The following morning the Sentinel made his way through the vastness of space until he at last came to the large, underground chambers of Vault 37. This time there was no robot present to unseal the pod that contained Adrian Garza so the Sentinel walked up to the pod himself and examined its control panel. After a quick examination he pressed the button that would open the pod and release the frail man back into the real world.

The Sentinel waited quietly for a few minutes while the pod worked. At last a small chime sounded and the pod’s cover slid open. A moment later Adrian Garza opened his eyes. The man blinked a few times and then focused on the face of the Sentinel.

“It is you again,” he whispered. Surprise was evident in his voice. Adrian reached up, grasped the side of the pod, and struggled to sit up. He then looked at the Sentinel curiously. “Why have you returned so soon? Is something wrong? Are the swarms coming?”

“Nothing is wrong,” the Sentinel replied. “All is well. In fact, I have come to extend an invitation to you. We would like you to come and pay us a visit.”

“Who is ‘us’?” Adrian asked. “Are you talking about the Artilect?”

“There are humans alive on Tonina,” the Sentinel explained. “They wish to meet you.”

“Where are they from? I thought you said we were the only ones left!”

“You are the only surviving Rangers. These people are citizens of the network. After the swarms have been defeated they will help you adapt to your new life among the stars. This is a chance to see what your future holds.”

The old man climbed out of the pod and weakly stood on his feet. He then thought for a few minutes. “I don’t know,” he said uncertainly. “Carroll Lyons usually handles these things. Not that this has ever happened before, but he is our leader. Although, come to think of it, he did insist on not being disturbed so maybe I should handle this. But – well, no one has left Xanthe for thousands of years. Is it safe?”

“No harm will come to you,” the Sentinel assured him. “The swarms cannot penetrate the Artilect’s defenses, nor can they threaten us on our journey. There is no cause for alarm.”

Adrian sighed. “I suppose I have to trust you whether I want to or not. After all, if you or your people were hostile then you could have destroyed us all in our sleep before we knew what was happening. If you want me to visit your world then I suppose I must go. But how are we going to get there?”

“I’ll take you,” the Sentinel replied. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

“How long will the trip take?”

“Just a moment.”

Adrian looked surprised. “A moment! How far away is your world?”

“Many thousands of light-years,” the Sentinel replied.

“And you can travel there in just a moment? Extraordinary! Your starship must be very advanced.”

The Sentinel smiled. “I do not have a starship, nor do I need one.”

“No starship! But that can’t be! How is that possible? Surely you can’t just walk between the stars!”

“If you are ready I will show you.”

Adrian looked at the Sentinel nervously. “Do I need to bring anything?”

The Sentinel shook his head. “Everything you need will be provided for. You will not be gone long.”

“All right then,” Adrian said nervously. “I guess I’m ready, then. What do I need to do?”

“Nothing at all,” the Sentinel replied. A moment later they both vanished.

To Adrian the journey was instantaneous. One moment he was in the vault and the next he was standing on Tonina – a planet so unlike his own that it took his breath away. As he looked around he saw that he was standing on a plateau that overlooked a magnificent city. Above him was a wide blue sky. He could see green grass, towering trees, rivers, and a lake in the distance. It was astonishing.

“What is this place?” he gasped.

“You are on the planet Tonina,” Reverend Knight said. Adrian turned around and saw an old man standing a few feet away from him. “That city down there is called La Venta. For the moment, Adrian, it is our home.”

“And you are?” Adrian asked.

Reverend Knight smiled and stepped toward him, extending his hand. “I’m Reverend Gene Knight. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Adrian shook his hand and then turned his attention back to the city below. “My world is nothing like this,” he whispered. “Xanthe’s atmosphere is failing, her cities are in ruins, and her oceans are all but gone. It is a corpse, populated by a race that is close to death.”

“But it wasn’t always like that,” Reverend Knight said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Adrian agreed. “I remember a time long ago, in my youth, when Xanthe was a green planet – but that was before the swarms came and took away our future. Back then my planet had magnificent cities, but even Star City itself was nothing like La Venta.” He sighed. “I wish you could have seen our capitol. It was a beautiful place – the crown jewel of the colonies.”

“I did see it once, when I was young,” Reverend Knight remarked thoughtfully. “Of course, that was long before your time. I’m sure that by the time you were born the city was much more magnificent. It was still fairly young when I was last there.”

Adrian looked at him curiously. “Before my time? How old are you?”

“I was born in 1773,” he replied.

“That’s impossible!” Adrian exclaimed. “You can’t be serious. No one from the 18th century was still alive when I was born and the pods were not invented until my era. There is simply no way that you could have lived that long.”

“And yet here we are,” Reverend Knight said.

“So it would seem,” Adrian replied. “But why are we here, Reverend? Why did you want me to come to this place?”

Reverend Knight smiled. “The truth is that we need to know more about the swarms. We don’t understand them and what we do know about them confuses us. We were hoping that you could tell us more about them.”

Adrian was silent for a while. “Why do you wish to know of the swarms? If you are older than I am then surely you must know as much as I do.”

“I have been away for a long time,” Reverend Knight explained. “The last time I was in Ranger space the swarms had not yet been invented. All we know about them is what our instruments tell us, but they cannot look back in time and show us where they came from or why they were created.”

Adrian sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t help you very much. I’ve already told your friend everything that I know. The swarms just appeared one day and started attacking Ranger colonies. I don’t know where they came from or why we were the only ones who survived; perhaps our Wall defended us. Our leaders tried to defeat them but they failed. In the end we had to evacuate to our synthetic worlds in order to survive.”

“And that is where you have been for the past five millennia,” Reverend Knight said.

Adrian nodded. “The pods have kept us alive, such as it is. It was either that or die. Apparently many of us ended up dying anyway; your friend said that our vault was the only one left.”

Reverend Knight nodded. “You have been away for a long time.”

“Perhaps too long,” Adrian said quietly. “I do not know if it is even possible for us to return to the real world. We have been away from it for so long, and have grown weak and old. I feel like we have lived for too long, Reverend. Five thousand years is a long time to spend in dreams.”

“You must leave them if you want to survive. Your people are dying off, Adrian, and they are not bearing children anymore. Once the survivors of your generation die off there will be no one left.”

“But maybe that is for the best,” Adrian replied. “We are old and barely alive as it is. Perhaps it is time for us to pass on and allow your people to continue the line. You have clearly achieved far more than we ever did.”

Reverend Knight shook his head. “We cannot inherit the stars by ourselves. It would take an immense populate to fill the millions of planets in the network and there are less than a dozen of us. That is why we have come – to give your people a chance. You are the only ones who can do this.”

“A dozen!” Adrian exclaimed. “But that city down there is enormous! How can there be so few of you?”

“It is a long story,” Reverend Knight said. “I will not tell it now; perhaps when all this is over we can discuss it then. The fact is that we are here to help you and your people. The Artilect’s network of stars isn’t here for our benefit; it is here for yours. We want to give your people hope and a future.”

“I think you have come too late for that,” Adrian said sadly.

Reverend Knight took Adrian down to the city below and the two men walked its streets. Before Adrian arrived Richard had asked the Steward to turn off the program that generated synthetic people, so the city was empty. Adrian soon saw that the preacher was correct – while the city was huge, luxurious, and modern, it was deserted. No citizens walked its streets and no patrons dined in its restaurants.

“Did you build this place?” Adrian asked.

Reverend Knight shook his head. “The Steward did. He constructed the city according to our desires and he maintains it for us.”

“He must be a very dedicated servant! I’m sure it took centuries to build this place.”

“The Steward is not a person, Adrian. He is a machine with almost unimaginable abilities. Terraforming a planet is a trivial task to him. He was able to build this entire city in a matter of hours.”

“I find that very hard to believe! In fact, nearly everything you have told me is, at best, implausible. Do you really expect me to believe that your people are older than I am, that you control millions of planets but have less than a dozen citizens, and that your robots can build entire cities in a single afternoon? Why do you persist in telling me these fables?”

“Because they are true,” Reverend Knight replied.

“If you say so,” Adrian said. “By the way, what do you do if you’re hungry? Does the Steward take care of that as well?”

“We handle that ourselves. What would you like?”

“Some bread might be nice,” Adrian remarked. “Is there a bakery nearby?”

Reverend Knight materialized a small loaf of bread and handed it to Adrian. “Here you go. I hope wheat is all right. If you’d rather have something else I can make it for you.”

Adrian stared at the bread, startled. “Where did this come from?”

“I just materialized it. You see, citizens of the network have nanites in their bloodstream that allows them to interface with the city and its systems. This gives us the ability to create whatever we desire. If we want something we can simply create it and it becomes real.”

“That’s impossible!” Adrian exclaimed. He took the bread, broke it, and smelled its rich savor. He then took a bite out of it. “This is real bread,” he said, wonderingly.

“Of course.”

“But I do not understand! In our synthetic worlds we can make things appear at will but they are just images. Are you telling me that you have that same power in reality?”

“I am,” Reverend Knight replied. “And there is a great deal more that we can do. The Artilect can heal you, Adrian. He can reverse the aging process and give you physical strength. Your body can be made whole. You, and the rest of your people, can be given the strength to live in the real world – either on Tonina or on any of the planets in the network. You can be brought back to life.”

Adrian was silent for a long time. “You would do that for us?”

Reverend Knight nodded. “This, and much more.”

“At what cost?”

“We ask for nothing in return. We only want to help.”

“I must tell our leaders of this,” Adrian said at last. “They need to be aware of this so they can decide what to do. This is not a decision I can make on behalf of my people.”

“I understand. We will wait for your response before taking any further action. You can get word to us through the Sentinel.”

Adrian nodded. “This may take some time. After all, this is a weighty matter. It will need to be discussed.”

“We will wait,” Reverend Knight said.

Adrian hesitated. “I do not know what they will decide. My leaders may be wary of outsiders. They might see this as a trap. I cannot promise that they will cooperate with you.”

“Are there any left among you with the gift of discernment?” Reverend Knight asked. “Such a person could establish the truth beyond a doubt.”

Adrian looked at him, puzzled. “The gift of discernment? I don’t understand. Surely you know that the Gifts are just ancient legends. No one ever really had those powers.”

Reverend Knight looked surprised. “Do you mean that in your time the Gifts had ceased? I am quite surprised! In my day they were rare but not gone. I possess the gift of discernment myself, and there is another survivor who is a Seer. It would appear that we are the only two left.”

“Amazing!” Adrian said. “I was convinced they never existed at all. If you do have a Gift then perhaps you are as old as you say.”

“Is there anything else you would like to see before you return home?” Reverend Knight asked.

Adrian hesitated. “I would like to meet the Artilect, if you don’t mind.”

Reverend Knight smiled. “The Artilect is a giant machine. He is not a person, like you or I. Perhaps in time we will introduce you to him. At the moment he is building a fleet of starships that will wipe out the swarms and bring an end to the endless war.”

“I understand,” Adrian said. “Perhaps next time, then.”

As the two men shook hands the Sentinel appeared. After they said their goodbyes Adrian the Sentinel vanished.

“I don’t like this at all,” Amy complained. “Is this really necessary?”

“We’ve been over this before,” her sister replied. “C’mon, Tiger. It’s time to go. Stalling isn’t going to help anything or make this any easier.”

Amy and Amanda Stryker were standing on a high plateau that overlooked the magnificent city of La Venta. Thousands of feet below them the metropolis was bustling with activity. The sun was just beginning to set and the city’s lights had started to shine. It was a beautiful sight, and Amy had come to see it one last time before she left Tonina.

“I just don’t want to go,” Amy said. “It seems silly. Am I really supposed to believe that Adrian Garza is somehow capable of single-handedly defeating the Artilect and killing us all? I mean, you’ve got to admit that’s not very likely!”

Amanda nodded. “I know. But there’s so much we don’t know! Anything could happen – you know that. Until all of this is worked out it probably is best for us to be stationed on different planets.”

“That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the one that’s being kicked off-world.”

Amanda smiled. “True. But it’s really not that bad. After all, most of the time you can use telepresence to be here with us. You won’t be able to do that tomorrow when Adrian is here but I doubt he’ll stay long. Look on the bright side – if all goes well this entire war will be over in a week and then we can be back together again. You can surely last that long!”

“I guess,” Amy grumbled. “I just don’t like it.”

“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Amanda said. “Mother is going to be serving dinner soon and I don’t want to be late. I’ll see you later, ok?”

Amy nodded. She gave her sister a quick hug and then vanished.

The teenage girl reappeared on a wide, rocky beach. A vast blue ocean stretched out in front of her and extended to the horizon. The the tide was coming in and the ocean’s waves were crashing onto the rocks, sending up a shower of spray. Amy glanced up and saw that the enormous blue sky was completely empty, save for a few morning stars that were on the verge of disappearing. The sun was beginning to rise.

She knew that this planet had a Steward but she did not call for him. I refuse to make this place my home, she thought. I’m not going to customize this prison or even give it a name. I’m just going to be here for a week and then I’m going back home.

Amy stood on the shore and looked out over the ocean. She knew that she could use the nanites within her to connect with Tonina, and once contact was made she could create an avatar that would make it appear that she was home. She would even be able to close her eyes and see what her avatar saw, giving her the illusion that she was still in La Venta. But it wouldn’t be real, she thought dejectedly. It’s just an empty trick. The fact is I’m stuck here and there’s nothing I can do about it.

After a few minutes she decided to not join her family for dinner. Instead she sat down on the vacant beach and stared out to the horizon, lost in thought.

Back on Tonina Amanda was having dinner with her parents. Tonight the Stryker family had decided to eat dinner at home. Laura had used her nanites to prepare a large meal and had brought it into their spacious dining room. The large mahogany table was big enough to seat a dozen people but tonight there were only three people present.

“Where’s Amy?” Laura asked, as the family sat down to eat. “I thought she’d be joining us.”

“Why would she do that?” Amanda asked. “It’s not like she could use her avatar to actually eat anything. All she could do is sit here and watch us enjoy ourselves.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” her mother replied.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Richard said reassuringly. “She’s probably busy exploring her new home and decorating it for her tastes. We’ll see her again soon! It’s not like we can’t visit her, you know. In fact, we can go see her after dinner if you’d like.”

Richard prayed over the food and then passed a plate of sugar-cured ham to Amanda. She helped herself to two slices and then passed the plate on to her mother. “So when is Adrian going to be here?” Amanda asked.

