I thought this was very cool. I just liked this story so I wanted to share it here. You can find more teachings on various bible topics at the link below.
Pelican Feeding Her Chicks. Symbol of Jesus Feeding His Church with His Body & Blood.
JESUS COMMENTS ON DANIEL CHAPTER 7
Jesus says:
"Daniel is the one who has the same note as John, and John is the one who gathers in and amplifies Daniel's initial note. That is why you, Little John, [
Jesus calls Maria Valtorta little john] like him so much.
Like a fish in a clear fishpond, you are happy when you move in the atmosphere of your Christ, who will have His supreme triumph in the hour when Satan, his son, and his courtiers are rendered powerless forever. And in Daniel this atmosphere is present. If Isaiah is the pre-evengelist who speaks of My coming into the world for the salvation of the world (Isaish 2:1-5; 7:10-17; 9:1-6; 11:1-9), Daniel is the pre-apostle, the pre-John who announces the glories of My eternal triumph as King of the everlasting Jerusalem.
Now see the way the signs of the diabolical ministers of the Apocalypse (Rev. ch. 13 & 17; 19:11-20:10) are foreshadowed in the four beasts described by Daniel (7:1-8, 11-12, 15-25). The commentators have labored to provide a historic-human meaning for those four monsters. But it is necessary to project one's gaze much futher ahead and much higher. When you meditate on the holy books, lift yourselves above the earth, detach yourselves from the present moment, and project your gaze into the future and the supernatural. The key to the mystery is there.
The four beasts: the four errors which will precede the end. The four errors which will be four horrors for mankind and which will give birth to the final Horror.
Man was a demigod through Grace and Faith. Like an eagle and a lion, he was able to face and overcome the dangers of sense and raise himself to soar in the atmosphere of God, where the soul is joined to her Lord in a supernatural marriage, in continual, swift unions of burning passion, from which she descends to the earth each time renewed in strength, joy, and charity, which she pours upon her brothers and sisters, and she then rises again, even more impetuously, towards God, for every union is an increase in perfection which is fulfilled when union becomes eternal in My Paradise.
Atheism tore away man's wings as an eagle and heart as a demigod and made him into an animal walking in the mire and bearing over the mire, towards the mire, his oppresive heart, entirely of flesh and blood. In his selfhood, deprived of the spiritual wings of the spirit, man bears a weight heavier than lead, a weight bending him over, knocking him down, and plunging him into the mire.
Man was a demigod because of the Charity living in him. In loving God and His Law, which is the law of Charity, he possessed God and, with God, Peace, which is one of God's main attributes, and with peace, so much universal and individual good.
Man rejected the Law of God to take up many other doctrines. But none of them was or is of God, and true Charity is thus not in any of them. Hence man, who had embraced atheism, changing from an eagle and a lion into a mere man, through a hellish sorcery gave birth to himself turned into a bear, the fierce devourer of his fellows.
But horror produces horror. By an ascending ladder. Horror is ever greater, for in accursed unions with Satan, man whom Christ brought back to his nature as a demigod, generates increasingly monstrous monsters. And they are the children of his erring, sold to Satan to receive his earthly assistance.
From man the demigod came man; from man, the bear; from the bear, the new monster, ferocious and false as the leapard, endowed by Satan with multiple wings so as to be swifter in doing harm. I told you that Satan is the aper of God. He too thus wanted to give wings to 'his' child--by now his child--to humanity without Faith and without God.
Not the wings of an eagle, but of a vampire. so that it would be a nightmare for humanity itself and be quick to rush down upon its own parts, the victims of itself, to suck their blood.
The mystical pelican, I have opened My Heart to give you My Blood. Satan makes man--to whom I have given My Blood--the vampire that sucks parts of itself and slays itself with torment.
Doesn't it sound like a nightmarish legend? It is, however, your reality. It is not a mythical monster. It is you with diabolical hunger devour part of yourselves, bleeding yourselves to death, mutilating yourselves so as to generate afterwards the new parts, while you devour those already formed, with a continuity which has a maniacal aspect to it--diabolically maniacal, however.
Power which is willed, pushed forward, and imposed to the point of crime is the third beast. Since it is human power--that is, sold to Satan just to become increasingly powerful, going against every divine and moral law--it begets its monster, whose name is Revolution and which, in keeping with its nature, bears in the protuberances of its monstrosity all the fiercest horrors of revolutions, the social shipwreck of Good and Faith.
