At first glance, the title of this column might seem to be a mistake. It is not.
(NOTE: This column is a bit long, even by Kovach standards. And, it gets a bit scary toward the end, even by Kovach standards.)
Having spent six months writing a book on Bible prophecy, and having hinged much of what I wrote upon this year's Feast of Trumpets, it might seem that I would be justifiably disappointed that "nothing happened" during the two-day feast that began when the New Moon rose on the evening of the 29th of September. Since mid-June of this year, I've been saying that a significant earthquake is likely in the area of Northern California that I have dubbed the Quake Crescent. At the center of that area is a large idol of an owl at a place called the Bohemian Grove. The owl is one of the representations of Lillith, a demon that has been described in the literature of several Middle Eastern cultures for most of recorded history. (Another representation is a nude, long-haired woman — very much like the one on the Starbuck's Coffee logo. Coincidence? I think not.) The earthquake that shook the Sacramento area on 05 August was, in my opinion, only the foreshock of the quake that I believe will topple the idol of the owl. The owl idol itself. the Bohemian Grove itself, this summer's California Supreme Court decision, and the Starbuck's Coffee company are all associated with the promotion of homosexuality. I believe that is the reason that God will punish Northern California with an earthquake that damages both the idol and the capital of Sacramento. But, that quake did not occur on the 29th of September.
So, is all of my research worthless? Au, contraire.
Kiskil-lilla: depicted in a Mesopotamian terra-cotta known as the Burney Relief.
Believed by some scholars to be same as Lillith.
Note resemblance to Starbuck's logo, including the similar-shaped adornments on the heads of the two women. Also note her bird-like feet, and the owls on either side of her.
(image source: Wikipedia)
Those months of research proved to me (as if I didn't already know) that the Holy Bible is a document filled with precision. The language is precise. The numbers are precise. The mathematical formulas are precise. The mentions and descriptions of other "gods" and demons are precise. (Starbuck's claims that its logo represents a Siren — a mythical Greek temptress that lured sailors into crushing rock formations. Lillith is sometimes described as "the maiden who screeches constantly". Coincidence? Again, I think not.) Sometimes we do not have enough understanding and insight to appreciate the precision. And, sometimes that insight is withheld from us until God's timing has been fulfilled.
Let's talk about God's timing.
Much of my recent book, Tribulation: 2008, hinged upon the formula given in 2nd Peter 3:8, "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." When no earthquake happened on the Feast of Trumpets, nor did "hail and fire ... mingled with blood" fall from the skies, I was admittedly perplexed. (*My writings make clear that I believe the scenario in Revelation 8:7 involves a comet.) Did I get the whole thing wrong? Did I mess up the calculations based upon the formula? (That is possible, given the difference between the 360-day Hebrew calendar and the 365-day Gregorian calendar. But, that difference is covered in the book. So, was it something else?) Was my work destined to "fall upon the ash heap of history", only to be trampled upon by scoffers?
Or, did I simply miss a detail somewhere?
If so, where was that detail? Was it part of the formula itself? Was there another formula in another part of the Bible? Was it a different application of the same formula? When I wrote the book, I tried to pick apart every detail — trying to "sit in the seat of the scoffer", and thus "attack" my work from the outside — in an effort to ensure the highest degree of accuracy. I only published the book when, as the saying goes, "There was no doubt in my military mind."
And, then it hit me. The detail that I had left out was a military detail.
Usually, when a command is given via trumpet on the battlefield, there is a built-in amount of lag time before the signaled movement actually begins. How much lag time? And, knowing that there is a decompression of time from Heaven to Earth, how could we calculate it? Is there an example to follow in the Bible?
Yes.
In the Book of Daniel, there is a point at which Daniel prays for wisdom and knowledge from God. Eventually, the angel Gabriel, who explains that he was detained by a battle with the Prince of Persia, visits Daniel. God had heard Daniel's prayer, but the answer took 21 days to arrive. (Given that the spiritual battle took place on Earth, we know that the angel is describing 21 days on Earth, and not 21 days in Heaven's time.) So, by the explanation given to Daniel, we know that there can be a lag time between the moment that God utters a word and the time that the word is accomplished (although, the very fact that the delay is explained in that instance indicates that such delays are rare). Now that we know that such a lag can exist, can we calculate whether such a lag exists in this case?
