An update of clues used to decipher Nostradamus' name for the Third Antichrist . . .

Who will be MABUS?

Mabus will soon die, then will come,
A horrible undoing of people and animals,
At once one will see vengeance,
One hundred powers , thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.

                       Nostradamus (1555), Century 2, Quatrain 62

The time has come to reexamine the 16th century prophet's dire warnings if full-scale war should be the next step. Such a war could trigger the fulfillment of certain important predictions that will enable us to clearly name who Nostradamus intended to be this 3rd and final "man of evil."  We may also discover how the death of this man, early in the next conflict between Arab and Jew, may scourge the world with a 27 year war of terrorism.

A number of Nostradamus' prophecies infer that the first antichrist was Napaulon Roy (Napoleon King) and  the 2nd Hister (Hitler).  The 3rd is code named Mabus.  His fate in the prophecy mentioned above possibly implicates him as one of the first to fall in a devastating war that only begins with his death.  The reference to the undoing of people and animals not only suggests war but also a plague - perhaps one caused by the use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.  The undoing or unraveling of civilization in a future 21st-century Balkanization of the world is a common theme in Nostradamus' prophecies.  Such a world civil war comes as a result of a possible breakdown of the climate and the human food chain ("thirst, famine").  The stress of these added to the demands of an exploding population drags a hundred "powers", or nations, into a world war free-for-all fought over dwindling resources no later than the 2020s.

Many historical facts support the prescient clues of Nostradamus that the present day is slotted for Mabus and his war to appear.  A great comet did pass through the skies as a harbinger of things to come - Comet Hale/Bopp in 1997. The turn of the millennium saw human population  cross the threshold of 6 billion.  There are over 100 nations that one could say are suffering the widespread distresses of malnutrition and a lack of fresh water ("famine, thirst") that could lead to a plague of civil and national wars.  The "hundred hands" or "powers" could stand for Middle Eastern nations, terrorist factions (be they Jewish, Arab and Iranian) that spring to action if "Mabus" the Third Antichrist should fall.

Who is Mabus?  According to my interpretation of this enigmatic code name in such books as Nostradamus:  The Complete Prophecies and Nostradamus:  The New Revelations, I pose that Mabus is a North African or Middle Eastern Arab terrorist.  I base my theory on Nostradamus's habit of hiding his messages in classical cryptograms.  To me, Mabus stands for Thurbo Majus, the classical Roman name given to the "infernal God of Hannibal" referred to in Quatrain 30 of Century 2.  Any number of shadowy figures of Arab terrorism have spent their time near Thurbo Majus, hiding their true identities under code names beginning with "Abu" (Arabic for "father").

The wide use of Abu fits the prophet's rules of anagram decoding.  You can drop one or two letters in a word, for instance, the "m" and "s" from "mABUs" and you get "Abu".  The Majus-Mabus link implies those individuals or organizations using that PLO North African base or those organizations and their operatives who are code name "Abu" - such as Abu Amar, Abu Nidal, or Abu Abbas, etc. - as candidates for the Third Antichrist.

Beyond the PLO connection, Nostradumus scholar, Bardo Kidogo, uses classical Persian metaphors to unveil Mabus as a modern-day Iranian Ayatollah.  He sees Mabus as a cryptogram for Gobrayas Megabyzus who was one of several conspirators who overthrew a Zoroastrian priest (or magus) who had usurped the throne of Persia (Iran) in ancient times.  Megabyzus showed himself to be a real tyrant with a flair for terrorism.  His favorite modus operandi was to attack enemy states from within.  Mabus could also be currently hiding out in Afghanistan.  The Saudi terrorist, Usama bin Laden, who commands his war of jihad on America and Israel from a base camp in remote Afghanistan, often sees Western reporters misspell his first name.  "Usama" makes his name a classic fit for Mabus if one follows Nostradamus' rules of wordplay.  "Usama"= maaus.  Drop the redundant "a" and replace with a single letter allowed by the rule and insert a "b" = Mabus. 

Then there is Saddam Hussein of Iraq.  You can find his name matching that of Mabus by using a simple occult word game.  First spell m-a-b-u-s backwards; then turn any letters around that can represent a new letter once reversed, such as "b" turned to a "d".  Thus, Mabus spelled backwards is "Sudam".  Use the law of replacing one letter and you get "Sadam".  Phonetic redundancies allow you to spell it with an extra "d" and it becomes "Saddam".

Despite the current bellicose climate between Israelis and Palestinians, I still hold that Saddam Hussein of Iraq is the chief candidate for Mabus, to date.  He considers himself the protector of extremist Palestinian aspirations - namely; the deep rooted desire to push Israelis into the sea and take back all Palestinian lands seized in Israel's 1948 war of independence.  He has pledged a force of up to 5 million armed Iraqi Mujahadeen poised to assist their Palestinian brethren in the coming conflict.  Intelligence reports indicate that Saddam Hussein is rapidly rebuilding his chemical and biological weapons arsenals.  He may yet produce atomic bombs - either smuggled from former Soviet sources or through manufacturing a crude bomb of his own.  The most conservative Pentagon estimates say Iraq could build or procure an atomic weapon in less than five years.

One cannot rule out that Nostradamus intended Mabus to be a thing rather than a person.  There is possibly one of Nostradamus' complicated double entendres working in this enigmatic code name.  Mabus the "thing" then is Saddam the "person's" weapon of mass destruction, hurled at Israel.  One of the Iraqi leader's arsenal of "al-Abbas" (Mabus) scud missiles could be the payload for a future chemical, biological, or even nuclear attack on Tel Aviv.  In such a scenario the famous "Mabus" prophecy could describe the launch of an al-Mabus missile that "soon dies" in the flames of its own successful explosion after its seven minute supersonic journey.  If the target is Israel, she may reply with one of her own 200 nuclear weapons.  the last Gulf War clearly demonstrated how scuds or other intermediate-range missiles are perfectly designed for surprise in the compact theater of the Middle East.  The chemical or nuclear extermination of just one of the region's cities would set alight "all at once" the Holy Land's ancient vengeances in an "undoing" of men and animals" in a region-wide Armageddon.  Mabus the missile and/or the person would be instantly consumed in a World War III in miniature that erases the land where Moses wandered, Jesus walked, and Muhammad drove his camels.

Although I deem Mabus to be Saddam Hussein, there is one last important candidate who at this very moment may hold the key to peace or Armageddon waged between Israeli and Palestinian, Chairman Yasser Arafat.  Before he became a peace broker for his people, his PLO secret code name was "Abu Amar".  Drop the last two letters "ar" and replace with "s" to get Maabus.  The "aa" phonetically stands for one "a" - MABUS.