S T O R I E S F R O M M Y H E A D
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the writings of R.B. BANFIELD
All Bible quotes are literal translations by the author.
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Copyright © R.B. Banfield, 2019, 2022
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Except for personal reference or book review, no other part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.
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Contents
PART FOUR: SIX JUDGEMENTS OF THE LAMB
Seventh Seal: Revelation 8:1-6; 15:1-16:1
First Judgement: Revelation 8:7; 16:2
Second Judgement: Revelation: 8:8-9; 16:3
Third Judgement: Revelation: 8:10-11; 16:4-7
Fourth Judgement: Revelation: 8:12; 16:8-9
Fifth Judgement: Revelation: 9:1-11; 16:10-11
PART FOUR
SIX JUDGEMENTS OF THE LAMB
The most obvious example of parallelism in Revelation can be seen in the similarities between the angels with seven trumpets and the angels with seven bowls. In the following passages we only see the fallout from the first six, since the seventh heralds the Second Parousia.
Many Revelation interpreters miss how these two passages easily interconnect.(78) The first was on the earth, the second on the sea, the third on rivers and springs, the fourth on the sun, the fifth causes darkness, and the sixth was on the river Euphrates. The only question we need to ask is what is the timing of the six calamities. It is the position of this book that most, if not all, have already taken place.
At the time of this writing (2019), what is described in the following appears to be the fulfilment of all six judgements. It may not necessarily be correct, since the Lord has not yet returned for his Second Parousia and there could be many more significant events yet to happen in the world, but they are the closest examples seen so far.
Footnote
78. One of the rare example of seeing a connection was Robert Anderson’s book The Coming Prince (1894).
SEVENTH SEAL
Revelation 8:1-6 ∥ 15:1-16:1
(8:1) And when he opened up the seventh seal there was silence in heaven, about a half-hour. (8:2) And I saw the seven angels who stand in the presence of God, and seven trumpets were given to them. (8:3) And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer. And much incense was given to him, that he give them with the prayers of all the holy-ones at the golden altar in the presence of the throne. (8:4) And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the holy-ones, went up from the hand of the angel in the presence of God. (8:5) And the angel has taken the censer and filled it with the fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth. There were noises, peals of thunder, flashes of lightning and commotion. (8:6) And the seven angels having the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound a trumpet blast.
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(15:1) And I saw another sign in the sky, great and wonderous; seven angels having the last seven calamities; for they complete the wrath of God. (15:2) And I saw what was like a glass sea having been mixed with fire, and those subduing the wild beast and its likeness and its impression and the number of its name, standing on the glass sea, having lyres from God. (15:3) And they sing the song of Moses, the slave of God, and the song of the young lamb, saying, “Great and wonderous are your works, LORD God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of Gentiles! (15:4) Who will not revere you, LORD, and glorify your name? For you alone are right, for all the Gentiles will come and prostrate themselves in homage in your presence, for your equitable deeds are now revealed.”
(15:5) And after these things I saw, and lo, the Temple of the Tent of Testimony in heaven was opened up. (15:6) And seven angels having the seven calamities came forth out of the Temple, clothed in clean and radiant linen, and golden belts having been fastened around their chests. (15:7) And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of the God living forever and ever. (15:8) And the Temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his ability, and no one could enter into the Temple until the seven calamities of the seven angels were completed. (16:1) And I heard a loud voice from the Temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God!”
Let my prayer be set before you as incense.
Psalm 141:2a
“And if you walk contrary to me, and are not willing to obey me, I will bring sevenfold plagues on you according to your sins. And I will send wild beasts.”
Leviticus 26:21-22a
“You, Son of man, this is what the Lord the LORD says to the land of Israel, ‘The end. The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end has come upon you, and I will send my anger against you, and I will judge you according to your ways, and I will repay you for all your abominations. And my eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity. I will repay your ways, and your abominations will be in your midst, and then you will know that I am the LORD.’”
Ezekiel 7:2-4
Because all having been born of God subdues the world, and this is the conquest subduing the world: our faith. Who is the one subduing the world, except the one trusting that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 5:4-5
And it happened, when the priests came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.
1 Kings 8:10-11
And I will set my glory among the Gentiles, and all the Gentiles will see my judgement which I have made, and which I have laid with my hand on them.
Ezekiel 39:21
The silence in heaven, about a half-hour may represent the first half of the 70th Week of Babylon, which this book estimates to be approximately from the year AD 380 to sometime in the 13th Century.
Of the following interpretations of the Judgements of the Lamb, each judgement was known all over the world at the time when it happened. Each of these events signalled dramatic world change, and at least three events caused the downfall of powerful empires. It is important to reiterate that these judgements were not written to be fulfilled in chronological order. This is what has caused confusion and misunderstanding.
FIRST JUDGEMENT
Revelation 8:7 ∥ 16:2
(8:7) And the first angel sounded a trumpet blast. And there was hail and fire being mixed with blood, and it was thrown on the earth, and a third of the earth was consumed, a third of the trees was consumed, and all green grass was consumed.(79)
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(16:2) And the first went and poured out his bowl on the earth. And there was a worthless and evil ulcer on those people having the impression of the wild beast, and those prostrating themselves in homage to its likeness.(80)
An evil disease, they say, clings to him, now that he lies down, and will no more rise up.
Psalm 41:8
There were two parts to this event, first deadly hail and fire from the sky, and second, a worthless and evil ulcer, which was undoubtedly a major plague pandemic. This was exactly what happened in the 6th Century AD, and like all these judgements, it caused dramatic and far-reaching change to the world. For an unknown reason, the incredible events of the 6th Century have been ignored by every single End Times teacher.
Footnote
79. There is very little said about the First Trumpet by any of the four interpretations. Books and teachings resort to repeating the text and diverting attention away from the fact that it does not fit with their interpretations. The Historicist cannot find anything like this from the history books that fits with their timeline, as it must with their interpretation. The Futurist is stumped as to what this could mean, especially since their interpretation usually has literal meanings, but they cannot apply a third of the earth being consumed to what else must follow in the last seven years. If it is to be symbolic, they do not know of what. The Idealist cannot describe how this could be a description of God’s judgement, as they always do, since it is affecting the trees and the grass, and they do not show us how that can mean people. The Preterist has nothing that proves that the Roman armies used hail and fire to destroy trees and grass in the First Jewish War, but we can be certain that they looked for any references to it.
80. Historicists see the First Bowl as the fulfilled with the French Revolution, apparently for no other reason other than their system puts it quite late in history. Futurists see it as something that will happen during the last seven years, whereas Idealists see it as a general bad thing that will happen. Preterists offer no explanation at all, since nothing like this happened during the First Jewish War, as they say it must.
THE JUSTINIAN PLAGUE
Justinian rose to power in AD 527 and ruled from Constantinople over what is now known as the Byzantium Empire. To the west was the territory formally known as the Western Empire, which had been conquered by Germanic tribes. Rome was under the control of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths held Spain, the Burgundians and Franks held parts of what is now France. Further north were Lombards and Saxons. Northern Africa was held by the Vandals, including the important port city of Carthage. Most of these Gothic tribesmen held to the Arian sect of Christianity, and in Rome the popes of the time had to walk a careful line between upholding Catholicism and not annoying the Arian Gothic kings.
A religious man, Justinian became zealous for the cause of converting the world to Roman Catholicism, and his ambition was to rid Italy, and the rest of Europe, of the Goths and Arianism, and thus become the first man since Theodosius to rule over a united Roman Empire. His motto was, “One empire, one church, one law.” To implement the “one church,” he placed himself at the head of Christianity, and mandated that every citizen must be Christian. For “one law,” he ordered a codification of Roman laws, which became the influential Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law).
For “one empire,” he needed the skills of his brilliant general Belisarius. Northern Africa was won in AD 534, including Carthage, and the Vandal civilisation was completely wiped out. Italy was invaded next, and Rome was taken in AD 536. The following years saw many battles against the Ostrogoths and the Franks in Italy, plus attacks from the Persians who took advantage of the absentee armies in the east. Although Justinian succeeded in taking back Italy by AD 554, it did not last, and there would be no reunited Empire.
Antioch had always been a major city, equal to Rome and Carthage. For the festival for Ascension Day in AD 526, the population built up to over 250,000. That was when the city was hit by a huge earthquake, followed by a raging fire. According to John Malalas (AD 491-578), who lived in Antioch, it was no normal earthquake, but rather a barrage of fire from the sky:
“Those caught in the earth beneath the buildings were incinerated and sparks of fire appeared out of the air and buried everyone they struck like lightning. The surface of the earth boiled and foundations of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the earthquakes and were buried to ashes by flames. It was a tremendous and incredible marvel with fire belching out rain, rain falling from tremendous furnaces, flames dissolving into showers, and showers kindling like flames consumed even those in the earth who were crying out. As a result Antioch became desolate . . . everything had been utterly destroyed . . . in this terror up to 250,000 people perished . . . during the wrath of God it became clear what a great number of citizens there was . . . after the collapse of the city many other earthquakes occurred during the next eighteen months.”
The Chronicle of John Malalas, 17 (c AD 565)
This account makes it clear that Antioch was struck by debris from space, from either meteors or a passing comet. Astrophysicists Fred Hoyle(81) and Chandra Wickramasinghe theorised in their book Our Place in the Cosmos (1993) that comets carry viruses and bacteria. Having realised the failure of evolutionary theory to adequately explain the wonders of creation, these two men looked to outer space for the answer (and sadly, not to God himself). They believed that what is “out there” can not only cause life, but can also bring death. Their theory was ridiculed, but it holds much more water than most other theories about life origins, and especially the origins of plagues. Their idea was that near passes of the earth by comets can result in infected dust raining into our atmosphere. It is an interesting theory, but when compared to Revelation it takes on a new meaning. The seven angels with the bowls were seen by John as pouring their bowls out on the earth. This is an accurate picture of a comet passing by the earth and engulfing the planet with its dust. The conclusion we can reach is that a comet, or a series of comets, passed near to earth in the year AD 526,(82) and debris from its tail caught fire in the upper atmosphere and struck Antioch. The strikes greatly affected the entire planet, and caused worldwide famines and unpredictable weather. But what was worse was that it brought with it a killer disease, that moved slowly over the next few years, but would eventually kill around 50 million people, at least a third of the population,(83) and become known as the Justinian Plague.
In the spring of AD 542 the plague reached Constantinople, and even Justinian himself, who fell into a coma but recovered.(84) The disease attacked people quickly, in a matter of days. There would be a mild fever, followed by swellings of black blisters. Some would become comatose, but others would become delirious.(85) At its height, 5,000 died in Constantinople per day. So many people died in such a short time that healthy people took to wearing name tags to make identification easy if they died. It ruined the economy, with no one left to work farmland, and no one left to bake bread, which led to widespread famine. Unlike most diseases, it did not strike only the poor, who were the most vulnerable to any disease. Everyone, no matter their social standing, was at risk. It was the world’s first recorded pandemic. Nothing was ever seen like it before, and the disease lingered for centuries, emerging now and then, before finally disappearing.
Since modern researchers thoroughly dislike having no explanations for historic events, they decided that this plague was identical to the Black Death of the 14th Century, and that it was carried by rats and fleas. This speculation is supported by very little evidence. In the ancient world, however, comets were always associated with death, and as many as nine comets were seen during the time of the Justinian Plague. The “first angel with the trumpet heralded hail and fire thrown on the earth,” exactly describes comet debris striking from space. In AD 526 the city of Antioch was destroyed by fire from the sky. This fulfilled Revelation 8:7, with hail and fire being mixed with blood, and it was thrown on the earth. The plague fulfilled 16:2, with a worthless and evil ulcer on those people.
Like most, if not all, of these Judgements of the Lamb, they significantly altered the history of the world. Justinian failed to unite the Roman Empire, and Europe sunk into the Dark Ages.(86) God’s plan was for the Roman Empire to continue to be divided into two, the east and west, and continue in a divided form until the time of the Second Parousia.
Footnotes
81. To make fun it, Fred Hole coined the name “Big Bang” for the ridiculous theory of the origin of the universe. The theory itself originated in the imagination of Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest.
82. The 6th Century suffered from many so-called natural disasters, from Mt Vesuvius erupting in 512, earthquakes in Corinth in 512 and Cilicia 524, many crop failures and famines in the 530s around the world, with cold summers and a “dry fog” in the Middle East, Europe, and China. In 536 Procopius wrote that the sun did not give brightness. There was an earthquake in Bulgaria in 543, a “mould plague” in Europe in 565, and an earthquake in Antioch in 580. In 589 the Tiber flooded Rome when a comet was seen, and then came more famine and disease. A comet was again seen in Rome in 590 and a pandemic hit the city, killing Pope Pelagius II, and lasted for fifty years.
83. It is possible that the actual death rate was closer to 50% of the population of the entire world.
84. As recorded by Justinian’s court historian Procopius of Caesarea.
85. Unlike the bubonic plague, the symptoms and causes of death were varied.
86. A famine that lasted for eight years followed the pandemic, and this caused a change to the traditional system of agriculture. Gradually the three-field crop rotation system emerged, and together with the great social upheaval of such a high death rate, caused the development of the medieval feudal system. The world was literally changed by this plague.
SECOND JUDGEMENT
Revelation 8:8-9 ∥ 16:3
(8:8) And the second angel sounded a trumpet blast. And something like a huge mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood, (8:9) and a third of the creatures in the sea having souls died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.(87)
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(16:3) And the second poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood, like that of a dead-one, and every living soul in the sea died.(88)
Thus says the LORD, “By this you shall know that I am the LORD, behold, I will strike with the rod that is in my hand, the waters of the Nile, and they will be turned to blood.”
Exodus 7:17
The mystery of what this judgement could be—and it certainly appeared to be foretelling something highly significant in the world’s history—was answered by an unprecedented earthquake and a terrible series of related events. At the time, it appeared to be nothing more than a tragic natural disaster, but after a few years the truth came out, that indeed a third of the sea became blood, as death came to the Pacific Ocean. Since this is a very recent event, it remains unknown if any End Times teacher will want to equate it with the Second Trumpet and the Second Bowl.
Footnotes
87. Historicists see the Second Trumpet as the 5th Century attacks on the Roman Empire by Goths and Vandals. Preterists offer the vaguest of answers, that it is the First Jewish War, the “mountain” is Jerusalem and the “sea” is the Gentiles. Futurists take their choice of literal or symbolic interpretations, the latter being a large meteor impacting the oceans, or the detonation of an Atomic Bomb. Idealists have the “mountain” as a kingdom, probably spiritual Babylon.
88. Historicists see the Second Bowl as fulfilled in the naval disasters inflicted on France by the British after 1793. Futurists and Preterists provide nothing to explain the Second Bowl. Idealists also have nothing, but they assure us that it is something bad and symbolic.
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI
After Japan suffered under two nuclear bombs at the hands of the American government in 1945, one would think that it would be the last country on earth to embrace nuclear power, but by 2011 Japan had 54 reactors, with plans to build more. The Japanese people accepted nuclear reactors because they were given misinformation about their safety and efficiency, and it contributed to 35% of their country’s power provision.
Daiichi, meaning First or Number One, was the first to begin operation in Japan, in 1971, and it featured six reactors. The neighbouring plant Daini, meaning Number Two, operated four reactors (and has been decommissioned since November 2013). In 2011 there were ten reactors on the Fukushima Prefecture coastline, the most reactors anywhere in the world in such close proximity.(89)
Daiichi was one of the largest and advanced water-production sites in the world, and it was built on landfill that the Japanese government knew would be highly unstable during an earthquake. Even worse, the management at Daiichi was warned that its seawall guarding against tsunami was built far too low, at only 5.7 metres (24 feet), when tsunamis can be up to 50 metres (164 feet) high. How could they have not properly prepared for a tsunami, since the very word is Japanese, and Japan is the most earthquake-prone country in the world?(90) Every plant has emergency electric power generators, but because the diesel generators at Fukushima Daiichi were housed at sea level, they were flooded during the tsunami and became inoperable. The nuclear reactor cores at the Daiichi plant were built high up, far from sea level, but the generators were not.
Nuclear power plants produce electricity, and yet they need electricity to operate. The worst scenario for a nuclear reactor is overheating, and every reactor has backup power. If a nuclear power plant loses electric power to provide cooling water, it becomes as dangerous as a nuclear bomb. Heat is created when uranium undergoes fission, and water is needed to stop the heat from becoming so extreme that the radioactive products will literally melt through the floor. Any such “melt down” will result not only in widespread deadly contamination of the soil and underground water, it would also be completely unstoppable.
On 11 March 2011 an earthquake struck 70 kilometres (43 miles) north-east of Fukushima. It had a magnitude 9.0 to 9.1, making it one of the four strongest ever recorded. It lasted for six minutes, and was 29 km (18 miles) deep, which is considered to be very shallow. The earthquake itself did not cause undue damage to any of Japan’s nuclear power plants. The tsunami that struck the coast may have been as high as 40 metres (133 feet), and travelled 10 km (6 miles) inland, and killed almost 16,000 people. None of the nuclear power plants suffered damage from the tsunami impact, but because Daiichi’s backup electric power generators became engulfed in water, they were rendered useless. Cooling water was prevented from entering the cores of Units 1, 2, and 3, that were operating at the time, and all three experienced core meltdowns. Days later, all three exploded. Radioactive material lifted 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) into the air, and spread out over the Pacific Ocean. The radioactive fallout was the equivalent of 100 Chernobyl disasters and every other nuclear disaster and nuclear bomb test combined. The neighbouring plant Daini did not suffer melt downs since power was not lost to its four reactors.
When Unit 4 exploded on 15 March 2011, the radiation fallout was the equivalent of 10,000 to 20,000 Hiroshima bombs. Unit 4 did not undergo a melt down because it was not in operation at the time of the power outage, but it remains (in 2019) highly unstable, due to its spent fuel rods. It is routine procedure for intensely hot nuclear waste to be stored in long metal tubes that are kept cool in water pools. The tubes, called either rods or pins, are so dangerous that anyone standing next to one would die in a matter of seconds. The rods must never break, nor must one rod ever touch another rod. The spent fuel rods inside the pool of the damaged Unit 4 must be removed from the unstable structure, but it is an impossible task. The radiation levels inside Unit 4 remain so high that no human can survive getting anywhere near the rods. Even robots cannot last for more than a few minutes inside the reactors before their circuits stop working. Another major earthquake could cause the fuel rods to become exposed to the air, and if that happened then they would quickly explode. The resulting radioactive fallout would be the same as what would be released by a major nuclear bomb.
No one knows the location of any of the melted fuel. If any has melted down through the floor and into the earth to poison the ground and water, there is nothing to prevent the contamination to spread, and it will eventually (no one knows exactly how long, but it cannot be stopped) kill every living creature in the world. This very fact alone should cause everyone to demand the immediate end of the use of nuclear reactors worldwide, and the leaders of the nuclear industry held to account.
During the 2011 meltdown crisis, the Japanese government faced the problem of evacuating the entire city of Tokyo. This was an impossible task, since the population was 50 million. Even if some evacuation had been attempted, it would not have been possible to protect people from breathing the radioactive air. The decision was taken to not inform the people about the dangers, and instead announce that the air was safe.(91) Recent tests have been conducted on the levels of radioactive residue in Tokyo’s soil, and on the city’s streets, and the results show that no one should be living there.
The worst problem facing Japan is in the food that comes out of Fukushima Prefecture, and the fish that is caught in the contaminated sea. The only solution from the Japanese government was to tell the people, and the rest of the world, that the dangers have disappeared and the food is now safe. Since nuclear radiation damage to the human body is of far greater risk for children than adults, and for girls more than boys, the results will be clearly seen as time goes on. In 2001 Japanese children with thyroid cancer was one in one million. In 2012 it was up to 35%. In 2015 the children who lived in Fukushima Prefecture had thyroid cancer at a rate of fifty-times more than children in the rest of Japan.
In 2011 the entire western coast of Canada and the USA were the hardest hit by the initial nuclear radiation atmospheric fallout that quickly travelled there in the first three days via the jet streams. It took seven days to reach Iceland, and then Europe.
The bigger problem is in the radioactive water that continually flows into the Pacific Ocean at a rate of at least 300 metric tonnes per day, and is impossible to stop. The Pacific Ocean covers 30% of the earth, which is more than the combined land mass of the rest of the planet. At the time of this writing, eight years after the disaster, the great majority of life in the Pacific Ocean has already died, and many species are surely extinct. It has now spread into every other ocean in the world, which will suffer the same marine die-off. Given the rapid rate of marine die-off and total inability to contain, let alone fix the problem, it is unlikely that the full horror of this disaster can continue to be hidden from the world. Nor can the extent of the threat to life to every living creature on the planet continue to be suppressed.
The Japanese government claimed that it would take over forty years and some $189 billion to fix. Such a figure is an invention and a distraction, since it is a problem impossible to fix. Money is not the answer, since no human or robot can survive the extreme radiation levels to remove the spent fuel rods. The only reason that time is given as a solution is because it is hoped that a solution will be discovered in the future, because they have no other hope. It is wishful thinking heightened to the level of fantasy.
This calamity was a specific fulfilment of the second trumpet and the second bowl. Revelation 8:9 said that a third of the creatures died, but 16:3 said that every living soul in the sea died. This reflects how the Pacific Ocean was first poisoned by nuclear radiation, but then every ocean and sea in the world will follow, and all the thousands of water species will become extinct. Because of the Wigner Effect (that says nuclear radiation eventually breaks down solid material), ships will sink and aeroplanes will fall out of the sky, as their structure and mechanics weaken because of the high amount of nuclear radiation in the atmosphere and in the ocean. Revelation 8:9 says that “a third of the ships were destroyed.”
Footnotes
89. What was the world’s largest, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, on Japan’s western coastline, has seven units, but has not yet been given permission to restart. The Bruce Station in Ontario, Canada, runs eight units, but Pickering (six units) and Darlington (four units) are sited very close to Toronto. China’s Qinshan Station has seven units, Tianwan six, and Yangjiang six, with more planned. South Korea’s Hanbit and Hanul both have six units. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia has six units. No power station in America (the home of 92 such plants) has more than three units, but Braidwood, Dresden, and LaSalle (totalling 6 between them) are sited very close to Chicago. There are 180 such plants in Europe, 40% of the world’s.
90. China, Indonesia, Iran, and Turkey are the only countries to have recorded more earthquakes, but given Japan’s size, the only country to compare is Italy, which have half as many.
91. Before the disaster, Japan’s authorities ruled that the level of safe radiation for a human being was 1 millisevert per year. After the disaster that was changed to 20 milliserverts.
THIRD JUDGEMENT
Revelation 8:10-11 ∥ 16:4-7
(8:10) And the third angel sounded a trumpet blast. And a great star burning like a torch fell out of the sky, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. (8:11) And the name of the star is said to be Apsinthos. And a third of the waters became apsinthos and many people died from the waters, because they were made bitter.(92)
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(16:4) And the third poured out his bowl into the rivers and into the springs of the waters, and they became blood. (16:5) And I heard the angel of the waters saying, “You are just, O Right-One who is and who was, because you judged these things; (16:6) that the blood of holy-ones and prophets they have poured out, you gave them to drink, for they are deserving!” (16:7) And I heard another, from the altar, saying, “Yes, LORD God Almighty, true and just are your judgements!”(93)
“. . . may there not be among you a root producing bitterness or wormwood.”
Deuteronomy 29:18b
This was one of the rare occurrences where the Bible provided a secretive word to help our understanding. The name of the star is said to be Apsinthos, which most modern translations render as Wormwood. This simply means that something called Wormwood will poison the water supply and kill many people. It is quite stunning how literal this judgement was fulfilled, in 1986, in the Ukrainian region of Chernobyl, which means Wormwood in the local language. Chernobyl literally means Black Grass, the Artemisia vulgaris species that grows there. It has various names, most commonly Wormwood, Mugwort, or Sagebrush. This is not a secret found by any special calculation, or gnostic investigation into Greek words, or any esoteric connection, but what the word literally means.
The number of End Times teachers who equate Chernobyl to the Third Trumpet and Third Bowl would be zero.(94) Not only that, but many become hostile to the suggestion that this was literally fulfilled in the events at Chernobyl in 1986. Many Bible commentators claim that this passage has nothing to do with Chernobyl. They say Chernobyl does not really mean Wormwood, that it is “some other plant,” and therefore this prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. It remains a mystery, that if they are correct and Chernobyl was not the Third Trumpet, how the actual fulfilment could possibly be any more literal.
Footnotes
92. Historicists see the “great star” as fulfilled in Attila the Hun of the 5th Century, who apparently caused so many deaths that it made the “springs of water” poisonous. Futurists are vague about this fulfilment, but they endeavour to fit it into the last seven years, but if it is to happen in the future, who can prove them wrong? Idealists are also vague about what the Third Trumpet could mean. Preterists teach that it must have something to do with the First Jewish War, despite being unable to show what it is.
93. Only Historicists offer an explanation for the Third Bowl, but it is in the form of a vague insistence that it has something to do with the French Revolution. While Futurists can get away with the idea that it will happen in the future, so therefore they do not need to say what it is, and Idealists can say it is symbolic of bad things, Preterists again expose their limited interpretation by showing no link at all with the First Jewish War.
94. Of the few who do see the connection with the Third Trumpet (not the Third Bowl), they do not take it any further.
CHERNOBYL
The Soviet Union saw nuclear energy as the best way for their communist system to work. At the time, it would have seemed a good idea for Party Leaders to embrace this cheap, clean, and efficient power source. That was how nuclear power was advertised (and it still is), but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Nuclear reactors are by far the most expensive way to produce electricity, and nuclear power plants are highly inefficient, and extremely hazardous to the environment. Faced with the unexpected and growing cost in building their nuclear power plants, plus the abundance of ambitious Soviet officials in a system that accepted no failure, many shortcuts were taken. When finished and operational, the poorly constructed Soviet nuclear reactors became poorly maintained time bombs.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was built 110 km (68 miles) north of Kiev, in what is now the nation of Ukraine, and first became operational in 1977. It featured four RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors which were widely known to be inherently flawed and lack basic safety regulations. For the entirety of the Chernobyl plant’s life, there were significant violations of operation rules. They came close to disaster on 9 September 1982, when a “partial meltdown” occurred, which was successfully kept secret.
The Soviet authorities were fully aware of the basic design faults. They knew that the reactor must not be allowed to operate at a low power level (under 700 megawatts), but they disregarded that and ran it as low as possible (at just 30 megawatts) as part of a test on Unit 4 for a self-fuelling system. At 1:23 a.m., 26 April 1986, the security systems were disabled, including the automatic shutdowns. The lack of cooling caused the steam to build up. The core duly overheated and caused the reactor to explode. The roof of reactor four blew off and released showers of radioactive chunks of graphite, and a steam cloud of uranium. Then a second explosion caused a cloud of deadly gas to sore 900 metres (3,000 feet) into the air. During the next three panic-filled hours, everything the heroic workers did to solve the problem made it worse.
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At 5:30 a.m. the Kremlin was informed that there was no problem, and that it was all under control. Over the next few days, a deadly nuclear cloud spread north-west, and was first detected in Sweden. The Swedes were, understandably, furious at not being informed of the danger. The International Atomic Energy Agency later gave it a Nuclear Event Scale of 7, the highest, a “major accident” (the same as they would later give to Fukushima Daiichi).
After the two explosions there followed a tragic scene of firefighters and soldiers, with completely inadequate training and no safety equipment, trying to clean the disaster site of the highly radioactive material that littered the ground and rooftops. Young men were ordered to shovel radioactive material over the side of a building. They would soon all be dead. Six hundred pilots bravely hovered their helicopters over the reactor so that thousands of tonnes of lead, sand, and clay could be dropped into the exposed and burning core. One of the helicopters used for the construction project dropped out of the sky. Their efforts proved to be of no use, and soon every single one of them would be dead.
There was an estimated 50% chance of a third explosion. With 200 tons of nuclear fuel still burning, the blast force would have been the equivalent of ten Hiroshima bombs. Both major cities Minx and Kiev would have been razed, and half of Europe would have been made uninhabitable. To prepare, Soviet officials sent one thousand train cars to evacuate Minx’s 2 million people.
The city of Pripyat, built to accommodate the workers of the Chernobyl power plant, had a population of 50,000. It was evacuated the day after the reactor exploded, but it should have been done much earlier. The residents were told that they would only be gone for a short time, and they were not allowed to take their pets with them. They never returned, and their pets were killed. The buses used for the evacuation became contaminated with very high levels of nuclear radiation, and yet they were returned to Kiev to continue their usual day-to-day service.
A 30 kilometre (19 mile) “exclusion zone” was placed around the nuclear plant and Pripyat, which has only recently been opened up to curious and morbid tourists. The area is surrounded by forest, and it is entirely radioactive. The regular fires help spread more nuclear particulates into Ukraine and neighbouring countries. In 2015 a forest fire burned there for four days, and the smoke from it would have been deadly.
The residents of Kiev were told to celebrate May Day of 1986(95) as if nothing had happened. The people were expected to go outside and celebrate their Soviet overlords in the contaminated air. At the time, Kiev was the third-most important city in the USSR, and it has a dated history going back to the 9th Century AD. In 1986 the population was 2.5 million. After the May Day celebrations, eighteen days after the meltdown and explosions Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev finally informed the public what had happened. That was far too late for many people.
In June 1986 a massive steel and concrete sarcophagus was built over the reactor, called Shelter Object. The sarcophagus was the only solution that the nuclear scientists could think of. It was built to last for about thirty years, when, the nuclear scientists estimated, a solution would be found. They were wrong. In 2017 an even larger steel and concrete sarcophagus was built over the top of Shelter Object, called New Shelter. It is estimated that this one will last for a whopping 100 years, by which time nuclear scientists are confident that a solution will be found.(96)
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The Chernobyl disaster led Gorbachev to co-operate with American President Ronald Reagan to reduce the number of their nuclear weapons. It also led Gorbachev to introduce Glasnost (“Openness”) which led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Block.
With insane disregard for safety, Chernobyl continued to operate its Unit 1 and 2 reactors until the year 2000. An estimated 40% of the European landmass still lies contaminated. The nations of Belarus and Ukraine still have 8 million people living in contaminated areas. The soil of neighbouring Turkey also remains contaminated.(97)
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Revelation 8:7 said that the rivers and springs became contaminated, or made bitter, which caused many people to die. It has been estimated that one million people died as a result of the Chernobyl accident. This is surely too conservative a number, since it is impossible to detect the origins of cancer. But it has been confirmed that the chances of the children of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia being affected by thyroid cancer has greatly increased as a result of the disaster.
When the Soviet government was fighting to stabilise the accident, there was a genuine fear that the core would melt down into the ground, to the water springs that lead to the Black Sea. Despite the USSR being an atheistic society, many people knew that it would fulfil the biblical prophecy of Revelation 8:10, “it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters,” and 16:4, “into the rivers and into the springs of the waters.” An underground concrete barrier was quickly constructed to prevent such a melting, at the cost of the worker’s lives. No one knows if their hurried prevention to stop the core from melting through and down into the springs actually worked.
To this day there stands in Pripyat a sculpture of the third angel with a trumpet.(98)
Footnotes
95. May 1, only 5 days after the event.
96. Or perhaps better names.
97. The sole nation in Europe to do anything remotely sensible was Italy, with a referendum in 1987 to abolish their nuclear power plants. The result was 80.6% in favour of abolishment.
98. There is little information available about this sculpture, apart from that it was made by Ukrainian artist Anatoly Haidamaka.
