Woman of Revelation Series: Spiritual Construction

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

This is the Woman of Revelation Series with a Friend of Medjugorje.

 

[CLIP]

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

These apparitions are the most important apparitions in the history of the world. This was designed from the beginning of the world because God knew what was going to happen, and He knew they would throw away the gift of salvation, Jesus Christ. And our society has done this at this point. He has thrown away.

 

[END CLIP]

[COC]

And that was a Friend of Medjugorje on January 2, 2008. Our Lady gave a very important message on that day. A Friend of Medjugorje is going to talk all about that tonight. He also shares why he started Radio WAVE to begin with. And through the course of this broadcast, he tells of something that we all need to go back to, those who have been involved with Medjugorje for a long time, and those who are just new to Medjugorje, and that is our spiritual construction.

 

And so, here is a Friend of Medjugorje January 2, 2008.

 

[CLIP]

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, tonight we want to welcome you to be with us again. It’s always a joy for us to be able to meet with you and be brought into your homes and to be able to discuss Our Lady, Her messages, fresh.

 

I know one thing that was in the Medjugorje movement that we were able to do as a community is, that when the message came out, we thought about it. We discussed it. We had dinner that night. We…it was our conversation, or according to the profoundness of the way Our Lady gave it to us, or Her words. And we took it for granted for such a long time and not realizing how many people are out there that didn’t have any other Medjugorje people that had no center to turn to, and something to evolve around that would hear the messages be discussed and the topics discussed about it or how to apply it to life. And we find in our own selves, when we discuss it, we learn about the message. We understand more about the message. We go into prayer about it, and it’s something that we, of course, in the messages hear in community every single day. In fact, we open our morning prayers or gathering of our workdays, we pick the message for the day. And these messages are constantly in our hearts, and it’s constantly what we do and it’s what our life’s called to.

 

But we see through mej.com now and Radio WAVE, especially, that, where people were so lonely in this sense, that you might want to say, of getting the message and then nothing to share or nothing to see what was discussed about. Nothing to talk about or nothing to equate it to other than their little world, but what was everybody else in the rest of the world thinking about it?

 

And so, it’s a joy that we can come through Radio WAVE to the whole world and speak about that and come into your homes and give you a little bit about what we have in our community. And when Our Lady asked a 1988 for the Community to be established, when She appeared in the Bedroom, it was a shock to hear that. And there was no rushing out to make that happen. Of course, many of you may know the story. I didn’t want that to happen, but I wanted to do the will of God and the will of God’s not always what you want. And if you want God’s will, then you’re going to be doing things you might not want to do. But maybe that’s the criteria for it being successful, that it’s not your ambition. It’s not your desire, but God’s, and when you come in union with God’s will, then things flourish and that’s what’s happened with the Community itself.

 

But through that, we evolved into being able to really take the message and then do what we do and turn it into our life. And so, that’s what we live here in the work of Our Lady and spreading Her message. And through this, now, we can share this in a more intimate way through Radio WAVE, and it’s a close-out year of what we just finished in ‘07, which was really amazing for a first-time broadcast of a year and then also for mej.com and what it did. We had just at seven million hits for the whole year, which is really phenomenal for starting at a zero base, zero ground level and coming up to that point. A lot of people who are aware of it or in the works of the web and what it does says it’s very, very good.

 

So we realize Our Lady’s graced us with this and She’s blessed us. And we hope 2008…We have a lot of plans on the drawing board and a lot more we want to do as far as spreading Our Lady’s messages in ways that She’s inspired us to do that.

 

And so, being able to look at these messages and discuss them, hopefully it’ll open up into your heart more things that you can see or spark something that we might not even say, but because we say it, you go to another higher point of applying the message to your life.

 

I know, years ago I was in Rome at St Peter’s. And I was looking at the altar where the Pope says mass, and it’s got these big, swirly four posts that hold up the huge canopy at St. Peter’s. You’ve seen the pictures and those who’ve been there have seen it in person. And it was always amazing to me, where did Benini get this idea? Where did he get the concept to design this? And then on the altar, there’s some similar design work like that. And years later, I was able to be able to go into an archaeological walk underneath the Vatican, which is hard to get into, that you have to go to Rome when you go there and then ask for permission to be called, and then they call you if you’re doing you’re trip, and you may get called, and you may not.

