 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 178, Why the World Didn't End, on September 23rd. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey, Mike. It's almost over. It's the end. This is the end. Almost. Almost. Yeah. And you're probably hoping that because your fantasy team took a dive last week. Yes, Mike. People are getting so tired of talking. You want the pain to end of us talking about fantasy that I don't want to. No, you don't need to talk about it this week. You're now in fourth place. How'd that happen? Don't need to talk about it. People are tired of it, Mike. Who's up? Who's in first place now? That is the pugnacious pugs. Oh, my goodness. They are ruling the league. Well, you have taken over the rain. I know why you want it to end, but it ain't going to. It's not going to end. Your misery is going to continue. We shall see, my friend. We shall see. Long way to go. Yeah. Long way to go. But another world is not going to end on September 23rd, and we are so confident of that that we are doing the show, we're doing this episode before that time gets there. So we're not going to be like the, I'll just go ahead and say it, the false teachers that are putting dates out there, and then after the fact, they've got to improvise. We don't need to improvise here. The world is not going to end on September 23rd. The Lord's not going to return on September 23rd. And I will also add that the tribulation period is not going to begin on September 23rd. It's going to be the last one where we can say stuff like that, and then nobody can figure out that we're wrong until seven years later. So that's sort of clever. I might prefer a word like devious to that with all the connotations that go there with. But yeah, we need to talk about this. It's coming up a lot in pop culture. I've mentioned it before and in both on the podcast, the live stream, and if you don't know, we have started a live stream, just sort of a chit chat thing. We try to do it Friday nights. My son and I, so look, follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, you know, for, for those announcements when that is ready to go. But usually seven PM Pacific, but we've talked about it on there as well. But we wanted to dedicate an episode to it because you ought to have some place that you can sort of go for a brief survey of why this is nonsense. And there's really two sort of category reasons, you know, since this is the naked Bible podcast, we're going to be dealing with the biblical reasons. But this is getting linked online, not only with the astronomy stuff in Revelation 12, but it's also getting linked to Wormwood and getting linked to Planet X, which is Nibiru. So a lot of this, you know, the ancient astronaut mythology, again, getting Christianized, getting baptized to make it sound biblical. You're getting all of these things together. So the other sort of category, you know, the, the, the category of analysis here would be astronomy. And we're not going to do that because we're not astronomers, but I happen to know an astronomer who blogs about this regularly. Actually, Stuart, this is Stuart Robbins on the pseudo astronomy podcast. Stuart's PhD is actually in, in geology, specifically Martian geology. But that requires a lot of astronomy background naturally because it's Mars. Stuart has done a whole series on Planet X myths. You're looking at them from the perspective of mostly science. I say mostly because I've actually been a guest on his podcast twice. And we've talked about things like ancient astronaut theory was Zechariah Sitchin, who is really sort of the, you know, the point of origin, at least for the Nibiru stuff, which again gloms on with Planet X and whatnot. So I would say, you know, we're going to put this link on the episode page, you know, for this episode, a link to Stuart's archive or what, where it'll go is it'll go to my page, a page of my blog. And then there'll be links there to individual episodes on Stuart's archive, where he covers the scientific reasons why Planet X, the return of Planet X and Nibiru stuff is just nonsense. So you'll get that if you're interested after the fact, hopefully, again, some of the people promoting this idea and baptizing it, you know, making the sign of the crossover. It will also go up and listen and read as well. Stuart has links on his episode pages and just repent of the nonsense and move on from there. But for our purposes here, we're going to talk about the biblical reasons. Why again, this is just, it's just silliness. And, you know, I say silliness, it's easy to laugh at. It's easy to poke fun at. But just this, again, past week, we see the Huffington Post. They, I don't know how much effort it took them, how much time they put into finding the dumbest articulation of this idea, but they managed to. Someone named David Mead, you know, who talks about Elohim showing up 33 times in the Bible. Like, does he know what a concordance is? I mean, it's a few thousand, David. You're only off by a few thousand. So, you know, here you have the Huffington Post pick this idea up and they have a very, very wide circulation. And so once again, we get Christian silliness that makes it easy for non-Christians to consider the Bible and the gospel ridiculous. So it's not just silly, you know, it's actually serious. And again, they look for the ones that are the most absurd, the most absurd examples. You say, well, not everybody is that dumb, Mike. There are some like really smart people doing, you know, saying this too. Yeah, well, they're wrong as well. They might be wrong for different reasons, but they're going to get lumped in to the really, really, really dumb articulations of Bible prophecy, what the Bible says, biblical theology. And it really makes it hard for those of us who are trying to do serious work, you know, and have it matter for the pop culture. Again, the wider church, if you're familiar with my Christian Middle Earth analogy, the bottom realm, the one that's the biggest, it really makes it hard to sort of combat all that, you know, with good content. And even worse, when scholars again, see this kind of stuff that they see what really happens online and the absurdity and the nonsense and what Christians who, you know, profess to want to be interested in Bible study are really saying and thinking about and buying into. It just discourages them from getting involved. They don't want their content used in such terrible ways. They don't want to be associated in any way, even if they're trying to combat it with nonsense and, frankly, false teaching. So it's just not a good thing across the board. But I wanted to have at least an episode where we do a survey. This is not going to be terribly deep because, frankly, the reasons why this is just absurd should be pretty evident. In some cases, self-evident. But I'm going to just go through a few reasons. I have five of them. Again, why the world, you know, did not end, you know, why Jesus didn't return on September 23rd and why those who claim these things are false teachers at best or, you know, they might even be doing it. They might even know better and still be doing it. You