The Prophecy Of Monk Johannes
Foretold In 1600
Note: The following prophecy of Monk Johannes, made in the year 1600 makes interesting reading. Much has already come to pass. David S. Ward writes to a Harrogate contemporary:
Through the kindness of a Belgian judge, whom I met in London, I received a copy of an exceedingly interesting old prediction made in 1600 evidently referring to the present war raging on the continent, and thinking it might have some interest to your readers I have pleasure in forwarding it to your readers for your perusal. As a proof of its genuineness, I may say this gentlemen assured me he had a copy of this prophecy as far back as the Antwerp Exhibition. Some of the French words uses, are I believe, very old, this being also indirect testimony to its age. Your, readers must, of course, allow for the religious preconceptions of the author, as altogether apart from this, its precise detail is, to say the least, remarkable. Latin prophesy:
1. Several times has one seemed to recognize him because all slayers of the Lamb resemble each other and all the wicked are the precursors of the Great Wicked One.
2. The veritable Antichrist will be one of the monarchs of his time, a son of Luther; he will invoke God and call himself His messenger.
3. The Prince of Lies will swear by the Bible; he will call himself the arm of the most High, chastising corrupted people.
4. He will only have one arm, but his innumerable armies, who will take as their motto “God is with us,” will seem like infernal legions.
5. For a long while he will act by ruse and treason; his spies will spread all over the earth, and he will be the master of the secret of those in power.
6. He will have theologians in his pay to certify and prove his celestial mission.
7. A war will furnish him with the reason for lifting his mask. It will not be one, which he will make against the French monarch, but another, which will be easily recognized by the fact that in two weeks’ time it will have become universal.
8. It will call to arms all Christians, all Mohammedans, and even other very distant people. Armies will be formed in four parts of the world.
9. For men’s mind will be opened by angels, and in the third week they will understand that this is the Antichrist and that they will all become slaves if they do not trample down this conquering one.
10. The Antichrist will be recognizable by several marks, he will chiefly massacre priests, monks, women and children and old people. He will show no mercy; he will pass along holding a torch like the barbarians, but invoking the name of Christ.
11. His false words will resemble those of Christians, but his acts will be those of Nero and the Roman persecutors; there will be an eagle in his coats of arms, and there will also be one in that of his confederate, the other wicked monarch.
12. But this one is a Christian and he will die cursed by the Pope Benedictus, who will be elected at the beginning of the reign of the Antichrist.
13. Priests and monks will no longer be seen confessing and absolving the combatants, because for the first time priests and monks will fight with other citizens; and also because Pope Benedictus having cursed the Antichrist, it will be proclaimed that all those who wage war against him will be in a state of grace, and should they die will, like martyrs, go straight to heaven.
14. The pope’s “bull” proclaiming these things will make a great sensation and will cause the death of the monarch, the Antichrist’s ally.
15. In order to conquer the Antichrist more men must be killed than Rome has ever held. It will require an effort from all lands, for the cock, the leopard and the white eagle would not suffice to overcome the black eagle if they were not helped by prayers of all the Roman race.
16. Never before has humanity been in such peril, for the triumph of the Antichrist would be that of Demon, in whom he is incarnated.
17. For it had been said that twenty centuries after the incarnation of the world, the beast in his turn would be incarnated, and would threaten the earth with as many evils as the Divine Incarnation had brought in graces.
18. Near the year two thousand the Antichrist will appear; his army will surpass in numbers anything before imagined; there will be Christians among his hordes, and among the defenders of the Lamb there will be Mohammedans and savage tribes.
19. For the first time the Lamb will be entirely red; in the whole of the Christian world there will not be a space that will not be red, and the heavens, the earth, the water and even the air will be red, for blood will flow in the sphere of the four elements at the same time.
20. The black eagle will throw itself upon the cock, which will lose many of its feathers, but will strike heroically with its spur. It would be soon annihilated were it not for the help of the leopard and its claws.
21. The black eagle, which will come from the land of Luther, will surprise the cock by another side and will invade half of the land of the cock.
22. The white eagle will come from the north, will surprise the black eagle and the other eagle and will completely invade the land of the Antichrist from one end to the other.
23. The black eagle will be forced to leave the cock to fight the white eagle, and the cock will pursue the black eagle into the land of the Antichrist to help the white eagle.
24. The battle waged until then will be small in comparison to those that will take in the land of Luther. Because the seven angels will at the same time pour fire from their burner on the impious land (image taken from the Apocalypse), which means that the Lamb will order the extermination of the Antichrist’s race.