 

And so, going on as archaeological walk, during World War II when they were going to do something to the Vatican floor, and they found out something was underneath it, that they began to secretly excavate underneath the Vatican. And in doing so, they found out that there was a cemetery down there and streets. And so, they continued to excavate for some time. And now you can go into that. And it’s fascinating is one most fascinating things in Italy you can do. But you go in there, and they walk you through these little streets where, if you look up, that was open sky. And so you’re walking with what it was like 2000 years ago. And as you walk through this, you go through these corridors, and you see these families and you see where there was Christians in the families and pagans, and they had some pagan symbols, and they had some Christian symbols on there. So you had families where you saw there were mixed conversions. I mean, some stayed pagans, some were Christian, but they’re all buried in the same burial plot or the urns that they put them in, in the jars.

 

It’s very, very interesting, but as you navigate toward, underneath St Peter’s main altar above, you come to this one little altar, and of course, they found at this point, they found some, Royal cloth, purple. It wrapped and contained bones. And that was dead center above the canopy straight down, and several other reasons that they determined that this was Peter. “Upon this rock I’ll build My Church.”

 

The fascinating thing to me was that was not only that, but that on this a little altar they’d been buried was four little columns, a mini version, no taller than three or four feet tall shaped just like what Benini had designed above. And I realized that inspiration is a cumulative. In other words, one person says one thing, or designs something, or do something architecturally. Another person takes that and expands upon it. Benini didn’t come up with this concept. They got this from the orient, no telling how old it was when they got it to Rome or the Romans did it. And then they built this altar with it. It was a concept from some Chinese man, maybe someplace, and nowhere could be found in the world so far from us. And yet, Benini saw this, and then he builds upon that. And then he goes to the next level with it.

 

And so, most of this, Michelangelo, some of the things he did was based on something else. And I say that only because the messages are the same way. Maybe we say something tonight that you can come up with something that we can’t. And certainly, the messages speak to us in this way, that it is cumulative, that the more you discuss it, the more you see into it, the more it works for you and the more it can say. And they’re not dead messages. They have life. They will say something different for you one year from now.

 

This is a very important concept. It took me years to really grasp and understand how much life was really in the messages. And this is why Our Lady says—and She means what She says—when She says the words, “…transform them into life…” It’s because they can be applied to your life today and tomorrow, speak two different things. Totally different.

 

And so, it’s an exciting time to live. It’s a fascinating time to live. It’s somewhat of an eerie time to live at the same time. We’re not sure of our future and where we’re headed and what’s going to happen. But one thing we do know is that Our Lady is with us, and She said some very, very revealing things in this second of the month message yesterday, that I, along with everybody here, and I think probably you, too, when you read it, there’s one word that struck out instantly. And the fact that She said that word twice rang the bell twice in the heart. So, it’s a pretty profound message, and I’ll let Joan go ahead and read that message at this moment.

 

[COC]

Our Lady Queen of Peace of Medjugorje’s January 2, 2008 message to Mirjana Soldo:

 

“Dear children! With all the strength of my heart I love you and give myself to you. As a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you. I ask you not to be afraid to open yourselves, so as to be able to love with the heart and give yourselves to others. The more that you do this with the heart, the more you will receive and the better you will understand my Son and His gift to you. May everyone recognize you through the love of my Son and through Me. Thank you!”

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, I think that you probably grasped the word that we’re talking about is “…fight…” a rather strange word, you might want to say, or might think, for Our Lady to be saying. I was surprised to see it and joyful about seeing it at the same time, because I know that’s what She’s been doing is fighting for us. But sometimes, people can think…I know when I wrote Words from Heaven, that there was a couple people that had come up to me one time and say, “Well, you know, it’s just too militaristic.” Military oriented. I couldn’t relate to that, because it’s Our Lady who said

 

August 2, 1981

“…A great struggle is about to unfold…between my Son and satan. Human souls are at stake.”

 

I wrote in the back of the book of Words from Heaven that God’s seeking soldiers to draft, privates, captains, generals. And Our Lady tells us our role is great. We are in a war of the worlds. And here it is, now, Our Lady says, “…fight…”

 

If you don’t grasp that we’re in a war, you haven’t engaged yet. The enemy has. We’ve spoken about this on our last several programs about that. And because of that, people might think, “Okay, well, Our Lady’s so sweet. It’s just love. What She’s after is just for us just to always be on a level of passivity.” In other words, we don’t confront certain things. That’s just the opposite of what we should be doing.

 

[COC]

In pondering this message, I wonder if there’s more significance to it because it is the first message of the new year.

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, the first of the year always is a very important message. January 25, 1987 is a foundation monthly message where She said She had “…a great plan for the salvation of the world…” (January 25, 1987) That plan has been long-term in being established, and of course, it’s been a fight to do that both for Our Lady and for us that join Her.

