Signs in the Sky
In my previous post I indicated that we are living through the death throes of a dying age, and that a new age is dawning that will transform both the earth and the heavens. I went on to say that the transition from our existing world age to the new one will be accompanied by world-wide calamities brought about by a close encounter with a comet.
Shortly before his arrest and crucifixion, as Jesus sat upon the Mount of Olives, he was approached by his disciples who asked him to describe the things that would happen on earth at the time of the ending of this present age.
“And they asked him, saying, Master, but when shall these things be? And what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?
“And he said, take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them.
“But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by. Then he said unto them, nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
“And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.” (Luke 21: 7-11)
In recent years there have been no shortage of sermons, news releases, articles, websites and videos dealing with wars and rumours of wars, as well as topics like global warming allied to earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other indications of the recent wrath of nature.
I myself have pointed out that extinction level events in the past have been preceded by climate change (Podcast # 4), and that these changes in climate have been characterized by extreme weather events (Podcast # 12). But up until this point, very little attention has been paid throughout the media to the subject of signs in the sky.
This in itself is surprising, since reference to strange and terrible events in the skies above the earth can be found throughout the Bible, and they were a continuing refrain in the predictions of Old Testament prophets relating to the “latter days”, or the days leading up to the ending of the age.
As we read in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who lived in the 8th century BC:
“Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.” (Isaiah 13:13)
In the Book of Joel, the prophet writes:
“The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining”. (Joel 2:10)
According to the Book of Amos:
“Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?” (Amos 5:20)
The apostles writing in the New Testament of the Bible were even more dramatic, for the apostle Luke writes:
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring. Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of the heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:26)
What is significant here is not just the references to changes in the sun, the moon and stars, but the reaction of people on earth who will witness these events at that time, such as the “distress of nations”, and of “men’s hearts failing them for fear”.
Now we are living at a time when the recent discoveries of astronomy, astrophysics and space science have enabled us to understand many of the mysteries of the heavens that so terrified people in ancient times. We are well aware today of the nature and causes of eclipses, supernovae, meteor showers, sunspots and solar flares, as well as of such heavenly interlopers as bolides, meteors, asteroids and comets.
And over the course of the last two thousand years, science has reassured us that nothing has changed in the alignments and motions of the planets, or of earth’s course around the sun. Certainly nothing has happened that would inspire a world-wide sense of dread, panic and despair.
So we have to ask ourselves what event, or events, might the Old and New Testament prophets have been referring to when writing about the “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”. As we can see from the extracts given below:
“Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” (Isaiah 13:9-10)
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.” (Joel 2:30-32)
“The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” (Zephaniah 1:14-15)
It is clear from the verses quoted above that the prophets were referring to something that would happen in the course of a single day. Furthermore, this event would be so terrible that it would not only cause men’s hearts “to fail them for fear” (Luke), but also to cause “mighty men to cry bitterly”. (Zephaniah)
So what could they have been referring to that would not only create great devastation upon the earth, but darken the sun and the moon and the stars in a way that would cause brave men’s hearts to quake with fear? It seems clear from the verses quoted from the Book of Revelation in my previous post (The New Golden Age), that the events these prophets were referring to was a close encounter between the earth and a comet.
But according to accepted scientific knowledge, astronomers and cosmologists say that not only is such an event extremely unlikely, but even if it did occur, they insist that there is no chance that it would conjure up “distress among nations”, let alone signs in the sky that would cause “mighty men to cry bitterly”.
Comets, scientists assure us, are nothing more than “dirty snowballs”, and despite the presence of thousands of comets in our solar system, none of them have posed a threat to earth over the last two thousand years. Thus prophecies such as those quoted above are invariably dismissed by science as the fantasies of gullible minds.
Comets are generally divided into two categories, based on the time it takes for them to complete their orbits around the sun. Although these orbital periods can range from a few years to thousands of years or more, comets are usually categorised either as short-period comets, or long-period comets.
Short-period comets are considered to be those whose orbital periods are shorter than 200 years, with the rest being grouped as long-period comets. Short-period comets are thought to originate from an area of space called the Kuiper Belt, which is a region of the Solar System located beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.
