The prophecy of John of Jerusalem
John of Jerusalem was born not long after a fter the year 1000 AD. Historians think that his parents may have been pilgrims on the road to Saint James of Compostella in Spain. These pilgrims came mostly from Germany, Germany, France and Italy and travelled for months, or even years. John was probably born during one of these pilgri mages and, as often happened in those days, was given to the Benedictine monks at Vezelay (Burgundy) (Burgundy) on the return journey journe y. The monks describe him as “child of the Monastery, son of Burgundy, soldier of Christ in the Holy Land”, where he lived for about twenty years, participating in the conquest of Jerusalem, and writing his prophecies. The manuscript mentions that “he often retired to the desert to meditate, where the sky and the earth meet”. He wrote in the margin of his manuscript: “the book of Prophecies is a secret protocol”. He was one of the founders of the Order of the Temple, and died around 1120, 1120, at the age a ge of 77. I have translated his prophecies from the original French. There may be some who would would question my translation. I would be happy to hear from them. The original language is not coded and, apart from John’s John’s difficulty in describing modern things (of which he does a pretty good job) is very easy to understand. There are forty prophecies. Numbers one to thirty all begin with “When the Year Thousand that today’s world with astonishing accuracy accurac y. comes after Year Thousand begins…” and describe today’s Numbers thirty-one to forty all begin with “In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand…” and describes what comes right after those dark ages and that is known in John's revelation as the 1000 years kingdom.
I would love to go directly to the prophecies for this Golden Age but, for the sake of the credibility of John of Jerusalem, I think that I should start from the beginning. beginning. Once we see, and recognise, the picture which he paints of us as we are now, now, we should be more inclined to believe his optimism about our future.
1
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Gold will be in the Blood. Whoever looks at the sky will calculate how to profit from it Whoever enters the Temple will meet merchants The Rulers will be money-changers money-changers and usurers The Sword will defend the Serpent.
But fire will be smouldering Each town will be Sodom and Gomorrah And the children of the children Will become the fiery swarm They will raise up the old banners.
2
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Man will have peopled the Heavens and the Earth and the Seas with his Creatures He will want the powers of God He will know no limit
But each thing will turn against him He will stagger like a drunken king He will gallop like a blind knight And with his spurs he will push his mount into the forest At the end of the road will be the fall.
3
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Towers of Babel will rise in all corners of the Earth That one will be Rome and this one will be Byzance The fields will be empty The only law will be that of oneself and one’s one’s clan
But the Barbarians will be in the city There will not be enough bread for everyone And games will no longer be sufficient Then people with no future Will light great fires.
4
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Hunger will squeeze the stomachs of so many men And cold will turn blue so many hands That these people will want to see another world And dream-merchants will come who will offer them the poison.
But it will destroy bodies and rot souls And those who will have mixed the poison with their blood Will be like wild beasts caught in a trap And will kill and rape and extort and steal And life will become an everyday apocalypse. apocalypse.
5
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Each person will seek as much sexual pleasure as he can The man will repudiate his wife as many times as he marries And the woman will go from place to place taking whomever pleases her Giving birth without giving the Father’s Father’s name
But no educator will guide the child And each one among the others will be alone Tradition will be lost The Law will be forgotten As if the Annunciation had never been made and man Will become wild again
6
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The father will take his pleasure with his daughter Man with man, woman with woman The old man with the impubescent child And that will be known by all.
But blood will become impure The disease will spread from bed to bed The body will receive all the putrefactions of the earth Faces will be gaunt, limbs will be emaciated Love will be a great threat For those who only know each other sexually.
7
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins He who speaks of sworn Oaths and of Law Will not be heard He who preaches the Christian Faith Will lose his voice in the desert.
But everywhere will spread the strong waters Of other religions False messiahs will assemble blinded men And the armed Infidel will be like never before He will speak of justice and of right And his faith will be burning and decisive He will take his revenge for the Crusade.
8
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The noise of killing will roll like a storm upon the earth There will be barbarians among the soldiers of the last legions People of different faiths will live in the heart of the Holy Cities Each in turn will be barbarous, faithless and lawless.
There will be no more law and order Hate will spread like a flame in the dry forest Barbarians will massacre soldiers Those of no faith will slit the throats of the faithful Brutality will be everywhere and the cities will die.
9
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Men will judge each other according to their Race and their Religion Nobody will listen to the suffering hearts of the children They will be taken from their nests like baby birds And no-one will be able to protect them from the rapid hand By the gauntlet.
Hate will flood the lands which thought themselves pacified And nobody will be spared, neither the elderly nor the wounded Houses will be destroyed or stolen People will take the place of others Each one will close his eyes so as not to see the women raped
10
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Everyone will know what is happening everywhere on Earth They will see the child whose bones are piercing his skin And the one whose eyes are covered in flies And the one being hunted like a rat.
But the man who sees will turn away his head For he will be thinking only of himself That man will give a handful of seeds in charity When he sleeps on full sacks And what he gives with one hand he will take back with the other. other.
11
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Man will make mechandise of everything Everything will have its price Trees, water and animals Nothing more will be given and everything will be sold.
