Fire from the Sky

On the morning of 27 December 1831, the naturalist Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth harbour in England at the tender age of 22, on a journey that was to last five years and take him all around the world.

It was the result of his botanical and biological research conducted in the course of that voyage that was to result, many years later, in his epochal work On the Origin of Species, which was to become the foundation of the modern theory of evolution.

In this book Darwin laid out his theory that all the different species that have ever lived upon the earth were descended from a common ancestor, and that each species subsequently changed into another through a process he called “natural selection”.

According to Darwin, this process of natural selection took place over vast ages of geological time. In this he was guided by the work of two men. One was the 18th century Scottish naturalist James Hutton, and the other was the geologist Charles Lyell.

Both Hutton, who has come to be regarded as the father of modern geology, and Lyell were major advocates for an idea that was rapidly gaining acceptance at the time, and that was the principle of “Uniformitarianism”.

Uniformitarianism was the belief that the geological forces we see at the present time are the same as those that operated in the past, and that all the changes that have taken place on the earth are the result of imperceptibly slow changes over vast spans of time. There was no room in this theory for sudden catastrophes.

For Darwin, this was the idea his theory needed in order in order to justify the same imperceptibly slow rate at which one species changed into another. And Uniformitarianism remains to this day the theory that is taught in our schools and universities.

Unfortunately, this neatly ordered theory of evolution, in which catastrophism plays no part, has not been validated by the facts. It is now known that almost all the species that have ever lived on the earth have not continued to evolve over time into ever higher orders of form, as Darwin so eloquently argued.

Instead, they became extinct.

What the fossil record has shown very clearly is that different species have emerged suddenly, and then, after long periods of time, have vanished equally suddenly, in a process that has come to be known as “Punctuated Stasis”.

Each of these different species has existed for long periods of time, with very little or no morphological change, until they unexpectedly disappeared completely from the fossil record. The best example of this is the dinosaurs.

It has now become accepted throughout the scientific community that the entire spectrum of dinosaurs, from the small to the very large, suddenly perished at a time when the earth underwent a catastrophic event.

This change is now believed to have occurred some 65 million years ago, when a large asteroid collided with the earth in an area around the northern tip of  the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, to form the famous Chicxulub crater.

This event shows up so clearly in the geological record, that it is now considered to be the boundary between the end of the age of the dinosaurs (Cretacious period) and the beginning of the age of mammals (Tertiary period).

This same pattern of long periods of “stasis” or stability, interspersed with sudden extinction level events that we find in the fossil record, seems to be matched by a similar cycle of events in the course of human civilization on the earth.

When we examine the records of ancient history, we find the same tales of long periods of stability broken up by sudden cataclysmic events, that have been responsible for the destruction of entire civilisations all over the earth.

As has been explained in an earlier post (2012 and the Mayan Calendar), stories of previous cataclysmic disasters that have devastated entire cultures have survived in sacred books from China, India, Persia, Greece and Rome, as well as from the Incas, the Aztecs and the Maya.

There seems to be a common link between the sudden extinction of species around the planet and the collapse of these human cultures, and that is the threat of catastrophic change, most often brought about by “fire from the sky”.

It was the Russian-born American scholar Immanuel Velikovsky who devoted ten years of his life researching these ancient stories of disaster. In particular, he focused on a series of events that occurred around 3,500 years ago, and which devastated the entire planet.

As we find recorded in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses was sent on a mission by God to liberate the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, only to find on his arrival that he was rebuffed by the Pharaoh.

According to the Biblical story, Pharaoh hardened his heart against Moses, and refused to release the Israelites. In response, God brought a series of plagues against the people of Egypt.

The first plague caused the waters and rivers to turn into blood, killing the fish and polluting the drinking water. This was followed by an outbreak of frogs, lice and flies. Then came the “murrain”, an infectious disease that killed the livestock.

The next plague was a strange dust that caused boils and blisters to break out on the skin of people and animals. Then came thunder and hail, and fire that ran along the ground, destroying the crops in the field.

This was followed by a vast swarm of locusts that destroyed the remainder of the crops that had survived the hail. Then there came a strange darkness that fell over the whole land of Egypt. This was a darkness that not only blackened the sky, but could be felt as well.

Most Bible scholars have interpreted the story of the plagues of Egypt as a series of miracles performed by Moses, and authorised by God, as part of his plan to deliver the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.

These scholars probably never considered for a moment the possibility that the plagues that descended on Egypt might not have been supernatural miracles after all, but rather the predictable consequences of a close encounter between the earth and a large comet.

That is, until Velikovsky came along.

What Velikovsky did was to research the legends of other cultures that existed elsewhere on the earth at that time, to see if they had records of events that correlated with those described in the Bible.

And find them he did. In fact the more he looked, the more he found. In his book Worlds in Collision, he quoted from sources derived from ancient manuscripts in Egypt, as well as from Greece, Babylon, Finland, Siberia, as well as the Maya.

But Velikovsky was not content with drawing historical parallels between stories drawn from ancient cultures located in different parts of the world. He used his education and training to interpret these stories in the light of modern science.

And the story he told was utterly compelling. As he wrote in the second chapter of his book, the cause of these world-wide catastrophes was a close encounter between the earth and a large comet.

