Issued: 10/1/23

PLEASE NOTE:  Because Bible versions sometimes differ from each other in crucial ways, the version quoted here will be the one that best clarifies the point being made.  For a quick comparison between versions, please go to: http://www.biblehub.com.

   All bracketed material may be authorial comments, attempts at proper syntax, or minimal rewordings of Scripture for the sake of clarity and continuity.  These emendations will not be italicized.

   The “/” will be used to signify “and/or.”  The symbol “↔” is used to connect verses corroborating each other and so establishing doctrinal truths (Matthew 18:16↔2Corinthians 13:1).

   In differentiating between Yahweh of hosts [later Jesus] and Yahweh the Most High God, lower case letters have been used when discussing the former; upper case letters are reserved for the One and Most High God.  Since Jesus was at pains to differentiate himself from God the Father, we have followed his lead here.

   The term neo-Christians will be used to differentiate between false Christians and Jesus’ true followers.

   In Hebrews 11:40 Paul argues that God tests faith with tasks tailored to each generation of believers.  As a rule, such tests involved personal ordeals (Hebrews 11:35-38), accompanied by miraculous events necessary to promote faith (John 4:48; Acts 5:12-16; 1Corinthians 2:4-5).  But as Christianity evolved, miracles were superseded by God’s “hidden wisdom,” imparted by the Holy Spirit in order that the faithful could ‘read  between the lines’ what Old Testament Scriptures revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29; Jeremiah 33:3↔James 1:5; Mark 4:11-12↔Isaiah 28:13; John 16:13↔1John 2:27; 1Corinthians 27-14).  This meant that faith would now be reinforced by the internal logic of Scripture rather than external evidence, since God did not provide experimental means to prove His naysayers wrong.

   Because science dismisses/contradicts faith, the task assigned to our generation is examining Scriptural narratives that refute scientific thinking.  Remember:  We cannot prove God exists anymore than science can disprove His existence; we cannot prove Scripture is God’s word anymore than science can prove it is not.  There will always be an impasse between faith and experience; between the conviction of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1) and things observed and quantified.  God is invisible¹ (John 1:18, 5:37, 6:46; 1Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 11:27; 1John 4:12) and therefore non-quantifiable; so the human choice is either to believe in Him or not.  After all people are free to choose their beliefs—with the understanding of attendant consequences (Romans 6:16; 2Peter 2:19).  God seems to agree with the notion that one has to lie on the bed one makes for him/herself.

   It follows, then, that science, which ‘walks by sight,’ is anti-faith, given that the faithful “walk by faith” (2Corinthians 5:7).  Now that science has become the world’s counter-gospel by virtue of its undeniable and breathtaking accomplishments, our task is hardest and our faith bound to be sorely tested.  This may be the reason for Jesus’ assessment “that many who were first would be last and the last first” (Mark 10:31), given that previous generations witnessed more genuine miracles that those at end-times bombarded with false ones.²  It is only fair, as was the case with Abraham (Genesis 15:6) and those sharing his faith (Hebrews 11:13), that all who believe without seeing are worthier than those who need proof in order to believe (John 20:29).

   This brings us to 1John 2:22:  Whoever denies Father and Son is Antichrist—a term applicable to Satan himself as a factual being (1John 4:3, 5:2, 14:30; Luke 10:18↔Revelation 12:9,17; 1Peter 5:8) and all his human vectors (Ephesians 2:2; 1John 3:18-19).  John’s focus was on false Christian preachers; but we must add empiricists to the list, scientists as well as ‘enlightened’ skeptics/atheists gung-ho on harping on Someone they believe does not exist in the first place.  It is no coincidence that such naysayers have proliferated exponentially in the apostate times preceding Jesus’ return (2Thessalonians 2:2-3), when ‘evidence’ contradicting Scripture literally keeps popping up out of the skies and the earth beneath our feet.

   So the challenge for us is this:  If the assurances of faith are meant for those who believe (Romans 1:17), and the scientific-minded do not believe, what are we to believe?  In theories about the formation of the universe and natural evolution contradicted by Genesis 1?  In time measurements derived from analyses of visible/tangible matter?  In dinosaur remains despite Scriptures suggesting their non-existence?  In extra-terrestrial life on the evidence of UFO/alien sightings existing in a cosmos Scripture tells us will be dismantled and created from scratch?   