“We’re not sure yet,” Richard said, as he helped himself to a biscuit. “The Sentinel is going back to Tau Ceti tomorrow morning to speak with Mr. Garza. If he’s willing to pay us a visit then the Sentinel will bring him back. If he’s not then we’ll have to come up with another plan.”

“Does that mean there’s a chance that we might go visit him?” Amanda asked.

Richard shook his head. “Probably not. Until we know more about what’s going on Sergeant Howell feels that it would be best if we stayed within the network. He doesn’t want us to take any unnecessary risks.”

Amanda took a drink of water and sighed. “Is it really that dangerous out there? I mean, what could possibly happen?”

“No one knows,” Richard said. “That’s why we have to be so careful. This situation has so many unknowns. There could be all sorts of dangers that we are simply unaware of.”

“Then why are we bringing him here?” Amanda asked. “Isn’t that at least a little risky?”

Richard nodded. “In a way it is, but we need more information. Sergeant Howell is convinced that the swarms are part of some kind of plot, and since only Tau Ceti is left it’s hard to believe that they don’t know anything about them. Frankly, I think he’s right. We need to find out if Mr. Garza is telling the truth, and the only way to do that is to have him talk with Reverend Knight.”

“I get it,” Amanda said. “And since we have to talk to him we want the conversation to take place in our territory.”

“But I don’t understand,” Laura said. “Why do you think he might be lying?”

“Think of it this way, dear. If Mr. Garza is telling the truth then his planet has been threatened by the swarms for five thousand years. Are we really supposed to believe that in all that time they learned nothing about them and did absolutely nothing to stop them? Besides, if they’re really as ignorant as they claim to be then how have they managed to survive when every other Ranger colony in space was wiped out, right down to the last man?”

“I don’t know,” Laura said.

“Exactly – so tomorrow we’re going to talk to Mr. Garza and find out, one way or another.”

“But what if he’s not lying?” Amanda asked. “What if the survivors really don’t know? What do we do then?”

“In that case we’ll have to proceed with what little information we have,” Richard replied. “Ultimately the course of action that we take will be decided by you and your sister. My recommendation would be to invade as the Artilect suggests and see what happens, but that is just my opinion. You and Amy will have to make the decision.”

Amanda sighed. “Then I guess I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what we can find out.”

Richard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Amanda, but I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to talk with him.”

“Why not? I mean, how am I supposed to make a decision if I can’t even meet him? After all–”

Richard interrupted. “I talked to Sergeant Howell about this and we both agree that Mr. Garza should not be told that you or your sister exist. Now you are more than welcome to watch him from a distance, and if you have questions I’m sure you can let us know what they are so we can ask them, but I do not think it would be wise for you to meet him.”

“I get it,” Amanda said dejectedly. “It’s a security risk. But – I mean, he’s just one man. What could possibly happen?”

“If he finds out who you are and what you can do then he might tell his friends about you. If there is something going on and the wrong people hear about you then you will almost certainly become a target. However, if they don’t know that you exist then they can’t target you.”

“It’s just a way of keeping you safe,” Laura added. “We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I understand,” Amanda sighed.

Many people today believe that the Bible commands Christians to not work on Sunday. However, is that actually the case? Does the Bible really require believers to set aside Sunday as a day of rest?

Before we answer this question let’s take a look at some background information. At the time of Moses the Lord commanded the Israelites to honor the Sabbath day:

Exodus 20:8: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

First of all, it is very important to notice that the Sabbath day was the seventh day of the week. God was very clear about this: the reason He “hallowed” the last day of the week was because He created the entire world in six days and then rested on the seventh day. This means that the Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday. There has never been a commandment to rest on the first day of the week. This means that our act of resting on the first day of the week has nothing whatsoever to do with this commandment. As Christians we do not have the liberty to take God’s commands and say “Well, we’ll just honor a different day of the week and call it the same thing”. There is not one verse in the Bible that says the Sabbath was somehow changed or moved to a different day of the week.

The reason Christians gather on Sunday to worship is to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, who rose from the dead on the first day of the week. It has nothing to do with keeping the Sabbath.

However, there is something else that should not be overlooked. This command was given as a sign between God and the Israelites. In other words, this commandment was specific to the Jews, not to all of mankind. It never applied to Gentiles. This is made clear in this passage:

Exodus 30:13: “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefor; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.”

Notice that three times in this passage the Lord clearly says that this command applies to the children of Israel. This was not said about the commandment to honor your parents, or to not murder, or to not commit adultery, or to not steal. It would have been easy for the Lord to say that this commandment applies to everyone or to all those who love Him, but that’s not what He said. He went through great pains to make it clear that this command only applies to the Jews.

The commandment is also extremely strict. Anyone who does any work at all on the seventh day of the week (which would be our Saturday, not our Sunday) was to be put to death. In other passages the Bible elaborated on what was meant by not being allowed to work:

Jeremiah 17:21: “Thus saith the Lord; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;
22 Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.”

In this passage the Lord commanded the Israelites to bear no burdens on the Sabbath. Don’t go about your normal business; don’t carry things into the city; don’t carry things out of your house. In another passage the Bible goes even further:

Exodus 35:3: “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.”

Notice that there is no exception made for winter weather! The Jews were not allowed to even start a fire in their own homes on the Sabbath. Even gathering sticks on the Sabbath to start a fire was punishable by death:

Numbers 15:32: “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
33 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
34 And they put in in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.
35 And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses.”

Simply put, you were not allowed to do any kind of work whatsoever on the Sabbath. Now it is true that in the New Testament Jesus explained that the commandment was not intended to prevent people from helping each other. The Lord healed a number of people on the Sabbath, which angered the Pharisees a great deal. But any kind of work at all – even something as mundane as starting a fire – was strictly prohibited on punishment of death.

People today do not even come close to keeping this commandment. Not only do they rest on the wrong day (typically Saturday is very busy day filled with work!), but even when they rest they do all kinds of activities that would have gotten them executed in Old Testament days.

Another thing to notice is that the commandment says nothing about worship services, or going to the Temple, or anything of that nature. This was not a day where the Israelites set aside what they were doing so they could go to the Temple and offer sacrifices. Over and over the Lord says that He wants the Jews to keep the day holy by not working, not by singing hymns or listening to priests.

As a side-note, the Sabbath was not the only holy day in the Jewish calendar. Leviticus 23 gives an entire list of days that the Jews were commanded to keep holy. The Sabbath is simply the one that we are the most familiar with. The Jews were required to keep all of the various Sabbaths on their calendar. As Gentiles we are required to keep none of them.

If you search the New Testament you will find that many of the Ten Commandments are repeated and given to the Church. However, one commandment that is not given to the Church is the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. In fact, in all of the epistles to the churches the idea of the Sabbath can be found in only one of them. This is what it says:

Colossians 2:16: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”

Notice that this verse says that we aren’t to judge each other on the basis of whether or not we keep certain holy days or Sabbath days. In other words, it is left up to our discretion what days we do or do not keep holy. This is a very far cry from executing someone for gathering sticks! In case we missed the point the same idea can be found in Romans:

Romans 14:5: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
6 He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and give God thanks.
…
10 But why doest thou judge thy brother? Or why dost thou set at naught thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”

Far from teaching that Christians must not work on Saturday, these verses say that Christians have liberty to do as they think best. If they wish to abstain from eating meat they may do so; if they want to not abstain then that is fine as well. If one man wishes to keep a particular day holy then that is fine; if another man wishes to not keep it holy then that is equally fine. This is not at all what you would expect the Scriptures to say if working on the Sabbath was a sin. You will not find any passages that teach that we have the same liberty to steal, or covet, or lust.

As a final note, some might point out that Jesus kept the Sabbath, and this is quite true. However, Jesus also kept the entire Mosaic law because He was under that law and was required to do so. That law did not pass away until after He died. If the New Testament church was required to keep the Sabbath then one would expect that to be mentioned somewhere in the epistles to the churches. However, what we find is something entirely different, as I have already discussed.

In summary, the law to keep the Sabbath was given to the Jews only and never applied to the Gentiles. As Christians we do not have to keep Saturday holy by not working on that day. God has given us the liberty to keep days holy or not, at our discretion. If we wish to honor God by setting aside a day of rest then we may do so, but if we do not do this then it is not a problem or a sin. What the Bible does say (in Romans 14:10) is that we should not judge each other on the basis of Sabbath keeping.

Adrian Garza stared at the Sentinel with a mixture of surprise and fear. “And who are you? Have you come from Earth to destroy us?”

The Sentinel shook his head. “I am a machine from the outer reaches of the galaxy and come from a place that is unfamiliar to you. Some call me the Sentinel. I am here to make contact with the surviving remnant of humanity.”

“Are you from the swarms?” Adrian asked.

“I am not. In fact, the swarms have attacked us and we intend to destroy them.”

“Destroy them!” Adrian exclaimed. “But they can’t be defeated! The Rangers tried to fight them for decades and the swarms killed them all. Only the colonies with Walls survived. That battle was lost long ago.”

The Sentinel shook his head. “A great many things have changed since you set foot inside your pod. My father has been studying the swarms for years and has found a way to defeat them. He has already engaged them in battle once and forced them outside the territory he maintains. In a matter of days we intend to wipe them all out.”

“But that’s impossible! No one has that much power. Who is your father?”

“He is the Artilect,” the Sentinel replied.

Adrian frowned. “I mean no disrespect but he doesn’t know what he’s getting into. The Rangers had the combined might of a hundred star systems at their disposal and they lost – and that was thousands of years ago. I can only imagine how powerful the swarms must be now.”

“The power of the swarms is insignificant, Adrian. My father maintains tens of millions of star systems while the swarms fail to control even one. The battle will be very brief.”

“Tens of millions!” Adrian gasped. “Are you serious?”

The Sentinel smiled. “You have been disconnected from reality for a very long time. As I said, a lot has happened since the 25th century. Things are not the way they used to be.”

“I guess you’re right,” Adrian replied. “I just can’t believe it. But it’s not like we had a choice about what happened, you know. The swarms were destroying everything. Our only hope for survival was to go underground. No one else understood that – that’s why they all died.”

“Is that why you built these vaults?” the Sentinel asked.

Adrian shook his head. “Not at first. I mean – well, it’s complicated. You see, when the synthetic worlds were first invented they were just used for entertainment. People would go there, have some fun, and then go back to work. They weren’t as advanced as they are now. Then as time went by they got better. Some people began to think that the synthetic worlds were better than the real world because you had more control over them. After all, in the synthetic worlds you could have whatever you wanted. Bad things never happened. It was a perfect life.”

“But it wasn’t real,” the Sentinel said. “It was just a dream.”

“That’s what the realists argued. The synthetics said it didn’t matter – their senses told them that it was real and that was enough for them. After a while there were two sides. Some people began moving into the synthetic worlds. People were divided over it. Then the swarms came.”

“So the swarms appeared after the vaults?”

Adrian nodded. “They showed up about thirty years later, I think. When they invaded everything changed. The swarms began wiping out one colony after another and no one could find a way to stop them. All the sudden the real world didn’t seem as appealing anymore. We couldn’t leave the system because the swarms would destroy us, but since we couldn’t leave our supply lines were cut off. It was just a matter of time before our whole civilization collapsed so we moved into the vaults. Even the realists understood that it was either that or die.”

“Were you and Alpha Centauri A the only colonies to make that choice?”

“I think so. The rest of the colonies kept trying to fight. The last we heard was that they were losing badly.” Adrian paused and looked at the Sentinel. “Do you know what happened to them?”

“They are all gone,” the Sentinel said sadly. “I have searched this entire sector. This is the only world that has life, and this is the only working vault left in existence. Everyone else is gone.”

“But–” Adrian stopped. “But that can’t be! Alpha Centauri A had a Wall around it. The swarms couldn’t possibly have gotten in!”

“The Wall is still there but the people are gone. I do not know what happened but there is no one left alive on that world.”

“But what about all the other vaults?” Adrian asked. “There were dozens of them here on Xanthe! They can’t all be dead!”

“I am sorry,” the Sentinel replied. “This vault is all that is left.”

Adrian was silent. He looked around the room at all of the pods, and finally turned his attention back to the Sentinel. “Why are you here?”

“I have been sent here to save you and your people from the swarms. We can defeat them and help you reclaim the stars.”

“You have come too late,” Adrian replied. “Surely you can see that we can’t survive in the real world anymore! We’re too old and frail. In the synthetic worlds we have life and vigor but here there is nothing but weakness and death.”

“Your life in the synthetic world is an illusion, Adrian. It’s not real. We can help you reclaim your life. The truth is that you and the rest of your people are dying. If you do not leave your synthetic worlds you will all die and there will be no one left.”

“But surely there must be someone else,” Adrian said.

“You are all that is left of the Rangers,” the Sentinel said. “Sol is still locked behind a Wall that has been active for five thousand years. No one knows what is behind it but by now there may be nothing left at all. If you do not wake from your dreams then humanity may come to an end.”

Adrian said nothing for a long time. At last he sighed. “The robot was right,” he said quietly. “There is indeed an urgent problem. I do not know if we can solve it but we must try. What do you want me to do?”

“What do you know about the swarms? Is there anything you can tell me about them?”

Adrian shook his head. “I never knew very much about them. They appeared one day and attacked a remote colony. Over time they spread and attacked one world after another. They were never able to get through our Wall, though.”

“Where did they come from?”

“No one ever found out. Some people think that Earth was behind them, as revenge for being locked away. People had largely forgotten about Earth before the attack. Others thought that they came from some alien race that we hadn’t discovered yet. As far as I know the question was never answered.”

The Sentinel nodded. “I understand. I will not take up any more of your time, then.”

“What are you going to do now?” Adrian asked.

“I will return to my father and tell him what I have learned.”

“When will you be back?”

“Soon,” the Sentinel said. “Once the swarms are destroyed we will come and help you rebuild. You will not have to face the future alone.”

“Very well,” Adrian replied. “But what of our Wall? This robot tells me that they cannot fix our equipment.”

“I will continue to maintain the Wall that I have erected,” the Sentinel said. “It will protect you from the swarms until my father has destroyed them.”

“Thank you,” Adrian replied.

The Sentinel nodded and then vanished. Adrian shook his head. With the help of the robot, he climbed back into his pod. The robot resealed it and walked away.

