Updated 2-21-03
As NASA continues its probe into the precise cause of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, government researchers are confirming the recording of explosions as the orbiter broke apart during its fatal descent.
According to a report in the Toledo Blade, some scientists believe the recordings could shed light on the theory that an electrical phenomenon called a "blue jet" knocked the shuttle out of the sky....
MJA: The lightning called elves has also been proposed as breaching the leading-edge shield on the left wing, causing the breakup of Columbia from heat entering the wing. If I understand it correctly, the elves lightning is an oval at the base of the red sprites or blue jets.
Lightning dazzles and amazes as it lights a night sky. Related displays of atmospheric electricity -- 'red sprites' and 'blue jets' -- inspire awe too. But less is known about these natural illuminations, which occur at high altitudes, where the thin atmosphere makes them ghostly and special instrumentation is sometimes needed to view them....
Blue jets are cone-shaped, dim blue lights that begin near the cloud tops at around 15 kilometers altitude, then extend upward to around 45 km like a quick puff of smoke.
...Little is known about this region of Earth’s atmosphere and, in fact, the Israeli science experiment aboard Columbia was designed to study electrical phenomena at high altitudes and scored a space first by capturing an image of one of the so-called “elves.”...
Doug Kohl worked for more than 10 years at the Kennedy Space Center as a test conductor, pad leader and part of the handpicked team that prepared Columbia for its first post-Challenger-era flight in 1989.
“I still think that the RCC saw something such as a large static discharge that damaged it and the surrounding thermal protection system tiles, and that the problem progressed from there,” Kohl said....
The large amount of "evidence" you put on your web site about the Pope and pagan connections is interesting but not vital to individual Catholics believing in Jesus, just as your deductions about the actual day of the rapture is interesting but not vital to individuals believing in Jesus. Were any of this vital to salvation, God would have provided it clearly. What is vital has been given, as in John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Note it does not say, "but if you are Catholic and the Pope is the anti-christ, all bets are off."
It is out of our hands if God has determined the Pope will be an anti-christ. We don't determine what he wears on his body/head or what he carries nor are we individually tainted because the Pope may screw up. Each of us is responsible for what is in our heart and that includes the Pope. If you knew your church minister was to be an anti-christ, I doubt you would dump your faith/church affiliation nor could you do anything to prevent the inevitable.
I don't think we should shut down Catholic hospitals/schools/food banks for the needy/other good works because a Pope may be predestined to fill the job description of an anti-christ. Being an anti-christ is a dirty job but someone has to do it and God will choose whomever He wants.
Changing the subject, I think there will be a real reason for the UN to move to Iraq. If we go to war, some entity will have to put that country back together, including regulating their vast oil fields every country needs. The UN is the obvious choice. They choose Babylon, which is about sixty miles from Baghdad, use Saddam's palace near Babylon for a temporary headquarters, and begin a building program for their permanent headquarters putting thousands of Iraq's people back to work. The stage is set, Babylon becomes an economic hub of the world dispensing oil, the life blood of every world country, including us.
I had given much thought as to how Babylon could ever become a place for the one world government and an economic center for the world. I think I know, now.
Love from one of your Catholic friends
Your idea about Babylon seems right in tune with world conditions. What is going on now will lead to the final towers being built there. The base of the Tower of Babel is still there, and the final Mystery Religion of Babylon will be "set there upon her own base" (Zech. 5:11).
When "all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication (joining), and the kings of the earth have committed fornication (joined) with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies," the end will come. But before she is destroyed in one hour, "another voice from heaven" will say, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" (Rev. 18:3,4).
Another voice, another Rapture, just before the "stone like a great millstone" (Rev. 18:21) will fall on Babylon. There is hope, even in the Tribulation. When that stone impacts Earth, no one will be here but unbelievers. The believers will get out by the skin of their teeth. No wonder the Lord will wipe away their tears. Love, Marilyn
I sure appreciate your reports. You help us keep abreast of the events taking place in Israel. Thanks much for taking the time to go photograph the temple mount walls for us too.
In your file on Passover, you said, > > Yeshua died on the Feast of Pessah, was buried on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and rose on the Feast of First Fruits. Fifty days later the Holy Spirit was sent on the next Holiday in line Shavuot (Pentecost). This was what is referred to as the first advent. The first three Holiday’s follow each other, in the first three days, (Pessah, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits) and we celebrate them all within an 8 day celebration, and we just call it Passover (Pessah)....
