On a road to nowhere
After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a populist politician, Pim Fortuyn, gained popularity because traditional politicians had failed to address the growing unease of the Dutch about Muslim immigrants. Fortuyn promoted a messianic personality cult. He called himself the Son of the People of the Netherlands. About the leader the Netherlands needed, Fortuyn wrote in his book De Verweesde Samenleving (The Orphaned Society), ‘A leader of stature is Father and Mother in one. He dictates the law and oversees the herd’s cohesion. The skilful leader is the Biblical Good Shepherd.’ Fortuyn anticipated the coming of the Great Leader of the Netherlands as he wrote, ‘Towards a Father and a Mother, on the way to the Promised Land,’ and, ‘Let us prepare for his arrival so that we can receive him.’ He posed himself as the Messiah. It was one of the reasons I didn’t like him. Perhaps you can see the irony of that.
Fortuyn called Islam a backward religion and claimed that Western civilisation was superior. He valued the achievements of Western civilisation, such as the separation of church and state, LGBTQ rights and freedom of opinion. Many Muslims hold on to a medieval worldview. Still, Islam opposes interest charges on money and debts, and I believed that interest was one of the gravest threats to civilisation, so my views of Islam were more favourable. We could learn something from Islam. Even more so, out-of-control technology might end human civilisation, either through an apocalyptic event or by altering humans to the point that they cease to exist. You can’t blame Islam for that. It is Western civilisation that has brought us to the brink. And if you can only choose between doom and women wearing body covering garments and honour killings, the choice is not that difficult, for a rational individual at least. We are on a road to nowhere,
We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Taking that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride
I’m feeling okay this morning
And you know
We’re on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we goTalking Heads, Road To Nowhere
The song says that the road to nowhere is to paradise. That is the duplicity of it. Everywhere Fortuyn went, there was chaos and conflict. He seemed to enjoy it. Establishment politicians didn’t like him because they feared he would undermine society. The Netherlands has had a consensus-building tradition known as the Polder model for over a century. Fortuyn broke with that tradition.
False Messiah
Fortuyn saw himself as the coming Great Leader of the Netherlands. History took an unexpected turn. On 6 May 2002, a left-wing loner assassinated him, an event that shocked the Netherlands. ‘The bullet came from the left,’ Fortuyn’s supporters claimed. Exactly 911 days later, an Islamic fanatic murdered the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Fortuyn’s sudden popularity was closely linked to 9/11, while Theo van Gogh had just finished 06/05, a motion picture about the assassination of Fortuyn. Van Gogh was killed on 2 November 2004 (11/2 in American notation), while 112 is the European emergency services telephone number. That points to the hand of God. The Bible has warned us of false messiahs like Fortuyn. I hope you can see the irony of that as well.
Fortuyn aspired to become Prime Minister. Instead, Jan-Peter Balkenende got that job. He looked like an apprentice from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter became his nickname. And that was not a coincidence, as the Netherlands was in for a massive bout of magic. Captain Decker, a song by Boudewijn de Groot, has the following lines,
Captain Decker, Flying Dutchman,
climbs above the timeless
space machine you’re living in,
starts to turn you inside out,
he needs you to know
what he was really all aboutCaptain Decker, Boudewijn de Groot
The timeless space machine could refer to the place where God is living. A Dutchman may need God to know what he is about. The animated picture Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie by Herman Finkers explores the possibility of Christ being born in Twente. My birthplace is Eibergen, just over the border in Achterhoek. In the 1980s, there were plans to create an independent province of Twente. It was to include Eibergen and Nijverdal. Finkers came from Almelo, like Ilse DeLange. DeLange’s fourth studio album, The Great Escape, plays a central role in God’s messages in pop music.
World peace
In December 2008, there were many strange incidents. One of them was that the candy vending machine at the office delivered a particular message. Often, I went there to fetch a Twix bar. This time, the machine malfunctioned and failed to produce a Twix. It repeatedly misfired. That had never happened before, and to my knowledge, no one else had trouble with the machine that day. After trying three different options, it finally worked when I chose option 22: a Nuts bar. That was nuts, even more so because 22 = 11 + 11.
It was about to get even nuttier. To me, 11:11 represents a strange coincidence with two parts. The next day, I bought a bag of potato crisps from the same machine. This time, it worked fine, but after opening the bag, I found a small piece of paper with the crisps. It was a temporary tattoo with the following Chinese text:
世界和平
One of my colleagues knew a Chinese man who translated it for me. The characters stand for world peace. No one else got a temporary tattoo with a bag of crisps. It was a production glitch. The paper had slipped into the bag, perhaps from another product line, and it ended up in my hands. Remarkably, my colleague Ronald Oorlog was absent that day. He had fallen ill. His last name, Oorlog, is the Dutch word for war. Now, that is a funny coincidence. Another colleague, Rene H, joked about the text, saying, ‘World peace is what Miss World would say she wanted after winning the prize.’
Linking it to Sneek
A nursing home in Sneek is named Nij Nazareth (New Nazareth). The nickname is The Banana because the building is banana-shaped. A former neighbour of Allard and Geke, nicknamed The Hedgehog because of his hairdo, has taken residence there. If the name New Nazareth means anything, it could mean that the Second Coming comes from this particular town, which was, by some miraculous accident, my town of residence. It could be that there were other places and buildings with the same name. And so, I used a search engine to look for them, but nothing else came up. Perhaps I was making too much of this coincidence. In the song Het Sneker Café, the unrivalled poet of the Dutch language, Drs. P mocks the making of outlandish connections to a pub in Sneek,
There once was a girl of seventeen years of age,
the only child of a wine merchant,
who sought shelter in the Jura,
because she was lost on a trip.
