Astrology

Interestingly enough there are about 10,000 people who work fulltime in astrology in the United States and 200,000 working part time (from the book “Psychic Forces” by John Weldon and Clifford Wilson). The Babylonians took astrology seriously in 3000 B.C. The ancients believed that the power of the constellations affected the lives of humans. Early Greek Zodiacs had thirteen signs including the Pleiades.

Contemporary astrology uses twelve constellations, which are known as the Zodiac. They are Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, Leo the Lion, Virgo the Virgin, Libra the Balance, Scorpio the Scorpion, Sagittarius the Archer, Capricorn the Goat, Aquarius the Water Bearer and Pisces the Fish.

There are two major schools in astrology. “Siderial” astrology deals with the constellation in which the sun is located at the moment of birth and “Tropical” astrology handles a thirty degree slice of the zodiac or a sector. The latter “Tropical” sector astrology was developed for convenience because, “constellations such as Virgo, which bulges beyond the confines of that allotted 30 degrees, and Libra, which occupies only half the allotted area, created a situation in which mythical figures were hanging over everywhere, and so someone had to ‘draw the line’ Some constellations are barely within the traditional 16-degree-wide-band of the zodiac, while the Man-Killing-a-Snake-or Dragon” is on the zodiac, but not used” (Quoting the book “Flim-Flam” by James Randi, Chapter 4 “Into the Air, Junior Birdmen”).

Some of the principal arguments arguing against the validity of astrology include the following:

1. Within the profession of astrology “Siderial” and “Tropical” astrology are at odds with one another.
2. There are two hundred and fifty billion stars in our own galaxy and over one hundred billion galaxies twirling about in space. Therefore the are 25,000,000,000,000,0000,0000,0000 stars in space which could mold a person’s personality, affect his or her likes and dislikes, and predetermine his or her personality, direction in life … That’s what astrology would have you believe!
3. Because of their distance in light years we are seeing the light of some stars which no longer exist. They may have imploded or exploded thousands if not millions of years ago. Is it fair to say one of these stars determine one’s personality at birth?
4. Pursuant to astrology each person is influenced by a wide array of signs, but primarily by one’s birth sign and one’s ascendant, the sign that was rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. There are also one’s moon sign, career sign, and various house sings. In other words a human being is an amalgam of all the signs of the zodiac!
5. Different astrological magazines show totally different horoscopes for the same sign on the same day. There is no consistency in the field of astrology.
6. Why should the sign at the moment at birth prevail? Why shouldn’t the sign at the moment of conception?
7. It would seem that the physician’s body as he assists at childbirth exerts a greater gravitational influence on a baby being born than the entire gravitational field of the planet Mars (James Randi op.cit.).
8. Astronomers tell us the constellations have shifted from where they were 2,000 years ago. Each sign in relation to the earth has moved thirty degrees to the west. Instead of being an Aquarian you may find you are a Capricorn!

The Bible warns us in Deuteronomy 4:29, “Beware, lest you lift your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” In Deuteronomy 17:2-3 doing “evil in the sight of the Lord your God” is identified as worshiping other gods “or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host.”

Worshiping the sun or the moon is the same as making oneself dependent on them and turning to them for direction and guidance, after all if you believe in astrology you also believe that the heavenly bodies direct your life.

This author knows of an Eastern guru who has his followers, for a hefty fee, obtain astrological charts from his resident astrologers. If the astrological charts are not favorable, you can pay additional money to the guru for a “karmic adjustment.” The guru has done very well for himself and has found no shortage of devotees willing to part with their money.

The bottom line with astrology is that it fails to stand reasoned analysis. Why create needless worries and apprehension from a belief system that fails to meet the test of common sense? Why create false expectations?

As this website clearly proves there is an Intelligent Designer outside time and space. Why put yourself in bondage to an aspect of the Creation when one can worship the Creator of the Universe? Why honor the pot when one can honor the potter? Why give glory to the software when one can honor its Designer?

