Re: Will God burn up the heavens and earth?

Posted by JolietJim on 1325188485

There's a lot of mentions of 'fire' in prophecy; Daniel 7 has the political Beast and the religious False Prophet being sent to the 'glowing flames' (or lake of fire, or burning brimstone, elsewhere). There's "my word is like fire, like a hammer that breaks rocks". Most common is the image of the harvest, from the OT prophets to the NT prophets (Jesus and John's Revelation; Jesus was a prophet; he described himself as a prophet, and others called him that). At the last harvest, the wheat is gathered into grain shocks, and put on the harvesting floor where it was trampled to separate the wheat from the useless chaff, and then the chaff was blown away or thrown into the fire.

Now remember, a lot of imagery is metaphorical, that nonetheless describes a very real event; in this case, the day of wrath, where the useless chaff is sent to a fire, or a furnace. So, what's this furnace? Our sun is described as a furnace over Jerusalem; and we know that there's a billion 'furnaces' in our galaxy and trillions more galaxies. Most languages, from English to biblical Hebrew, have the particle for the word translated as 'into' also meaning 'towards'. Just in time, as it were, for the day of Jehovah, is the discovery of hundreds of other planets orbiting other suns. So, being burned up and thrown into a furnace, is a metaphor for being: snared, zapped up; swept away; raptured; slain by a heavenly sword; becoming a pillar of sparkling salt in the morning sun; etc. and hauled away or removed or thrown towards a very distant sun to a planet of detention orbiting that sun.

Several prophecies describe this as happening very suddenly, in the course of a single day after a year of trials and difficulties. As in Psalm 37, Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, etc, the obedient (meek, humble) inherit the Earth under the Christ-Messiah (about a dozen prophecies); and the new (or old, pre-expulsion-from-Eden) Earth is returned to its original, rightful place as a paradise without evil, where 'knowledge covers the Earth as water covers the bottom of the sea' where corruption and disease are unknown. But notice - if the good, Mosaic Law-abiding people remain on Earth in the creative paradise here, there are a lot a mentions of a lot of people (nine out of ten!) being removed forever from Earth and 'raptured' somewhere. That 'somewhere' is with the evil beast (of Daniel, Jesus, etc.). Jesus (Luke 17) says it is where the vultures gather, pretty obviously where those who are 'dead to us' are imprisoned on a planet very far away, hurled there towards a distant 'furnace' or sun. That the evil people are the ones who are 'raptured', is very clear when you read the OT prophecies carefully; that is why the meek inherit the Earth. Really, if the obedient people remain here on Earth with the Messiah, those that are swept up and hauled away and raptured, are (duhhh) the ones who are evil, who reject the Law and Prophets. This explains neatly why there is no mention in the OT about 'dying and going to heaven'. Instead, those who are faithful to the Law, 'sleep in the dust' and stay on Earth. All the evidence in the prophecies about the last day, are entirely consistent with evil being removed from Earth, and sent off to a place in the heavens, to be quarantined and detained, sent off to a 'furnace' far away.

In fact this scenario is elegantly consistent, from the prophecies of 20 and 35 centuries ago, to what we now know of space travel, as we would commonly conceive of it. I made a list of the prophecies that describe this scenario. Basically what happens, is on that day of terror, the good people hole up and hunker down and hide, just as during the 'passover' before the exodus from Egypt (or Rahab and her family who helped Joshua's spies in Jericho; and Lot and his daughters when Sodom was destroyed; also 1 Samuel 19:2; 1 Samuel 20:19; Job 14:13; Psalm 27:5; 57:1; 63:7; 94:13; and especially Isaiah 26:20-21 and Jeremiah 4:6-7 and 17:17 and Habakkuk 3:13-18 and .. a dozen more). But, the evil are snared, caught, paralyzed lying in the streets to be swept up, etc. (Rapture? no thanks.)

You might also notice the many descriptions of this 'last day' are amid the sun becoming dark and the moon becoming dark or red. Eclipses - full eclipses - fit this description; and on Passover in 2014 and 2015 we have full eclipses of the moon, and full eclipses of the sun at the closest possible time (a fortnight) to passover, both times. One full eclipse at passover is very unusual; to have both solar and lunar full eclipses two years in a row, is extremely rare, and hasn't happened in at least seven or so centuries (you can check astronomical records on the web). Descriptions often have dual metaphors; those on Earth (us, the good guys) see the skies becoming dark; those who are exiled and banished from Earth during the 'rapture' see the skies becoming dark (as they leave the atmosphere of Earth), and then they see 'the Earth and sun hiding themselves' as a couple more prophecies put it, as they get further and further from our solar system.

But, there was one part of these descriptions that made my jaw hit the floor, and pretty much wrapped it up for me, that these descriptions were for real, by an Intelligence that was about to do what he repeatedly was describing, as he described it. I know a little bit of astrophysics and special relativity, from browsing a few sites on the internet that have simulations of what it would look like to travel near the speed of light. As the speed of light is approached, there is a type of relativistic aberration that occurs, where objects surrounding the fast-moving traveler, appear to be shifted and compressed into a cylinder ahead of their real position in space; and the traveler appears to be moving down the axis of this cylinder. This near-light-speed optical effect is not shown on shows such as Star Trek or Star Wars, but you can find a few on-line simulations of it; and I found (in the appropriate contexts) an elegant description of this in Isaiah 34:3-5 and Revelation 6

Isaiah 34:3-5 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come
up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted
with their blood.
Isaiah 34:4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens
shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall
fall down, as the leaf falls off from the vine, and as a
falling fig from the fig tree.
Isaiah 34:5 For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come
down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

That aberration of light is neatly described as 'heavens rolled up as a scroll'. The 'sword' is mentioned over eighty times in prophecy as 'Jacob's ladder', a whirlwind coming down on the workers of evil', a pillar of light (at night) and smoke during the day; etc. In Revelation, there is mention of a mark being put in or on the foreheads of those who remain in the Earthly world to come; this is described in detail in Ezekiel 9. This column or pillar is mentioned by Moses and Joshua many times, and by others, as if it was an elevator; this pillar of light is, apparently, used for temporarily taking someone, to instruct them, or show them things, or to implant something in them before returning them; then, on the last day, those with that 'mark' are left behind to live in the re-established paradise on Earth, but those without the mark are removed and taken away. These descriptions of the 'pillar' and the strange beings associated with it, bear a certain resemblance to the modern descriptions of 'alien abductions'. I have never witnessed anything like these phenomena, but several times, about 15 miles east of here, hundreds to thousands of people simultaneously saw gigantic silent vehicles, triangular in shape, slowly cruising overhead, over a half mile in size; you can find this in Wikipedia: 'Tinley (or Orland) Park Lights'. After researching several dozen modern reports of these unusual phenomena and comparing them with Ezekiel 9 and other biblical descriptions (including several in Daniel), I can only conclude that the 'certain resemblance' between the modern and ancient descriptions is best described as 'identical'.