You are our letter of recommendation. The New Testament being written as it should be, not on mosaic tablets of stone, but on your hearts, for it is a testament of the spirit and of life, incomparably more glorious even than the Old Testament blazing in glory, which made Moses veil his face. Alas, that Old Testament is still veiled from the Jews, but Catholics worship God in spirit, in liberty, and in true glory.

Therefore, we Catholic priests preach with courage out in the open, hidden only from disbelievers, Jesus Christ, for your sakes, light of God’s glory. However, we priests remain fragile creatures, vulnerable to all kinds of suffering unto death, so that you should have life, but we are confident that Jesus will give life to ourselves also, an enormous reward in heaven for our little troubles now.

For we know that heaven is our destination, our desire, so long as we die in the state of grace, and God gives us confidence that we will go to Him, so we do our best for Him because we will all be judged on the good or bad we have done.

God sees our hearts. We hope you do too, because all we do is for your sakes, to bring you to Christ who died for us all, reconciling us with God as we priests tell. Do listen and do seize the moment of grace which is now, for we priests are poor creatures, downtrodden by the world, but the power of God is within us. Your problem is not ourselves, but yourselves.

Do realize as Catholics, you cannot mix with the world which is radically opposed to Christ. Leave the world behind you and then God will come to you.

So leave behind impurity and recognize that we are your true friends. What joy it was for us to meet Titus bringing good news of your love of me. I am so happy that my letter made you sorry with a true and fruitful sorrow. You made Titus see that I was right to trust you. How we rejoice.

This passage is from 2 Corinthians, specifically the difficult chapters three, four, five, six, and seven. It is difficult to sort out, difficult to make a plan of, but St. Thomas says that 2 Corinthians is about the priesthood. 1 Corinthians is about the Eucharist, marriage, and baptism. And 2 Corinthians is about the priesthood, the sacraments of the New Testament. St. Paul is having to defend himself against the Corinthians who are accusing him of all kinds of things. But in these chapters, the ideas just come tumbling out one after another.

The line is there: „You Corinthians are our letter of recommendation.‟ That immediately makes him think of the Old Testament prophet who talks about the New Testament being written on hearts of flesh and no longer on tablets of stone. That prophet is Jeremiah. Jeremiah 31. Look at that because it’s an important passage.

There are no tablets of stone in the New Testament. It is a testament of grace inscribed on hearts. „And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying, ‚Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me from the least of them even to the greatest,‟ says the Lord. „For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.‟

In other words, you are not going to have instruction like the rabbis instructed. Children and adults are not going to have to learn all of the Pentateuch or all of the 613 rabbinical precepts. True, Catholics will need to know their catechism. But learning the catechism is going to be nothing like as exteriorly burdensome as it is for a Jew. It is going to be quite a simple affair, and the child of five in the new covenant is going to be able to be full of grace and to know all about God without having had to learn a great deal. Of course, he should proportionately with his age learn everything that is fitting to learn about his religion. But the essence of this religion is not going to be what you learn, not what you know of the law, not what you observe of all the external precepts. It is a religion that is going to be inside. The law is driven inside. It is much simpler, much deeper, much more spiritual.

„They shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying, ‚Know the Lord.’ For all shall be made from the least of them even to the greatest,‟ saith the Lord. Children of five and six can make some of the best Catholics because the essentials can be there. „I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.‟ Thus saith the Lord, who give you the sun for the light of the day, the order of the moon and the stars for the light of the night, who stirred up the sea. „I will give my law in their bowels… I will write it in their heart.‟ That is the famous quotation from Jeremiah about the New Testament.

„And now he hath obtained a better ministry, for how much better also is he to mediate a better testament, which is a section on better promises.‟ Because if the former testament had been faultless, there would not have been a place for a second testament. But finding fault with the Old Testament, he saith, „Behold, the day shall come,‟ and that quotation from Jeremiah follows. And now in verse 13 of Chapter 8 of Hebrews, „In saying new, he hath made the former old, and that which decayeth and groweth old is near its end.‟ In other words, the New Testament has superseded the old, which is the whole argument.

Alas, that Old Testament is still veiled from the Jews. Saint Paul jumps cleverly from the veil covering Moses’ face to the veil covering the Old Testament, in the sense that the Jews could not look on the brightness of Moses’ face because of the glory. But now the Jews cannot see anything in the Old Testament; they cannot see the real glory of God in the Old Testament. It is blocked off from them. The Jews, for 2,000 years, have been carrying in their synagogues all over the world the Old Testament. They are faithful carriers of the Old Testament, but it is a closed book to them. They cannot get inside it because they refuse to believe in Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is still veiled from the Jews, whereas Catholics worship God in spirit, in liberty, and in true glory.