Astrology, Nostradamus, and the Bible ~ Predictions of Michel de Nostredame, Bible Prophecy & Astrological Predictions

“So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting witches and mediums? Don’t listen to their whisperings and mutterings. Can the living find out the future from the dead? Why not ask your God?” (Isaiah 8:19).

Nostradamus was an occult prophet who lived from 1503 to 1566. Michel de Nostredame (or Notredame) was born in St. Remy, France to a family of Jews who became Catholics. Although it is reported in several prominent publications he took a medical degree at the University of Montpelier, Peter Lemesurier in his excellent book “The Unknown Nostradamus” documents that while Nostradamus applied for entrance at the University of Montepelier in 1529, Guillaume Rondelet, the student registrar, denied him enrolment in the student body for being a “quack.” There is absolutely no record of his re-admission.

Having been denied admission he set to wander the highways and byways of Europe as a apothecary in search of medical knowledge. When the plague struck Aix en Provence in 1546 the local doctors undoubtedly fled in panic. The celebrated Toulouse doctor Augier Ferrier, a Montpellier alumnus, counseled his fellow doctors, “Get out fast, stay well away, come back late.”

According to Lemsurier, “And since the only reputable doctor who could be relied upon to stay and fight the pestilence was still engaged in Marseille, and either couldn’t or wouldn’t come, the only thing left to do was to invite his second-in-command. If the organ-grinder refused to perform, there was nothing for it but to settle for the monkey.”

Aix in June 1546 hired “Micheou de Nostredame” to fight the plague. Nostradamus concocted some rose-pills for repelling the plague. He later admitted that none of his methods worked and that even his rose-pills were only a prophylactic. His wife and son tragically died of the plague.

The prophet Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes, “That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done, so there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). As with most of human history the 15th and first part of the 16th century were rife with climatic, economic, political and religious events. Europe’s “Little Ice Age,” was in full swing in the 1520’s and crops were devastated, the plague ravaged towns and cities, the rulers of Europe were continually waging war with one another, Soleiman the Magnificent with his superbly trained Janissary armies were sweeping into southeast Europe from Ottoman Turkey up to the very gates of Vienna.

Darkly viewing the future, the public developed an unsatiable appetite for books on prophecies. One of the most successful was the “Mirabilis liber” of 1522 which was undoubtedly read by and inspired Nostradamus and which in many ways is a paraphrase of Biblical prophecy (John’s Book of Revelation: the two prophets confronting AntiChrist, Ezekiel 38-39:Gog of the land of Magog and Gog’s allies attack Israel, Joel 2: the perfectly trained northern army): Here is a sample quote:

“In the very midst of this calm there shall suddenly emerge from the north with Gog and Magog, a nation that shall make the whole world tremble. Horrified, all men shall hide themselves in the mountains and among the rocks in order to flee their presence. They are not of the race of Japheth. The plague of the North, they shall devour human flesh and snakes, women and little children.”

By contrast the Bible in Ezekiel 38: 2-9(NASB), which is possibly a an Armageddon or pre-Armageddon end time scenario (some speculate seven or even three and a half years prior to the Battle of Armageddon) reads:

“Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, ‘Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am againt you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. And I will turn you about, and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; Persia, Ethiopia, and Put with them, and all of them with shield and helmet; Gomer with all its troops; Beth-togarmah from the remote parts of the north with all its troops – many peoples with you. Be prepared, and prepare yourself, you and all your companies that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. After many days you will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them. And you will go up, you will come like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your troops, and many peoples with you.’”

The prophet Ezekiel is prophesying an invasion of Israel, whose people had been scattered to the nations and regathered in the “latter days”. The confederation is headed by Gog who comes from the “remotest parts of the north” (Ezekiel 39:2). Many of the countries named are recognizable. In brief God divinely intervenes through a great earthquake, pestilence, torrential rain, fire, brimstone and by sowing internal discord in the ranks of the invaders. The invading army is annihilated (Ezekiel 3-6, NASB):

“And I shall strike your bow from your left hand, and dash down your arrows from your right hand. You shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your troops, and the peoples who are with you; I shall give you as food to every kind of predatory bird and beast of the field. You will fall on the open field; for it is I who have spoken, declares the Lord God. And I shall send fire upon Magog and those who inhabit the coastlands in safety (possibly a worldwide nuclear exchange); and they will know that I am the Lord.”