   It goes without saying that such an impasse would end if the heavens parted and God showed Himself.  Yet He has chosen non-evidentiary faith as the sole criterion for salvation:  “The righteous will live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17); not only in the sense of living piously in this world, but of securing immortal life in the Kingdom to come.

   Consequently, God always lets His people know—directly (John 16:13) or indirectly (Amos 3:7, 4:13) —what lies ahead for them; and the Scriptures we are about to examine attest to that pledge.  If science is indeed antichrists’ counter-gospel to the true one, God has to tell us where scientific wisdom digresses from His “hidden” one; though “hidden” does not mean out of human reach, but in the sense that God has made it impossible for unbelievers to assimilate it (Deuteronomy 30:11-14; 1Corinthians 2:14-15).  Hearing about and reading Scripture are all within human purview (Mark 4:12); what is missing is the personal, spiritual ‘unlocking’ that makes understanding and acceptance possible (Luke 18:34, 24:45).  If in this divine MO the Holy Spirit is the key (John 16:13), Jesus does the ‘un-locking’ (Acts 16:14; 1John 2:27).

   We argue, therefore, that God has provided us with Scriptures to validate or dismiss religious dogmas and scientific theories.  But this system follows a template.  Firstly, unlike men, God is not in the habit of offering evidence to support His claims; and discourages believers from engaging in fruitless debates, be them religious (2Timothy 2:14; Titus 3:9) or scientific (1Timothy 6:20-21):  He leaves it up to individuals to draw their own opinions from His written word.  Secondly, foreknowing all the deceptions Satan would deploy against men throughout history, God intimates rather than argue against ‘evidence’ which unbelievers seize upon to point out Scriptural fallacies—the objectives being letting believers know the true scoop while condemning naysayers (Isaiah 28:13↔Mark 4:11-12; 1Corinthians 3:19).  And thirdly, time in Scripture is hardly atomic-clock accurate:  Timetables are flexible and subject to God’s discretion (Mark 13:31-32; Acts 1:7; 2Peter 2:8-9).

   On this last point, we begin our discussion.

Biblical Time Measurements

   Why seven Genesis ‘days,’ the exact number of days in our calendar weeks?  And why “sunset to sunset” if obviously the Sun was not created until Fourth Day?  Given that time itself was set in motion on First Day, ‘days’ as used in Genesis are not 24-hour periods, but artificial constructs in Scripture’s measurement of historic time.  Assuming Genesis’ Seventh Day of rest foreshadows Revelation 20:4’s Millennium, it is not unreasonable to conclude that every other Genesis ‘day’ is 1,000 years long.  This agrees with Habakkuk 3:2: “Renew Your work [plan of redemption] in the midst of the years.  In the midst of the years make it known”;³ wherein ‘midst of years’ refers to Jesus’ ministry on earth some 2,000± years ago; as well as with Peter’s remark that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day” (2Peter 3:8↔Psalms 90:4).  We usually take this to mean that for God time is meaningless; yet since He Himself created time (Genesis 1:3↔Psalms 2:7), could not the Holy Spirit be giving us a conversion factor of 1 day = 1,000 years to compute the duration of Genesis’ ‘days’ ? ⁴

   One final time measurement:  Biblical genealogies.  Though they appear in lots of Old Testament books, they are there to give us a ball-park figure about the span of human history from Creation to Jesus.  Attempts have been made to estimate the start of Creation; but we are not going to get ensnared in this fruitless controversy.  If Jesus lived 2,000± years ago, Matthew (Matthew 1:1-17) and Luke (Luke 3:23-28) respectively trace him back to Abraham and Adam.  Despite gaps in Scriptural chronologies, by no stretch of the imagination are we talking about millions or billions of years, but thousands of years in keeping with Genesis’ ‘week’ template—the reason for the seven-day scheme rather than any other time measurement.

First through Forth Days of Creation

[Before we start, there are symbolic meanings attached to Creation.  For these please refer to our essay,  Genesis: The Myth that Never Was. Here we are limiting our discussion to showing how Scripture contradicts scientific laws/theories].

