Immanuel.at Discussion Forum Discourse 151 – A great sign from heaven.

There will be great signs from heaven.

Teacher, they asked, ‘when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?’
He replied: ‘Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, "I am he," and, "The time is near." Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.’ Then he said to them: ’Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes (Google: Recent earthquakes), famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events(e.g. lunar eclipse, solar eclipse)
and great signs from heaven’.
(Lk 21,7-11)

The newly discovered megastructures and the universe / Reports 2024-01-11

On 11.On 11 January this year, at exactly 3.15 pm, budding astronomer Alexia Lopez from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK couldn’t believe her eyes when, while analyzing the light from distant quasars, she came across an incredible structure in the cosmos – completely by chance, as she says: an almost perfect, large ring of galaxies and galaxy clusters 9 billion light years away and 1.3 billion light years in diameter:

"It’s really surreal. I do have to pinch myself, because I made these discoveries accidentally, they were serendipitous discoveries. But it is a big thing and I can’t believe that I’m talking about it, I don’t believe that it’s me "Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easy to explain in our current understanding of the universe" she said. "And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes, and cosmological proximity must surely be telling us something important – but what exactly?" said Alexia Lopez.

But this was not the first time it had found itself in such a situation. Three years ago, she discovered an almost symmetrical giant galaxy arc (Giant Arc) in the constellation "Bear guardian" (Bootes), also 9.3 billion light years away – i.e. very close in cosmological terms. The "Big Ring" that has now been discovered is therefore the second celestial formation that scientists would have described as completely impossible just a few years ago. These are the two largest structures in the universe discovered to date.

Newly discovered largest structures in the universe puzzle experts

These megastructures are actually larger than the cosmological principle (standard model of the universe) would allow. (Something is wrong in the universe) "The more we find, the more we have to deal with the fact that our standard model may need to be reconsidered," said Lopez. (Huge Galaxy Ring Discovery Challenges Thinking On Universe.). And that brings us to the answer to the question of what such a topic has to do with a biblical-Christian website.

The significance for end-time exegesis.

On a biblical-Christian website, you would naturally expect an answer from God in such a case. But an answer to what? Of course, it can only be the answer to a global question, a question that concerns all of humanity. So let’s go further and examine the current living situation of people to see to what extent we could seek answers to questions here. From an international perspective, we are of course currently facing a number of dangerous crises, and I am not referring to Putin’s war against Ukraine.

The war in the Middle East fits in much better, but more on that later. What I want to talk about here is not the "anthropogenic" problems – this foreign word is now part of the German vocabulary – but the global disasters that are forced upon humanity from outside.

Such as the corona(virus)-crisis, the climate crisis, floods, forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc., etc., which do not always affect people worldwide, but more and more often and more devastatingly in entire countries. So do all these events on earth have anything to do with the discovery of giant cosmic structures – and with the Biblical-Christian faith?

Well, you can probably imagine that I wouldn’t be writing this article if I thought that wasn’t the case. So let me give you the arguments that led me to my opinion. Perhaps I will be able to explain things so clearly that you will also be able to form a clearer picture.

When it comes to questions about the future of humanity, I like to turn to the biblical book of Revelation. This work is indeed "a book with seven seals" – which is where this well-known term for mysterious writings comes from – but it contains these seven seals as individual chapters, so to speak, and if you are interested and can read carefully, it is by no means as "mysterious" as is often said.

So in this revelation we have – almost chronologically ordered – an overview of the events on earth in the last days of this planet and thus statements about the future of humanity. There – but also in other books of the Bible – a great tribulation is prophesied in these last days "as it has never been on earth before and as it will never be again".

It is therefore a difficult time and it is indeed worth taking a closer look at these statements, as this revelation claims to be a direct statement from the one and only living God, who created all of this – the universe, the earth and mankind – according to biblical Christian belief and must therefore know best what is coming, how things will continue and how best to behave in this time of tribulation.

The Son of God, Jesus Christ, also made predictions for this time and it seemed to me to make sense to check whether these prophecies correspond to those in the Revelation of John. And I have indeed succeeded in finding prophecies in the whole event that relate to the same period in both books, the Gospel of Matthew and the Revelation of John.

The beginning of birth-pains.