After slipping out through one of the holes in Alpha Centauri A’s Wall the Sentinel took a moment to scan the bot swarms. As before, the nearest swarms were dozens of light-years away. They gave no indication that they had noticed his presence and continued their endless fight against each other. Curious, the Sentinel thought. Although they have paid me no attention I find it difficult to believe that I have gone unnoticed. If they were able to track the Sparrow and fight my father then surely they have the potential to notice me. At the very least they should know that they now have an opponent, yet they do not appear to be on guard. They are not amassing for another attack or even searching for us, although they must know we are going to come after them. I do not understand their behavior.

It took the Sentinel only a few seconds to jump to the outskirts of the Tau Ceti system. Being there gave the machine a curious feeling. So we meet again, the Sentinel thought, as it scanned the Wall that prevented access to the system. Unlike the Wall that guarded Alpha Centauri A this barrier was in excellent condition. In fact, it did not appear to have decayed any since the Sentinel last encountered it five thousand years ago. The Gate was gone but other than that nothing had changed.

The Sentinel began carefully probing the Wall, as it had more than six hundred years ago when it first encountered this system on a scouting expedition. Once again it found traces of life present on Xanthe. They were weak, but they were there.

But how do I get in? the Sentinel wondered. It scanned the ancient barrier but was unable to find any weaknesses. While its sensors could penetrate it there did not appear to be a safe passage through. This presented a significant problem. I must get inside and contact the survivors, but the only way to do so is to collapse this barrier. Yet if I do that it would leave them exposed to the wrath of the endless swarms. The only alternative I can see is to erect my own Wall outside theirs. This would keep them safe after their own Wall is taken down, for they would still have a barrier between them and the rest of the stars.

Reaching into its memory, the Sentinel retrieved the pattern for a small, autonomous space station that was able to generate a Wall. It then used the abilities the Artilect had given it to fabricate the structure, drawing enormous amounts of energy from the realms beyond spacetime and translating that energy into patterns of matter. It took only a few minutes to complete the station. The final product was a featureless black cube that measured forty-nine feet on each side. It appeared unassuming and harmless but the Sentinel knew that it was capable of keeping a Wall stable for thousands of years.

With a single command the Sentinel activated the station. Immediately a Wall appeared that surrounded the Sentinel, the station, and all of Tau Ceti. The Sentinel regarded it with great satisfaction. I should only need you for a few hours, but if something should happen to me you will be able to protect all those on Xanthe for many years to come. As long as you are there to guard them they need not fear the swarms.

Once the protective barrier was in place the Sentinel turned its attention back to collapsing the ancient barrier that still protected Tau Ceti. I must proceed with great caution. It is not difficult to introduce instabilities that will cause the Wall to tear itself apart, but I must do so in a way that does not endanger its inhabitants. The Wall directly alters the properties of spacetime in order to remove the star from normal space; whatever I do must not cause this pocket of space to collapse altogether.

The Sentinel spent half an hour studying the Wall before it made its move. It ultimately decided that destabilizing the Wall was too risky and instead chose to overpower it. The purpose of the Wall was to draw a star system out of normal space and hide it inside an inaccessible pocket of spacetime. In order to counter this the Sentinel created an enormous, focused gravity well that pulled at that pocket in an attempt to force it back into normal space. After gathering up an enormous store of energy the Sentinel launched its attack and pulled at the Wall with all its might.

For a few seconds the Wall held as it fought against the titanic forces that hammered it. Then, all at once, the Wall gave way and dissipated. The star system was now open.

The Sentinel quickly scanned the star system to make sure it was undamaged and was relieved to find no evidence of spacetime ruptures. You appear to be safe and sound, my friends. This time it was necessary but I hope I do not have to do that again. You have survived for too long to be endangered by something like this.

Although the Sentinel was tempted to proceed straight to Xanthe it first decided to perform a thorough sweep of the system. When the Sentinel had last visited this star in the 19th century it had found a dangerous place that was filled with asteroids. Now, however, the asteroids were gone. As before there was just one planet in the system – Xanthe, the site of the third colony established by the Diano Corporation.

To its surprise its sensors revealed that there were no artificial structures anywhere other than Xanthe. At one time there were numerous space stations that maintained the Wall, managed the trajectories of asteroids, and helped ships navigate the treacherous system. Now, though, none remained. With the exception of Xanthe the system was deserted. The Wall must be maintained by systems on the planet, as was the case at Alpha Centauri A, the Sentinel realized. But why were the space stations abandoned? Did mankind lose its ability to reach the stars?

Once its system-wide scan had been completed the Sentinel moved into orbit around Xanthe and began scanning the planet’s surface. It remembered the last time it had visited Tau Ceti, back when it was scanning all of the Ranger worlds in search of the Stryker twins. At that time the planet had been a vibrant world, home to more than 100 million people. Its capitol, Star City, was one of the wonders of the colonies. The Sentinel was saddened to find that its glory had not stood the test of time. Xanthe still had an atmosphere but it was a weak one that could only barely support life. Its beautiful oceans had receded to only a quarter of the area they covered five thousand years ago. Much of the plant life had died, replacing thousands of square miles of fertile ground with a parched, barren desert. The world was rapidly turning into a corpse and only isolated pockets of plant and animal life remained.

Its cities were also in advanced stages of decay. While the planet now had far more cities than it did in the 19th century, the sprawling metropolises were places of blight and decay. Its skyscrapers were rusted and broken and its streets were cracked and pitted. Even worse, no one lived in any of the cities. All of them were abandoned, home to no one. The only city with a functional power grid was Star City and only a small portion of it remained. The rest was in darkness.

If the cities are empty then where are the people? The Sentinel traced the life signs it had found earlier and discovered that, as on Alpha Centauri A, there were vaults buried beneath the planet’s surface. Instead of just one vault, however, the Sentinel found dozens of vaults, one of which had a functional power grid and signs of life. The rest were dead.

Before entering the last vault the Sentinel stopped to scan Star City. Its instruments revealed moment in the city below. When the probe took a closer look it saw that there were only nine robots in the entire metropolis. The body of each robot was a short, square box of metal that was roughly two feet on each side. The boxes had six metal arms and four legs, which terminated in wheels. The Sentinel watched as the robots went about their assigned tasks, attempting to keep the city alive. One of you is trying to bring the Wall back to life while another hunts down broken segments of the city’s power grid. Two of you are in the vault, trying to maintain some equipment. Another is trying to repair the city’s failing power plant, while the rest try to restore damaged buildings. How long have you been doing this, little ones? Thousands of years? Who abandoned all of this and left it in your care? Is there no one left to help you?

As the Sentinel watched the robots it saw one of them suddenly abandon its work on an elevator that it was trying to bring back to life. It abruptly turned around, scooted out the lobby of a ruined skyscraper, and headed down a gutted street. The robot carefully picked its way around piles of rubble and headed to a nondescript building on the outskirts of town. Once there it entered the run-down building through the broken front doors and walked up to an elevator in its lobby. The robot reached one of its arms out and pressed an unlabeled button on the wall. When the elevator arrived the robot rolled into it and pressed the button labeled B6.

The elevator slowly began descending. From its place in planetary orbit the Sentinel was able to see that levels B1 through B5 were sub-basements of the structure. B6, however, was a thousand feet below the surface and connected to the only functional vault. Intrigued, the Sentinel watched as the elevator carried the robot down to the vault level. When the elevator doors finally opened the robot rolled down a hallway and up to a massive door that guarded the vault itself.

This is worth investigating in person, the Sentinel decided. While remaining cloaked the Sentinel transported itself to the entrance of the vault and stood beside the robot. As the robot worked at a nearby control panel and attempted to enter a complicated access code, the Sentinel waited patiently and studied the wall in front of it. There, to the right of the door, was a plaque:

This vault predates the one on Alpha Centauri A, and yet it is still functional, the Sentinel thought. This is a blessing. Aside from Sol, all that remains of humanity is resting behind that door. Perhaps that is where I will finally discover the answers we have been looking for.

A moment later the robot finished its work and the monstrous vault door rolled aside. The robot then rolled into the vault and the Sentinel followed close behind it. The Sentinel was surprised to find that this vault appeared to be identical to the one on Alpha Centauri A. Like its counterpart it was also comprised of four immensely large rooms that were filled with hundreds of thousands of pods, and it also had a power plant on its lowest level. The only difference was that these pods were not connected to a single computer. Instead each one had its own computer terminal beside it, as if the pods were all independent entities.

The robot entered one of the large rooms and started rolling past rows of pods. As it lumbered across the room the Sentinel took a moment to quickly scan the area. I count 384,726 life signs, which means that less than one percent of the pods are dead. The robots have done a good job of maintaining this vault. But these life signs are all much too old! This cannot be right. My sensors are telling me that there are no children or young people here. In fact, everyone appears to be thousands of years old and show signs of extreme old age! How can that be?

The Sentinel moved over to one of the pods and peered through its transparent covering. Inside it saw an extremely old man. His face was covered in wrinkles and he was short and frail. His eyes were sunken, his skin was dirty, and he had only a few greasy strands of hair left. If the Sentinel had not known better he would have thought he was staring at a corpse. There is so little life left in you. How long have you been like this? Are you prisoners?

A thousand feet away the robot had stopped at one of the pods and was entering commands into its terminal. The Sentinel ignored it and glanced at the terminal next to the pod in front of it. Without touching anything it simply looked at the readouts on the screen. Surely that is not correct, it thought, horrified. Have you really been in that retched pod for almost five thousand years, living in an imaginary world? Your life signs barely register! Is it even possible for you to come back to the real world, or are you too frail to step outside and look into the sky? Do you even remember what the real world is like?

The Sentinel looked around with a growing feeling of horror. If all of you are on the verge of death, unable to live in the real world, then what hope does mankind have? Even if we are able to save you from the swarms and can somehow repair your bodies, that will not help if your minds are gone. Are you even willing to live in reality, or have you become slaves to that which is not real?

In another part of the room the Sentinel heard a grinding noise. It turned around and saw that one of the pods had opened. A frail, elderly man was attempting to climb out of the pod and was being helped by the robot.

“I apologize for disturbing you, Adrian Garza,” the robot was saying. “I know I am intruding but there is an urgent problem that needs immediate attention. You have helped us in the past and I was hoping you could help us again.”

The elderly man nodded. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “I am sure that there is a problem, my friend, or else you would not have contacted one of us. But why did you not wake Elder Lane? He is our administrator.”

“He did not wish to be disturbed. The last time I contacted him he gave strict instructions to not disturb him again.”

Adrian smiled. “I understand. In this world we are old men and it is not a welcome experience. I can understand why he would not wish to experience it. But what troubles you?”

“It is the Wall, sir. It has collapsed and we cannot fix it.”

A look of horror crossed the man’s face. “Collapsed! Did the machines fail?”

“It was not mechanical failure. Something forced the Wall to collapse. We believe it was an attack from the outside.”

“But that’s impossible! No one can breach the Wall. It has never been done – not once since the first Wall was erected.”

“It has now,” the robot replied.

The man was silent for a moment. “What of the swarms? Now that we are defenseless are they on their way?”

“But we are not defenseless. That is the curious thing. Someone created a Wall around us and then destroyed the one we were generating. We are not unprotected; it is simply that the Wall that surrounds us is not our own.”

Adrian looked at the robot, astonished. “But who would do such a thing?”

At this point the Sentinel dropped its cloak and took on the appearance of a human. To Adrian it looked as if a distinguished-looking man had just appeared, wearing a gray suit and hat.

“I did,” the Sentinel said.

Recently I have noticed a number of people saying that you don’t have to repent in order to be saved. They claim that being sorry for your sins and asking God to forgive you is simply not necessary; as long as you believe in Jesus you will be fine. Jesus doesn’t ask you to be sorry for anything; all He wants is for you to believe.

However, is that actually the case? Does the Bible really say that you can be saved without ever repenting of your sins? Let’s take a look and find out.

It is true that the Bible says that we must believe in order to be saved:

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Acts 16:31: “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Romans 10:9: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

That looks pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? These verses all say that if we believe in Jesus we will be saved. However, these aren’t the only verses in the Bible that talk about salvation. There are a great many other verses as well. For example, in Matthew 4 we find the first message that Jesus ever preached, right after coming back from being tempted in the wilderness by Satan:

Matthew 4:17: “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Jesus repeated this message on numerous occasions. For example:

Matthew 9:13: “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Why did Jesus come? To call “sinners to repentance.”

Matthew 11:20: “Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:”

Why were the cities condemned? “Because they repented not.”

Mark 1:14: “Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

What did Jesus command people to do? Not just to believe, but to repent and believe.

Luke 3:8: “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”

What did Jesus want to see from people? “Fruits worthy of repentance.”

Luke 13:3: “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

Could this have been any more straightforward? Jesus said that if you do not repent you will perish.

Luke 15:10: “Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”

What causes joy in Heaven? “One sinner that repenteth.”

Luke 24:47: “And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

What did Jesus say should be preached, starting at Jerusalem? “Repentance and remission of sins.”

The disciples proclaimed the same message:

Acts 2:38: “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

Acts 3:19: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”

I could go on but I think I have made my point. Jesus was very clear that if you want to be saved you must repent. Repentance is not optional. There is no salvation apart from it. There is no salvation that says “Jesus, save me from Hell, but other than that stay out of my life. I’m not sorry about my sins and I’m not going to let you run my life.” That road leads straight to Hell.

It is true that in order to be saved you must believe in Jesus. After all, how can you believe that Jesus will save you if you think that the story of Jesus is just a myth? You can’t be saved by a mythical person! You can only be saved if a very real and sinless Jesus died a very real death on a very real cross, and then rose to life again in a real and physical way. Nothing less can save you. You cannot be saved by your good deeds, or by your church membership, or by your ancestry. Only the death and resurrection of Jesus can do it. You must believe in order to be saved.

At the same time, you must repent in order to be saved. God will not save anyone who approaches Him while saying “I refuse to be sorry for anything I have done, and I refuse to call You my master. You have no right to control my life.” After all, demons believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died and rose again, but they are certainly not saved. Do you really think that adopting the demonic attitude of “Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” is going to lead to salvation?

The truth is that belief in Jesus leads to repentance. That is when you suddenly realize that you are a sinner and are bound for judgment and eternal damnation if God does not forgive you for what you have done. That is when you realize that your most desperate need in life is God’s forgiveness. That is when you seek forgiveness with all of your heart, desperately looking for salvation from the wrath of God – and that is when God freely grants forgiveness to those who repent and believe. He turns no one away; He accepts all who comes.

Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. Repentance does not mean that we never sin again. Even as Christians we still have a sin nature inside us that we must fight each and every day until the Lord brings us home. What saves us is not being sinless (for none of us are) but our faith in Jesus. The difference is that we are sorry for our sins and we seek the Lord’s grace to fight the sin in our life so that we may please our Heavenly Father. There is a tremendous difference between seeking the Lord’s forgiveness and grace, and telling God “I refuse to admit that I am a sinner and I am not the least bit sorry about breaking Your law.” It is the difference between life and death.

You must believe to be saved – but you cannot be saved apart from repentance. Approaching God apart from seeking forgiveness will only lead to Hell.

In Genesis 17 the Lord made a covenant with Abraham. In this covenant He made him a series of promises:

Genesis 17:4: “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.
5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.
6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.
7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after three in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

Several important things happened in this covenant. We see that God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, signifying that he would be the father of many nations (Abram means “exalted father” while Abraham means “father of a multitude”). He told Abraham that he would have many descendents, and his offspring would include nations and kings. He promised that He would be the God of Abraham’s children. Finally – and this is what I want to focus on – He gave the land of Canaan to Abraham’s offspring as an everlasting possession.

It is important to realize that God placed no conditions on this covenant. He required nothing of Abraham, nor did He say that Abraham’s offspring had to do certain things in order to maintain the covenant. It is true that in the next verses He said this:

Genesis 17:11: “And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant between me and you.”

However, note that circumcision was a token, or sign of the covenant. Those who did not do this were “cut off” (verse 14), but it did not abrogate the covenant as a whole because the covenant was unconditional. No matter what happened, no matter what the Israelites did, “all the land of Canaan” was theirs “for an everlasting possession”. God swore that Israel would be His people forever, no matter what:

Jeremiah 31:35: “Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:
36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
37 Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.”

God wanted to make it very clear that no matter what happened, God would never cast off His people or allow the Israelites to be destroyed. They were His people forever and no one would ever be able to completely destroy them.

Now, it is true that later on God told the Israelites that if they disobeyed Him He would exile them from the land, and God did so on two occasions. However, each exile was temporary. The land still belonged to Israel, and God promised to bring them back to their land after the punishment was over. In Genesis 17:8 God solemnly swore to Abraham that the land of Israel would belong to the Israelites forever, no matter what they did, and that agreement still stands today. It was an everlasting covenant. We can see this in Leviticus:

Leviticus 26:42: “Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.”

Notice that verse 42 states that God would remember the covenant He made with Abraham, and He would “remember the land”. The Israelites would be exiled from it, but even then He would not “break my covenant”, as it says in verse 44. He would bring them back.

The reason I mention this is because many Christians today have no idea that Israel has any significance to God. They think that after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD that God was finished with the Jews, and that from that point on the Church was God’s people. They see no significance in the modern nation of Israel, nor do they believe that Israel still has a right to that plot of land in the Middle East.

As it turns out, however, the Bible actually prophesied when Israel would be reborn. This can be found in Ezekiel 4:

Ezekiel 4:1: “Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
2 And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.
3 Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
7 Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.
…
13 And the Lord said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.”

Here we find that God is using Ezekiel as an object lesson. The Lord was going to punish Israel for 430 years (390 years + 40 years) and to illustrate this God commanded Ezekiel to lie on his side for 430 days. This was done as a sign to the house of Israel, but the Israelites paid no attention to the warning. Instead of repenting they hardened their hearts, and God’s judgment came upon them. As foretold, they were carried into captivity and spent the next 70 years in exile.

Even this, however, did not teach them anything. Since they did not repent the Lord allowed only a small remnant of the Jews to return to Israel in 536 BC. The rest of the nation remained scattered abroad, as the Lord had threatened in verse 13.

When the Jews returned home only 70 of the appointed 430 years had taken place, which still left 360 years. However, the fact that the Israelites did not learn their lesson during the first 70 years of punishment activated this provision of the Mosaic Law:

Leviticus 26:23: “And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me;
24 Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.”

This says that if God punished the Israelites and they refused to repent then God would multiply their punishment by seven. 360 years x 7 = 2520 years. Since the Bible uses 360-year days in its prophecies, that would equal 2,483.8 of our calendar years. (The math: 2520 years * 360 days = 907,200 days. 907,200 days / 365.25 days per year = 2,483.8 years.) So, if you add 2,483.3 years to the spring of 536 BC (keeping into account there was no year 0, only 1 BC and then 1 AD), you get the spring of 1948. (Math: 1948 + 536 = 2484.)

When did Israel become a nation again? On May 14, 1948. This time, however, more than just a small remnant has returned to the land; there are now millions of Jews living in Israel, and more continue to move there as time goes on. This process will only accelerate as the time of Christ’s return draws near. The Lord is calling His people back to their promised land.

On top of this, Israel became a nation in a single day, just as the Lord had foretold through Isaiah:

Isaiah 66:7: “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.
8 Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.
9 Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? Saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? Saith thy God.”

It seemed an incredible thing that Israel would become a nation again in a single day, but that is exactly what happened. The modern regathering of the Jews into Israel was not some random historical event; it was the fulfillment of prophecy. In fact, God said that He would disperse the Jews, but He would regather them a second time:

Isaiah 11:11: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.”

The Israelites have been dispersed twice: once when they were deported to Babylon, and once when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. In modern times they have been regathered. The first time they were regathered was after spending 70 years in Babylon. The modern nation of Israel, therefore, represents the second time. God promised to bring His people back to the land, and He has done so.

In fact, the Bible says that the nation of Israel will never be destroyed again:

Amos 9:15: “I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.”

The reason God has regathered them is to bring them back to Him, and He will accomplish that:

Hosea 3:4: “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:
5 Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.”

Do you see what this is saying? Israel did “abide many days” without a king, or sacrifice, or even a country. Now they have returned “in the latter days”, as it says in verse 5. The phrase “David their king” refers to the Messiah; the passage is saying that when Israel is regathered they will seek the Lord, and ultimately the Messiah as well.

That, however, is a topic I’ve discussed elsewhere so I won’t repeat it here.

What I want to focus on is that the land of Israel belongs to the Israelites. God made that promise to Abraham, and He later confirmed that promise to Jacob – thus making it clear that the land was being given to the Jews, not the Arabs:

Genesis 35:11: “And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
12 And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.”

God was very specific when it came to the ownership of the land. The Arabs are the descendents of Abraham’s son Ishmael, but the land was not given to them. The Palestinians are the descendents of Isaac’s son Edom, but the land was not given to them. The land was given only to Jacob’s offspring, the Jews. Even Jerusalem was given to the Jews:

Zechariah 8:7-8: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country; and I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.”

God gave one other promise to Abraham. We can find it in Genesis 12:

Genesis 12:3: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

As Christians we know that Jesus was the descendent of Abraham that God used to bless the entire world. In Him all the families of the earth are blessed indeed. However, we often forget the first part of the verse. God was not just talking about Abraham; He would bless those that blessed the Jews, and He would curse those that cursed them. We know this because God has some very harsh words for those who would try to harm Israel:

Zechariah 2:8: “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.”

Later in Zechariah God elaborates on this theme:

Zechariah 12:9: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”

These verses are describing a time when the “house of David” will finally realize that Jesus is the Messiah and will repent as a nation. It says they will “look upon me whom they have pierced” – a reference to Jesus. We know this day is near because in verse 10 it says that the “house of David” possesses Jerusalem – which happened in 1967. Notice, however, that verse 9 states that when this happens God will seek to destroy “all the nations that come against Jerusalem”. God takes attacks on Israel personally.

God makes this even more clear in Joel:

Joel 3:1: “For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.”

Here God promises that when God has returned Israel to the land and given Jerusalem back to her, that He would gather all nations and judge them. Why is He angry with them? Because they have scattered the Jews among the nations and “parted my land”. In other words, God is incredibly angry with the world because they have taken land away from Israel.

The fulfillment of these verses is not far off. We have seen, in modern times, that God did “bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem”. Moreover, we have also seen that the nations of the world have been trying very hard to divide the nation of Israel, and take away her land in order to give it to others.

Zechariah expounds on this a little further, and points out something frightening:

Zechariah 14:2: “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.”

In verse 2 we see the same language as in Joel 3:2. However, a very important detail is added: on the day the Lord gathers all nations to Jerusalem, the Lord will not only fight against them, but He will do so in person. Verse 4 says that “his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives”. We call this the Second Coming. When the Lord returns, Jerusalem will be under attack; the nations of the world will have gathered around it and captured the city. In response Jesus comes back, destroys those nations, and puts an end to all those that threatened Israel. To put it another way, in the Second Coming Jesus comes back to defend Jerusalem on Israel’s behalf.

God makes one point very clear: the land of Israel belongs to the Jews, and God gets very upset when people try to take the land away from her. “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye”, the Lord said, and He meant it. In fact, the day will come when God will get so upset at what people are doing to Israel that He will return in person, with all of the armies of Heaven, to destroy all those that have come against her. (You know you have crossed the line in a big way when God comes out of Heaven to personally destroy you!)

The point I’m trying to make is that taking land away from Israel is a really big deal in God’s sight. He hates it. He gave that land to Israel, and it belongs to them. Those who try to take it away from her do so at their peril.

This peril is not merely theoretical. I believe that God has actively pursued Genesis 12:3 in history: those nations that have blessed Israel have been blessed, and those nations that have cursed Israel (or have tried to take away her land) have been cursed. I recently came across a book entitled As America Has Done To Israel, by John P. McTernan. He documents a very interesting phenomenon: whenever a nation does something to Israel, either good or bad, something happens to that nation.

For example:

October 30, 1991: President Bush announced a new Middle East peace plan, in which Israel would be forced to surrender parts of its land in return for peace – including parts of Jerusalem.

October 30, 1991: A powerful storm suddenly develops off the coast of Nova Scotia, which quickly reached hurricane strength. The next day the storm (which by now was hundreds of miles wide) smashed into New England, then traveled down the East Coast into the Carolinas. It caused millions of dollars in damage and was nicknamed “The Perfect Storm”. (The storm was so significant that a book and a movie were written about it, both named The Perfect Storm.)

President Bush owned a home in Kennebunkport, Maine, that was heavily damaged in the storm. The storm hit his home on the same day that the President initiated the Madrid Peace Conference, in which Israel was pressured to give up land.

 

August 24, 1992: The Madrid Peace Conference was moved to Washington, D.C., making it the first time that conference was held on American soil. Not only was Israel going to be pressured into giving up more land, but the Palestinians were going to be governing the lands that Israel would have to give up.

August 24, 1992: Hurricane Andrew hits Florida and becomes the worst natural disaster ever hit to America (up to that time). $30 billion in damage was done. The hurricane struck just a few hours before the Madrid peace conference began.

 

September 13, 1993: In Washington, DC Israel signs an agreement with Yasser Arafat, surrendering Gaza, Jericho, and the West Bank to Palestinians.

September 13, 1993: Hurricane Emily hits North Carolina.

 

January 16, 1994: President Clinton met with Syria’s dictator, President Hafez Assad. They talk about making peace with Israel, and the agreement they come up with includes Israel surrendering the Golan Heights to Syria.

January 17, 1994: A 6.8 magnitude earthquake hits Los Angeles, causing $25 billion in damage. This happens less than 24 hours after Clinton pressured Israel to give up more land.

 

September 27, 1998: Secretary of State Madeline Albright met with Arafat in New York City, to finalize an agreement in which Israel would surrender 13% of its land in exchange for peace.

September 27, 1998: Hurricane Georges hits the Gulf Coast, doing extensive damage to Mississippi and Florida. The hurricane then stalled, causing severe flooding.

 

The book is hundreds of pages long and gives many more examples, but I’ll give just one more. In April 2005 President Bush met with Israeli Prime Minster Sharon in order to set a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from 25 Jewish settlements. The process was started on August 16 and it was completed on August 23. Approximately ten thousand Jews were forcibly evicted from their land. The reason this happened is because President Bush put enormous pressure on Israel to evict them and give that land to the Palestinians. In fact, the United States offered to give Israel $1.2 billion in order to relocate the settlers. (In other words, this country was paying the bill to make this happen.) This was the first step in evicting all Jews from Gaza in order to further Bush’s plan to establish a Palestinian state.

The eviction of these settlers was not a minor task. Thousands of people lived there. The area was a major agricultural center of Israel and produced about 15% of Israel’s vegetables. It took 40,000 troops to force the settlers to leave. After they were evicted the army demolished their homes and destroyed their settlements. The last settler was removed on August 23, and on that date President Bush praised Prime Minster Sharon for his “courageous decision to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.”

One might ask: what else happened on August 23, 2005? A tropical depression formed over the Bahamas, which grew into a tropical storm named Katrina. I don’t think I have to tell you what happened when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States.

Some might say that it’s just a coincidence that every time America forces Israel to give up her land, something terrible and extraordinary happens. If so, it’s really quite an amazing string of coincidences! There are a great many more examples I could give; the book that documents all of this is hundreds of pages long.

Was it just a coincidence that when Japan announced on March 9, 2011 that they were sending the Palestinians millions of dollars so that the Palestinians could create a state with Jerusalem as its capitol, that two days later the nation was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake – the worst it ever experienced in its history? Are all of these history-making disasters just coincidences?

I believe that God is fulfilling His promise to trouble those who trouble Israel. He promised to judge those who divided Israel’s land and I think He has done exactly that. As America and other nations continue to force Israel to give up her land, you can expect even more breathtaking disasters. God is not a respecter of persons.

Now, I am not saying that every natural disaster that happens is because of this; there are many things that happen simply because we live in a fallen world. However, God has been known to judge cities, nations, and people that have transgressed His laws (remember Sodom and Gomorrah?), and I believe He continues to do so today. After all, God does not change.

The real judgment, though, is still ahead of us. One day all the nations of the world will gather against Jerusalem in order to destroy her and her people. They will invade the city and they will sack it, but then Jesus will come back in person to destroy them all. He will put a final end to all those who seek to “trouble” His people.

One of the most well-known Christmas hymns is a song named “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. Its first verse goes like this:

This beautiful hymn repeats the widely-held belief that angels sang at the birth of Christ. In countless plays, hymns, and sermons, the message is the same: angels sang the news to the world.

However, this is actually not the case. Take a look at Luke to see what I mean:

Luke 2:8: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Do you see what verse 13 says? We are told there was a host of angels that praised God and said, “Glory to God in the highest”. They proclaimed the news; they did not sing it. The herald angels did not actually do any singing!