I agree with you that these three spring feasts follow each other on three consecutive days. In 30 AD, they were on Friday (Nisan 14), Saturday (Nisan 15), and Sunday (Nisan 16). Josephus agrees. He said, "on the second day of unleavened bread, which is the sixteenth day of the month, they first partake of the fruits of the earth, for before that day they do not touch them" (Ant. III. X. 5).
I agree with you that Pentecost was 50 days after Firstfruits. Also, that the celebration lasted eight days, Passover plus the 7 days of Unleavened Bread.
However, I think the Crucifixion and burial were on Thursday, Nisan 13, the Preparation of the Passover. I'm using the Hebaic-Roots Version New Testament. Yochanan (John) 19:30-33 says, "after he had taken that sour wine, Yeshua said, Behold, it is finished. And he bowed his head and GAVE UP HIS SPIRIT. And the Judeans, because IT WAS THE DAY OF PREPARATION, were saying, These bodies should not remain overnight on their gallows because the sabbath is drawing on, for the day of that sabbath was a HIGH DAY" (Passover).
Yeshua died at 3 PM, when the priests started killing the sacrificial lambs. "For our Pesach is the Messiah, who was slain instead of us" (I Cor. 5:7).
Look at Luke 23:43-46,50-54. At about noon, "Yeshua said to him (the thief that was saved), Truly I say to you today that with me you will be in pardes (Paradise). Now about six hours had gone (about noon), and darkness was upon all the earth until the ninth hour (3 PM, 'the time of prayer,' Acts 3:1). And the sun was dark and the veil of the Temple was rent from its middle. And Yeshua cried out with a great voice and said, My Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. He said this and died....And one man, whose name was Yosef, a counselor from Ramatayim, a city of Y'hudah, was a good and just man ('he also was a talmid of Yeshua,' Mattityahu 27:57)....This [man] drew near to Pilate and asked for the body of Yeshua. And he took it down and wrapped it in a shroud of linen cloth and placed it in a hewn sepulcher in which no man yet had been placed. And IT WAS THE DAY OF PREPARATION." The day of Preparation for the Passover High Sabbath was Thursday, Nisan 13. Both the Crucifixion and burial took place that day before 6 PM, when the Passover feast began.
Instead of Paradise, the Old Syriac has "Garden of Eden." That's interesting.
> > In a house there is much preparations for the Seder, the house is cleaned from top to bottom, there is no bread or leaven left in the house anywhere. After the first week of Nisan, for focus is very directed towards Pessah. After sundown on the fourteenth day of Nisan, a special ceremony called bedikat khameytz (the search of the leaven) takes place in the home. The last tiny bits of leaven are found and removed from the house, taken outside and burned.
> > This is interesting because the house had been previously cleaned, so the leader of the house had to hide some small bits here and there in the house to be found. Then the leader takes a feather and a wooden spoon and a lighted candle. And the family begins searching for the final leaven....
> > There are many spiritual lessons for Believers here. The leaven (sin) must be cleaned from our house (our hearts). In so doing we must use the light of the candle (the Word of God) Illumines our sin (Psalm 119:11). The most beautiful of all, the wooden spoon that holds the leaven, (the Wooden Cross that holds all of our sins and carries them away).
That is beautiful. Thanks for teaching me what the wooden spoon stood for. I should have seen that, but didn't.
Mattityahu 12:40 says, "as Yonah was three days and three nights in the fish's belly, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Those were Thursday (day, from 3 to 6 PM), Friday (night then day), Saturday (night then day), and Sunday (night, from 6 PM Saturday to sometime before dawn on the first day of the week, Sunday).
Luke 24:20,21 says, "the Chief Cohenim and elders delivered him to the judgment of death, and they crucified him. But we had hoped that he was to deliver Yisrael, and behold, it is three days since all these things happened." Those three days were Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the days of the three feasts, Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits. Shalom and agape
VATICAN CITY: Pope John Paul II and UN chief Kofi Annan stressed the need to keep the UN at the forefront of efforts to stave off a US-led military assault on Iraq in talks here late on Tuesday....
Mr Annan also met the pope's senior foreign policy advisor Cardinal Angelo Sodano and had an opportunity to speak directly to papal troubleshooter Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Saturday....
The Holy See has repeatedly warned that a war against Baghdad could be interpreted by extremists as a war between the West and Islam, which would be a severe setback of John Paul II's policy of reaching out to all religions.
In certain circumstances, nothing could be done to avoid such a collision and ensuing destruction, and it would be best not to tell the public anything, said Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California....