 

But it’s interesting in the fact that Our Lady’s last message on the second of the month, if you recall last month, Mirjana said, at the end of the apparition, that she begged Our Lady not to give up on us. And here we come, as a response to that, that Our Lady says,

 

“…As a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you…”

 

It’s a direct answer to Mirjana, the way She left, which Our Lady smiled, crying, leaving, not responding to that, and Our Lady comes back this month and responds!

 

“…As a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you…”

 

I know I wrote yesterday in regards to this message yesterday morning when we got it about, I was instantly reminded of, how would a mother fight? And I wrote the story. I read this years ago. It’s in the Birmingham Jefferson County archives in the library, downtown, Birmingham. I was in there doing some research…This was pre-Medjugorje. It was a rainy day, and I couldn’t be doing the work I was supposed to be doing, so I decided to go to the library. And I ran across a story right after I bought land out here in this valley, and it was about a mother who was outside her cabin, and a man had walked up on her. He had written a story. The archives is from his own writing. And of course, he saw this woman, and she had these lacerated marks all over her arms, really festering out, and he asked her what happened. And she had been at the creek the week before, heard her child screaming at the cabin. She ran back up, and a racoon was there attacking the child. If you’ve ever seen a racoon fight with a dog, it’s vicious. Their teeth are razor sharp. Their claws are razor sharp. You just think about being at campgrounds, and a lot of times, you’ll see racoons fighting each other.

 

But for a human being, man or woman, much less a woman, to engage an animal like that, can’t be a thought by the intelligence. Not that it’s not intelligence. But if you stop and think, you would think that’s not the way to do it. But because it was her baby being attacked, she didn’t even give it twice the thought. She immediately grabbed the racoon and started fighting with it. And the only things she had were her hands. And so, this think clawed at her and bit her, and she continued this fight until she strangled this racoon to death. A small racoon won’t attack a baby. It’s going to be a large racoon. It didn’t say in the writing how big it was, but you can only imagine that something that size, what that would be. It’s an amazing story in the sense that a mother will fight for her child. And you can equate this to what Our Lady’s doing,

 

“…As a mother fights for her children…”

 

You know, just this story…I hadn’t thought about this story for years. As soon as I read that, that’s the first thing I thought about, this woman, in the 1800s, how she fought this thing bare-handed.

 

You can only imagine Our Lady, what She’s having to do to fight. The dictionary defines “fight” as,

 

“to strive or to contend for victory in battle or in single combat; to attempt to defeat, subdue, or destroy an enemy either by blows or weapons; to contend in arms; to contend to strive to struggle to resist or check; to act as a soldier”

 

I just read to you what’s in Words from Heaven, that Our Lady’s looking for privates, captains and generals to induct in Her army. We are in battle, and it is a fight. It is a struggle. She used that exact word: “…struggle…” She has said “…victory…” before. She has said “…armor…” before. Look it up! Armor’s in the message. And we fall into a concept of Christianity that it’s just only a sweet little thing, and we’ve just got to go love and, you know…What is love? Love is obeying the Commandments. What do you have to do in this society today to obey the Commandments? It’s a fight. You’ll go against everything in society, against your own family in many times, against your own friends, against your own church, even the shepherds of the Church! They’re mundaning things.

 

I know we had a friend that was just at the mission was talking about going to Confession, and she said, “It’s been one week since my last confession,” and the priest started chiding her on that, that “You really only have to go once a year.” So, she got in this debate with him, challenging him, basically bringing up that, “You’re too scrupulous.” You know, this is ridiculous! Our Lady said to the prayer group one time, “I want you to go to Confession, even if you just went to Confession in the past few days.” There’s something really lost in the membership of the Church. There’s something lost in our shepherds. You know, we’re starving. The people are starving to be told what’s right and what’s wrong. Don’t mundane it. Don’t wash it away. We’re in a fight. And we just have bought this whole line of tolerance. We’re so tolerant of everything now. We’re tolerant of sin. Just, we accept it! There’s no question about it.

 

I was listening earlier today about Willow Creek Church. It’s a famous church, Protestant church, because they’re evangelical outreach and how much they grew, and they had done this, I think they said five-year study of their church. And they expected this beautiful report to come back about how they’re growing and how they’ve done with their five thousand members and how everybody’s so richly filled. And what they found out in this study is that people aren’t growing. They’re looking for program-fed self-individualism. They want the church to feed them. They’re wanting to get the roses and stuff, you know, just the flowers from the church. In other words, they’re not doing anything for themselves to strive toward holiness. They want the church to do everything for them. And the pastor exposed this, and there’s a big controversy across the country right now on a lot of evangelical shows or Christian shows talking about it, pastors, that it was shocking to them. And some of them are criticizing him. Some of them are praising him for it. But the pastor said, you know, “We’ve failed.” But his whole concept is, is now to come back up, “We’ve got to go back and maybe give more toward getting people to get personal coaches.” You know, in Catholicism, we’d call that a spiritual director. But still not the way his concept was. His concept’s more of getting a coach and helping them along. But it’s still just another program! You know, it’s self-management. Our Lady’s not talking about individualism. She’s talking about community! The community to read the Bible and put it into action. Take that Bible; turn that into life. Let that life be the Bible for others who may witness and see you.