FOURTH JUDGEMENT
Revelation 8:12 ∥ 16:8-9
(8:12) And the fourth angel sounded a trumpet blast. And a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck, that a third of them might be obscured, and a third of the day might not appear, and the night similarly.(99)
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(16:8) And the fourth poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was given to it to scorch people with fire. (16:9) And the people were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God, the one having authority over these calamities, and they did not repent to give him glory.(100)
“And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth anxiety of Gentiles, in a quandary over the sound and tossing of the sea; people fainting from fear and apprehension of the things coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
Luke 21:25-26
The first three judgements have had very strong literal fulfilments. The fourth judgement is not so obvious, and that may be because it has not yet been fulfilled. A simple reading of the text, combined with the knowledge of how the first three judgements have played out, can bring the conclusion that it is describing a future Thermonuclear War. Given the fact that there is some 15,000 of these insane weapons in the hands of megalomaniac and criminal politicians, the ongoing question should not be when they will be used, but why they have not yet been used. Two have already been inflicted on humanity, of course, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, but they were tiny compared to what is available now.(101)
While that may indeed be the fulfilment of the Fourth Trumpet and the Fourth Bowl, it is worth considering that the medical implications caused by the entire Nuclear Age itself appears to be described in the Revelation text. While some End Times teachers (notably those who are sensationalist) have been keen to deduce that nuclear warfare is described throughout Revelation, it remains an untouched subject for the great majority.
We are told that the sun is heated by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. While this natural nuclear fusion process of the sun remains impossible for modern science to duplicate, the other form of creating heat, nuclear fission, is abundantly used but is incredibly dangerous. Could this be how the people were scorched with great heat of the Fourth Judgement?
Footnotes
99. Historicists see the Fourth Trumpet as fulfilled in the conquest of Rome in AD 476 by the Heruli, a Germanic tribe who quickly became lost to history. For such extreme description, it is difficult to see how such an fleeting event by obscure people could be its fulfilment. Futurists see it as something bad that will happen in the last seven years, but what it will be remains a mystery. Idealists see the Fourth Trumpet signalling how God judges the nations, as they usually explain. Preterists see it as events surrounding the First Jewish War, without providing any examples.
100. Without surprise, we see that none of the other interpretations offer anything to explain the Fourth Bowl. The Historicists lump the bowls together into the French Revolution, for no other reason than it was the last major event in the world when their teaching was popular, since the bowls occur towards the end of Revelation.
101. It needs to be pointed out, however, that many people remain sceptical about whether or not these weapons actually exist, since they have not been used (as far as we know) since World War II. There cannot be any doubt that weapons capable of vast and terrible destruction are readily available, if not capable of immediately killing the population of major cities, as the nuclear weapon is touted.
THE NUCLEAR AGE
After the discovery of the workings of the atom and the radioactive properties of various materials in the early 20th Century, nuclear science promised great things for the world. With the introduction of relatively harmless X-ray machines and microwave ovens, the future looked to be incredible, as everything would be run by nuclear power. It was expected that the secret of clean fusion power would also be discovered; the actual “power of the sun.” But with the new science came evil men and their lust for war and death. When the nuclear components were shown to be extremely dangerous, the question in the minds of those madmen was “how dangerous?” Nuclear bombs were tested, and endlessly retested, out in the open air. The result was the slow yet inevitable contamination of our planet.
The best way to generate the needed ingredients for nuclear bombs was to use nuclear power plants. The manmade chemical element plutonium(102) (which was named after the Devil) is created from the uranium waste found in spent fuel rods. This is why the world has been sold the lie that nuclear fission is the way of the future, so that war profiteers can get richer by building more and more nuclear bombs. Despite both the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi disasters showing how dangerous nuclear reactors actually are, the careless and criminal nuclear industry not only continues to thrive, but it has plans to greatly exceed the number of reactors throughout the world.
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All a nuclear reactor does is boil water, creating steam, which turns electric generators to produce electricity. They are nothing more than giant kettles, that have the side effect of producing “waste” of lethal water and radioactive elements including depleted uranium. There is no known way to dispose of the waste. As the amount of waste builds up and is stored in containers with limited life span, the end result will be the extinction of every living creature in the world. Nuclear scientists persist in imagining that one day a solution will be found, so there is nothing wrong with escalating the problem.
The widespread and utterly careless use of radioactive materials that began in the 20th Century, and the gradual poisoning of the entire world, has resulted in illness and death directly caused by radiation(103) and it increases with each generation. Many diseases are caused by radiation, and the one that takes the longest to appear is cancer. Heart disease, which accounts for 1 in 4 deaths, and respiratory failures, are also symptoms of nuclear radiation poisoning. Various radioactive elements attack different parts of the body. Cessium-137(104) binds to muscle, Iodine to the thyroid gland, Strontium to bone and DNA.
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In the year 1900 cancer was rare, at 7%. In the 1940s it was 1 in 16. In the 1970s it was 1 in 10. In 2014 it was 56%. Worldwide, 20,000 people die every day. 8 million people die every year. With cancer and heart disease rates going through the roof, the medical industry continues to claim that those illnesses have nothing to do with the saturation of nuclear radiation pollution in the world.
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Cancers directly caused by radiation poisoning can take years, or even decades, to develop. Nuclear radiation is like a modern plague; a silent killer that moves very slowly but cannot be stopped. Both the Justinian Plague and the Black Death lingered for several hundred years, but nuclear radiation is capable of remaining active for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years.
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A cure for cancer was reportedly found in the 1930s,(105) but that cure was suppressed from the world so that it could be used only for the world’s elitists, while the ordinary people, the so-called “useless eaters,”(106) would die off. Many elitists live to ripe old ages, and it is very rare for any of them to die from cancer. The official “cures,” chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery, are more likely to cause death than the cancer itself, but that is what the general population have been given for a choice, and they have become part of the multibillion-dollar health industry.
Since 1945 there was an insane amount of open-air nuclear weapons testing. At Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, American soldiers were ordered to observe the tests at close proximity, so their health (and deaths) could be studied. Soviet scientists tested entire towns without their knowledge. The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (the “Polygon”), which is now located in Kazakhstan, tested 460 weapons, starting in 1961, without telling the local population.
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There were many close calls to disaster in the USSR’s nuclear programme, but they were all covered up, as they tried to do with Chernobyl. The Kyshtym disaster was an explosion at a plutonium production site on 20 September 1957, with the radioactive fallout rated the third worst in history, behind Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl.
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At Windscale, Great Britain, there were two nuclear reactors built only for the purpose of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. A fire on 10 October 1957 resulted in a dangerous release of nuclear material. Desperate for more manpower, the local police commissioned the help of people who happened to be in a picture theatre watching a movie. These people were given no protective clothing and were not informed about the extreme danger, as they were asked to handle radioactive steel rods.
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The United States government’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, located in Simi Valley, California, had a secret history of radioactive accidents and fire. Despite its location of only 48 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, the public was never informed of the radiation dangers.
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Showing how criminal they are, the United States military frequently uses depleted uranium in warfare, since it explodes very easily. The resulting radioactive fallout causes widespread death, or lifelong illness, to any civilians who happen to be near, and also to the American soldiers. The survivors of the radiation exposure will have mutation in their genes, which will result in passing on genetic mutations to their children.
In 1945 two bombs were criminally dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The American government wanted to see how many innocent people could be killed by such weapons. At the time, Japan wanted to surrender and end the war, since they were about to be invaded by Soviet forces from the north. The Americans ignored any talk of surrender until the bomb tests were carried out.(107)
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As an intriguing aside, there is an odd connection with the Roman Catholic Church and this slaughter of innocent Japanese civilians by the 1945 bombing. Japan was a nation where the Jesuit missionaries were unable to get a foothold. From the 1540s, there were only a small number of converts to Catholicism. The Japanese authorities learned that the Jesuits were attempting to infiltrate their government, so the Order was officially banned in 1620. That did not stop the Jesuits, of course, and in 1945 they had an established church in Hiroshima. This church, it was claimed, not only survived the blast from the “Little Boy” bomb that razed Hiroshima and instantly killed 70,000 people, but four priests inside the church survived, without any signs of radiation sickness for the rest of their lives. They claimed to have been only 3 kilometres (2 miles) from ground zero, where every other person died immediately. After the attack, these same Jesuit priests made a name for themselves by helping the community recover, and spread Catholicism by reminding everyone that the American President Harry S. Truman, who ordered the attack, was a Protestant. One of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, went on to become the Jesuit General from 1965 to 1983.
