Constellations Archives - Truth Is The Word

Easter Victory

3 Comments / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

A woman clothed with the Sun, an enormous red dragon and a victorious male child, equals an Easter Victory.

Chapter Twelve of the book of Revelation starts Part Four which, like the other parts of the book, covers the full period between the first and second coming of Jesus. At a cursory read, it seems as if the chapter is just about a woman and a dragon, but there is another character embedded in the narrative who, although seemingly invisible, is central to the whole story. I am writing this post during the week leading up to Easter and so I am going to focus on this ‘hidden’ character and then double back and describe the full scene to you in my next article.

I have already pointed out in my previous post that the woman in Chapter Twelve is linked to the constellation of Virgo and the dragon to the constellation of Hydra. Although this is important to understand, it is far more important that we fully comprehend the glorious drama that these representations depict. Virgo symbolises the people of God, more specifically Israel, and Hydra symbolises Satan, the great adversary of the people of God. The primary reason the Old Testament people of God existed was to provide the means by which the saviour of humankind could come into the world. The devil’s only hope of vindication and continued freedom was to prevent Israel succeeding in birthing the Messiah, and if he couldn’t do that it was to kill the Christ Child himself. The intensity and scope of this drama require an article of its own, so I will return to it at a later time.

Israel’s greatest moment came, not when it received the Ten Commandments, and not when she occupied the Promised Land, but when Mary, her finest offspring, gave birth to Jesus Christ. The history of the chosen nation is replete with great figures such as Moses, King David, and Solomon, but none as fine, noble and worthy of honour as Mary. This is why she herself declared, “From now on all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48)

Virgo and Hydra Revelation Revisited Series 42 Mary gave birth to ‘a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre’ (Revelation 12:5), and his name was Jesus. Verse five then goes on to record that ‘her child was snatched up to God and to his throne‘. But what about His 42 months of miraculous deeds and sublime teachings? Where is the reference to His atoning death on the cross of Calvary and His glorious resurrection on the third day after that? Well, it’s not that John regards these things as unimportant, it is because in this section of Revelation he wants us to grasp something else – the stupendous victory over Satan that Jesus’ ascension back into heaven completed.

The cross is implicit in the narrative of Chapter Twelve in words such as, ‘they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’ (Revelation 12:11). These words take us right back to the ‘Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the centre of the throne’ in Revelation 5:6, and “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” (5:12). The word of testimony of disciples of Jesus Christ has always been, “It is true! The Lord has risen!” (Luke 24:34). Incidentally, a movie has just been released and for the first time in years I can recommend a Hollywood production to you; it is called ‘Risen’.

Because of His sacrificial death on the cross and His rising from the tomb in death-conquering glory, Jesus vanquished Satan, stripped him of all authority, and expelled him from Heaven! Revelation 12 describes Michael and his angels casting the devil out of Heaven (12:7-9), and as this happens a loud voice declares: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down” (12:10).

In this eternity changing victory at Calvary, the Lord Jesus Christ settled the penalty of the broken covenant between God and mankind, bringing the human race back into a position of potential peace and fellowship with the Godhead. He removed all and any grounds for accusation by the devil against the children of God. He expelled Satan from his presence and denied him access to the throne of the Almighty. Then, in a sealed tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane, this same Jesus broke the power of death, rose bodily from its clutches, and in so doing created a new resurrection template of eternal life for all who believe in Him.

So, this ‘Good’ Friday and this ‘Easter’ Sunday, remember His death and celebrate His resurrection, but also be so very grateful for His VICTORY… for His victory is our life now and the assurance of the glory to come.

Easter Victory Read More »

The heavens declare

2 Comments / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

‘The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork’ (Psalm 19:1 NKJV).

If you go out after dark and look up at the expanse of the night sky, what do you see?

The answer is probably, ‘pollution haze and a few stars’, but the people of John the Revelator’s day would have seen a glorious display of galaxies, planets, and stars without measure. The religious astronomers of the ancient world would have understood the dazzling celestial display as a divine presentation of significant events and portents of things to come, and John taps into this in the book of Revelation.

According to my best research, the Magi of Babylonia were the first to be schooled in the art and science of the heavens. Abraham, the father of the Jewish Faith, came from the region of Babylonia (Genesis 11:31) referred to in the Bible as Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled from there to Canaan. It is probable that Abraham brought with him the knowledge of how to read the night sky and that this became embedded in the religious understanding of the Israelites. When John wrote the book of Revelation he used this knowledge to present God’s great redemptive plan to the people of his day, and thus to us as well.

I introduced this concept in the posts: ‘Revelation in the Stars’, and then pointed out a number of links to specific constellations in ‘Religious Woe’, ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, and ‘Some things are still a mystery’.

The Two Witnesses are the focal point of Chapter Eleven of Revelation, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find a depiction of these ‘twins’ in the night sky. And there they are (Gemini) tucked between the constellations of Cancer and Taurus, another pointer to the marvelous progression of constellations that await us in chapters 12, 13, and 14. But I have spent sufficient time on Chapter Eleven and must now move on to the next major part of the book of Revelation.

In my next few articles I will elaborate on what I am about to describe, but to help you make sense of this celestial aspect of Revelation, I will start with the big picture.

Remember that each part of Revelation takes us back to start, which is Christ’s birth, and ends with His coming again to judge and create a new HeavenEarth.