 

[END CLIP]

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

This is the Woman of Revelation Series with a Friend of Medjugorje. Stay tuned. A Friend of Medjugorje will return after this short break.

 

[COMMERCIAL]

[NARRATOR]

What if Our Lady hadn’t appeared in 1981?

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

We know Our Lady, had She not come and appeared to these visionaries, She revealed that the world would have destroyed itself.

 

[NARRATOR]

Why is the Holy Virgin coming?

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

“…Read Sacred Scripture[s], live it, and pray to understand the signs of the time…”

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

At 6:40, June 24, 1981, the world was on a downhill slide toward evil and darkness and hate, that that changed in one moment toward the good.

 

[NARRATOR]

Has anything been said about Christians?

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

There’s many Christians in the world, but also She gave a message that said there’s many Christians living as the pagans. They live pagan Christianity.

 

[NARRATOR]

With daily apparitions, do we know if there is some kind of plan?

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

It’s Her words, saying, “I want to use you in a great plan. You must pray to understand what your role is in that plan, and it’s for the salvation of the world.”

 

[NARRATOR]

How will it happen?

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Because you are the chosen ones in the time of grace, walking with Her, who are going to instruct the others after the time of grace…

 

When Our Lady came June 24, 1981, it was at that point that God had decided to bring us ten secrets, three admonitions…and it’s going to happen. They will happen.

 

[NARRATOR]

Do not put off drawing closer to God now in the time of Divine Mercy. Find out more about the most extraordinary plans in two thousand years of Christian history. Be kept informed of the most important event in your life, your children’s and your grandchildren’s, and all your posterity to the end of the world. See mej.com.

 

[END COMMERCIAL]

[THEME MUSIC]

[CLIP]

[COC]

You know, looking at the message from yesterday, we think of Our Lady so many times of just the peaceful, quiet Woman that the Gospels portray. But this message in which She says, “…a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you…” says something about the character of Our Lady of Who She really is. She’s a three-dimensional Person. And it reveals something of Her that we don’t normally think about as describing Our Lady. And perhaps you can share your thoughts about that.

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, I think we have a concept of Our Lady that’s not always accurate, that we see this…I mean, there were two concepts people had watching Jesus walk down Via Dolorosa. One, that He was weak, one that He was tremendously strong. Here’s this Man Who claimed to have the power of everything, to heal people and do whatever He wanted to do. “Make Yourself come off this Cross.” And the power of man was over Him. And this was all seen as weakness. You know, certainly, if they realized He was God, even the soldiers and some of the people that were throwing, doing the things to Him, they wouldn’t have done it. And of course, yes, the devil was let loose, and it was in their hearts. But on an intellectual side, had they known that He was God, they wouldn’t dare do that against the power that He was. But He gave, by every appearance, of the image of Him, that was weak. While those who knew Jesus, those who believed in Him, knew that this was really, could they do that? Peter couldn’t even stand there and be arrested. I mean, he pulls a sword out and cuts the servant’s ears off. Where’s the strength? The strength is in that interior silence and the acceptance of the will of God, knowing you may be right about something, and knowing that you have to suffer through that, and yet, not react to it. And Our Lady shows us this victory repeatedly. There’s some things you just have to let take its course. You may have the authority, the power, to do something. But should you do that, or should you just surrender it to God and let God do that?

 

And of course, Our Lady is in somewhat of a different context right now in that this is Her time. This time has been coming right now for two thousand years. I believe this time is really, actually started at Guadalupe. I think that was a main thing to make Our Lady really known publicly to the people, and it hasn’t stopped. You can go from there to France and other apparitions and to Fatima, and it’s all been…Then to the Miraculous Medal, which was something Our Lady said, always struck me very profoundly, is that She says, “I want this medal struck, and I want it worn around the neck.” She wanted to be seen because that was Her little billboard on every person that walked around because She wanted devotion to Her because She had to become known, so that immediately when She appeared in Medjugorje, She could be accepted throughout the world. People knew Who She was. We immediately identified. Fatima was a step toward that. Fatima people see Fatima was the pinnacle of everything. They’re still talking about it. And I just saw an article today, somebody said in a magazine about Fatima, you know, the Fatima chastisements. Well, it’s time to wake up.