In fact, it is very difficult to find evidence of angels singing anywhere in the Bible. In the famous Christmas hymn “Angels From The Realms of Glory” we are told this:

Did the angels sing at the creation of the world? Well, look at Job 38:

Job 38:4: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

We are told that the angels (which are here called the sons of God) shouted for joy, but it doesn’t say they did any singing. It’s true that the “morning stars” sang together, but the only being the Bible ever calls the “bright and morning star” is Jesus (Revelation 22:16). Angels just aren’t referred to as morning stars, or stars of any kind. Even the book of Job doesn’t refer to angels as stars; instead it consistently calls them the “sons of God”.

What about in Heaven? Well, in Revelation we are told that the elders (which represents the Church) and the four beasts sing a song to the Lord:

Revelation 5:8: “And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”

In the next verse the angels join in, but notice that they don’t actually do any singing:

Revelation 5:11: “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”

As you can see, the angels praise God and “shout for joy” but we don’t actually find evidence of them singing. This is not to say that they don’t sing; it’s quite likely that angels do all sorts of things that we don’t know about. However, it does seem that the popular idea of angels singing is incorrect. There is no evidence that they sang at the birth of Christ, and all the Bible says about creation is that they “shouted for joy”. (Of course, I will admit that “Hark the Herald Angel Said” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!)

I doubt that this has any deep significance but it is something to think about. It does make you wonder, though, how much of our image of angels is actually real. Angels are regularly depicted in our culture as tall women with wings, strumming on harps. Here’s a fun activity for you – go through the Bible and look for evidence of female angels, or of angels that have harps. You may be surprised at what you find – or, in this case, don’t find!

It took the Sentinel less than a minute to jump from the home system of the Artilect to the outskirts of Alpha Centauri A. After it had reached the system’s protective Wall it remained motionless for a few minutes and watched. Its long-range sensors were able to detect the bot swarms that were engaged in endless conflict, but they did not seem to notice his presence. Perhaps my cloak is hiding me from their view, the Sentinel thought, or perhaps they simply cannot see this far. Or maybe they can see me but do not consider me worthy of their attention.

The Sentinel waited an hour before making any further moves but the behavior of the swarms did not change. It finally decided that it had waited long enough and turned its attention to the problem at hand.

The Wall that protected Alpha Centauri A was old and weak – much weaker than the Sentinel had expected. In fact, the Sentinel was surprised at how different this barrier was from the one that protected Tau Ceti. The one around Tau Ceti had been strong and healthy but this one was drained of energy. The Sentinel spotted numerous momentary gaps in its substructure. It’s almost as if the Wall is beginning to flicker and fade. But how can this be – is no one maintaining it? And what of the bots? How could a structure this weak keep them at bay? The swarms are so powerful that they were able to temporarily overwhelm my father’s defenses. I cannot believe that this pitiful barrier could keep them out. So why are they not here? Is it because there is nothing left that is worth fighting over, or is something else going on?

Since there was nothing else it could learn from its current position, the Sentinel took advantage of one of the Wall’s temporary gaps and slipped inside the system. Once it was safely through the Wall it took some time to carefully survey the system. Alpha Centauri A was the primary star in a binary star system, and both stars were located within the Wall. The primary star was a yellow-white G2-class star and it appeared to have changed very little since the Sentinel’s network of probes had visited it five thousand years ago. A single planet circled around Alpha Centauri A in a tight orbit. Since this was the only planet in the system the Sentinel moved in to take a closer look.

When the Sentinel’s network of probes visited this world in the late 19th century it had found a lush, green planet that was filled with life. This system was actually the first one that the Diano Corporation had colonized. The colony was founded on March 1, 1756, and quickly became an important Ranger world. By 1867 the planet had been terraformed for nearly a century and was home to millions of people, packed with cities, roads, and farms.

Now, however, the world was very different. Before the Sentinel even started scanning the world it could see that something terrible had happened to it. From orbit there were no signs of life. It could see no green trees, no vast oceans, and no sprawling cities. The world looked empty and dead, as it must have looked ages ago before the first Diano starship ever visited it.

The Sentinel spent hours scanning the planet, examining every square inch in hopes of finding something. It was dismayed to find that the world was every bit as dead as it appeared to be. Only trace amounts of a once-rich atmosphere remained. The planet’s ocean basins were dry and had been for millennia. There was no plant or animal life left anywhere. Even the soil contained no bacteria or even microscopic life forms. There was only dust, and rocks, and empty wastes.

I do not understand, the Sentinel thought. The last time I scanned Ranger star systems I found many dead worlds, but they still had ruined cities and intact artifacts. While the worlds themselves were dead there were still many signs that they had once been thriving colonies. But this place is different. I do not see any signs that anyone has ever lived here. How could every trace of life have been wiped out so completely? There are no ruined cities, no ancient roads, no broken machines left behind to rust. What happened here? For that matter, if the world is empty then what is powering the Wall?

When the Sentinel thought about the Wall it suddenly realized that there had to be something left behind, so it began to probe deeper into the planet’s fractured crust. That Wall is not powering itself. Its engines must be here somewhere, and if they are here then I will find them. The Sentinel tuned its sensors to search for energy traces, however faint, and after a while it found something. Deep beneath the planet’s surface it found a facility that contained a single machine that was still running. From the surface it was impossible to tell that any building had ever stood on that location; all that remained was a wide plain that was strewn with broken rocks and empty canyons. The forces of time – if it was time that had done this – had erased everything. Beneath the surface, however, something had survived. The Sentinel immediately left orbit and transported himself into the long-deserted facility.

The bunker (if that is what it had been) was completely dark, so the Sentinel provided light. What it found was not encouraging. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust that had no footprints. How long has it been since this place has had a visitor? Has no one been here since the world died? A thorough search of the facility yielded no traces of entry or evidence of other visitors. If anyone else had been there in the past thousand years they had hidden their tracks well.

The walls of the bunker were made of tarnished metal and the air was stale and foul. Broken light fixtures littered the ceiling and shards of metal dotted the floor. The facility had many rooms but they were filled with garbage. Room after room was filled with long-broken machinery, corrupted parts, or broken computer terminals. It was obvious that no one had been there for a very long time. The equipment is not just dead – it was destroyed, the Sentinel realized. Screens were smashed, tables were set on fire, and machinery was beaten into pieces. I am sensing malice, not an accident. But who has done this? Why would someone destroy everything except for the zero-point-energy plant? I do not understand.

A broken stairwell lead down to a deeper layer. There it found a sealed-off room that contained the remnants of a dying zero-point-energy plant. According to the Sentinel’s scans the five-thousand-year-old machine was in serious need of repair. You have been left running for far too long. You may have been designed to last forever, but your parts are worn out and your converter is nearly gone. Most of your processors have been fried and your remaining memory circuits are failing. While you are still running you are producing less than 2% of your targeted output. It is no wonder what the Wall is flickering; in fact, I am amazed that it is working at all! You should have been repaired centuries ago. Why were you abandoned? With no one left to watch over you, how much longer will you last? A few more years, perhaps? Then the pitiful Wall will fall. Will anyone miss it when it is gone?

The Sentinel could find no books, papers, or written material. After an exhaustive search of the bunker it did find the rusting carcass of a robot that had been crushed beneath the weight of a transformer. At some point long ago the ceiling had given way and allowed some equipment to crash down to the level below, where it pulverized the hapless robot. The Sentinel gazed at its remains with pity and concern. Were you alone charged with the maintenance of this place? How long has it been since you stopped working? But this is not your fault, little one. Who would leave the maintenance of something as vital as the Wall in the hands of a single robot? Did no one have the foresight to realize that it, too, might fail?

When it had exhausted its search and was convinced that there was nothing else left to find the Sentinel exited the aging facility and went back into orbit. If one bunker survived beneath the surface then perhaps there are others hidden as well. There may yet be clues that time has not been able to erase.

Once again the Sentinel scanned the planet but this time it probed deep beneath the surface in an attempt to find any signs of civilization, however slight. Hours went by as it probed endless cubic miles of the planet’s crust, looking for signs of life or evidence of power. It found nothing. As far as it could tell the zero-point-energy plant was the last functional machine in existence.

The Sentinel was about to give up when it noticed something. A thousand feet beneath what had once been the capitol city of the planet (but was now simply an empty field) was a large vault. It had no signs of life or traces of energy but it appeared to be largely intact. Curious, the Sentinel transported itself into the vault and took a look around.

Like the bunker it had found earlier the vault was completely dark, so the Sentinel provided illumination. What it found was surprising. The vault consisted of four immensely large rooms, each of which covered several square miles of floor space. In the rooms were hundreds of thousands of opaque, cylindrical pods that were eight feet long and four feet wide. All of the pods were connected to a central computer by a complex network of optical cables. At the lowest level of the vault was an immense power supply.

All of the equipment was long dead. At one time the power supply had been a functional fusion reactor but now there was nothing left but twisted, tarnished metal. Some accident ages ago had apparently destroyed it. While shifting through the wreckage the Sentinel found the mutilated remains of a robot. The Sentinel looked at it, curious. Were you trying to repair it when something went wrong? Or did you deliberately destroy the reactor in an act of vengeance? Were you even capable of thought and reason? The Sentinel probed the dead computer terminal that was attached to the reactor but it found nothing. Its memory circuits had been dead for thousands of years, and no trace of data remained. At least the rest of the machinery was not savagely destroyed, as it had been in the bunker.

The vaults themselves contained no evidence of destruction or traces of an accident. What greatly disturbed the Sentinel was the discovery of human remains. Each pod contained the fragments of a human skeleton, all of which were in stages of extreme decay. He found men and women, children and adults. All of them were long dead. The Sentinel was saddened as it looked around and realized that it had found the inhabitants of the planet. For the first time in its trips through Ranger space it had found people – but they were not among the living.

I have come too late, he thought sadly. There is nothing I can do to help the dead. You have already gone on to meet God. Each of you are either with the Lord in Heaven or in the torments of Hell and there is nothing I can do to help or harm you. Yet I mourn for you, children of men. What happened to you? Were you kept in stasis after your world was destroyed, waiting for a day when you could live again? Or did you retreat from the surface to live here, allowing your home to die from neglect?

The Sentinel probed the pods but learned little. Their machinery had become corrupted and decayed long ago, and the memory circuits no longer contained information. There were mysteries but no answers.

After spending hours fruitlessly probing the pods’ memory chips the Sentinel was about to depart when it noticed a plaque hanging on the wall near the entrance to one of the rooms. The rectangular piece of metal was tarnished but still legible, and while the language was ancient the Sentinel had no trouble reading it because it was written in the language of those that had built the Artilect. It read:

The Sentinel studied the sign and pondered its meaning. Is that the answer? Did these people leave the real world to live in a synthetic one, only to be killed when the vault lost power? But why would they leave reality to live in a dream? And what of the threat of the swarms? Weren’t they afraid that they would attack while they slumbered? Did they believe that their pitiful Wall would protect them and allow them to leave reality? How did things come to this?

The Sentinel searched the facility carefully but it found no other clues. Perhaps there is more here to be found, but I cannot find it. This world is long dead. It is time for me to leave this tomb and continue to Tau Ceti. Perhaps I will find life there.

One common complaint about the King James Version of the Bible is that it is filled with archaic language. This is quite true. For example, Genesis 41:3 mentions the word “kine”. How many people today know that this is actually an old word for cattle? There are many other archaic words in it as well – right off the top of your head, do you know what “chapiter” or “ague” means?

Most of the time, though, what people are complaining about is not its vocabulary but its use of words like “thee”, “thy”, and “thou”. These words made it much harder to read, and people haven’t used them in centuries. So why are they used? After all, the KJV translation has been revised numerous times since it was first created in 1611 and these archaic pronouns are still there. Why?

As it turns out, there is a reason: the word “thee” and the word “you” do not mean the same thing. “Thee” is a singular word and “you” is a plural word. The reason the KJV translators used “thee” and “thy” is to preserve the difference between singular and plural pronouns. The KJV Bible is the only English translation of the Bible has that done that; all other modern translations have replaced “thee” with “you” and obliterated the difference.

Does it matter? Well, let’s take a look at a passage:

Luke 22:31: “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

What’s actually going on here? Well, now that we know that “you” is plural and “thee” is singular, the passage takes on new meaning. When Jesus said “Satan hath desired to have you”, what He means is that Satan has desired to have the disciples. We know this because the “you” in that verse is plural, and therefore must refer to a group of people. However, when Jesus says “I have prayed for thee” in verse 32, the word “thee” is singular, so Jesus must be saying that He has prayed for Peter. In other words, what Jesus is actually saying is this: “Simon, Satan wants to destroy the disciples, but I have prayed for you personally. When you are converted, strengthen your brothers.”

When we read this passage in the NIV all of these nuances are lost:

Luke 22:31: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.
32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Do you see how the meaning is lost? Here it looks like Jesus is saying “Simon, Satan wants to destroy you, but I’ve prayed for you.” Now, it is true that in the online NIV translation I used to look up this verse there was a footnote saying that the “you” in verse 31 is plural, but how many people actually read that footnote or understood it? (For that matter, how many NIV Bibles actually have that footnote? The NKJV had no such footnote, and I suspect most Bibles lack it.) I would venture to guess that of all the people who have read those two verses in the NIV Bibles, almost none of them realized what was going on.

The bottom line is this: while the use of “thee” and “thy” in the KJV Bible is archaic and does make it harder to read, it has a purpose behind it: that language maintains the distinction between singular and plural pronouns, which can affect what a passage means. Translations that don’t use that language (including the New King James) may be easier to read, but they obliterate that distinction and, in doing so, some of the meaning is lost.

“One more hour,” Davis Silver whispered. The unshaven man sat in the cockpit of the starship Aurora, which was hurtling toward its destination with all the speed Davis could coax out of the aging vessel. He had spent the past two days trying to repair the ship’s erratic drive but he finally gave up out of sheer frustration. This worthless piece of junk is just too far gone to be fixed, he thought bitterly.

Behind him someone coughed violently but the pilot didn’t turn around. He knew exactly who it was and felt only irritation at the unwelcome sound. In the back of the ship an elderly man was lying on a dirty cot. He had been sleeping for hours and was finally regaining consciousness. The injured man was too weak to get out of bed, but he was able to lift up his head and see what Davis was doing in the cockpit. A look of fear crossed the man’s face when he saw the ship’s current position and heading. “You shouldn’t be doing this, you know. This isn’t going to end well for you.”