I have read where some say it was 21 yrs, but I can not arrive at the same conclusion they do, even when "following" their explanation.
Now perhaps I'm being stubborn.
What is your take on this?
Below is what I've posed to one person, will not burden you with the response (unless you want me to) - suffice it to say, could not make it work out. Thx and blessings
Here goes, I must have missed something in reading Gen. In Gen 31:38, 41, both state clearly that Jacob worked for Laban only 20 yrs. Gen 31:38 reads 20; Gen 31:41 elaborates and reads first 20, then breaks down the 20 to:14 and then 6. I'm sure I should sit up, something is going over my head. It may be that the 14 plus the full 6 leads to the beginning of 21 or something like that.
Regardless, how does one account for the clear statements abt him working 20 yrs.
PS Reread Jer 50 and 51. Every verse in those two chapters seems to apply now: I guess the Hajj was just symbolic of who the enemy of Israel would be in the latter days. The big wipe-out could still occur within a month. The war protests could help make Saddam's evil plan look more plausible.
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=260
Jer. 50 and 51 concern "the day of trouble" (51:2),"the time of the LORD'S vengeance" (51:6), "the wrath of the LORD" (51:13). The Day of God's Wrath is the first day of the Millennium and the last day of the shortened Tribulation.
The verse I saw a rectangle of light on when I was writing about the 3 Babylons (Nimrod's, Nebuchadnezzar's, and the False Prophet's) is Jer. 50:2. It says, "Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel (the Baal of Babylon, i.e., Satan) is confounded, Merodach (a Babylonian idol) is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces."
Jer. 50:22-25,35 says, "How is the HAMMER (the incoming binary asteroid) of the whole earth cut asunder (gada, cut in sunder; separated, the mountain-sized piece will hit the Mediterranean Sea [Zeph. 2:4,5]; the 'aster' will hit Babylon [Rev. 8:8,10]) and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations! I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD. The LORD hath opened HIS ARMOURY, and hath brought forth the WEAPONS OF HIS INDIGNATION (zaam, froth at the mouth fury): for this is the work of the Lord GOD of hosts (Christ, Isa. 44:6) in the land of the Chaldeans (Iraq)....A sword (the Sword of the Lord) is upon the Chaldeans, saith the LORD, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men."
Isa. 34:5,6 says, "MY SWORD SHALL BE BATHED IN HEAVEN: behold, IT SHALL COME DOWN upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The SWORD OF THE LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea."
Jer 12:12 says, "The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness: for the SWORD OF THE LORD shall devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh shall have peace." Agape
To Marilyn Agee - Per your question of what day of the week is Nisan 14, 32 AD?
You can actually do the calculation yourself to figure out to a reasonable degree of certainty what day of the week Nisan 14 fell on in 32 AD: This of course assumes the length of the day, moon cycle, or solar year has not changed to where the error introduced by them over a period of 2000 years would be greater than 1 day. From what we know of the rate of decay of these times at least now, barring a catastropic cause like a meteor we don't know about, this is a fair assumption.
Since the Gregorian Calendar is built into commonly used spreadsheets lets just use this as I'll explain later.
The Gregorian Calendar assumes a year composed of 365.2425 days. The actual solar year is 365.242199. The error introduced by this over a period of 1971 years (from 2003 back to 32 AD) is: (365.2425 - 365.242199)*2000 = 0.602 days which is less than a day. So we are actually going back 0.602 days too far which means you can add 0.602 of a day if desired. But for now we are just dealing with whole days.
If one comes up with a consecutive number count for a date which is what spreadsheets use, it is a simple matter to divide that number count by 7 (days per week) and then look at the remainder to determine the day of the week for that date.
In like manner it is a simple matter to divide that same number by 29.530588 (days per moon cycle) and then look at the remainder to determine the day of the Jewish month for that date.
One first "calibrates" the two calculations above to give the right results for a known date's day of the week and day of the Jewish month. This is done by adding a number in each case to the day count before it is divided which results in the known day of the week and the known day of the Jewish month.
One trick is that because spreadsheet dates don't go down below 1900 AD, just add 2000 years to each date on the spreadsheet and then subtract 2000 years in your head.
Use the =mod(date,divisor) function if you are using Excel to get the remainder of a date. Through trial and error I've found for Excel that 10.5 works for the Jewish calculated calendar and 8.5 for the Jewish observed (actual) calendar.