 

A book I wrote about that explaining that is Medjugorje: The Fulfillment of All Marian Apparitions. Why did I title it that? Because this is the fulfillment of all the Marian apparitions. Because Marija has very, very clearly said that these are the last apparitions on earth. I want to say something about that because there’s people that will add, “of this kind.” The reason they add the words, “of this kind,” is because they’ve been told to add that because this is too controversial to say these are the last apparitions on earth. But that’s what Our Lady said, and She didn’t say, “of this kind.” That’s human. That’s man has added that. And the reason they add that because sometimes it’s maybe going to make waves or, “This may make Medjugorje be rejected by the Vatican.” That’s not our concern. Our concern is to put forth what the message says, what Our Lady said, and She said, “These are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

I went to Vicka. I said,

 

“Vicka, people are saying these are not the last apparitions on earth.”

 

She says, “They are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

I said, “But do you understand what I’m saying? Are they the last apparitions?”

 

She says, “They are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

And I asked her a third time. I said, “But are you sure Our Lady said that?”

 

She said, “These are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

I asked her again, a fourth time, and I asked her again a fifth time, and she got aggravated. She says,

 

“I said these are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

Now, I asked that when we were working with 20/20. They were in the production. They were going to name their piece—this was back in the late 80s—The Last Apparitions. But because some of the structure in Medjugorje didn’t want that said because that, again, causes waves, which is not my concern. And people that know our mission, we’re not concerned about making waves. We’re concerned only about getting the message accurate. If it makes waves that causes us problems, then it just causes us problems. But we won’t be pressured into not saying what the truth is about this.

 

And so, there’s been this mentality—I confronted even some priests in Medjugorje once. And one of the figure priests there said, “Well, what is the last apparitions on earth? Does that mean Our Lady’s never going to quit appearing until the end of time?” We don’t know what this means! All I can say is what Our Lady said. “These are the last apparitions on earth.” Don’t try to requalify that. And don’t try to add, “of this kind.”

 

So, Vicka’s very clearly confirmed this. There’s people that don’t want this out. They don’t want this said. And we have Marija, which I’ve talked about many times about it, and I decided to tape her three or four years ago, get it on tape.

 

I said, “Marija, I’ve talked to Vicka about this, and I know you have told this, and I’d like to just tape you in this conversation to document this, that these are the last apparitions on earth.”

 

She says, “Yes.”

 

I said, “This period of apparitions like this, they won’t come back anymore?”

 

She said, “No.”

 

I said, “Well, there’s some people trying to requalify, saying ‘of this kind.’”

 

She says, “Well, yeah. These are the last apparitions of this kind, which means, these are the last apparitions where Our Lady will talk to us, we can talk to Her, we can touch Her, and in a group like this.”

 

In other words, like Fatima, with the three visionaries, like the six visionaries there, like La Salette, with the two visionaries.

 

So, the character of this, where Our Lady’s coming like She did in Guadalupe to become more known and loved and to say something to the earth, this is the last time, whether you have guides, whether you have somebody else, whether you have priests. This is what the visionaries have relayed, and they are the first testament. They are the first witnesses.

 

Now, you might even have another visionary that may say, “of this kind.” But they’ve been guided to say that. But it’s usually said to…And it mitigates the strength of the apparitions and the importance of these apparitions.

 

Our Lady gave a message Herself that says, “These are the last apparitions in the world.” (June 23, 1982) And in that message, it’s very clear that what Our Lady’s saying.

 

May 2, 1982

“…I will not appear any more on this earth.”

 

Now, my conversation with Marija, I asked her, “What does this mean?”

 

She says, “It means that, where we can see, hear and touch Her.”

 

They can touch Her. She’s three-dimensional like Joan just mentioned. She’s coming three-dimensionally, real, and a real, live person.

 

I said, “Well, will Our Lady never come?”

 

She says, “Our Lady may come to a nun in a convent, or something in the heart, something like that. But it’s not going to be like this.”

 

See, that’s where the naysayers jump on this bandwagon and say that, “of this kind.” But I think there’s a very, very critical important point to make, because somebody might say, “These are the last apparitions of the kind,” means, “Okay, it’s not as important.” These apparitions are the most important apparitions in the history of the world. This was designed from the beginning of the world, because God knew what was going to happen, and He knew that they would throw away the gift of salvation: Jesus Christ. And our society has done this at this point. He is thrown away.

