The Three Days of Darkness (Part Five)

We began this series of Blog posts with an account of a dramatic vision which occurred to the disciple John when he was in exile on the island of Patmos. In this vision, he saw a series of events that would occur on the earth shortly before the return of the Christ.

In his description of this vision in chapter eight of his Book of Revelation, he attributed these events to the actions of seven angels, each of whom was given a trumpet. As each angel sounded his trumpet, a particular disaster would befall the earth. These disasters were as follows:

• First angel – Hail and fire mingled with blood was cast upon the earth
• Second angel – A great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea
• Third angel – A great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp
• Fourth angel – Darkness descended upon the sun, the moon and the stars

We then went on to detail the warnings that were given by St Francis of Assisi and Padre Pio about the end times in general, and the three days of darkness in particular, as well as dreams and visions that have happened to ordinary men and women since that time.

It should come as no surprise that all of these dreams, visions and other warnings have been described in religious terms, because they not only fulfil the prophecies of Old Testament prophets, but also the predictions of Jesus and his disciples.

Based on the legacy of Old Testament prophets who wrote in the context of angels and demons and of the wrath of the Lord directed against sinners, modern Christianity continues to view the world as a cosmic battle between God on one side and Satan on the other.

But we no longer live in Biblical times, and humanity no longer views the events of this world solely through the lens of religion. Ever since the Reformation, when Galileo challenged the Church by pointing out that the earth moved around the sun, the dogma of the Church has been replaced by the evidence of science.

If we are to truly understand the prophecies of the ancients and the revelation of St John, we need to examine them through the discoveries of modern science. And science does not deal with angels and demons, but with cold hard facts and scientific law.

it should be clear to most readers by now that what St. John saw in his vision was a close encounter between the earth and a comet. And the reason why he devoted so many chapters to this event in his Book of Revelation, was because it was associated with so many different effects upon the earth.

First of all there were the atmospheric effects associated with the red dust falling upon the earth and making it look like blood. But this dust did not just colour the seas, lakes and rivers. It contaminated them as well, giving them a bitter taste and poisoning anyone who drank from them.

Then there were the incandescent particles in the tail of the comet that fell to the earth like fiery hail, together with electrical discharges between the nucleus of the comet and the earth that would appear as spectacular lightning bolts hurled down from the sky.

Then as the core of the comet drew closer to the earth, it began to shroud the entire planet in inky black dust that obscured portions of the sun, the moon and the stars and made it difficult to breathe, before blotting out all light upon the earth for a period of three days and nights.

Although it is theoretically possible for the head of a comet to collide with the earth, it is much more likely that the nucleus would disintegrate into smaller fragments as a result of electrical charge differentials between the two bodies.

This would account for the asteroid or “great mountain burning with fire” that St. John said would be cast into the sea, which would of course lead to catastrophic consequences all around the earth. The impact might even alter its axis as well as its orbit around the sun.

The Dirty Snowball

As plausible as such an explanation may seem, it does not resonate with astronomers at this time, for the simple reason that modern scientists do not take the threat of a close encounter between the earth and a comet seriously. In fact, they still don’t understand what a comet really is.

Most astronomers and astrophysicists continue to believe in the speculative ideas of Fred Whipple, the American astronomer who originally came up with the hypothesis that comets were little more than “dirty snowballs”, consisting primarily of ice and dirt.

Whipple theorised that comets weren’t rocky objects like asteroids or meteors, but instead consisted mainly of ice together with some dust and frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia.

Whipple’s hypothesis, which he advanced in the 1950’s, came to be known as the “dirty snowball” model. It soon gained widespread acceptance among the scientific community, and it remains to this day the model that is taught in all the leading colleges and universities of the world.

What distinguishes comets from other space objects like asteroids is that as they draw closer to the Sun, they begin to glow and develop various luminous tails which point away from the sun and stretch for hundreds of millions of miles.

According to the “dirty snowball” model, when a comet approaches the Sun, a “Coma” or glowing envelope forms around the nucleus or head of the comet, as the solid matter of the core is converted directly into a gas through a process known as “sublimation”.

As conventional theory explains, these pockets of ionized gas inside the nucleus of the comet, formed by the radiant heat of the sun and the Solar Wind, then explode to form the jets of material commonly seen emerging from the heads of comets.

Then as the comet approaches its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, the ice that makes up the bulk of the nucleus of the comet steadily boils away, causing it to shrink in size with every successive orbit until nothing remains.

However, when scientists began sending probes into space with sophisticated instruments that enabled them to examine the nature of comets more closely, they were startled to find that their results were very different from what the “dirty snowball” model predicted.

In 1999, NASA launched its Stardust Mission to Comet Wild 2 in order to evaluate its dust and formative material, and to return samples of these to the earth. When these samples were later recovered and examined in the laboratory, they revealed a complete absence of water.