know, they're doing things for their ego, for an audience, for money, you know, whatnot. But at best, they're just they're inept in terms of their approach to scripture and what they're doing with scripture. Now, in either case, they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. And you shouldn't be following them. You shouldn't be giving them any attention. They can be safely ignored. If you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're already doing that. Chances are really good. You're already doing that. But you have friends, you know, people in your family. And those are the people you can reach to try to get them, you know, try to take their interest in the Bible and direct it to better content. So let's go through five, you know, again, just, you know, statements, five, you know, topical kind of statements and work our way through the list of five for why, again, the world didn't end on September 23rd. The first one is that Revelation 12 is about a past event, not a future event. In other words, Revelation 12 predicts nothing. It's about a past event, not a future event. Now, this, the people who are peddling the September 23rd thing are tying this in to the fact that the astronomical items mentioned in Revelation 12. Okay, the Virgin with the 12 stars, you know, the woman with the 12 stars around her head, you know, constellation Virgo, the sun in her midst, moon at her feet, that sort of thing. You get things that aren't mentioned in Revelation 12 that are factoring into this, but the things that I and others have talked about in hindsight, again, if we take Revelation 12 as astronomical signage and in association with the Star of Bethlehem, the Star of Bethlehem is actually part of this, especially if, as most astronomers would agree, the Star of Bethlehem was Jupiter in its retrograde motion. Again, if you plot out what Revelation 12 is describing, if you take it as John's actually looking up at the sky or he knows the position, you know, he knows enough esoteric astronomy, that sort of thing, or where he's heard the tradition or whatever by those who are into it. You know, we don't necessarily know how John got the material, but it's there. So if you take it seriously in that way, you get a whole set of astronomical signs and then there are things happening in the sky in conjunction with what's actually mentioned that matter for the birth narrative in Matthew 2, namely Jupiter in its retrograde motion. Not going to go into all the details of that. You could find a little bit of a little discussion of mine online in a number of places on YouTube and whatever, but, you know, that's legit. It's hindsight, though. And it's also not a fulfillment of any biblical prophecy in the Old Testament. It's just something that we can note after the fact that takes on significance when it produces a date, September 11th, 3 B.C. And again, for those who might just be listening to this for the first time and you think, Oh, I can't be because Herod died in 4 B.C. Oh, contrary, you're that is the dominant opinion in New Testament scholarship. It's also one of the most unexamined things in New Testament scholarship. There are a number of scholars who have shown that the 4 B.C. for the death of Herod does not work and not only doesn't it work. It interferes with other things in biblical chronology. So you could you could go to my my website, drmsh.com, put in September 11th, you know, 3 B.C. or the Star of Bethlehem or something like that. You're going to find my post where I list, you know, some articles that you can get. You can actually get the articles, which are one of them is is at least pretty hard to find the one by Ormond Edwards on Herodian coins and how that affects chronology, specifically this point of chronology. You can get that by subscribing to my newsletter. And the other one you can get as well. And I need to add a third one. I mean, this is not this is far, far from being an axiomatic unassailable point in New Testament scholarship. It is not that at all. It's just nobody bothers nobody. Nobody cares about the chronology. It's it's been repeated so often that Herod died in 4 B.C. Nobody looks. Well, there are people who have looked and there are some serious problems with it. So if you take the September 11 3 B.C. date that happens to be Tishri 1, Tishri 1 factors into all sorts of Jewish traditions. There's other material that I that I discuss in my lectures in the work of Ellen Robbins at Johns Hopkins, how the the flood events, Noah, the watchers, all this kind of stuff factored into a Tishri 1 date and the chronology. All these things are mixed. They're all part of a matrix. And I discuss these things in my book, Reversing Hermon. So if you want that, you know, you can go look it up. You can go get it. But for our purposes here, if you look at what's going on in Revelation 12, you treat it that way in hindsight. There is no Old Testament prophecy that spells any of this out. It's just something you see in hindsight that marries in real interesting ways with Jewish tradition and their thoughts about Messiah. OK, then the assumption has become for some. Well, if it had this relationship to the first coming, then surely, surely it tells us something about the second coming. Well, it doesn't because if you read Revelation 12, it doesn't predict anything. It's hindsight, not foresight. And people say, well, it's in the book of Revelation, Mike. And the revelations about the future can't be about the past. If it's in the book of Revelation, again, I got news for you. The book of Revelation refers to past events. There's no law that says it can't. And in this case, it clearly does. I'm going to read the passage. And again, this is so self-evident. I can't even imagine why this is this is an issue. But again, we're going to talk on this episode about why it is. And you're going to throughout the episode, you should be saying to yourself, good grief, that's bad interpretation. And it is. It is. But that doesn't stop people from doing it. So here's Revelation 12, one through six, again, just to get it fixed in somebody's head that might be new to this information. A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven, behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on his head, seven diatoms. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. Verse five, she gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for twelve hundred and sixty days. That's Revelation 12, one through six. Now, it's crystal clear that this is the birth of the Messiah. And she gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. That is that is a quotation right out of Psalms. It's a messianic song, the ruling the nations with the rod of iron. Again, this is very familiar. You know, if this was Christmas time, we would sort of just be able to pick that out because you hear it in songs all the time. But this is clearly clearly a past event because we know Jesus was born. It has nothing predictive about it. It is a past event. Revelation 12 was about the past, not the future. And even the rest of verse five, her child was caught up to God and to his throne. It's a reference to the resurrection and more specifically the ascension where Christ ascended to the right hand of God, the throne of power, the place of power. So verse five encapsulates sort of the mission of the Messiah. He's born, born as a man. He's going to, you know, he is the Messiah. So his destiny is to rule the nations. You know, he rises from the dead and he ascends to the father and he takes he sits down as scripture says, you know, half a dozen times, just look it up. Look up the right hand of God, the New Testament. He sits down in the place of rulership, you know, inaugurating the kingly rule, inaugurating the kingdom. Now, the kingdom hasn't reached its full consummation yet. We all know that. But this is what the New Testament describes. Jesus rose from the dead. He ascended. He sat down at the right hand of God. This is clearly, clearly Jesus. And by the way, if Revelation 12 is predicting something in the future, then it would be contradicting the stuff that's already said in the New Testament, because Christ has already seated. He's already seated at the right hand of God. So it's not future. It's past. Anyone I would think that has a modicum of New Testament knowledge should be able to read this and understand it clearly. But in this day and age, I guess that's asking a lot. You say, well, what about verse six? You know, the woman fled into the wilderness. You know, who's the woman? Mary, Mary didn't, you know, no, it's not Mary. And of course, Mary didn't flee into the wilderness. The woman is Israel, Israel births the Messiah. Israel is the, you know, the bride of God in the Old Testament. Israel is the one who would produce the messianic child. He is a descendant of Abraham. OK, again, that the imagery is crystal clear. If you know a little bit of your Old Testament. So Israel, after Christ has risen and ascended, gets persecuted, flees into the wilderness. Again, this is this is a picture of the persecution of the Jews, which, of course, we know from the book of Acts happened. OK, there is a Jewish persecution and an early Christian persecution in the Jerusalem church. So she flees there, you know, she she gets away under persecution. Of course, the dragon, if we keep reading in the book of Revelation, you know, let's just go beyond verse six. So after the woman flees into the wilderness, we'll get back to the 1260 days for a moment here. But after the woman flees, now war arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated. There was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him. OK, this happens after or I would I would say even even more pointedly in conjunction with the inauguration of the kingdom. So when Jesus rises from the dead and has victory over the powers of darkness, sits down at the right hand of God. That's basically the beginning of the end for the dragon. OK, and those who are with him. And that's what Revelation 12, 7 and onward are are describing. This is not describing a primeval rebellion of a third of the angels before the creation of humankind. And, you know, in between Genesis one, one and two, the gap theory, there is nothing of the sort in this passage to support any of that. And by the way, this is the only place in the Bible. It's the last book of the Bible, by the way. This is the only place in the Bible where a third of the angels are mentioned. The idea of a primeval rebellion of Satan and the angels before creation or in between Genesis one, one and two is a myth. It has no scriptural basis at all. Again, you can you can prove that established by using a concordance. It ain't hard. So the dragon gets thrown down and John says in verse 10, I heard a loud voice in heaven saying now the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come. So verse 10 validates the explanation I'm giving you. Do it. Does anybody read on through verse 10? OK, the kingdom of our God, the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the land, by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives, even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, in you who dwell in them, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short. And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she has to be nourished for a time and times and half a time. What's happening here is from verses seven on and I'm right now. I'm at the end of verse 14. You have the fleeing of the woman, OK, the flight of the woman under persecution, which was verse six. You have it repeated with more detail in verses seven through 14. It's the same episode. They're just covering. It's like the verse six is sort of, you know, an earthly reference because the birth happens on earth and then Israel has to flee under persecution. Seven through 14 is sort of the perspective from heaven. There's a war in heaven in conjunction with, you know, the events of the Messiah because his coming and his resurrection, his ascension bring forth the kingdom. You have something alluded to here in Luke. You know, I saw Jesus as I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And I've said in the past that this is in conjunction because it is just read the Gospels. This is in conjunction with the beginning of his preaching about the kingdom of God. So what Jesus is saying in Luke 10 is the kingdom of God is in concert with, commensurate with the defeat of Satan. Satan no longer can accuse believers. He no longer has a claim on their soul, as it says here in Revelation 12. The accuser doesn't have a case anymore. The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. OK, he has no authority anymore. So what Jesus comments on when he begins preaching about the kingdom is pro-leptic. It foreshadows what's going to happen. When does it happen? Here's the key point. When does all this happen when Christ ascends and takes his seat at the right hand of God? That is throughout the New Testament, when the kingdom begins. It's not when the kingdom reaches its full form. It's when the kingdom begins. The kingdom is here. If he's not, if it's not here, then Christ is ruling over nothing or he isn't ruling at all. The New Testament has him ruling in many places. So you either accept the language of the New Testament or you don't or you make something up in its place. And that's pretty much, again, what some of these people are doing. So the Israel gets persecuted and it actually expands. If we keep reading here, the serpent, verse 15, poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with a flood. Again, it's imagery. It's an image about trying to kill the woman, trying to devour the woman, trying to drown the woman, whatever. But the earth came to the help of the woman and the earth open its mouth, swallowed the river that the dragon had poured forth from his mouth. Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring. Interesting line. Who are the rest of her offspring? Who are the rest of Israel's offspring? On those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. It's also a reference to the church. The church begins with Jewish converts. Again, this is New Testament history 101. Revelation 12 is chronicling stuff that had happened and stuff that was happening in their days. Well, what about the 1260 days? Well, surprise, surprise in the I have a quote here from from own who David own A.U.N.E his revelation commentary. He quotes, you know, several sources for this. I mean, but again, you can just go look up, look it up in the history books and do the math. He says in the present context, it is relevant that almost exactly three and one half years elapsed between the beginning of the first Jewish revolt, A.D. 66 and the siege of Jerusalem, which was, you know, 70 A.D. So there you got your 1260 days. The Jews under persecution and they it lasts for three and a half years and they get destroyed. You said, well, how can that be an escape then? Well, didn't you weren't paying attention when we read through Revelation 12 here? I'll read the line again. It says here in verse 11, they have conquered him. OK, the believers are brethren in verse 10 have conquered him, the dragon, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. For they love not their lives, even unto death. The escape of the people of God is not earthly oriented. OK, it is ultimately heavenly. They escape because the accuser of the brethren has been cast down. They have eternal life. OK, that's their escape. So Revelation 12 doesn't say that nobody died. Lots of people died. And that's what played out in history. This is a historical reckoning. Now I would add again that you're going to have people in the audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is preterism. Yeah, hooray, hoopla. OK, this actually doesn't say a thing about preterism in principle because Revelation 12, again, it doesn't predict anything. So it doesn't really comment on the rest of the preterist system. You can still have Revelation 12 look back at an event. It looks back on the Messiah's birth, after all. You can have Revelation 12 looking back in time. But that doesn't mean that it legitimizes a system that says everything in Revelation is back in time. That would be overreading Revelation 12 in a different way than the September 23rd Futurist people overread it. We have a persecution following the resurrection by the time Revelation gets written. Really either way, either before 70 or in the 90s. And I take the 90s view, but either way, that's history. That's past. You see the pastor like it's happened right then. I mean, it's not about the future. And so to use one passage in Revelation and say that's referencing a past or present event. And so therefore we should read everything in Revelation that way. Again, you're guilty of overreading a passage and imposing it on the entire book in a different way than those who overread the Futurist position. So be careful. OK, we need to have consistent hermeneutics here and making the context of one passage be the context of everything else is not really good method to be brief about it. Now, wings of eagles. Let's just comment on a few other things here. Wings of eagles. Oh, that must be in helicopters. You know, but that's like an airlift. That's the airlift out of out of Ethiopia when the, you know, like, because the people are Jews are coming back to Israel. And now we've got an airlift and we get the phalloshes out of Ethiopia. We bring them to the land and OK. No, I'm sorry. It's not helicopters. It's not an airlift. It's Old Testament. It Wings of Eagles, Exodus 19 for its a reference back to the Exodus from Egypt. Remember where Israel was delivered from Egypt? OK, so they're using a deliverance image to describe the deliverance of Israel here, the woman who's fleeing Exodus 19 forces. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on Eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Well, maybe God use helicopters back there and each and each. OK, please, please. You get the same image in Deuteronomy 32 11, you know, God, you know, sort of being cast as as an eagle that protects its young. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them up on its pinions. The Lord alone guided him and speaking of the nation. You know, no foreign God was with him. You know, and the familiar Isaiah 40 31 is Isaiah 40 talking about the deliverance, you know, from the exile in the Old Testament context. They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like Eagles. They shall run and not be wary. They shall walk and not faint. Again, it's about deliverance. It's about divine deliverance. It's not about helicopters. Now, Revelation 12 11 again makes clear that this isn't like nobody dies. This the whole passage refers to really, really pivots on the birth of the Messiah past event, the resurrection and ascension of the Messiah past event, the persecution of the Jews at the time, you know, shortly after the resurrection, the ascension and the persecution of the early church past events. But the kingdom again, in verses seven through 14 or so, you know, the kingdom transcends earth. Now, when it reaches its final consummation, it will return to earth in a global new, a new global Eden. If you've read Unseen Realm, I spent a lot of time on that. So the kingdom of God that exists now in a spiritual sense will return to earth. Okay, it'll do that. That's what the Bible says. It will do that. We will have a final outcome where the nations will be returned. The nations will be reclaimed. We will rule over the nations, you know, with the rod of iron, we get the morning star, we displace angels, we rule over angels, all that stuff in Unseen Realm. Okay, all of that is the case. But in Revelation 12, the emphasis is, okay, you got stuff happening on earth. Now let's take the heavenly view. People are going to die on earth. It's a terrible time, but let's take the heavenly view. And the heavenly view is that the accuser of the brethren can accuse no more. If you are a member, here's what all that means. If you are a member of the kingdom of God, you will have eternal life. The one who owned your soul because of the fall, okay, who gets to, you know, accuse believers, you know, assert his ownership, point out their sin and their estrangement from God. That's over. That's done with. And it's a past fact. Colossians 1.13, God has delivered us into the kingdom, has delivered perfect tense. Go look it up. Has delivered us into the kingdom of his dear son. If we passed, you know, the perfect tense have been delivered into the kingdom of his dear son. That is a past event. The kingdom is here already, but it's not yet here in its fullness. This is basic New Testament theology that is summarily ignored by the people who promote the world ending on September 23rd. Again, Revelation, our first point is past. It's about the past. It's not about the future. There isn't a whiff, not a whiff of prediction in Revelation 12. Number two, not only do we have that not going for the September 23rd theorists, but there's no other passage in the New Testament that cites or alludes to the signs of Revelation 12 with respect to the second coming or the end of the age. There is no other passage that references it. There's no other mention of a virgin with 12 stars. There's no other mention of the moon at her feet, the sun in her midst. There's no passage that says in any