In the process, I also succeeded – just as an aside – in refuting the false doctrine of rapture before this Great Tribulation. However, I also refuted myself, who had taught rapture after the Great Tribulation. The rapture actually takes place IN the Great Tribulation, after the "beginning of labor pains" mentioned by Christ (also known as the "Tribulation / Tribulation of those days"), i.e. at the very end of that initial period of the Great Tribulation, in which the events of these seven seals, in which God’s judgments will come upon this humanity, take place.

And the very first seal is a rider on a white horse. The second seal is a second rider on a fiery red horse:

Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword.

Rev 6,1 I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come!" 6,2 I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. 6,3 When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!"

6,4 Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword. 6,5 When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. 6,6 Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A kilogram of wheat for a day’s wages, and three kilograms of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

6,7 When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" 6,8 I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a quarter of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. Rev 6,1-8;

So this could mean global wars. However, part of this text somehow doesn’t seem to fit. "He takes peace from the earth" ok, that’s clear: worldwide wars, but "people kill each other"? Especially today, when the attacker is sitting behind a screen thousands of kilometers away and it is the war machine, the drone, that is " will kill people"?

I found the solution in the statement of the Son of God in the Gospel of Matthew. There the Lord says:

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

Mt 24,6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 24,7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 24,8 All these are the beginning of birth-pains.24,6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 24,7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 24,8 All these are the beginning of birth-pains. Mt 24,6-8;

This also sounds like a world war at first, but even here the attentive reader will become suspicious. If "nation will fight against nation" and "kingdom against kingdom", i.e. if Jesus already mentions all those involved, why does the Lord not also mention "nation against kingdom" or vice versa? And then the text from Revelation comes to mind again: "people will kill each other"(in the original Greek text: "to slaughter").

So if they are going to slaughter each other, then they, the citizens of a nation, a kingdom, must be close to each other and not somewhere in the world. On further study, it turned out that these prophecies were obviously about civil protests, uprisings and revolts, even civil wars, and not about a world war.

That is why the Lord only says "nation against nation" and "kingdom against kingdom" and leaves the obvious variant "nation against kingdom" unmentioned, because the current rail strikes in Germany, for example, are not taking place in Great Britain. However, wars nation against nation "in the neighborhood", so to speak, as we have in reality in Russia against its neighbor Ukraine and in Israel against its neighbor Palestine, are not excluded.

The attentive reader will now have recognized why I am explaining these relationships so precisely. According to my knowledge, this early time of the Great Tribulation, prophesied by the Lord in the Gospel of Matthew and by God in the Revelation of John, is our present real time. Whether it is the civil protests, revolts and uprisings, I think we are experiencing this right now and the civil wars will not be long in coming.

And we have already experienced some of the famines, epidemics and earthquakes mentioned in the text of Mt 24 (HIV,kingdom ) and will see even more of them in the near future. Any doubts about this, because "wild animals" are also listed as a cause of death and this is hardly imaginable in this day and age, are dispelled when you consider that a virus is also a wild animal! If a virus were not an animal, what else would it be and it is also impossible to say that a virus is a "domestic animal", i.e. that it is domesticated. The best that can be said is that humans have immunized themselves against known viruses.

The first seal – the rider on the white horse: the first Antichrist?

In my opinion, we are therefore already at the beginning of this end time, which begins with the rider on the white horse. I have not commented further on the rest of this individual prophecy above because I first wanted to familiarize the reader with the context. Now we can look at the continuation of this text:

I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

Rev 6,1 I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come!" 6,2 I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. Rev 6,1-2;

I assume that this rider on the white horse is the first Antichrist. (I have already repeatedly provided biblical evidence as to why I believe there will be two Antichrists). This rider on the white horse was therefore given a bow and a crown. And "he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest". However, this does not necessarily mean that this bow is a war bow, because this biblical war comes with the next one, the second rider on the red horse. But if the first horseman went out "as a conqueror bent on conquest" – which is also indicated by the crown – this surely means that he will fight some kind of "battles" (battles of words – politics?) and always win.

To come back to these cosmic formations, the "Giant Arc" and the "Big Ring": a closer look reveals that this last discovery, the "Big Ring", took place on January 11. That is 5 days after the day of the "holy three kings", which is celebrated worldwide in Christianity on January 6. Two thousand years ago around this time, these three had also discovered a particularly bright star in the sky and followed it to Bethlehem. At that time, God gave people a sign and announced that his Son had been born, who would rule the world in the Millennium.