Ezekiel 39:14-15 informs us men will be appointed to pass through the land for seven months to search the land and put markers by the bones. Special buriers, perhaps a radioactive “decontamination team”, will then bury the dead in the valley of Hamon-gog.

Undoubtedly Nostradamus, being of Jewish heritage, was familiar with the prophecies of the Old Testament. Because people were willing to pay good money to know the future, especially to know next year’s weather, two or three dozen almanacs were being published each year in Europe, many of them Biblically based.

Nostradamus entered into this lucrative profession and published his first almanac.

For Nostradamus, the approach in prophesying was:

Forty years after Nostradamus published his first “Almanac” his faithful latter-day secretary, Chavigny, was unable to identify any prophecy as having been specifically fulfilled. He offered the lame excuse, “he really meant some other year.” In 1553 Nostradamus published two “Almanachs” which were significantly different (perhaps like reading your horoscope for the same day in two different astrological magazines). It was not uncommon for Nostradamus to recycle some of his prophecies in later publications.

It is interesting to note that in Old Testament times a prophet of God was one who was one hundred percent correct. The penalty for not being 100% right was stoning. In New Testament times prophecy is a “gift of the spirit.” The true spirit of prophecy is inspired and quickened by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. God, being outside the time dimension (See the discussion of “Time is a physical property with a beginning” on this website in Section 9 “Creation vs. Evolution” under the “Cosmological Argument For God’s Existence” subsection), does not lie and sees the beginning and end of human history from an extra dimensional perspective.

Only true prophets of God, who are given supernatural insights into the future by God Himself, are infallible. In light of this absolute standard, Nostradamus’s prophesies are presumption (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Nostradamus based his predictions on astrology and admitted consulting the planetary charts. Planetary charts are written in the belief that heaveny bodies influence human affairs, a wild improbability per the previous analysis of astrology. Therefore Nostradamus’s works are individual speculation (intuitive forecasting) and being astrologically based also occultic. Nostradamus was engaged in speculation, charlatanism (see below), and occultism.

The speculation rests on the irrational assumption that similar events in human history will reoccur in the future, as far as hundreds of years from now, when the same planetary alignment (the planets would again be in the same signs) reoccurs. Something very similar to Hannibal’s invasion of Spain and Mediterranean coastal Europe would reoccur, per Nostradamus, when the same planetary alignment was again in evidence in the future.

All Nostradamus had to do is look up the positions of the planets at the time of the former historical events and then use a readily available published book of planetary tables, such as the “Alphonsine Tables” of Jean de Murs available to the public since the fourteenth century or the ninth century “De Magnis Coniunctibus”, frequently quoted by him, and then with the aid of planetary tables determine when similar patterns would happen again in the future. More often however Nostradamus simply stated what the planetary positions had been and let the reader figure out the future timings (of the reoccurring events) because these situations involved significant positions of harder to chart inner planets.

No great divinatory skills were needed for this. The “Astronomicum Caesareum” came with a set of “disc-type paper computers” to make the job easier for putative astrologers. We often picture Nostradamus as wearing a conical hat adorned with new moons staring in the late night into the swirling mists of a crystal ball. But this does not appear to be the case. Professional astrologers in his day assailed his obvious astrological incompetence.

The reality was that Nostradamus was not much of an astrologer. Nearly every one of the horoscopes he cast for wealthy individuals contained per Peter Lemesurier (op.cit.) one significant error and “about half would contain whole rafts of them”. Because of this Nostradamus expected his clients to have their astrological charts already drawn by expert astrologers prior to seeing him. One may wonder why anyone bothered to see Nostradamus in the first place! Maybe this is similar to getting a “second opinion” after having seen your own doctor, just in case. The problem here is your own doctor is more skilled than the “second opinion”.

