help.
Whether during our waking lives or in dreams, the gifts we receive from God are meant to help us grow in our relationship with God.
I’ll cite two examples. One from the waking world, and then a dream.
Pope John Paul II visited Canada in 1984. I was about 12. When he came to Vancouver, my school took us there to see him at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver.
A year ahead of my class, I had received Confirmation when I was 11, while my family were living in Manitoba. So, among all my friends, I found myself feeling very alone in a group dragged into this mayhem by the Teacher-Karens and our ‘Susan-From-The-Parish-Council’ Vice Principal.
It’s bad enough being 12, and then having something about you that makes you different from all of your classmates. Now I was a different 12 year old in a place like this, full of the largest crowd of people I had ever seen, who were all excited and eager for the same thing, and I was feeling a growing sense of separateness and disconnection.
He rode in to the stadium from below our seats in his little popemobile. I watched him give blessings to the crowds as he rode by to the stage, and it was then that I realized I was standing exactly at his back, and he couldn’t see me to bless me.
None of the dozens of cameras placed all over the stadium were pointed up at me. On the giant screens above the stage I could see everyone in the stadium crossing themselves, receiving his blessing, but no one could see me.
I looked all around me at what was happening. I saw how everyone around me was lost in the moment, a weird frenzy of excitement and adulation, and I was very shocked. I couldn’t get anyone to hear me, they were so zoned out and so keyed up in their excitement. It felt like I was somehow invisible to them. How could this be happening?
The whole time the Pope spoke, the crowd was never really silent, but it didn’t matter anyway, because with his heavily accented English spoken from the stage of the worst echo chamber ever built by lowest-bid contractors, I couldn’t understand a word he said. I’m pretty sure nobody else did either, and I am certain that no-one in that stadium cared.
Looking back on it now, I think that this was my first exposure to -- and repulsion of -- an act of public idolatry.
This wasn’t a prayer meeting, and it wasn’t Christian at all. It was somebody standing in a high place like Moses but this time, he was letting the Israelites worship him. It was no accident, it was on purpose. He knew what was happening, and he didn’t care. As young as I was, I understood that very well.
I never forgot that day. For a long time after that, I would look up at the forested mountains of British Columbia on my way to that school, wishing I could run away from the world I found myself in and live out there. In the years after, I certainly did take many trips alone out in those solitudes.
But in the end, I didn’t run away from the modern world. I learned instead how to leave it on purpose.
Only a little while later, I had a dream. Although dream journaling was becoming popular at that time, I wasn’t really keeping one, but that period of time in my life was very turbulent, and I often would write my thoughts, feelings and other things out in little cheap scribblers I could buy with my allowance.
I had written pages of text about the papal visit, and what happened. The main question I seemed to have at the time was normal enough – why did all that happen to me? When you’re 12, the world is still supposed to revolve around you, and at that age I was the average selfish twit wondering why it didn’t.
But I was also very aware that something VERY CATHOLIC was supposed to have happened for my benefit, and I just felt completely cheated, wondering if I did something wrong and was at fault for not being changed at all by this experience.
The other kids my age really did seem to have been affected. The teachers at school were still talking about it weeks later, like it was the event of their lives.
So I kept asking myself, what’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong?
Then one night, I had this dream. It was very long, and so detailed and clear when I woke up that I grabbed my journal and wrote everything I could remember right away.
‘There was someone walking with me in the dream the whole time, but at first, I mainly focused on what I saw. In the beginning of the dream we were walking along a dirt road. No gravel, just dirt, like a summer road in the country. I don’t remember being cold, but on the left side of the road, there was a wire fence, and beyond was an endless winter scene of a harvested wheat field. As far as I could see there was only drifted snow and stubble. The sky was grey, and I could see nothing else to the far horizon.’
‘The road eventually became a gravel road, and started curving to the right. On the right side of the road was a vast expanse of flowing water, but it was not easy to see if it was a river, or a racing tide at the edge of a great sea. I could see in the distance a navy ship patrolling the shore. On the foredeck was a man in an old fashioned Captain’s uniform. He was looking for technicians and engineers. I had the impression then that we had escaped him. Then he saw us, and turned to look straight at us. But when he did, he looked shocked, and instead of moving the ship toward us he let it drift away.’
‘The road had become a paved road now, and we left behind the wire fenced field. On the left were beautiful flower gardens, and there were tall stately elm and maple trees on either side of the road. It was sunny and springtime, and the lawns were very green.’
‘The road changed again into a brick lined driveway, and the next thing we came to was a circular courtyard in front of an immense white house. In the center of the courtyard there was a disused fountain. There was no water in the pool, only leaves and dirt, and I couldn’t see the statue because it was covered in dead moss, bird droppings and dry leaves.’
‘But the house caught my attention now. It was truly immense, easily as big as the old plantation houses from the Southern US, and in a way, just as grand as the summer houses of the merchant princes of Italy on the Mediterranean. But it had almost no windows, and the few that it had were strangely small, like small bathroom windows. There was no porch, and there were no columns of any kind. It had only a single, huge door, painted black.’
‘We went into the house, and it got even stranger. Instead of seeing furniture and paintings, the inside of the house was empty and unfinished. None of the walls had plaster and all of the studs and beams were exposed. There didn’t seem to be finished floors above us when I looked into the gloom. There were staircases and landings everywhere, some very grand, and others looking very plain. Up into the shadows they climbed and turned, like a labyrinth.’
