Prophecy Of Coming Storm May Relate To Prediction Of Gabriel And His Trumpet

By Michael H. Brown

The week of May 5th 2003 we carried a report about a former newspaper journalist and radio host from Illinois who says he has been given prophecies since childhood from the Archangel Gabriel, and most recently, visions pertaining to a "great storm" that will soon "break."

This storm supposedly involves a general global upheaval, and I found it interesting because I recalled an article about photographers at the World Trade Center who saw a mysterious man blowing a trumpet right after September 11 -- a haunting echo in the cement canyons of Manhattan, as smoke still continued to rise. We have written of this before. When one photographer who goes by the professional name of Miklos, hearing about the man on the radio, went to take his picture, according to a newspaper account, his shutter would not depress. He and others were left only with the memory of the man illuminated in shafts of eerie, dusty light.

A mysterious stranger. A trumpet. Naturally, those who believe it was an angel identified him as Gabriel.

And if so, one is made to wonder if it further relates to countless reports during the past several decades of mysterious hitch-hikers who are picked up on highways, mention that Gabriel is about to blow his trumpet, and then vanish. They are known as "vanishing hitch-hikers," and the stories, apocryphal or not, are widespread.

Was September 11 the event in which the long foretold "trumpet of Gabriel" finally sounded? And is it a prelude to a much greater storm to come?

During the 1960s, hitchhikers were being reported all the way down to Brazil. Went one story: A minister was motoring down a road to make a sick call when he spotted a young male on a stretch of uninhabited land. He picked up the man and they began to speak of Jesus. The preacher said he believed the Lord's coming was drawing near. "Well, that may be sooner than you think," the stranger replied. And when the minister turned to look, the young man was gone. On the New York State Thruway have been similar accounts of a "beautiful young hippie" clad in shining white who supposedly would enter a car, buckle his seat belt in the back seat, and talk about religion. Mainly he seemed to want to know if the driver believed in the Second Coming. When drivers turned around to answer him, the hitchhiker had vanished -- leaving his seatbelt fastened (according to a professor who studied this, Lydia M. Fish of the State University College of New York at Buffalo).

We investigated this matter and found reports in Pennsylvania and Virginia and Maryland, in Ohio, in West Virginia. There are hitchhiker stories from Massachusetts to California. "Well, the Lord is coming soon," one such hitchhiker, this time an old man, allegedly told Jack Mattox, a retired factory manager from Mattoon, Illinois, with whom we spoke. 

That was 1979. The reports mushroomed in the 1990s. In Eureka, Missouri, a witness named Gary Ridings said he picked up a guy with silverish hair on Highway 270 in 1993 while he was driving a pickup. It was around the time of the Mississippi flooding. "This fellow said, 'The coming of the Lord is at hand,' and when I turned to the right side -- he was on the right side and I had been looking to the left -- he wasn't in the truck any longer. He was gone."

Excitement was generated on a Christian television network when a female caller recounted the story of an old shabby-looking man who was walking along the highway. As the woman picked him up (prompted by a "voice"), he suddenly looked neat and clean and said, "The Lord told you to pick me up." Then he supposedly added: "I have a message for you: Gabriel's trumpet is almost to his lips."

I have heard this time again: the mysterious stranger saying that Gabriel was about to sound his horn (as I reported in a book called The Trumpet of Gabriel). This seemed relevant because the trumpet in Revelation is used by angels to announce purification (8:7).

Real angels or false prophecy?

Tough to say. We must always to be on the lookout for deception (it is precisely the devil coming as an "angel of light" that Scripture warns about), at the same time that we must be open to prophecy (1 Corinthians 14:22). Gabriel is often pictured playing his trumpet, and he is certainly associated with the Blessed Mother and announcements. He is the angel of annunciation, mercy, and revelation. He foretold the Lord's first Coming. In lore, he is said to sit on the left-hand side of God. To Mohammedans, he was the spirit of truth. In Jewish legend, it was this great archangel who dealt destruction to Sodom and Gomorrah. He is the prince of justice as well as the angel of hope.

"The Archangel Gabriel is often pictured playing his trumpet," notes one observer, Mark Judelson. "In Islamic tradition, Gabriel revealed the Quran to the prophet Muhammad. In Jewish tradition, Gabriel interpreted Daniel's dreams. And in Christian tradition, Gabriel came to Mary and told her of the coming of Jesus." 

Meanwhile, when angels sound trumpets in the Bible, it is when the seventh seal is opened, and it is a harbinger of major events, including warfare, something from the sky, and plagues.

This is what the Illinois man, Charles Johnston, describes as a coming storm (a period in which there will be a great international civil war, terror, and conflicts) and what we have long described as a "purification" (including tremendous natural events) to be followed by a glorious period. The question is whether the purification will stop at the cleansing stage or graduate to truly momentous events, including the Second Coming, long foretold in prophecies like those of Revelation.

 [Resources: The Trumpet of Gabriel]