 

That’s what Willow Creek’s talking about. Their people aren’t growing in holiness. They’re raved and they’re reviewed as the greatest evangelical church out there, the mega church. And now, it’s shaking the foundation of all the other mega churches. “We’re not doing something right.” There’s no personal growth in holiness. Everything’s program-oriented. Everything’s individualistic. And Our Lady comes and tells us, She wants us to grow in holiness, not everybody else. You grow. Don’t look to be just getting something soft and sit on a couch or have a theater-type church.

 

And we can find the same thing in the Catholic Church. What are we doing? Just going there to comply, “Well, I’ve got to go to church on Sunday,” or how many people are growing in holiness?

 

And so, Willow Creek, now, 200 churches are going to review them to see what they’re doing. Our Lady’s got the answer! Even for them! Read your Bible. Put it in action. Fight against the world.

 

And I was listening to a story today on James Dobson about the third-most listened to rated program for the year. And some of you may have heard about that, but it was a very interesting story of a guy who’s a pastor now who, as an eighteen-year-old, committed murder and was thrown in prison for, basically, for the rest of his life. And this prisoner was an atheist. He didn’t want nothing to do with God. He didn’t want God, and everybody in prison was miserable. He saw many of them in their life. He also had one guy in the prison, a young guy, who was always smiling, that he didn’t like. But he always wondered about him, and he always said he had Jesus, and he didn’t want nothing about it.

 

And one day, he went out to his hearing, to his final court trial, and the guy who was always smiling came back smiling even bigger. And he said, “Oh, this guy, if anybody in prison deserves to get out, it’s him. I mean, he is a good guy.”

 

And he said, “Well, what did they do?”

 

He said, “Well, they gave me seventy-five years.”

 

And he knew, then, he was in prison for the rest of his life. And yet, he was happy. And it was at that moment that he realized, he became very depressed and knew that he needed to do something.

 

So, he asked him to start talking to him. So, the guy sat down with him with a Bible, and he went through an instant conversion—trememdous conversion.

 

He said, “Well, what we need to do now, we need to have church.”

 

So, that Sunday, they decided to get inmates, and they were going to have church. And they went and told everybody about it, and they show up in this room the prison warden must have gave them. There was nineteen people that came out of fifty out of the prison. I think it was seventeen or nineteen, something like that.

 

And out of the number of people, they got in there with this guy who was always smiling, and he says, you know, “Where’s everybody else?”

 

He said, “Well, the rest of them wouldn’t come.”

 

He says, “We’ve got only forty percent of the population of the prison in here. The rest of them have to come.”

 

He said, “You’re going to go get killed is what you’re going to do.” This is the new convert.

 

He says, “No. Everybody’s going to come.”

 

So, he went and found a stainless steel bowl, toilet cleaner—it was made out of stainless steel—and he started hitting that on the bars and told the other guys they’ve got to come to church. And one guy stood up, and he bashed his teeth in to get this guy to come to church. Well, all of them started pouring out of the cells, and they all came to church, and they had a 100% thing, and then they immersed them and started baptizing them. [LAUGHTER] You know, this guy was a fighter!

 

I don’t know the rest of the story, but the guy’s preaching now in Tennessee. So, he must have been successful. But he had all these guys going in prison. It may not be the way Our Lady’s teaching us to do it, but I mean, he fought to do what he did, and he did it. He lived by his convictions.

 

I’m not saying to go out and do that, because Our Lady’s not after that way. [LAUGHS] To fight also means,

 

“to carry on a contention; to maintain a struggle for victory over enemies; to contend with in battle; to war against”

 

As a noun, it means,

 

“a battle; an engagement; a contest in arms; a struggle for victory, either between individuals or between armies”

 

We are in war. How few people understand that.

 

The culture war and what you’re going to be seeing on the streets in the next couple years, two or three years, how are you going to accept that? How are you going to accept when people will do just about anything they want to do in front of you?

 

We’ve got to realize that we are in a wickedness that’s prevailing over the culture that nobody’s contending, nobody’s standing up to.

 

And so, Our Lady speaks about victory, and victory itself means conquest. You know,

 

“the defeat of an enemy in battle or an antagonist in contest; a gaining of the superiority in war or combat; Victory supposes the power of an enemy over an antagonist to prove inferior to that of the victor. Victory, however, depends not always on superior skill or valor. It is often gained by the faults or mistakes of the vanquished.”

 

There’s one mistake being made by those who are promoting every evil is that it’s consolidating, for the first time, Christians. I mean, we’re waking up. There is a lot of good, and there’s a lot of beauty right now in a lot of different missions and ministries that are saying, “We’ve had enough!” You know, it’s like “Tora! Tora! Tora!” in World War II. I think it was the Japanese commander who said, “All we’ve done is wakened the sleeping giant.”

