About Me

John O’Connell

The Lamb of God

On the O’Connell side of our family, we have been in Derry since my great grandfather, William O’Connell, who was born in Dublin in 1843 and brought up there, arrived here in 1870. His parents were Henry [a paper maker in Clondalkin paper mills] and Anne [nee O’Grady] [died 1897]. William joined the then British army aged 17, serving first from August 1864 in Hamilton, Ontario, and Montreal, Canada, as an ordinary soldier in the 16^th Bedfordshire of Foot (1st Battalion), and then returning in 1867 with his fellow soldiers to their base in Newry, County Down, where he met my great grandmother, Mary Ann McClelland, who was from the Waterside in Derry city.

My great grand-parents were married at St Columb’s chapel in the Waterside on 26^th December, 1870. According to the research of a [distant] relative, he is recorded as having been imprisoned from the 18^th to the 22^nd February 1870 in the Guard Room for going absent presumably without permission from the 7^th to the 10^th February earlier in the month. He was clearly no angel and he wasn’t being paid by angels either. In fact, he is recorded as having been court-marshalled before that [for some unspecified offence] in Hamilton, Ontario, and sentenced to five days in the Guard Room from 7^th to 12^th June 1867, followed by a stay in the Military Prison from 13^th June to 5^th July 1867. He also forfeited 168 days pay for his trouble, and that was quite a sum, I’m sure. After a couple more years in the army, my great grand-parents eventually settled in Herbert Street, Waterside, [off Fountain Hill], where they brought up five children. My great grandfather then worked as a general labourer and died in October 1916 [aged 73].

 My grandfather and the man I was named after, John O’Connell, was born in Derry in August 1889. He worked first as a shirt cutter in Welsh Margetson’s shirt factory and later as a clerk in the local shipyard. He was active in local sport, including the local cricket team and married my grandmother, Josephine Friel, and they were blessed with eight children. He played a part in the War of Independence in Ireland and died before my birth in April 1960.

My father, William, who was born in 1928 and who was named after his Dublin-born grandfather, was the fourth child of John and Josephine O’Connell of 18 Rossville Street, virtually in the city centre in the Bogside area of Derry. He grew up with three brothers [two deceased] and four sisters [two deceased]. He worked with the Derry Journal, mainly as a compositor, for almost fifty years until he retired in 1994. He also helped organize St Eugene’s Youth Club, as a volunteer, both in Orchard Street and in the Creggan for almost twenty years from 1949 until he became involved in politics in the late 1960s.

My father, William, showing P5 children from St Patrick's P.S., Pennyburn, the printing presses in the Derry Journal in May 1990.

Following in the footsteps of his uncle, my father became involved in politics. His uncle was Councillor and Alderman Patrick Meenan [1864-1938], a councillor on [London] Derry Corporation in 1910s to the 1930s, who Meenan Square in the Bogside was named after, and who is reputed to have gone into the Guildhall town hall during a fire there to rescue several of the paintings on display. He was motivated deeply by the assassination of President John F Kennedy in November 1963, which he was informed about traumatically by his sister-in-law, who entered the cinema he was sitting in with my mother in order to tell him the news.

My father as mayor of Derry in 1983 with [from left] my mother, Eileen, the
mayoress, my uncle George and his wife, my aunt Josie from Syracuse, New
York state, and aunt June, who lives in Worcester, England

My mother’s family have not been researched just as much as there is less of significance in the earlier generations of her family. We know her family grew up in a house they owned at the gates of St Columb’s chapel in the Waterside. There were seven children, my mother was the only one who passed the Eleven Plus [in its first year, notably along with John Hume, inter alia]. She attended Thornhill College and then went to St Mary’s Teacher Training College, which she left before completing her course. She worked in the Civil Service for several years, having to leave according to the law then when she married my father in 1963. They had five children [I’m the second oldest] and, like many mothers after the birth of her youngest child, my mother went back into work again in 1974. She sat the Civil Service entry exams and came third in Northern Ireland, taking a job with the newly-formed Northern Ireland Housing Executive. She retired in 1994.

Her father was Frank McGinley, of Chapel Road, Waterside, a lorry driver, who played a part in the War of Independence too and was an active gaelic footballer, winning trophes. His forbearers came from Glencolumbcille village in southwest Donegal, where there are some McGinleys mentioned in the tourist-centred school with records dating from the 1800s.  Her mother was Teresa Fulton from another Derry family. Her grandmother’s surname was Kennedy from Ardara town in southern Donegal. She is very proud of her Kennedy links, and will often mention her great uncle Philip who went to Philadelphia in the USA and sent quite a lot of money back to help his family.

John O’Connell

I am your gentle judge, the humble lamb who has returned to bring the world to safety.

I am a former student of St Patrick’s Primary School, Pennyburn, Derry, where I represented the school in the soccer team. I then went to St Columb’s College, Derry, where I was a member of the Gaelic football team as well as of the sixth form council. I was also a prefect for my sins.

I then went to University College Galway, where I graduated with a B.Comm (Hons.) in 1987. I represented the College and my faculty in the Gaelic football team, as well as playing for my class soccer team. I was also vice-chairman of the Political Discussion Society.

I trained and worked as an accountant in Belfast from October 1987 until God decided on a different course for me.

