Crosses of Light with miraculous powers of healing are appearing in many different parts of the world. People take the crosses as a sign of divine promise; many believe they signify the return of the Christ. There have also been reports of people seeing the Star of David.
In 1998 - members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. George in Brooklyn NY, witnessed what they thought was God's presence in the form of an icon which wept tears of oil. Oil was coming from all parts of this icon. People put the oil on and were cured. One woman was cured of breast cancer after she rubbed the oil on her forehead.
New York - 1998 - A cross of light appeared in a building in West 113th Street, New York, NY
From the moment he first saw a cross of light on display in Manila, the Philippines, Dr Ching, a medical practitioner specializing in acupuncture and also a student of a school of esoteric studies, the Divine Wisdom Lodge, has cherished the hope that perhaps one day he, too, would be granted such a cross.
The phenomenon of the appearance of crosses of light in window panes is not limited to any one particular place nor is it an entirely new occurrence. Crosses first appeared in 1988 in El Monte, California, and in increasing numbers since then, scores of crosses of light have been discovered in Seattle, Western Canada, Washington DC and now in the Philippines.
The crosses all seem to conform to a particular pattern: a brilliant even-armed cross within a diamond shape. They appear in frosted glass and give the impression of floating suspended in mid-air, between the glass and the light source. The first such cross in the Philippines, appearing in a small piece of glass, was given to the Divine Wisdom Lodge by Michiko Ishikawa, who brought it with her from the USA. Ms Ishikawa is a volunteer who works in both the US and Japan to help make known the reappearance of Maitreya. It was in March this year, when this particular cross was on display in Manila, that Dr Ching first saw it.
Inspired and moved by the crosses of light, and knowing of the healing and miraculous powers attributed to them, Dr Ching freely admits that he often went "cross hunting". He and his fellow students kept a look-out for crosses and always checked their own windows. At the clinic where he works, Dr Ching began sensing a different kind of energy which, he believed, explained the sudden, unusually fast rate of recovery of their patients. "What normally took an average of 20 treatments before would just take about five to 10 treatments now," he said. "I know it was not any effect I was having; I have been practicing medicine for 16 years and I have never seen such results so quickly. This holds true now for all our patients and it happens all the time," explained Dr Ching. However, despite this unusual development there was still no sign of any cross.
Then, while one of Dr Ching's associates, Nieves Taguinog, was locking up at the clinic one night, she noticed a cross on one of the windows. To make absolutely sure Ms Taguinog waited until the next night to see the cross again before telling Dr Ching. The cross seemed to be the same image as had appeared in other window panes, in California, for instance. All the windows in the clinic were then checked and to their surprise almost all windows held the image of the cross. The other windows where no crosses had appeared showed the usual reflection of a squarish pattern. More crosses were discovered in neighboring houses.
Meanwhile, more apparent miracles and mysterious events unfold around the first cross of light in the Philippines - that given as a gift to the Divine Wisdom Lodge by Ms Ishikawa. During Holy Week, the piece of glass with its radiant cross was put on display for the public in the home of Juanito Crisostomo, a teacher and leading figure of the Divine Wisdom Lodge. Many photographs were taken of the cross, all more or less from the same angle. However, one of the photographs is quite different from all the rest. Amazingly, a hand held up as if in the act of blessing can be seen shining through the cross.
In a telephone interview with Newsday, Benjamin Creme (on a lecture tour of Japan at the time) said that his Master had confirmed that the hand in the photograph is that of the Christ, "blessing the world through the cross, blessing the Philippines through that cross". He also said that people would be healed and that there would be many spiritual experiences through the cross. Mr. Creme went on to say that soon crosses of light would be manifested in such numbers throughout the world that they would draw great attention. People would begin to realize that the crosses represent something of great and unusual significance. Many would take the crosses as a sign of the Christ's presence or of His return. Hundreds of people are already experiencing the spiritual energies radiating out from the crosses which are all made to appear by the Christ.