Regardless, Nostradamus had hit upon the winning formula of projecting into the future past events. If events reoccur then you can have a plethora of prophecies, recycled historical events: comets, famines, plagues, locusts, persecution of the Church, fires, court intrigue, wars, victories, defeats, treason, naval battles, monsters appearing, earthquakes, rapes, Popes fleeing, rapes, serpents rising out of North Africa etc… In one year he generated over 300 prophecies! Nostradamus became to prophecy what Henry Ford was to the automobile. He published three “Almanachs” in 1557 and another two in 1558. .

Immediately foreseeable events also qualified as prophecies. For example for February 1554 Nostradamus predicted two popes would die. That did not happen until the following year. If the popes are old and in poor health their death, sooner or later, is foreseeable. This is similar to prophesying today “There will be terrors in the Middle East (Proche Orient) this year.” It doesn’t take a prophet to conclude this is inevitable. Historically the Middle East has always been a bed of turmoil, but for that matter so has the entire planet.

In 1955 Nostradamus started claiming he was divinely inspired, thereby giving his prophecies unimpeachable authority.

Nostradamus covered his bases by saying the “Dieu est sur tous les asters” (“God is above all the stars”). Therefore if his predictions didn’t come true, the inference is God has simply changed his mind. The burden for the realization of a prophecy was not on Nostradamus but on God. Naturally one can conclude that Nostradamus might have believed he had a private line to God, which nobody else did (the representation of every quack prophet and some “charismatic” evangelists).

The Bible in Deuteronomy clearly cautions, “There shall not be found among you anyone … who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Undoubtedly even a mass production prophet such as Nostradamus falls under this Biblical ban.

The “Chronique Lyonnaise” attributed in summer 1955 Nostradamus with the ability to practice “chiromancy (palmistry), mathematics, and astrology”. It is interesting to note that Laurent Videl in his 1558 writing criticizing Nostradamus accused him of swindling 10 crowns (approximately $900 today) on the way to the King’s Court from a woman in Lyon by giving her a worthless prescription which didn’t work. Subsequently when the woman cried out “Give me back my ten crowns, for your prescription is no good” Nostradamus “like a shameless charlatan …. said ‘It’s all right’”and refused to give her back her ten crowns.

As a result of his prophecies he was consulted by Catherine de Medicis, queen of Henry II of France (in a similar fashion as the gullible Queen Alexandra of All the Russias fell prey to Rasputin), and became physician to King Charles IX in 1560. He also became a member of the intellectual circle of Julius Caesar Scaliger. The latter bitterly broke the relationship accusing Nostradamus of being an “inane,vile scoundrel”, a disseminator of “falsities”, and a “criminal beggar”.

Folklore says that Queen Catherine de Medicis asked Nostradamus to conduct a séance for her in her beautiful castle of Chaumont. Her husband, Henry II, had just died and she wanted to know the fate of her sons, the Valois royal line. Nostradamus directed the séance. By staring into a “magic mirror” the “angel” (from a Christian perspective a demonic entity impersonating an angel) Anael (nonexistent in the Bible) was invoked.

In the magic mirror she saw her sons. Francis II, recently crowned, appeared and walked around once in an imaginary room seen in the mirror. Then Charles appeared, who succeeded Francis as king, and he walked around fourteen times and disappeared. Finally Henry III of France appeared in the mirror and circled the room fifteen times. Each tour around the room represented a year of power. Francis II did not live long and was succeeded by his brothers for fourteen and fifteen year reigns respectively..

In view of Nostradamus’s track record of cryptic and convoluted prophecies and the precision and accuracy of the “magic mirror” prophecies it is doubtful the séance occurred. Nostradamus denied consulting “familiar spirits” (demons who impersonate the dead; the dead cannot communicate with the living. See Section 3 of www.earthharvest.org “Detractors From The Simplicity of Salvation” subsection “Witches, Witchcraft, and the Occult”) which is the whole purpose of a séance. He complained of his critics who:

“are quick to blame and to speak ill of me and say that such pronouncements come from a familiar demon… Which is a thing assuredly as alien as the truth as they themselves are for certain far from reason or good judgment, having their minds deranged by envy and ignorance.”

