Signs in the Heavens, Part 4

Signs in the heavens! God made the stars for signs:

Genesis 1:14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years

He used the stars to announce the birth of the Messiah (previous post):

Matthew 2:1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ² saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

He will use the stars again to announce when Jesus' second coming is approaching:

Luke 21:25 “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;

Even "great signs" in heaven:

Luke 21:11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.

Now, granted, some of those signs we expect (at least I do) to be huge and major - something that causes the kings of the earth to hide themselves in caves. The next verse after Luke 21:25 above is

Luke 21:26 men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

So, yeah - huge, major, unmistakeable things are going to happen. But, leading up to that are signs we can see right now with modern technology. The current blood moon tetrad with the accompanying eclipses being in perfect symmetry is one sign like that. Another such sign is something that will play out in the sky in a couple years - something that has never happened before and will not happen again.

How many times have you read these verses?

Revelation 12:1 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

Did you take them literally? I didn't. I've read those verses at least a couple dozen times and took them to be speaking figuratively of Jesus' birth - and of course, they are. They are also perfectly literal. We take the passage from Luke literally -

Luke 21:11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.

Why don't we take Revelation 12:1 literally, when it uses the same words?

Revelation 12: 1 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. 

In the Greek, from Luke 21:11 - great (μέγας megas) signs (σημεῖον sēmeion) shall there be (ἔσομαι esomai) from (ἀπό apo) heaven (οὐρανός ouranos). From Revelation 12:1 - there appeared a great (μέγας megas) sign (σημεῖον sēmeion) in (ἐν en) heaven (οὐρανός ouranos). 

In my last post, I talked about (thanks to the folks at Bethlehemstar.net), what was likely the sign in the heavens that announced Jesus' birth - Jupiter in triple conjunction with Regulus from the constellation of Leo and then in the most amazing conjunction with Venus nine months later.  Normal people, looking up at the night sky wouldn't have seen anything unusual, unless they happened to have seen the perfect Jupiter-Venus conjunction during the probably two hours that it was brightest. 

Something similar is coming up. All of us - looking into the night sky - are not going to see anything amazing unless we really understand what's happening there. As Daniel 12:4 says, knowledge has been increased, and thanks to technology, we can see that sign now. 

OK - here is the constellation Virgo. I will not take the space here, but I believe like Seiss and others who believed that the constellations were all originally to tell the Gospel story. (a post on that is coming soon) Virgo, of course, is the Virgin:

You can kind of see her, right? Interestingly (that upcoming post), every culture and language calls this constellation "the virgin."  Yet, without those lines, this is what she looks like:

Do you still see a virgin? Do you even see a constellation? Well, anyway, that's a tiny preview of a future post.

Now, every Autumn, the sun "clothes" Virgo (click on the picture for a bigger image):

The moon is often at her feet, but according to others, smarter than I am, it's only precisely at her feet WHILE she's clothed with the sun every 19 years.

The constellation "Leo" is at her head in the sky. Leo has 9 stars, but the verses call for her to have a crown of 12 stars. Approximately once every eight years, Mars, Venus and Mercury come into position so that these "wandering stars" make up a total of 12. (the times they do this is kind of irregular, but it's on an average of once per 8 years).

Jupiter is the King planet and associated with Messiah. Even in the corrupted version of the stars, Jupiter is "king of the gods" in both Roman and Greek mythology. Jupiter enters the "womb" of Virgo relatively often, but it is only every 83 years that its retrograde motion "keeps" it in her womb (that trapezoid of 4 stars in the Virgo constellation) for the length of a normal pregnancy. On November 20, 2016, Jupiter will enter the womb of Virgo. Because of retrograde motion, it will stay there until September 23, 2017 - a total of 41 weeks.

On that same day - September 23, 2017 - Virgo will be clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet and a crown of 12 stars at her head. This is the first time this has happened -that all those things happen together - in at least 6,000 years, and it will not happen again for at least 1,000 years. That's as much as this fellow checked it. 

Here's the direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXxVwpcXV0U

Once Jupiter leaves the womb of Virgo, it continues and enters the constellation of Libra (the scales). As this site says 

Libra was depicted as a set of scales. Libra represented the condition of the human race after the fall of Adam. “Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting” (Dan. 5:27). The sign of Libra has been associated with justice and order throughout the centuries. For that reason, the symbol has often been used on buildings housing courts of law and justice.

In other words, Jupiter, the king planet - representing Messiah - enters Libra, representing law and justice. For a year, Jupiter's retrograde motion keeps it inside Libra, until September 10, 2018, when it comes to the very top of the scales - exactly at the Feast of Trumpets. This is a picture, in the sky, of Messiah taking control of law and justice. Sitting on the throne, ruling, some would say.

This person explains that. I don't think I agree with his take on the serpent/dragon. I'm still expecting that to be a comet or something, but who knows?

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ccQPOl5U0

Now, one person has calculated (I have no way of checking) that ALL of that - the signs in Virgo, fully describing Revelation 12:1-2 and then Jupiter staying in Libra until it comes to the very tip (and there is even more to it that I will not go into, involving Saturn) - will not happen again for 1.97 trillion years. If someone has the skills to look into that wants to comment on that, feel free.

Here is another person who comments on the first part of the sign - the stuff that happens in Virgo (there are plenty more videos and websites discussing this, if it interests you): 

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBijLdYXMFw

OK - to summarize. We are currently in the midst of the 8th set of biblical blood moons and in a time period (2010 to 2019) of eclipses that are perfectly symmetrical. That has never happened before. (See Part 2 of this series)

On September 23, 2017, Revelation 12:1-2 and at least some aspect of Revelation 12:5 for the year after that, will play out in the sky above us in a way that has not happened for at least 6,000 years and will not again for at least 1,000 years (and perhaps as much as 1.97 trillion, but it was checked with Stellarium for sure for 1,000 years).

If you accept that Revelation 12 is a mid trib sign, (that would be way too long to defend here, but I can in a future post if there is interest) when you subtract 1260 days from, you come to three days before the first of the blood moons in the current tetrad.

Now - these are SIGNS, not the actual events. What do signs do? They tell of something coming up. The sign for your exit comes BEFORE the exit - otherwise, you'd never exit in time.

What does this mean? We can argue, but to me, it would appear that these signs are warning of the start of  that period of time that God says in Luke 21 to be careful about: 

Luke 21:34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.

"Watch. Watch. Watch," Jesus said over and over. If you are ready, there is not reason to fear. In fact, rejoice!

Luke 21:28 Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near

How soon? How much advance warning are we getting? No idea. They may very well play out at the same time they appear, as they did when Jesus was born. The advance warning is hearing about it now, thanks to technology. In any case, it would appear that that time period that the prophets all spoke of is very, very close.  The last blood moon of the current tetrad is THIS September.

 Wow - and I just wrote that last bit so casually. It's still weird to me to study things and even accept them on some level as being probably true (Scripture always being true - but my interpretation of it or how I think it might play out being up to question) and yet disassociate myself from it. It's one thing to be interested in prophecy and quite another to think of it actually coming true in front of me. 

Am I right in what all this means? Maybe. Maybe not. My interpretation of this may be off. However, the fact that this is playing out over our heads over the next 2-1/2 years is perfectly factual. And, WHATEVER it means, it has never happened before. What I just wrote in these posts, if I truly believe it (and it's certainly true - the only question is, does it mean what it seems to?) SHOULD impact me. As Peter says, "Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives."