Prophecy 01

And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great, Revelation 16:18-21.

Verses eighteen and nineteen announce the occurrence of great worldwide earthquake activity, and then go on to describe some of its universal (cities of the nations fell) and local (the great city was divided into three parts) effects. Verse twenty then gives a visual observation of what is producing the effects of verses eighteen and nineteen: the visible movement of the islands and mountains atop the great shifting crust of the earth. This great shifting of the crust producing the earthquake activity of verses eighteen and nineteen will simultaneously be creating the phenomenon described in verse twenty-one.

The “hail” of verse twenty-one is not made of ice. These tal­ent approximated chunks of matter are hot volcanic rocks thrown high in the heaven where the birds fly to eventually come down on sinful mankind as a plague of fire. There are three heavens portrayed in the Scriptures: the heaven where the birds fly (atmosphere); the heaven where the sun, other stars, and the planets exists; and the Heaven where God dwells. Verse twenty-one is an observation of those regions of the heav­ens containing this planet’s atmosphere. The King James trans­lators in 1611 correctly supplied the word “stone” rather than “hailstone” to describe the true contextual meaning 6f the Greek word chalaza.

The word “hail” appears only four times in the entire New Testament, and all four appearances are limited to the book of Revelation. By a process of abridgment the basic meaning of the word chalaza has been lost in a great surge of definition by com­mon usage, which began about the time of the Civil War. The original Greek lexicons of the New Testament were monstrous­ly large, far too enormous to conveniently carry from class to class or place to place. For this reason a historical process of abridgment has gradually reduced the first lexicons to about one fourth of their original size. In order to shorten lexicons to their present day volumes, it was necessary to select those seemingly non-essential Greek words with long definitions for particularly close trimming and chalaza was just such a word; a word appearing only four times in the Scriptures and pos­sessing a lengthy variety of meanings.

In today’s modern era of rapid technological development, vast improvements in the area of creature comfort have slowly given rise to what is now the generally accepted idea: new is better than old. This, of course, is true in most aspects of learn­ing: knowledge of today is better than that of yesteryear. But this idea must be rejected when considering the true meaning of a biblical word. The farther back in time one is able to track the meaning of a word, the closer he or she comes to what the writer meant when he wrote it. In paragraphs that follow, the history of the word chalaza will be unveiled back to the most authoritative lexicons ever written

Most preachers and commentators after the Civil War began to teach uniformly that the “hail” of Revelation was in the form of ice. Primarily because of this common usage, virtually all new post-Civil War publications simply abridged away the orig­inal basic meaning of the word chalaza. All of the following pop­ular reference publications were abridged in part from post-Civil War sources, and merely list chalazaas “hail”: Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, The Analytical Greek Lexicon, and Strong’s Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament.

Now, please carefully examine the following definitions extracted from pre-Civil War sources from which the post-Civil War sources were abridged.

1857—A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testamentby E. W. Bullinger.

1843—A Greek-English Lexicon compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, based on the work of Franz Passow in his lexicon of 1819.

The writings of the early Greeks clearly reveal that the usage of chalazawas not limited to a frozen ball of ice that fell from the heavens. The word chalaza was used by Sophocles, Aristotle, Athenaeus, Theophrastus, Orphica, and Plutarchus to describe the following things:

(1) a knot, (2) a hard lump, (3) a pelting shower of anything, (4) a bituminous rock, (5) a stone that resembles a hailstone, and (6) anything that falls from the heavens.

The 1819 lexicon by Franz Passow is recognized as the grandfather of modern day lexicons even though it was based on the 1797 lexicon of Johann Gottlob Schneider. The noun cha­laza comes from the verb chalao, which means “to let down from above.” Chalaza is whatever happens to be let down from above. Passow’s 1819 definition states its full, basic meaning best:

The four occurrences of chalaza in Revelation do not picture balls of ice being let down, but rather stones of fire from mas­sive volcanic eruptions produced by a fantastic shifting of the plates. A further validation of this statement may be made by an interpretation of Revelation 8:7:

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

Please note in figure 3 that many of the great cracks in the crust of the earth pass across large segments of the earth’s dry land mass. What John observes as recorded in verse seven is the opening of these plate boundaries to allow massive showers of hot, burning pyroclastic material to shower down upon the dry land masses. The word chalaza appears as “hail” in this verse, but this chalaza is not made of ice, for ice does not mix with the literal Greek word used for “fire” (pur),nor does it burn up trees or green grass. Because God sent a plague of hailstones and fire against the Egyptians in the Old Testament as one of the ten plagues, most commentaries link this verse in Revela­tion to that event and thereby identify the fire as lightning. I can see the reason for this common interpretation, but I hearti­ly disagree with it. The reason for my disagreement is dramat­ically portrayed by what appears in the preceding two verses of chapter eight.

And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thundering, and lightning, and an earthquake.

And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up, Revelation 8:5-7.

Please note in verse five that the word “lightning” appears. This is a translation of the Greek word aetrapai, which means “vivid flashes of static electricity,” a very common phenomenon produced by volcanic eruptions. Why am I so sure that the word “fire” in verse seven is not lightning? Because an entirely dif­ferent word from astrapaiis used in verse seven as God’s Holy Spirit causes John to use the word pur, which means, “a visible heat flame evolved by ignition and combustion.” The Holy Spirit would not have caused John to use astrapai for light­ning” in verse five and then suddenly cause him to use an unre­lated word like pur for lightning in verse seven. John reported exactly what he saw. He saw lightning in verse five and he saw fire in verse seven.

The Greek word for “blood” in verse seven is haimati,which can mean any one of three different things: (1) real blood, (2) the blood-red color taken on by an object, (3) any form of liquid hav­ing a blood-red color. The Hebrews had a habit of identifying any color from orange to reddish black as “blood.” The following passages from the Old Testament show that the word “blood” was often used in a figurative sense.

Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidney of wheat; and thou didet drink the pure blood of the grape,Deuteronomy 32:14.

And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood:

And they said, This is blood: the kings are surely slain, and they have smitten one another: now therefore, Moab, to the spoil, 2 Kings 3:22,23.

Certainly grapes do not contain real blood, but many vari­eties contained a blood-red liquid. The Hebrew was familiar with the many various shades of blood from the wounds of the battlefields. They had seen blood from the heart area of an extremely light reddish hue and blood from the femur veins that was almost blackish. Not only is there a tremendous dif­ference in the shades of blood within each individual, but also differences between individuals. Anytime that John observed a color from orange to deep dark red he simply reported the color as “blood.” You will not find the color orange in the Scriptures. In Revelation 6:12 we are not told that the moon will actually turn into real blood, but rather that it will take on a blood-red color (orange to deep red) from volcanic lithometers in the lower stratosphere.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, Revelation 6:12.

In Revelation 8:5-7 John observed an angel take fire from the heavenly altar and then cast it into (eis) the earth to produce the following phenomena: (1) voices (phonai—literally, sounds), (2) thunderings, (3) lightnings and (4) an earthquake. The sounds that John heard were the terrifying sounds generated by movement along the pressurized plate boundaries. The thun­derings were from massive thunderstorms formed by wide­spread uplifting of moisture in hot convective currents above vast volcanic eruptions. The lightning he observed was from vivid static electricity produced by both thunderstorm and the volcanically induced heat component of friction. As a meteorol­ogist and physical scientist, I assure you that sounds, thunder­ ing, lightning and earthquakes are common occurrences in all major volcanic eruptions. And may I also assure you that the sounds, thunderings, lightning and earthquakes occur in conjunction with, and are followed by, chalaza, pur andhaimati. The word translated as “mingled” among these seven frightening phenomena is memigmena,and it means to be mixed in with something, as one would dip a garment in red dye.

Now, armed with all this information, let us carefully exam­ine what John saw in verse seven. He saw chalaza (something let go, let fall). He observed objects being cast upon the earth. These objects were pur (fiery) and they looked like they had been dipped in haimati (a blood-red liquid). The objects were fiery volcanic rocks that looked as if they had been dipped in blood, and that blood-red liquid was lava. This is a perfect figu­rative description of a literal volcanic eruption.

The linguistics of verses five and seven describe massive vol­canic eruptions, but the effect on the dry land is the final proof of the pudding. Please note that all the green grass is destroyed, but only one-third of the trees. Why not all of the trees? Because in all major volcanic eruptions the grass is destroyed over a vast area due to the shallowness of its roots, but only the trees in the immediate vicinity of the eruption are destroyed due to the much greater depth of their tap roots. In virtually all-volcanic eruptions you will find within the same area that all the green grass is destroyed, but only about one-third of the trees are killed, those being the trees nearest the volcanic cone.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood: 

And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the. ships were destroyed, Revelation 8:7-9.

In the previous chapter a lengthy discourse of verse seven was given; a discourse portraying the terrible effects of volcanic spillage on dry land masses. I have attempted to build a case that God will move the massive tectonic plates of figure 3 to pro­duce unbelievable dry land eruptions. But the shifting of the plates would most assuredly not only affect the land, for most of these great cracks exist on the world’s ocean and sea floors. John’s eyes had been fixed on the horrifying burning of the earth’s greenery (verse seven), but as he watched the land scene the underwater volcanic activity remained hidden from his view. It is therefore only natural that the dry land events were reported before the water events.

In order to correctly interpret verse eight, one must under­stand what the expression “as it were” means, and how it is used in relation to the subject and verb of the middle section of this verse. Many commentaries identify the great burning mountain as a meteorite that falls into the sea from heaven, but I will attempt to prove that this is not the case.

The expression “as it were” is one very small Greek word. That word is hos. Hos is a particle having a very wide variety of uses in the New Testament. At times it applies to the subject, at other times it applies to the verbal action, and sometimes it applies to both. Hos can be translated as “what looked like,” “it was as though,” “what seemed to be,” “it was as if,” “as it were,” etc.

The verbal action “was cast” Is a single Greek verb, eblethe. It expresses punctiliar action in past time and, as such, can be translated “had been cast.”

But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.

For I think that God hath set birth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

Now considering the usage of hos and eblethe in Revelation 8:8, let us carefully examine what John saw and how he report-. ed it:

And the second angel sounded, and as it were [thos] a great moun­tain burning with fire was cast [eblethe] into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood.

Hos (as it were) refers to both the subject (great burning mountain) and the verbal action eblethe (had been cast) that began at some point in time before John actually saw the sub­ject. John’s attention had been fixed on a horrible scene of fiery objects coming down upon the dry land masses of the world, destroying all the green grass and one-third of the trees. Suddenly the second trumpet shifted his eyes to the sea, and he beheld what looked like a great mountain on fire in the midst of the sea. John did not know where it came from, so he used the expression (hos) to tell us it was as if it had been cast into the sea. John did not see it cast into the sea, because the tense of the verb eblethe indicates the action that caused it to be in the midst of the sea occurred before John actually saw it there. What John saw is what you see in figure 5. The mountain had been cast into the sea from beneath, not from above as many commentaries assume. Not all commentaries take the falling meteor position. Among one of the more reputable that does not is the Expositor’s Greek Testament Volume five of this highly esteemed work provides the following information concerning Revelation 8:8 and the rest of the book of Revelation:

Volcanic phenomena… in the Egean archipelago are in the background of this description, and of others throughout the book; features such a the disturbance of islands and the mainland, show­ers of stones, earthquakes, the sun obscured by a black mist of ashes, and the moon reddened by volcanic dust, were the natural conse­quences of eruption in some submarine volcano, and Thera—adjoin­ing Patmos—was in a state of more or less severe eruption during the first century. All this suggested the hideous colours in which the final catastrophe was painted by the imagination of pious contem­poraries. In the eruption of 1573, the sea round Thera was tinted for twenty miles round, and even when the submarine volcano is quies­cent, ‘the sea in the immediate vicinity of the cone is of a brilliant orange colour, from the action of oxide of iron.” In 1707 a large rock suddenly appeared in the sea, during the eruption, and owing to noxious vapours ‘all fish in the harbour died.’

It is difficult to prove conclusively the case for volcanic erup­tions by linguistics alone, but the effects produced in the form of blood-red water that destroys aquatic life is a natural conse­quence of volcanic eruptions. There have been thousands of meteorites that have fallen into man’s water supplies for many years and yet not one case of poisoning has ever been validated. Meteors are not poisonous nor do they turn water a continuing red.

Please do not let the “orange” color mentioned in the quote from the Expositor’s Greek testament mislead you. You will not find the color “orange” in the entire Bible. One of the reasons the word “blood” appears so often in Revelation is that it figu­ratively covers a wide range of blood shades from orange to red­dish black. Ask any hematologist about the tremendous change in blood color found in various parts of the human anatomy.

There are three types of magma that burst onto the earth’s surface as blood-red lava, and basaltic magma has the highest iron content of the three, with virtually all oceanic eruptions being of the basaltic variety. If a piece of iron is left long enough in a glass of water it will turn the water a rusty red by oxida­tion If the water is heated the oxidation (rusting) will be accelerated. As the basaltic material makes contact with the ocean seawater its temperature is often in excess of six hundred degrees centigrade, and this produces fantastically accelerated oxidation of its iron content. In virtually all oceanic eruptions a blood-red shield is formed, and this shield is carried away from the source many miles by the currents of the sea. When coupled with the other chemical reactions associated with maritime volcanic eruptions, it acts like a smothering aerobic blanket on aquatic life as it spreads across the seas and oceans of the world.

God, who created all things and will use them to fulfill His prophecies, has also created life forms in the sea that can pro­duce dreadful effects. There are certain microscopic organisms that exist in the sea that can reproduce at fantastic rates. Under certain conditions these oceanic organisms have repro­duced to exhibit over sixty million in a single quart of seawater. They are deadly only under certain conditions which I shall describe later. As long as these organisms remain in a certain environmental temperature range there is no problem. They will remain absolutely harmless. In fact, if the organism is car­ried into a cold water zone by the currents of the ocean, God has so designed it that a protective crust forms around it, and the shield remains until it is carried back into a favorable temper­ature environment. But there is one thing that must never be performed on this organism: never heat the water. For if you heat the water above the orgamism’s normal temperature envi­ronment, the following quote from a standard biological text describes what will happen:

Under certain conditions it reproduces at a fantastic rate; sixty million have been counted ina single quart of seawater. The organ­ism tends to utilize the dissolved oxygen at a rate which creates an anaerobic condition. Thus aerobic organisms, such as fish, die. It also releases an airborne “poison gas” which irritates the human res­piratory tract and may cause coughing, sneezing and even shortness of breath.

During the red tide off the coast of Florida in 1952 and again in 1954 enormous numbers of fish died, and the shore was littered for miles with stinking fish.

Another dinoflagellate, Gonyauiox, also causes waters to appear a rusty red at times becaue of its great numbers. Gonyaulax catenel­la is known to have been the cause of disastrous poisoning in man. Several kinds of shellfish along the Pacific coast feed on them, thus making the shellfish poisonous for human consumption. In 1941 there were 346 cases of poisoning with 24 deaths. Since 1941 state laws forbid the gathering of shellfish during the season of the red waters. Experiments have shown the toxin (an alkaloid) to be about ten times as potent as strychnine, which is used for poisoning mice.

When God shifts the great tectonic plates, all the cracks on the ocean floors shown in figure 3 will open to produce long chains of oceanic eruptions as pictured in figure 5. As the magma begins to heat the oceans and seas of the world, many varieties of dinoflagellate will begin to reproduce at fantastic rates. As the heating spreads, the dinoflagellate will spread, both by formation and transportation by the currents of oceans and seas of the world. The sea will be turned red by both oxida­tion and organism secretion, both creations of God. The same God who created the process of oxidation and all organisms has also created the mechanism to slowly spread the blood-red shroud of poison across the oceans and seas of the world—the currents of the “seven seas” shown in figure 5A. By the time the last drop of the second vial has been poured out, all aquatic life in the oceans and seas will have been destroyed by this shield of death carried by the currents that daily move life through them.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood: and the third part of the creature. which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed, Revelation 8:8,9.

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea, Revelation 16:3.

And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed, Revelation 8:9.

The preceding chapters have continually added to the premise that God will destroy sinful mankind with the earth. This chapter, and those which follow, will continue to build upon that premise. The major contention of this premise is that God will move the massive tectonic plates shown in figure 3 approximately one to two feet during the last three and one-half years of the Tribulation Period. It is this destroying with the earth that will create the horrifying scenes described in Isaiah 29:6 and Luke 21:25.

Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire, Isaiah 29:6.

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring, Luke 21:25.