In Altadena, California, near Los Angeles, hundreds of people tramp through the home of Reverend P.G. Pierce and his family to see the brilliant image of a cross shining through the bathroom window. According to the Pasadena Star-News, which ran a photo of the cross, the image appears to be shining through the window from the outside, but when people go into the back yard to find the source of the phenomenon, there is nothing to be found. Only when one stands inside, looking out, can the cross be seen, a phenomenon reminiscent of a hologram in which a three-dimensional image is only visible from certain angles.
Pierce, an evangelistic minister, believes that the cross is a sign of Jesus Christ's return. Commenting on the phenomenon, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner observes that ,"whether or not a miracle exists, it is clear that many people in Los Angeles want desperately to see and touch a fingerprint of the Creator... All but the most committed of atheists would like to have a sign, any sign. Everyone wants to know that we are here for a reason, and that a higher entity stopped by to tell us so." (reported in Share International, October 1986)
1988 - As reported above, crosses of light appeared in the Southern California town of El Monte. At least 10 crosses have been reported in the area, which was previously a rather run down, poor, mainly Hispanic neighborhood. However the crosses of light touched the lives of many of the residents and a great transformation has taken place in this community. While producing a video documentary on the El Monte crosses, Frances Robinson hears stories of numerous others in Baldwin Park, Montebello, La Puente and East Los Angeles.
1989 - A Share International reader writes about a cross of light that appeared in their Los Angeles home, shortly after his infant son received a miraculous healing.
A report in the Los Angeles Times August 17, 1990) describes crosses appearing in bathroom windows in Montecito Heights, Los Angeles, as they were in 1988 in El Monte. Two and sometimes three images appear simultaneously in the shape of crosses in the frosted glass.
These new crosses can be viewed from outside into the bathroom window, but this time through etched glass, according to the LA Times. When the source of light is turned off the images disappear. In spite of the pessimism of the local clergy who as usual insist on commonplace causes for this phenomenon, the local response has been enormous, with queues stretching up the block armed with videos and cameras, and the crowds are still growing.
1990 - At the home of Leo and Loretta Alphonso in Violet, Los Angeles, there now appears a radiant panorama of crosses, elaborate foot-tall figures that are tapered at the ends and appear set off in the distance. Three of them glow in white and one in gold. Some see a red cross that floats past the others. (Source: The Dallas Morning News, 23 November, 1990)
1992 - A cross of light appears nightly in the window of Maria Ruiz' home in Baldwin Park near Los Angeles. Ruiz first noticed the cross during a power cut when she stood in her darkened bathroom and saw the bright yellow shape formed by a light above a nearby freeway. Ruiz had lived in the apartment for seven months without seeing anything unusual. A steady stream of neighbours and relatives now visit her bathroom to take a look at the cross. Some visitors cry, pray and kneel on the floor when they see the image. Ruiz, a Catholic who attends church infrequently, said she used to think reports of religious sightings were "a bunch of phony baloney." But now she's not so sure. "I can't say it's a sign from God or it's not a sign from God," she said. "It is weird." (Source: Pasadena Star-News)
1992 - December 8, 1992, Joann Noriega saw a "big, beautiful cross", created by the light of the moon, appear on her bathroom window. She had never seen the image before in the 17 years she had lived in the house in Montclair, Southern California. Noriega opened and closed the window, wondering if the cross would go away. But the cross remained. Noriega got down on her knees and began praying. "It was the Virgin Mary," Noriega said. "I had no doubt. I didn't even try to guess at it."
Noriega saw the Virgin on the lighted cross, surrounded by a host of angels next to her "like the Immaculate Conception." The vision came after midnight and lasted for more than a week before it disappeared. The vision of the Virgin on the cross returns every month during the full moon. Other phenomena have occurred in Noriega's home - additional crosses in the window, rainbows on the ground, oil seeping from a candle in her bedroom, and the sound of bells. In her living room are faint photographs, taken by Noriega at her house, of a man on a cross reaching out to a similar figure in prayer, and a diamond-shaped figure in the sun.