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Revelation 16:8-9 says, “the sun . . . was given to it to scorch people with fire, and the people were scorched with great heat.” Not only has this happened with nuclear weapons, which recreates a level of heat equivalent to the sun, the careless and widespread use of radiation will cause many more people throughout the world to die. Nuclear radiation is in the air, the water, and the soil. From the ocean, it is in the rain, which means it is in the plants, and therefore in the food chain. It will eventually kill every living thing in the world. There exists no technology to reverse this damage. The only hope for this contamination of the world is through heavenly intervention, which will surely soon come.
Footnotes
102. The inhaling of less than 1 millionth of a gram of plutonium can induce cancer. Every nuclear reactor has 250 kilograms (500 pounds) of plutonium in it.
103. Children are ten to twenty times more vulnerable than adults. Females are more sensitive to radiation poisoning than males and no one can explain why.
104. Both Cessium-137 and Cessium-134 do not naturally exist in nature, and once they in the human body they can build up.
105. In 1930 Dr. Royal Rife proved that if microbes inside cancer cells are killed then the cells revert back to normal ones. In 1939 Rife’s lab was destroyed by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). His cancer cure rate was 100%. The Rife machine can still be used today to cure cancer. The AMA had been suppressing natural cures since 1905. By the 1930s many labs were destroyed, materials confiscated (stolen), and doctors were either arrested, silenced, or murdered. In 1940 lung cancer was discovered to be caused by cigarettes, so the AMA had doctors endorse smoking. In 1970 Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, who is still working today despite misinformation against him, found a cancer cure. His clinic was raided in 1977 by the FDA. In the 2010s Google, YouTube, and other social media sites purged videos of cancer cures. By 2012 the National Cancer Institute (NCA) was spending $1.2 billion per year to suppress natural cures.
106. One of the many disgusting things to emerge from the mouth of the globalist leach in human form Henry Kissinger. It appears to be a phrase used by the elitists against the common people.
107. Many other cities in Japan were firebombed at the same time, a fact that the official history books fail to mention.
THREE WOES
Revelation 8:13
(8:13) And I saw and heard an eagle flying in mid-air, saying with a loud voice, “Woe! Woe! Woe! To those residing on the earth, from the remaining trumpet sounds of the three angels being about to sound a trumpet blast!”
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Isaiah 5:20
“Woe to the world for offences! For it is necessary for the offences to come, yet woe to that person through whom the offence comes!”
Matthew 18:7
The Three Woes serve as proof of the Parallel system of interpretation. We were told that there are Three Woes to come, but only two of them were specifically described by John. This is because the Third Woe refers to the Second Parousia, which is the Seventh Judgement of the Lamb. The Second Woe (11:14) refers to the Rapture of the True Church.(108) It is not like this “eagle” was unaware that six Bowls were still to come after the Trumpets. The Bowls represent the same events as the Trumpets, and the fifth of those was called the First Woe.
The first four judgements have been interpreted as four momentous events to strike the world, and it is the same with the next two. The fifth judgement was an event that shook the world to its core, and its name still evokes dread today.
Footnote
108. As discussed with Revelation 11:7-13.
FIFTH JUDGEMENT
Revelation 9:1-11 ∥ 16:10-11
(9:1) And the fifth angel sounded a trumpet blast. And I saw a star, having fallen from the sky to the earth, and the key to the pit of the Abyss was given to it. (9:2) And he opened up the pit of the Abyss, and smoke like that from a large furnace went up out of the pit. And the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. (9:3) And out of the smoke came forth locusts on the earth. And authority was given to them as the scorpions have authority on the earth. (9:4) And it was said to them to not wrong the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. (9:5) And it was given to them that they should not kill them, but that they be tortured for five months; and their torture is like a scorpion when it stings a person. (9:6) And in those days people will seek death but they will not find it, and they will long to die but death will escape them. (9:7) The resemblance of the locusts was like horses having been prepared for war, and on their heads were something like wreaths, as gold; and they had faces like people, (9:8) and they had hair like women’s hair, and teeth like those of lions; (9:9) and they had breastplates like iron breastplates, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariot horses running to war. (9:10) And they have tails like scorpions, and stings were in their tails, and their authority is to wrong people for five months. (9:11) And they have a king over them, the angel of the Abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek the name he has is Apollyon.(109)
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(16:10) And the fifth poured out his bowl on the throne of the wild beast, and its kingdom darkened and they gnawed their tongues because of their anguish, (16:11) and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their anguish and ulcers, and they did not repent of their works.(110)
The LORD will not allow the Destroyer to enter your houses and strike you.
Exodus 12:23b
For a nation has come up against my land, strong and without number, with the teeth of a lion, and the fangs of a lioness.
Joel 1:6
This vision signalled the appearance of a spiritual entity called Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek, which in English means Destroyer. Five months was the average time of a locust plague in the Middle East, and in this prophecy something like locusts were released into the world. Smoke caused the sun and the air to be darkened. When compared with the parallel vision in 16:10, we see that the darkness is repeated, as too is the anguish, but the second vision added the information that people will receive ulcers.
For such a highly descriptive passage, it seems reasonable to expect the fulfilment to be of great importance to the world and have a lasting impact. This vision has surely been fulfilled in the 14th Century, when most of the world, from China to the Middle East, and all the way through to Europe, even to Iceland, was placed under the utmost terror.
Footnotes
109. Historicists interpret the “locusts” as the Saracens, who were Muslims who fought against the Eastern Roman Empire over the years AD 612-763. The 150 years of that time is seen as the fulfilment of the “five months”, since five 30-day months comes to 150 days, and Historicists change days for years. The “king over them” is seen as Mohammad. Futurists see the “star having fallen from the sky” as symbolic of a man, presumably the Antichrist, who will arise during the last seven years. The “locusts” are demons who will be active at that time. Idealists see the entire Fifth Trumpet as symbolic of all demonic activity. Preterists present the strangest argument for what this passage means, and state that during the First Jewish War some Jews became demonised!
110. Historicists see “the throne of the Beast” as the Vatican, specifically when Pope Pius VI was removed by the French, although that did not stop the Roman Catholic Church from continuing to be blasphemous. Idealists and Futurists offer nothing at all. Preterists seize on what they see as a reference to Rome and believe that this describes the death of Nero and the Caesars who immediately followed him. The problem with such an explanation is that none of the Caesars at that time died of ulcers. Known as the Year of the Four Emperors, Nero, Galba, and Otho, died by the sword, while Vitellius died at the hands of a mob.
THE BLACK DEATH
The Black Death was similar to the Justinian Plague of the 6th Century, in that it came out of nowhere and killed around half of the population. There is good evidence that the disease originated from space. Historians have routinely discarded the many eye-witness accounts of unnatural events at the time of the plague, such as meteor or comet strike, and strange ill-smelling clouds or gas. Since this does not fit the modern narrative, we are repeatedly told that the plague was spread by fleas and rats, like it is a proven fact. This explanation fails to provide us with an origin for the disease, and the actual evidence shows that fleas and rats could not have been the cause. There was not one single report of any dead rats, and the streets should have been filled with them, as well as the roads between villages. The plague travelled more than twice as fast as any other disease ever known, and it has never been explained how this could have been done by rats. It was recorded to travel at nearly 2 kilometres (1 mile) a day, and yet there were other reports of it moving at 12 kilometres (8 miles) a day. The plague also struck the island nation of Iceland, while most of Poland remained untouched. The famous story that it was spread by infected corpses that were flung over the walls of a city under siege is pure fiction. Fleas do not live on dead bodies, since there is no blood for them to feed on. Most telling, is that a recent study of the bubonic disease has shown that it is not infectious, and the mortality rate is very low. The only explanation that is supported by the available facts and eye-witness accounts is that the Black Death plague was not bubonic and that it was airborne.
The natural world in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries was a place of torment. There were devastating floods, famines caused by widespread crop failure, swarms of locusts, continual earthquakes, increased thunder and hail storms, and volcanic activity. Probably related to these unsettling disasters, there were also many comets. Seen in 1347, Comet Negra was commonly associated with the Black Death, but there were regular comet sightings for fifty years before the main European outbreak. In 1294 there were “lightning and meteors” seen in Ireland. China had “fireballs” in 1295. Russia had “fireballs” in 1299. Lower Egypt had an earthquake that lasted for 15 minutes in 1303. China had an earthquake estimated to be at over 8.0 on the Richter scale.
