"On his deathbed Pope John XXIII is said to have had a vision of a man that would usher in a new Golden Age such as mankind has never known. He described him as a small, barefooted man with brown skin who will wear a distinctive red robe. Similarly, the great 16th century seer Nostradamus and American prophet Edgar Cayce predicted that a holy man from the east would challenge the major religions of the world as a prelude to a Golden Age."

Comment on the above waffling by Craig-Hamilton: The above is taken from the so-called 'psychic' Craig Hamilton Parker's website at <http://www.psychics.co.uk/saibaba/saibaba.html>. That website preys upon the uncertainties and hopes of innocent and vulnerable people, a sickeningly commercial website pretending to 'spirituality'. It is full of other bogus claims and propaganda about psychic contacts - not least with Sai Baba. Craig Hamilton-Parker simply repeats the 'Pope to recognise Sai Baba' myth on his website. (This Pope rubbish was not invented or counterfeited by ExBaba people, as some fanatics claim of the excessive statements and e-mails etc. by Sai devotees.)

One would ask, by whom is the Pope "said to have had a vision"? The claim about Nostradamus claim, like so many over-exaggerated claims about him, is not backed by a single fragment of genuine documentation. (Moreover, Craig-Hamilton's website supports and links to hypocritical pro-Sai propagandists, web defamers and stalkers of Sai Baba critics, not least since his own support for - and reliance on the claims of -Sai Baba has been questioned by academics and other Sai critics).

Another source of this hoax is found at http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items01/200201-1.html as follows:-
"It is relevant here to cite the incident, which took place in Rome. On his deathbed, Pope John XXIII – the most liberal of the Popes of the Roman Papal Curia – is said to have had a vision of a man that would usher in a new golden age of peace and harmony humankind has never known. The late Pope had described the man with brown skin who will wear a distinctive red robe. Similarly the great 16th century seer Nostradamus and American Prophet Edgar Cayce had predicted that a holy man from the East would challenge the major religions of the world as a prelude to a Golden Age. Such developments have shaken the foundations of Christianity, which is already under doctrinal threats from within the clergy some of whom do not believe in the Virgin Birth."

Many will ask what are the reasons for so many Sai devotees to accept and unceasingly perpetuate these extremely unlikely myths? It has been shrewdly suggested by Barry Pittard that the psychology which leads to their doing so is as follows: "Faced by their own uncertainties, often more or less unconscious, about whether Sathya Sai Baba is all that he proclaims himself to be, they grasp at 'proofs' independent of his own allegedly infallible utterances. Some will also wish to make him comprehensible and believable to modern 'new age' friends who they would like to accept their 'Swami'. In a word, they doubt, and anxiously go looking for buttressing substantiation anywhere." Click here about the current Pope.

Comment on the above: Only a person without any knowledge of European history and the role of Christian belief in it can claim that Nostradamus or Cayce have, to any noticeable extent, "shaken the foundations of Christianity". Now, Martin Luther shook what were the foundations of Western Christianity and it led to the reformation. King Henry VIII of England shook them again when he defied the Pope and was excommunicated because of supporting a heresy (i.e. creating the Anglican Church). Carl Friedrich Nietzsche shook the foundations in another way with his 'nihilistic' philosophy which was a step towards secularisation and modern philosophy. But the idea that Nostradamus or Cayce (both of whom were Christian believers) were responsible for shaking Christianity is, at best, an exaggerated wishful thought. As for Sai Baba, wishfully identified as the "small barefooted saint" and who is not at all as what he repeatedly claims to be such as The Avatar of the Age, and the Father who sent Jesus, and not least Allah and also the Mehdi Moud of Islam. One can but smile!

Sathya Sai Baba has certainly not shaken Christianity, the world press has hardly ever so much as noticed his influence, let alone mainstream Christian organisations, whose websites never even mention him. This despite his followers' very eager efforts to attract various Christian denominations under any pretence they can devise, but with minimum success. The Italian Pater Mazzoleni was actually excommunicated by the Vatican for insisting that Sai Baba is what he claims to be!