In Luke 21:25 the word translated wave is saiou, which means a particular type of wave. It means a wave that breaks on the shoreline, a wave of the surf. The nations of the world will be in great perplexity because of the roaring sound of the sea and surf. It is this phenomenon of sea and surf that will destroy one-third of the world’s shipping.

The claim has been made that unbelievably violent earth­quake and volcanic activity will be occurring along the area indicated by dashed lines of figure 3 during the last half of the Tribulation Period. Please note that most of these great cracks in the earth’s crust lie on the ocean and sea floors of the world. If I am correct about the earthquake and volcanic activity along these cracks, then I am positive that what I am about to describe will definitely occur.

There are many types of waves that exist on the ocean sur­face. The most common being those induced by the winds and tides of the earth. But the most horrifying of all waves that pound the shorelines of the world is not produced by wind or tide; it is the unbelievable tsunami produced by earthquake and volcanic eruption on the seafloor.

Tsunami are not “tidal waves.³ They are caused by undersea earthquakes or volcanoes and have killed millions of people down through the ages. Tsunami is the Japanese word for “storm wave.” The Alaska earthquake of 1964 produced the tsunami wave pattern shown in figure 6. As you can observe from the figure, it only took the tsunami four hours to move from the epicenter to Hawaii. Tsunami travel as fast as some jet aircraft. Tsunami can now be predicted so that appalling death tolls of yesteryear can be avoided. A network of seismic warning stations now functions across the Pacific Ocean to give early warning of an approaching tsunami.

As you can observe on the lower half of figure 6, a tsunami is generated when an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption causes a sudden downward movement of an earth block. The downward displacement of water above the block produces not a surface wave, but rather a wave which moves horizontally outward through the water from the bottom to the top. Tsunami cross the ocean as long low waves which seagoing vessels may not even notice. But as you may observe in figure 7, when the tsunami approaches the shoreline the energy of the wave is con­fined in shallower and shallower water. Tsunami have been known to rise to heights in excess of two hundred fifty feet. The increase in tsunami occurrences, during the past 190 years, is made evident in figure 8. When a tsunami crashes against a coastline it destroys everything in its path, often up to half a mile inland.

Shipping on the open sea is virtually unaffected by a tsunami, but woe unto the ship that is caught in port. There is not a ship built which can withstand the force of a full blown tsunami as it roars into port. In one day the old city of Lisbon and all the ships in port were destroyed by a wall of water that washed half a mile inland. During the last three and one-half years of the Tribulation Period most of the coastal cities of the world and the ships in port will be completely destroyed by tsunami after tsunami.This is what will produce much of the distress and perplexity among the nations of the world. Now, how does all this fit in with Revelation 8:9 regarding John’s statement: “and the third part of the ships were destroyed?”

At any given time approximately two-thirds of the world’s shipping is “under way” on the open sea, and one-third is in port or dry dock. The two-thirds on the open sea will be spared, and the one-third in port will be destroyed by tsunami during the sounding of the second trumpet.

The following Scriptures leave little doubt that God has con­trol of the sea and the destructive forces of its waves. Those who “do business in great waters” will lose one-third of their busi­ness on the sounding of the second trump.

The earth is God’s creation and all the things thereof. God does not need man’s weaponry or technology to fulfill His prophecies. God has already made all the elements necessary to destroy man, and He has molded them into forms, shapes, com­pounds and processes capable of fulfilling His revelation of end-time events. I know that a great war will occur. Many men will die in that war. Bullets and other weaponry will kill many of them; but that will be only a few compared to the earthquake, fire and brimstone toll exacted by the force of Almighty God upon sinful mankind. For too long biblical expositors have been concentrating on a single tree (man’s weaponry and technology) as the fulfillment of Revelation prophecies. In so doing, they have overlooked the forest of God’s creation, the earth’s natural destructive forces.

Man will not destroy himself in a nuclear holocaust of his own making. If you desire to be frightened by such a possibili­ty, be my guest and join the crowd. I do not fear the armies with thermonuclear arsenals. May I remind you whom you should fear with this closing passage of Scripture.

And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Luke 12:4, 5.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit, Revelation 9:1,2.

I am a literal interpreter. That does not mean that I take all the inspired writings to he absolutely literal. I am very aware that certain parts of God’s Word are inspired poetically, figuratively and symbolically, but unless it yields ridiculous results, I am always more inclined to accept a literal interpretation over a figurative or symbolic explanation.

In verse one there are some points that can be made literal­ly concerning the symbols, things, places and events described. First of all, the star is identified by the personal pronoun “him” as a masculine spiritual being that comes from Heaven.

Secondly, this masculine spiritual being comes to a physical place: the planet Earth. Now, putting these two factors togeth­er, we have a being sent from Heaven to the physical earth. That means he is standing on the surface of what you see in fig­ure 3, on top of these massive tectonic plates that float on top of an underground ocean of liquid rock.

Thirdly, this heavenly visitor has been given a key which rep­resents the authority to unlock something. He has been sent to unlock the earth itself. The earth is the bottomless pit. There are hundreds of geometric figures that have bottoms, but the earth is an oblate spheroid, and as such, it has no bottom. If it were possible to dig through the earth you could never reach bottom for you would simply come out on the opposite side from which you started; the earth has no bottom.

Fourthly, I call your attention to the Koine Greek words translated “bottomless pit,” those being phreatos tes abussou, or literally, SHAFT OF THE ABYSS. This is a perfect scientific description of these great geological faults shown in figure 9. They are a great interconnecting shaft system that extends down through the crust into the abyss. It is this locked system that the heavenly being is sent to unlock. He unlocks the locked plate structure with the power of God symbolized by the key.

Fifthly, please note that the interior of the bottomless pit is likened to a “great furnace.” Virtually all-scientific texts of today use this term to describe the interior of the earth.

And, lastly, please notice the results of the unlocking of the tectonic plates in verse two—a great smoke that rises up to darken the sun and the atmosphere. This is precisely what would occur if these huge tectonic plates were unlocked.

Volcanic smoke would pour upward into the earth’s atmosphere along all areas indicated by the dashed lines shown in figure 3. This smoke would most assuredly darken the sun on a world­wide basis as it collected and advected around the earth under a great temperature inversion just above the tropopause.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. [2] And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. Revelation 9:1,2

I am a literal interpreter.  That does not mean that I take all the inspired writings to be absolutely literal.  I am very aware that certain parts of God’s Word are inspired poetically, figuratively and symbolically, but, unless it yields ridiculous results, I am always more inclined to accept a literal interpretation over a figurative or symbolic explanation.

In verse one there are some points that can be made literally concerning the symbols, things, places and events described.  First of all, the star is identified by the personal pronoun “him” as a masculine spiritual being that comes from Heaven.

Secondly, this masculine spiritual being comes to a physical place – the planet Earth.  Now, putting these two factors together, we have a being sent from Heaven to the physical earth.  This means he is standing on the surface of what you see in figure 3.  He is standing on top of these massive tectonic plates that float on top of an underground ocean of liquid rock.

Thirdly, this heavenly visitor has been given a key which represents the authority to unlock something.  He has been send to unlock what he stands upon – the earth’s crust.  The earth is the “bottomless pit.”  There are hundreds of geometric figures that have bottoms, but the earth is an oblate spheroid and, as such, has no bottom.  If it were possible to dig through the earth you could never reach bottom, for you would simply come out on the opposite side from which you started.  The earth has no bottom.

Fourthly, I call your attention to the Koine Greek words translated “bottomless pit,” those being phreatos tes abussou, or literally, SHAFT OF THE ABYSS.  This is a perfect scientific description of these great geological faults shown in figure 9.  They are a great interconnecting shaft system that extends down through the crust into the abyss.  It is this locked system that the heavenly being is sent to unlock.  He unlocks the locked plate structure with the power of God symbolized by the key.