   We have all heard about the Big Bang event:  An outward explosion of infinitesimally compressed matter—what science calls the initial singularity—created the universe as we know it.  Following the Big Bang, the laws of physics as we understand them came into being, and time itself began.  These are complex issues we need not discuss; suffice it to say that the universe is spectrographically estimated to be 13.8 billion years old and our solar system around 5 billion years old.  Since Sun and planets composing it came together around the same time, our Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old ± 50 million years.  The oldest rocks on Earth have been dated via isotopic decay at 3.8 billion years.

   Enough of the science; let us look at Scripture.

   What do we read in Genesis 1:1-3,5?  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light…And there was evening, and there was morning, the First Day”—corresponding with the “today” of Psalms 2:7.  While verses 1:1-2 identify God and the Holy Spirit, no mention is made of Son; which is our first clue that the Entity we call God is a Dyad rather a Trinity.  Also note that earth was formless and void; there were waters of some kind; and some area termed “the deep,” all hardly evocative of any singularity.

   Thus there was differentiated, uncompressed matter in the form of earth and waters before time began in verse 1:5 with the creation of “Light”; which is not, as some have posited, the Big Bang’s sudden release of energy, but Scripture’s symbolic way of telling about us the creation of only begotten Son—as attested to in John 1:9; in John 8:12, where Jesus calls himself the light of the world; in Colossians 1:15, where the Holy Spirit through Paul tells us Son, the first-born of all creation, was made in God’s image; and in Revelation 3:14, where Jesus as re-appointed proxy God (Matthew 28:18; Revelation 1:18↔Isaiah 22:22; Revelation 3:7) corroborates Paul’ testimony.  Since all Scriptural truths are settled by the testimony of two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2Corinthians 13:1; 1John 5:7), we move on.

    Let us dig a bit deeper into all of the above.  While the Most High God lives in inaccessible light (Psalms 104:2; 1Timothy 6:16) and is invisible, the fact that He made Son in His image and later on Son made Adam in their image (Genesis 1:26), tells us either that God has human-life features or has chosen to depict Himself in human form—as suggested by Daniel 7:9 and Revelation 1:14 [hair]; Genesis 21:17; Exodus 2:24; 2 Samuel 22:7; Psalms 102:2 [ears]; Deuteronomy 11:12; 2Chronicles 16:9; Psalms 34:15, 139:16; Proverbs 15:3 [eyes]; Genesis 8:21↔2Corinthians 2:15 [nose]; Psalms 89:34; Genesis 22:16↔Hebrews 6:13; Numbers 23:19; Lamentations 3:38 [mouth]; Isaiah 59:1; Revelation 5:1 [hand]; Ezekiel 39:29; Psalms 13:1; Matthew 18:10; Revelation 22:4↔Matthew 5:8 [face].

   So if “Light” was made in God’s image (Colossians 1:15), Scripture is not talking about visible electromagnetic radiation but about Son, who thenceforth was empowered to complete the rest of Creation—the reason why Jesus is spoken of as the Creator of all things in heaven and earth (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2).  Also we must consider that before Son came into being, the formless earth⁵ and waters existed outside of time whereas Son was conceived within time—i.e., First Day.  If we then follow Genesis’ chronology, Son’s work in Genesis 1:6-13, Second and Third Days, was to bring that pre-existent matter into order:  Heavens to separate waters above [unidentified] from those below [natural bodies of water]; and to create landmasses were life forms could proliferate (Psalms 104:6-8).

   No indications of Big Bang in any of this; nor on Fourth Day (Genesis 1:14-19), when celestial bodies as we perceive them came into being at Son’s command.  Let us consider Isaiah 40:22:  “He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in,” imagery that supports prophecies—as we will soon see—concerning the disappearance of the cosmos.  What about the constellations in Job 9:9?  “He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south” [see also Job 38:31-32; Amos 5:8).  The “Bear” is Ursa Major, home to the stars of the Big Dipper; the red giant star Betelgeuse in Orion is estimated to be 10 million-years old, whereas our Sun is nearly 5 billion-years old; the Pleiades is home to hot blue starts thought to have been formed during the last 100 million years.