Regarding whether Sathya Sai Baba or his organizations have any Roman Catholic support, note that the Westminster Cathedral Authorities have firmly refuted that the Sathya Sai Organisation held a meeting in Westminster Cathedral, as was falsely claimed and advertised on the official U.K. Sathya Sai Organization website. Once this was publicised, they removed that posting without comment or apology, that is - only when the exposure of its sheer falsity became too uncomfortably revealing of their machinations. That the Sathya Sai Organisation constantly tries to gain admittance to Roman Catholic churches and events like interfaith conferences is simply to get the chance to proselytise about their guru's supposed miracles and 'incredible' works. A key part of the organisation's strategy is to depict itself as respected by mainstream religious and other organisations. But integral to this ploy is the suppression of all reference to Sai Baba's claims to be 'Father of Jesus Christ,' and God fully incarnate to save the entire world essentially in his own lifetime, and to the fact that many credible leaders and others have left the Sai Organisation in response to the credibility and seriousness of criminal allegations against its founder and the profound cover-up by Sai Baba's top leaders of many shocking allegations. Many Sai devotees in nominally Christian countries wildly hope to attract Christians of any kind and so spread Sai Baba's fame and influence, believing his claims that his organisation will envelop the entire world. Efforts are repeatedly made to wind over Catholics from their fundamentalist doctrine to the equally hierarchical and yet more fundamentalist Sai Organisation, with its highly authoritarian and secretive cult.

The faking of Nostradamus' quatrains is a something of a big business, as any visit to the Internet can confirm. Some of these counterfeits and twisted interpretations are exposed by comparison with the original quatrains in French at http://skepdic.com/nostrada.html. For a complete overview, see Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus in French and English. When one actually reads these texts, one realises how little substance there is in his outdated and fanciful 'predictions'.

Edgar Cayce's prophesies are controversial. Firstly, note that Cayce's difficult-to-find predictions about a 'barefoot saint' who challenged the traditional religions are far from being as extensive or as prominent as the subject would seem to merit. The information about this supposed saint given by Cayce is very sparse - no country of origin, no name, no background information... Even if Sathya Sai Baba were the 'barefoot saint from the East' in question, it would be remarkable that a psychic with such spiritual gifts as Cayce is supposed to have had would not know about all the claims of many thousands of miracles and healings. Not to mention Sai Baba's unsurpassable claims about himself as being The World Saviour, the Avatar of the Age, the Father who sent Jesus, Rama and Krishna re-embodied come again and much more were only ten percent true. Why would Cayce's visions of Atlantis and similar rather peripheral subjects fill thousands of pages, while just some few and vague indications about such an earth-shaking event as Sai Baba claims himself to be?

Believers in Cayce defend him remarking "Cayce would repeatedly say that even the Lord of Lords could not accurately predict future events because human free will can alter and change the future". So, prophecy is never given for any other purpose than as a warning. For this reason, a successful prophecy is one that has been averted and therefore does not happen." Many of his prophesies on future events have been proven completely wrong, but they are by and large presented as being very impressive by his proponents, because some of what he predicted has in fact more or less come to pass. For example, he predicted a shift of the magnetic poles (which, however, geophysicists and astronomers in his day had already considered possible, as reported on the pro-Cayce website at (formerly found at http://www.metareligion.com/Paranormale/Prophecies/edgar_cayce_prophecies.htm but now removed).

