".... will reappear during times of great trouble"

©2021 The Media Desk
http://themediadesk.com

      There are numerous figures who it is said will 'come back', however that may be defined, during periods of immense difficulty, again, whatever that means, wherever they may be from, and when they stop by, they'll be on a mission, of some sort.

      In this edition of The Mystery Series, we're going to look at everybody from religious figures from the Second Elijah and the Twelfth Imam (the Mahdi), the Twenty Ninth Buddha (the Metteyya) all the way through King Arthur and even Moth Man. Some are said to being going back to their old neighborhood, others will visit for the first time, either way, this is the general bus stop where they'll arrive.

      Of course, they are all but a shadow of the image of the promised return of the Son of Man, which we will look at in passing. Including the similarities of those other promises, and the differences.

      We've already stumbled around in the dark of Europe during the ages around 1000 or so, to 1300 AD (Dark Age in Europe, get it?.... ... ok, that was a bit of a reach, moving on...) in our search for Prester John, who we'll stop and look at with both feet solidly in Europe when the article went from Mongolia to Southern Africa and even a remote island in the Indian Ocean, see link below.
      In that article we discussed that while Europe endured interminable wars, famines, several bouts of The Plague, and new and improved forms of corruption in local government and the period called the 'saeculum obscurum' (Latin for "dark age") and later the 'Pornocracy' (the infamous 'rule by harlots') in the Holy See in Rome, the people were yearning for a noble and wise ruler from The East, who would ride into the scene at the head of a powerful army and sort the mess, end the Hundred Years War, that had lasted for a Hundred and Twenty years, and put Good Rulers on the high seats in Europe before he returned to his own kingdom.
      Unfortunately for the people of Europe, ranging from a Pope desperate for a powerful ally down to the common people of Bavaria looking for somebody to dispose various self-enriching local minor princes, the individual known as Prester John when examined under the harsh light of the Desk's inquiry, came out to be more wishful thinking than actual Sovereign.
      They NEEDED there to be a Prester John, however, as the song goes....

"you don't always get what you want"
-The Rolling Stones

      Well, "flash from the newsroom", It Didn't Happen, because, as it turns out, Prester John was more myth than man.

      And, if you carefully look through the headlines from the last year, NONE of the figures we listed earlier in this one have turned up to guide us out of this mess, nor has the Second Coming happened. So we're all still here to wade through these legends and see just how bad things have to be before any of these figures show up to help us out of it.

      Like we saw in the article on the Count St Germain (see TheMediaDesk.com link below for more), there have been those who have claimed to be him, or are speaking on his behalf, as we'll see in a minute. Others say they are the Mahdi, or even Christ Himself. Most of those claimants vanished as quickly as they appeared. However, a few managed to gather a significant following, including a veritable harem of adoring women, and some appear to have done so simply to make money.
      Perhaps some examples.

      We'll start with those cashing in on the Count:
"Lady Portia and Count St. Germain channeled through Star Hinman, Spiritual Messenger for the Ascended Masters"
https://sananda.website/category/saint-germain/ (also linked below)

      If they are "channeling" him that means he has "shuffled off this mortal coil" and is 'out yonder', which explains the "ascended master" part, but while the Alchemist of Old was something of a mystical figure, we're not sure he would appreciate working overtime in this way. Be that as it may... moving on....

      And now we'll look at one who overthrew a country for fun and profit claiming to be the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad in the Sudan:

"In 1881, a Muslim sheik, Muhammad Ahmad, led a four-year successful military campaign against armies led by Egyptian and British officers. Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the “redeemer of the faith”, and won followers by declaring that it was time to revitalize Islam. The Mahdi claimed to descend from the Prophet Muhammad and demanded strict adherence to the words of the Prophet in the Qur’an. ... ...He also omitted the haj to Mecca and substituted it with a new pillar, a jihad against infidels."
http://webs.bcp.org (link below)

      In Shiite teachings, the real Twelfth Imam is to appear from a special water well to battle injustice and return the people to the true faith, and there may be another function that we'll come back to later.
      Sheik Ahmad is known to have had his own ideas about Islam, and spent more time battling the British than he did injustice. But that didn't stop him from becoming very popular, and very wealthy, in his homeland, and his son and then grandsons became statesmen of renown in Sudan.
      Go back and read that statement above about having his followers use violence against non-believers instead of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Where have we seen that promoted lately? And that is enough of that.

      And it is in that brief review of the job description of the Twelfth Imam that we come to the primary reason these individuals are going to show up. They are here on a mission. As another example, we'll look at the Twenty Ninth Buddha, the Metteyya (also referred to as "Maitreya"), who is to be the final Buddha for our world.
      When this great teacher arrives, the one who is now portrayed as a rotund Buddha figure who is seen laughing, or at least smiling broadly, he... (hang on to that pronoun, we'll come back to it in a moment), he will teach the rest of us true enlightenment and possibly usher in the next age of humanity.