   Let us not haggle over the accuracy of such estimates; but rather on Genesis’ argument that the entire cosmos sprang into being simultaneously in all directions—which would make all observable bodies roughly the same age and contradicts the validity of the above estimates.  If all stars were created in the span of Fourth Day, how could our Sun be 4,990 billion years older than Betelgeuse; or how can Pleiades’ stars be 90 million years older than Betelgeuse?

   Genesis 1:14-16 certainly takes into account the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun; hence the reference to stars as signs for the seasons, days and years.  Sun and Moon were created in tandem:  No Mars-sized planet gouging out our Earth to create the Moon.  So in terms of the visible universe,  Scripture is giving us God’s faith-based timelines whereas science provides conclusions based on isotopic dating/spectrographic analyses of observable matter.  And perhaps here we should repeat Paul’s pithy definition, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2Corinthians 5:7), the implication being that what is seen is not necessarily the whole story.

   Hence those Scriptures which illustrate supranormal powers acting upon human eyes, preventing them from perceiving ‘reality’ (2Kings 6:15-18; Luke 24:16,31; John 20:14).  Proof of this lies in Stephen’s stoning, when he could see the heavens opened, yet no one around him did—not even unconverted Paul then present (Acts 7:55-56,58); or Paul’s remark in Hebrews 13:2 that some believers “entertained angels without knowing it.”  How could that be unless the distinctive presence of angelic beings had been ‘cloaked’ from their hosts?  Could not deceptions like UFO sightings and Marian apparitions be ascribed to such powers, since God allows Satan to deploy them against unbelieving mankind (2Thessalonians 2:9-11)? More about this later.   

Fifth through Sixth Days of Creation

   Though devoid of life, water bodies were already present, neither the result of volcanism nor rains lasting for millions of years.  In point of fact, Genesis 2:5-6 (↔Jeremiah 14:22) mentions “that Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth, but that a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground.” 

   On Fifth Day aquatic life and bird species were created:  Son commanded them to emerge from the waters.  These were followed by animals created from the earth—including man—on Sixth Day; meaning that if dinosaurs had really existed, they came after birds and co-existed with Adam; so that in Scripture’s ‘counter-evolution’ version, birds precede dinosaurs and are totally unrelated to them.

   This is a particular blow to modern theories that birds sprang from dinosaur species like dromaeosaurids, Archaeopteryx, and theropods, all of which were ostensibly land animals.  Since birds are indeed terrestrial, we must ask ourselves why Genesis classifies them as aquatic; the probably answer being that God is telling us ‘dinosaur-into-bird evolution’ never took place.  Here is an example of those intimations rather than arguments by which God proves science wrong.

   Now Genesis 2:19 tells us that Son [here named Yahweh God] brought every beast of the field and every bird of the air to Adam in order to name them.  Here we reach an imponderable:  There is no way of ascertaining the total number of animals brought before Adam.  Is Scripture suggesting pairs representative of each species [as later during the Flood], one animal per species [all “clean” at this juncture], or however many had been created?  Let us remember that Adam was then in the Garden of Eden, which was not representative of our world into which he was exiled; so we cannot go any further with this.

   Of course Adam himself was made from earth, thus by definition a land creature and totally unrelated to water-born creatures; so land-life [except for birds] did not originate in the sea; neither did man evolve from land apes but from a non-animal medium: soil—which raises red flags about the nature of ape-like, hominid remains.  Are they the real McCoy or a deception?  Surely they can be seen and touched; but then again the choice is deciding on grounds of faith and not perception.  Furthermore, Son made Man in his and His Father’s images; this word implies a fixed mold, neither ape-like nor changing over time, but in the standard semblance with which divine beings like Yahweh Son and angels are depicted in Scripture:  As human-like males (Genesis 18:2,25; Joshua 6:13-15; Mark 16:5; Acts 1:10).

   Thus on Sixth Day Man and Woman were created to resemble outwardly Son [the empowered Creator] and the Most High God [the power-giving Creator]. What crucial event did not take place during the creation of Man and Woman?  They shared the divine image but not the divine substance; physical features and indwelling spirit, but not immortal flesh; which is the key event during the resurrection of the righteous.  Then and only then will all the righteous since Abel to end-times share Jesus’ immortal flesh (1Corinthians 15:49-53; Colossians 1:8)—the point made in Psalms 17:15, “I shall be satisfied with your likeness when I awake”; and in 1John 3:2, “When he is revealed [during his second coming], we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”  The Most High God is immortal Spirit (John 4:24); so while no flesh considerations reference Him, immortal souls are patterned after His indwelling Spirit.

