End of the World?
Our Real "Nemesis" According to Bible Prophecy
Does Bible prophecy
predict an "end of the world?" Unfortunately, yes; but not in the way
that most expect or would believe.
Civilization won’t
end by ice age, global warming, nuclear war, overpopulation, killer virus,
supernova, or by any other doomsday scenario accepted by most scientists.
Instead, Bible
prophecy corroborates a fringe theory proposed by only a few acclaimed scientists.
Find out about
Nemesis theory and where Revelation describes something just like it bringing a
series of global cataclysms to earth.
Also why this theory
is not so "laughable" as the similar "Planet X" theory.
By Tim McHyde
The End of the World
As We Know It (“TEOTWAWKI”)
or the breakdown of our civilization or end of our existence is not just some
radical survivalist/prepper concept. The Bible speaks about it, too, in both
the past and future.
There was of course
Noah's flood when only eight souls escaped a global deluge to reboot the world
with a new climate and new diet. Jesus spoke of the end of the world or age in
his Olivet Discourse when God will step in to prevent the extermination of all
life:
“3 And as he sat
upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell
us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the
end of the world?
... 22 Unless those days were limited, no one would survive. But those days
will be limited because of the elect.” Matthew 24:3, 22 (HCSB)
The book of
Revelation has specifics about the end of the world that Jesus spoke of. While
it can be pretty scary reading, there is a silver lining to
studying it.
With the global
cataclysms topic so well covered by the Bible, you can safely assume that if a
scenario is not mentioned there, then it is because it is
simply not in the cards.
I'm referring to the
many doomsday theories you
will encounter on the Internet from both reputable scientists and conspiracy
theorist nuts alike.
The Bible was in the
doomsday forecasting business long before any of them came around and you could
say it has a corner on the market with its accurate record.
Ways
the World Could End – According To Scientists and the Bible
Reputable scientists
see many ways that our fragile existence could potentially end, and not just by
a nuclear war or the sun burning out billions of years from now.
Let's look at a few
of the scientific doomsday scenarios proposed by scientists which the Bible
also seems to talk about. We'll disregard the scenarios that the Bible says
nothing about (like, for example, wandering black holes) under the assumption
that only the ones the Bible talks about are going to happen.
Global Warming/Ice
Age
Everyone is familiar
with global warming hysteria
today, but did you know that back in the '70s scientists were worried about the
opposite: a possible ice age?
I remember being
fascinated by the theory when I read about it in Science Digest as
a boy. You cannot blame the scientists as we were in a troubling cooling trend
then, just as now a warming trend is troubling scientists.
And once again,
cataclysmic climate change is considered a possibility. Thankfully, the Bible does
not corroborate either doomsday theory (except that there is an extreme
cooling event coming at the 4th trumpet when the sun is
blocked as we will cover below).
Super
Virus/Pandemic/Bio-Terrorism
Viruses, bacterium
and other pathogens have proven their potential to devastate humanity. The
Black Death plague reduced the world population by 100 million in the 14th
century (including one in four Europeans). The 1918 Spanish Flu virus epidemic
killed up to an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
As depicted in the
1995 movie Outbreak, the Ebola virus has a 50% mortality rate. Genetically
engineered bio-weapons could arise that make that look like a case of the
sniffles.
Although in the Bible Jesus
(Luke 21:11) and the 4th
seal/horseman of the Apocalypse do mention pestilence or plagues,
their impact is limited to at most one fourth of humanity (Revelation 6:8), and that number
may be spread out over a long period of time that started in recent centuries.
Plainly, plagues in
the Bible do not come close to bringing TEOTWAWKI.
Solar Flare/Coronal
Mass Ejection
As dramatized in the
2009 Nicholas Cage movie Knowing, if one of the sun's solar flares
(ejections of plasma) made a direct hit on the earth, the effect would be
devastating. It could collapse the power grid while exposing us to intense
radiation, if not fry us immediately.
The largest solar
flare recorded (the Carrington Event of 1859) electrified telegraph lines to
the point that technicians were shocked and fires started.
The Bible seems
to be referring to such a thing when it talks about the sun getting seven times
hotter and burning men with heat and fire during the 4th bowl (Revelation 16:8). This is part of
the controlled wrath of God before Jesus takes over to reign for 1000 years of
peace called the Millennium.
Obviously, humanity
will survive the short-lived super heating from the sun that God has in store
for us.
Near Earth Object
(NEO)/Comet Impact
Between the evidence
that an asteroid could have
killed off the dinosaurs and the dramatic impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into
Jupiter back in 1994, scientists have woken up to the potential of a comet or
asteroid hitting the earth.
Consequently,
programs have been started to search the skies for potential threats of all
sizes, not just ELE (extinction level event) rocks of 1 kilometer or greater.
The Bible is
plain about earth receiving not just one impact, but a series including
multiple impacts from meteorites on land at the 1st trumpet (Revelation 8:7) and a
mountain-sized asteroid or comet hitting the ocean at the 2nd trumpet (Revelation 8:8) with a major
global earthquake preceding (not following) them at the 6th
seal (Revelation 6:13).
Which
Bible-Confirmed Cataclysm is Next?
Scary, right? It's
disturbing how many scientifically accepted cataclysm scenarios seem to be
predicted by the Bible. So how do all these cataclysms interrelate? How do we
sort through them and make sense of them all? What's next?
To sort them out you
just have to arrange them on the 21 point timeline of seven seals, seven
trumpets, and seven bowls that Revelation provides.
The bowls of God's
wrath happen at the end, after the Great Tribulation and after the Rapture, so they and their 4th
bowl sevenfold hot sun are not a concern for faithful believers. With
the seals, my research concluded that they are mostly past including
"death" from war, famine, beasts and plagues that affect one quarter
of the earth starting at the 4th seal.
The four horsemen
spirits of the apocalypse are already riding and bringing the negative effects
described as can be seen throughout history
1:
deceptive religions in Christ's name,
2:
ideologies taking peace from the earth,
3:
an economic stranglehold on the masses by the rich, and
4:
the increased deaths, respectively).
The 5th seal is
unique among the 21 in being constrained to heaven (martyrs' souls under the
altar waking up to ask how much longer until they are avenged and being told to
go back to rest a little longer).
The 6th seal is
where the cosmic disturbances start with two eclipses and a great global
earthquake. They continue with impacts at the 1st and 2nd trumpet,
and conclude at the 4th trumpet with the “nuclear winter”
which deep impacts would bring (from all the dust thrown into the atmosphere).
I found this
sequence confounding. Why does an earthquake happen before impacts do? How do
you have a lunar and solar eclipse together? What is the cause and explanation
of it all?
For the first four
seals and all the bowls, the explanation was readily apparent. God was directly
sending angels to pour out the seven bowls on earth to judge and repay the
wicked. The four horsemen are said to be spirits (no doubt evil ones sent by
Satan) as they are not called God's angels as the bowl spirits and many other
messengers and spirits appearing in Revelation are constantly identified as.
What was the cause
of the 6th seal through 4th trumpet cosmic disturbances and catastrophes? A
single comet or asteroid did not seem to explain it all. Especially when
considering the cryptic 3rd trumpet that mentions a star named Wormwood as
being blamed for making one third of the fresh waters bitter for drinking but
not through direct contact or collision. (A wayward star would destroy us long
before it could ever collide with earth.)
I was stumped.
But not for long,
as, soon enough, like your friends probably do, a friend of
mine forwarded me a new doomsday theory he wanted my opinion of.
Idea
1: Nibiru/Planet X Cataclysm Theory
From that email I
learned about a popular fringe doomsday theory not endorsed by
respected scientists.
The Nibiru
cataclysm theory supposes that an outer planet will hit or pass close
by earth and bring disasters. Nibiru is the name of 12th planet described in
Sumerian clay tablets which supposedly visits earth every 3600 years to bring
cataclysms.
As time has gone on,
it has been attached by conspiracy theorists (like Nancy Lieder) to many other
real or hypothetical objects such as Planet X, or the name given in the 19th
century to the hypothetical undiscovered planet that was believed to be
perturbing the orbits of the outer planets.
Similarly, over time
it has been attached to multiple doomsday dates. The first I heard
of was May, 2003 which was due to come less than a year after I first learned
about it. As you could probably guess, December 21, 2012 was the next date attached to it, due to the
Mayan Calendar doomsday theory for that date.
Despite how hard it
is to take seriously a theory centered around a doomsday date, I found the
theory intriguing. What if this “Planet X” orbiting our sun was really a dim
and hard to detect red or brown dwarf star? This would fulfill the
star mention of the 3rd trumpet. Then if that star had enough
objects in tow orbiting and accompanying it, perhaps they could reach into our
inner solar system where their star could not possibly go without creating
total havoc due to its immense gravity.
While I did not believe
the Nibiru cataclysm theory in its details or its date, considering it allowed
me to finally accept the 3rd trumpet Wormwood star as literal
along with all the cosmic events surrounding it. I could see Wormwood as the
cause behind the entire 6th seal through 4th trumpet cataclysm series, despite
it only being seen or blamed for something towards the end of that series.
From there over the
next couple years, the entire book of Revelation began to open up and come
together for me in a very thrilling way. This research became my book Know the Future, which was and is
very well received by readers ... if they can get past the story
recounted above how a “laughable” fringe doomsday theory was instrumental in my
breakthroughs.
Some readers
unfortunately miss that the book is not at all endorsing Planet X, a theory
eviscerated by real astronomers. Instead, the book endorses Wormwood prophecy.
The problem with
this first explanation for Wormwood was in understanding how such an outer
planet like star could ever successfully bring trouble to earth. Its orbit
would never bring it close to earth, but somehow it would have to bring
something smaller close to us. I was unclear on exactly how this part would
work.
Idea
2: The Nemesis Theory by Prof. Robert A Muller
In the latest (2012)
edition of my book, I include a better explanation for Wormwood which
addresses that problem. I only became aware of it years after I first heard of
the Planet X/Nibiru theory.