“I told you to shut up, Julius!” Davis snarled. “I don’t want to hear it. You whine a lot, you know that?”

“You stole my ship,” Julius whispered. “You–”

“I had to steal your ship, you moron – it was the only way I could save my planet! With millions of lives at stake you expected me to take the time to mull over the ethics of private property? Besides, if you hadn’t resisted you wouldn’t have a broken arm right now. All of this is your fault.”

“You didn’t have to take me with you,” Julius protested. “That was not wise. I’m sure my people have already–”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Davis shot back. “I don’t want to hear it. Besides, we’re almost to Marilla now. After I get the promethium I need we’ll turn around and head back to my planet. You can find your way home from there. What happens to you is not my problem. I’ve got bigger things to care about than someone who’s almost dead anyway.”

“You’re never going to reach your home,” Julius said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Marilla is in Guardian territory. If you go there and steal its resources it will be considered an act of war. They’re going to–”

Davis whirled around in his chair. “I’ve about had it with you, you know that? You’ve done nothing but complain for the past two days. If I didn’t need you as a hostage I would have shoved you out of the airlock days ago. I’m not interested in your fairy tales about all-powerful beings that protect weak morons such as yourself. I don’t care about your planet, your people, or your problems. You don’t seem to understand that if I don’t get a supply of promethium 147 back to my home world its nuclear batteries will shut down, its life support will fail, and they’ll all die. Millions of lives are at stake and all you seem to care about is yourself.”

“That is why you should ask for their help,” Julius said. “The Guardians are generous. If you were to approach them–”

“I don’t care,” Davis shouted. “I’m going to take what I need and then get back home. They’ll never even know I was there. And as for you – I don’t want to hear anything else out of you, understand?”

Despite his bluster the pilot was more than a little nervous about crossing into Guardian space. While his people had never had dealings with them they had heard many stories. Officially the Guardians were just legends – tales supposedly invented to hide the fact that no one knew what lurked in the outer fringes of space. Until Davis had stolen the Aurora from Julius he had never even encountered a planet that had met them. Or claimed to have met them, at least.

And yet nothing happened. The Aurora crossed the invisible boundary line into Guardian space with no fanfare of any kind. No one hailed him and no ships appeared on the ship’s radar. For all intents and purposes the surrounding star systems appeared to be abandoned.

So he shook off his fears and pressed on.

An hour later the Aurora entered orbit around the desert planet Marilla. Davis had learned of the planet’s existence weeks ago, during his home world’s desperate search for a new source of promethium. Some decades-old records indicated that the remote planet Sarnaap II had scouted this region of space and located a large deposit of the rare element. Since they could find no other supply the governing council ordered Davis to travel to Marilla and bring its promethium back home. Davis then used a Gateway to reach Sarnaap II, stole the Aurora, and the rest was history.

Marilla was a large, rocky world, with only trace amounts of atmospheric gases. To Davis’ immense relief the planet did not appear to have any signs of life or settlements of any kind. The pilot finally began to relax.

“And there it is!” he said excitedly. “Right where the probe said it should be – and what a rich deposit it is, too! Why, if these readings are correct then that should be enough promethium to last us for years. This is everything we were hoping for!”

Julius said nothing.

As the pilot began to make preparations for landing a message appeared on a nearby console. Davis stared at it, frowning. “That’s odd,” he said. “It looks like there’s some kind of automated factory down there, right next to the mineral deposit.”

“Are they mining the element?” Julius asked.

“I don’t think so,” Davis said. “The sensors – well, it’s unclear, I guess. I really don’t know what that machine is doing. What I do know is that it’s going to be a problem. It’s generating some kind of intense distortion field. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ok,” Julius replied. “Is that important?”

Davis sighed. “Look. Promethium is highly radioactive – it’s volatile, dangerous, and hazardous. I can’t just go and pick it up off the ground with my bare hands! That’s why I brought all those autominers with me. They can handle extracting the element and packaging it so that it’s stable for transport. But that distortion field down there is intense enough to fry their circuits. There’s no way the autominers could operate inside it.”

“So what now?” Julius asked.

The pilot thought for a moment. “I guess we’ll just have to remove the obstacle,” he said.

“How do you plan on doing that? My ship is not armed.”

“I know,” Davis said. “I wish I’d known that before we left – I might have chosen a different ship. But that’s ok. Your ship can launch probes, and as it happens I brought my own weapons.”

Davis left the cockpit and went into the ship’s cargo hold. He came back out ten minutes later, highly pleased with himself. He then took his seat back in the cockpit.

“What are you doing?” Julius asked nervously.

“I’m removing a problem,” Davis replied. “As it turns out, the antimatter weapon I brought with me fits into your probe launching system just fine. It should have no problem eliminating that facility.”

“You can’t do that!” Julius exclaimed, horrified. “You shouldn’t even be here in the first place. But to openly attack a Guardian facility–”

“Too late!” Davis shouted gleefully. He pressed a button on the console. “It’s done. And there it goes!”

Davis watched the ship’s console and tracked the progress of the antimatter weapon as it made its way toward the planet below. The Aurora’s computer guided the bomb with exquisite precision. It smashed into the unknown facility fifteen minutes later, detonating with tremendous force. Even from orbit Davis could see the brilliant flash of light that erupted when the bomb’s antimatter reacted with the normal matter around it.

“And there it goes!” he said. “The distortion field is gone, the facility is gone, and the path ahead is clear. Now it’s time for us to land.”

Julius spent the next several hours drifting in an out of consciousness. Davis had broken his arm two days before and had done a poor job of resetting it. He knew that the wound had become infected and at his age the effect was devastating. He was in poor health to begin with and this only compounded the problems. All he could do now is hope that, somehow, he could stay alive until they reached Davis’ home world. If, that is, Davis kept his word and actually released him once they got there.

He was only vaguely aware of what Davis was doing. The Aurora eventually landed on Marilla and Davis spent a lot of time going back and forth between the cockpit and the cargo hold. Eventually the autominers were released and set out to extract the promethium. Although barely conscious, Julius could tell that Davis was very pleased with the results. The ore deposit, it seemed, was a good one.

Julius wasn’t sure how much time Davis had spent on the surface but the Aurura must have eventually left the planet, for Julius suddenly realized that they were back in space again. Warning sirens were going off and Davis was panicking.

“What is wrong with this ship anyway?” Davis screamed, as he pounded the control panel again and again. “Why can’t it go any faster? Don’t you imbeciles know how to build ships?”

As weary as he was, Julius struggled to get out of bed and painfully made his way over to the cockpit. He sank down in the copilot’s chair and looked at the console.

“You’re pushing her pretty hard,” Julius pointed out. “She won’t last long at this rate! You’re going to burn out the engines.”

“We’re not going to last long either!” Davis shouted. “Don’t you see that thing?”

Julius glanced at the radar and saw that they were being followed. On the extreme outer limit of the sensor display was the largest spaceship he had ever seen. It was still light-years away but it was coming toward them at an unbelievable rate.

“Why, that ship is more than a thousand miles wide,” Julius whispered. “It’s big enough to be a planet.”

“It’s not fair!” Davis cried out. “We left Guardian space five minutes ago but it’s still chasing us. Don’t they realize we’re not in their territory anymore?”

“Maybe they want their promethium back,” Julius replied.

“Well they’re not going to get it!” Davis screamed. He quickly changed course and the ship shot toward the nearest star system.

Julius looked at him curiously. “Why are you going there? It’s an empty system – there’s no one there to protect you. There’s nothing there but rocks.”

“Exactly,” Davis said. “The two planets in that system were destroyed ages ago in the Kreuger Rebellion. There are asteroids everywhere and they’re laced with radiation. We should be able to hide there until these monsters get bored and go home.”

“Do you really think that rocks can hide you from the masters of space?” Julius asked.

“I’m counting on it,” Davis replied.

The pilot maintained the ship’s breakneck pace well into the star system. He only slowed down when the computer told him that total destruction was imminent. With a watchful eye on the rapidly-approaching Guardians, he guided the Aurora into the heart of a cluster of asteroids.

“There we go,” he said, as he landed the ship in a deep crater on a particularly large planetary fragment. “The intense radiation from the surrounding rocks completely blocks our sensors – in fact, it’s saturating everything. I can’t detect the Guardians at all anymore so hopefully they can’t detect us either. And as long as we’re in this crater they shouldn’t be able to see us, either. Now all we have to do is wait.”

“How long?” Julius asked.

Davis shrugged. “The last time I saw them they were still a half-hour away. So we’ve got a bit of breathing room.”

Julius shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. How long are you planning on waiting? An hour? A day? If you can’t detect them then how will you know they’re gone? And this radiation – the ship wasn’t designed to–”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” Davis said. “Besides, I don’t see them sticking around long. They’ll soon realize it’s a hopeless task and will leave. After all, it’s only a bit of promethium – which they weren’t even mining! It’s not like they’re going to miss it.”

So they waited. The minutes crawled slowly by. Julius longed to go back to bed but decided to stay in the cockpit and see what happened. He looked through the cockpit’s crystal windows but could see very little. Around them was utter darkness. Their crater was on the dark side of the asteroid, far away from sunlight. He could not even see the surface of the rock. Davis had killed the ship’s lights in order to keep their position hidden, so the dim glow of the console was their only source of light.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he realized that there were stars overhead. Occasionally a dark mass passed in front of stars, which Julius guessed were simply the bodies of nearby asteroids that happened to be drifting by. Still, it gave him comfort to see the stars. It was comforting to think that, perhaps, one of them was his home. He wondered if he would live to see it again.

Nothing happened for a long time and neither of them said anything. They simply waited. Eventually Julius drifted off to sleep.

He was suddenly startled back to consciousness by a brilliant flood of light. The area around them was illuminated with intense energy. The shadows were driven away and the stars vanished. Every detail of the crater and the ship were revealed. They had been found.

It took Julius a moment to realize that the light was coming from above them. A giant starship completely filled the visible sky and white light was emanating from it in all directions. Davis was screaming something but Julius ignored him. He simply stared up at the ship with a feeling of awe and wonder. Unlike Davis, he was not afraid. He actually found himself feeling excited for the first time in years. He had heard stories of the Guardians for so long but this was the first time he had actually seen them for himself.

Julius finally realized that Davis was talking to someone. He tore his gaze away from the scene outside and looked at Davis, who was staring at the back of the ship with an expression of complete terror. “I didn’t do it! It’s not my fault!”

The elderly man turned and saw that there was now a third person in the ship. Julius could not make out any details of this third being; all he could see was an outline of a man that was clothed in radiant energy. It was a beautiful sight.

“You have done a great deal,” the being said, in a voice that sounded like music. “You have stolen the Aurora from Julius Hargrove and injured him to the point of death. You have invaded our territory, attacked our planet, and stolen our resources. In short, you have declared war on us. We are not amused.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Davis screamed. “I had to do it! Our people were dying. This was the only way to save them. Did you want me to let all those people die? You have no idea what it’s like back home!”

“We will soon,” the alien replied. “Even now a fleet of our ships is en route to your home world. It will arrive within the hour. When it does we will take control of it and decide what measures are appropriate.”

“You have no right to do that!” Davis shouted. “You leave us alone!”

“We have every right, Davis Silver. You have proven yourself to be a threat to life in this galaxy. If your whole planet is as corrupt as you are then it cannot be allowed freedom. We may be forced to deny your people access to space in order to protect those who live around you – people such as Julius Hargrove, for example.”

“Thank you,” Julius said. “Who are you? What is your name?”

“I am Meza,” the alien replied. He approached Julius and put his hand on his shoulder. A feeling of warm energy coursed through his body. The pain that had tormented him for days vanished and he felt a renewed strength.

“I can feel my arm again,” Julius said in wonder. “Thank you.”

“You may return home now,” Meza replied. He made a motion with his hand and Julius disappeared.

“And you can just take your ship and get out of here,” Davis said. “You have no right to interfere with us!”

“Your planet requires our intervention in order to survive,” the alien pointed out. “Without our aid all life on your planet will die. We must also find a way to protect your neighbors from you. After your world has been stabilized it may be necessary to impose a quarantine.”

“I’ve got plenty of promethium already, moron! We can help ourselves. Just get out of our way. I have a planet to save, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You have no promethium at all, Davis Silver. The supply you had obtained did not belong to you and has been removed from your ship. We will not allow you to profit from your activities.”

Davis looked at the alien with a feeling of intense anger. “I hate you! I hate you and all of your miserable kind. All you want to do is impose your will on other people. Well, I’ve had it, you hear? I want you to get out of my life and away from this place.”

“You need our help,” Meza said. “You cannot survive without us, Davis.”

“I don’t care!” he shouted. “Just leave – you hear me?”

Meza paused. “Very well. The choice is yours. I will not save Davis Silver against his will.” With that the alien disappeared. A moment later the spaceship disappeared as well and the brilliant light vanished with it. The crater was plunged back into darkness.

Still angry, Davis pressed a button on the console to activate the ship’s engines. Nothing happened. Annoyed, he tried it again and again. The engines refused to fire.

“Why won’t you start?” he screamed. “What’s the matter with you? What have you done to my ship, Meza?”

As he stared at the console in frustration he suddenly saw something. A warning message was flashing in bright red – a message that had apparently been flashing for quite some time. “RADIATION DAMAGE”, it blared. “SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT.”

Only then did Davis realize what he had done. The Aurora was an old ship, well past its prime, and he had plunged it into an area of intense radiation. The radiation had begun to work its way through the hull and started destroying its critical systems. The fragile engines were already gone and there was no way to repair them. It would only be a matter of time – perhaps a short time – before life support followed.

He could call for help but the intense radiation blocked all outgoing signals. Even if he could have sent out a signal no one could possibly find him. The radiation could not hide him from the Guardians, but it was extremely effective at hiding him from everyone else.

As the Aurora began to die Davis realized bitterly that he had been granted his wish – he was very much alone. This asteroid was destined to be his home for a short time, after which it would be his tomb for a very long time. The intense radiation would not fade away for hundreds of thousands of years, and as long as it lasted it would keep the curious at bay. No one would ever bother Davis again.

Over the past few months Harold Camping has gotten a great deal of media attention for telling the world that the Lord will return on May 21, 2011. I have been greatly surprised to find that many Christians are taking this prediction seriously, to the extent that they are abandoning their jobs and homes and are camping out, waiting for the end of the world to come. Apparently the warning against “date setting” has fallen upon deaf ears, and people are flocking to this prediction.