‘We began to climb the stairs. No light could be seen coming in from the tiny windows, and much of the place was hidden in deep shadow. On every landing standing near the walls there were many people, with their faces always hidden from my view. I knew, or was told, that some were soldiers and some were convicts, and as we made our way into the labyrinth, we saw more and more of them. Sometimes they whispered things I couldn’t make out. Sometimes, groups of them would try to stop us, and we had to fight them to go on.’
‘Eventually, we began to descend into the deepest part, and I could hear the sound of machinery.
When we came to the end of the staircases at the bottom, there were many machines and huge engines of some kind. There were men here too, working around the machines. We moved past these. We were seeking someone in particular, who had something we came to get.’
‘The man we sought was dressed as a blacksmith, and wearing a welder’s leather cap. His face was old, but he looked very strong and very tough. I remember his eyes were brown. He had just finished making something, and brought it from his forge to us so we could look at it.’
‘I knew it was what we had come for. I somehow knew that it was called a Clef, which was an old French word for a key. Part of it was gold, and part of it was made from brass pipe, and it was somewhat shaped like a bass clef, but I knew that it was also a kind of key for something the one who was with me in the dream already had.
The blacksmith gave it to me, and the other one with me handed me a small cloth bag. It looked a lot like the old soft cloth bags you got with Crown Royal whiskey bottles, with the same kind of royal purple colour. I had a difficult time placing the clef into the bag, and as I was trying to do so, I moved into a beam of light to see better. Once I had it in the bag, I looked up, and I saw that the source of light was actually a sunbeam, from a small dirty window far up in the immense gloom above me.’
‘We began to rise up inside the sunbeam toward the window. The last thing I see is the outline of the courtyard on the other side of it, and then the dream ends.’
As with many dreams, there were parts I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t shake the certainty that this dream was an answer. Eventually, though, I put it aside and let it be.
Time passed.
Some years ago when I retired, I found that old journal again among boxes of things I had kept in storage. I have no idea how it got there, or even survived so many moves. But somehow, without my even knowing it, this journal had come with me, and after almost 30 years, I read it once again. The boy I once was put a lot of details in that I did not include in this digest version. It ran to almost 20 pages, and stopped because I had run out of pages to write on.
But sentence after sentence, and page after page, I could identify everything in that dream. Everything in it was true, it turned out.
Sometimes literally, such as the fact that I did briefly transfer from the army to the Canadian Navy, studied for a while at the Naval Engineering school in Halifax, and then returned to the army again.
It was also true that I felt as relieved as anyone would feel to have narrowly escaped a trap. I had gone there pursuing a technical engineering trade, and it wasn’t going to work out, either career-wise or personally, but going back to my old trade came with a renewed sense of appreciation and purpose. The man on the boat in a navy uniform was a real person too: he was the Admiral in command of the east coast Navy that I served under.
The dream was an answer, after all. A very clear and truthful one at that, but it was an answer my 12 year old self wouldn’t fully understand until I had lived for 30 more years. At that age, I did understand enough to help me see that being different was not the same as being wrong or bad. And that being different was often the better answer to the conclusions and condemnations of the group. Especially if you find yourself going to a Catholic school that doesn’t teach anyone how to be a Catholic, and nobody in it acts like one, or even cares.
That’s all very well, you might say, but of what use is a dream that foretells your future if you don’t know it’s true until thirty years later? What is the good in that?
But I didn’t ask about the future.
I asked about what happened at the pope’s visit, and what was wrong with me.
The dream’s answer was clear enough for me even back then: I did nothing wrong.
There was nothing wrong with me, but there was something wrong with what happened that day in the stadium and with the other people there, including my classmates and teachers.
And as an adult, years later, not only did I understand this, but I could see very clearly that the dream was showing me how my life and my choices would be always be different, and I would always come through, because of my faith. I could see how and why the companions of my younger life would not leave the labyrinth, and could not follow where I was going. Because they had no faith.
The answers I saw as an adult from that dream given to a 12 year boy were not the product of his mental faculties, nor could they ever be any of the typical, fashionable or trite answers given by either scientific or “spiritual” experts from the world. They were too clear, and too true.
That dream was an answer to a question that was too important NOT to answer.
But with conditions:
The dream record was meant to be laid aside and lost, and it was also meant to be found again by me -- at the right time.
All in God’s good time. Which is frightening, frustrating and useless for the worldly and the faithless but just what was needed for me.
The world, the flesh and devil do not work this way. Something is always out of whack in the matter, form or intention whenever any of those are involved, to frighten, confuse, and always to hurt.
No, the world, the flesh and the devil do not work that way.
But God does. He works this way. God will reveal Himself to those who are little, who believe in Him and have Faith. The “still, small voice of God" does not require years of training, experience and the amazing perseverance of the saints to be able to be listened to. It is simpler than that.
He waits for us to become like unto little children to whisper prophecies and visions of his Kingdom.
He waits to do this every night when we lay down to sleep.
Fantastic. Its so interesting to hear this because I had almost the exact same Papal experience at almost the same age but with Benedict XVI and not JP2.