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Monday, April 23, 2012

Why Nuclear Weapons Are Not God's Weapons of Wrath

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys took images of the disintegration of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3's fragment B. Click to EnlargeCredit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (APL/JHU), M. Mutchler and Z. Levay (STScI)  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/Comet_73P.html






            While the Bible makes reference to the Weapons of God’s Wrath (Isaiah 13:5 NIV), few Bible scholars have addressed exactly what God’s weapons are.  Yet dozens of books and scores of pastors have spoken about the part nuclear weapons will play during the end times.  Does God need man’s modern inventions to accomplish His will during the end times?  Based on the description of the disastrous events prophesied in Revelation, the weapons of God’s wrath must be able to:

    • Cause the stars or host of heaven to fall to the earth, and reign fire and brimstone upon the land (Matthew 24:29, Isaiah 34:4 and Revelation 6:13, 8:7-10, 9:1-2, 15-19; also see Genesis 19:24).
    • Cause an event where a third part of men are killed by fire, smoke and brimstone (Revelation 9:17-20).
    • Cause an earthquake large enough to make the cities of the nations fall to the ground (Revelation 16:19).
    • Cause planet earth to reel to and fro like a drunkard in space (Isaiah 24:18-21).
    • Put up enough dust and debris in the sky to blacken a third part of the sun, a third part of the moon, and a third part of the stars (Revelation 8:12, 6:12).
    • Cause a tsunami with waves over a mile in height that destroys one-third of the ships at sea (Revelation 8:9).
    • Poison the waters in lakes and rivers (Revelation 8:10-11).
    • Bombard the earth with 100 pound hailstones (Revelation 16:21, 11:19; also see Joshua 10:11, Exodus 9:18-25 and Ezekiel 38:22).
    • Cause every mountain and island of the earth to disappear (Revelation 16:20).
    • Cause the atmosphere to roll back (Revelation 6:14 and Isaiah34:4).
    • Scorch men with heat and even consume eyes and tongues (Revelation 16:9 and Zechariah 14:12).
    • Cause grievous sores (Revelation 16:2).
    • Engulf planet earth in fire so that the elements melt with fervent heat (II Peter 3:12-13 ).



            Nuclear weapons are not powerful enough to cause this type of global destruction.  Even if all the nuclear bombs of the world were stacked together and simultaneously detonated, they couldn’t produce events of this magnitude.  No fault triggered earthquakes of any magnitude or volcano eruptions could cause these levels of destruction.  On the other hand, cosmic impacts, by comets or asteroids are powerful enough.  The impact of a several mile wide comet can release many thousands of times more energy than nuclear bombs.  (Depending on where they hit [air, land or sea] comet impacts can have different types of catastrophic effects.)  For example, in Time-Life’s Comets, Asteroids, and Meteorites their scientific consultants calculated what would happen if a six-mile wide meteorite (comet) crashed into the earth.  They said “the energy of the impact – equivalent to the explosion of five billion atom bombs – would transform cool blue earth into a flaming crucible.”

            The impact of an approximate 18-mile wide comet produced the 312-mile in diameter Wilkes Land Crater in Antarctica 250 million years ago.  The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, the crater associated with the impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  It seems that the Wilkes Land impactor penetrated the earth’s crust with such force it caused a sudden outflow of molten material from the interior of the Earth through the opposite side of the Earth which produced the Siberian Traps.  The Siberian Traps are a very large region of volcanic rock (basalt) thousands of feet in thickness that cover an area about the size of the lower 48 United States.  A comet of this size penetrating the Earth’s crust and exploding in the already hot interior of the Earth could produce enough heat to melt the Earth’s crust and cause every mountain and island to disappear.

            Since only comets can produce the catastrophic events of the magnitude called for in the Bible, what does the Bible say about comets being God’s weapons of wrath?  Few people are aware that comets are referred to in the Bible as “stars” and as the “host of heaven.”  During ancient times the word “star” was a generic term that meant any luminous body in the heavens.   A “star” could be a hairy star (a comet), a shooting star (a meteorite), a wandering star (a planet), the sun, the moon, or a hot gaseous body.  So in scripture when we read about stars falling like figs, it is referring to meteorites or comets.

            The words “host” or “host of heaven” in the Bible can refer to the objects of heaven such as the sun, the moon, and the stars which includes comets.  This definition of “the host of heaven” is in Deuteronomy 4:19 which says, “And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.” The culture Abraham came out of mainly worshipped the host of heaven, a pantheon of sky gods led by the “queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25).  These sky gods were mainly comets.  Deuteronomy 17:3 warns about serving other gods “either the sun or moon, or any of the host of heaven (‘stars of the sky’ NIV); and II Kings 23:3 tells about “those who burned incense to the Sun, and to the Moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.”  (Also see Acts 7:42.)

            According to ancient Near Eastern usage, when the Bible refers to the God of the Bible as the Lord of Hosts” in a passage that pertains to the objects of heaven, it is in effect referring to the God of the Bible as the “Lord of Comets.  Again and again, the God of the Bible represents Himself as being the one who is in charge of the heavens, including comets, which are part of the “host of heaven.”  Recognizing that the definition of the words “host” and “star” can refer to “comets” is the key to recognizing that comets are “the weapons of God’s wrath.”

