The Three Days of Darkness (Part One)
According to Biblical scholars, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (81AD to 96AD), the apostle John was exiled on the Greek island of Patmos, located just off the west coast of modern Turkey.
As he himself wrote in the first chapter of his book of Revelation: “I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ”.
It was during this time of exile that John had a series of visions in which he was shown the events that would lead up to the return of Jesus. As he explained:
“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John”.
In his book of Revelation, John details the things that he saw during his visions, and what he was told by the various angels associated with these events. For example, in chapter eight, he describes seven angels with seven trumpets, each of which signified a particular scourge or disaster.
“And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. 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 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: 6-12)
The question that has challenged eschatologists (those who study “end-time” events) ever since, is this. What exactly was John describing when he wrote the above words? And it is no surprise to find that most Bible scholars disagree as to the nature and timing of these events.
But there is an important clue to interpreting the words of St. John that has been missed by most scholars, and that is that these predictions of end-time events bear an eerie similarity to things that happened some three thousand years ago in Egypt.
In the Days of Moses
The second book of the Bible, known as the book of Exodus, tells the story of Moses, and how he was called upon by God to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt and guide them to a promised land flowing with “milk and honey”.
The Bible relates how Moses confronted Pharaoh and demanded that he let his people go. But Pharaoh was unmoved. As we read in the Bible, the Lord hardened his heart against Moses, and he refused to release the Israelites. In response, God brought upon a series of plagues against the people of Egypt.
The first plague caused the waters and rivers to be turned 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 land of Egypt. This darkness not only blackened the sky. It was a darkness that could be felt as well.
Now most Bible scholars have been educated to interpret the story of the plagues at the time of the Exodus 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 have probably never considered for a moment the possibility that the plagues that descended on Egypt might not have been divine miracles at all, but rather the predictable consequences of a close encounter between the earth and a large comet. That is until Velikovsky came along.
Immanuel Velikovsky
By any standards, Velikovsky was an unusual man. He learned several European languages while he was still a child. He was educated in Moscow, where he distinguished himself in Russian and Mathematics and graduated with a gold medal.
After graduating he travelled to various countries in Europe, including Palestine. This was before Israel became a nation. When he returned to Russia before the outbreak of the first World War, he enrolled at the University of Moscow where he received a Medical degree at the age of 26.
He then left Russia for Berlin where, with the financial help of his father, he edited and published two volumes of scientific papers in Hebrew. It was while he was in Berlin that he enlisted the aid of Albert Einstein in preparing a volume dealing with Mathematics and Physics.
Shortly after his marriage in 1923, he and his wife moved back to Palestine, where he began a successful practice in psychoanalysis, which he had studied while he was in Vienna. He was also instrumental with Einstein in setting up the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
With the prospect of another World War looming, Velikovsky travelled with his family to New York, where they remained until the end of the war. It was during this period in New York that Velikovsky began his research into the ideas that were to dominate the rest of his life.
While researching early Jewish history, Velikovsky began to wonder if the Egyptian plagues at the time of Moses might have been the result of an astronomical event that affected the entire planet. If so, he reasoned, there should be records of this event in the ancient works of other cultures.
He therefore set about looking to see if similar stories could be found elsewhere. And the more he looked, the more he found. He found them in ancient documents from pre-Columbian America, from China, India, Persia, Babylon, Iceland, Finland, Greece and Rome.
In fact, over the course of the next ten years, he accumulated enough material to fill three complete books, each of which went on to become a best-seller. They were Worlds in Collision (published in 1950), Ages in Chaos (1952) and Earth in Upheaval (1955).
Worlds in Collision summarised the literary accounts of these disasters as recorded by other cultures around the globe. Ages in Chaos dealt with the problems of ancient chronology as a result of these catastrophes, and Earth in Upheaval dealt with the geological evidence for these global catastrophes that can still be found on the earth today.