And when NASA extended its Deep Space mission (DS1) to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly in 2001, it was also found to be hot and dry, with not a hint of water.

When NASA launched its Deep Impact probe in 2005 to study the surface of Comet Tempel 1, images sent back by the probe portrayed an object that looked surprisingly like an asteroid. It even had numerous impact craters. The only thing it lacked was any evidence of surface ice.

Space probes have now been sent to five different comets. They are the comets Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2, Tempel 1 and Hartley 2. Yet none of these comets have shown any evidence of surface ice, as the “dirty snowball” theory requires.

The final nail in the coffin of the “snowball model” was provided by the Rosetta space probe. Although it had been launched by the European Space Agency in March 2004, it took ten years for the probe to reach its target, which was the comet referred to as 67P.

After orbiting the nucleus for several months, the module called Philae separated itself successfully from the Rosetta spacecraft and landed on the surface of the comet on November 12, 2014. The information relayed back from the spacecraft confirmed what earlier studies had indicated.

There was absolutely no trace of ice or water on the surface of the comet. In fact, it consisted of craggy cliffs and desert sand highlighted by numerous impact craters, as the accompanying picture reveals.

Astronomers and astrophysicists who have been trained to interpret all comet behaviour within the confines of the “dirty snowball” model proposed by Fred Whipple, have been at a complete loss to explain the anomalies outlined above.

In fact many of them have confessed, like Donald Brownlee, principal investigator of NASA’s Stardust Mission: “It’s a mystery to me how comets work at all”. Their confusion is easy to understand.

They have been trying to explain the phenomena of comets in the context of a Cosmological theory that is palpably wrong. However, in recent years a new breed of scientists has come forward to explain the mysteries of comets within a revolutionary new theory which they call the “Electric Universe”.

The Electric Comet

What these scientists have done has been to build on the Cosmology of the past by including an ingredient which had been overlooked by such scientific giants as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. That ingredient was electromagnetism.

And it is only when the electromagnetic force is restored to its rightful place as a fundamental building block of the universe, that the mysteries of comets can not only be explained, but predicted in advance.

The theory of the “Electric Universe” is predicated on the thesis that the entire universe is basically electrical in nature. So in terms of this theory, we are electric beings living on an electric earth, which orbits around an electric Sun as it travels through electric space.

And comets are not “dirty snowballs” consisting mainly of dirt and ice. They are actually electrically charged objects travelling through an electrically charged field of space. As plasma physicist Wallace Thornhill, one of the leading proponents of this electrical theory, puts it:

“Comets spend most of their time far from the Sun where the charge density is low. Since comets move slowly, their electric charges reach equilibrium with the weak, radial solar electric field. When a comet falls into the inner Solar System closer to the Sun, however, its nucleus accelerates into regions of increasing charge density and voltage.

“Charge polarization in the nucleus respond to the increasing electrical stress, forming a vast coma (plasma sheath) around the comet. Discharge jets flare up and move across the surface, similar to the plumes on Jupiter’s moon, Io.

“If the internal electrical stress becomes too great, the nucleus may explode like an overcharged capacitor, breaking into fragments or vanishing forever. Similar effects are most likely responsible for meteoric explosions in Earth’s atmosphere, such as the one that occurred over Tunguska in Siberia.”  (View Source)

In addition to challenging historians, geologists and physicists with his revolutionary theories of cosmic collisions within the recorded history of mankind, Velikovsky was the first to point out that space was not a vacuum and that the earth was surrounded by an electromagnetic sheath.

This sheath, which has now come to be called the magnetosphere, has a geomagnetic tail which extends beyond the orbit of the moon. The Van Allen radiation belts, which were discovered in 1958, are located within this magnetosphere surrounding the earth.

The well-known phenomena of the auroras, which can be seen in both the northern hemisphere (aurora borealis) and the southern hemisphere (aurora australis), are displays of light that result from disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind.

These charged particles emitted by the sun cause changes in the upper atmosphere of the earth which manifest themselves as displays of varying intensity and colour. They can even appear blood-red, as can be seen in the accompanying photograph.

What Velikovsky suspected, and what space probes have now confirmed, is that electrically charged comets generate electrical discharges when they come in close proximity to other electrically charged objects like planets. In other words, they generate thunder and lightning.

But if a large comet should approach the earth, the electrical discharges that would be generated between these two bodies would be unlike any localised electrical storm normally experienced on the earth. Lightning and thunder would literally engulf the entire planet.

Humanity would be stunned by the cacophony of noise that would be generated by this phantasmagorical display of light and sound. It would seem like a cosmic battle of the Gods, just as it was portrayed in the myths and legends of ancient societies all over the globe.

And it is this clash of light and sound that those who have experienced the onset of the three days of darkness in dreams or visions, have emphasized the most.

Continued in Part Six

This entry was posted on Friday, November 22nd, 2019 at 11:04 am and is filed under The Three Days of Darkness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.