Now the Antichrist is the "son" of Satan, to whom the devil will ultimately hand over all his power and strength and even his throne (the throne of the ruler of the world Rev 13:2;). And here we can draw a certain comparison between these biblical statements (horsemen with a bow) and these cosmic formations. It could therefore be a sign of the birth of this first Antichrist. After all, he is born as a human being, then killed by the Son of God when Jesus returns for the rapture, and resurrected by Satan as a demon. So if we are talking about the birth of this human being, we would probably still have 20-30 years.

We therefore have a possible biblical correlation both for the time of the discovery – "Three Holy Kings" – and for the content of the sign – "Rider on a white horse with a bow", which is confirmed in particular by the uniqueness and unprecedented nature of this cosmic discovery.

To summarize, in my opinion there are too many "gigantisms" in these giant cosmic structures for this to actually be a coincidence.

From the perspective of science:

o both megastructures are located at a distance of 9 and 9.3 billion light years from Earth,^¹))

o these structures are the largest formations ever encountered in the universe, the diameter of the Great Ring: 1.3 billion light years,

o according to the standard model of the universe, which is accepted worldwide in science, such an agglomeration of matter should not even exist,

o this "cosmic principle" of science, the standard model, must therefore be reconsidered,

o also the geometric shape of these two objects (symmetrical arc and almost perfect circle) are unique and pose a puzzle for astronomy.

o A recent study (Seoul, South Korea) challenges what is probably the most fundamental assumption of modern cosmology: the accelerated expansion of the universe. According to this study, new data suggests that the expansion of the universe is no longer accelerating, but has already begun to slow down.

From the perspective of the Bible:

o These two cosmic formations were discovered by chance when researchers were studying the light from distant quasars. These people have no idea of the existence of this prophecy in the Bible, let alone what it means, they have probably never held a Bible in their hands in their lives.

o There has already been a similar event: two thousand years ago, a wandering, brightly shining star announced the birth of the Son of God.

o The time of this accidental discovery of the "Great Ring" is almost congruent with that of around two thousand years ago.

o The image of these formations can be linked to the prophecy of the rider with the bow on the white horse (Re 6:2) and thus to the first Antichrist.

o Just as the birth of the peace-loving Son of God was announced then, the birth(??) of the brutal son of the adversary is being announced now.

o So, from a biblical perspective, there is no doubt: these mega-formations are the "great signs from heaven" that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, prophesied to us in Luke 21:11 for the end times.

And so it is not the case that "this ‘cosmic principle’ of science, the standard model must therefore be reconsidered". What needs to be reconsidered is science’s view of this one and only living Creator God and his abilities and capacities. It was obviously this Creator God who put together these unimaginably large megastructures of giant galaxies as "(truly) great signs from heaven".

Finally, here is a short report from BBC news about this event, which shows the surprise and disbelief in scientific circles about these discoveries:

(Texts in a black frame are quotes from visitors to this site or other authors).

Giant ring of galaxies challenges common scientific understanding of the cosmos / Pallab Gosh (BBC)

Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire have discovered a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space. It has a diameter of 1.3 billion light years and appears to be around 15 times larger than the moon in the night sky when viewed from Earth. Called the "Great Ring" by astronomers, this ring is made up of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. They say that it is so big that it challenges our understanding of the universe. It cannot be seen with the naked eye. "t is very far away and identifying all the galaxies that make up this larger structure has taken a lot of time and computing power. According to one of the guiding principles of astronomy, the so-called cosmological principle, such large structures should not exist." This states that all matter is evenly distributed in the universe.

Although stars, planets and galaxies are huge lumps of matter in our eyes, they are insignificant in the context of the size of the universe – and the theory states that much larger lumps of matter should not be able to form. The Great Ring is by no means the first likely violation of the cosmological principle and therefore suggests that there is another, yet to be discovered, factor at play. According to Dr. Robert Massey, Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, evidence is mounting for a rethink on a key point in astronomy. "This is the seventh large structure discovered in the universe that contradicts the idea that the cosmos is smooth to the greatest extent. If these structures are real, then this is definitely food for thought for cosmologists and the accepted thinking about how the universe has evolved over time," he said."(BBC News)

Notes

^¹)The light year is a length measure and corresponds to the distance that light – at a speed of approx. 300,000 km per second – covers in one year.

Discourse 151 – A great sign from heaven.