A recent Daily Mail headline immediately caught my attention as it read “Asteroid the size of Mount Everest set to fly by earth next month.” Of course, the reason for my interest is that the Apostle John in his vision of the end-times saw a mountain-sized asteroid slamming into the earth.
But as I read the article, the asteroid known as “52768 (1998 OR2)” is only 2.25 miles (ca. 3,621 meters) at its widest point wide making it just under half the size of Mt Everest, the world’s largest mountain that is 5.5 miles (ca. 9 km) high.
But despite this, 52768 easily qualifies as a mountain as it is larger than Oregon’s Mt. Hood that is about 2.12 miles (3.41 km) in size.
This asteroid, first discovered in 1998, will fly by earth at 19,461 miles per hour (ca. 31,319 km/h) on April 29, 2020.
The good news is that it will miss us by 3,908,791 miles (ca. 6,290,589 km). The bad news is that it is a regular inhabitant of our solar system as it circles the sun about every 3.67 years, which means we will probably see it again sometime in 2023.
But the Daily Mail article revealed other news as well.
The earth has a second moon, well it’s more like a mini moon. NASA discovered that another asteroid, between 6 feet (1.83 meters) and 12 feet (3.66 m) in diameter, has been caught in the earth’s gravitational pull and has been circling the earth for the past three years. Named 2020 CD3, it is expected to eventually be pulled into earth.
This is not the first asteroid that has been caught in earth’s gravitational pull and circled the earth before eventually crashing. A fireball that streaked across Australia in 2016 was later discovered to have circled the earth several months before burning up in the earth’s atmosphere.
In his vision of the end times, the Apostle John warns that one of the defining moments will involve a massive asteroid slamming into the earth with devastating consequences:
8 The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, 9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Revelation 8:8-9 NASV
There are a couple critical things that we need to note. First the Apostle John saw this mountain-sized asteroid smashing into one of earth’s ocean.
The resulting collision will cause a tremendous devastation — a third of the sea life will be killed and a third of the ships destroyed. Of course, a mountain sized asteroid smashing into the ocean at a mind-bending speed would set off multiple mountain-sized Tsunamis in every direction.
Secondly, this asteroid was part of seven judgements that John recorded in chapters eight through 11 as being part of the opening of the seventh seal. There were six seals opened prior to this.
But each of the judgements that are part of the opening of the seventh seal was accompanied by an angel sounding a shofar or trumpet revealing God’s hand in these end time judgements.
For the past several years, NASA and others have been warning of asteroids hitting the earth and has been actively tracking potential Near-Earth Objects.
Source:
OpentheWord.org 