He was aided in this task by his brilliant analytical ability, his knowledge of science and his talent for languages, which enabled him to delve into records that were not only written in English, but also in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
Historical Evidence
One of the first sources that Velikovsky examined was the Papyrus Ipuwer, an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus dating back to the period 1250BC, that he found in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in the city of Leiden.
In it he found corroborating evidence of the Biblical events described in the book of Exodus. Ipuwer was an Egyptian eyewitness of these events, and his papyrus was a lament devoted to the catastrophe that overtook Egypt at that time. As Velikovsky noted in his book Worlds in Collision, Ipuwer wrote:
“The river is blood”, compared with the book of Exodus: “All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood” (7:20). The author of the papyrus also wrote: “Plague is throughout the land, blood is everywhere”, corresponding with “there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt”. (Exodus 7:21)
While the book of Exodus describes how “the river stank”, and that “all the Egyptians digged around the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river” (Exodus 7:24), the papyrus relates: “Men shrink from tasting; human beings thirst after water”, and “That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is ruin”.
The Ipuwer papyrus goes on to record such things as: “Cattle are left to stray, and there is none to gather them together”. “Trees are destroyed”. “No fruits, no herbs are found”. “Grain has perished on every side”. “That has perished which yesterday was seen. The land is left to its weariness like the cutting of flax”.
And when the book of Exodus records: “And the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt”, the Ipuver papyrus says: “Gates, columns, and walls are consumed by fire. The sky is in confusion”.
Finally, after the tenth plague, when “Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead”. (Exodus 12:30) the Ipuwer papyrus notes: “The towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become a waste”. “All is ruin”.
As Velikovsky suspected, stories of destruction raining down from the skies were not limited to Egypt alone. Similar tales of death and devastation as a result of cosmic catastrophe could be found in the records of other ancient cultures all around the planet.
For example, on the other side of the world, ancient records described how a great cataclysm caused the earth to quake and the waters in the rivers to turn into blood. The devastation caused by this event can be seen in the following excerpts from their sacred books.
“It was ruin and destruction …. the sea was piled up …. it was a great inundation …. people were drowned in a sticky substance raining from the sky …. the face of the earth grew dark and the gloomy rain endured days and nights …. and then there was a great din of fire above their heads.” (Popul-Vuh)
“There descended from the sky a rain of bitumen and of a sticky substance …. the earth was obscured, and it rained day and night. And men ran hither and thither and were as if seized by madness; they tried to climb to the roofs, and the houses crashed down; they tried to climb the trees, and the trees cast them far away; and when they tried to escape in caves and caverns, these were suddenly closed.” (Manuscript Quiche)
Similar accounts of destruction raining from the skies were preserved in the Manuscript Troano of the Maya, as well as the ancient Mexican text of the Annals of Cuautitlan. They describe in vivid detail how a cosmic catastrophe was accompanied by a hail of stones descending from the sky.
They called the agent of this destruction Hurakan, from which our modern word “hurricane” is derived. The Aztecs called the age that ended in a rain of fire from the sky Quiauh-tonatiuh, meaning “the sun of the fire-rain.”
The Kalevala of the Finns told of a time when hailstones of iron fell from the sky, and the sun and the moon were hidden during a period of darkness.
In Babylonia, the Epic of Gilgamesh described a time when the earth was scorched by great heat, and “darkness stretched to heaven; and all that was bright was turned into darkness. Nor could a brother distinguish his brother.”
What Velikovsky discovered as a result of his decade-long period of research, was that what was described by the ancients as “the wrath of God” was actually a historical cosmic event. And this catastrophe had not just happened once, but many times, as recorded by the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Maya and other ancient societies.
Velikovsky confined his research to events that had happened in the past. Although he quoted frequently from the Bible, he displayed no interest in prophecies relating to the future. Had he done so, he might have discovered that what had happened in the past, was predicted to happen again.
And as readers of this Blog will have realised, the events that are now unfolding on the earth suggest that we are living at a climactic period in human history, and that we are the ones who are fated to experience all the horrors of the ending of this age of darkness.
Continued in Part Two