‘Singularities’ in Noah’s Flood

   We have stated that singularity in science is a state where the laws of physics as we know them do not work.  We do know that a finite amount of space can only contain so much matter; that, if at all possible, transporting animals from every corner of the world to a specific location would be a protracted, logistics nightmare; that falling rain filling up oceans rising way above Mount Everest is a physical impossibility; that if such were to be the case, once waters receded, there would be tons of mud left behind; that rising oceans would increase depth and pressure on aquatic life, possibly annihilating entire species; and that terrestrial plant life under such conditions could not possibly survive.

   Yet the Flood narrative is an exercise in all of the above.  The Ark was of finite size and shape (Genesis 6:14-16).  Seven pairs of clean animals and one unclean pair were brought into the Ark from every land-dwelling, air-breathing species (Genesis 7:2-3,8-9,21-23); which intimates that samplings from the entire global fauna were somehow teleported to the Ark’s location.  This 14:2 clean-to-unclean ratio makes sense, given that the majority of Ark animals had to have been herbivores (Leviticus 11:3-8) in order that pairs of unclean carnivores (Leviticus 11:27) feeding on them would not immediately deplete their numbers following disembarkation.  Animals dependent on aquatic life forms ostensibly could feed as before the Flood.

   Rain fell for 40 days until the waters rose “fifteen cubits [18 to 21 inches, or 22.5 to 26.5 feet] higher” than the highest mountains (Genesis 7:18-20).  After the waters receded incrementally, the ground was completely dry (Genesis 8:3-13); so that when the animals left the Ark, not one got stuck in mud and all ostensibly were teleported back to their place of origin.  The Flood’s objective was to destroy every air-breathing, animal form of life (Genesis 7:22);⁶ so the suggestion here is that aquatic life survived the catastrophe despite depth and pressure changes—even air-breathing ones like whales and dolphins.  And finally Genesis 8:8-12 intimates that on the evidence of the olive leave brought back to Noah by the scouting dove, plant life was not destroyed, so that on her last excursion, the dove found some tree where it nested and did not return.  This too makes sense, since herbivores needed plant life to survive back in their respective habitats.

   Totally bonkers according to science, but perfectly conceivable for the God for Whom nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37)—or for His proxy God wielding His powers.  Therefore if the laws of physics are by-products of Creation, it is quite possible for proxy God/Son to subvert them to serve his purpose [as he did by nullifying gravity while crossing stormy waters (Matthew 14:22-25)], especially since he was walking back on his hasty decision to destroy mankind (Genesis 6:7).  The Most High God would have carried through had He made such a decision (Numbers 23:19); but Son seized on Noah (Genesis 6:8) to put Plan B into operation:  Creation, though diminished, would endure.  The Flood was Son’s affair; the pact with Noah his own; and the rainbow sealing the pact emblematic of him (Genesis 9:9-15; Revelation 10:1).  That rainbow is the signal that will appear on sunless skies prior to his coming (Mathew 24:29-30).

   The language in Genesis 9:16 is particularly telling:  “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”  Who is this God Son speaks of if not the Most High God, Whose separate, inviolable covenant (Isaiah 24:5) of salvation includes the destruction of all things as we know them?  And this destruction, which involves fire from Heaven and not water, will take place at Armageddon (Revelation 20:7-10). The Most High’s vengeance against His enemies takes place once and collectively at end-times (Deuteronomy 32:35).

   Let us go back to the subversion of scientific laws during the Flood.  We will remember that on Second Day of Creation, Son separated waters above the sky from waters below.  What are these waters above the sky?  Neither the Hubble nor James Webb Space Telescopes registers them; nor for that matter, those reputed stores of hail to fall upon mankind during the final plagues (Job 38:22-23; Revelation 16:21).  Where are they?  Close above?  Beyond the Oort Cloud?  Light-years away?   