            God says in Isaiah 45:12 says: “I have made the Earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens and all their host have I commanded.”   From this verse the God of the Bible, the “King of Heaven (Daniel 4:37) specifically says that it is He who created comets and He alone who commands the host of comets (Isaiah 40:26, 13:3-5, Daniel 4:35, Psalm 103:20-21, 104:4, and 148:8).  Since comets can be referred to in the Bible as “snow” or “ice” or “hail” and comets can be surrounded by basketball sized hailstones, these words are also important to recognizing scriptures about God’s use of comets as weapons.  Job 38:22-23 (NIV) asks “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?”   In other words, God says that he has set aside comets in storehouses until the times that they are needed.  This is scientifically consistent with the Hills Cloud and the Oort Cloud, vast reservoirs of comets that begin at the edge of the solar system and contain trillions of comets. In Daniel 4:35 the comets in these storehouses are referred to as God’s “army of heaven.”  

So what else does the Bible says about comets?

·         God calls them His weapons of wrath, His mighty ones, His messengers and His ministers of wind and flaming fire (Isaiah 13:3, Isaiah 13:5 NIV and Psalm 104:4 NAS).

·         God calls the comets by name (Isaiah 40:26).

·         God commands the comets (Job 37:12 and Isaiah 45:12).

·         Comets respond in accordance to the physical laws and ordinances of heaven and Earth set by God (Job 38:33, Jeremiah 31:35, 33:25).

·         Some comets were prepared for a specific destination, at a specific time (Revelation 9:15).

The following scriptures are just a few that speak of God’s distinct connection to the heavens:

Concerning who created the heavens: Nehemiah 9:6 says “Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven (the solar system), the heaven of heavens (the Oort Cloud, a spherical reservoir of comets at the end of the solar system), with all their host (in this case comets).” 

Isaiah 40:25-26 asks: “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.  Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number (‘starry host one by one’- NIV, comets): he calleth them (the comets) all by names by the greatness of his might for that he is strong in power; not one (comet) faileth (‘fails to appear’ in Tanakh).”                                                                                 

Concerning God’s control over comets: Isaiah 13:3-7, speaks of God’s control of the comets to come during the end times, says:  “I have commanded my sanctified ones (comets), I have also called my mighty ones (warriors’ NAS - comets) for mine anger . . . the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle (army of comets).  They came from a far country (place), from the end of heaven (the Oort Cloud, the spherical reservoir of comets at the end of the solar system), even the Lord and the weapons of his indignation (wrath in NIV - comets) to destroy the whole land.  Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.  Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt.”

Comets are called by name: Isaiah 40:25 says that the God of the Bible calls the “host” or comets “all by names.”  Indeed, the name of a comet is given in the Bible.  Revelation 9:11 says that the name of the “star” that falls to Earth opening a bottomless or very deep pit, is Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek.  In both Hebrew and Greek this name appropriately means “destroyer.”                         

            The author is by no means the first scientist to recognize that the God of the Bible uses comets as His weapons.  A growing number of astronomers and geoscientists have written about the connection between cometary impacts and the catastrophes recorded and prophesied in the Bible.  It is interesting that the father of modern physics, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), whose theory of gravitation permitted the calculation of the movement of the objects of heaven, also believed that comets represented one of the ways that God expressed His wrath.

            In the book The Prophet and the Astronomer, Physics and Astronomy Professor Marcelo Gleiser of Dartmouth wrote that Newton believed God used comets as His tools or instruments; what the Bible calls “instruments of indignation” or “weapons of wrath” (Isaiah 13:5 NAS or NIV).  Professor Gleiser wrote, “In Newton’s scheme of the world, history was punctuated by catastrophes promoted by collisions with comets through the agency of God, in what might be called a causal theology.”  Dr. Gleiser also noted that, “In his (Sir Isaac Newton’s) view, the scientist’s search for a quantitative description of natural phenomena was part of a grander quest, that of deciphering God’s plan, or mind: the scientist was a decoder of God’s writing.”

            So we have looked at how the scriptures identify comets as God’s weapons of wrath.  Added support for this thesis comes from the study of the phenomenal catastrophes of the Old Testament.  These events can now be explained to be a consequence of comet activity.  There is now physical evidence for events such as the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the destruction of the Tower of Babel being caused by comets.  For example, recently discovered impact craters such as Burckle Crater and the Amarah Crater are linked to the Flood and the destruction of the Tower.  Astronomers and geophysicists are now theorizing what could happen if the earth took a very large impact. Eerily their descriptions match the level of destruction the Bible calls for in the end times. 

          When we know what we are looking for, we can see that the Bible contains a “textbook” of scientifically accurate information about comets, including details of their origins, composition, behavior, and impact effects.  How did the writer of the Bible come to ‘know’ so much about comets, the great ice balls of space, before modern science?  For example, in the fall of 2010 NASA was taken by surprise when they discovered that Comet Hartley 2 was surrounded by a huge cloud of basketball sized hailstones.  Yet Revelation 16:21 refers to basketball sized hailstones, hailstones that weigh upwards of 100 pounds when it says “And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent (70-100 pounds).”



This article is also posted on my blog at the Christian Post, The Comets of God Blog. To make or read comments go to http://blogs.christianpost.com/comets-of-god/why-nuclear-weapons-are-not-gods-weapons-of-wrath-9494/

You can learn more about comets on my book’s website:  www.thecometsofgod.com.