Honesty, respect, morality, religion, freedom, and goodness die when this monster exhales its hellish breath upon a nation, and like a pestiferous emission it expands beyond these confines, infecting the whole world, preparing--over the ruins of the nations reduced to rubble--the cradle for the final monster: the Antichrist.
I told you that he would be the son of man's lust, born of the marriage of lust with the Beast. I told you. I do not change in My mode of expression. What I say is true. I know it with no need to read it; I remember it with no need to reread it. It is written in My mind as God, before which there incessantly flow over each other all the events of man in time, without one's impeding the vision of another.
The Antichrist, the perfection of Horror, as I was the perfection of Perfection, with his numberless weapons, symbolized by the ten horns, his jaws toothed with iron, his savage feet, and, finally, his small horn, a symbol of the extreme hatred with which Satan will endow his son to corrupt humanity as he seduces it with his lying mouth, having himself worshipped as a god, will excessively torment those who, as a little faithful flock, will remain My followers. The little horn will grow by the hour to do harm; the Satanic intelligence will grow to make the mouth tell the most distressing lies; he will grow in power as I grew in wisdom and grace (Lk. 2:40) armed with eyes to read the thought of holy men and kill them through that thought.
Oh, My saints of the last time! If the life of the early ones amidst the persecutions of paganism was heroic, three times, seven times, and seven times seven times as holy will be the life of My last saints! Only those nourished with the crumb of Faith will be able to have a lion's heart to face those torments and the eyes and feathers of an eagle to gaze steadily at Me as Sun and fly to Me as Truth, as the darkness overwhelms them on all sides and Deceit tries to persuade them to worship it and believe in it.
After the forerunners of the Antichrist, the Antichrist himself will come. The anti-Christian period, symbolized by the Beast armed with ten horns--the ten servants, who are believed to be kings, of Satan, three of whom (note carefully) will be torn away and cast into nothingness (that is, into the abyss where Godis not present and where there is thus Nothingness, the opposite of God, who is All)--will culminate in the birth and growth of the eleventh horn to the point of its maximum power, the reason for the fall of the threee forerunners, and the seat of the true Antichrist, who will curse God as no son of man ever did, trample upon God's saints, and torture the Church of Christ; since he will be the son of the union of demoniac pride with human lust, he will think 'he can do great things and change the times and laws' and for three and a half years he will be Horror reigning over the world.
Then the Father will say 'Enough,' before the immense choir that will be formed in Heaven through the 'sound of the solemn words' of the saints; and the wicked Beast will be slain and cast into the well of the abyss and, along with it, all the lesser beasts, to remain there with Satan, their begetter, for eternity.
I shall then be called by the Father to 'judge the living and the dead', as stated in the Symbol of the Faith. And the 'living', those who persevered life in themselves by having kept Grace and Faith alive, will inherit 'the kingdom, the power and the magnificence of God." The spiritually dead will receive eternal Death as their will has chosen to receive.
And then there will no longer be the Earth, of fleshly man. But there will be only 'children of God', creatures freed from all pain, and there will no longer be sin, and there will no longer be darkness, and there will no longer be fear. But only joy, joy, immense, eternal joy inconceivable for men. The joy of seeing God, of possessing Him, and of understanding His thought and love.
Come, O men, to the Fount of Life. I open its source to you. Draw from it, fortify yourselves in it so as to be intrepid in trials and come to immerse yourselves completely in it, in Me, the source of blessedness, in the lovely Paradise which My Father has created for you and in which the threefold Love of the One God and the Purity of 'our' Mother await you and, along with them, those who, by having been faithful, have already obtained Life."
oday in the news, I saw a picture of a sad-faced man condemned to die by, believe it or not, a firing squad!
oday I heard the news of someone who committed suicide also. He was a regular forum member of a popular and well known social networking site. I felt the sadness and condolences of all those near and dear to him as they shared past experiences and how much he meant to each one of them, touched beyond belief they allowed a moments grief over the loss of his life . I thought of what todays reflection of scripture might mean.... Divine Justice or Divine Mercy . I hope God's Mercy in this case because he was an atheist; irregardless, I don't mean any disrespect; I fully believe atheists are created in God's image and therefore are children of God as well. The more sick or wretched a person is , the more they are in need of a physician and the more love and care they require. I think wretchedness attracts God's Mercy . Again I don't mean any disrespect in that, because God's Grace is amazing and saved a wretch like me :P I'm just sayin...
oday is the beginning of May traditionally called Marys Month. 