   What we do read in Genesis 7:11 is this:  “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life…all the fountains of the great deep were burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.”  In other words, the waters above the sky rained down on earth until they were stopped (Genesis 8:2); the word “rain” in this narrative being a figure of speech, not a run-of-the-mill downpour.  And they fell through the zone Scripture calls “the deep”—i.e., the sky of Genesis 1:6-8 separating the divine and the human realms.  If we again quote from Psalms 104:6, “You covered [the earth] with the deep as with a garment”, it is clear the sky is being referenced; that “veil” stretching over all nations (Isaiah 25:7), hiding Heaven from human eyes.  Still “garment” is a more fitting word to describe a sky filled with celestial decorations.

   As used here, “deep” implies distance between a higher [heavenly realm] and a lower point [our world]; but Scripture gives us no specific measurements.  However, it gives us clues which suggest that Heaven is within the range of human vision.  First of these is in Genesis 28:12:  Jacob dreamt of a ladder touching the ground and reaching up to an opening in Heaven, and of angels going up and down on it.  What is odd about this?  That the angels should be climbing up and down the ladder instead of flying to and fro as they normally do; which makes us realize that our attention is being drawn to the height of the ladder in order to suggest Heaven is not that far above.

   Then we have Jesus’ ascent into Heaven.  Assuming Jesus to have been of average height, the Apostles could see him going up until a cloud covered him, presumably hiding the entry point to Heaven (Acts 1:9-10).  This is followed by Stephen’s experience:  The sky opened and he could make out Father and Son on their respective thrones (Acts 7:55-56).  Or as Isaiah prophesied, the righteous in Heaven will be able to look down on Satan chained on earth (Isaiah 14:15-17).  Still more specifically, we have Luke 16:23-26, a clear reference to Armageddon,⁷ when Jesus and the redeemed will look down from the ramparts of a hovering, Heavenly Jerusalem onto satanic and human armies getting burned below (Revelation 20:7-10↔Ezekiel 38:8-12,15-17,21-23, 39:2-8,17-21).⁸  Also note that in Luke 16:26 mentioned is made of a great chasm separating divine and human levels.

   Perhaps the most suggestive of all these clues is found in Jesus’ second coming:  “He comes with the clouds, and every eye will see Him” (Revelation 1:7).  Now Jesus’ return takes place after some rearrangement of the natural world (Revelation 16:20) and after all celestial bodies have disappeared, including our Sun and Moon (Matthew 24:29).  Upon this darkness appears his rainbow, another singularity since no light is being refracted, reflected, or dispersed by suspended water droplets.  The sky opens and Jesus comes with angels tasked with collecting the resurrected righteous, all visible to the naked eye.  What is the oddity?  In our spherical Earth, supposing Jesus appears on the east, how can he be seen simultaneously on the other side of the planet?  By technological means?  Unlikely, since Matthew is clearly saying “every eye” will see him; and not every human being has access to technology.

   The implication here is a scientific impossibility, another singularity:  Earth has to become flat for every living being to see Jesus simultaneously.  And this ‘flatness’ is suggested in Revelation 20:8-9:  Satan deceives “the nations which are in the four corners of the earth…[and gathers] them together for [Armageddon]…And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.”  Plain means level ground; like those areas surrounding earthly Jerusalem which Jeremiah calls the “Valley of Slaughter” (Jeremiah 7:32); but renamed in Joel as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat”, the battlefield where Armageddon will take place. “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there.  Let the nations rouse themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat…Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the wine press is full (Revelation 14:14-20).  The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great (Revelation 9:20-21).  Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision (Revelation 20:9)! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining” (Joel 3:2,12-15).

   Armageddon’s plain is another Scriptural singularity, this time found in Zechariah 14:4,6-7:  Yahweh’s “feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. Then the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a very large valley, with half of the mountain moving toward the north and half toward the south…in that day the light shall not be clear or dark.  It will be a unique day which is known to Yahweh (Mark 13:32; Acts 1:7), not day, and not night [no Sun and  no Moon]; but it will come to pass that at evening time there will be light”—the fire from Heaven and ensuing conflagration incinerating Satan’s armies?  And why “evening”?  Because the Millennium of rest, running from sunset to sunset like its Genesis counterpart, will expire on the ‘evening’ Armageddon takes place, prior to the dawning of God’s timeless Kingdom.

   We will continue our discussion in Part II.

