[Note: This chapter, and all others in this book, are excerpted from The End of Our Century by Francois Masson, written in 1979-80. It was transcribed from French into English by David Michael Steinberg in 1981 and a publisher was never found. It was finally edited, updated and published on the Internet by David Wilcock in 2001.]

How can any reasonable man keep his balance when he sees all the values established by past generations dissolving beneath his feet, even the basic moral foundations and social units of religion, nation, community and family?

Since the appearance of modern dictatorships, whether fascist, communist, theocratic or too subtle to be clearly labeled but all based on using the audio-visual media to control the minds of the populace, the world has embarked on a period of fluidity and change much more radical than that stimulated by the invention of printing which launched the Renaissance, a period that foreshadowed ours in its social and religious upheavals.

We see the general instability increasing as we approach the Aquarian Age, and this will go on until we outgrow our present view of the universe. Every birth is traumatic and bringing forth this new life of humanity will be especially hard.

The fatal year marking the beginning of our entry into a new age was certainly 1968 with its worldwide revolt of youth against the establishment. This revolt was clearly foreseen by Michael Helmer using the theory of historical cycles (see Chapter 6 for an explanation of this technique.)

In 1968, especially from May onward, a wholly unexpected, spontaneous movement took hold of young people all over the world; in France, the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Germany and notably in Czechoslovakia.

Instinctively the youth were trying to create a world with more freedom and brotherhood and less hypocrisy. It is hard to convey to one who was not there this great celebration of youth with all its virtues and defects, a feast of constant exchange of ideas in which all social classes thrown together could freely express their deepest thoughts without being put in their place by any legal authority.

In spite of the broad reverberations of the movement, this political reexamination was carried out without large-scale violence, without seeking martyrs for the cause — a handy foundation for new tyrannies — without terrorism deliberately provoking counter-terrorism to justify itself.

Even the confrontations in Paris between the forces of law and order and the young demonstrators were never marked by violent death, as if on both sides, the climate of tolerance for others’ opinions had an unconscious pacifying effect on everyone’s mind.

During this short period of the Reign of Youth, all the taboos which were used until then to safeguard special privileges in a society stiff with age were swept away, even those essential to the stability of any society.

Thus sexuality enjoyed a lawless explosion, which threatens to destroy the family unit, the basic cell of the social organism. But as everyone realizes by now, most young people are idealistic and believe in fidelity in love and marriage.

If we take the long view, we must admit that 1968 represents(1) a basic change in the concept of the individual’s relation to society, and (2) an attempt to strip away the lies sugar-coating all systems. When the leaders of these movements come to power, as is inevitable, they are bound to put at least some of their ideals into practice.

The world will then realize that the final score of these movements is on the positive side. Their conception of society will be realized as this century ends and the next one begins and is appropriate for humanity’s entrance into the Aquarian Age.

The ideological smokescreens will be swept away and the naked truths revealed. So let’s be hopeful about the future; despite the excesses of extremist fanatics, which only prolong the strife and suffering, the world is surely moving toward an era of justice and brotherhood. It will put an end to the Big Lie which governs the operation of our institutions.

Unfortunately we are still in the middle of the period of transition, with disputes of all kinds, when all the old religious and philosophical standards are called into question. This, of course, gives rise to countless sects and cults, from the hippies to the Red Brigades. Yes, we have indeed reached the time of false prophets announced by the Christ in his speech on Jerusalem and His Second Coming.

Having enjoyed the consumerism of the affluent society, we are beginning to pay the price: complete overturning of the traditional environment and general pollution of bodies and minds, spreading from the tropics to the poles and sparing no one.

This moral and material pollution is deadlier than all the wars of yesteryear. Its worst effect is the slow attrition of the family, already well begun in totalitarian regimes, through indoctrination of the youth and denunciation of parents by their children. Prisoners of war returning from Germany report having witnessed this under Nazism and the same thing occurred during a similar period in the USSR.

This destruction, of course, has not yet entirely ceased in the totalitarian states, even though their young people are moving in new directions. But it goes on in our democracies too, only in more subtle ways — the extreme sexual freedom we already spoke of is one of them.

All of this shows an effort by the prince of this world to keep his grip on it before his final defeat, announced by the prophecies of Nostradamus, Cayce and Fatima for 1998-1999.

 

It is not the aim of this book to spread a paranoid fear and anxiety, like that which gripped humanity at the approach of the year 1000, but rather to propose an answer for those who reflect on the purpose of our existence.

Practically all religions have forsaken their role of leadership and instead follow the latest fashions, whether nationalist, collectivist, sexual or whatever. They have lost the respect of the majority and few people still have the simple faith of the peasant.

And yet, the more insecure the world becomes, the more man feels a need to believe in something. The proliferation of cults and false prophets can only increase with the political and even geologic crises yet to come.

An answer to the anguished query of mankind is given by the Christ in his speech on His Second Coming (Matt. 24, Mark 13, Luke 21.) Then there are the answers of Max Planck, Velikovsky, a cyclologist like Michel Helmer, and even to some extent Teilhard de Chardin. Except for the latter, these men are not accredited philosophers or fashionable gurus such as hatch daily, but non-conformist thinkers who have really made a study of man’s destiny.

To these thinkers we can add those persons called prophets or seers because Nature has endowed them to the highest degree with the gift of precognition, a gift now statistically recognized and found, on a small scale to be sure, in many human beings. Through their utterances these psychics have shed much light on the mechanism of this mutation.

This book, then, will discuss Nostradamus and Cayce, the best-known seers whose accuracy is documented, despite the deliberate obscurity of Nostradamus and Cayce’s ambiguities.

