BIRTH PANG NUMBER 12
CHAPTER 14 – WORMWOOD
Revelation 8:10,11
And the
third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it
were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the
fountains of waters; [11] And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the
third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
In the three preceding verses of our text, John has
viewed the land and sea events fully described in previously issued Birth Pang
Numbers 5, 6, and 7. Now his view is
shifted upward where he observes a great star falling from heaven. The word used for star is “aster.” It can mean any one of three different
things. It can be a fixed star in the
heavens such as the North Star, Polaris – or a “shooting” star, better know as
a meteor – or a comet. Sometimes meteors
and comets are both referred to as “asteroids” by news commentators, just as
they often refer erroneously to tsunami as a “tidal wave.” Since the fixed stars in our universe (except
for the sun) are thousands to millions of light years from our planet and, as
such, eliminate themselves from consideration as candidates for being Wormwood,
this leaves us with only two candidates – a meteor or a comet. In order to select between these two it is
necessary to carefully examine John’s description of the characteristics of
Wormwood.
Using John’s description, the following statements
concerning Wormwood cannot be easily refuted:
(1) It burned like a lamp, and the Hebrew lamp
had a fuel supply that kept it burning.
(2) It fell upon the third part of the earth’s water surface, and yet
John did not so much as mention a quiver in the earth’s crust as it
struck. He mentions earthquakes time
after time throughout the Book of Revelation, but does not mention one
occurring as Wormwood strikes the earth.
(3) Whatever Wormwood is, it dissolves in water, because the water
becomes Wormwood. (4) When it dissolves
in man’s water supply it gives the water a bitter taste, and it causes many who
drink the water to die.
When a “shooting star” is outside the earth’s
atmosphere it is called a meteoroid.
When it enters the earth’s atmosphere it is called a meteor. And, if it is large enough to eventually
strike the earth’s surface, before burning into ashes, the solid portion that
remains is identified as a meteorite.
For simplicity I will refer to all three phases as “shooting stars” to
avoid confusion.
Shooting stars are made of nickel, iron, and/or
stone. Now, let us reason together as to
why Wormwood cannot be a shooting star by comparing it with John’s Revelation
description.
(1)
A shooting star does not burn like a Hebrew lamp. It does not have a continuous fuel
supply. Being a solid it burns out very
quickly in a matter of seconds to minutes.
(2)
If a shooting star large enough to strike one-third of the earth was to
make such a contact, the impact of such a solid object would jar the earth to
its very foundations, but John reports no such shaking in his vision.
(3)
Nickel, iron, and stone do not dissolve in water, but the water is said
to become Wormwood.
(4)
Nickel, iron, and stone do not give water a bitter taste, nor or they
poisonous. During the course of man’s
recorded history, thousands of shooting stars have fallen into local water
sources, and yet there has never been a validated report of poisoning recorded.
One might argue at this
point that God could make a shooting star with a continuous fuel supply, which
melted instead of burned, dissolved in water, made water taste bitter, and was
poisonous to mankind. He doesn’t have to
make one, because he made many heavenly bodies long ago that do all of these
things – we call them comets. The
“aster” of Revelation 8:10 is one of God’s trillions
of comets. Why am I so confident that
Wormwood is a comet? My reasons are as
follows:
(1)
A comet has a continuous fuel supply.
As it approaches the sun its fuel supply begins to be released by
sublimation, and it then moves through the heavens like a great, ever burning
lamp.
(2)
If a comet entered the earth’s atmosphere it would not burn to ashes,
for a comet is composed largely of ice.
It would not burn, but would melt by sublimation, and eventually fall as
liquid, and a super thick cloud, upon one-third of man’s water supply. As the ice melted from a solid into a super
thick glob of vapor and liquid, the trillions of pieces of nickel, iron, and
stone, embedded in the ice, would be released.
The super thick cloud of liquid and vapor would decelerate in his
descent toward the earth, but the released solids, being heavier, would be
subject to greater gravitation pull, and would proceed to the earth in advance
of the cloud, burning in the atmosphere as shooting stars. To an observer on the earth it would appear
that all the stars of heaven were falling to earth in advance of the cloud that
would eventually settle on one-third of man’s water supply. “But in those days
after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give
her light, [25] And the stars of heaven shall fall,
and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.” (Mark 13:24,25)
(3)
As the comet passed through the earth’s atmosphere during its melting
process, it would release methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and a wide range of
cyanogenic poisons, all of which are 100 percent
water soluble and have a bitter taste.