 

And maybe that’s what it’s going to take. Maybe 2008 is going to be the year we just get our back pushed into the corner. We can’t take all this sitting down anymore.

 

The meekness of Christianity doesn’t mean that we have sitting and we become pacifists and do nothing. We have every right, every right. When we were a moral society, a moral country with laws, you went to jail for certain sins! You weren’t allowed and permitted to do that. There is nothing mixing government or law with religion about that.

 

Censorship, years ago, was defined as the right of the government to protect the morals of the people. Censorship was a good thing! We need a lot more censorship in our life. We’re not talking about restriction of free speech. But free speech doesn’t mean that you can go burn a flag! That’s not free speech. And even the most conservative, or one of the most conservative judges on the Supreme Court, Scalia, you know, he’s accepted that flag burning is free speech! He’s wrong about that! He don’t know nothing about the law if that’s what he thinks. Why? Because he don’t understand the law. That’s blasphemy. That’s sacred.

 

There’s something sacred about something that men have died for, honored, that drapes caskets. There’s things that you can profane in society. And our law used to recognize that. Not because it was an opinion or it was a fad at that time, that’s what we recognized. It was because people understood the truth. They understood what was real, what was value, and what was free speech and what was not free speech. And even our judges, even our conservative judges, have lost that. They do not understand what free speech is any longer.

 

[END CLIP]

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

This is the Woman of Revelation Series with a Friend of Medjugorje. Stay tuned. A Friend of Medjugorje will return after this short break.

 

[CLIP]

[NARRATOR]

Do you confront when someone speaks in error, or do you become quiet to avoid being disliked, disenfranchised or shunned?

 

Are you intimidated about spreading and expressing your faith?

 

Many Christians are buying the lie of darkness that they can’t bring faith to the workplace, their schools, their life.

 

Watching evil take place all around them and not stepping up to contradicted is termed:

 

Quietism.

 

Quietism was deemed a heresy by the Church several centuries ago. People had accepted and tolerated many things, not agreeing with them, but looking the other way.

 

Centuries later, today, quietism is slowly creeping in everywhere, even to the point that Christians squirm in their seats when religion is discussed in public.

 

Often, yourself and many others practice this heresy, contributing to the world’s demise.

 

Read Quietism, an important writing that will convict, making you want to take greater responsibility in responding to the call to convict, be a witness and an apostle in a world growing more and more in darkness.

 

Many who read it say they will never be silent again.

 

Order on mej.com, spelled M-E-J.com, or call in the U.S. 205-672-2000.

 

[END CLIP]

[THEME MUSIC]

[CLIP]

[COC]

We’ve talked a lot about overcoming the fear of non-involvement and Quietism, as this commercial just spoke about, in past shows.

 

And it appears, in this message, that Our Lady is encouraging—Herself—She’s encouraging everybody not to be afraid to speak out or to act on our beliefs, especially when She says,

 

“…I ask you not to be afraid to open yourselves, so as to be able to love with the heart and give yourselves to others. The more that you do this with the heart, the more you will receive and the better you will understand my Son and His gift to you…”

 

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

The guy in the prison that was smiling all the time was giving himself as a gift to this other. He became Jesus for this convict, though he be rough in his conversion in starting off how he did things. But he gave himself, and he represented Jesus. And so, we see this in people.

 

But, you know, he immediately became involved. And there’s a danger of going to Medjugorje or coming up to Our Lady and finding Her messages and then start going and beating people over the head with Her message. That’s…We don’t encourage that.

 

Instead, we look at St. Paul who was converted instantly, who spent eight years learning how to be a Christian. There was no road for him to see. There was not…Christianity was just in its beginning stages. There wasn’t a lot there showing…Like we’ve come from a Christian society. We’re now living in a, well, it’s safe to say a pagan society. But we still know what Christianity is about. We don’t understand how to live it in this age. That’s the problem.

 

But it’s important to understand that when you’re in engaged in warfare, when you’re engaged in battle, and then you fight, that there is…you check your armaments. What are they? You just don’t have it there magically. You’ve got to build your missiles. You build those things from components. It takes time. There’s engineering to do that that takes a while. It took St. Paul eight years to learn what it meant to be a Christian. Special weaponry takes years to build and engineer and invent or polish and test.

 

And so, to become a Christian and build yourself…Our Lady uses, actually, the words, “construct.” “I want you to construct yourself spiritually.” (March 27, 1989)

 

“This construction…” Same word, twice in the message. She says, “I want you to construct yourself spiritually. This construction will last the rest of your life.” (March 27, 1989)

 

And so, you’re never going to be finished. You’re always going to be becoming a better weapon in the hands of Our Lady. What does that mean? Does that mean we’re soldiers? Well, you saw the definition of “fight” means to act as a solder. Louis de Montfort used to see it as you’re a militant. Our Lady’s militant.