She found an unoccupied house at the edge of the forest,
and felt from the outset that this is not right.
She took a glance at the window and what appeared:
Inside was the skeleton of a salesman in toiletries,
who had been missing for years
and had once stayed with his uncle and aunt in Bordeaux when he was young.
And there, they had almost exactly the same type of lampshades
as a small pub in Sneek.Drs. P, Sneker café
That is indeed scary, that skeleton being the remains of someone who once stayed at a home with lampshades almost identical to those in that particular pub in Sneek. Equally sinister is the following. Sneek is one of the Frisian cities of the famous 11 City Skating Tour. The only junction on the tour is at Bartlehiem, which loosely translates to ‘Bart’s home’ but originally meant Bethlehem. And that brings us back to New Nazareth. Drs. P’s song reveals a few more equally sinister connections to the pub and then concludes,
You see now how the pub again and again
affects the social interaction.
How here and there, and yes, even overseas
one stumbles upon this pub from Sneek.
It’s inexplicable and almost occult,
something that fills the world with trepidation.Drs. P, Sneker café
As a prophecy, it is slightly off the mark by focusing on a pub, not on Sneek itself. Prophesies somehow tend to be off. That comes with predestination. If we knew our predestined future, it wouldn’t materialise. Yet there are inexplicable, occult connections that fill the world with trepidation. And that nursing home, New Nazareth, is not the only thing that justifies thepidation. You pronounce Sneek like ‘snake,’ and there was allegedly a serpent in Paradise. After what happened to me, there seemed to be more to it than just a coincidence. In scripted reality, there is no coincidence. And had the connection been meaningless, my noticing it would still have been part of the plan. So, behind every escape hatch hides another monster.
Pope end times prophecy
In January 2013, an Australian poster on the message board Godlikeproductions.com started a thread titled ‘112 Keeps Coming Up In The Media.’ Others joined in with their own selective biases and found many 112s popping up in the media. That same number is the European Emergency Services telephone number, and since I had lived in room 112 in that fateful dormitory, the thread caught my attention. The discussion remained active for several weeks. During that time, Pope Benedict XVI resigned on 11 February 2013, a highly unusual move. He was the first pope to step down in almost 600 years.
That became material for this thread. 11 February is also the 112 European Day, which celebrates the emergency services telephone number. 11 February is 11/2 in European notation, and 112 is the European emergency services telephone number, so that is why. You must admit the European bureaucrats have found a most peculiar occasion to throw a party. In any case, the Pope’s resignation came unexpectedly, like a bolt from the blue. And lightning struck the Vatican a few hours after the Pope had resigned.1 It made several people wonder, so the thread came back alive.
Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation on European 112 Day is also noteworthy because of the 112th Pope End Times Prophecy attributed to Saint Malachy. The prophecy alleges 112 popes would reign, starting with Celestine II, until the End of Times. Benedict XVI was the 111th Pope. His resignation prepared the way for the 112th Pope, Pope Francis, who, according to the prophecy, would become the last Pope before the End of Times and Jesus’ return. That made me curious, so I investigated the matter and discovered that Saint Malachy had died on 2 November (11/2 in American notation) 1148, and I added that noteworthy item to the thread.
The prophecy raves about the 112th Pope, ‘In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed, and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.’ Some claim it refers to Judgement Day or the second coming of Jesus Christ. It requires quite a stretch of the imagination to make it fit Francis’s tenure, but humans are imaginative beings. Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, 21 April 2025, at the age of 88, and the 113th Pope, Leo XIV, came. My preparations weren’t yet complete, but had progressed far enough to think that the End Time could commence within a few years.
If so, that century-old prediction could be remarkably close in time, even though it doesn’t match the described events. It seems too accurate to be a coincidence, yet not entirely on the mark. The same holds for Finkers’ animated picture of Christ’s birth in Twente. My birthplace, Eibergen, is a few kilometres outside Twente. Likewise, the 9 February 2009 superstorm prediction was too accurate to be a coincidence. The date was correct, but the location was off by about 400 kilometres. Route N666 didn’t precisely end in Borssele, the location of the only remaining Dutch nuclear power plant, but in nearby Heerenhoek within the Borssele municipality. The other Dutch atomic plant, which had been closed, was in Doodewaard (Death Holm), a remarkable name. The former Doodewaard municipality had been 66.5 square kilometres in size, so close to 66.6 that it is noteworthy.
Jesus’ ministry occurred sometime between 26 and 30 AD, a period that will soon mark 2,000 years, which is worth noting. We might find out soon whether or not God finally means business this time. After 2,000 years of waiting, you wouldn’t expect that anymore, and most people live as if Judgment Day will not occur during their lifetimes. And as you might know, the hour will come as a thief in the night. The Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly, suddenly, and without warning. That is to say, if that day ever comes. Likewise, you wouldn’t expect an autistic individual like me to be the messiah. Okay, men with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to be faithful, and God might prefer a man with ‘a heart of gold’, but maybe there is more to it. So, what makes autistic people special?
Latest revision: 11 February 2026
1. Lightning strikes St Peter’s Basilica as Pope resigns. BBC (12 February 2013).
The Plan For The Future 