We will also examine the prophecies of St. Malachy, the words reported by the children at Fatima, and other evidence, drawing on historical cycles, planetary motions and Pyramid studies. Although these data come from such disparate sources, the conclusions all point to our time.

Let us repeat that we are not trying to be sensational at any price: quite the contrary. By simply putting facts together as they fit, our object is to inform the reader of what may happen during the next 50 years and what the eventual result will be; a fairer, more fraternal world — after a painful labor and delivery with its inevitable loss of blood.

Bearing in mind that the times are already changing as we see every day, several passages from Christ’s speech on Jerusalem and His Second Coming quoted by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, become amazingly topical and should be reread by all. Just notice the concrete statements that are becoming reality, for the following words are coming true:

”For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled; for all must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” (Matt. 24: 5-8)

 

We are indeed in the time of wars and rumors of wars. Only the blind could fail to notice that since the end of World War II, the media speaks to us continually of wars, hot or cold, and of rumors of wars, ideological or otherwise.

Not a day goes by without this fact piercing us from all sides, and it either involves ideological strife or pits one people against another or one nation against another. And look at all the plays, movies and novels about Jesus Christ Superstar — the first efforts to create a new Christ — matched by the attempt to transform Che Guevara into a new Christ martyr; remember the cartoons and posters at the time?

We are not concerned here with denying Che’s romantic, or even idealistic appeal, but let’s not forget that Christ always recommended non-violence to resolve conflicts. Gandhi used this method to obtain justice and freedom for his people, and whoever studies his life realizes how effective it is. But Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatic — and this is really symbolic.

Big parades, violent confrontations and terrorists are not necessary to carry an idea to victory. A mass silent protest, a quiet sit-down strike or simply staying home is much more effective and will upset any authority.

Happily, the Christ goes on to say:

“And, except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matt. 24:22)

 

But before these plagues are over,

“iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” (Matt. 24:12)

“And then if any man shall say to you. Lo, here is Christ: or, lo, he is there; believe him not: for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets.” (Matt. 24:24)

 

The Christ states clearly the unmistakable signs of his true return:

“For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” (Matt. 24:27)

 

The Christ described exactly the signs that will herald his coming which everyone will recognize because it will follow a shake-up of the heavenly bodies. The Christ says;

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” (Matt. 24: 29-30)

 

But, the Christ added this statement, a valuable one for all times:

“As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and living in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark — and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away. So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.”

 

The end of the Christ’s speech is precise and matches the visions of Nostradamus and Cayce: geologic upheavals, perhaps caused by a planetary disturbance, await us, and as always mankind will be taken by surprise. Nostradamus in his quatrain III-34 says:

“When there is an eclipse of the sun

In broad daylight the monster will be seen

It will be wrongly interpreted

No care how costly, no one will prepare for it.”

 

In other words the sun will fail, or darken, the monstrous author of that disturbance will be visible, but once again no one will have taken the necessary precautions and that will prove costly to the human race.

Except for the ancient Gauls, whose only fear was that the sky would fall on their heads, men cling to a belief in the absolute stability of the earth. They will never accept the possibility of a world-wide earthquake and they are always surprised by deluges, whether of water or fire, although the earth has suffered many of them.

It will be the same in the future, despite all the prophecies and warning signs, no matter how explicit. Luckily, the Christ added that those days will be brief because of the elect. On the other hand, Nostradamus calls his predictions “perpetual vaccinations, from now to the year 3797,” and Cayce says that exchanges between countries will go on after the upheavals.

Note that Christ’s words contain an incredible statement: A certain number of just men, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, can either avert the destruction or shorten it.

That seems impossible to us, but is a result of the infinity of God, of which we each carry an infinitesimal part, but a part nonetheless. A scholar like Velikovsky, after all his research on the oldest records of ancient cataclysms, comes clearly to that conclusion.

Edgar Cayce in his psychic readings about Atlantis before its final destruction also outlines this process: the keepers of the Law of One, the law of the just, had, like Noah, foreseen the destruction of their country because all spirituality had totally disappeared and the children of Belial had violated the laws of nature to satisfy unlimited earthly appetites — which was bound to bring about the certain destruction of Atlantis.

In various other readings, Cayce explained the reasons for the two previous partial destructions of Atlantis — all due to the collapse of spirituality. On the eve of the third and last, the children of the Law of One knew from the experience of their ancestors what fate awaited their land, and they all fled to different regions, while Atlantis vanished in a single night.

It seems sure that the higher spirituality of a certain number of just persons is both necessary and sufficient to maintain the cosmic order. Below this minimum, the world inevitably heads for wars and disasters and if we don’t “repent,” i.e. turn back toward spirituality, it will infallibly undergo a radical purging so that we can start afresh on a new moral basis.

Let us hope, then, that the time announced by both Nostradamus and Cayce is not far off when a new religion comes to reform and revive the whole Christian Church. It will take such an event to cut short the announced cataclysms.

This book will mention every relevant fact that may shed some light on this picture of the future and no data will be rejected, not the psychic visions of Nostradamus, Cayce, St. Malachy and Fatima; cyclology; the effects of sunspots; the imminent official discovery of the new transplutonian planet or the secret of the Pyramids.

Of course, a commentator, by definition, is not a seer, and he may be wrong about the exact chronology of the prophecies but the bundle of hypotheses he has collected make him presume that he is right, in general, about the events of the next fifty years.

The reader may feel that this is too much to expect, but the more deeply the author studies the data, whether from physical, paraphysical or mathematical sources, the firmer his belief becomes. As he is looking only at the near future, correct prediction should be within the realm of the possible, even though we are dealing with a time of evolutionary and exceptional phenomena.