way, hey, reader, hey, you reading the Bible, you might want to study the star of Bethlehem to learn about the second coming, not the first, but the second coming. You got that? There's no passage that says that. There is no other reference to birth astronomy anywhere in the New Testament, except Matthew 2 and Revelation 12. And Matthew 2 doesn't say, hey, the second time that this guy shows up, you know, that Revelation 12, that's what that's about. There's nothing like, there's just no textual support for this idea. There's nothing in Scripture that tells us that Revelation 12, which is clearly past, birth of the Messiah, I would suggest that's in the past, ascension, resurrection, ascension, that's in the past. There's no other verse outside of Revelation 12 that tells us to read Revelation 12 as a future thing. There just isn't. Again, again, I don't write the material. I can read it and I can study it. And so can you. And you will find that what I'm telling you here is completely correct. Third, the September 23rd phony prophecy. Cites the astronomical signs associated with end times in the Bible generally. It cites them haphazardly and selectively. In other words, they cheat or they're inept. I mean, you got one or the other. Both, neither choice is really flattering, but it's one or the other. Some say Revelation 12 is the sign of the beginning of the tribulation. But where's the verse that associates Revelation 12's signs with the beginning of the tribulation or the tribulation period at all? Well, it's that it's that it's a persecution stuff, you know, right? Oh, really? So, OK, let me let me go back to Revelation 12. Got the birth of Messiah. Check. OK, do we know that that happened? Yep. Check. Do we know that was in the past? Check. OK, so like if that marked the beginning of the seven year tribulation, then why are we still here? You know, shouldn't like seven years later, the Lord have returned. Revelation 12, verse six, and then what follows is not about the tribulation period. Yeah, I'm speaking to people who, you know, who adopt that system. Just just think about it a little bit. Where's the verse as well that associates any signs in the sky? And I can't catch this. Where's the verse that associates any signs in the sky with the beginning of the tribulation at all? Well, there's those those passages about the sun being darkened and the moon being darkened and the blood moons and all that stuff. Well, if you actually read those passages, they come from somewhere. All of those things come from somewhere. And that somewhere would be the Old Testament, that thing that's three quarters of your Bible. The Old Testament. And you know, if you go back and look at the Old Testament, you know what they're associated with? The day of the Lord. Now, if you're a standard pre-trib, pre-mill, a scatological person, OK, and you have like a pre-trib rapture. Well, even if you don't have a pre-trib rapture, if you're if you're like there's a tribulation period of seven years and then we have the second coming, OK, wherever you put the rapture, doesn't matter if you got the seven year period and then you've got the second coming at the end of the seven year period. Well, guess what? All of the signs, the celestial signs mark the end because the end of the seven year tribulation period is when the day of the Lord happens. This is when everything just blows up. This is when you get Armageddon. This is when you get the judgment of the nations. This is when you get the vindication of the righteous, the return of the Lord with, you know, the holy ones, which includes, you know, believers. This is when you get that stuff. The day of the Lord is when everything wrong is made right and everything that was right to begin with is vindicated. Again, just a little basic day of the Lord theology. All of it would be at the end of the tribulation, not the beginning. There isn't a single verse that puts these signs at the beginning of the tribulation or put another way. There's no verse that puts these signs seven years prior to the day of the Lord. There just isn't. Again, you could just look the signs up and look at the verses, read the verses. Look in your when you're reading your Bible, look at the little footnotes, little letter one, two or A, B or whatever, and they will direct you to cross references in the Old Testament that the New Testament writer is using to write their material. Now, if you search for the term tribulation, and of course I did this in preparation for this episode and, you know, preparation for, you know, other things as well, if you search for the tribulation, again, you're going to find that this is true. You can search for sun. You can search for moon and the word dark in conjunction with sun or moon or blood moon or you can do all of the searching. Okay, it's all associated with the day of the Lord or the one exception is going to be Acts chapter two or Pentecost. Again, if this must be the beginning of the tribulation, like why are we here? Because if Pentecost marked the beginning of the tribulation, well, then seven years later, Jesus should have returned, right? Again, everywhere you look, it implodes on itself. It fails miserably. There are celestial signs, again, mentioned in conjunction with end times eschatology, but they are associated with the day of the Lord. Okay, Matthew 24-29. Just think, just listen to this. Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Same thing in Mark 13-24. Same thing in Luke 21-25. I mean, all you have to do is look up these items. And the language itself is going to show you where these signs fit. They do not fit, you know, at the beginning of the tribulation. Now you could say, well, okay, you know, if the Lord returns at the end of the tribulation, then, hey, these signs are associated with the second coming because that's in conjunction with the day of the Lord. Well, you'd be correct then. But guess what? None of these things are in Revelation 12. None of them. So why would we use Revelation 12 to interpret these passages in the Gospels so that we could calculate dates? Why would we do that? Well, just to be a little cynical, I'll tell you why people do this. They do it to get an audience. They do it to sell things. They do it for ego or they do it because they're either sinister or just plain inept. That's why they do it. The greater question and frankly, the more important question is why do people follow them? Why do so many people buy in to this thinking when they either have the books sitting on their lap that they could check it out or they have software, they have something online. It is not difficult to check these things. We have, I guess the conclusion I have to draw is we have a lot of people in our churches that either can't think well, are basically biblically illiterate or they just don't care. And that's really sad. Any one of those options is really sad. This is not rocket science. This is not like, oh, this guy's so smart, I have to listen to him because he's spending his whole life studying this stuff. Well, actually, you can destroy it in about five minutes with a concordance. You really could. But people won't do