But then Man will be no more than his weight of flesh His body will be bartered like a side of meat m eat They will take his eye and his heart Nothing will be sacred, neither his life nor his soul They will compete for his dead body and his blood Like a dead animal to be cut up.
12
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Man will have changed the face of the earth He will think himself the master and Ruler Of the forests and the flocks He will have burrowed into the ground and the sky And left his mark in the rivers and the seas.
But the earth will be naked and sterile The Air will become burning hot and the water will stink Life will wilt because man will use up the richness of the world And man will be alone like a wolf in hatred of himself.
13
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The child too will be sold Some people will use him like a quintain To get sexual pleasure from his new skin Others will treat him like a servile animal.
They will forget the sacred weakness of the child And his mystery He will be a foal to be trained Like a lamb to be bled, to be slaughtered And man will be nothing more than savage cruelty.
14
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The opinions and the minds of men will be imprisoned They will be intoxicated and will not know it They will take images and reflections for the truth of the world They will be treated like sheep.
Then the flesh-eaters will come Rapacious people will herd them The better to lead them to the cliff ’s edge And turn them against each other They will be skinned for their wool and their leather And man if he survives will be stripped of his soul.
15
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Rulers with no religious beliefs will reign They will issue orders to unsuspecting and passive crowds of people They will hide their faces and keep their names secret And their castles will be hidden in the forests.
But they will decide the fate of everything and of everyone No-one will participate in the meetings of their order Everyone will be a true serf and will believe himself to be a free man and a knight The only ones to rise up will be those of the untamed cities And of the heretic faiths But first of all they will be defeated and burnt alive.
16
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Men will be so numerous over the lands That they will resemble an ant’s nest Into which a stick has been poked They will swarm everywhere and death will crush them underfoot Like frightened insects.
Great movements will push them from one country to another Brown skins will mix with white skins The Christian faith with that of the Infidel Some will preach sworn peace But everywhere there will be fighting among enemy tribes.
17
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Men will want to break down all barriers The mother will have the hair of an old woman The path of nature will be abandoned And families will be like scattered grains That nothing can unite.
It will therefore be another world Each person will roam without ties like a bolted horse Going in all directions with no guide Unhappy the knight who mounts this steed He will be without stirrups and will fall into the ditch.
18
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Men will no longer rely on the law of God But will want to lead their lives li ves like a horse They will want to choose their children in their wives’ wombs wombs And will kill those that they don’t like.
But what sort of man takes himself for God like li ke that? The Powerful will seize the best lands And the most beautiful women The poor and the weak will be cattle Each home will become a donjon Fear will be in every heart like a poison.
19
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins A black and secret order will have risen Its law will be of hate and its arm poison It will want always more gold and will spread its reign Over the earth Those who serve it will be bound to each other by a kiss of blood.
Good men and the weak will be submitted to its rule The Powerful will enter its service The only law will be that which it dictates in the shadows It will sell the poison even in the churches And the world will walk with the scorpion under its heel.
20
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins A lot of men will remain seated with their arms crossed Or will wander without knowing where, with glazed eyes For they will no longer have a forge to beat metal And no field to cultivate
They will be like a seed which cannot take root Roaming around and owning nothing, humiliated and desperate The youngest and the oldest often homeless They will have only war to save them And they will start by fighting themselves And they will hate their lives.
21
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Illnesses from the water from the sky and from the earth Will attack man and endanger him He will want to revive that which he has destroyed And protect that which remains He will be afraid of the days to come.
But it will be very late The desert will swallow up the land And water will be deeper and deeper It will flow some days Taking everything like a flood And the next day there won’t be enough for the land And the air will eat away the bodies of the weakest.
22
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The earth will quake in several places And the cities will fall down Everything that will have been built without heeding the wise ones Will be endangered and destroyed Mud will submerge towns And the ground will open under the Palaces.
Man will persist for his pride is his folly He will not heed the repeated warnings of the earth But fire will destroy the new Romes And in the accumulated ruins The poor and the lawless will loot in spite of the Legions The abandoned riches.
23
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The sun will burn the earth The Air will no longer be a veil which protects from the fire It will be only a curtain with holes And the burning light will eat away skins and eyes.
The sea will rise like boiling water Cities and seasides will be covered And entire continents will disappear Men will take refuge on the heights And they will rebuild already forgetting f orgetting that which has happened.
24
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Men will know how to make mirages live The senses will be deceived and they will believe they are touching that which is not They will follow paths which are seen only by the eyes And in this way dreams will be able to come alive.
But man will no longer know how to separate That which is from that which is not He will be lost inside false labyrinths Those who will know how to make the mirages live Will take advantage of the naive man by deceiving him And a lot of men will become grovelling dogs.
25
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins The animals which Noah had embarked on his Ark Will be no more in Man’s hands Than beasts transformed according to his will And who will worry about their lifetime of suffering?
Man will have made each species into what he wanted And he will have destroyed numerous ones What will the man have become who will have changed the laws of life lif e Who will have made the living animal a piece of clay Will he be the equal of God or the child of the Devil?