Fifthly, please note that the interior of the bottomless pit is likened to a “great furnace.”  Many scientific texts of today use this term to describe the interior of the earth,

And, lastly, please notice the results of the unlocking of the tectonic plates in verse two – a great smoke that rises up to darken the sun and the atmosphere.  This is precisely what would occur if these huge tectonic plates were unlocked.  Volcanic smoke would pour upward into the earth’s atmosphere along all areas indicated by the dashed lines on figure 3.  This smoke would most assuredly darken the sun, on a worldwide basis, as it collected, and advected, around the earth under a great temperature inversion which exists just above the tropopause.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; [11] And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

In the three preceding verses of our text, John has viewed the land and sea events fully described in previously issued Birth Pang Numbers 5, 6, and 7.  Now his view is shifted upward where he observes a great star falling from heaven.  The word used for star is “aster.”  It can mean any one of three different things.  It can be a fixed star in the heavens such as the North Star, Polaris – or a “shooting” star, better know as a meteor – or a comet.  Sometimes meteors and comets are both referred to as “asteroids” by news commentators, just as they often refer erroneously to tsunami as a “tidal wave.”  Since the fixed stars in our universe (except for the sun) are thousands to millions of light years from our planet and, as such, eliminate themselves from consideration as candidates for being Wormwood, this leaves us with only two candidates – a meteor or a comet.  In order to select between these two it is necessary to carefully examine John’s description of the characteristics of Wormwood.

Using John’s description, the following statements concerning Wormwood cannot be easily refuted:  (1) It burned like a lamp, and the Hebrew lamp had a fuel supply that kept it burning.  (2) It fell upon the third part of the earth’s water surface, and yet John did not so much as mention a quiver in the earth’s crust as it struck.  He mentions earthquakes time after time throughout the Book of Revelation, but does not mention one occurring as Wormwood strikes the earth.  (3) Whatever Wormwood is, it dissolves in water, because the water becomes Wormwood.  (4) When it dissolves in man’s water supply it gives the water a bitter taste, and it causes many who drink the water to die.

When a “shooting star” is outside the earth’s atmosphere it is called a meteoroid.  When it enters the earth’s atmosphere it is called a meteor.  And, if it is large enough to eventually strike the earth’s surface, before burning into ashes, the solid portion that remains is identified as a meteorite.  For simplicity I will refer to all three phases as “shooting stars” to avoid confusion.

Shooting stars are made of nickel, iron, and/or stone.  Now, let us reason together as to why Wormwood cannot be a shooting star by comparing it with John’s Revelation description.

A shooting star does not burn like a Hebrew lamp.  It does not have a continuous fuel supply.  Being a solid it burns out very quickly in a matter of seconds to minutes.

If a shooting star large enough to strike one-third of the earth was to make such a contact, the impact of such a solid object would jar the earth to its very foundations, but John reports no such shaking in his vision.

Nickel, iron, and stone do not dissolve in water, but the water is said to become Wormwood.

Nickel, iron, and stone do not give water a bitter taste, nor or they poisonous.  During the course of man’s recorded history, thousands of shooting stars have fallen into local water sources, and yet there has never been a validated report of poisoning recorded.

One might argue at this point that God could make a shooting star with a continuous fuel supply, which melted instead of burned, dissolved in water, made water taste bitter, and was poisonous to mankind.  He doesn’t have to make one, because he made many heavenly bodies long ago that do all of these things – we call them comets.  The “aster” of Revelation 8:10 is one of God’s trillions of comets.  Why am I so confident that Wormwood is a comet?  My reasons are as follows:

A comet has a continuous fuel supply.  As it approaches the sun its fuel supply begins to be released by sublimation, and it then moves through the heavens like a great, ever burning lamp.

If a comet entered the earth’s atmosphere it would not burn to ashes, for a comet is composed largely of ice.  It would not burn, but would melt by sublimation, and eventually fall as liquid, and a super thick cloud, upon one-third of man’s water supply.  As the ice melted from a solid into a super thick glob of vapor and liquid, the trillions of pieces of nickel, iron, and stone, embedded in the ice, would be released.  The super thick cloud of liquid and vapor would decelerate in his descent toward the earth, but the released solids, being heavier, would be subject to greater gravitation pull, and would proceed to the earth in advance of the cloud, burning in the atmosphere as shooting stars.  To an observer on the earth it would appear that all the stars of heaven were falling to earth in advance of the cloud that would eventually settle on one-third of man’s water supply. “But in those days after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, [25] And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.” (Mark 13:24,25)

As the comet passed through the earth’s atmosphere during its melting process, it would release methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and a wide range of cyanogenic poisons, all of which are 100 percent water soluble and have a bitter taste.

Methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and cyanogenic gases are extremely toxic, and many would die of the poisoning effects.

Comets originate from a region between our solar system and the nearest stars.  There are trillions of comets in this great comet cloud.  There appears to be a virtually endless supply of them, for each year new comets are discovered and others go out of existence, victims of the shattering effects of the sun.  When earth passes through the old path of a comet, the small solid particles, which melted off the outer veneer of its icy surface, are intercepted, and meteor showers are produced in our atmosphere.  These showers occasionally exhibit as many as a thousand shooting stars per minute falling through the earth’s atmosphere.

A comet is one of God’s strangest creations.  There is nothing quite like it.  A comet nucleus is made of solid ice, but it is actually ice made of gases that solidified in the unbelievable coldness of outer space.  As the ice ball nucleus approaches the sun, its outer surface begins to pass directly from solid ice to a gas by sublimation, and we earthlings begin to observe its long, gaseous, lamp like tail.  A Hebrew lamp, because they did not refine the olive oil, put out a gray trail of smoke when it burned. Figure 18 illustrates how the comet’s tail always points away from the sun because of the sun’s solar winds.

The black specks on the surface of the comet in figure 17 are small pieces of nickel, iron, and stone that become embedded in the outer layer of ice by contact as the comet makes its long elliptical orbit around the sun and our solar system.  These pieces of nickel, iron, and stone are released into its tail along the comet’s path when the sun’s rays begin to melt the comet, as illustrated in figure 18.  Sometimes the gaseous tail of a comet has been observed to extend out to 150 million miles from its nucleus, and over this great distance a trail of small, solid pieces of space debris is laid down in space.  Every year, particularly during the late fall and early winter, the earth passes through several comet tails of the past, and dramatic shooting star displays are visible in our atmosphere.

The solid chunk of ice nucleus varies in size, some being less than 20 miles across, while other icy centers are several thousand miles in diameter.  When the nucleus comes within the warming rays of the sun it begins to melt, and this produces the coma and tail shown in figure 19.  The icy nucleus is composed of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen gases in a solid icy state.  As the ultraviolet rays of the sun strike this combination of elemental gases, several compounds are produced.  Among these gases are methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, and a whole range of cyanogenic poisons.  When Russian, Italian, and Japanese satellites went in, around, and over the coma and nucleus of Halley’s Comet in 1986, scientists were shocked by the very heavy concentrations of cyanogenic gases that were discovered.  The same heavy concentrations have also been observed in all probes of comets since 1986.

I do not know which of the trillions of comets God will select to be Wormwood, but I am certain that Wormwood is a comet.  When Wormwood enters the earth’s atmosphere it will not burn, it will melt.  And, as it goes directly from a solid to a gas, it will release into the earth’s atmospheric the aforementioned deadly gases of figure 19.  Figure 20 pictures another creation of God described in Ecclesiastes 1:7 – “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”

[12] And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; [13] And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. [14] And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Revelation 6:12-14

The terrifying scenario associated with verses twelve and fourteen has been fully painted in graphic detail in the preceding chapters of the birth pangs.  But please observe verse thirteen, which is so conveniently placed in the midst of this pattern of horror.  In the same time frame that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are producing the effects of verses twelve and fourteen, the stars are observed to fall to the earth.

In Chapter twelve the composition of a comet was outlined.  It is basically a great dirty snowball or ice block.  In the outer veneer of its icy surfaces there are billions to trillions of pieces of embedded space debris.  Most of these tiny pieces of space debris are about the size of a thumbnail, while a few may be hundreds of feet in diameter.  They are composed primarily of nickel, iron, and/or stone.  As a comet approaches the sun, its outer ice surface begins to melt, and releases a long trail of condensational gases that seemingly trail it.  As the outer veneer melts, many of the pieces of space debris are set free from their icy jail, and are then laid down as long belts of small meteoroids suspended in space.  Whenever the earth passes through the meteoroid belts, fantastic displays of thousands of shooting stars fall through its atmosphere, most of which burn into tiny specks of dust before they reach the earth’s surface.