      Now, back to "he".

Stand By For Tangent:
      With the possible sole exception of the Metteyya, and indeed a bare handful of previous Buddhas (depending on your source), all of the individuals we've mentioned were exclusively male, both their former mythical and/or historical selves, and in some cases those are completely unrelated designations. See link below for one example of a female Buddha. While the usual depiction of the coming teacher is male, that appears to only be an artistic convenience instead of deep theological dogma. Indeed, "the Buddha", that is "The Universal Spirit", can choose whether to appear in this world as a male or a female, and has done so several times in the past, a link below discusses it, and the Metteyya could well decide to visit our world as a woman this time.
      In Islam, women have been forbidden from any position of religious responsibility when that would put them over men until very recently, and only in a few places in the West, see link to an example from France below. And such promotion has been deemed haram ("forbidden to the faithful") by various international leaders. If the Mahdi were to be a woman, not only would she not be accepted by the majority of the leaders of the various major houses of Islam, including the Shia who are waiting at the well for the arrival of the Imam.
      Things are slightly more favorable in many Christian churches, and even that ancient bastion of male-centric authority, the Roman Catholic Church, is starting to take a few tentative steps that way. One group has made that their banner cause, see link below.
      Under Judiasm, women have been accepted as Rabbis most widely since the 1970s for the more modern branches into the turn of the century for the Orthodoxy. Of course, throughout history, there have been locally recognized female Rabbis, often of necessity during persecutions instead of by desire of the community members. But those are rare enough to be counted as aberrations instead of the norm. There's a good overview linked below. But our discussion was about the return of Elijah as mentioned in Scripture, most notably Malachi 4 and Matthew 16, see links below. And being that the prediction is for the return of a specific individual known male figure, it has to be a male that returns.
      Is that enough? At least for now? OK. Moving on.
End Tangent.

      One of the things the legends have in common is that whoever it is, or in the case of Mothman, whatever It is, would appear during a time of great trouble. Many of the legends indicate that the troubles included spiritual apostasy as well as all of the usual societal ills.
      This can be seen in the prophecy that states that Elijah would return before the "Day of the Lord", which is the proverbial Palaeoloxodon in the room (a link below explains that). It is implied in the story about the coming Madhi and the next Buddha. And it is also told at the end of the traditional story about King Arthur, "the once and future king", who would return to save Britain from some calamity.
      But the stories don't get very specific about the problems that arise, nor why any of those that we are talking about would be the only ones that could solve them.
      It could be as we saw in Europe around the year 1000 AD when we discussed another mythical figure who was supposed to arrive soon and put the situation right, Prester John. And, just as those a millennia ago saw their hopes unfulfilled, and in some cases, brutally dashed by prolonged wars between otherwise minor princes and city-states in parts of central and southern Europe.

The Mothman connection.

      Something strange happened along the Ohio River in the mid-sixties in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
      Something strange appeared several times, at least as far as is known that is, to several different witnesses.
      Something strange, is the best way to describe the whole series of events and individuals. Which climaxed with the collapse of the Highway 35 "Silver" Bridge between Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio, which killed forty six people in December of 1967.
      Not long afterward there were those that said the appearance of the apparition was a warning the people in the area about the impending disaster, and those that encountered the Mothman, with his odd wings, glowing eyes, and clawed feet, misunderstood.
      There are also those who say that Mothy, as some call him, will return to warn of another disaster and we had all better pay attention when he shows up.

      Which is why 'Mothy' is part of our discussion to begin with. If whateveritwas was real, and was really there to warn them that something was wrong with at least one of the eyebars used to support the superstructure of the bridge. If you want to read a non-Mothman account of the bridge failure, an official page on the event is linked below.
      If, and that word should be in bold caps.... IF (that's better) any of that is true, then perhaps the statements, or should we say 'prophecies', of the others may well be true as well. Which would mean that the subject of those prophecies will have the highlights of their message all ready on press releases to be delivered to the locals.
      Everybody from King Arthur down, or up as the case may be, will have a reason to be stopping by and not just here on a holiday. So, right now, the good King is out making plans to save his nation from the coming disaster, there's a link below to another Desk article about His Majesty.
      Soon the Metteyya will be teaching true enlightenment in the central courtyard at the mall every morning. The Mahdi will be doing something similar in the afternoons. And then later in the evening Elijah will preach his message about the coming Day of the Lord (hang on to that thought for a moment).
      And ALL OF THEM are there because there is something big afoot and they have been sent to get the rest of us ready for it.
      With the Metteyya, it is the end of this age of the world and the dawning of the next. The Mahdi's mission is essentially the same, although as some traditions make it, his arrival portends the returning of Christ, while there is a line of thought that they will arrive almost simultaneously. See the link below for more on that connection.

      Ah, yes, a question from over there, yes?

"This is all fine. But, so what? We're dealing with ....."