Because of the cross, and a scent of roses in the house, many people make a pilgrimage to her house seeking the Virgin Mary's presence. Each week, Noriega holds a Friday night prayer meeting in her living room. It is here that the Virgin has been appearing for three years, Noriega says. Noriega also invites troubled people into her home to help them overcome despair and renew their faith in God by sharing her miracle with them. "Inviting people here to pray and see the crosses makes them feel good," Noriega said. "They can feel the Holy Spirit. They can feel all these warm feelings." The cross of light has transformed the lives of many people, including a former drug addict, Hussem Farach, who said: "I believe I've been in the worst places in my living hell... But now I know, whatever happens, God is there for me. He's already proved it."
- Source: Daily Bulletin, Southern California - 1996
1994 - May 21 - Maria Ortega of Orange County, in southern California, awoke from a deep sleep at about 3 am. She thought she heard a baby crying and got up to investigate. She walked through the house, listening for the source of the baby's cry. When she turned on the light to look in the bathroom, she heard a loud rush of wind. Then she saw the cross in the window and fell to her knees and cried. Since then, life has changed completely for the 12 members of the Ortega family who share the house. Maria Ortega says she feels more spiritual. George, her 21-year-old son, has stopped drinking. And then there is the constant stream of visitors who come into their home, file through the living room and into the bathroom to stand in the tub and look at the cross.
Three hundred to seven hundred people stop by each day. At four in the morning, a mother with a baby knocks on the door. Maria's husband, Margarito Ortega, says that although he feels "a little tired", he cannot deny people the right to see the cross. Says family member David Ortega: "I think it's a message to everybody. Something's going to happen, but we don't know what."
- Source: Orange County Register
1996 - Hundreds of people have visited the home of Carlos and Ines Alvarez in Bakersfield, California since the couple discovered a large cross of light in their bathroom window on 7 March. The Alvarez' say they can see the cross especially well when the light is just right at about 8 am and 5 pm each day, and at night when the neighbours' lights are on. At other times during the day, the cross is visible when light is focused on the window.
As word spread about the cross, crowds began lining up at the Alvarez' house to see the phenomenon. While viewing the cross, people kneel and pray, say the rosary, cry, and even faint.
"A lot of people think it's a message God is trying to send us because we're in the last days," said Mrs. Alvarez. According to the article: "The family has a copy of a locally produced video about the cross, which says: 'Christ is coming soon' across the bottom of the frame in Spanish. ... The family says a priest from Arvin told them the cross was a sign of the Second Coming."
- Source: Bakersfield Californian
In a suburb of New Orleans, four foot-tall crosses of white and gold light appeared suddenly in the bathroom window of a 61- year-old pipe fitter who had been praying to St Jude for help with his failing eyesight. The man and his wife have had to set up evening viewing hours to accommodate the hundreds who come to see what they believe is a miracle. There are no internal or external lights which could be casting the images against the glass, and the pipe fitter reports he has regained part of his sight since the crosses appeared, although he readily agrees his doctor's injection also helped.
In a related development, television producer Dan Meenan of the US tabloid program Hard Copy, told Share International contributor and video producer Frances Robinson that after filming a story about a previous manifestation of a cross in Louisiana a cross appeared on the videotape which had not been present during the original shooting. Meenan said that on a production which attempted to document an alleged cross appearing in the Louisiana sky in l989, they were not able to see the cross in the sky on tape, but that they did an interview with a Catholic priest who was at the scene of its appearance just outside New Orleans. It was later in the studio that the cross appeared, superimposed on the image of the priest, stated Meenan. He saw it while they were editing. "It was as clear as could be and had nothing to do with the image of the priest; it hadn't been there when we interviewed him; we went over it five times to be sure it was there, and it looked exactly the same to me each time", even though the editor he was working with couldn't see it.