Yes.
We know from scientific studies conducted regarding car crashes that it takes approximately one second for the human brain to perceive a dangerous situation in the traffic ahead of a driver. It takes another second for the driver's foot to be applied to the brake pedal. At normal in-town driving speeds, it takes another second for the car to stop. That is three seconds from the time the danger occurs at the first car until the second car stops. But, that application is based upon the driver seeing the danger at the speed of light. A trumpet blows at the speed of sound. (To my knowledge, there is no direct example in the Bible of how fast sound travels in Heaven as compared to Earth.)
Let's use a battlefield example. A commander gives a command, and the bugler is standing near the commander. Knowing that the commander is about to say something, the bugler already has the bugle to his lips. (Revelation 8:6 says that the seven angels with the seven trumpets "prepared to blow".) Even with that preparation, the bugler must process the command in his mind, think of the corresponding melody, and then begin to play it on the bugle. The sound must then travel to its intended audience, and then the soldiers on the battlefield must process what they heard, begin to respond individually, and then mold their individual responses into a group response. That is six separate steps. But, the angel is a spiritual being, so the mental processing in his mind is instantaneous (the angel's mind is not filtered through a body of flesh). That would approximate a five-second lag time. That, in turn, seems appropriate to the battlefield analogy.
So, how long is a second in Heaven?
In the book, I showed that a half-hour in Heaven equals 20.8 years on Earth. That was determined by dividing the "thousand years is one day" by the "silence in Heaven for about half an hour" found in Revelation 8:1. There are 48 half-hours in one day. One thousand divided by 48 equals 20.8 years. So, what about the seconds?
There are 1,800 seconds in a half-hour. So, 20.8 years times 360 days on the Hebrew calendar equals 7,488 Earth-days in a half-hour in Heaven. (There are 7,592 Earth-days, if you multiply by the 365 days on the Gregorian calendar. But, the reader will soon see that this difference is virtually insignificant to the final calculation.) So, if we divide the number of days by the number of seconds in a half-hour, we discover that one second in Heaven equals 4.16 Earth-days by the Hebrew calendar or 4.21 days by the Gregorian calendar. For those that love math (I don't), that difference equals 1.2 Earth-hours out of a span of approximately 21 Earth-years. As I wrote earlier, the difference is virtually insignificant.
So, now that we know how long a second in Heaven lasts on Earth, what do we do with that knowledge?
In the battlefield analogy above, we saw that there was approximately five seconds of lag time from the time the bugler blew the signal until things changed on the battlefield. If we apply that same concept to the blowing of the first trumpet of Revelation, then we see that the lag time on Earth is notable, because of the decompression of time from Heaven to Earth. Five seconds of lag time in Heaven, times 4.185 days (thus, splitting the difference between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, just to eliminate arguments), equals 20.925 days of lag time on Earth from the time the trumpet starts to blow until a result happens on Earth.
So, is there anything that we can anticipate on Earth that happens 21 days after the Feast of Trumpets? And, does such an event correspond to anything that I wrote in the book? And, does that event correspond closely enough with Bible language to — hopefully — remove doubts from the minds of scoffers?
Oh, yes!!
Revelation 8:7 says, "The first angel sounded, and hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth." (emphasis added) The language does seem to imply a built-in lag time. And, my book contains a detailed explanation of why I believe that the "hail and fire ... mingled with blood" accurately describes the disintegration of a comet as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere, as opposed to other possibilities. Now, do we have any evidence of even the possibility of a comet coming near the Earth during a time that matches the lag time described above?
According to this NASA Web page, the Comet Boattini (official NEO designation: P/2008 T3) will pass near Earth's orbit ... on the 22nd of October!
Various objects — comets, asteroids, wayward satellites, and other "space junk" — sometimes fall toward Earth. These are tracked by NASA, and are categorized as "Near Earth Objects" (NEOs). One recent NEO was discovered only 19 hours before it struck Earth's atmosphere over Sudan. The asteroid (about the size of a car) burned up in the atmosphere on Tuesday, 07 October, providing a light show over eastern Africa. (The atmospheric burn was very fast, thus producing an explosion approximately one-seventh the force of the atomic bomb dropped upon Hiroshima.) Notably, it marked the first time that scientists were able to accurately predict the trajectory of an inbound asteroid. According to SpaceWeather.com, as of this writing, scientists know of 990 potentially hazardous NEOs.