Perhaps the most famous of the Renaissance astrological treatises are the “centuries”of Nostradamus, first published in 1555. Each “centuries” was a group of 100 rhymed prophetic quatrains. Nostradamus won lasting fame in 1559 when King Henry II of France died in a manner supposedly predicted in the “Centuries” as follows:

This is another one of Nostradamus’s cryptic prophecies which can be applied to a variety of situations. Henry C. Roberts in “The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus” believes this quatrain is a prediction of the fate of Adolf Hitler. He interprets the “iron cage” as the bunker in Berlin where Hitler died. A concrete bunker is more a “concrete cage” with rebars than an “iron cage”.

Classically trained commentators on Nostradamus are fully aware that in Roman times the lower portion of the Danube River is known as “Ister” or “Hister,” and is referred to as such on Roman maps.

Many writers have interpreted the last line of the quatrain to read “Quand Rin enfant Germain observera,” or “When the German Child will see the Rhine,” however “rien” in French means nothing, not “Rhine” and “enfant de Germain” from the 12th to the 16th century meant “brother” or “near relative” (James Randi, op.cit.)

Hitler and Goebbles attempted to make capital of this possible prophecy. Hitler was aware that “Hister” was Latin for the lower Danube but also believed the quatrain had a double meaning and applied to him.

One can only wonder why, as its context is not very flattering. The next line talks about the “great one” being dragged in an iron cage.

All this speculation however over what Nostradamus meant by the word Hister is a moot issue. The “greatest” seer of the Renaissance lays the matter to rest himself in his prediction for November 1554 which reads:

“A very learned man in the last quarter (of the moon), while walking along the river Hister, also called Danube, the ground subsiding, in the said river shall be lost” (Source: “The Unknown Nostradamus” op.cit. Page 68).

He did not mean “Hitler”. He meant “Danube”!

WORLD WAR III QUATRAINS Many have interpreted the following verses as applicable to the advent of the Third World War, an attack upon New York City.
	Cinq et quarante degres ciel bruslera Feu approcher de la grand cite neufve Instand grand flame esparse sautera VI.97 The sky will burn at 45 degrees. Fire approaches the great new city. Immediately huge, scattered flame leaps up ….

Thousands of Americans were killed by the vicious crashing of two airliners into the World Trade Center in September 2001 killing innocent civilians including women and children. At the time many said, “Nostradamus predicted this”.The verses above however do not apply to “911” as New York is at 40.6 or 40.7 degrees latitude, the sky did not explode on fire, and huge flames did not immediately leap up. Nostradamus only mentioned America once, if that was his intent, in quatrain X.66, which has nothing to do with VI.97.

There is a town at 45 degrees north latitude named Villeneuve-sur-Lot in southwestern France which better fits the bill. Ville neuve in French literally means “new city”. Some have argued that Nostradamus meant 40.5 degrees when he stated “cinq et quarante”, however this argument fails as the decimal system did not exist in Nostradamus’s day.

L’an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois, Du ciel viendra un grand Roi deffraieur Rescusciter le grand Roi de’Angolmois Avant que Mars regner par bonhneur X.72

In the book “Norstradamus, 1985 and Beyond” Erika Cheetham offers the translation of this quatrain as:

“In the year 1999 and seven months from the sky will come the Great King of Terror. He will bring back the Great King of the Mongols. But before and this war reigns unrestrained.”

In the book “The Secrets of Nostradamus: A Radical New Interpretation of the Master’s Prophecies” David Ovason offers the following translation:

“The year one thousand nine hundreds ninety nine seven months
From the sky will come a King of alarm
To bring back to life the great King of Angoulmois,
Before after Mars to reign by good fortune.”

Maintaining that Nostradamus was “an initiate, working on behalf of a sixteenth century arcane school,” Ovason analyzes the verse in terms of the Green Language which “has been used widely in occult literature.”

Ovason informs us that Angoulmois comes straight from the arcane Green Language and concludes: “It is evident, therefore, that Nostradamus is disguising the name of the planetary archangel Michael in the pseudo-epigraphic Roy d’Angoulmois.”