1999 - Parishioners at the Greater Macedonia Baptist church in the small town of Port Sulphur, Louisiana, USA, had just finished celebrating mass on Christmas morning when one of them felt something burning into his back. At the same time it became very bright outside, even though the sun was not shining. They discovered that two crucifix-shaped lights had appeared in the church windows, with the appearance of a figure hanging from the cross.
Since Christmas Day the crosses, originally gold or bronze-colored, have been steadily growing in intensity and thousands of visitors have inundated the tiny community, queuing outside to enter the church and witness the phenomenon. There are no external factors which could account for the manifestation: reporters from the local television station WVUE-TV have filmed the crosses and are convinced they are genuine.
One visitor, Lucretia Hunter, returned home to Buras to find an identical cross of light shining in her bathroom window. Parishioner Lois Gibson said that the crosses had "brought the whole community here closer together, irrespective of creed or nationality. It is a sign at the time of the millennium that it is possible for us all to live in harmony together."
- Source: The Planet on Sunday, UK
"I can't get the hair on the back of my neck to do anything but stick straight out these days. The crosses are indeed in the windows at the Copper Ridge Baptist Church. That is a fact. It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. There at first, I was a bit of a skeptic myself. But now that I've seen the crosses of Copper Ridge with these two eyes, I'm a believer"
- Bob Hurley, columnist for The Greenville Sun
On November 8, 1995, the members of a small, 135-year-old Baptist church near Knoxville, Tennessee noticed that the light coming in through the windows was in a new pattern: the shape of an even-armed cross. All five sanctuary windows, which have been installed in the church for 26 years began to exhibit the same phenomenon.
The crosses are not on the window per se, but are suspended in mid-air like a holographic image some 30 yards away from the building. They appear white in the daytime when the light source is the sun. At night, when a streetlight is the light source, they are a fiery, reddish-gold. And while the image which appears on the glass may only be four to six feet tall, the crosses, as seen through the windows, stretch from the ground upward to about 40 feet.
Since the Knoxville crosses have been made public via word-of-mouth and local, national and international media, more than 35,000 people have visited the church. There have been many undocumented claims of healing - such as blindness, deafness, cancer, and drug abuse.
A Cross of Light has appeared in the bathroom window of Ida Rollins' house in Riviera Beach, Florida. People are so moved by it that they have been flocking to see it - so many that the Riviera Beach police have had to put barricades up on the street to keep the cars out. A radio announcer called it "the miracle of 37th street." In spite of the crush of people around her home, Rollins believes it is a sign from God, a message of hope for one of the poorest areas in town.
- Source: Miami Herald, USA
A cross of light was brought to the Philippines from the USA. It impressed not only journalists but also a local Chinese doctor who was so inspired by it that he would frequently check the windows in his clinic in the hope that he, too, had been given such a cross. Crosses did eventually appear in almost all of the clinic's windows, as well as in some of the neighboring houses.
It was mid-afternoon. With a score of neon lights on and sunlight streaming through two windows, there could be no occasion for hocus-pocus. The piece of glass was set up on its box like a picture frame. It looked exactly like any other piece of frosted glass, almost opaque, one could not see through. A flashlight was pointed at it and switched on and there appeared this even-armed cross of light seemingly within a diamond-shaped aura. Somebody placed another switched-on flashlight beside the first and two crosses appeared. The flashlights were switched off. The crosses disappeared. They were switched on again, the crosses reappeared. The usually boisterous newsroom was silent. Our inimitable fun-man, Managing Editor Teddy Berbano, who could squeeze out of even the most serious occasion the most hilarious joke, had no punch-line, or any line, this time. As stated earlier, the phenomenon was awe-inspiring, or, at the very least, intriguing.