The case was made in Birth Pang Number 12 to show Wormwood is definitely a comet.  This allows verse thirteen of Revelation, Chapter six, to blend perfectly with the worldwide scenario presented by the verses above and below it.  In the midst of worldwide cataclysms of earthquake, fire, smoke, and brimstone, we have the arrival of Wormwood.  In Birth Pang Number 12 full attention was given to the poisoning effects of Wormwood, but when it melts in the atmosphere, what happens to the billions of tiny, solid pieces of space debris in its nucleus?  The answer is given in verse thirteen.  The solid pieces of space debris will not melt like ice, but they will burn.  They will fall through the earth’s atmosphere as meteors, billions of shooting stars.  It will appear that all the stars of heaven are falling to the earth.  Of all the billions that fall, only a handful will be large to reach the earth’s surface as meteorites.  John’s description of falling stars is echoed by both Matthew and Mark in their frightening descriptions of end time events.

[29] Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: [24] But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, [25] And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. [26] And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. Matthew 24:29 + Mark 13:24-26

Hell will come up from below, and parts of the heaven will come down from above.  Revelation 6:12-14 is a synopsis, a summary, a preview of what Revelation says will happen for the last three and one-half years of the tribulation period.  It is a preview, given at the opening of the sixth seal, as to what will be occurring through the Trumpets and Vials of God. These three verses describe the terror, and verses fifteen through seventeen show its effects upon mankind.

[15] And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; [16] And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: [17] For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? Revelation 6:15-17.

[2] And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men, which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. Revelation 16:2

This first vial is directly tied to the first trumpet.  The trumpets herald (announce) the beginning of seven chronological events, and the seven vials close each of these events.  The first trumpet announces the beginning of event number one, and the first vial closes it when its last drop strikes the earth.  Previous chapters have fully outlined the series of horrifying events that begin with the blowing of the first trumpet.  The great unleashing of thousands of great earthquakes from the sixth seal to the seventh trumpet will be the action of God, and it will eventually lead to the outbreak of noisome and grievous sores in Revelation 16:2.  The following Scriptures attest fully that God will shake the earth to its very foundation during the latter part of the Tribulation Period:

[1] For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. [6] For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; [1] Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. [6] Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire. [19] The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved (torn asunder), the earth is moved exceedingly. [20] The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.    Malachi 4:1 + Haggai 2:6 + Isaiah 24:1 + 29:6 + 24:19,20

When the Bible was written mankind believed the world was flat.  But God, who made the universe, knew the folly of man’s belief, for in Isaiah 40:22 He tells us, “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.”  God knew the earth was circular before man.  He also established the invisible forces of the universe that hold the earth in its planetary position.  He testifies to this in Job 26:7 by the statement: “and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”  This circular earth, made by God, and held in space by His invisible powers, will soon be shaken to the very foundation of it’s gravitational center.  God testifies to this unbelievable foundation shaking of the earth’s core in Isaiah 24:18 as he states: “For the windows from on  high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.”

When the tectonic plates of the earth begin to readjust themselves to a new balance of geophysical isostasy, there will be a dramatic change in the gravitational core balance of the earth.  Isostasy is neither a force nor a process, but the universal tendency to establish balance between the segments of the earth’s crust.  It’s attempt to correct the gravitation imbalance in the plates will cause a disruption from the crust to earth’s core.  This disruption of the earth’s tectonic balance will damage the electromagnetic field.  The central core of the earth is solid nickel and iron.  The outer core surrounding it is liquid nickel and iron.  As the earth spins in space it moves the liquid around the solid core.  So we have the solid core rotating as an electric conductor in a magnetic field.  God has so constructed the interior of the earth that it operates like a huge generator.  This produces electricity in fantastic quantities, which generates a very powerful magnetic field, and that field is God’s magnetic field of the earth.  The earth’s magnetic field is so complex that only God understands the delicate balance which keeps the geomagnetic shield in place around the earth.

Figure 22 portrays the protective magnetic field that God maintains around His planet Earth.  The magnetic field is a protective barrier around the earth.  The field is constantly being bombarded by many a wide variety of celestial particles and rays.  Among the many attacking celestials are cosmic rays, which are strong charged, fast moving particles of hydrogen and helium.  They severely damage living cells, and produce horrifying mutations of the skin.  If the magnetic field were to be disrupted, all life forms would be subject to a very high dose of cosmic-ray bombardment.  Terrible mutations of the skin would naturally occur.

I am convinced that the great shaking of the earth prior to, and during, the pouring of the first vial, will produce the conditions described in Revelation 16:2, the outbreak of noisome and grievous sores upon the flesh.  The shift in the magnetic field of the earth will play a part in the fulfillment of Revelation 16:2.  The earth’s magnetic field has shifted several times during geologic history.  Whenever these reversals occur they reduce the earth’s magnetic field by about 80%, thereby leaving the earth without it’s protective shroud.  I believe God will lower his protective magnetic shield to plague the doomed of the earth with flesh mutilation by cosmic radiation.

Thus far we have dealt with only the fantastic shaking produced by earthquakes up to the pouring of the first vial, which leads to surface cosmic ray bombardment.  In all reality, this cosmic bombardment will be incidental in production of sores, when compared with the effect of volcanic eruptions produced by the movement of the same tectonic plates.  Lord willing, we will show what will produce most of these sores, as we examine trumpet four and vial four in a continuation of this chapter next Friday as BIRTH PANG NUMBER 14A.  Destruction of the ozone layer will produce most of the sores.This is a continuation of Birth Pang Number 14, Chapter 16.  In Birth Pang 14 we dealt with the first trumpet as it relates to the first vial, and how they will produce some of the sores that appear on mankind during the latter portion of the Tribulation Period.  We will continue the discussion regarding how the majority of these noisome and grievous sores will be produced.  We will do this by dealing with the fourth trumpet and the fourth vial as to how they will affect the flesh of mankind.

[12]  And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. [8]And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. [9] And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. Revelation8:12 + 16:8,9

The first trumpet and the first vial dealt with things that were “cast upon” and “poured out” upon the earth.  This casting and pouring on the earth will produce a reversal of the earth’s geomagnetic field, which will generate the skin plagues of Revelation 16:2.  But the fourth trumpet of Revelation 8:12, and the fourth vial of Revelation 16:8, involve the interplay between God’s judgment of man and His use of the sun He created.  When the fourth trumpet sounds, God smites the sun to begin Event Number Four, and then has the fourth vial poured out on it to the last drop to close it.  I have already explained fully in previous chapters on Revelation 8:12.  They give a complete explanation regarding the gradual formation of a great cloud shroud by volcanic eruptions.  It is this volcanic activity that will eventually allow the sun to scorch men with the great heat of ultraviolet radiation.

God has created a thick layer of ozone in the earth’s vast stratosphere.  If this layer was not there, man would be scorched with ultraviolet radiation, and annihilated from the earth within a few years.  Many scientists still cling to the idea that chlorofluorocarbons are breaking down the stratospheric ozone layer.  However, the real culprits are the increasing frequencies of volcanic eruptions.  Ozone is a form of oxygen that protects man from the sin’s deadly ultraviolet radiation.  If this radiation could slip through the ozone layer it would lead to rapid worldwide outbreaks of fast growing skin cancer.  AU.S. Geological Survey scientist, Dr. David A. Johnston, missing and presumed dead since the first eruption of Mount Saint Helens, was quoted by Warren E. Leary, and Associated Press science writer as follows:

“Analysis of trapped gas pockets in volcanic and other material indicates molten magmas may contain 20 to 40 times more chlorine than earlier estimates upon which volcanic atmospheric impact had been estimated.  This means that the amount of chlorine emitted into the atmosphere could equal more than 100% of the 1975 world production in fluorocarbon chemicals.  Johnson said in his report that volcanic explosions powerful enough to penetrate the stratosphere have been occurring about once a year in recent times.  These eruptions shoot hydrogen chloride high enough to reach the ozone layer.”

As a scientist, certified to teach chemistry and physics, I was so certain the ozone layer was being depleted by gases blown vertically into it by volcanoes, that I began to teach and write about it in books published in the late seventies and early eighties.  I was so firmly convinced of it that I predicted the ozone hole would continue to grow, even after worldwide elimination of chlorofluorocarbon production by man had occurred.  In the early eighties they predicted the ozone hole would decline in size by 1985.  When it did not, they said it was due to residual effects.  But we were assured it would decrease by 1990.  When it did not, they said the residual effects were greater than they had thought, but we would see a small decline by 1995.  When it did not decline they kept on riding the same old dead horse, and predicted a thinning by 2000.  It is still continuing to grow, and now they say it may not decline until 2020.  The ozone hole growth since 1979 is as follows:  from very small in 1977 to 500,000 cubic kilometers in 1980, to 10,500,000 in 1986, to 22,000,000 in 1992, to 23,500,000 in 1994, to 27,0000,000 in 1999, and to 28,300,000 cubic kilometers in 2000.  And still there is no ozone hole over the North Pole, yet 74% of all ozone destroying particles are released in the Northern Hemisphere!  But isn’t it strange that most of the world’s volcanoes are located in the Southern Hemisphere, with many of them south of 60 degrees latitude, while only a handful of volcanoes exist north of 60 degrees latitude.