Since leaving accountancy in 1997 I have written and published twelve books. I have written My Name is John…(1999), concerning my manic-depressive illness, Love is the Answer (2002), dealing with my mystical experience, The Calling of Sinead (2003), dealing with the calling of women to politics, The Hunger File (2004), dealing with an aspect of the hunger-strikes, Heavenly Bliss! (2005), dealing with the issue of forgiveness, The Bride of Christ (2005), dealing with a doctor I once fell in love with, My Life in the Eden Zone (2006), an autobiographical account of growing up with God, Let the prisoners go free!!! (2006), a polemical argument for the ending of the criminal justice system, My Miracle in Medjugorje (2007), a record of my first miracle, The Book of Revelation Revealed (2008), which sets a Book of Revelation context for my coming, God is a Woman and the Future’s Female (2008), defining God’s gender as part of my judgment of the North’s politicians, and Glad to be Mad (2009), a tribute to those who suffer.

I have also written and published the pamphlet An Irish Velvet Revolution – Achieving a united Ireland through repartition (2004) [which is on the Website].

My work as the Lamb of Revelation is recorded in my twelve books, countless letters and articles. Read “Revelation” for the conceptual framework of my coming straight from the Book of Revelation.

God has nurtured me all my life. In 1986, She let me into a secret – Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and DUP leader Ian Paisley, whose names come out at 666 on a numeric alphabet, are the two beasts of the Book of Revelation.

Derry was always important to me. It was the New Jerusalem so far as I was concerned. It had the walled inner city, the most complete set of walls in Europe, and these walls were symbolic of the New Jerusalem’s walls in the Book of Revelation. Indeed the old Jerusalem had its walls, which the Romans had destroyed only to find that a new empire, based in a different part of the world, and in a different era, had built another beautiful fortress where the Lamb was to reside. Derry, the place of so much oppression over the last several hundred years, was the place where the 144,000 citizens, who had the name of the Lamb and his father written on their foreheads, were to reside.

Then I looked and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his father’s name written on their foreheads. (Rev 14:1)

Thus the Lamb was to have a name, and his father was to have a name, and in human terms this name would be significant for the 144,000 who lived in the New Jerusalem.

I interpreted the phrase ‘written on their foreheads’ in a unique manner. To me, it meant that the name was to be so obvious that no-one could miss it. My name held special significance now that I realised that names were all-important.

I had the most famous surname in the history of Ireland, O’Connell, due to the efforts of the Liberator of Irish Catholics, Daniel O’Connell, and it was fitting that my name, the name of the Irish Christ, was to be so. It was the most powerful name in the Irish historical sense, immersing the Irish Christ into the midst of Irish history and culture even further.

But the Liberator had a son called John O’Connell, and so in a sense I was the son of the Liberator, another way of saying the Son of God, the ultimate liberator.

But my name was even more important in the context of Derry, the New Jerusalem. The walled city of Derry was situated in a peninsula called Inishowen, or in English, the island, as it formerly was, of John. So I lived on the island of John. But the peninsula was situated in the ancient kingdom of Tyrconnell, meaning in Irish, ‘the land of Connell’. So I also lived in the land of Connell.

I was John O’Connell, John of the clan Connell, living on ‘the island of John in the land of Connell’, my name and my father’s name ‘written on their foreheads’ (Rev 14:1), or so obvious it couldn’t be missed. It was a monumental coincidence. I was the Lamb of God. I had no doubt about that.

It was the certainty to me too that Derry was the New Jerusalem. Derry was a blessed place, and I knew that God had protected the people of Derry from the worst excesses of the Troubles.

This is the gravestone of the prince Eoghan [in English - Owen or John]of
Iniseoghain [Inishowen]. He was the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages [Niall
was a king of the O'Neill clann which went on to dominate Ireland from the
6th to the 10th centuries.] and died in 465 A.D. of grief for his brother
Conall. He was baptised by Patrick c. 442 A.D. and buried in Uisce Chadin
[Iskaheen, on the outskirts of Derry city].

Son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, Conall Gulban, King of Tir Conaill or the
Land of Conall [Tyrconnell, later Donegal and the west bank of Derry city],
which was his share of the family's conquests in north-western Ulster after
425 A.D.. His descendants, known as the Cenél Conaill, formed one of the
principle branches of the Northern Uí Neill, and until the 12th century
their kings were inaugurated at the sacrifice of a white mare, going down on
all fours like a stallion and lapping its broth. As the kindred of St.
Columba, members of this branch were also Abbots of Iona 563-891 or later,
Abbots of Dunkeld from the 9th to 12th centuries, and Kings of Scots from
Duncan I [slain by MacBeth 1040] to Alexander III [died of a fall from his
horse 1285/86].

Tyrconnell was founded in the fifth century by a son of Niall of the Nine
Hostages, Conall Gulban, the eponymous ancestor of the Cenél Conaill [the
O'Connell dynasty, although there are O'Connells going back as several
centuries before Christ.] His descendants ruled the kingdom till the Flight
of the Earls in September 1607, which marked the end of the kingdom.
 

Colmcille and My Name

It wasn’t just the Book of Revelation that had prophecies relating to Derry. The saint

Colmcille, who founded Derry in 546 A.D., also made prophecies in relation to Derry, and many other things. For example, he wrote:-

Oh, my Derry! My beloved little Derry!
The place of my abode, and the solace of my existence!
Wo betide the man, O God, thou whose ways are unsearchables (sic),
Who is destined to despoil my Derry!
After the despoilment of my beloved Derry, And the dispersion of my pupils,
A Dalcassion shall not obtain possession of Ireland, Ever again – a long period of time.
The king who will cause a lasting change,
Shall be from Desmond – the prediction is correct –
Goodness forever after that time.

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