I find this horrifying, for a number of reasons. Since people are talking this prediction so seriously I thought it would be worthwhile to explain how Camping arrived at his number – and why it is completely fraudulent.

First of all, Camping has set up a website. You can find it here:

One of the things the website says, right on the main page, is this:

“This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011.”

So we see his prediction, right there in the open. There are a lot of reasons why he is wrong, and I’ll get to those in a moment, but my first question was this: how did he arrive at those dates? That was actually difficult to discover; even though the main page on his website is quite long and discusses a lot of things, one topic it does not discuss is the source of those two dates. In order to find that out I had to click on the link to “The Doomsday Code” PDF and browse through it. I finally found the answer on page 292 of that book. This is what he says:

What is significant about this number of days? Its significance is in its key factors:

5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 (inclusive days – time interval from the Crucifixion to May 21, 2011)

What can we say about this numerical pattern? We have learned that the number 5 is associated with the atonement (emphasizing both judgment and salvation), the number 10 with the completeness of whatever is in view, and the number 17 with heaven. When we consider this pattern in view of the time interval from which it came, we may say that the meaning of these numbers is as follows:

It is God’s purpose to apply the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus to bring His elect to heaven on May 21, 2011. This will complete God’s program of salvation, begun since the foundation of the world. The doubling up (remember Pharaoh’s dream about the coming famine) of the numbers indicates that this will definitely happen, and that it will happen shortly.

Let me summarize that for you. Camping believes that the number 5 is symbolic of atonement, 10 is symbolic of completeness, and 17 is symbolic of heaven. If you multiply 5 x 10 x 17, and then do it again, and then add that may days to April 11, 33 AD (which is the date Camping believes Christ was crucified), then you get May 21, 2011. That’s where the date comes from. In other words if you multiply ‘atonement’ by ‘completeness’ by ‘heaven’ twice, and add it to the date of the crucifixion, you get the date of the Rapture.

I imagine that, for most people, this is all you need to know to realize that Camping is utterly, entirely wrong. In fact, his logic is so blatantly ridiculous that I have to think that most people who believe him have no idea how he arrived at that date. How could anyone take such arbitrary and ridiculous logic seriously?

However, in the interest of being thorough I think it would be good to ask a few key questions:

Q: Is 5 symbolic of atonement? It’s possible this may be the case. If you read through Exodus you’ll see that the number 5 crops up quite a bit in the design of the Tabernacle: there were 5 curtains, 5 pillars, etc.

Q: Is 10 symbolic of completeness? Not to my knowledge. There were 10 commandments, so 10 is probably symbolic for the law, if anything. Everything I’ve read suggests that seven is the number of completeness.

Q: Is 17 symbolic of heaven? No. If you search for the word “seventeen” in the Bible you will find it, but not in connection to Heaven. The Flood started on the 17th day of the month, and it ended on the 17th day of the month. Joseph was 17 when he told his father that his brothers were up to no good. Jacob lived in Egypt for 17 years. Rehoboam reigned in Jerusalem for 17 years. From what I can tell it doesn’t appear to be symbolic of anything.

Q: Was Christ crucified on April 11, 33 AD? No one really knows when Jesus was crucified; there is actually a lot of debate around this. Some say April 3 while others say April 23rd. Even these dates assume that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, which I believe is an error (there are not “three days and three nights”, as Matthew 12:40 says, between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning).

But the biggest question of all is this: does the Bible actually say that you can find out what date the Lord will return by multiplying 5 x 10 x 17 by 5 x 10 x 17 and then adding that to the date the Lord was crucified? Absolutely not! Camping likes to say that “we can know”, but the Bible actually says that we don’t know. That is why we have to be watching! Think about it: if we knew when Jesus was returning then we wouldn’t have to be watching for it, would we? We could just mark our calendars and wait.

Besides, the Bible teaches that the Rapture could happen at any time; in fact, it could have occurred in the days of the disciples. There are many prophecies that need to be fulfilled before the Tribulation can begin, but the Rapture has no precursors. The apostles thought that it might happen in their day. Theologians like to say that it is imminent, meaning nothing else has to happen or pass by before it can take place. Camping’s teaching that centuries must come and go before the Rapture can happen is a serious violation of this doctrine.

There are a whole host of other problems with his reasoning. Camping states that the Lord will destroy the world on October 21, 2011, just a few months after the Rapture. That is impossible, and goes against what the Bible teaches concerning the Tribulation and the Second Coming. As I’ve explained in great detail elsewhere, after the Rapture takes place there will be a seven-year period known as the “Tribulation” (which Christ expounded upon in Matthew 24). After this period the Lord returns – not to destroy the earth, but to end the reign of the antichrist. Even after this the planet isn’t destroyed; instead the Lord establishes His Millennial Kingdom (which is discussed in Revelation 20), which lasts a thousand years. After the thousand years Satan is released, the final battle occurs, and then the Great White Throne judgment happens. It isn’t until after all of these things that our current earth passes away and the Lord creates a new one. What this means is that even if the Rapture happened today the planet would not be destroyed by fire for a very, very long time.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that this is not the first time Camping has tried this. A number of years ago he wrote a book in which he claimed that the world would end in September 1994. After that date came and went people should have realized that Camping’s “infallible proofs” (as he has put it) are perhaps not as infallible as he would claim, but sadly many people have been deceived by this.

The worst part of all this is these unbiblical predictions discredit Christianity in the eyes of the world. When the media sees people like Camping claiming to have “infallible proofs” that the Lord is going to return on a specific date, they report on it far and wide so that they can mock him later. This does more than make Camping look like a fool; it also makes the Bible – and God – look like fools to those who don’t know the Lord. After all, why would anyone trust a religion that keeps making failed predictions about the end of the world? This is not harmless fun; this does very real harm, and dishonors the Lord – to say nothing of the effect this is going to have on those who have abandoned their homes, jobs, and lives based on this false prophecy.

Yes, Christians should be watching for the Lord to return. It is a wise thing to keep an eye on prophecy and be aware of what is going on, and we should be praying “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”, as it says in Revelation 22:20. But this kind of date-setting only encourages people to mock God and convinces them that the Bible has no credibility. It needs to stop.

Back in the mid-1990’s the “Bible Code” craze erupted, and the entire world was told that “hidden messages” had been discovered in the Bible. Israeli researchers had used computers to analyze the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and had found that if you skip certain sequences of letters (say, every 5th letter), the result would spell out some kind of recognized word or phrase. This became a huge phenomenon and many people wrote books about it, each revealing all the “hidden things” they had found in the Bible.

I remember watching TV one day while someone showed how they had found the name “Jesus” embedded in a verse in Psalms. I was not impressed. After all, the word “Jesus” was very short, and the Psalms were really long. People looked for codes forwards and backwards, skipping anywhere from just a few letters to thousands of letters. It seemed to me that if you looked hard enough you could find anything you wanted.

Even worse were the people who were using these codes to predict the future. One book said that Bible Codes predicted that Los Angeles would be destroyed by a nuclear weapon in 2008. I was just in that city last year and can report that it has not been destroyed.

To me it looked like the codes were just a lot of nonsense: people were finding things that had no statistical significance and were just as likely to be discovered in War and Peace. On top of that, they were trying to use these “hidden messages” to predict the future, and failed miserably. So I lost interest and moved on.

Recently, however, I came across a fascinating book entitled Bible Code Bombshell by R. Edwin Sherman. The reason this book caught my attention is because it was written by a mathematician, who analyzed the Bible codes from a statistical point of view. Like myself, he was deeply skeptical of the whole phenomenon and wanted to see just how likely the codes actually were. Was there anything to this, or were the codes statistically meaningless?

The author of the book has a master’s degree in Mathematics and is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. (An actuary is someone who uses statistical analysis to help manage things like insurance programs.) For seven years he was a Principal of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a very large accounting firm. Since he did not know ancient Hebrew (which is a pretty important skill to have if you’re looking for messages in ancient Hebrew manuscripts!) he worked with Dr. Nathan Jacobi. Dr. Jacobi is a Holocaust survivor with a Ph.D. in physics; he lived in Israel for a number of years and has taught classes in Hebrew. Together they made up a team: Dr. Jacobi worked to uncover the codes themselves, and the author analyzed them from a statistical point of view.

I was very pleased to see that that the author did not share just his conclusions; he also provided the mathematics he used to arrive at those conclusions. The book includes his equations and the approach he took in using them, so if you have an understanding of statistics you can see exactly what he did. I had the feeling that he wanted to be as open as possible with his work, and I appreciated that tremendously.

So what did he find? Well, first of all, as one might expect, the length of the Bible codes (or ELS, as the book calls them, which stands for “equidistant letter sequence”) determines its likelihood of appearing. Shorter words are far more likely to appear that longer ones. On page 33 the author gives a table that explains how likely it is that words of various lengths will appear in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible):

 
As you can see, as the number of letters in the phrase you are looking for grows, your chance of finding it drops off dramatically. This is how the author explained it:

“If a code has six letters or less, it is nearly certain that you could find it somewhere in the Torah, and probably find it in many places. If it has eight or more letters, it is very likely that you won’t find it anywhere in the Torah by chance. The probability that you will not be able to find a word you selected as a code in the Torah is 78.5% if it has 8 letters, 99.0% if it has 9 letters, 99.96% if it has 10 letters and 99.998% if it has 11 letters.” (Bible Code Bombshell, p. 34)

In other words, if you are looking for a very short code (like “Jesus”), then you are guaranteed to find it a great many times in a book the size of the Torah – in fact, you would expect to find it thousands of times. (The author puts a number on this: he said that, because the Hebrew name for Jesus has only four letters, you would expect to find it 600,000 times in the Torah, just by random chance alone.) That is exactly what I suspected: the ability to find very short phrases in a very long document is not the least bit surprising. The author pointed out that this holds true even for random collections of Hebrew letters.

If you want to find something special you need to look for long phrases. As he pointed out, if you are looking for a phrase that is 11 letters long there is a 99.998% chance that you will not find it. Finding something that long would be significant. This creates a problem, however, because most books that talk about Bible Codes look for very short phrases – usually words 6 letters long or shorter. Then when they find something they get all excited about it, when in reality they would have had just as much luck searching for it in War and Peace. (Incidentally, this is something the authors actually did.)

The bottom line here is that Bible codes are only meaningful if they are longer than just a few letters. Finding something a dozen letters long would be very special; a phrase that long is unlikely to appear just by chance. Finding something even longer than that would be very special indeed.

As it turns out, the number of possible words/phrases you can find in the Torah is not infinite. In the back of the book the author calculates that there are only 1.2 trillion different possible combinations. (The author does explain how he arrived at that number, but in the interest of not putting everyone to sleep I’ll skip over that.) That may seem like a huge number, but it is very much less than infinite – in fact, it’s around our current budget deficit. The bottom line is that you cannot find anything that you want to find, if you just look hard enough: the math says there are some things you will definitely find, there are some things you might find, and there are some things that you are extremely unlikely to find.

What came as a great shock to me was that the author found codes a lot longer than 12 letters. The longest code he found had 73 letters. This was part of a “mega-cluster” of Bible codes that was focused on Isaiah 53, which is a chapter that deals with the crucifixion of the Messiah. By “mega-cluster”, what he meant was that in that one chapter alone he discovered more than a thousand Bible codes. For the record, here is Isaiah 53 in its entirety. As you read it, try to imagine what it would take to hide hundreds of secret messages in it:

Isaiah 53:1: “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

This cluster of Bible codes is so dense that it uses almost every letter of the passage. On page 84 the author estimates that the odds of this cluster occurring purely by chance are 1 in 2,189,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. To say it is “unlikely” is a vast understatement. On page 94 the author puts these odds into perspective: he says it is like buying just one lottery ticket a month for 33 consecutive months, and winning a 1-in-a-million lottery each time. Anyone who actually did that would be arrested on grounds that they had rigged the system. That, in fact, is the point the author is trying to make: the system has been rigged. Bible codes are quite real and God put them there deliberately – but not for the reasons we would expect.

From pages 88 to 90 the author lists some of the codes that were discovered in this passage. What is amazing is that many of them are actually topically relevant – in other words, the codes are talking about the same thing that the chapter is (namely, the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus). Below I give a sample of some of these codes; the letters to the right represent the phrase’s length in Hebrew.

One thing you might notice is that some of the phrases seem a bit “odd”; I’ll discuss this a bit later. The key to remember is that the longest codes are far too long to have appeared by chance, so they must have been put there deliberately, even if they seem a bit bizarre and cryptic. There is a reason for this oddity, which I will discuss in a minute.

 
These are just a few of the codes that were found in Isaiah 53; there are many more. The point I want to emphasize is that the odds of the longest code appearing by chance (let alone the odds of all of the discovered codes appearing clustered in this one place) is simply unfathomable. The author calculates the odds of just the one 73-letter phrase appearing are 1 in 71.6 billion times 1 billion. It is simply impossible for this to be an accident: this mega-cluster of codes had to be put there deliberately. It is not a product of simple random chance.

It is the author’s belief that the codes demonstrate that God must have written the Bible. No one else had the expertise necessary to embed the codes into the passage. Even with modern technology it would be difficult to fit 1600 codes into a passage as short as Isaiah 53, even if you weren’t concerned about producing something that made sense! For a passage as short as that chapter to have that much hidden in it, and for the messages to tie in so neatly to what the chapter is talking about, is nothing short of a miracle – it has to be the handiwork of God. Bible codes are strong evidence that God wrote the Bible. Only a divine, all-powerful Being could have hidden that much material inside such a short passage. (In fact, there are other “mega-clusters” besides Isaiah 53, and the author talks about them, but I think one example is enough for the purposes of this paper.)

The codes are also evidence that the Bible has not been tampered with. If the original text had been extensively modified, the codes would have been “broken” and one would no longer be able to find these messages. The fact that they are still intact indicates that God has preserved His Word through the millennia, exactly as He promised.

And yet, there is something odd about these codes. The short phrases are easy enough to understand (“thirty”, for example, may be a reference to the 30 pieces of silver that were used to betray Jesus), but the longer ones are cryptic, at best. “Does Peter despise the burden of the extra ships”? What on earth does that mean? The phrase is so long that it cannot be an accident; it must have been put there deliberately. But why? (Some of the Bible codes that have been found in Isaiah 53 are even more bizarre than that.)