Revelation 12:1-2 presents us with the picture of a woman whom John describes with these words: ‘A great and wondrous 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. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth’ You will have to wait for my next post for the reasons why I believe that she depicts Israel, the Old Testament people of God, the wife of Yahweh, and the ‘mother’ of Jesus the messiah. For now, I ask you to just notice the constellation of Virgo.

The account in Chapter Twelve goes on to describe a great dragon, who’s tail swept a third of the stars from the sky, crouching before the woman in order to devour her child when he was born (Revelation 12:3-4). This, I believe, is represented by The constellation of Hydra which appears below Virgo in the night sky and spans about one-third of the circle of the sun’s apparent path through the heavens. Alongside Virgo, is the minor constellation of Coma, which, in Persian means ‘pure virgin’ and was originally depicted as nourishing an infant boy having a Hebrew name meaning The Anointed, or in Greek, Christos. On the other side of Virgo on the Star Map we find the constellation Centaurus, the evil Centaur, spearing a lamb (Not a wolf as shown on modern charts). Tucked in under Centaurus is Crux, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see what this represents to the Christian.

I will give more detail and explanations of these star signs in my next post, but to make the point that Chapter Twelve contains a wealth as astronomical information just consider how verse 14 links to the constellation of Aquila, the great eagle mentioned by John. Note also how verses 15 and 16 link to the constellations of Aquarius and Piscus Austrinus (water pouring out and being swallowed up).

To help you make sense of all this I have included a Sky Map showing the constellations as seen from Patmos at the time John wrote the book of Revelation.

As we work through chapters 12 to 14 of Revelation it will become increasingly obvious that John was linking the revelation to the constellations of the night sky. Why did he do this? I will try to answer this satisfactorily before this series is completed.

The heavens declare Read More »

Ghost riders in the sky

Leave a Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

My last regular Revelation Revisited post before Christmas concerned the second of the Woes described in Chapter Nine, and I asked you to consider the following graphic:

If you have not yet caught up to where we are in the book of Revelation, please have a look at the video overview on the website HERE or YouTube HERE. You can also view the summary as a pdf HERE

Some readers might have recognised the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpio and others may have wondered if I had been smoking my socks. 🙂 I have already mentioned in this series that there is strong evidence that John keyed his inspired writing to the astronomical constellations as seen from his location in the Northern hemisphere. The use of a Sky Map identifying the visible stars in the night sky dates back to at least 2500 BC and there is abundant evidence that the ancient Mesopotamians made use of it to calculate seasonal occurrences. However, they also believed that it portrayed divine purposes and thus contained insights into the progression of the history of nations. For them, the science of astronomy was intertwined with their religious belief system.

The ancients regarded the southernmost constellations, as observed from locations such as Babylon and Jerusalem, as the gateway to a dark spiritual underworld. Scorpio, as its name suggests, is the great scorpion of the heavens. This arachnid appears in the scriptures in a number of places as a symbol of danger (Deuteronomy 8:15, Ezekiel 2:6). The Lord Jesus used it to depict demonic evil when he said to his disciples, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:18-20). In the book of Revelation Chapter Nine, the scorpion features in aspects of the demons that rise up from the pit of Hell – the First Woe.

The constellation to the left of Scorpio is Sagittarius, the Centaur, half man half horse, with a drawn bow in its hands. With the exception of Chiron, the centaurs of Greek mythology were barbarous beasts given to drunkenness, debauchery, and rape and this would be a good description of what demons do. The book of Revelation describes a Second Woe, the horde of demons released by the sixth angel, as horses and riders.

Right at the bottom, the southernmost border of the Star Chart, is the small constellation Ara, pictured as a small upside-down altar of some sort. The Greeks had a goddess named Ara, and she was the personification of destruction and revenge. The Hebrew words Aram and Mara incorporate the same root and mean ‘utter destruction’ and ‘a curse’. I have already noted in my previous post (found HERE) that the second demonic plague of Revelation Chapter Nine, pictured as grotesquely mutated horses, is connected in some way to the Altar of Incense (Revelation 9:13) which we know from Revelation 8:3-4 is a symbol of prayer and worship. Revelation 9:20 strengthens this connection by declaring that the victims of these invading demons are caught up in idolatrous worship.

“But wait, there is more” as the Home Channel gizmo salesmen are famous for saying; Pictured in the Star Chart, just above Scorpio, is a depiction of a man with a huge snake in his hands. They represent the intertwined constellations of Serpens and Ophiuchus, which in Aramaic are called ‘The accursed reptile and the strong one’. The Greek construct for Ophiuchus is Æsculapius and the historian Hislop describes Æsculapius as the Epidaurian snake which the Romans worshipped along with fire as the child of the sun. He records the story that in a time of deadly pestilence this ‘god’ boarded a ship and traveled from Epidaurus to Rome and that when it slithered off the ship the plague stopped. The ancient Aramaic name itself means ‘the instructing snake’, and the inhabitants of Pergamum worshipped it as a healing and enlightening deity (see Revelation 2:12-17).

So here in the depictions of five of the southernmost constellations is a graphical presentation of the Woes of Revelation Chapter Nine. From this point on in our journey through the book of Revelation it is going to become increasingly obvious that John used the constellations of the night sky as a key device.

In my next post I want to deal with Revelation Chapter Ten, The Angel and the Little Scroll’. In preparation for this you might like to answer the question, ‘What is the little scroll in the angel’s hand’? Until then …

E-Book PDF: Open in New Window | Download

Ghost riders in the sky Read More »

Constellations