In 1456 the Church saw its chance to lead both a saint and a national heroine back into the fold. The Church set aside the verdict that had brought their co-religionist to the stake. She was beatified in 1894 and canonized in 1920.
In the Epilogue to Bernard Shaw's St. Joan it says: The Gentleman: On every thirtieth day of May, being the anniversary of the death of the said most blessed daughter of God, there shall be in every Catholic church to the end of time celebrated a special office in commemoration of her; and it shall be lawful to dedicate a special chapel to her, and to place her image on its altar in every such church. And it shall be lawful and laudable for the faithful to kneel and address their prayers through her to the Mercy Seat.
Shaw used the official text literally. That is the kind of basic revision the Church subjects itself to, when saints are not only saints, but also active political power factors with whom they can advantageously identify themselves.
I have already mentioned that the Roman Catholic Church claims for itself all the visions designated
'genuine' by its courts. This is usurpatory, for there are other large Christian communities and sects who also base themselves on the Old and New Testaments. These millions of adherents of different Christian religions do not consider themselves a lesser breed of Christians, as second- or third-raters.
They, too, champion the 'authenticity' of visions in their religious world.
Once again, this obstinacy is contrary to all logic. The messages in visions received by Methodists, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the New Apostles, members of the Greek Orthodox Church etc. work the very same religious miracles and proclaim the same values - such as faith, prayer, good behaviour loving one's neighbour, respecting one's fellow-men, the pro scription of criminal acts - that the Roman Catholic doctrine requires. Why then in the devil's name does the devil, if only Lucifer can appear to them, achieve such typically Christian aims among the 'others'?
The prophet Joseph Smith (1805-1844) founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
During the night of 21st September, 1823, he had a vision [21]: While I was so engrossed in prayer to God, I perceived a light shining in my room that increased in power until the room was lighter than at noon, upon which an angel appeared beside my bed, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the ground. He was dad in a loose robe of extraordinary whiteness.
He was whiter than anything else I have ever seen, nor do I believe that anything terrestrial could be so exceptionally white and brilliant. His hands were bare and so were his arms until just above the wrist.
His feet were also unshod, and his legs until just above the ankles. His head and throat were also bare.
I could see that he wore nothing else besides this robe, for it was open and I could see his breast.... He named me by name and told me he had been sent to me as a messenger from God and that he was called Maroni; God had work for me to do ... He said that a book was preserved written in gold plates which gave an account of the earlier inhabitants of this continent and their origin; it also contained the fullness of the eternal gospel as proclaimed to those former inhabitants by the Saviour ... After these pronouncements I saw the light in the room slowly shrinking around the man who had spoken to me, and this continued until the room was dark again, except around him. Then I could suddenly see into heaven as if through a shaft of light and the visitor rose up until he disappeared entirely and the room was once more as dark as before the vision of heavenly light ...
How does the vision in this report differ from the visions approved by the Roman Catholic Church?
Joseph Smith had more visions, in which he was shown the gold plates, the text of which he transcribed. In this way the Mormon Bible The Book of Mormon came into being in 1830. In 1848 the Christian Mormon community settled by the Salt Lake of Utah, U.S.A ... after lengthy wanderings in the desert, and founded the Mormon State of Utah with the flourishing settlement of Salt Lake City as its centre. Today the Mormon Church has over a million and a half members, who are scattered all over the world. Mormons really do live according to their Christian laws: they are more than a sect that could be dismissed as a quantite negligeable.
Who on earth can credibly explain the 'miracle' experienced by Joseph Smith except as an 'inspiration', i.e. a vision? Neither the F.B.I, nor a smart private eye knew the place on the unknown hill where Smith was to find the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon. No archaeologist had ever dug there. The vision led Smith to the hidden treasure, on the contents of which he was to base his religion.
No one knew about it, no one had been there before him so no one could have led the seventeen-yearold there telepathically. However it is logical that someone somewhere did know about this hiding place, indeed must have put the plates there. As this great unknown was not a contemporary of Smith, the impulse to search in this spot must inevitably - how else? - have come from people in the know outside our planet, people who at some point in time unknown to us had sojourned on the earth. For those who emitted the energy for the Smith vision must also have been on the hill at some time. Even they can only induce what they know, and they know more about our race and hidden knowledge than we have been able to discover so far. Smith was an instrument of the extraterrestrials. I should be genuinely grate-ful for any other convincing explanation of this phenomenon.
The Book of Mormon, which originated from these visions, contains such a wealth of historical events, with facts, names and geographical data, that it could not have formed part of the knowledge of a seventeen-year-old boy.
As with all visions, there was 'something' here. This 'something' needs investigation. It was definitely not a demonstration by the powers of hell, because the results were positive. That would be, to follow the Church Fathers, a con-tram tontrariis (fighting opposites with opposites).
The Coptic Church is the Christian national Church of Egypt, with over a million believers. It is led by the Patriarch of Alexandria, who has had his seat at Cairo since the eleventh century.
On 2nd April, 1968 passers-by observed figures like white doves, which had fluid outlines and slowly met in a mist, above the domes of the old Coptic church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitun. In a ghostlike metamorphosis the mist assumed the aspect of a human figure. It was so radiant that the spectators were blinded and could only follow the phenomenon with their eyes screwed up. The vision showed itself at the same place in the same way on other evenings.
The Coptic Patriarch Kyrillos VI at once convened a commission of priests, scholars and lay members of the Coptic community. This commission, along with thousands of Cairo citizens - Copts, Moslems, Hindus, Christians of all shades, members of sects - declared that they had seen a 'beautiful lady'
radiating light above the domes of the church. That was six years ago. On the evening of 12th April the Egyptian photographer Wagih Rizk Malta, on the hunt for a sensation, took the first snapshot of a vision of Mary in the sky. On 14th April the Patriarch produced the photograph at a press conference.
It showed a dazzlingly white shape with an unidentifiable figure against the background of the three domes near the lower edge of the picture above the church roof. Numerous witnesses confirmed having seen a 'beautiful female figure', by signing a document to that effect. [22]