Chapter 4: „Therefore, we Catholic priests preach.‟ He does not say Catholic priests, he says apostles, but it is the same thing. The essence of what Paul is talking about is the Catholic priest. „We Catholic priests preach with courage out in the open, hidden only from disbelievers.‟ The glory of the New Testament is out in the open, it is not hidden. But it is hidden from disbelievers. The Catholic Church is there in the streets. Everybody knows it. But if you do not believe, you cannot see what it is. „We preach Jesus Christ for your sakes, the light of God’s glory. However, we priests remain fragile creatures. We carry this treasure in vessels of clay. We are vulnerable to all kinds of suffering unto death so that you should have life. However, we are confident that Jesus will give life to ourselves also and an enormous reward in heaven for our little troubles now.‟

Chapter 5: „For we know that heaven is our destination, our desire, so long as we die in the state of grace.‟ And Paul says „clothed.‟ We want to die clothed; that is the garment of the wedding feast. „And God gives us confidence that we will go to him.‟ Does this ring a bell for those who did Saint Paul last year? God gives us confidence. What gave the Galatians confidence? The Spirit of God crying, „Abba,‟ Father, within us. It is also in Romans. „God gives us confidence that we will go to Him, so we do our best for Him because we will all be judged on the good or bad we have done. God sees our hearts. We hope you do too because all that we do is for your sakes, to bring you to Christ who died for us all, reconciling us with God as we priests tell. Do listen and do seize the moment of grace which is now.‟

This corresponds to Romans; Romans 1 and 2 Corinthians are all written about the same time, there are many cross-references. Romans 13: „Now is the time to convert, now is the day pleasing to the Lord, now is the time to convert.‟ That is an epistle at the first Sunday of Advent. Romans 13:11: „Knowing this is that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep, for now our salvation is nearing the way we believe. The night is past and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering impurities, not in contention and envy, but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its conquered businesses.‟

That corresponds to 2 Corinthians 6: „Do seize the moment of grace which is now. For we priests are poor creatures, downtrodden by the world, but the power of God is within us. Your problem is not ourselves, but yourselves.‟ The Corinthians obviously had been trying to say that Paul was inadequate. And Paul is saying, „No, I am sorry. You are the problem, not me.‟

„Do realize, as Catholics, you cannot mix with the world.‟ This is the famous passage about the incompatibility of Christ and the world, Belial, at the end of 2 Corinthians 6. „As Catholics you cannot mix with the world which is radically opposed to Christ. Leave the world behind you and then God will come to you.‟

Chapter 7: „So leave behind impurity and recognize that we priests are your true friends. What joy it was for us to meet Titus bringing good news of your love of me. I am so happy that my letter made you sorry with a true and fruitful sorrow.‟ This possibly refers to 1 Corinthians or a letter that got missed in between 1 and 2 Corinthians. „You made Titus see that I was right to trust you. How we rejoice.‟

He then notes that 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 are famous for discussing money, where St. Paul talks for two chapters about money without once mentioning the word.

Ever since his 21st year, that is 1959, things happen in this way with him. If he is completely relaxed and sitting down on a chair, or if he is woken up in bed, but wide awake and with open eyes, he sees in front of him something like films, like in a cinema. In the corners of the room, he can still see the background of the room that he is in, but there is like a film in front of him. In the middle of his vision, he sees these events. He even sees himself in these coming events as a talking and acting person. For instance, he saw the television announcement of Kennedy’s murder exactly sometime before the president was killed in 1963.

For a long time, he paid no great attention to these visions. Only when he heard that there were men who had second sight, and when, in 1975 for the first time, he got hold of a book of prophecies in which things were similarly described to what he had seen himself, only then did he begin to pay any attention to his experiences. He found that his own visions corresponded mostly with „The Song of the Linden Tree‟ by Holzhauser, the report of Alois Irlmaier, and Father Hantwerker from the 18th century.

This farm worker sees overlapping events without them being in ordered succession, and therefore in their order, there may be mistakes. As for the time they are going to happen, he can only speculate and try to work back from the events, for instance, from the development of means of transport that he has seen, how old certain people look that he knows, whether houses have been built in this and that place where there are still none. From the vegetation, he can sort of make a guess at the time.