Unlike the Nibiru
cataclysm theory that is universally derided by respected scientists, the
Nemesis theory is supported by several highly respected scientists today. Yet
despite this, you probably have never heard about it. It does not typically
appear in “ten ways the earth could be destroyed”-type articles and TV
programs.
There simply is not
enough evidence to prove it—or disprove it, at least not yet. But for Bible
readers, the Bible's talk of a “death star” called Wormwood appearing in the
future and blamed for trouble on earth may be all the proof they need to accept
this scientific theory.
The Nemesis
theory was put forth by physicist Richard A Muller in 1984 as a way to
explain the regular periods of mass extinctions seen in the fossil record. (See
this fascinating History Channel episode of The Universe about Nemesis: The Sun's Evil Twin for a great overview.)
Briefly, if our sun
is like most stars, it is part of a binary solar system,
meaning it has a twin star companion orbiting it far in the distance. A dim red
or brown dwarf star that far out and traveling with our solar system
would be hard to find and understandably not detected by current search
parameters and thresholds.
When this star
passes through the Oort cloud where comets are kept in “cold storage,” it would
disturb their orbits. Some comets would head into our inner solar system.
Put another way, Nemesis'
passage through the Oort cloud would turn the inner solar system into a
shooting gallery. If one of the comets were to approach and pass or glance by
earth, it could explain all the effects described by Revelation from the 6th
seal through the 4th trumpet.
Note, this
is not to equate Wormwood with Nemesis or to endorse all the points of
the theory as correct or reliable, such as the concept that Nemesis has come
before "millions" of years ago.
The Bible says
nothing about Wormwood coming before, nor does it easily support the idea of
earth being millions of years old. Instead, the point of considering
Nemesis theory is to explain why the Wormwood star is mentioned with the other
trumpet cataclysms and potentially cause them.
How exactly this
will play out with Wormwood, Revelation does not say. Perhaps a comet sent by
Wormwood breaks up near the earth or passing Jupiter, the way and is able to
thereby cause the eclipses, earthquakes and impacts described.
One thing is for
sure, a typical comet is not enough to explain everything Revelation describes
since a star is specifically named as involved.
Thankfully, while
Bible prophecy predicts that we will one day see another star nearby like
Nemesis (and name it Wormwood, for bitterness because it will cause
devastating cataclysms on earth), life is prophesied to continue here. That
said, the aftermath will certainly qualify as “the end of the world as we know
it” that many fear one day will happen.
Conclusion
(Doomsday When?)
When will Wormwood
do all this and should we be watching for it? As Jesus said about the interconnected
end time events, no man knows the day or hour.
We cannot calculate
the arrival of Wormwood effects by any means (especially considering the star
itself never approaches or comes near earth, but rather other unknown objects
that it passes will). Thus, disregard any dates you hear of as all doomsday
dates imagined by man have failed.
Also forget about
scientists seeing it and warning us. All indications from the description in
the 6th seal (when Wormwood's effects begin) are that the population will be
blindsided by it.
Instead of going
into prepared bunkers, shelters or “arks” (as depicted in the 2012 movie),
people are seen panicking and running to the caves in the mountains (apparently
to avoid being hit by a falling meteorite or drowned by the tsunamis that the
sea impacts will cause).
If someone reports
that they have pictures of Planet X, Nibiru, Nemesis or the latest comet
claimed to be on a collision course with earth (like Comet Elenin was), you can
safely ignore them.
While Jesus did in
fact mention the same cataclysms of Wormwood that Revelation describes (Luke 21:11, Revelation 6:12, 14, 8:7), He never told us
to rely on watching for a wayward star first.
Instead, he promised
that, just as John the Baptist came to fulfill Malachi's prophecy of Elijah (which even
the Scribes expected to happen), likewise Elijah would come again to “restore all things” before the “great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5-6).
Since not everyone
reads or understands the Bible, and the Bible does not tell us exactly when
the “beginning of sorrows” will commence anyway OR exactly
where God plans to gather and protect us on earth from it, a prophet must be
sent to clue everyone in and lead the way.
Even if we did have
all that information, most of us do not have the finances, resources or freedom
to move or prepare as needed to save ourselves from such severe global
catastrophes. Our only hope is to stay close to God so we do not miss it when
God sends someone to show us the way and and so we have everything we need to
escape in that way, just as Jesus said:
“But be alert at all
times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these
things that are going to take place and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:36 (HCSB)
Related Posts:
Who are the four horsemen of the
apocalypse?
http://puricarefiles.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-four-horsemen-of-apocalypse-what-is.html
What Does Wormwood Mean When Used
In Revelation?
What Does Wormwood Mean When Used
In Revelation?
http://puricarefiles.blogspot.com/2016/05/wormwood-can-refer-to-bitterness.html
10th
Planet Xena 2003UB313: Planet X
Wormwood Redeemed?
10th
Planet Xena 2003UB313: Planet X Wormwood Redeemed?
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Tim McHyde is the founder
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