26
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins You must be afraid for the child of man Poison and despair will lie in wait for him He will be desired only selfishly and not for his own sake or for the world He will be tracked down for sexual pleasure and sometimes his body will be sold.
But even the one being protected by his family Will be in danger of having a dead mind He will live inside games and mirages Which will guide him because there will be no more educators No-one will have taught him to hope and how to act.
27
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Man will think that he is God when he will be nothing more than a baby He will hit out, always overcome by anger and jealousy, But he will be armed with the power that he has taken And blind Prometheus he will be able to destroy everything around him.
He will remain a dwarf of the soul and he will have the strength of a giant He will take enormous strides forward but he will not know which road to take His head will be heavy with knowledge But he will not know why he lives and dies He will be like the fire f ire always gesticulating or the child who whimpers.
28
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Whole regions will be prey to war Beyond the Roman limes and even on the former territory of the Empire, men of same cities will cut each others throats Here it will be war between tribes and there between religious believers.
The Jews and the children of Allah will unendingly oppose each other And the land of Christ will be their battlefield But the infidels will want to defend the purety of their faith everywhere And opposite them will be only doubt and power Then death will advance everywhere everywhere like the flag of the new times.
29
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins A multitude of men will be excluded from human life They will have neither rights, nor roof, nor bread, They will be naked and will have only their bodies to sell They will be pushed far away from the opulent towers of Babel.
They will swarm like a remorse and a menace They will occupy entire regions and will proliferate They will listen to the preachings of vengeance And they will launch an attack on the proud towers The time of barbaric invasions will have come.
30
When the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand begins Man will have entered into the dark labyrinth He will be afraid and he will close his eyes for he will no longer want to see He will be wary of everything and afraid at every step But still he will be pushed onward for no halt will be allowed him.
Even though the voice of Cassandra will be loud and strong He will not hear it For he will want to possess more and more and his head will be lost in mirages Those who govern him will deceive him And there will be only bad shepherds.
31
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Men will have at last opened their eyes They will no longer be locked up inside their heads or in their cities They will see and hear each other from one point of the earth to another They will know that whatever strikes one of them hurts the others.
Men will be like a great single body Of which each of them will be a tiny part And together they will constitute the heart And there will be one language which will be spoken by everyone and this is how the great human being will be born.
32
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will have conquered the sky He will create stars in the great dark blue sea And he will navigate on this shining ship New Ulysses, companion companion of the sun, for the celestial Odyssey. Odyssey.
But he will also be the ruler of the water He will have built great nautical cities Which will be fed by sea crops He will live like this in every part of the great domain And nothing will be forbidden him.
33
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Men will be able to go down under the waters Their bodies will be new and they will be fish And some will fly high, higher than the birds As if stones don’t fall.
They will communicate with each other For their minds will be so greatly open that they will receive all messages And dreams will be shared And they will live as long as the oldest of men The one of whom the Holy Books speak.
34
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will know what the spirit of all things is The stone or the water, the body of the animal or the gaze of others He will have pierced the secrets that the ancient Gods possessed And he will open door after door in the labyrinth of the new life.
He will create with the gushing power of a water source He will teach the knowledge to the multitude of men And the children will know more about the earth and the sky than anyone before them And Man’s body will be bigger and skilful And his mind will have embraced all things and will have understood them. them.
35
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will no longer be the only ruler for woman will come and seize the sceptre She will be the great mistress of the future times And that which she thinks, she will impose on men She will be the mother of this Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand She will spread the warm softness of the sea after the days of the Devil She will be beauty after the ugliness of the barbarous times The Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand will change into a gentle time People will love and they will share They will dream and they will give birth to the dreams.
36
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will have a second birth The Spirit will take hold of the human throng Who will worship in brotherhood Then the end of the barbarous times will begin.
This will be the time of a new vigour of the Faith After the black days of the beginning of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Happy days will open up Man will again find the path of Men And the earth will be in order.
37
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Roads will go from one end of the earth and the sky to the other end Forests will be dense again And the deserts will have been irrigated The waters will have become pure again.
The earth will be like a garden Man will watch over everything that lives He will purify that which he has soiled He will feel as if all the earth is his home And he will be wise in thinking of the days to come.
38
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Each person will be like a measured footstep They will know everything about the world and about their bodies They will cure illness before it appears Each person will be healer of himself and of the others.
They will have understood that you have to help to be able to maintain And man, after the times tim es of narrow-mindedness and of avarice, Will open his heart and his purse to the poorest He will feel himself to be a knight of the human order And in this way a new time will at last begin.
39
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will have learnt to give and to share The bitter days of solitude will be gone He will believe once more in the spirit And the Barbarians will have acquired recognition.
But that will come after the war and the fires That will spring up from the blackened ruins of the towers of Babel And it will have taken an iron fist For the disorder to be put in order and for man to find again the right path.
40
In the heart of the Year Thousand that comes after Year Thousand Man will know that all living things are bearers of light And that they are creatures to be respected He will have built the new cities In the sky, on the earth and on the sea.
He will have the memory of what was And he will know what will be He will no longer be afraid of his own death For in his life he will have lived several lives And the light, he will understand, will never go out.