I've also modified the Generations Spreadsheet which John graciously posted in November 2001:
http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/nov2001/tedp115.htm
Note - there was a slight error in the Excel spreadsheet and discussion posted in November 2001 which I didn't notice till now. Every time the number 365.252199 appears it should have been 365.242199. However since the spreadsheet was based on the built in Excel Gregorian calendar it did not affect the generation to generation calculation.
And hopefully John can also post the modified version of the spreadsheet. This includes a section on Nisan14 and on Generations calculation. In retrospect 6998 days lines up with significant dates if used as the length of a generation which is why this date is shown. Also note that this length intersects April 13, 32 AD and the approximate actual (not calculated) Nisan 13, in 32 AD which if you add the 0.602 days could be considered Nisan 14 (actual) in 32 AD, which would be a Wednesday. So Wednesday would be approximately the day of the week that the actual Nisan 14 was in 32 AD based on doing the calculations ourselves. If one extrapolates back the current calculated Jewish calendar which I've read would not apply as it was not used back before the 6th century, then Nisan 14 would be two days earlier. I have seen other sources that try to make a case that the calculated calendar was used before the 6th century because David knew that the new moon would be the next day (I Samuel 20:5). However if the new moon is more correctly translated crescent as others believe, then a sliver of a moon one night would let David know that the "new moon" would be the next day. I realize this is a subject of debate so that is why I'm mentioning it.
Also, as a caveat, if there were cloudy days, which one has no way of knowing, Nisan 1 could be delayed conceivably up to a couple of days which means Nisan 14 could have been either on Thursday or Friday. I don't know if it was cloudy or not. Which means that we haven't proved conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Nisan 14, 32 AD was on a Wednesday. That is just what the calculation comes out at. And it needs to be recognized there could have been circumstances that could have delayed it to Thursday or Friday. Shalom! Ted Porter
P.S. Could 6998 days be the length of a Generation? I didn't have time to do this question justice but will try to cover it in another post.
> > Jewish calendar which I've read would not apply as it was not used back before the 6th century
Here is what George Zinberg said on page 42 in his book, "Jewish Calendar Mystery Dispelled."
"The Rules that guided the Sanhedrin, the governing group of Jewish Elders of Judea, in their computation of the Jewish festivals were kept a jealously guarded secret in order to continue the dependence of the scattered communities upon Judea and thus preserve their ties to the homeland. The days appointed for the Jewish festivals, as computed by the Sanhedrin in accordance with the secret Rules, were communicated to the distant communities by special messengers. In the middle of the 4th century, however, persecutions rendered such communications impossible. Patriarch Hillel II then published the secret Rules to enable the distant communities to make their own computation of the calendar and to determine for themselves the days of the Jewish festivals, without depending upon the Sanhedrin."
I assume that the Secret Rules had been in use for quite some time before Hillel II published them in the middle of the 4th century. Agape
My question to you is this; You state the following from a recent reply to an email and elsewhere on your site:
"On the Day of God's Wrath, a binary asteroid will break up and hit Earth (Rev. 8:8,10). A mountain-sized piece will hit the Mediterranean Sea in the northeast. With the resulting impact blast and tsunami, it will destroy Gaza, where God's land has been taken away from Israel and given to the Palestinians."
If a piece the size of a mountain hit the Mediterranean Sea...wouldn't the resulting impact blast and mega-tsunami destroy everything within a good sized radius? Not just Gaza? Israel can fit in the size of Lake Michigan. And considering a Mega-Tsunami would/could produce a wave 3mi high...it'd wash out the whole surrounding Mediterranean seaboard.
Thoughts? Thanks for such a great web site, and any reply you can provide!
I didn't mean that only Gaza would be hit with a tsunami. That's a small part of the Day of Destruction. The whole globe will be turned upside down. Isa 24:1 says, "Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it UPSIDE DOWN, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof." Can you imagine the oceans and lakes out of control during that time? All but 1/6th of Gog's army will be destroyed on the mountains of Israel (Eze. 39:2). It will take the remnant of Israel 7 months to bury the dead (Eze. 39:12,13) to cleanse the land for the return of Christ.
Hab 3:10-13 says, "The mountains saw thee, they were in travail: Torrents of waters passed by; The deep uttered its voice, Lifted up its hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation, At the light of thine arrows which shot forth, --At the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through the land in indignation, Thou didst thresh the nations in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, For the salvation of thine anointed; Thou didst smite off the head from the house of the wicked." The dead will lay around the world. Isa 10:19 says, "And the remainder of the trees (men) of his forest shall be few: yea, a child might write them. Agape
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Updated 2-21-03