The Chronicon Estense of the 14th Century stated: “Between Cathay and Persia there rained a vast rain of fire; falling in flakes like snow and burning up mountains and plains and other lands, with men and women; and then arose vast masses of smoke; and whosoever beheld this died within the space of half a day; and likewise any man or woman who looked upon those who had seen this.”
A comet may also have caused the Little Ice Age, that began in the 14th Century and lasted into the 15th Century. A second, and longer, cool period happened from the year 1600 to 1870.
The Black Death hit the world in two places. The first people to suffer were those in China in about the year 1331. It is impossible to know exactly how many people died, but it was probably far more than those in Europe; perhaps over 100 million, or maybe even twice that number. The plague was accompanied by famine, earthquake, locust swarms, and even a mountain that collapsed enough to create a chasm. By 1338 it was in central Asia, 1345 in Russia, 1346 in India, and 1347 in Constantinople. It triggered the collapse of the Mongol Empire, the most powerful empire in the world. This stage of the Black Death is seldom mentioned, due to a lack of eye witness accounts.
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe showed that the European plague began in 1338 in the Mediterranean Sea, near Italy and Greece, and spread outward from there over the next few years.(111) This was the secondary outbreak. It did not arrive from the east, as is commonly repeated, but from the Mediterranean. By December 1348 it was in Northern Africa, Spain, France, and southern England. In 1352 Moscow received the second outbreak, seven years after the first.
Physicians were helpless in finding a cure, and could do nothing but comfort the dying, and hope that they would be counted with the few who recovered. 13th Century medicine could not cope, but 21st Century medicine would have had no chance either. The plague struck anyone, regardless of social standing; the poor and rich alike. There was no logic to how it moved. Some villages were wiped out, and others were completely spared. People who isolated themselves, either in their houses, or far off in the mountains, died in the same percentages as those who lived amongst the corpses.
Revelation 9:2: “smoke like that from a large furnace went up out of the pit, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit,” is similar to the testimony of people seeing “fire from the sky” and dark clouds or gas. Revelation 9:3: “out of the smoke came forth locusts,” is strikingly the same as the descriptions of actual swarms of locusts. Revelation 9:11: “they have a king over them, the angel of the Abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek the name he has is Apollyon” (Destroyer). The Black Death had a well-known figure representing Death, the skeleton in a hooded cloak and carrying a scythe. This horrific figure was so powerful an image that it remains to this day.
Revelation 16:10, “the fifth poured out his bowl on the throne of the wild beast,” was the European plague that first began near Rome, the traditional throne of the pope, and his kingdom darkened with the Black Death. The people blasphemed the God of heaven by worshipping the false gods of Catholicism because of their anguish and ulcers from the plague, and did not repent of their works of religious ritual.
Footnote
111. Our Place in the Cosmos (1993).
FIRST WOE
Revelation 9:12
(9:12) The first woe has passed; lo, two woes still come after these things.
The previous five judgements have largely followed the same pattern, that a deadly and invisible disease killed many people, and led to the demise of established and powerful empires. The judgements were either associated with what was man-made, or what probably came from space through comet debris. The Sixth Judgement was entirely different in its fulfilment, in that it was caused by the actions of men, and saw the destruction of many empires.
SIXTH JUDGEMENT
Revelation Revelation 9:13-19 ∥ 16:12
(9:13) And the sixth angel sounded a trumpet blast. And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar in the presence of God, (9:14) saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Loosen the four angels, those having been bound at the great river Euphrates.” (9:15) And the four angels, those having been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were loosened that they should kill a third of mankind. (9:16) And the number of the armies of the cavalry was two hundred million, and I heard their number. (9:17) And in this way in the vision I saw the horses and those sitting on them having fiery-red breastplates, even jacinth and sulphur; and the heads of the horses were like heads of lions, and from their mouths proceeded fire and smoke and sulphur. (9:18) By these three a third of mankind were killed from the fire and from the smoke and from the sulphur coming out of their mouths; (9:19) for their authority is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like snakes, having heads, and with them they do wrong.(112)
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(16:12) And the sixth poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings from the rising of the sun.(113)
Surely these will come from afar, and look, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of the Sinim.
Isaiah 49:12
“These from the land of the Sinim” means the people of Sin, which is where we get the word China. At the time of Isaiah, in the 8th Century BC, the State of Qin (the Latinised form of the word Sinae) was under the Zhou dynasty, but in 221 BC it became the Qin dynasty. When the parallel text is compared, the phrase “kings from the rising of the sun,” makes it obvious that China was referenced by Isaiah. He foretold a time when people from China would make their way west, the same as in Revelation. There should not be any doubt about how this was fulfilled.
Footnotes
112. Historicists see the Sixth Trumpet fulfilled in the battles of the Tartar horsemen (but not 200 million of them), who were a collection of Turkic ethnic groups, over the years 1055-1453, ending in the fall of Constantinople. Futurists explain it as an enormous army, even of the literal number, from China, who decide to conquer Israel during the last seven years. Preterists and Idealists provide no explanation at all.
113. Historicists see the mention of the Euphrates as having something to do with the Turkish empire. The continued silence of Futurists, Idealists, and Preterists about what any of the bowls mean, is deafening.
THE MONGOL EMPIRE
Only in recent years has the story of the origin of the man known as Genghis Khan (1162-1227) been revealed to the world.(114) His name was Temüjin, and as a boy he lived in poverty, and briefly slavery. As a man he united the fearsome warrior tribes of the Mongolian steppe into the most formidable fighting force ever known until that point in history. They were a warrior people, who knew how to survive in very harsh conditions, splintered into many rival tribes and clans, who travelled on fast horses, and were masters of the bow and arrow. Not only did Temüjin unite his tribe, he quickly rose in power to unite all the tribes of the region. Temüjin then took the title of Genghis Khan, meaning Great and Fearless King.
A famous quote attributed to Genghis Khan was, “I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” Sometime before the year 1200, prominent Mongolian shaman Teb Tengri declared the words, “I have given the whole surface of the Earth to Temüjin and to his sons.” There is no reason to doubt that this was a special word of prophecy from God, for that was exactly what happened. The Mongols took whatever land they wanted, and no one could stop them.
There were probably only about 700,000 Mongols in the 12th Century, and the number of warriors would not have exceeded 100,000. With such small numbers, they would go on to kill more than 40 million people and rule over 100 million. They began by taking on the powerful Song Dynasty in China, and then establish a dynasty of their own, the Yuan. They would go on to claim a staggering 16% of the world’s total land mass. Genghis Khan himself conquered more than twice the territory taken by Alexander the Great.(115)
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The fullest extent to the Mongol Empire was achieved in only thirty years, and its warriors were known for their great cruelty, which caused widespread fear. No one had ever seen an army like it. Their scouts killed anyone they met. Behind them came the Advance Guard of 30,000, led by Genghis Khan’s best men. They destroyed city and countryside alike, salted fields, cut down orchards, blocked wells and canals. Any city, people, or king who opposed them was wiped off the maps. Theirs was a reign of absolute terror, as they slaughtered every living thing that opposed them, and laid waste wherever they went.
Genghis Khan was a master of organising his army. He shunned tradition and did not select his generals according to social status, but according to ability. What made him the greatest conqueror in history was his understanding of how to best defeat each enemy he encountered, and he was utterly ruthless. They were masters of deceit, and understood propaganda. They would make an enemy passive with a peace deal, and then think nothing of breaking it and killing them all.
Before Genghis Khan attacked a city, he offered them peace under Mongolian rule. They treated the conquered and subservient people well, regardless of religion, and let them carry on with their lives in peace. That led to some people making the mistake of confusing their tolerance for weakness. If a city rebelled, the Mongols would inflict the harshest possible punishment. Every living thing in the city would be killed, and the city would be totally destroyed.
The Mongol style of fighting, with their advanced skills and tactics, would have decimated any army in history up until that time. They were always outnumbered, but that made no difference. The Mongolian bow was the most formidable weapon ever seen in the world at that time. Their bows had a special inward curve, which was difficult to master, but it made their arrows travel an astonishing 450 metres at 300 km/hr, capable of piercing steel armour. They were all expertly trained horse archers, and they fired their arrows whilst standing up on the stirrups and riding at speed. They could shoot their arrows from all angles, including directly behind them as their horses galloped.
