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/