While not wishing here to diminish the reported works of Cayce in apparently helping thousands of sufferers which much testimony supports, it is evident that his present-day supporters tend to present one side of the picture and seldom dwell on his mistakes or his many failed prophesies. Less biased observers (click to see one example) point out he prophesies the following:

Cayce's predictions of global catastrophe "The arrival of Armageddon in 1999, would be followed by a new age and the Second Coming of Christ. China will become the new "cradle of Christianity". He saw a strong religious movement coming out of Russia. He gave a trance "reading" which described a number of quite unimaginable natural catastrophes that would occur at the end of the 20th century. In June 1940 Cayce predicted that the island called Poseidia would rise again, "expect it in ‘68 or ‘69." It would happen in the area of the Bahamas Cayce often called the Bahamas “Poseidia.” For this reason many link the following prophecy to the Bimini one above (given on June 28, 1940): "Poseidia will be amongst the first portions of Atlantis to rise again— expect it ‘68 and ‘69–– not so far away."According to Cayce's "clairvoyant readings given back in the 1930s on Atlantis", the fabled lost continent extended from the Sargasso Sea to the Azores, and was about the size of Europe. It had experienced two periods of destruction, in the first of which the mainland had divided into islands. The final breakup occurred, as Plato said, about 10,000 BCE, and the last place to sink was near the Bahamas. He claimed that archives dealing with Atlantis now exist in three places in the world, one of these in Egypt. "

At SkepDic.com it is stated: "He predicted that in 1958 the U.S. would discover some sort of death ray used on Atlantis. Cayce is one of the main people responsible for some of the sillier notions about Atlantis" and "He made other predictions concerning such things as the Great Depression (that 1933 would be a good year) and the Lindbergh kidnapping (most of it wrong, all of it useless), and that China would be converted to Christianity by 1968."

Cayce predicted changes to the earth surface to begin some time between 1958 and 1998. The cause of these dramatic earth changes will be the shift in the world's magnetic poles around the year 2000. The latest scientific measurements of core magnetism in different areas of both hemispheres do indicate that magnetism is unevenly distributed and is leaning more and more towards a coming cyclical pole shift, which would cause major global problems.

Cayce predicted that when this pole shift occurs it would begin reversals in the world's climate so that:
"..where there has been a frigid or semi-tropical climate, there will be a more tropical one, and moss and fern will grow." [My comment: The geosciences have long considered this and the consensus is that this would also doubtless occur. Where it will occur is highly doubtful, and Cayce has been totally wrong about locations and timings in his prophesies already]. Due to the shifting of the earth's magnetic poles and natural disasters, dramatic changes such as this will occur: "The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America. When there is the first breaking up of some conditions in the South Sea and those as apparent in the sinking or rising of that that's almost opposite same, or in the Mediterranean, and the Etna area, then we many know it has begun. Portions of the now east coast of New York, or New York City itself, will in the main disappear. This will be another generation, though, here; while the southern portions of Carolina, Georgia -- these will disappear. This will be much sooner. The waters of the lakes will empty into the Gulf, rather than the waterway over which such discussions have been recently made. It would be well if the waterway were prepared, but not for that purpose for which it is at present being considered. Then the area where the entity is now located (Virginia Beach) will be among the safety lands, as will be portions of what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and much of the southern portion of Canada and the eastern portion of Canada; while the western land -- much of that is to be disturbed as, of course much in other lands."

Finally, Cayce foresaw a new era of enlightenment and peace for humanity in the future. Cayce states:
"A new order of conditions is to arise; there must be a purging in high places as well as low; and that there must be the greater consideration of the individual, so that each soul being his brother's keeper. Then certain circumstances will arise in the political, the economic, and whole relationships to which a leveling will occur or a greater comprehension of the need for it. This America of ours, hardly a new Atlantis, will have another thousand years of peace, another Millennium. All this done in the same manner that the prayers of ten just men once saved a city. And then the deeds, the prayers of the faithful will glorify the Father as peace and love will reign for those who love the Lord."

It is clear that Cayce was influenced by the notoriously inaccurate and historically doubtful Christian Bible where it is also said that there will be an 1,000-year rule of perfect peace and justice from a New Jerusalem, which comes only after horrendous destruction and great tribulation for humanity as the forces of evil, led by Satan's general, the Antichrist, face the armies of God, led by Christ, in the final battle, Armageddon. Believe all this who want to base their outlook on dreams, visions, fancies, guesses and conflicting tales and imaginings in ancient scriptures!