In late 2001, when I first realized the quatrains fit together to tell a story in epic poem style, I selected a number of quatrains that told a historic story that began with the creation of the State of Israel and ended with the known facts of September 11, 2001.  That history was told in roughly 40 quatrains.  The whole story that history fit into consisted of 200 quatrains.  I had selected those from my 1975 edition of an Erika Cheetham book on Nostradamus’ prophecies.  The remaining 160 quatrains told an amazing story of what would happen after 9-11, leading to the end of the world as we know it, with the eventual return of Jesus Christ. 

The reason I only selected 200 quatrains was I knew nothing about how to read Nostradamus, nothing about Old French and nothing about what Erika Cheetham had written of how past history matched the other 743 quatrains.  In other words, I was mostly choosing the ones Erika Cheetham could not interpret because she deemed them to be a future event, she stated the quatrain was too vague to interpret, or she stated the quatrain was fully or partially telling of times that had occurred well before Nostradamus was even born.  Those quatrains she had boldly predicted to be of some archduke with some queen in the mid-17^th Century (et al) I did not waste time looking over.  I chose 200 quatrains that (in 1975) were dealing specifically with Islamic-Christian unrest, which had not been part of serious consideration since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.  September 11, 2001 brought about a renewal of meaning to those 200 quatrains. 

By early 2002 I had written an unedited book that strung those 200 quatrains into a tale of where the future would lead us.  It was not a pretty picture.  At that time I was writing all of my interpretations, based on the translations of Erika Cheetham.  I did not know anything about any other texts written about Nostradamus, until December 2001. 

I bought another book then, one written by John Hogue, which was my first introduction to the letters written by Nostradamus, including his Letter of Preface to Les Propheties.  Still, at that time I was so busy trying to write a book of warning to the world, one making it understood that Nostradamus wrote something that has to be put into the right order to understand, that I had no time to delve deeply into those letters.  What I could understand was danger; and that understanding meant the realization of where we were headed was not where we wanted to go.  I foresaw the wars coming in Afghanistan and Iraq, before they happened, simply from understanding the quatrains as they were translated by Erika Cheetham.

The point I want to make with this personal history of my writing about Nostradamus seven years ago is because I have recently returned from a vacation in Italy.  Italy will be the one nation that will receive the most devastation in the world war that is to come.  I realized I have not published much about this specific destruction coming to Italy.  While my book, The Letters of Nostradamus, has two sections about Italy's destruction (in the part explaining the Letter to Henry II, which are headed, “The Beginning of the Judeo-Christian Defeats,” and “The Persecution of Europe”), the Letter to Henry II yields only a quick overview of The Prophecies.  In an overview of explanation, it is impossible to recount the whole horror that will come to Italy. 

My unpublished book, “The Future According to Nostradamus,” has made vivid images in my mind’s eye of all the coming devastation - war, pestilence, persecution, famine, and death.  Those images became enhanced greatly, once I began to do my own translations and look at all 948 quatrains as parts of the whole story.  I found the stories within the story that I originally saw in The Future According to Nostradamus became fully understood with the addition of the other 748 quatrains I had originally ignored.  Once those other misinterpreted quatrains found their true home within the sections of my 200 quatrain epic tale, the stories expanded to greater depths of meaning. 

Every quatrain Nostradamus wrote is one piece of a whole puzzle, which tells of the self-destruction of the world, by a mankind turned away from God and Jesus Christ.  This epic tale is one of another holy war, with the most unholy motivations.  Since Italy represents the religious center for Christian nations (i.e.: the West), through the Vatican being the Western home of Christianity, it will become the target of Islamic revenge.  Italy, for that reason alone, will suffer like no other Christian nation will; and all nations on earth will suffer greatly.  The carnage and persecution is terrible to think about; and it will come completely by surprise. 

I have not yet fully communicated this publicly.  On my tour of Italy I visited Rome, Siena, Florence and Venice.  All of these places will be the scenes of terrible war.  I asked the tour guide to check out what I have written; but I realized later he would have to peel through too many layers to see his country's painful end.