it. They're either disinterested or they've been convinced somehow that this is some sort of wizard in front of them or online making this website. They're not. They're not. And, you know, you have scripture, you can look at these things up for yourself and you should. If you have the tools and you're not using them, that's that's on you. That's on you. It's sad to say, but that's on you. Number four, the fourth problem, let's just put it this way, the fourth problem with all of this is that it is based as well in part on overreading the quote, sign of the son of man, unquote. People arbitrarily say that Revelation 12 is the sign of the son of man. Let's put our thinking caps on. Let's utilize the powers of our investigative mind to dig into this. As we read through Revelation 12, does the phrase son of man ever show up? No. Well, if we looked up the phrase son of man everywhere else in the New Testament, does that ever reference anything in Revelation 12, you know, these astronomical signs? No, it doesn't. So that took, again, if you had a concordance, you could you could do that in a couple of minutes. You could destroy the foundation of the idea with very little effort. You know, you look at Matthew 24 again, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be dark and then we will not give its light. The stars will fall from heaven. The powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Again, the tribulation is passed. There's the reference to the son of man. We get astronomical signs. Yes, the sun will be darkened. Is that what Revelation 12 says? No. The moon will not give its light. Is that what Revelation 12 says? No. No. Now, you know, we do get an illusion to the stars will fall from heaven. But no, no, see, if you're taking Revelation 12 as astronomy, then you have to you have to literalize that. So does Revelation 12 describe asteroids falling, comets, meteors falling to earth? No, it doesn't. It describes a war in heaven that involves Satan, which tells you that it's talking about divine beings. It's talking about spiritual stars, spiritual members of the heavens, not astronomical. And again, Revelation 12 doesn't point to anything future anyway. I should add, look at the description, verse 30, then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man. And then all the tribes of the earth were born. They will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. Clouds are not astral signs, folks. They are meteorological. And also, they're not mentioned in Revelation 12. Now, you know, let's just drift back here to the sign of the son of man. I mean, you could you could compare what's being said to these passages, you know, for a couple of hours and again, poke fun at it. But I'm hoping you get the message. Just just think about what's said and go actually go look at the passages back to the sign of the son of man. Now, in this is actually a difficulty, you know, in biblical studies and New Testament studies, there are a number of competing interpretations to the son of man. I saw our point here is that people over read the sign of the son of man. They assume that it talks about what's being described here in Revelation 12. The son of the son of man is actually never identified at all. And that's why it's a problem. Now, I'm going to quote a little section here from Loz's Hermione commentary. I believe this one's on this volumes on Matthew. And he says this about the sign of the son of man here in his discussion of Matthew 24, 29 and 30. He says there are three competing interpretations. The first corresponds to the interpretive tradition of the ancient church, although today it has the fewest advocates. According to this interpretation, the sign of the son of man is a cosmic cross appearing in the sky. The Didache in Chapter 16 verse 6 already understood it this way. The Didache is again a part of what we would call the early patristic, early church fathers, you know, set of writings. So it's actually pretty close to the New Testament era. So the Didache, it's kind of a Christian, I don't want to say handbook, that's a little too flippant, but sort of a discipleship manually, a manual for following Jesus, that sort of thing. Again, an early Christian text, the Didache already understood it this way. And that was followed by numerous older and more recent interpreters. But again, as Loz commented, this one has the fewest advocates today. The second interpretation continuing with Loz understands the sign in the Holy War tradition as a field banner or flag, a standard in support of this interpretation are especially a number of biblical texts in which sign, the Greek is Simeon, appears in connection with trumpet. The Greek word for trumpet is it's hard to pronounce. Southpigs or something like that. You have two consonants, the G and the S bump into each other. It makes it difficult. So we've got in biblical text, the word sign Simeon and the word for trumpet are often found together. And when they are, especially in the Old Testament, it refers to sort of a military situation where you have a field banner that becomes the particular sign, you know, sort of, you know, to coordinate troop movements or specific, you know, regiment, if you want to use that term, a specific portion of a tribe that goes out to war, that sort of thing. So what he's suggesting here is that we need to judge the sign of the Son of Man, along with the reference to trumpets. And if you do that, you're going to have the sign of the Son of Man have something to do, perhaps. Again, this is, this is a guess because it's never actually spelled out. You're going to have the sign of the Son of Man in some way associated with the, you know, the Feast of Trumpets or the trumpets that sounded, you know, on Tishriwan or something like that. Now, if you took it that way, again, that's a connection to the Tishriwan of Revelation 12. But again, Revelation 12 talks about a past event, not a future one. It doesn't give us the details that say, this is how you should read this passage. Again, this is a guess. And also Revelation 12 doesn't refer to the sign of the Son of Man. Why wouldn't it refer to the sign of the Son of Man? Because it's past. It's relating a past event, not a future one. That's why the sign of the Son of Man is not mentioned in Revelation 12. Third, third view, going back to Luz in contrast with these two interpretations is a third and it's specifically modern and the interpretation that assumes no particular sign in addition to the Son of Man himself. This view would understand the phrase of the Son of Man. Okay. After the word sign, sign of the Son of Man is understood here as an exegetical genitive. In other words, without getting into the grammar speak, the sign is the Son of Man himself. The sign of the Son of Man is the actual appearance of the Son of Man, that this is the third view. So the only sign promised by Jesus is his appearance itself. That's how you would parse the third option. Now, again, these are three views and they have, you know, competition among scholars. They've all got, you know, they got something going for them, except maybe the first one. I think the first