Please allow me to elaborate why man-made CFC gases are not the culprits responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer over the South Pole:

74% of all man-made CFC’s are released in the Northern hemisphere. The Long-term vertical circulation patterns of the earth in the Northern Hemisphere demand that the first ozone hole should have appeared over the North Pole – it did not!

The CFC gases are heavier than the atmosphere into which they are supposed to be rising, hence they cannot rise to the level of the ozone layer of their own volition.

CFC’s are washed out of the atmosphere by the precipitation cycle of the troposphere before they could reach the ozone layer.

CFC gases, without the direct help of volcanic activity, don’t penetrate the restricting worldwide temperature inversion, which begins well below the ozone layer at the tropopause.

Now, please allow me to exposit why I am confident that volcanic eruptions are responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer over the South Pole:

The rate increase in major eruptions since 1950 is four times greater than at any time in history.

Most vertical eruptions are occurring in the Southern Hemisphere, thereby causing the ozone hole to appear first over the South Pole, rather than the North Pole.

Volcanic eruptions forcefully blow different kinds of ozone depleting gases through the tropopause inversion into the ozone layer, bypassing much of the earth’s circulation and hydrological patterns.

There is an active volcano pouring its depleting gases upward into the center of the ozone hole from time to time – Mount Erebus, which is near the South Pole.

The growth of the ozone hole has been steadily toward the north over the southern tip of South America, where a thick concentration of active volcanoes exists today.

During the latter part of the Tribulation, thousands of volcanic eruptions, like those in Figure 10, will occur along the dashed lines of figure 3.  These eruptions will send staggering amounts of hydrogen chloride, nitric oxides, and other ozone depleting gases into the ozone layer.  The resultant breaking down of the ozone layer will allow ultraviolet radiation to pour through onto the inhabitants of the earth.  These occupants of the final days of Satan’s kingdoms on this planet will be scorched with the great heat of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.  Yet they still will not repent toward the God of these plagues that physically destroy them.  They will understand the processes that are causing it, but they will not recognize that God is doing it.

Most Christian writers of today spend a lot of effort in trying to work the entire modern day arsenal of man into the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.  Most make the last day skin plagues attributable to atomic radiation.  May I assure you that the ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, which would pour down on the earth’s surface if the ozone layer weakened and the magnetic poles reversed, would be thousands of times deadlier than atomic radiation.

[1] Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it. [2] For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. [3] Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. [4] And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. [5] For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.  Isaiah 34:1-5.

There can be little doubt that Isaiah is speaking about one of the events of the latter portion of the Tribulation Period.  He speaks of the great slaughter of the nations that will come against the nation of Israel and her great city Jerusalem at the final battle of Armageddon.  He further testifies to a heavenly picture of the chaos previously described in many Birth Pang chapters.  And then, in verse five, Isaiah gives us a specific location where the great sword of God will streak down from Heaven to cleave asunder the land of Idumea.  This country of Idumea is also called Edom in the Scriptures, and any reliable dictionary or commentary locates it between the southern end of the Dead Sea and the northern tip of the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba (See figure 23).  This section of the earth’s crust will suddenly be torn apart by God’s power in the latter portion of the Tribulation Period.

It is not by accident that the great north-south crack in the mid-Atlantic, shown in figure 3, continues around the southern tip of Africa, through the Indian Ocean, down the Gulf of Aden, up the Red Sea floor, along both sides of the Gulf of Aqaba, northward across the Araba Desert, along both sides of the Dead Sea and Jordan River Valley, and finally through Lebanon to intersect another east-west fault in Turkey.  God will be using this great geological rift fault to fulfill many of His Tribulation Period prophecies.

By observing figure 25, you can visualize how God is rapidly spreading apart the Red Sea fault faster than any other geological fault in eastern Africa or the Middle East.  God has been bringing an unbelievable tonnage of red hot, flowing rock called magma upward through this Red Sea crack for a very long period of time.  As the liquid rock makes contact with the water cooled Red Sea floor it solidifies into new basaltic crust.  This new crust is pushing apart two large tectonic plates: the African and Arabian plates.  The crack in the crust of the earth through Idumea is kept locked together by horizontal pressure applied by God in the distant past and, consequently, the hot liquid rock beneath Idumea is kept locked deep beneath the surface.  However, the rapid spreading of the crust (to the south of Idumea in the Red Sea) will continue to induce more and more horizontal pressure in the opposite direction of the force that now locks the Idumean section of the fault.  In the latter portion of the Tribulation Period the splitting force of  the south  will exceed the locking force of the north, and the the center of the land of Idumea will suddenly rip apart as if a great sword from heaven had swept down to slash it.   When this occurs along a line from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, the land will suddenly become what geologists call a flood basalt plain.  It will be a valley filled with flowing blood-red lava at temperatures initially in excess of 2100 degrees Fahrenheit (1200 degrees Celsius), and will be accompanied by all the horrors of a flood basalt plain.

There were no Hebrew words in Isaiah’s day for magma pikes, lava intrusions, pyroclastic avalanche clouds, flood basalt plains, etc.  So when Isaiah received this vision from God, he used the most descriptive words of his language to fit what he saw.  We began this chapter with the terrifying picture of the judgment of God on the nations of the world and Idumea as outlined in Isaiah 34:1-5.  Now, bearing in mind that Isaiah did not have our geological jargon of today, let us discover what geologic horror is created in Idumea when God’s sword comes down by examining Isaiah 34:8 & 9.

[8] For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. [9] And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.  Isaiah 34:8,9

[19] And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. [20] And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. Revelation 14:19-20.

This particular angel thrusts his sickle INTO the earth.  We are advised in verse 20 as to WHERE the sickle makes its earthly penetration; somewhere in Israel “outside the city,” which is the city of Jerusalem.  The word used for winepress is “LENOS,” which means: “a trough dug in the earth, a ditch or canal, or anything shaped like a tub.” The winepresses with which John was familiar were rectangular in shape and made of, or dug out of, the rock of the earth. Blood-red wine was made from grapes.  The ripe clusters were carried in baskets and thrown into the press.  The winepress consisted of a shallow trough built above the ground, or excavated by chipping it out of limestone rocks in the earth.  There were also village and household winepresses, but since the one to which John refers is one in a vineyard field, one made by chipping out a rectangular trough in limestone rock, I will limit my discourse to that type.  One end of this type was made lower, such that the blood-red liquid from the grapes would flow into it, after being pressed out by the feet of humans in the shallow end. So both the upper and lower sections of the winepress presented a view of a blood-red trough in the crust of the earth.

John, in his vision, looks down upon the earth and, from this aerial view, recognized the city of Jerusalem, a city he had looked down upon many times from the Mount of Olives.  He beheld “without” (outside) Jerusalem, to the east, the greatest winepress ever seen by human eyes.  He saw a trough (lenos) in the earth 1600 furlongs (185 miles) in length.  The opening of the earth caused by the angel’s sickle had caused blood (haima) to come up “out” (ek) of the winepress to a depth of about five feet (“unto the horse bridles”).  The Greek word used for blood is haima, which can mean real blood, or any object taking on a blood red color, or any liquid that has a blood-red hue.   The Hebrew word for blood is also used to describe a blood-red liquid rather than body blood, as we find stated in Genesis 49:11 – “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:”  The moon will not turn to real blood in the Tribulation Period, but it will take on a blood-red hue, as is described by the use of the word haima in Revelation 6:12 –     “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;”  Before this Birth Pang is completed I will carefully pull together everything previously stated, and thereby put together a full exposition of Revelation 14:19,20.  But for now I must take time to describe one of the most terrifying creations of God in the distant past: a flood-basalt plain.