The world will have become a more dangerous place by the eve of Italy’s destruction.  Great earth changes (earthquake caused) will have greatly limited the capacites of the British and United States navies.  The land masses of the Mediterranean Sea will have been severely altered by nature.  This will make the Western nations of the Mediterranean endangered, such that Italy will be a key strategic location for defense. 

Even though the Italian military and an American presence in Italy will be adequate for Italian national defense (under normal circumstances), Europe will need a stronger southern defensive line.  For this reason, Italy will come under the protective influence of French soldiers, transported by the French navy to Venice.  At that time, North Africa and the Middle East will have become more threatening to European interests. 

For the only time in the history of France, French military troops will occupy Italy as an ally, due to U.N. mandate.  They will make Venice their port of entry and the Po River Valley will be where they will establish their outposts.  The French will be called upon to rise and become a power, like it once was during colonial times; but the French troops will be ill-prepared for battle and their leaders will not take the role of protector seriously. 

I found it interesting to learn, on my tour of Venice, that Napoleon conquered Venice and left a French influence that remains there today.  Perhaps this will be why the French will choose such a unstrategic port of entry; because Nostradamus cries out (with the use of rare exclamation points) for France to beware setting foot on Italian soil.

Imagine, if you will, what it was like for an Iraqi citizen, one who is not involved with the politics of government or the armed control of the masses, through the military or police, when war suddenly burst upon the scene.  The troops come and force you into lineups, pointing guns at you; and you do not understand a word they are saying to you.  You live in fear; but you have no escape.  This way of life is known all too well by people of the non-Western world; but it will become a way of life in the West, particularly in Italy.  Italian citizens used to nothing more than living an Italian way of life will have those lives turned upside down.  Those of the military charged with protecting them will be running from fear, due to an enemy with blood in its eyes.  The killing will not cease until surrender.  Italy will surrender; but that will be when the persecution begins.  The famine will follow not long after that. 

I have slowed my writing about Nostradamus, to the point of this blog being about all I will publish about the quatrains, for the time being.  The point is not to gain bragging rights – you see all you foolish people!  I was right!  The Italians, French and Spanish are all converted to Islam or in death camps, just like I said Nostradamus wrote it would be! – because only fools brag about such things.  The point of prophecy is to see how history repeats, and prophecy shows us the future through understanding the faults of the past. 

The West, particularly the United States (but don’t forget the British Empire), has punished people around the globe for the past century, through the use of clandestine manipulation of international politics, the suppression of non-Christian religious laws and the murder of leaders who would right the world’s wrong course.  Call it karmic debt; but it does not take prophecy (at this late point) to foresee doom being not far away. 

Mother nature is growing angrier with Man.  The global economy is already shaking like it is on the brink of another global depression.  Oil is the way the Middle East has the West by its proverbial balls.  What the United States thinks is ultimate power and force (through advanced technical military might), is useless without the means to power high-tech weaponry to the threatening areas.  

Most nations of the West are paper lions, in a world where terrorism is identified as anyone tired of being ruled by oppression.  We are weaving a tangled web that will drop us to our knees.  It is Uncle Remus’ tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby … the harder we try to defeat an insolent foe, the more entraped we become.

The solution to this future Nostradamus was shown and told to prophesy about, in its most simplistic form, is to simply not let it happen.  Of course, the reality of that simplistic solution is as difficult as it has been for people to believe in Jesus as the Christ, with those who do believe having a terrible time actually living up to their confessed beliefs.  If Christians lived as Christ, patriotism would take a back seat to the belief that war cannot bring about peace. 

We can’t change government (even though some politicians claim they will), and most people can’t even change themselves.  Take a first-step to change by getting rid of your cell phone.  Ha.  Addictions are easier talked about stopping, much more than actually stopping the addictions.  Those who do actually try will get shakes and chills, which means the solution calls for suffering, no matter what.  We are already in too deep to simply walk away.

The solution for most is just to get ready to suffer.  The solution for a handfull is to do nothing differently than you have been doing (if you are truly following the model of Jesus).  Just remember what God to Lot and his family before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah … don’t look back.