Bruce,

I'm sorry about your knee injury, I hope that it does get stronger.

I wanted to say something about that 3rd secret of Fatima.

When I was young, both my grandmothers were zealous catholics.

The next generation, not so much, i.e. my Dad would leave mass at communion time.

My mom, once was in the confessional, on the opposite side from where I was, so I could hear the priest talking to her, but not her voice.

I heard him say that he refused her absolution for something, so she stormed out, and never went back to church.

I used to go to the stations of the cross with one grandmother, on good Friday.

The other grandmother went on a pilgrimage to Rome and Lourdes (i.e. Song of Bernadette), and brought back "holy water".

I began daily devotion to the queen of heaven, in particular praying the rosary (most often without the benefit of the beads in my hands).

Did it seem a "good bet", with 10:1 odds of her hearing my prayers, i.e. 10 "hail Mary's" for every 1 "our Father", for the 5 mysteries/decades around the rosary?

I also, while still a child, had a statue of her in the back yard, and left food there each day of the month of May.

My grandmother must have influenced my Dad, since he took us to the Guadeloupe shrine in Mexico, on our vacation.

Then, not long after I was married, I was given a book about the various apparitions of the queen of heaven, beginning withe the one in Knock, Ireland.

A few later, my job took me to Portugal.

On a long weekend, I drove my wife and two small children down to Fatima, to visit.

However, the day I was saved, I was in my car, in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the inbound Kennedy.

I was strongly convicted that I had to choose between Jesus and the queen of heaven.

To choose between who I would trust, who I would pray to, who I would worship, and who I would love.

I was intensely convicted that it could NOT be both, only one.

I chose to fully trust Jesus, and at that moment, the close fellowship that I had been experiencing with the queen of heaven, instantly ended.

It was like, the moment Jesus moved into my heart, she moved out.

I know that sounds strange, but that is what it kind of seemed like to me.

I didn't leave the catholic church right away, but I went to the priest, who was the parish pastor, and told him that I got saved.

My wife and I had been co-teaching a ccd class each Sunday, on the seven sacraments and how to pray the rosary.

I told the priest that I could no longer teach that class, because I believed that the Bible taught differently.

So, he let me switch to teaching the class on the four gospels, which I agreed to.

After hearing said that miracles, like the Red sea & Noah's flood, didn't happen, and actually heard the words said, that Jesus was a myth, I left.

I first went to a "Bible church", and it was right before Christmas, and I heard the preacher say that the word, virgin, should have been translated, young girl, instead.

I knew that was wrong, so, I left there, too, and didn't fit in anywhere, until I ended up, sometime later, in a church that believed the Bible.

Later, after hearing that many catholics in the Chicagoland area were visiting the Hillside cross, at the queen of heaven cemetery, in Hillside, Illinois,

a few of us from the church went there to hand out gospel tracts, a little over 30 years ago.

The visitors there believed that the queen of heaven was appearing there, although it was not sanctioned by the diocese.

There was a lady leading the crowd in saying the rosary, and when she finished, I ran up to where she was standing.

I then quoted out loud to the crowd, the last part of:

Luke 24:5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

That shocked the crowd, and someone started mocking one of the men that I was with, but he suddenly started preaching the gospel, and against idolatry.

The crowd went wild, running all around him, but no one touched him while he was preaching.

There were a number of charismatic catholics there, too, who began all speaking in tongues at him, but his voice was much louder.

Some of them even started making animal noises, which probably freaked out even the traditional catholics, that were there.

As he finished preaching, and before the crowd could move in, cemetery workers suddenly raced in, grabbed him, and threw him in their truck, and drove him outside.

The other men, that I came with, were all shook up, with one weeping, but they all wanted to know why I was so calm, when they were not.

Was it because I used to go to places like that, before I was saved, like Fatima, and so I was somehow comfortable around all that?

I personally don't think that was the case, even though some of them might have thought that, and for a moment I even second guessed myself.

Yet, I remembered, that, years back, I had some kind of a sense of dread about Guadeloupe and Fatima, when I was there.

I remembered that they were spooky to me.

But, by the time we went to the Hillside cross, I no longer feared the queen of heaven, and instead, went there in Jesus' name, for the gospel.

I used to worship and pray to the queen of heaven.

I have come to believe that it was absolutely NOT the Mary of the Bible who appeared in those places.

But that it was some kind of fallen celestial being, maybe even the same one that Jeremiah warned the people about:

Jeremiah 7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

Whatever the queen of heaven is, it is certainly not of the LORD, but is some wicked thing.

Possibly even the same thing that left me, the day I was saved, when Jesus moved in.

Whatever things that apparition said, need to be ignored and dismissed:

Galatians 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

It preaches another gospel, and at some apparitions it also includes things, like saying rosaries, or devotions to the sacred heart, etc., which have nothing to do with:

I Corinthians 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

  2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

  3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

  4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

The secrets of Fatima, along with all the other things that the fallen celestial creature said to those children, back in 1917, should be avoided like the plague.

.