In the distant past, six major rips in the crust of the earth have produced six great basaltic flood plains.  These great cleavages of the earth’s crust occurred in zones along the dashed lines of Figure 3.   They represent old magma extrusions associated with the initial stages of continental drift.  Dr. W. Kenneth Hamblin, in his standard geological text, The Earth’s Dynamic Systems, states: “Where the rift system passes beneath a continent, the continental crust is split and great volumes of basalt are extruded and spread out over large areas of the continent.  These great floods of lava fill the lowlands and depressions in the existing topography.”  The rift system that passes beneath the continent from the Gulf of Aqabah northward through Israel is a prime candidate for the sudden creation of a raging flood basalt plain.  The following quoted material, concerning flood basalt plains, was extracted from Volcano,volume 2 of A 1982 Time-Life series that examines the workings of the planet earth: “Flood basalts are generated atop the upper mantle.  When tension opens fissures in the crust, the fluid magma spurts directly to the surface.  The sheer volume of it dwarfs all other volcanic activity: a week long flow can release 360 cubic miles of lava, 10 times the volume of Mount Rainier.  Extremely fluid magma suddenly spurts to the surface through a line of hundred of offset dikes, each one as much as 15 miles long and fifty feet wide.  The lava from such individual fissures, about five cubic miles per day, is so hot and runny that it speeds down the slightest slope at speeds up to 10 miles an hour, creating a lava sheet as much as 100 miles wide.  A standard textbook notes, “sooner or later they must recur.”  This liquid rock can hit the surface at temperatures from 2300 to 2900 degrees Fahrenheit.  This is double the temperature required to cremate a human body.  At these temperatures, the flesh would disappear from the body before it hit the ground, were it directly exposed to the initial air heat flash surge near the crack through which the magna extruded.  All that would remain would be a human skeleton.  At the same time that the Mount of Olives cleaves in its midst, and all the land in Israel from Geba to Rimmon is lifted up, what follows will happen to the antichrist’s army in the Jordan River Valley, as indicated in Zechariah 14:3-12.

[12] And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.  Zechariah 14:12.

At some point in time, near the end of the Tribulation Period, the great rift valley of Israel will suddenly rip open from one end to the other.  For a period of time after this ripping a vast flood basalt plain will be created along a 1600 furlough (185 mile) section of the valley.  Looking down on it from heaven in his vision it looked like a north-south winepress. It was east of Jerusalem, along the Jordan River Valley, as a long rectangular trough in the crust of the earth filled with blood.  Tremendous tectonic changes will completely restructure the entire valley from the Gulf of Aqabah to Lebanon.  The fissures will close abruptly at the end of the Tribulation Period from the southern end of the Dead Sea to Lebanon.  However, limited volcanic activity will continue south of the Dead Sea, in what once was Idumea, throughout Christ’s Millennial Reign from “generation to generation,” according to Isaiah.

[8] For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. [9] And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. [10] It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. Isaiah 34:8-10.

Now, considering John’s description of the great winepress in Revelation 14:19,20, in light of one of God’s fantastic creations in the earth, let us compare God’s linguistics with God’s science.  What John saw looked like a great lenos (trough or ditch or canal) about 185 miles long.  I call your attention to Figure 24, Part A, which is an excerpt from a 1970 diagram by Dr. Fruend showing both sides of the Dead Sea Rift.  The long dashed black lines that run north and south along both sides of the Dead Sea, from the Gulf of Aqabah through Israel, are great fissures in the crust of the earth.  These fissures erratically weave down through the crust of the earth to eventually make contact with great undersea lakes of magma.  Part A of Figure 24 gives a picture of these fissures as though you were looking down on them from a satellite, while Part B pictures the same fissures as though you were deep within the earth looking northward, and could see their downward progression into the earth.  These fissures are where they should be to comply with the description by John.  They are “without the city,” which is Jerusalem.  And the word lenos does fit the characteristics of the Jordan River Valley, which is a great trough in the crust of the earth.

John saw haima come up out the lenos to cover an area some 185 miles long.  John viewed a blood-red liquid (haima), which we call lava, spread across the great trough (lenos) to fill what we know as the Jordan River Valley.  And the blood-red liquid filled the valley to a depth of about five feet (height of a horse bridle).  Please note that, on Part A of Figure 24, a lone fissure  veers off from the main trough, then extends northwest past the Tel of Armageddon, and finally goes on to Haifa, where it meets the Mediterranean Sea.  If you measure northward from the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqabah to the point of departure by the fissure that extends to Haifa, you will discover it is 1600 furlongs, or 185 miles.  I believe this 185 mile section of the Jordan River trough is the great winepress that John saw filled with a blood-red fluid as he looked down upon the earth in his vision.

Please observe Figure 25.  God, for some time, has brought an unbelievable tonnage of hot flowing rock upward into the Red Sea Fault.  As this liquid rock makes contact with the water- cooled Red Sea floor, it solidifies into new basaltic crust.  This new crust is forcing two great plates, the Arabian and African, to move away from one another at a rapid geological rate.   This particular segment is moving faster than others in the Middle East.  Please note that, on Figure 25, while the Red Sea section of the fault is spreading rapidly, the great Rift Fault running up both sides of the Jordan Valley, is locked tighter than a drum.  Long ago God pushed together these two great tectonic plates, which are separated only by the Jordan Rift Valley between them.  God’s horizontal pressure fused both sides of the valley floor to these plates, like one would push together two pieces of clay.  It is this horizontal pressure that locks the fissures in place and prevents magma from spurting to the surface on both sides of the valley. The locked section, (See Figure 26), is held together by a strong tensional force placed there by God.  In the Red Sea section of the rift God is generating a force that is in direct opposition to His tensional force that locks the section through Israel.  Tensional forces are building in the Gulf of Aqabah, and soon the southern opposing force will end a long struggle by ripping apart the northern section to form a flood basalt plain.  It will be sudden, abrupt, and horrifying.  God will suddenly create flood basalt plains 185 miles long that begin at the Gulf of Aqabah, and then extend up to the east end of the Valley of Jezreel.  On both sides of the Jordan River Valley hot fountains of blood-red liquid, now confined by pressure below the fissures of Figure 27, will suddenly shoot hundreds of feet into the air.  And a heat flash will blast toward the west to reach the foothills of the mountains of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and toward the east to smash against the bluffs of the mountains of Moab and Ammon.  I believe Figure 28 is what John saw from the air in Revelation 14:19,20. When the angel, who has authority to say when fire is to be released on the earth, tells the angel that has the sickle to stick it into the earth, then as the sickle goes in, the vine of the of the earth (the antichrist’s army) will feel the wrath of God. God does not have to use the creations of man to fulfill his prophecies.   As he did in the flood of Noah, he will destroy man “with the earth,” but this time it will be fire from the earth, rather than water on the earth.

[14] Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. Isaiah 5:14.

Most expositors of today’s popular religious works go to great lengths to work the weaponry of modern technology into the Scriptures.  Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel becomes a flying saucer; John’s scorpions become enemy jet aircraft, and his horses are enemy tanks.  But expositors of all ages have vainly attempted to work the weaponry of their age into God’s word, and all have been in error.  Please do not misunderstand.  I am certainly aware there will be a great Battle of Armageddon,  and I realize a large percentage of mankind will be killed by his own weaponry.  And also please understand that some passages in the Scriptures may well refer to man’s weaponry of the last days, but I am simply saying it has been greatly overplayed.  The vast majority of mankind killed in the world, even during the Battle of Armageddon, will not be by man’s hand, but rather by God unleashing the natural forces of His creation.  God will destroy man “with the earth.”

Isaiah 5:14 portrays red hot liquid rock from hell pouring out upon the surface of God’s earth.  Hell literally enlarges itself by expanding out onto the surface of the earth as God opens the deep mouths in the crust of it (Shown as dashed lines in Figure 3).  Hell will flow upward to the surface of the earth without measure.  Today many modernistic theologians believe hell is a mystical, spiritual place somewhere in the mind, a spiritual concept, rather than an actual place of fiery torment.  But hell is a real, literal place of fire and liquid hell in the interior of the earth, where the departed souls of all the lost are kept until the Great White Throne Judgment of Revelation 20:11-15.  And, where these great interior lakes of liquid rock exist, it is dark as pitch and hot as hell.  I believe God has confined the souls of the dead, who died in a lost condition, to these underground liquid lakes of hell.  I know that God does confine spiritual beings to material places.  One such example is found in Revelation 9:14.

[14]  Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. Revelation 9:14.

Angels are certainly spiritual beings, and the Euphrates River is certainly a literal, physical place.  If you want personal proof, then look in a mirror.  Inside that literal, physical, material body is confined a spiritual soul that is confined to live there until physical death occurs.  Amos identifies the literal hell as a place you reach by digging downward.