- Julian Cruz, News Editor, Newsday Philippines - March 22, 1991
A cross of light appeared in a pane of glass belonging to Calgary school teacher, Ehren Rebmann. Months earlier he heard about the crosses of light, so he bought a small pane and shone all kinds of light through it. Nothing appeared so he put the glass away and forgot about it. Six months later, there was a meeting in his house for a speaker who had a cross of light. During the talk, Rebmann went into his bedroom, grabbed his piece of glass and shone some light through it. A cross appeared. It remains on the glass today, sitting in his living room. For him, the cross is a symbol of hope. "The main message here is one of hope to mankind," says Rebmann sitting on his couch, the cross of light shining over his shoulder. "We may be going through some pretty weird stuff right now, pretty harsh stuff, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't an oncoming train."
- Source Calgary Herald September 24, 1994
Germany - 1997
A Turkish family living in Germany were given a huge wooden cross as a gift. Shortly afterwards, crosses of light began appearing in the windows of their flat. The Isatabas family, faithful Aramaic Christians, have lived in Germany for 15 years and own a Turkish restaurant in Aschaffenburg.
Mrs. Isatabas, interviewed by Andrea Bistrich for Share International, said: "I first discovered the cross just before Christmas 1997. I had been out doing some shopping and was waiting at the traffic light. The light was on in our flat, and the restaurant was also lit up. You automatically look there. Suddenly you notice the cross. You know, it's exactly the Christian cross which is a symbol of our faith in Him. I instantly went into our flat to check. This happened just before Christmas 1997."
She has no doubt it is a miracle. "Now, when I have problems, I pray," she said. Problems include skepticism from the Church ("Not at all interested") and neighbours. "Many of them are laughing at us," said Mrs. Isatabas, "they don't believe in it. But the fact is: we have a cross of light. What can we do if one day a cross appears in our window? But when you tell them this is a miracle from God they all say: You're mad! We've had the window glass checked by a glass firm and they told us the cross is not caused by the glass. They said that is impossible." If she had a choice, would she keep it? "Definitely yes," she said. "It is calming, like a protection. It gives you hope."
Crosses of light have appeared in New Zealand in a house in which Benjamin Creme had been staying during his lecture tour of that country. The crosses were the subject of a prime time news story on national television which was broadcast with the following introduction: "Spiritual phenomena or simple physics? That is the question dozens of Aucklanders are asking each day as they line up to witness a white cross which appeared on a window of a suburban house."
1997 - "A cross of light appearing in the window of a Devonport house has been hailed as another sign Christ has returned to the world." Thus begins a recent article, "Cross of light sign of Christ", in the New Zealand Sunday News. The article continues: "Sign writer Paul Larkin told Sunday News the cross of light he noticed in his bathroom window was a sign of "something big" about to happen. "It was spotted by Larkin three weeks ago, shortly after he moved into the house. He recognized it, having seen other crosses in Auckland and having learned about them at his Transmission Meditation group. "I'd been in the bath, hopped out and got changed. I came back and turned off the light and it was there." Larkin said the previous tenants in the house had not seen the cross. He said the cross "appeared when I was down quite a lot, sorting through a lot of problems. It has really helped me through it."
The article quotes "cross-sightings-follower, Buddy Piper" as saying the crosses were "signs (Christ-figure) Maitreya and the Masters are placing in the world ... to awaken humanity to the truth He is here."
- Source: New Zealand Sunday News
In November 1999 the owner of a property in the suburb of Bucklands Beach, Auckland noticed a cross of light in the glass panel of the front door of the cottage behind their main house. The couple (and their parents) organize many of New Zealand's New Age Fairs and already knew about this phenomenon. Unlike the usual light source of a light bulb or candle, this cross is illuminated by the light from the TV set behind it and therefore constantly changes color.
2000 - A cross of light was discovered in the window of a retirement home in Auckland, New Zealand on Easter Sunday - by the producer of The Miracles Page website. It is the seventh cross to have appeared in the city.
Crosses of light have appeared in the towns of Novo Mesto, Koper, Ljubljana and Lenart in Slovenia. News of these manifestations has spread creating much interest in the media.