Probably the best known example of a short-period comet is Halley’s comet, which returns to orbit the sun every 75-76 years. Comet Halley can be clearly seen with the naked-eye, and is the only naked-eye comet that is likely to be seen twice in the course of a single human lifetime.
Comet Halley had been observed and recorded by Chinese and Babylonian astronomers dating back to the third century before the birth of Christ. However it was not until 1705 that the English astronomer Edmond Halley realized that these recorded sightings were actually recurring appearances of the same comet.
Since Halley was first person to determine with accuracy the periodicity of this comet, he was accorded the honour of having this comet named after him. This began the practice of naming comets after the people who first discover them, which has continued to this day. Comet Halley last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986, and will not make its reappearance until the year 2061.
Long-period comets on the other hand have highly eccentric orbits, and are believed to come from a hypothetical area of space called the Oort cloud. The Oort cloud is thought to be a spherical cloud of icy comet nuclei that exists nearly one light year away from our sun, or roughly a quarter of the way to the nearest star.
But whether long-period or short, all comets are believed to be similar in content. Every comet has a central nucleus, ranging from a football field in length to more than thirty miles across. They are composed of rock, dust, ice and frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia.
But the most distinctive feature of a comet, and what distinguishes it from an asteroid, is that they change their nature as they get closer and closer to the sun. While they are in deep space they are almost impossible to see, partly because of their small size, and partly because their surfaces have a very low reflectivity of light.
But once they approach the sun they begin to glow and to develop the characteristic tail of the comet. The “Coma”, or glowing envelope that forms around the nucleus of the comet, develops as part of the core begins to “sublimate”, which is the process whereby solid matter turns directly into gas without passing through the liquid phase.
As the comet approaches the sun, solar radiation causes the volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus. It is these streams of glowing gas and dust that form the Coma of the comet, and as a result of the forces of radiation pressure and solar wind, cause it to emit an elongated tail which always points away from the sun.
In fact comets generally emit several tails, depending on the constituents of the nucleus. The streams of dust and gas form their own distinctive tails. While streams of ionized (luminous) gases generally point directly away from the sun, dust tails tend to be curved. Some of these tails can extend over a distance of more than a hundred million miles.
While most comets pass around the sun only to vanish from our skies into the depths of space, others have met with dramatic fates. Probably the best example of a comet that astonished astronomers everywhere with its spectacular demise, was the Comet Shoemaker-Levy.
This comet had been discovered in March 1993 by the American geologist Eugene Shoemaker and his wife Carolyn, as well as the Canadian astronomer David Levy. It soon became apparent that this was an unusual type of comet, as orbital studies indicated that instead of travelling around the sun, it was actually orbiting the planet Jupiter.
Just over a year later, in July 1994, this comet was observed to break apart and split into a series of fragments ranging from a few hundred metres up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) in size. These fragments later plunged into the southern hemisphere of Jupiter at speeds of about 216,000 kilometres (134,00 miles) per hour.
These collisions were closely watched by astronomers all over the world. And although they had expected to see some fireballs arising from these impacts, few imagined that they would create the spectacular display that followed. In all, 21 different impacts were recorded.
The plumes generated by these fireballs reached heights of over 3,000 kilometres (1,875 miles) above the surface of the planet, while the impacts themselves created impact marks up to 12,000 kilometres (7,400 miles) across. The largest of these was estimated to have released an energy blast equal to six million megatons of TNT, about 600 times the size of all the nuclear bombs on earth.
But despite this graphic demonstration of the devastation that can be caused by cometary impacts like Shoemaker-Levy, astronomers today still display little concern about the potential harm to the earth from these “flying snowballs”. Yet if the prophets are correct, then our astronomers are about to get a rude awakening.
And the reason why is because they have lulled themselves into a state of complacency, based on a model of the universe that has become totally outdated. For as we shall see in the following instalments, space is not what scientists have long believed it to be, nor are comets the innocent “snowballs” they think they are.