 

And so, we’ve got to understand this, that we’re in, the whole concept of war, where did it start? Where was the first battle take place?

 

People think, “Oh, Heaven, Heaven, Heaven.” It took place in Heaven! There was a war in Heaven. Do you become a zealot and think you just start going, it’s about killing people? No. That’s too easy. You’ve got to do what Jesus did at Via Dolorosa. You’ve got to conquer people through your strength, through your conviction, through your life. That’s constructing your T-1 missile.

 

Your conversion is something you’ve got to construct. You’ve got to build, and you’ve got to learn how to be Our Lady’s apostle. You don’t do that overnight. You’ve got to be in the spirit of the message. You’ve got to go through the four basic messages. And it’s not what most people say, the five basic messages are. Our Lady said, “four basic messages.” (June 6, 1988) Those four basic messages give birth to all other messages.

 

Our Lady asked us to give those messages, “…prayer, peace, fasting, and penance…” (June 6, 1988) That’s the four basic messages. Out of those messages come all the other messages. People want to add this and that and Holy Mass and…Yeah. Those were messages, and it’s part of Medjugorje, and it’s part of what Our Lady says, but She wants you to build a foundation to grasp the Mass, what it means to be Christian, and that will come through the four. And it’s Her words Who said, “All messages come from the four basic messages: prayer, peace, fasting and penance.” (June 6, 1988)

 

And so, this is part of your construction.

 

And so, we encourage you to confront. But first, you’ve got to build your weaponry in your heart. You’ve got to build your treasure chest. You’ve got to become a shining light. And then you engage. That doesn’t mean along the way that you can’t confront certain things that’s blatant sin or something’s wrong. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be faithful citizens, like our bishops just sit there and passed in one of the bishops’ conferences. Thank goodness that they’ve done this. There some, still, things we’re lacking. We’ve got to become much stronger than that. But we cannot leave our leaders in the political scene to other people.

 

And yes, Our Lady said, black and white, very clearly, “Peace will not come through the presidents.” (December 31, 1985)

 

So, it’s not going to happen through election, through people.

 

Let’s see what happens in the next couple of years.

 

But what I’m saying is, is this fight, is an incredible thing that Our Lady said, profound thing that She said. And fight, of course, is about victory.

 

Another definition of victory is,

 

“the advantage or superiority gained over spiritual enemies”

 

Can you believe that? That’s in the dictionary.

 

“…over spiritual enemies, over passions and appetites, or over temptations or in any struggle or competition”

 

This correlates—this definition—exactly what I’m saying. You’ve got to become your T-1. You’ve got to construct yourself. How do you do that? Control your passions. Control your appetites over temptations. You’ve got to fight these things. And you’ve got to construct yourself spiritually strong, and then you confront.

 

So, there’s so much said with this, and this correlation of Our Lady’s last, Mirjana begging Our Lady, “Please don’t abandon us. Please don’t leave us.” And She coming back, saying, “I’m not going to. I’m going to fight for you.” (January 2, 2008)

 

“…As a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you…”

 

She didn’t have to say that twice. And She didn’t say one fight. The first fight was “fights” with an “s” on it.

 

“…As a mother fights for her children, I pray for you and fight for you…”

 

What are you doing fighting for God?

 

It’s easy to misconstrue this and become a zealot and say, “Oh, we’re going to fight.” You can’t do anything. You’re going to get beat up real bad if you’re not living the message and you’re not putting that in your life.

 

It doesn’t mean you’re not a sinner. We’re all sinners here in this mission. We’re worse than you are. Why? Because we have been given a holy way to live. We’ve been given, among some of the first in the Medjugorje movement in the world, as a community, as a village, to apply the messages into a real-life system.

 

There’s a lot of people across the world—millions—who live the messages who have that, but there’s very, very few, and I don’t know of any, actually—I think that’s part of Marija’s attraction to us—that actually has a little village, a little community like this that’s not priests and nuns, living and transforming the messages into our life.

 

We live a perfect way, and that perfect way is lived by imperfect people.

 

So, we don’t claim any righteousness. And we claim only that we’re worse than you are, because we have been given this great grace, but we’ve been given this for a specific reason: to transmit this that you can do it, and in the future, you’ll probably be doing it.

 

How that’ll happen? Well, we’ve got three warnings and admonitions coming, so you can choose to start setting that up now, or you can choose to do it by choice later.

 

[END CLIP]

[THEME MUSIC]