one's a little far-fetched, but again, it's part of the early church tradition. You know, if you're living a few decades after the crucifixion, you might think of the cross as the sign of the Son of Man. And that's understandable. But again, there's nothing exegetical to hang that on. So the second and third view are really the ones that sort of get discussed by scholars. But scripture itself is ambiguous. There's no clarity on the matter. We might ask ourselves as well, well, in Matthew, you know, he has these astronomical signs and, you know, Matthew 24, 29 and 30, you know, he's talking about sun, moon, and stars and losing their brightness, all that kind of stuff. Or might we want to ask where that comes from? It comes from the Old Testament, as I mentioned before. Now, generally, the day of the Lord gets described in terms of these astronomical phenomena, you know, a lot. You got Amos 518, 520, Amos 8 and 9 and following. Jeremiah 423, Zephaniah 115, Ezekiel 327, Joel 210. And you get a number of these references. But specifically, Matthew is referring to two passages, Isaiah 1310 and Isaiah 344. I'm going to read a little quotation here from from Hagner in this regard. This is Hagner's commentary on the same passage. The lines used to describe the changes in the sun, moon, and stars are drawn from the language of the Septuagint, the LXX. Thus, the reference to the sun being darkened and moon not giving its light is taken from apocalyptic material from Isaiah 1310. The only significant difference is Matthew's cinnamon. He uses Phegos, which comes from Joel 210 and Joel 415 instead of Matthew's fos for the term light. Both those terms can speak of light. Matthew uses a different one back to Hagner. Although Isaiah 1310 also mentions the stars not giving their light, Matthew next alludes to the Septuagint of Isaiah 344. Quote, All the stars will fall like leaves from a vine and as leaves fall from a fig tree. With this last point, again, notice the fig tree parable in verses 32 and 33. So it's in close proximity here to what Matthew is talking about. Only Matthew's phrase from the sky is added to these Old Testament passages to complete the sense of his own idea. Only that phrase is not verbally parallel in these Septuagint passages. The fourth line, which reads and the powers of heaven will be shaken, finds no direct parallel in the Old Testament but is similar to the statement in Joel 210, the heaven will be shaken and also Isaiah 344. Once again, the heaven will be rolled up as a scroll. So conceptually, they're the same, but the wording is not the same. Now, this is, again, me talking here. Did you notice or do you have in your head the context of Isaiah 13? Matthew talking about the day of the Lord, the return of the sign of the Son of Man, all that stuff quotes Isaiah 13. Isaiah 13 is an oracle against Babylon. Now, if you've listened to the podcast at any, for any length, you know that Babylon is a big deal. We're not just talking about the city, the way the Jews generally and New Testament writers specifically think of Babylon, they're not just thinking it's a bad place because, oh, you know, our people spent 70 years in captivity there. That was awful. Okay, that's part of it. But Babylon as a metaphor of chaos and everything that is oppositional to the most high God and his people goes all the way back into the early chapters of Genesis. You say, well, why bring that up? Well, what I'm suggesting is maybe this talk in Matthew 24, 29 and 30 about all this cosmic stuff going on at the time of the Lord's return. Maybe it's not about astronomy at all. Maybe we're supposed to be thinking of spiritual warfare here. Maybe we're supposed to be thinking of Babylon because Babylon is sort of the ground zero metaphor for the hostile forces of darkness that oppose God and his people. Maybe that's what we're supposed to be thinking. Maybe it's just saying that the Lord is going to return in the context of a time of just utter spiritual darkness. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do at all with physical astronomy. I'm going to get to one more point after this that I think sort of strengthens that idea. If you go to Isaiah 34, the other passage that he quotes, who's in the cross hairs in Isaiah 34 or 4? You've got the nations on the earth and the powers in heaven. Deuteronomy 32 world view the nations are under the dominion of powers of darkness, fallen gods. But you read a few verses down after the quotation who's mentioned? Edom. Edom, again, is another way of you couldn't think of Edom without thinking of Babylon in the Old Testament period. We covered the book of Obadiah here on the podcast. If you want to know why I'm saying that Edom has a close association with Babylon, go listen to those couple episodes, two episodes on Obadiah. You can't think of Edom without thinking about Babylon. One just sort of became a metaphor for the other. And it's because of the circumstances of what happened when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Edom helped. So again, it's another way of referring to this sort of, again, this matrix of ideas, this complex of ideas. But our last point here, our fifth problem, you know, why didn't, you know, why doesn't Revelation 12 signal the end of the world in September 23rd? Well, generally the people who prop up this kind of idea fail to note that the falling stars language, and this is for the wormwood crowd too, this is for the Revelation 8, you know, wormwood crowd. There's a consistent failure to note that falling stars language, the flaming falling mountains from the sky, you know, coming to earth, that language refers to divine beings in Jewish literature, especially in the Second Temple period. Many can refer to that in the Old Testament here and there as well, but especially the Second Temple period. So in other words, this language may have absolutely nothing at all to do with physical astronomy, comet, meteor, whatever, asteroid may have nothing at all to do with it. Now you can go read my blog post on wormwood, but I'm going to quote a little bit from Beal's commentary, which I quote there on Revelation 8, 10 to 11. And this will be where we wrap up. Now just this is from Beal's commentary, his Revelation commentary on Revelation 8, 10 and 11. He says, as with the Second trumpet, so again here, a great fireball is thrown from heaven. This time it is not depicted as a quote, great mountain, but as a quote, great star burning like a torch unquote. If this is a continuation of the similar judgment of the first two trumpets, then the fire can again be understood as a metaphor. We have observed elsewhere that stars represent angelic beings. Here's the main point. Stars represent angelic beings in the book of Revelation in the Old Testament and again in post biblical Judaism, post biblical meaning after the Old Testament here. These angels themselves often corporately represent earthly peoples and kingdoms and fire typically symbolizes judgment in the apocalypse and other related literature. The same must be the case here and the angels that have control over the nations and the fall of the fallen sons of God might really be what's in view here. This interpretation Beal says is supported by 1st Enoch 1813. Just read you that. It says there I saw seven stars like great burning mountains. The seven stars in 1st Enoch 18 are going to be identified as watchers, fallen watchers. 