There are some unique aspects to the Comet Boattini impact scenario. First is the "hail and fire ... mingled with blood", which potentially matches the scenario of a comet disintegration. Second is the timing. (While scientists are happy to have predicted an asteroid strike 19 hours before impact, the Holy Bible predicts such an event more than 19 centuries before impact. For the math lover, it means that the Bible is almost 17 million times more accurate than NASA scientists!) Not only is the timing consistent with the "lag time" presented above, and the lag time properly follows the Feast of Trumpets, but the timing also coincides with an event planned by scientists on Earth.
Now, this is where it gets scary.
Almost six weeks ago, I questioned whether a planned experiment of the Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that draws in a NEO to impact Earth. It turned out that the 10 September experiment was a "dress rehearsal", and not the full-blown atomic particle collision that could produce an unpredictable result. Since that time, two things have changed. One is that CERN, the parent organization of the LHC, has now completed the worldwide super-computer network that is required to keep up with the enormous volume of data that is expected to be produced by the experiment. On the 21st of October, CERN will hold an "inauguration" ceremony for the Large Hadron Collider. The stated purpose of the LHC is to produce conditions — at the atomic particle level — that will replicate the conditions "just before the Big Bang" when the universe was created.
The Holy Bible tells us, in English, that, in the beginning, "the earth was without form, and void". In Greek, the quoted phrase is only one word: chaos. Thus, untold billions of dollars from the economies of more than two dozen countries are literally being poured into a black hole with the goal of producing chaos!
My fear is that they will succeed.
God is not mocked. If the leading nations of the world get together to seek chaos, then perhaps God will give it to them. Perhaps the comet will impact the LHC facility. Perhaps those scientists will get a momentary opportunity to witness the "God spark" that they seek. And then, they will regret their choice. But, in the process, will the rest of the planet be "impacted" by their decision?
Comet Boattini is expected to miss Earth by 75 LD. (One LD is a "lunar distance" — the distance from the Earth to the Moon. That distance is recognized as 384,401 kilometers.) So, the comet is expected to miss Earth by more than 28-million kilometers (slightly less than 18-million miles.) By astronomic standards, that is considered somewhat "near" the Earth.
NASA orbital analysis of Comet Boattini near-strike course
(image source: Jet Propulsion Laborator NEO tracking project)
The very next day, 23 October, an asteroid is expected to pass within only 3.6 LD of Earth's orbit. Asteroid TT-26 (an "Apollo-class" NEO) is estimated at 70 meters in diameter. In summary, an asteroid 25 times larger than Comet Boattini will pass 15 times closer than the comet on the very next day. Have you read about this in any headline anywhere?
The LHC ceremony on 21 October is not expected to include any live experiment. But, notably, it is three days prior to the annual United Nations Day. (Three days is a very Biblical waiting period.) In summary, LHC ceremony on the 21st, Comet Boattini on the 22nd, Asteroid TT-26 on the 23rd, and United Nations Day on the 24th. All of this, by the way, will occur beneath the Crescent Moon — the symbol of Islam.
By the way, a retired geologist has a theory about earthquake prediciton. He claims that his is the most accurate scientific method currently available. He bases his predictions upon the effects that tides have upon the water in underground rock formations. If the Moon can have an effect upon all the waters of Earth, then could other space objects — especially if they are moving at a much higher speed — also have a gravitational effect upon the waters of Earth? And, could two such objects in a row — coming in from different directions — exert enough effect to trigger an earthquake?
The timing of this group of events matches — once the "lag time" is included — the events predicted in my book. More importantly, it matches the predictions made in the most important Book of all time. My hope is that, by showing the alarming truths that are unfolding literally right before us, many people will awaken to the truths of the Holy Bible. And, having done so, that those people will recognize Jesus the Christ as the only true salvation, having been sent by God the Father to save sinful mankind from the end result of those unfolding events.