They used every trick they could think of to gain their advantage, including disguising themselves as merchants, or setting up a night camp with many more fires than warriors. They were masters of psychological warfare, even letting people escape so they would tell others what they saw and spread fear. The few times they kept captives was only so they could be used as human shields, or human moat-fill for their siege weapons to roll over. Everything was used to their advantage. They had no interest in chivalry. They were there to win and nothing else.
Once their enemy was conquered, the Mongols singled out from the survivors the specialists and experts in everything from science, to administration, to the arts. They quickly merged the war technology of each land with their own, to make themselves stronger. While other conquerors were content to convert the new land and people into images of themselves, the Mongols studied each new culture and took what they could use to better their own. As each nation fell to them, they increased in knowledge and power. This accumulated knowledge gave them unprecedented superiority.
With three or four horses to each warrior, they could cover about 120 kilometres a day. They travelled light and without a supply train, preferring the winter months so they would use less water. A city protected by a river was easily defeated, as the Mongols simply waited until the river froze, to allow them to walk their horses right up to the walls.
They easily defeated much bigger armies, and destroyed cities with tactics that were sheer genius. They had engineers with them rather than machines of war, and any trees they found were cut down and turned into what they needed. When attacking a city they used catapults with pots full of burning liquid and devices that would explode. They built giant versions of their crossbows. If they found defenders stationed on the tops of walls, they simply constructed mobile towers higher than the walls, to allow them to be the ones to shoot down.
Their most formidable war strategy was honed to a fine art. They would act like they were defeated and start to panic and then retreat. Thrilled at the sight of gaining the upper hand over such great warriors, the defenders would turn attackers and chase after them. The Mongols would then lure their unsuspecting opponents into an area they had selected before the battle, where they would ambush and massacre every last one of them. They were even prepared to engage in this faux retreat for as long as two weeks, covering hundreds of kilometres, until they had their enemy exactly where they wanted.
Of all the greatest generals in the history of warfare, they had three: Subutai, Jebe, and Muqali. No other general has ever conquered as much land as Subutai, who at one time successfully controlled two simultaneous battles about 500 kilometres apart, in Poland and Hungary. When Subutai was scouting the terrified land of France, and with it the rest of Europe, he was forced to return home, due to the death of the Great Khan Ogedei, in 1241. Subutai and the Mongols never returned, since Europe was in very poor condition and had little to offer them. As great as Subutai was, his contemporaries regarded Muqali as the best Mongolian general. Muqali never lost a single battle, and Genghis Khan trusted him enough to make him his right-hand-man.
The Mongols totally destroyed the Khwarzmid Empire, that came to power in the late 11th Century AD. It was the strongest empire in the world at that time, with the biggest and richest cities. No other army had ever before sacked Moscow, and they did it during the winter. Jerusalem was taken in the year 1300, and they ruled there for an estimated four months, February to May.
Given his astonishing battle record, and had they planned to take Europe, Subutai would have made short work of the brutal Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Had the Mongols reached Rome, which at that time was in a rundown condition, they would have looked with disdain at the squalid living conditions in the Papal States. The Mongols practised religious toleration, and they would have been incensed if they saw a haughty man claiming to be God on earth, living in decadent wealth, and demanding that they worship him. If the Mongols had followed their usual pattern of answering such defiance, the Roman Catholic Church would have ceased to exist. St Peters would have been plundered of its gold and riches, and torn down, and every single priest would have been murdered. The destruction of the Vatican would need to wait until the Second Parousia.
The real first world war was not in 1914, but was fought by the Mongols from 1211 to 1264. Genghis Khan changed the world’s military tactics, cultures, and technology. His rise happened at the same time as the ascendancy of the Antichrist Pope Innocent III. When Innocent III became pope, Temüjin was busy attacking the Tartars. When Innocent III called for his grand Lateran Council, the Mongols were finishing off the Tangut Empire of Northern China.
The Europeans believed that the Mongols came from Hell. A Benedictine monk, Matthew Paris (1200-1259), wrote that the Mongols were, “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan . . . like demons loosed from Tartarus.” He confused the Tartars with Tartarus, the Greek name for Hell, but his thought was clear, that he considered them to be not from this world, and demonic in nature.
After the death of Genghis Khan, the empire divided into four: the Yuan Dynasty in China, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Ilkhanate in Persia, and the Golden Horde in Russia. These were under the rule of the spiritual powers described in Revelation 9:15 as, “four angels, those having been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were loosened that they should kill a third of mankind,” and 16:12, “the kings from the rising of the sun.” The Mongols wore protective helmets and armour, and so too did their horses. Revelation 9:17: “the horses and those sitting on them having fiery-red breastplates.”
According to Jake Weatherford in Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004), the Mongols were the first to use gunpowder in battle as a rapid blast. Gunpowder was previously used as a slow burn, but the Mongols added oxygen to cause ignition, and thus an explosion. They then learned how to launch projectiles with the explosion, and iron tubes were built for that task. Smaller tubes had wooden handles, and the larger had wheels. The larger tubes fired cases containing shrapnel or more explosives. They also developed small explosive devices that could be thrown with the hand. In short, the Mongols were the first to invent guns, cannons, and even grenades. The reaction from any army in the Dark Ages attempting to defend themselves from such an attack is unimaginable. To them it would have been exactly like Revelation 9:17-18: “From their mouths proceeded fire and smoke and sulphur. By these three a third of mankind were killed from the fire and from the smoke and from the sulphur coming out of their mouths.”(116)
Footnotes:
114. The Secret History of the Mongols was written after 1227 but became lost for centuries, only to then be hidden from the Mongol people by their Communist overlords. Written in a lost code, the book could only be gradually deciphered and translated, either by brave Mongolian scholars putting their lives at risk (and many were harshly persecuted), or by scholars from elsewhere who had little knowledge of Mongolia. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism did the story of the incredible leader, and the empire that he built, be fully restored to Mongolian people, and the world.
115. Genghis Khan 12,587,000 square kilometres (4,860,000 square miles), Alexander the Great 5,646,000 square kilometres (2,180,000 square miles).
116. It is rare to find any reference to Genghis Khan or the Mongol Empire in any book about Revelation, even by Historicists. If either one is mentioned, it is usually relegated to footnotes.
NO REPENTANCE
Revelation 9:20-21 ∥ 16:13-14
(9:20) And the rest of mankind who were not killed by these calamities did not repent of the works of their hands, that they will not stop prostrating themselves in homage to demons and idols of gold and silver and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. (9:21) And they did not repent of their murders, of their sorceries, of their fornications or of their thefts.
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(16:13) And I saw three impure spirits, similar to frogs, from the mouth of the dragon, and from the mouth of the wild beast, and from the mouth of the pseudo-prophet. (16:14) For they are spirits of demons doing signs, going to all the kings of the whole world, to gather them to war on that great day of the Almighty God.
LORD, do not your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain; you crushed them, but they refused correction. They made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
Jeremiah 5:3
Dearly beloved, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits, if they are of God; because many pseudo-prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1
These verses mark the beginning of the Seventh Judgement of the Lamb. The world that rejected the Gospel and would not repent and believe the truth, but would rather follow the lies of the Devil (the dragon), his kingdom (the wild beast), and the pope (the pseudo-prophet). The world ignored the judgements and continued on as if they never happened. Through plagues, war, and deception, the world refused to repent, and preferred to remain in sin and removal from God’s grace. They continued to mock his name, and invent false gods, modern myths, and worthless philosophies, to give themselves comfort. Blasphemy will continue to be spoken throughout the world right up until the time of the Second Parousia, when the kings and armies of the world will gather together in an attempt to prevent Jesus from returning to claim his throne in Jerusalem. There will be a Day of Reckoning, the Battle of Armageddon.
The first section of Revelation (1:1-9:21) ended here, but the second (10:1-16:21) continued for a little more. The second section depicted the Second Parousia three times (11:7-15, 14:14-20, and 16:15-21) which parallels with the third section (19:1-21). For the sake of keeping to a more chronological order, the third and fourth sections need to be addressed in Part Five. This will show more details about the Devil’s kingdom, and why people will try to confront the Lord when he returns.