1st Enoch 213. There I beheld seven of the stars of heaven bound and thrown into the abyss like great mountains burning with fire. 1st Enoch 21 is again about how the watchers were bound, the sinning watchers of Genesis 6, the whole watcher story. They're referred to in similar language again these stars of heaven like great mountains burning with fire they're thrown into the abyss. It's the language of Revelation 8 has nothing to do with Nibiru or planet X. And again if you want the astronomy for why that's nonsense go back to Stewart's podcast and he'll give you all the science you can handle there. Again just to wrap up and with Beal here this kind of language for the stars falling and even to the point where they're described as flaming mountains. Okay fiery stars you know falling to the earth that is stock description stock language in Jewish apocalyptic literature book of Revelation 2nd temple material. It's a stock description for fallen sons of God fallen divine beings it has nothing to do with astronomy at all. So you've got five problems. If you're trying to marry Revelation 12 to this stuff you're doing at arbitrarily you're doing it without scriptural justification and you might even be missing the entire point. The entire point might just be spiritual warfare associated with the second coming. I mean the dragon was angry enough at the first coming and he knows his time is short you know all that kind of stuff you know that we read again it might just be about spiritual warfare it might have nothing to do with astronomy at all but it's just one of the ambiguities that are actually present in the text and when the text is ambiguous you need to let it be ambiguous you need to let it be what it is. You don't need to start filling in the gaps with your imagination or your ego and that's what's happening. That's what's happening with all these date setting prophets and then you know they want to back away and tell you how they didn't say this or that or oh this was fulfilled in a different way than I thought and they'll keep people following them. Okay what they deserve is rebuke and you're in attention. They deserve to be ignored and so I hope this will be yet another lesson in why these people should just not have an audience at all. Yeah Mike and the reason why they do have an audience in my opinion only is that people just don't take the time to figure out what's going on people and Christians they they hear something sensational like the world is going to end and they don't really understand the reasoning behind it. So then they go by the book so they watch the show or they do whatever and they listen to it because they think oh you know I don't know what's really the Bible really says about anything. So I'm going to pay attention to it. See there's an validity to it. I mean I'm not going to complain that the world is going to end tomorrow. But I think a lot of these people they just don't know they're just ignorant. They don't know what the Bible really says about anything because people don't read the Bible today and so they're going to listen to the first person that comes up with some sensational answer. Yeah. And even in the unbelieving community they're going to they're going to be lots. There's probably hundreds of thousands maybe millions of people who read that Huffington post piece that aren't aren't believers at all have no interest in the Bible and they're not going to go look they're not going to fact check that. No no it's just that's going to become what the Bible is for them. It's entertainment. It's fun. It's weirdos over here. It's and for instance like that guy that that's getting the most attention about this. They're calling him a Christian numerologist which doesn't even exist. What is that? Yeah. Thanks for that. Just making us look foolish. It's sad. It is sad. But there you go. Hopefully people come to listen to the show and get some answers. Mike next week we're going to have a another special guest. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this. We're going to have Holly Pivock. I believe I'm pronouncing her name correctly on. She has the blog Spirit of Air and her. She's she's a co-author of a book on the New Apostolic Reformation. So this is something that I had to read her book to become familiar with it because I don't pay attention to popular Christian movements at all. And I'm really divorced from anything that would sort of touch the charismatic movement. I mean those of you who have come to events you know and have heard some interactions on some other things know that I'm not I'm not hostile you know to to people who are practicing the gifts and say the gifts are still for today. Again it has to have a scriptural grounding in a context for it. But that's about as close as I get you know to that world of Christianity. And there's a lot of abuse that goes on on in there. There's a lot of nonsense there as well. And so I wanted to have Holly on so that she can talk specifically about this thing called the New Apostolic Reformation and sort of you know hopefully learn from her like what does that term mean in relationship to other terms and and how do we how do we kind of navigate that that part of Christianity? How do we separate sort of the the you know the people who are being thoughtful and really want to tether their theology to the text and the people who want to tether their theology to emotion and and sort of you know authority and lord it over people and just do things like this. So those of you who are listening out there I'm sure you've you've had maybe some good experience you know with that part of the of the believing church and you've had some negative experiences like we've had Fern and Audrey on a few times and they've had some really bad experiences in the deliverance movement. And again that's going to be part of this sort of kind of discussion. But I wanted to have Holly on because again she has you know co-authored this book and I think it's an important resource and we need to all be able to learn a little something about this from her because she spends this is this is her thing. She spends a lot of time reading about these people their own material and talking about what what this this NAR thing the new apostolic Reformation really is so I think it'll be a good episode. OK well Mike just in case this is our last show it's been fun. And I and I won the league. Well the Pugs pull it out just in the nick of time. A little asterisk with it because it's not a season. But anyway please go leave us a review wherever you consume our podcast for the people who are left behind so they can get caught up. And but all right Mike well with that we appreciate you setting the record straight and letting us know while we're still here on the twenty fourth and I just want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heiser's other websites and blogs go to www.ermsh.com.