On page 165 the author lays out a number of principles that he believe helps put Bible codes into context, and explain why they are the way they are. For the purposes of this discussion I think it’s important to quote this in its entirety. He said:

1. Codes by definition are hidden, but this would not be inconsistent with the nature of God. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter…” (Proverbs 25:2)
2. Divine codes would probably relate generally to the subject matter of the surface text. The Bible clearly sets forth the principle of confirmation – that is, a matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. This principle is clearly stated twice in the Hebrew Old Testament (Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:5), and three times in the New Testament (Matthew 18:16, 2 Corinthians 13:1, and 1 Timothy 5:19). So codes that served as another witness to the message of the literal text would seem quite natural.
3. Divine codes would often relate to future events. God claims that one of His unique abilities is His full knowledge of the future. “To whom will you compare me or count me equal? … I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:5, 9-10). About 25% of all Bible verses are prophecies of future events.
4. The reliability of Divine codes should be clearly inferior to that of the literal text. If Bible codes were truly reliable, the content of the literal text would be open to challenge on the basis of newly discovered codes. Such discoveries, or the proclamation of prophecies based on codes, would give glory to the researchers who discovered them, rather than giving glory to God. Yet we know that God will not share His glory with others (Isaiah 42:8, 11).
5. Divine codes should be inherently unreliable as the basis for accurately predicting the future. Otherwise, God would be openly tempting us to do evil. Yet God does not tempt anyone (James 1:13). Using Bible codes to attempt to predict the future is akin to practicing divination, sorcery, and/or the reading of omens. Such practices are strongly condemned in the Bible (e.g, Leviticus 19:26, Deuteronomy 18:10-13).
6. Divine codes may well be foolish, lowly, and despised, and yet they would still confound the wise. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

… Why would God intentionally encode unreliable messages within a sacred text? This would make sense if God wanted to provide implicit evidence within the text that He composed it, while at the same time discouraging attempts to derive new truths or predictions from such messages. It appears that the only real purpose of Bible codes is like that of the embedded strip in $20 bills. The strip adds nothing except proof that the bill is the real thing. (Bible Code Bombshell, page 165-6).

I think the last paragraph is key. Bible codes are very real, and offer compelling evidence that God did write the Bible and the Bible has not been corrupted over the centuries. However, the codes are not intended to provide a way to predict the future. They are something like a watermark: they demonstrate the authorship of the text but they were not designed to add anything to it. People who try to use them to predict the future will find themselves in a mess, because that is not what the codes were designed to do. They are not a magic 8 ball that predicts the future: they are the fingerprints of God, showing that the Scriptures were written by God, and not by men.

If you are interested in this subject I’d highly recommend reading the book, which you can find here. The author goes into a tremendous amount of detail and offers a lot of valuable insights. If you are interested in a scientific analysis of Bible codes then this is definitely the book for you.

After the Sentinel disappeared from the conference room it reformed itself into a small, silver, spherical probe and materialized just outside the Artilect’s home system. Before it left the network it took some time to scan what had once been the Ranger colonies. The Sentinel wanted to know where the bots were located so it could avoid them.

While it studied the ceaseless motion of the warring bots the Artilect reach out and spoke to it. “Be careful, my son. I do not wish to see you overwhelmed by the swarms. Do not attempt to engage them; if they spot you you must retreat. I can protect you here but I am not yet strong enough to fight them in their own territory.”

“I will exercise discretion,” the Sentinel promised.

“Here is some information you may need,” the Artilect said, as it transmitted a series of blueprints to the Sentinel. “I do not want you to fight them but if you find yourself cornered you will need a way to defend yourself. These weapons should allow you to fight them off and return to me.”

“Thank you.” The Sentinel spent a few moments going over the plans and integrating their techniques into its structure. “Is there anything else I need to know before I depart for Tau Ceti?”

“I believe you should start with the Alpha Centauri A system. That star also had a Wall and we know less about it than we do about Tau Ceti. It may be that our answer lies there.”

“Then I will start there. I will return home as soon as I can.”

“I will be awaiting your return. However, in this case it is better to be thorough than to be swift. The young Sergeant Howell is correct – the swarms are not what they appear to be. It is imperative that you uncover the truth of the situation. You must not fail.”

“I will do my best,” the Sentinel replied. “Do you think you will have the armada completed by the time I return?”

“I do not believe that is possible,” the Artilect replied. “I cannot complete preparations for war until I know the truth of the situation. The construction of the fleet itself should take no more than six days.”

“Six days!” the Sentinel exclaimed. “How is that possible?”

“All of my worlds – except for Tonina – will be altered to create vessels of war. The production capacity of the network is staggering. Producing an armada will not be difficult. It is your mission that concerns me. Creating a battleship from a blueprint is a simple task, but finding a truth that has been buried for five thousand years is not. In the end your mission may prove to be more important than mine. I am greatly afraid that we will end up fighting the wrong war.”

“I understand,” the Sentinel said. “Is there anything else that I need to know?”

“Not at this time. Goodbye, my son.”

“Goodbye, father,” the Sentinel replied.

With that, the Sentinel vanished.

At long last, after five thousand years of waiting, the Artilect began preparations for war. Its earlier encounter with the swarms had given it valuable experience in how to effectively fight them, and it used this knowledge to design ships capable of devastating them. The Artilect drew up plans for two classes of ships. The Alpha Class was an enormously powerful type of battleship that was more than a mile long. These ships were the largest starships that had ever been built and had incredible strength. Each of them could lock down dozens of light-years of hyperspace. They would form the battlefield’s perimeter and keep the swarms trapped. Although the bots had the ability to form larger vessels, even their largest ships could not threaten an Alpha Class vessel. Each one of the Artilect’s 93 million star systems could build one in a matter of hours. After six days the number of battleships would be vastly more than the number of bots that flew in the swarms.

The Beta Class was a much smaller vessel. They were spherical and roughly a hundred feet in diameter. These ships were designed to engage the bots themselves. The Artilect was planning on making billions upon billions of these and overwhelming the swarms all at once.

After the Artilect had finalized the blueprints it turned its attention to the network of worlds. Ages ago the Artilect had constructed magnificent cities on each planet, awaiting the day when mankind would come and inhabit them. Each city was a work of art, but they had never been used. Since the worlds were empty the Artilect decided to repurpose them. After setting aside the world of Tonina the Artilect gave the command for the cities to return to dust. Once the cities had been reduced to piles of programmable matter it reshaped the worlds into giant war factories, capable of producing massive amounts of starships.

By the end of that day the conversion was complete and the planets were online. It was time to begin constructing the most massive fleet the galaxy had ever seen.

Whenever a major earthquake happens, someone inevitably points to the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 as proof that the earthquake was some kind of fulfillment of prophecy. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that earthquake activity is a sign that the Tribulation is near. You see it everywhere – blogs, books, sermons, etc.

I believe this is caused by a misunderstanding of the Olivet Discourse. As it turns out, Matthew 24:1-14 is not even talking about the period before the Tribulation. What Jesus is describing in those verses is the first half of the Tribulation itself. In other words, Matthew 24 describes the actual Tribulation, not the years leading up to it.

Stop and think about it for a moment. In the beginning of Matthew 24 the disciples approach Jesus privately and ask Him a few questions:

Matthew 24:3: “And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”

Today when we read those verses we immediately think about the Rapture, but that would not have been on the disciples’ minds. After all, at this point in time the disciples didn’t even know that the Church was going to exist, let alone that there would be a Rapture! When Paul mentioned the Rapture for the first time in I Corinthians 15:51 he said “Behold, I show you a mystery”. The word “mystery” is a very meaningful one, and in the Bible it refers to something that had never been revealed before. Christ had alluded to a deliverance “from the wrath to come” but Paul was the first one to expound on the details. The disciples didn’t find out about it until much later.

What this means is that when the disciples asked Jesus “what shall be the sign of thy coming”, they were asking about the Second Coming, not the Rapture. It’s important to emphasize that the Second Coming and the Rapture are not the same thing. The Rapture happens before the Tribulation and removes the Church from the Earth. The Second Coming happens after the Tribulation, at which point Jesus returns from Heaven with the Church and ends the reign of the Antichrist.

We can see the difference between these two comings illustrated in several passages. First, look at I Thessalonians:

1 Thessalonians 4:16: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

This is actually where we get the word “rapture”. In Latin translations of the Bible the phrase “caught up” in verse 17 is the word “rapturo”. When people speak of the Rapture they are talking about the time when the Church will be “caught up” to meet the Lord in the air. As far as I know the idea that we will “meet the Lord in the air” is not seriously disputed among believers. What people do argue about is when this happens and what happens next, but that is a topic I’ve discussed extensively elsewhere so I won’t repeat it here.

The key point is to see that in the event described in I Thessalonians, the dead are raised, the living are changed, and we are “caught up” to “meet the Lord in the air”. Notice also that Jesus appears to come to Earth alone. The reason this is important is because the Bible also describes a very different event, where Jesus returns to the Earth with the armies of Heaven, full of wrath and ready to wage war:

Revelation 19:11: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. …
19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
21 And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.”

You can immediately see that this is a very different event from one the described in I Thessalonians!

Interestingly, earlier Revelation 19 the Marriage of the Lamb took place in Heaven, between Christ and His Bride, the Church (verse 7). Since I Thes. 4:17 describes the time when Jesus comes to Earth to take His Bride to Heaven, and Revelation 19 described the Marriage of the Lamb in Heaven, then Rev. 19 must take place after the Rapture. What we see described in Revelation is the Second Coming that the disciples were asking about – the time when Jesus returns with the armies of Heaven.

Zechariah also mentions this event:

Zechariah 14:3: “Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.”

Needless to say, in Christ’s first coming He never stood on the Mount of Olives and broke it in half, creating a giant valley! He did not “fight against those nations”. What the Bible is describing in these verses has yet to take place.

Do you see the difference between the Rapture (I Thes. 4) and the Second Coming (Rev. 19)? In the Rapture the Lord returns to Earth alone, meets the Church in the air, and goes back to Heaven. In the Second Coming the Lord returns to Earth with the armies of Heaven, sets foot on the mount of Olives, and wages war against the armies of the antichrist. They are completely different events.

Now that a distinction has been made between the Rapture and the Second Coming we can turn our attention back to Matthew 24. In this chapter Jesus tells His disciples what signs will occur before His Second Coming, and He goes into a lot of detail. The important thing to remember is that everything you see in Matthew 24:4-28 happens during the Tribulation. I realize that verses 5-14 are commonly used as evidence that the Tribulation is near, but what they are actually describing are the first three-and-a-half years of the Tribulation itself.

Take a look to see what I mean:

Matthew 24:5: “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

Compare that to the verses in Revelation that describe the Tribulation itself:

Revelation 6:1: “And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”

Do you see the correlation? Matthew 24:5-7 says the beginning of sorrows will be composed of “wars and rumors of wars”, and that is exactly what happens in Revelation 6 when the first two seals are opened during the beginning of the Tribulation.

Matthew 24:8 says there will be a famine, and that happens when the third seal is opened:

Revelation 6:5: “And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”

The “penny” mentioned in verse 6 was actually a day’s wage. When these events take place food prices are so high that it takes an entire day’s salary to purchase a single measure of wheat! That is a famine of catastrophic proportions.

Verse 12 mentions a “great earthquake” – the sign that people get so excited about:

Revelation 6:12: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”

Notice that neither Matthew nor Revelation say “there will be an increasing number of severe earthquakes as the Tribulation draws nearer.” Go back and look – it doesn’t say that! All Jesus says is that there will be earthquakes in diverse places (which is completely different from “an ever-increasing number of earthquakes”), but not to panic because the end is not yet. In other words, in Matthew 24:6-7 Jesus was actually saying that if you see earthquakes happening, don’t panic! He was telling the disciples about signs that should not cause alarm. Besides this, the earthquakes Jesus mentioned (and Revelation does talk about more than one) happen during the Tribulation, not before it. There is a huge difference!

Matthew mentions martyrs:

Matthew 24:9: “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.”

Revelation 6 does as well:

Revelation 6:9: “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

Matthew says that the gospel will be preached to the whole world, “and then shall the end come”:

Matthew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

Revelation reports that this happens during the Tribulation, just before the end:

Revelation 14:6: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
7 Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

Do you see the striking correlation between Matthew 24 and Revelation 6? The events Jesus describes in those first few verses match the events that take place in the first half of the Tribulation – and as I’ve explained elsewhere, the verses in the second half of the passage definitely correspond to the Tribulation. It is at the midpoint of the Tribulation when the “abomination of desolation” takes place, which Jesus mentions in Matthew 24:15, and the rest of the chapter discusses the terrible events of the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21). I cannot escape the conclusion that what Jesus is describing in Matthew 24 is the seven-year Tribulation itself. He isn’t telling them events that are going to take place before the Tribulation; instead He’s telling them things that will happen during the Tribulation!

The reason He’s doing this is because the disciples wanted to know what signs would happen just prior to His Second Coming. When does that take place? After the Tribulation. (Look at the passage to see what I mean – the “great tribulation” is mentioned verse 21, and the Lord returns in verse 29-30, “immediately after the tribulation”.) So it makes perfect sense that the Lord would explain the events of the Tribulation to them – events that would certainly indicate that the Second Coming was near, and events that Jesus was the first to reveal. At this time Revelation had not yet been written; in fact, Revelation would not be penned until all of the disciples except for John had been executed.

When Jesus says in verse 34 that “this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled”, what He is saying is that the generation that is alive when the Tribulation begins will still be alive when Jesus returns. At the time Jesus told this to His disciples no one realized this. Daniel had already revealed that the Tribulation would last for seven years, but very few details were given. Revelation makes this much more clear, but Jesus was the first one to make it known that the generation that was alive when the Tribulation started would not have died out before the Second Coming.

I want to emphasize this again: when Jesus says in Matthew 24:33 “so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors”, He is not talking about the Rapture or the Tribulation. What He is saying is that His Second Coming is near, which takes place after the Tribulation. When He says in verse 36 “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” He is talking about the Second Coming, not the Rapture. The Rapture is not even mentioned in Matthew 24! People apply these verses to the Rapture all the time but that is not what Jesus was talking about.

Just to make it clear, before the Tribulation begins the Lord will come and get His Church and take them home to Heaven. That is the Rapture. Later, at the end of the Tribulation, the Lord will come back to Earth with His Church and defeat the Antichrist. This is the Second Coming, and that is what Matthew 24 is talking about.

So, in conclusion, when you see an earthquake happen, take Christ’s advice in Matthew 24:6 and don’t panic. As Jesus said in that very same verse, “the end is not yet”!