      If you go back and look at history, "we" are always "dealing with" something. And 'we the people' have really short memories. The Plague of 2020 is just the most recent unpleasant event. It wasn't that long ago that the German Measles (Rubella) which altered the crew of a Moon Mission and may have changed the outcome of it. There's a link below to the NASA overview of that one.
      Before that there were Flu outbreaks. Not to mention Typhoid, or Smallpox. Oh, and there was the Black Death that killed somewhere between a quarter and a third of the human population of Europe, not once, but Several Times over the course of history since the end of Rome. The History.com link below highlights a few of those.

      And we should remember things like Recessions (the 1980's anybody?) and Depressions (especially the one called 'the Great').
      And, we have forgotten to include small missteps like the Wars of Religion from about 1560 to 1600 that all but destroyed France. And then there were World Wars, or the US War Between the States. As well as events like the Attacks of September Eleventh some twenty years ago now.

      WE are Always dealing with Something.

      These sorts of events occur so often in the overall stream of Human History that it is more unusual to have a score of years of relative peace and calm that when it does occur for longer it is worth its own heading in the textbooks. Such as the Pax Romana, again, there's a link below to more on that.

      So. What sort of event would be dramatic enough to be the 'last straw' and trigger the return of, well, Mothy, or one or all of the others?
      All we can say is what Hasn't, including multiple World Wars, global disease outbreaks far worse than 'Covid-19', and economic downturns that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people even before the 'migrant' problems of the US and Europe of the last few years. A link below leads to an educational link that describes an ancient problem that sounds very familiar.

      And all that is without mentioning natural events like the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, the Great One, that all but destroyed a significant part of Portugal, Spain, and even North Africa and left some 130,000 people dead. That was an All Saints Day, 1 November, that will never be forgotten. See link below.

            Or has it been forgotten? We have short memories.

      We are not saying that any or all of those we've mentioned above are not going to return to show us a better way. Doing that is so far above The Desk's paygrade as to be hilarious to even consider. However, as we've just seen, nothing we've been through in the last two thousand years or so has been bad enough to bring on the End of the Age and usher in whatever is next, and call for one of the tour guides we've listed to point the way.
      According to various religious prophecies, it is NOT for humans to know when the time of the World We Know is up. Which, when you think about it, is what gives a figure like Elijah his job description.

      The time for This Article is Up. We need a conclusion.
      OK, here we go.....

      IF one of them shows up, including Mothman, we need to pay attention, and get ready for the Next Age of the Earth. But for now, we'll get a Dean Martin glass, a couple of ice cubes, and a generous splash of Wild Turkey 101.

The Count Saint Germain: https://sananda.website/category/saint-germain/

Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, the Mahdi of Sudan
http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/modernworldhistorytextbook/imperialism/section_6/resistance.html

The Mahdi and Iran: https://rasanah-iiis.org/english/monitoring-and-translation/reports/al-mahdi-for-shiites-sunnis-and-the-khomeini-iran/

the Mahdi and the Second Coming of Christ: "Jesus Will Return with Imam Mahdi"
https://www.al-islam.org/ancient-prophets-modern-world-true-story-jesus-p-shaykh-mansour-leghaei/jesus-will-return-imam-mahdi

A look at Female Imams
https://www.france24.com/en/20190205-france-female-imam-islam-mosque-bahloul-fatima-muslim-paris

The Buddha in the Future, the Metteyya
https://solancha.com/maitreya-the-coming-of-the-future-buddha/
Kwan Yin, a female Buddha: https://www.porchlight.ca/~blackdog/kwanyin.htm
More on the Yogini, female Buddhist teachers,: from an exhibit of artwork
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/arts/design/when-buddha-chooses-to-be-a-woman.html

The site is what it says it is: https://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/

Female Rabbis https://jwa.org/rabbis

"Who do people say the Son of Man is?" https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2016%3A13-20&version=NIV
Also available at the link above is: Elijah yet to come.
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes." Malachi 4:5-6
(an interesting study is to compare that and related ideas to the Mahdi)

Giant Straight Tusked Elephants: Palaeoloxodon
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/february/weird-skulls-of-straight-tusked-elephants-reveal-how-many-species.html

"The World's Only...." https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/

NOTE: The official state report on the bridge collapse does not mention Mothman: http://transportation.wv.gov/highways/bridge_facts/Modern-Bridges/Pages/Silver.aspx

From NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years-ago-apollo-13-and-german-measles/

Other historic pandemics at: https://www.history.com/

The Roman Peace: https://www.ancient.eu/Pax_Romana/

The Roman Era Migration Period in Europe.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-germanic-tribes/

The Great Lisbon Earthquake, 1755

The Media Desk non-fiction as mentioned in the article above:
The Desk's look at the "Once and Future King": Arthur

And the articles about:
Prester John

Count St. Germain

A Link To Other Non-Fiction and Mystery Series Articles
from TheMediaDesk.com at- http://themediadesk.com/nonfiction.htm

Back to the Desk's Main page
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