If the apparitions of Our Lady in Egypt are linked to the prophecy of the Woman adorned with the Sun in Rev 12, then the timing of her appearances at Assiut are extremely well placed to correspond with the previous conclusions I have drawn up concerning the significance of the turn of the millennium and its relation to the "War in Heaven". After they first began to occur inside the Church on 29th March, 2000, the apparitions at Assiut resumed (this time outside the Church) on 17th August - a year to the day after the earthquake in Izmit and during the Great Jubilee - the year which Fr Gobbi prophesied for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Message 532):
I confirm to you that, in time for the great Jubilee of the year two thousand, the triumph of my Immaculate Heart, which I foretold to you at Fatima, will come about and it will be brought about with the return with the return of Jesus in glory to establish His Kingdom in the world.
The above prophecy made by Fr Gobbi has been held up by scoffers as a spectacular failure. But it can be rescued if we accept the interpretation I have discussed in previous posts regarding the triumph of Mary - the point when she crushes the Serpent's head and Satan is cast to earth, as was foreseen by Jesus - "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18).
The mention of the return of Jesus in glory by Fr Gobbi remains problematic, but can probably be reconciled by the inclusion of the crucial "and". It is possible to interpret this statement as prophesying that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary would take place in time for the Great Jubilee Year 2000 and that it would also be brought about at the Second Coming. If this is the case, this would make the triumph take place between two points in time - it would take place in the year 2000, and would be brought to completion during the Second Coming. Anyway, I digress...
The apparitions at Assiut were notable in that some of the witnesses present described her as appearing with a sparkling box in her hand:
"I will never forget the night of the 28 September when my family and I stood on a rooftop on the eastern side of the church at 3:30am. It was just before dawn. At 4am a gleam of light appeared on the dome and moved on to the church spire. After about 25 minutes, the light began to take on the form of the Virgin Mary holding a square-shaped sparkling object in her right hand. She then appeared in the eastern and western church windows." (You can find the full article here).
As I argue in the book, the sealing of the saints in heaven described in Rev 7 takes place as part of the sequence of events which occur at the opening of the sixth seal. The sealing of the saints in heaven takes place to counter the implementation of the prophecy of the mark of the Beast, and these two events occur during the same time period. The sealing of the saints described in Rev 7 is also based on the Jewish practice of wearing phylacteries or tefillin - the name of God is placed on the foreheads of the saints in heaven to act as an antidote to the occurence of the mark of Beast on earth, who are marked with the "number" of the Antichrist. The sealing of the saints also reflects an earlier passage in Revelation, where we are told that the "overcomers" or "one who conquers" would be given a white stone inscribed with a name:
"To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it." (Rev 2:17)
Was the sparkling box held by Our Lady at Assiut a heavenly tefillin? And did this event signify the sealing of the saints in heaven after Satan was cast to earth?
I was in Assiut teaching English for four months and witnessed this twice. At the time, Assiut was officially off limits to foreigners due to recent violence and not many people outside of Egypt knew that this was taking place.
ReplyDeleteI am not religious at all and am convinced that there was a natural explanation. I met Father Zaka who invited me and some friends to watch from a prime viewpoint and asked if we could return and write down what we had seen to be part of the official report that would go to Pope Shenoudah to have the miracle recognised.
To this day I can't say what caused what we saw. It started about 1.00pm when a flash of light appeared and a dove circled the church. The crowd of thousands of pilgrims went wild. Over the next few hours the flashes increased in frequency and brightness. I thought at first that it could be flashes from cameras but there were thousands of those and they were too faint to register. This was like a giant spotlight was turned on. While the flashes took place, I looked at the direction the light should be coming form but saw nothing.
There must be a natural explanation but I could not work out what it was.
We returned to see Father Zaka the next day to fill out the report. He was very happy that we were skeptical as this gave a lot of weight to the report because we were not swayed by what we wanted to see but gave a factual report of what we actually saw.
One of the strangest things I have ever seen. So lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.