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Just FYI: The Bible Says the Apocalypse Might be Happening This Month

Sep 14, 2017

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The Sign, a documentary directed, shot and produced past Josh Turnbow and Robert Dvoran and prepare to air Thursday, addresses whether the end of days is coming this month, equally some biblical literalists predict.

The "sign" in the championship refers to an alignment in the heaven peaking on Sept. 23, whereby Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will be around the constellations of Virgo and Leo, together with the sun and moon. Sept. 23 is when Jupiter leaves Virgo after being in that location for a while.

Co-ordinate to Revelation 12, some say, this is when the cease comes, later much turmoil and destruction:

"A slap-up sign appeared in sky: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was significant and cried out in hurting as she was about to requite birth. Then some other sign appeared in sky: an enormous red dragon with vii heads and x horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a tertiary of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was most to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who "will dominion all the nations with an iron scepter." And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

According to the biblical literalists interviewed in The Sign, airing Sept. fourteen at eight p.grand. ET/PT, the "son" leaving the nativity canal is Jupiter leaving Virgo. The red dragon is associated past some literalists with Planet 10, a planet (wrongly) conjectured to orbit the sun nearly xc times more afar than Earth, which, the literalists say, comes every so often to create havoc.

To brand a long story short, many biblical literalists affirm with utmost conviction in the documentary that Sept. 23 is it — the day the finish comes as prophesied in Revelation. A preview of the film tin can exist watched here:

Fortunately, the documentary doesn't simply present this version of the story. Michael Shermer, author and editor of Skeptic magazine is there, too, to brand sense of the nonsense. And then are Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, and Konstantin Batygin, an assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech. Together, they explain the scientific arguments against such fears, including the fact that there is no Planet 10. Any such planet, given its elongated orbit and big mass, would take caused major instabilities in the solar organisation, including ejecting the Earth from its identify around the sun. Given that Globe has been orbiting the dominicus for iv.5 billion years, its orbit is pretty stable so far. There is no such planet.

Watching the documentary, what I find most striking is the strength of the literalists' conviction. What will they say on Sept. 23 when the globe remains where it is? Surely, as Shermer mentions, Trump may do something, or North korea. But isn't it e'er the instance that there will exist turmoil somewhere in the world — and this turmoil may exist interpreted as a sign from a biblical prophesy? Hasn't this happened over and over, prophecy of the end later on prophecy being debunked by the boring continuity of life as nosotros know information technology?

Believers disagree. They argue that information technology all revolves around Israel and the mounting tensions in the region — and that this is it. State of israel'south existence, a chronology of dates from its foundation to wars, everything, they say, points to the veracity of the one-time prophecies. One of them in detail, Michael Rood, has returned to Israel to watch the end unfold. Rood looks like a benevolent rabbi, a biblical patriarch. He is convinced that come up Sept. 23 something volition happen to the sun, signifying the dragon of the prophecy, although not necessarily Planet 10. He is convinced that God will transport the sign, and it need non be consequent with science. In his world, at that place are two coexisting parallel realities, a natural and a supernatural 1. Come the cease, they will disharmonism in decisive means.

I watched the documentary in a country of awe. The primal question here is what makes people believe in such literal readings in 2017?

In my book The Prophet and the Astronomer: Apocalyptic Science and the Terminate of the Earth, I explored why apocalyptic ideas frequently depend on some celestial effect and how such ideas have percolated from organized religion to science. The skies do brandish unusual alignments and phenomena that have been observed for millennia. Since for believers the skies are frequently the realm of the gods, the jump from seeing something strange upward in that location to attributing it to some sort of divine message is not a huge ane. Indeed, in cultures across the globe we observe eclipses, comets, and meteor showers being associated with evil portents. If the skies human activity crazy, the gods tin't exist happy. If the gods aren't happy, nosotros will pay for it especially — if you are a Christian — the sinners.

The fearfulness from the skies comes from the sensation of our essential fragility equally nosotros face nature's crawly powers. The current hurricane season is an obvious example of this, as is the recent solar eclipse. St. John makes good use of the blackened sun in his Revelation, knowing well that the image conjured terror in his readers. If God controls the heavens and He makes the sun disappear for a few minutes, couldn't He just as hands get in go night forever?

Shermer, Krupp, and Batygin practise their best to dispel whatsoever potential danger. Krupp goes as far as chiding the literalists for scaring otherwise prissy, skillful people with such fantastic tales. The documentary explores the potential for an all-out nuclear war starting with Iran bombing Israel or North Korea doing something equally outrageous. Of course, no i tin can predict what rogue states with nuclear weapons volition do. It is meaningful that I am writing these lines on 9-11, a date forever tinged with blood in the U.South. Withal, even if something awful does happen on Sept. 23, an act of state of war or of terror, it will be hard to know what came outset, the act or the conventionalities that an act on this date would conjure terror on large sectors of the population.

The strength of The Sign is to expose and then openly the extent to which literalists will go to justify their behavior, some using very complex numerology and coincidences as clues. The film ends with someone (I doubtable Rood) asking: "Could this be the yr? This could be the yr."

Unfortunately, any year could be the year. If annihilation, it'south really up to usa to collectively make a difference in what nosotros encounter around us, from social injustice to disease and famine. To instill fearfulness equally an amanuensis of change hasn't worked for millennia — and it won't work now.

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Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer — and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the manager of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Appointment at Dartmouth, co-founder of 13.7 and an active promoter of scientific discipline to the general public. His latest volume is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher'due south Quest for Trout and the Significant of Everything. You lot can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser

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Source: https://www.kqed.org/pop/96146/just-fyi-the-bible-says-the-apocalypse-might-be-happening-this-month

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