¹ There is a purpose in this:  To differentiate Himself from the interactive [↔Verb (John 1:1; 1John 5:7; Revelation 19:30] God of the Old Testament, Yahweh of hosts, who has been seen and heard (Genesis 18:25↔John 5:22; Acts 17:31; Exodus 20:19-22, 24:10-11, 25:22↔33:11, 21-23, 34:5-6; Deuteronomy 4:2)—as opposed to Father Who has not (John 5:37; 1Timothy 6:16; 1John 4:12).

   That there is a higher God [Father] and a lower-ranking God [Son] is obvious from Isaiah 44:6; John 14:28; 1Corinthians 15:24-28; Revelation 3:12.  Though Son shares His Father’s name, Yahweh, Son was an Angel speaking for and acting in lieu of Father (Genesis 21:17, 22:11-12,15-16↔Hebrews 6:13↔Deuteronomy 32:39↔Isaiah 44:8; Exodus 3:2-6, 23:20-21).  Jacob (Genesis 48:15-16) and Paul (Acts 27:23; Philippians 2:5-6) bore witness to Jesus’ nature as Angel and role as proxy God.

² This may be one reason why the 144,000 first-fruits are entirely chosen from mankind’s last generation (Revelation 7:1-8, 14:14-15), since they held onto faith despite massive evidence to the contrary.

³ Assuming the whole of human history, as Genesis 1 implies, spans 7,000± years; in which case ‘Wednesday’ will be the half-point, or midst of years in a week of 1,000-year days.

⁴ The same approach is used in Daniel 9:24-27 to compute prophetic time, wherein the conversion factor is 1 day = 1 year (Ezekiel 4:6↔Numbers 14:34).

   Summarizing Daniel’s timeline, we have 69 weeks, or 483 days (69 x 7), from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until Jesus’ baptism at age 30 (Luke 3:23).  Jesus is thought to have been born sometime between 6 BC and 4 BC; averaging these to 5 BC, we have around 25 AD for the year of his baptism; so that backtracking from that year [25 AD – 483 BC], we get ≈458 BC as the year when the decree was issued.

   Daniel speaks of an extra week which completes the 70 weeks of the prophecy (Daniel 9:24,26).  Please note that the Messiah dies on the middle of that last week (Daniel 9:26-27) when the following events take place: Jesus confirms his covenant with many [from after sunset Saturday to sometime on Wednesday = his 3-year ministry]; he dies on the cross [the latter part of Wednesday], thus invalidating Mosaic sacrifices [Galatians 3:13); and the last two days of that week [after sunset Wednesday to Friday sunset] comprise his ministerial work from Heaven—i.e., the 2,000-plus-year Christian experiment on earth spanning to end-times. The Millennium of rests takes place from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, when Armageddon takes place.

⁵The pre-existing—outside out time, therefore eternal in nature—foundation (Psalms 104:5) upon which our world is superimposed(?), consisting of geographical features that can be removed (Psalms 18:15; Revelation 16:20).

  Once the temporal world is burnt away, the new world consisting of eternal replacements (Hebrews 12:27) will stand on that self-same foundation.

⁶ If by “breath of life” we understand the soul, then Genesis 7:22 along with Ecclesiastes 3:21 answer the question that animals do have souls.  After all “breath of life” is what the Creator infused into Adam; from which Paul extrapolated that “Adam became a living soul” (1Corinthians 15:45).  Jesus of course taught that the soul gave life to the flesh (John 6:63); so animals would not be alive without souls of some kind—though these are not on a par with human souls.

⁷ “The blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42); where Satan and his angels doing will do some of the gnashing.  The concept of hell as generally understood is Roman Catholic propaganda, unfortunately perpetuated in great works of art by Milton, Bosch, Dante and others.  We should be outraged at the notion that a just God would allow the Deceiver and his minions to torment the souls they led astray while they suffer no consequences—which is not the outcome prophesied by Scripture.

⁸ Please note the cardinal point “north” in Isaiah 14:13, Jeremiah 1:13-15 and Ezekiel 38:15, 39:2 to denote the provenance of Satan and his army.  Also see the post-Judgment, pre-Armageddon connection between Jeremiah 7:33, 9:22; Ezekiel 39:4-5 and Revelation 19:17-18↔Ezekiel 39:17-21.