FATIMA

Not the Blessed Mother on Toast THIS        Today is Holy Thursday, commemorating for Christians the day Jesus Christ was arrested and condemned to death.  In various Gospel accounts he had, several times, alluded to his resurrection three days after "the temple was destroyed"  His disciples did not understand what he meant until the third day after his crucification. Whether you are a believer is moot here. This is. There has been, to my knowledge, just been one other instance in history where a forthcoming miracle was foretold, and that is Fatima.  If you've a mind to debunk Fatima, you may want to begin with Debunking the Sun Miracle Skeptics.  Peace. A brief chronology via Wiki Portugal was undergoing tensions between the secularizing Republican government and more conservative elements in society. The Catholic opposition compared the actions of the Portuguese government to the contemporary actions of the Russian Bolsheviks On May 13, 1917, the children purportedly saw a lady "brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun". The woman wore a white mantle edged with gold and held a rosary in her hand. Her disbelieving mother told neighbors as a joke, and within a day the whole village knew.[4] On August 13, 1917, the provincial administrator Artur Santos[7] (no relation to Lúcia Santos), believing that the events were politically disruptive, intercepted and jailed the children before they could reach the Cova da Iria. The administrator interrogated and threatened the children (with being  boiled in oil) to get them to divulge the contents of the secrets. Lúcia offered to ask the Lady for permission to tell the Administrator the secrets.[1] That month, instead of the usual apparition in the Cova da Iria on the 13th, the children reported that they saw the Virgin Mary on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, at nearby Valinhos.[4] As early as July 1917 it was claimed that the Virgin Mary had promised a miracle for the last of her apparitions on October 13, so that all would believe. What happened then became known as the "Miracle of the Sun". A huge crowd, variously estimated between 30,000 and 100,000,[8][9] including newspaper reporters and photographers, gathered at the Cova da Iria. The incessant rain had ceased and there was a thin layer of cloud. Lúcia, seeing light rising from the lady's hands and the sun appearing as a silver disk, called out "look at the sun". She later had no memory of saying this.[4] Witnesses later spoke of the sun appearing to change colors and rotate like a wheel.[10] Witnesses gave widely varying descriptions of the "sun's dance". Poet Afonso Lopes Vieira and schoolteacher Delfina Lopes (with her students and other witnesses in the town of Alburita), reported that the solar phenomenon was visible up to forty kilometers away.[10] However, the phenomenon was not visible in other parts of the globe. No movement or other phenomenon of the sun was recorded by scientists at the time.[4] Not all witnesses reported seeing the sun "dance". Some people only saw the radiant colors, and others, including some believers, saw nothing at all.[11][12]  (taken from Wikipedia) jmj