With respect to the verse “Du ciel viendra un grand Roy d’effrayeur” or “From the sky will come a great King of alarm” Ovason points out that while “effrayeur” means alarmist or frightener, “defrayer” means to amuse or entertain.

The quatrain’s “1999” per occultic analysis, according to Ovason, “could very be related to A.D. 2087.”

As with everything else concerning Nostradamus, things are very likely not what they seem. Furthermore, the variance of opinion in the interpretation of this quatrain represents a great dilemma with everything Nostradamus wrote. The quatrains are so cryptic that different writers interpret them differently. There are nearly as many interpretations as they are interpreters. People are trying to see something in them that is not there.

The quatrain XXV has been interpreted as the commencement of jihad:  †††† †
	Le prince Arabe Mars, Sol, Venus, Lyon, Regne d’Eglife par mer fuccombera; Devers la Perfe bi en pres d’un million, Bifance, Egptee, ver. ferp. inuadera The Arab Price Mars, Sun, Venus, Leo. The Rule of the Church will succumb by sea: Towards Persia very nearly a million men, The true serpent will invade Byzantium and Egypt

The planetary alignment we are told represents August 1998. The language has nothing to do with “jihad” but appears to concern an Arab ruler who fields an army of a million men and attacks Persia or present day Iran. He then apparently attacks Byzantium and Egypt. “Byzantium” does not exist anymore but is Moslem Turkey. If this were jihad there would be no reason to attack Turkey or Egypt, which are already Moslem.

During the Iraqi Iran war in the late 1980’s in which Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the human wave attacks of the Ayatollah’s Iranians there were about a million casualties and a million men were involved in combat on both sides but this has nothing to do with a planetary alignment in 1998 or an invasion of Byzantium and Egypt.

With respect to the Church succumbing by sea, the Church, which is the body of the people of Christ, is no longer a political power to succumb by military action. The Church is severely weakened by moral compromise in these latter days where good is called evil and evil is called good, but there is no apparent danger from the sea. Nostradamus may have been projecting into the far future danger from the Pirates of Tartary which terrorized the Mediterranean during his time.

BIBLE PROPHECY VS. NOSTRODAMUS

The Bible, unlike Nostradamus’s vague speculations, is very specific and depicts a much more detailed World War III type of scenario. The “day of the Lord”, possibly World War III, in Isaiah 13 is associated with the oracle concerning Babylon, which was situated in present day Iraq. According to Isaiah the Lord of hosts will muster an army for battle from a far country, from the “farthest horizons” as “His instruments of indignation, to destroy the whole land”.

The present political factionalism and instability in Iraq with its proximity to the world’s largest oil reserves may eventually lead to a world war, a nuclear exchange, where “every man’s heart will melt”, and “they will look at one another in astonishment, their faces aflame”. What is described in Isaiah 13 is of cataclysmic proportions as “the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light”, perhaps a “nuclear winter”, and mortal man will be “scarcer than pure gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir”. Isaiah prophesies that God, “shall make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken from its place.” The men assembled in the land of Babylon will “each turn to his own people, and each flee to his own land”.

This latter day scenario ends with Isaiah 13:16. In Isaiah 13:17 Isaiah, who prophesied from approximately 739 B.C. to 681 B.C., gives a prophecy which was fulfilled at least one hundred and forty years after Isaiah made it, the destruction of Babylon by the Medes. This occurred in 539 B.C. when Cyrus, king of the Medo Persians, captured Babylon. Babylon was believed to be impregnable because of its huge walls. The city was so vast that food could be produced in the agricultural land contained within its walls. The Euphrates River flowed through the city. Cyrus is said to have stationed his army where the river entered the city and where it left. He then diverted the upstream flow of the river temporarily by deepening the canals into the Euphrates Valley.. Cyrus’s troops under the leadership of Gobryas entered Babylon by way of the drained riverbed unopposed. The inhabitants of Babylon, dissatisfied with the reign of Nabonidus and Belshazzar, sued for peace and were granted it.