“The comet was on its way from its perihelion and touched earth first with its gaseous tail…One of the first signs of this encounter was the reddening of the earth’s surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment. In sea, lake and river this pigment gave a bloody coloring to the water. Because of these particles of ferruginous or other soluble pigment, the world turned red.” (Worlds in Collision)

He then went on to describe the inevitable results that would follow as the earth was drawn deeper and deeper into the tail of the comet.

The dust particles that caused the water to look like blood would also pollute the water, making it unfit to drink. This contaminated water would then cause the fish to die, and their dead carcases would soon begin to decompose, causing the rivers to give off a foul odour.

In order to escape, the frogs would abandon the rivers and make their way into the houses of the Egyptians. As the earth continued to pass through the tail of the comet, the red dust now coating the land would cause an infestation of lice, followed by immense swarms of flies.

This dust would also be likely to cause a variety of skin infections, boils and blisters, that would afflict men and animals alike. The lice and flies would also lead to outbreaks of disease among the livestock of the Egyptians.

As the earth plunged deeper into the tail of the comet, the particles of reddish dust would give way to gravel particles. These superheated particles would then fall to earth in the form of fiery hailstones that would run along the ground.

These flaming meteorites would not only strike people and animals caught in the open, but would set fire to the crops in the field as well. And any crops left standing would likely be destroyed by the vast swarms of locusts that would follow.

As the earth moved closer to the nucleus of the comet, there would come an inky blackness so intense that light could not penetrate it. This would be a darkness that could be felt, for the very air would seem to stick in people’s throats.

There is an eerie parallel between what happened in the distant past of our planet at the time of Moses, and the mysterious events that are described in the final book of the Bible, the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

While the disciple John was living in exile on the Greek island of Patmos, he had a series of revelatory visions about a future time when a Saviour would return in triumph to the earth. In his book of Revelation, John describes the dramatic events that would unfold at that time.

This book has since become one of the most enigmatic books of the Bible, and religious scholars still cannot agree on exactly what it was that John was describing.

We also have to remember, that if John really did foresee events that would happen on the earth several thousands of years in the future, he would hardly have been able to describe them in words that would be intelligible to us today.

He would also have been forced to use symbols for things that even he didn’t understand or recognize. For example, he writes about seven angels who were given seven trumpets. As each angel sounded their trumpet, so the earth would be assailed by a specific disaster.

“The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.

“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

“And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” (Revelation 8: 7-12)

For most readers of the Bible, these descriptions will probably seem mystifying enough. But just to complicate matters, John went on to describe seven more angels who had each been given Vials of the Wrath of God to pour upon the earth.

“And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.

“And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness: and they gnawed their tongues for pain“. (Revelation 16: 2-10)

These verses would probably have held little meaning for the people who were living at the time John wrote these words.

But because of the explanation given to us by Velikovsky, in explaining the various plagues that happened at the time of Moses, we may have a better insight into the apocalyptic events that John was trying to describe.

If he were still alive today, this is what I believe Velikovsky might say. Suppose a large comet was to pass in orbit around the sun. As it sped away from the sun back into the dark void of space, its luminous tail of dust particles would travel ahead of it, blown by the force of solar radiation.

If the earth should happen to lie in the path of this comet after its perihelion (or closest approach to the sun), then our world would first come into contact with the tail of the comet, which would extend ahead of it in space for many millions of miles.

If the dust particles in the tail of the comet were ferruginous (containing iron), then the earth would first be showered by particles of fine, red dust. As this cosmic dust began to fall from the sky, it would settle on the skin of people and animals causing irritation and infection.

The presence in the atmosphere of these tiny particles of dust would also spawn torrential downpours of rain, which would be characterised by a blood-red colour.

As the earth continued to be showered by poisonous dust this bloody rain would soon contaminate the rivers and the seas, causing them to become blood-red in appearance. Those who drank from these toxic waters would die.

When the nucleus of the comet drew closer to the earth, larger particles in the comet’s tail would fall as blazing meteorites.

This torment of fiery hail would then set fire to large portions of the land. Entire forests and countrysides would be engulfed in blazing infernos that would destroy crops, which would later lead to widespread famine.

Should a part of the comet, or even the nucleus itself plunge into the sea, this flaming asteroid would create unparalleled havoc, not just to those creatures in the sea, but also to those craft which happened to be travelling upon it.

Coastal cities would be ravaged by tumultuous tidal waves. Hundreds of millions of people would die in a matter of minutes. The resulting collision would devastate the land and decimate all forms of life on the planet.

A cloud of dust and debris would soon encircle the earth, blotting out in places the light of the sun, the moon and the stars. Such a close encounter with a large comet would severely jolt the earth, perhaps even causing it to tilt on its axis, and even change the alignment of its poles.

Just as at the time of the Exodus, when the earth was assailed by “fire from the sky”, so according to the book of Revelation, there will come a time when the world will once again suffer the cataclysmic consequences of a close encounter with a comet.

But just as before, when the global devastation caused by that previous encounter enabled Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to a place “flowing with milk and honey”, so the earth will once again be blessed.

It will be “made new” by these disasters, and will be transformed into a “new earth” where there will be no more suffering, and no more pain.

The political conflicts, the economic crises, the wars and outbreaks of terrorism, and the convulsions of climate that have come to characterise our current age, will give way to a time of harmony and peace, where “the calf and the young lion will lie down together”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2020 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Fire From the Sky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.