25. When the beast sees he is lost he will become furious; during months the beak of the white eagle the claws of the people and the spurs of the cock will harass him.
26. Rivers will be crossed on stepping-stones of corpses, which in some cases will change the course of the water. Only great noblemen, superior officers and princes will receive burial for to the carnage caused by firearms will be added the piling up of those who perished by famine and plague.
27. The Antichrist will several times ask for peace, but seven angels who precede the three animals, defenders of the Lamb, have said victory shall only be accorded on the condition that the Antichrist be crushed like a straw on the threshing floor.
28. Executors of the Lamb’s justice, these three animals cannot stop fighting so long as a soldier remains to the Antichrist.
29. The reason the sentence of the Lamb is implacable is that the Antichrist has pretended to be a Christian and to be acting in His name, so that if he did not perish the fruit of redemption would be lost and the gates of hell prevail against the Saviour.
30. It will be seen that it is not human combat, which will be waged where the Antichrist forges his arms. The three animals, defenders of the Lamb, will exterminate the Antichrist’s last army. But the battlefield will become as an altar of sacrifice larger than the greatest cities, and the corpses will have changed its shape by raising in it chains of mounds.
31. The Antichrist will lose his crown and will dies demented and alone. His empire will be divided into twenty-two states, but none will have either a royal house, an army or vessels.
32. The white eagle, by Michael’s order, will chase the Crescent from Europe, where only Christians will remain. It will occupy Constantinople.
33. Then an era of peace and prosperity will commence for all the universe and there will be no more war; each nation being governed according to its wish and living in justice.
34. There will be no more Lutherans or Schismatics. The Lamb will reign and the joys of humanity will commence. Happy they who, escaping from the perils of the prodigious time, can taste of its fruit, which will be the reign of the Eternal Spirit, and the sanctification of humanity, only to be achieved by the defeat of the Antichrist.
According to a note added apparently by the translator, France is figured by the Cock, England by the Leopard, Russia as the White Eagle, and Germany and Austria by the Black Eagle and the other “eagle” figures France. This prophecy was published in 1917 and in 1940 in various newspapers.
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Mother Shipton’s Prophesy
Because of the uncanny manner in which the prophecies of Mother Shipton have been coming to pass during the century past, considerable attention has been attracted to this strange woman of five centuries ago, even those who have in the past scoffed at the peculiar prediction of this woman are now stirred by curiosity to wonder what will occur next in this direction.
Mother Shipton, we are told, was born in Yorkshire, England, in July 1488, and died in 1559. In books of information she is described as a half mythical English prophetess, baptized Ursula Southeil, who later married Tony Shipton, a builder.
A house of glass shall come to pass
In merry England, but alas!
War will follow with the work
In the land of the bloody Turk,
And State and State in fierce strife,
Shall struggle for each other’s life.
Carriages without horses shall go
And accidents fill the world with woe.
And the center of a bishop’s see,
In London, Primrose Hill, shall be.
Around the world thought shall fly
In the twinkle of an eye.
Through the hills men shall ride
And neither horse nor ass bestride!
Under water men shall walk,
Iron in the water shall float
As easily as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found and shown
In a land that’s now unknown.
Fire and water shall wonder do
And England shall admit a Jew.
Three times three shall lovely France
Be led to dance a bloody dance
Before the people shall be free;
Three tyrant rulers shall she see
Each spring from a different dynasty.
And when the last great fight is won
England and France shall be as one.
And now a word in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in later time.
In those wonderful far-off days
Women shall get a strange new craze
To dress like men and breeches wear
And cut off their beautiful locks of hair,
And ride astride with brazen brow,
As witches do on broomsticks now.
Then love shall die and marriage cease
And babies and sucklings so decrease
That wives shall fondle cats and dogs
And men live much the same as hogs.
In eighteen hundred and ninety-six
Build your house of rotten sticks
For then shall mighty wars be planned
And fire and sword sweep over the land,
And those who live the century through
In fear and trembling this will do.
Fly to the mountains and the glens,
To bogs and forests and wild dens,
For tempests will rage and oceans will roar,
And Gabriel stand on sea and shore
And as he toots his wondrous horn
Old worlds will die and new be born.
In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black and also green,
Now strange, but yet they shall be true
The world upside down shall be,
And gold shall be found at the roots of a tree.
When picture look alive and movements free,
When ships like fishes swim below the sea,
When men, outstripping bird, can scour the sky,
Then half the world deep drenched in blood shall die.
At the time the prophecy was uttered, Primrose Hill was two and a half miles from London; now it is nearly the heart of the city, but a short distance from Regent’s Square.