The Sign of the Son of Man
Tuesday, 28 October 2008, at 0943 hours
Central Time -- Nashville, Tennessee, USA
One would think that people would "get it" by now. Alas, apparently, they do not.
We have officially entered The Tribulation -- the seven-year period, predicted in the Holy Bible, that immediately precedes the return of Jesus the Christ. (Many thanks to Mel Gibson for injecting "the" into the popular lexicon, via his blockbuster movie, The Passion of the Christ. The word "Christ" is a title; it is not His last name.)
In my recent book, Tribulation: 2008, I primarily used examples that are beyond human control to prove the Bible predictions. One would think that aligning the Sun, Moon, and stars to do things that are rare, if unprecedented, would be proof of God's unique activity. One would think that specific patterns of earthquakes in areas with prophetic significance (such as the Milwaukee Deep, which is explained in my book) would be enough to awaken the populace from its daze. One would think that my previous column, "God does not slumber", proving that celestial events occurred exactly on schedule according to the combination of a Biblical timetable and military tactical experience would prove that God is in action to bring about the final salvation of the human race. One would think that high-tech space telescopes discovering a silhouetted Cross in the zone called "the center of the universe" would be realized as proof of Jesus' prediction that the "Sign of the Son of Man" would appear in the heavens. It seems that NASA has provided us a foretaste of this event via the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA photo of a Cross in the center of the universe
Jesus said, "The lamp of the body is the eye..." (Matthew 6:22) and an American sculptor named Hiram Powers said, "The eye is the window of the soul...." The first photo above shows what appears to be a reflection in the pupil of an eye; it is really the center of a nebula formation thousands of light-years away from Earth. Some have called that nebula the Eye of God, for obvious reasons. Note that the center of the eye is also the central point of what appears to be a silhouette of the Crucifixion of Jesus. Further, the image is from an unusual perspective — a ground-up view, from the left side of Jesus (as He would've seen it from the Cross). Knowing that the right side of Jesus was pierced by a Roman spear, and knowing that the soldier doing the piercing was under a centurion, and knowing that the right side of a military formation is the place of honor, it seems that the view of Jesus in the middle of the God's Eye nebula is the view that the centurion would've had at the moment that he uttered, "Truly, this man was the Son of God." (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39) Thus, mankind's realization that Jesus is truly the Son of God — and, thus, the true Savior of all mankind — is not only the central event of the universe, but also the central point of the universe.
For those scoffers that say this explanation is quite a stretch, consider the other two photos. The middle photo is a small wooden Crucifix, decorated in the ancient iconographic style of the Orthodox Church. Icons of the Crucifixion almost always show Jesus' body in the twists of an agonizing death. Orthodox icons of this event also normally show the inscription ("Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" — often abbreviated "INRI", from the Latin "Iesus Nazarenum, Rex Iudaem") that was posted above Jesus' head, and the footboard. Note that the outline of the sign is visible in the nebula's silhouette, and the footboard is implied by the angle of His legs.
The bottom photo shows a three-dimensional perspective, as the centurion would've seen while supervising the execution, and clearly shows the torturous effects of gravity upon Jesus' body. (Sadly, another person present at Golgotha, and thus witness to the painful events, was His mother, Mary. The "empty space" at the center of the Eye of God nebula could also, thus, be her perspective. She could not have been far from the Cross, because Jesus spoke to her just before His last breath.)
Hopefully, the reader is convinced that "the Sign of the Son of Man" is in place in the heavens, just as Jesus predicted it would be. Because the pages of Tribulation: 2008 were printed in black-and-white, it was not possible to go into this much detail in the book. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the reader can expect to see this Sign in the sky without the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope!
"Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near." (Luke 21:28)