Once there is trouble from civil war, then through Austria, the Russian tank regiments march or charge through in the direction of the Adriatic, Italy, and Yugoslavia, as well as north of the Danube, in the direction of Bavaria. Only in the middle of the summer does it come to short and total war. So, this vision is of events starting some spring—I am not saying this next spring, I do not know—and piling up until there is total world war in the mid-summer.

There is a struggle in the Middle East, in the oil countries, where the Russians throw out the Americans. China attacks in South Siberia and also with tanks in the area north of Vienna and Bohemia. His vision is of the Chinese attacking the Russians and then the Chinese coming through.

Finally, things are set on fire by a huge bomb attack in the neighborhood of Prague. The Earth’s surface gets torn apart in that part of the world, and volcanic poison gases and magma come pouring out. There is week-long poisoning of the Earth’s atmosphere and a huge worldwide earthquake as a consequence. For a whole day, the Earth shakes and trembles. Imagine anything trying to stay standing.

These events in a little more detail: the destruction of New York happens in early summer. In mid-Europe at that point in time, we are still not experiencing any kind of war. New York will be quite unexpectedly destroyed through two small atom bombs, dropped from above, which will explode amongst the houses. The skyscrapers and buildings of Manhattan do not fall over or collapse immediately, but they are mostly, while remaining complete and only leaning over a little, pushed aside by the force of the explosion. It looks as though they sort of gently and quietly lean over and fall. They will be at the same time worn away from underneath like a carrot which one scrapes over a vegetable dish. And they will get smaller and smaller until then they fall down, and the area on which the famous New York skyline rose will be flat earth.

I saw myself standing after the announcement on the radio with other inhabitants of the village and commenting on the event. According to what was said, it must have been some daring attack by some psychopathic opponent—Gaddafi, or much more likely now, Saddam Hussein. The United States, in order to try to cut off impeachment proceedings, threw a whole lot more rockets at Iraq in a way that Iraq had no immediate way of defending itself against, all in the name of righteousness, in the name of the United Nations. Imagine how furious those Arabs are. The only thing that could be said in favor or in defense of the Americans is that they are the tools of others. And the Arabs know that. The Arabs know who their real enemy is, which is why they will bomb New York. It is very likely. They will just want to destroy all that vermin in New York. With a bit of luck, they could get the whole Senate in one go.

I heard them say that this would be the act of revenge of terrorists. Exactly. It is the act of revenge of terrorists. That is exactly what it would be. Very possible. In 1987, can you imagine? People were saying, „Certainly that what the Americans have done was not very good, but that they therefore go to destroying a whole city, that is surely going too far.‟ So, it is interesting.

Then we came into the period between the two wars, which only lasted from 1918 to 1939. That is only 21 years. And again, looking back today, what were the big sins of the 1920s and 30s? And yet there was a Second World War which was much worse than the first. The First World War was about 14-15 million casualties. The Second World War was, they say, about 60-66 million casualties. So the Second World War was much worse than the first. What were the terrible sins between the two wars?

Then you think of 50 years, 1945 to 1995 plus some, you think of the sins of these last tens of years, twice as long as in between the two wars, and much more than twice as sinful. So if World War II was proportionate to the sins between the two wars, what is proportionate to the sins that have been building up since the Second World War? Something of this sort. That is the world that is in front of you, in front of me too. This is reality. For my money, this is reality.

So, what can you do about it? Duty of state and prayer. You and I do our duty day by day according to what presents itself to us as our duty, and the only important thing, always, of course, is to die in the state of grace. That is the only thing that matters. What does it matter if the world falls down around my ears and I die in the state of grace? What does it matter if I own all of the skyscrapers in Manhattan and die in the disgrace of God?

But it is going to be very unpleasant, and as they say in French, „We will not have stolen it.‟ In other words, this horrible future has been well deserved. It belongs to us. It fits. It is what is due to us, and it is what is coming. So, as they say in American, „Enjoy.‟

So, verse 19 of Revelation 11, which says, „There was opened the temple of God in Heaven and it was seen the Ark of the Covenant in His temple, and there were thunder and voices and earthquakes and much hail.‟ From the end of the world, which was the seventh trumpet, we come back to the incarnation and the origins of the church. So this is a new vision starting: the woman and the dragon. Verse 19 could have been put by the divider of chapters together with chapter 12. It is a kind of transition verse.

The Ark of the Alliance here is the humanity of Christ, which is central to the new worship. The apostles of Christ produce miracles (lightning), preaching (voices), conversions (earthquakes), persecutions (hail). All hell breaks loose as the apostles begin to preach the risen Lord. The whole Roman Empire goes into convulsions, but finally converts. It stands to reason.