(4)
Methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and cyanogenic
gases are extremely toxic, and many would die of the poisoning effects.
Comets originate from a region between our solar
system and the nearest stars. There are
trillions of comets in this great comet cloud.
There appears to be a virtually endless supply of them, for each year
new comets are discovered and others go out of existence, victims of the
shattering effects of the sun. When
earth passes through the old path of a comet, the small solid particles, which
melted off the outer veneer of its icy surface, are intercepted, and meteor
showers are produced in our atmosphere.
These showers occasionally exhibit as many as a thousand shooting stars
per minute falling through the earth’s atmosphere.
A comet is one of God’s strangest creations. There is nothing quite like it. A comet nucleus is made of solid ice, but it
is actually ice made of gases that solidified in the unbelievable coldness of
outer space. As the ice ball nucleus
approaches the sun, its outer surface begins to pass directly from solid ice to
a gas by sublimation, and we earthlings begin to observe its long, gaseous,
lamp like tail. A Hebrew lamp, because
they did not refine the olive oil, put out a gray trail of smoke when it
burned. Figure 18 illustrates how the comet’s tail always points away from the
sun because of the sun’s solar winds.
The black specks on the surface of the comet in
figure 17 are small pieces of nickel, iron, and stone that become embedded in
the outer layer of ice by contact as the comet makes its long elliptical orbit
around the sun and our solar system.
These pieces of nickel, iron, and stone are released into its tail along
the comet’s path when the sun’s rays begin to melt the comet, as illustrated in
figure 18. Sometimes the gaseous tail of
a comet has been observed to extend out to 150 million miles from its nucleus,
and over this great distance a trail of small, solid pieces of space debris is
laid down in space. Every year, particularly
during the late fall and early winter, the earth passes through several comet
tails of the past, and dramatic shooting star displays are visible in our
atmosphere.
The solid chunk of ice nucleus varies in size, some
being less than 20 miles across, while other icy centers are several thousand
miles in diameter. When the nucleus
comes within the warming rays of the sun it begins to melt, and this produces
the coma and tail shown in figure 19.
The icy nucleus is composed of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and
oxygen gases in a solid icy state. As
the ultraviolet rays of the sun strike this combination of elemental gases,
several compounds are produced. Among
these gases are methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and a whole range of cyanogenic poisons.
When Russian, Italian, and Japanese satellites went in, around, and over
the coma and nucleus of Halley’s Comet in 1986, scientists were shocked by the
very heavy concentrations of cyanogenic gases that
were discovered. The same heavy
concentrations have also been observed in all probes of comets since 1986.
I do not know which of the trillions of comets God
will select to be Wormwood, but I am certain that Wormwood is a comet. When Wormwood enters the earth’s atmosphere
it will not burn, it will melt. And, as
it goes directly from a solid to a gas, it will release into the earth’s atmospheric the aforementioned deadly gases of
figure 19. Figure 20 pictures another
creation of God described in Ecclesiastes 1:7 – “All the rivers run into the
sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.”
This creation of God, known as the Hydrological
Cycle, is the cycle into which the 100 percent water soluble, poisonous gases
of figure 21 will be released. God has
so designed the earth’s atmosphere that the sun’s rays
cause exposed water surfaces to be turned into a rising gas called water
vapor. As the water vapor is set free
from its liquid state by evaporation, it rises and cools at the rate of 1
degree centigrade for every 100 meters it is lifted. Continued lifting produces a visible gas
structure by condensation, which we call a cloud. Further lifting causes the water vapor to
condense on microscopic floating particles in the air and, if they grow heavy
enough, they fall to the earth as precipitation. God’s comet gases will readily mix with God’s
water vapor in God’s hydrological system to fall as God’s deadly precipitation
on one-third of the water supply God made for man. The things of God’s creation will be used to
destroy most of what represents God’s most complex creation – mankind. Once again, I make my continuously
repetitious point: God will destroy most
of mankind with His creation, not with the creations of mankind.