The prophet Jeremiah also prophesied the destruction of Babylon by the “kings of the Medes” (Jeremiah 51: 27-32). Jeremiah was called to his prophetic office in 626 B.C. and prophesied for forty two years.

Compare the cryptic and hard to interpret prophecies of Nostradamus with those of the Bible. The Bible has over three hundred prophecies concerning the Messiah, which Jesus fulfilled, many of which were completely beyond His control such as: His place of birth (Micah 5:2), the time of His birth (Daniel 9:25; Genesis 49:10), the manner of His birth (Isaiah 7:14), His betrayal (Psalms 41:9, Zechariah 11:12, 11:13b), the manner of his death (Psalms 22:16), people’s reactions (mocking, spitting, staring, etc...) (Isaiah 50:6, Micah 5:1, Psalms 22:7,8, Isaiah 53:3, Psalms 69:8, Psalms 118:22, Psalms 69:4, Isaiah 49:7, Psalms 38:11, Psalms 22:7, Psalms 109:25, Psalms 22:17), piercing (Zechariah 12:10, Psalms 22:16) and burial (Isaiah 53:9). These were prophecies made hundreds of years before his birth. For example the prophecies regarding his crucifixion (Psalm 22:16, Zechariah 12:10, Isaiah 53:5-6) were made several hundred years before the Romans introduced this form of punishment into the Middle East. Stoning was the preferred form of punishment prior to the Roman presence in the Middle East.

Rather than repeating other sections of www.earthharvest.org concerning Bible prophecies please refer to Section 5 of this website entitled “Powerful Evidence ForThe Deity of Christ” and read the subsections “Prophecy Fulfilled” and the “Prophetic Odds”. Also refer to Section 7 of this website entitled “Other Landscapes” and refer to the subsection “The Testimony of Fulfilled Prophecy”.

The Antichrist

The Mark of the Beast

The beast has a companion, also empowered by the dragon, a second beast which has two horns like a lamb, speaks like a dragon. He may come as a lamb, soft spoken and silky, yet really be a wolf in disguise.

He is also referred to as the “false prophet” and makes fire fall down from heaven to earth. He makes an image of the first beast that was healed, which speaks. This second beast makes all the inhabitants of the earth worship the first beast and his image and “causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six” (Revelation 13:16-18).

In view of computers, microchip implants, GPS, an agenda toward national databanks on individuals precipitated by the “war on terror”, a real or fabricated scarcity of natural resources such as energy, socialized health programs, a trend away from the nation state and toward regional trading and political blocks which can be subsequently agglomerated, a global dictatorship could very easily be in the offing.

This will be a much more pervasive dictatorship than any in history, whose technology of control already exists. If you were forced to have a chip implanted in your hand or forehead on which were recorded all your personal history, financial information, medical drugs you require and through GPS your every movement could be tracked, you would be living in a high tech Auschwitz. In those days the Nazis used tattoos.

Unfortunately this is what the Bible prophesies prior to the return of Jesus Christ.. If you are diabetic and you don’t toe the line you don’t get your insulin, you go into a diabetic coma, and you die.

For those who like to go with the “path of least resistance” and take the mark (the chip) God does not give you an easy way out. One of the bowls of judgment is “a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image” (Revelation 16:2).

There will be plenty of advance warning to the entire human race about the consequences of accepting the “mark”:

God will send one of his angels to proclaim to the entire planet, “If any one worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” If the choice is being able to shop in a supermarket and/or filling your tank with gas by scanning your mark or fleeing in the hinterland unmarked, you better choose the latter.

In World War II in Poland the Jews who fled into the forests, many joining the resistance to the Nazi occupiers, had a much higher survival rate than those who went peacefully to concentration camps.

With respect to the mark there is no middle ground, no straddling the line, no room for opportunists. You are damned if you accept the mark and blessed if you don’t.

Accepting the mark will somehow be tied to the worship of the AntiChrist who is also called the beast and in the Old Testament is referred to as the “Assyrian.”

The King of Kings