[2] Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down: Amos 9:2.

Isaiah indicates that hell is located such that it must be moved upward from beneath to meet someone coming down from the earth’s surface.

[9] Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. Isaiah 14:9.

The earth itself is the bottomless pit that enshrouds a literal interior hell of hot, liquid rock.  And it is the upward extension of this hell upon the surface of the earth that will destroy most of the antichrist’s army.  (See Birth Pang Numbers 8, 15, & 16)

[9] Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: [10] Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. [11] Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. [12] Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. [13] Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. [14] Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. [15] The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. [16] The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.  Joel 3:9-16.

Verses nine through eleven describe the final gathering of the Gentile nations for the last great battle of the Tribulation Period, the Battle of Armageddon.  Verse twelve identifies a specific valley in Israel where God’s sickle will come down hardest in his judgment – the valley of Jehoshaphat.  Some biblical expositors of today locate this valley by identifying it as the Kidron Valley between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives.  But I believe this location is in error. Why? This identification was made by Jerome in the fourth century, more than one thousand years after the death of Joel.  The valley of Berachah in II Chronicles 20:25-29 is most likely what was identified by Joel as the valley of Jehoshaphat.  I believe this to be the case because about one hundred years before the writings of Joel, Jehoshaphat had won a great national victory in this valley over the heathen nations surrounding Israel.  Those nations sought to “cut off Israel from being a nation.”  This great valley is located between Tekoa and the road from Bethlehem to Hebron.  It is a broad, rich vale, watered with copious springs, affording space for the encampment of a great army of men.  Oddly enough, it just happens to be located eight miles west of the geological fault that goes down into the underground lakes of magmatic hell

When the great sickle of verse thirteen plunges into the earth in Israel, the Jordan Valley press will be full and overflowing with vast hoards of mankind whose “wickedness is great.”  Verse fourteen outlines the great number as “multitudes, multitudes,” and identifies it as the time of God’s final decision on antichrist and his armies.  Verse fifteen describes the effect that the volcanic smoke will have on the heavenly bodies as it collects above Israel.  Just as the antichrist believes he has won, with his armies controlling the land from Dan to Beersheva, God will have His angel put in the sickle of Revelation 14:19,20, and the valley of Jehoshaphat, plus the Jordan Valley itself, from the Gulf of Aqabah some 185 miles northward, will become a raging inferno (See Birth Pangs 15, 16, and 16A).  Verse sixteen affirms that all of this will be wrought by God to demonstrate He “will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.”

The raging inferno of the Jordan Valley will be what geologists call a flood basalt plain (See Birth Pangs 15, 16, and 16A).  It will extend from the Gulf of Aqabah for some 185 miles (1600 furlongs) to the intersection shown with the off-shoot fissure shown on Figure 26 (Click on Figures at top of this Birth Pang).  The penetration of this Haifa off-shoot fissure, via Tel Megiddo,  into the long north-south Jordan graben, will not allow the ripping action, described in Birth Pang 14A, to tear any further northward than the 1600 furlongs prophesied by John in Revelation 14:20.  The temperature of the lava, which will spurt up as fountains of what looks like blood on both sides of the Jordan Valley, will be in excess of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit.  The horizontal heat cloud, released from this sudden ripping, will instantly consume human flesh, eyes, and tongues on contact.  When you are made aware that Zechariah’s Hebrew word, translated as “plague,” literally means “destruction” or slaughter,” and that his Hebrew word “consume” literally means “melt,” it is much easier to understand how God, and not man’s weaponry, will destroy the people that have fought against Jerusalem in Zechariah 14:1-3.  God’s destruction of these people is vividly described in Zechariah 14:12.

[12] And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. Zechariah 14:12.

A blast of air, received from being near a sudden basalt eruption, would instantly melt the flesh of a body while it was still standing in place.  Most of the antichrist’s army will be destroyed, not by man’s atomic radiation, but by the surfacing igneous fires of our mighty God.  He will sit in judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and his judgment will be a judgment of fire on the evil vine of the earth, which He will cast into his great 1600 furlong winepress.

Of particular interest in Figure 30 is the location of the Afar Triangle at the juncture of three rift valleys: the Red Sea, Aden, and African rift cracks in the earth’s crust. This juncture is called a “triple point” in geological jargon. These three large pieces of the earth’s crust (Identified as the African, Arabian, and Somalian Plates in Figure 30) are slowly spreading apart from one another and, in the wake of their movement, are leaving behind a sinking depression in the crust of the earth, a depression identified as the Afar Triangle or Depression. The Afar Depression has not always existed. At one time it was merely a structural weakness in the crust of the earth where converging intersections of faults were made at angles which approached the perpendicular. But a tremendous shaking and upheaval in the earth’s crust at these intersections caused the formation of an active triple point depression at their juncture, and the spreading, particularly northward toward Israel, has been the most active on the Red Sea floor. The geological history of this rift structure, in chronological sequence, is as follows: (1) First the Gulf of Aden begin to rip apart, (2) Then the African Rift began to spread, (3) Then the Red Sea Floor began to actively spread, (4) Then the Gulf of Suez torn apart from the Sinai, and finally, (5) The Gulf of Aqabah (Eilat) torn away from the Arabian Plate. The next section that will rip apart is the land of Israel from Eilat to the intersection of the Plain of Jezreel with the Jordan River Valley, a distance of some 1600 furlongs (185 miles). For a full exposition of this ripping of the Jordan River Valley go back to Birth Pang Numbers 15 and 16, along with all their associated Figures.

At the present time there exists a pattern of normal faults in the Jerusalem area similar to those that led to the initial formation of the Afar Depression. I believe that, when God rips open the Arabah fault northward for 185 miles, the associated shaking and upheaval in the earth’s crust will produce a small Afar like depression on the eastern lee of the Mount of Olives. For want of a better name, I will refer to it as the Zechariah Triangle or Depression. Lord willing, Birth Pang Number 20, Chapter 22, will be devoted to a description of this future depression and its relationship to the cleaving of the Mount of Olives.

In Chapter 21 we observed how God slowly formed a great valley over a very long period of time. In this Chapter we shall observe how God forms another great valley in a very short period of time.

[4] And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. [5] And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. Zechariah 14:4-5

[11] As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the MIDST of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. Jeremiah 17:11

The Bible indicates a normal lifespan of seventy years for a human. You can see, from the preceding Scriptures, that if a man were to die between thirty and forty, he would have left the land of the living in the MIDST of his days. The word used for “midst” does not require that the Mount of Olives cleave precisely in the center. The Scripture merely indicates that a division will be effected in the middle section of the mountain.

May I now direct your attention to Figure 31. The two dashed black lines (oriented west to east and labeled “X” and “Y”) indicate normal faults in the upper crust of the earth. As you can see, they pass north and south of Jerusalem on a converging track toward the Mount of Olives. These normal faults are not there by accident. I am persuaded they have been created there by God and, at His command, will collapse to fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy. Please note that fault X intersects the northern flank of the Mount of Olives, while fault Y passes through its southern end. That section of the Mount of Olives between X and Y is the MIDST of the mountain, and is the section that will collapse and sink downward when God issues His command. These two normal faults pass through the Mount of Olives, and then make contact with a series of north to south faults that exist along the eastern lee of the mountain. In this zone, where the intersection of east-west & north-south faults occurs, a structural weakness like the Afar Depression will be generated in the earth’s crust when violent earthquakes are occurring in the Jordan River Valley (See Birth Pang 19, Chapter 21 and associated Figures). The center of this geological weakness zone is on the eastern side of the mountain, approximately four thousand cubits (six thousand feet) directly east of the Jerusalem Eastern Gate.

The old city of Jerusalem sets atop Cenomanian and Turonian limestone, a rock strata that will safely support the largest structures. One might naturally suppose, that just across the narrow Kidron Valley, you would find the Mount of Olives composed of a duplicate rock strata. However, its slope betrays its actual geological composition, for it is made of Cenomanian chalk – the same type of chalk that crumbles into a thousand pieces when it falls from a blackboard railing. I believe God deliberately formed it of chalk. When its northern and southern ends divide from its middle section, the entire middle section will sink downward and crumble into billions of pieces of chalk. This geological transformational process is shown in Parts A and B of Figure 32. Such a downward slippage process has been used many times in the past by God to form large fault block valleys around the globe.