2012… FIRST CONTACT?

Well, here we are. Just a couple of years before the year 2012 and already the books are flying off the shelf and movies are being made predicting the end of the world. It’s the same ole “same ole”. Someone cries wolf and all the sheople (sheep+people, means easily lead) get in line… Remember in the year 2000 it was predicted that the world would come to a screeching halt due to computers not being able to make the date change from the 1900’s to the 2000’s? Well, it didn’t happen. I remember our IT guy checking all of our computers to make sure they would continue to function after December 31st, 1999 11:59 am. I even had a friend stock pile candles and cans of food. He was so waiting for “Armageddon”. It never came. That date came and went without any hitches, just like all the other dates throughout history that “predict” something…So fast forward to the next stop.2012.

Ever since the Mayans decided to stop their calendar at 2012, (hey, they had to stop somewhere) Nostradamus and a few other fake prophets have jumped on that band wagon, and all of a sudden…GAME OVER. The countdown has begun. December 21, 2012…. LIGHTS OUT on the world as we know it…

Ever wonder that if the Mayans’ were so smart, why didn’t they see that they wouldn’t be around to see it? Actually, they don’t predict the world ending in 2012 but something “happening”, a starting over of the “cycles”. Think about this. The Mayans basically disappeared off of the face of the Earth hundreds of years ago. Anyone seen them?

Ok, my turn, and my examples…

In 1988, I was 22. There was a booklet floating around. It was called “88 reasons for Rapture in 1988”. It literally scared the hell out of me. I was young and naïve. It listed 88 reasons why Jesus was coming back in 1988 to get his church and I wasn’t ready. I thought about my young family who wasn’t ready either. Well, 1988 came and went and nothing happened. The guy that wrote that book redid his calculations and said he was off by a year. Well, he was more than off. He then said it would be in 1989, 1993, 1994… Get my picture? He died in 2001. So the rapture never came in his life time, or a lot of other people for that matter. Will it happen? It’s debatable. The word “rapture” is never mentioned in the bible but there are scriptures referencing” Being caught up in the air” and others.

Who else has predicted the rapture of the church? I pulled the following from Wikipedia

• 1792 – Shakers calculated this date.
• 1844 – William Miller predicted Christ would return between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844, then revised his prediction, claiming to have miscalculated Scripture, to October 22, 1844. Miller’s theology gave rise to the Advent movement.
• 1977 – William M. Branham predicted in 1962 that the Rapture could take place by 1977[
• 1981 – Chuck Smith predicted that Jesus would probably return by 1981.[38]
• 1988 – Publication of 88 Reasons why the Rapture is in 1988, by Edgar C. Whisenant.
• 1989 – Publication of The final shout: Rapture report 1989, by Edgar Whisenant. More predictions by this author appeared for 1992, 1995, and other years.
• 1992 – Korean group “Mission for the Coming Days” predicted October 28, 1992 as the date for the rapture.[39]
• 1993 – Seven years before the year 2000. The rapture would have to start to allow for seven years of the Tribulation before the Return in 2000. Multiple predictions.
• 1994 – Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church in Los Angeles predicted June 9, 1994. Radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted September 27, 1994.[40]
• 2011 – Harold Camping’s revised prediction has May 21, 2011 as the date of the rapture.[41]
• 2060 – Sir Isaac Newton proposed, based upon his calculations using figures from the book of Daniel, that the Apocalypse could happen no earlier than 2060

So far, all of them have been wrong. Well, all them that the dates have already passed. Even the cult of the “Jehovah Witness” has predicted the end of the world several times and has missed it. Not to mention all the other “doomsday” cults out there. Seems that one doomsday cult or another “pokes” its head up every few years decrying “it is time”. It may not be the “real time” and it usually ends in a tragic way by the cult committing suicide in order to catch a flying spaceship that is trailing behind a comet or they manage to get the Government involved and get torched to the ground taking innocent lives with them.

So, they along with the Mayans are wrong. It’s called date setting. It scares a lot of people and I guess it fills up church seats until the day passes and then those that believed figure out they were mislead ( as in sheople) so then some of them fall back out of church. Not really a good thing is it? Misleading people to fill seats? I can’t speak for God but I don’t think that is what he is all about.

Let me stop to make a point. I am not making fun of God. I am not making fun of people that date set. I am not even making fun of the cults we have floating around. I just want to add some common sense to all this and my opinion of it.
So, let’s start the journey…

I eventually started going to church. We did it religiously for years. Every Wednesday and twice on Sundays and every other time the door opened we got ourselves and our kids there. I am glad we did, I believe it gave them a firm foundation. After our kids were grown we stepped back out of church. I really don’t have any good reasons though I could start listing them but all they are just “excuses”. Everyone has one. Nothing against God either. As Dave Mustaine from Megadeth said in the song “Peace Sells”, “what do you mean I don’t believe in God, I talk to him every day”… I just don’t attend church at this time…

So I am also a science hound. Meaning, I love science, space exploration, sci-fi and anything and everything to do it and ancient History too. I watch as much as I can, read all that I can. Study it. Devour it…

So with that in mind and my religious studies, I tend to look at everything through “two sets of eyes” and not just “one eye” if you know what I mean. If not, it only means that I try to look at everything from a religious and secular way and equally. I think it gives more balance to my views of the world.…

And here are some of my observations.

For the religious or Christian people reading, God doesn’t “over make” something correct? A turtle only needs one shell, so he has only “one”. We don’t have 3 arms or eyes in the back of our head even though we thought our parents and teachers once did. Correct? Here we go so hang with me. But everything has a “purpose”. Correct? I mean it was “created” right? If it was “created” it has to serve a purpose…

For the scientific people reading, Trees take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen. We take in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Life as we know it is a carbon based life form and to quote Star Trek, “mostly bags of water”. Correct? And you can’t take “nothing” and create something from it correct? “0” multiplied by whatever number you wish to use is still “0” correct? With the cycle of life, everything needs everything else. Correct? Trees need us, we need them. We harvest the lands and the oceans for food but they both need us to protect them and be responsible , correct? Coal burns to bring us warmth. Oil is refined and made into fuel for our vehicles. Vehicles transport us. We move from place to place. Etc…

The journey

Example # 1. Millions of years ago the earth was a lot different than it is today. Agree? It was covered in swamps and trees. It looked more a tropical rain forest. Those trees and plants died and fell into the swamps. As the thousands of years passed these trees and plants kept dying and piling up on each other and compressing. This eventual turned into coal over the millions of years. Now think about this. It took millions of years for the plants and trees to become “coal”. It is known as a fossil fuel. And it was “ready” or I should say already had became coal when man came along and needed it. As in perfect timing I might add. Without coal we could have never had the industrial revolution … Meaning when our society needed a fuel to burn, the coal seams where there and ready to be “picked”. It’s not like we are still waiting for some plant life to convert to coal, it is already done. Finished. Was it “ordained? I would have to think so but don’t let me lose you if you don’t think so, hang with me….

So here we are… the coal was in the ground waiting for us to find it and use it. How convenient is that? If we didn’t need it then why was it there? It had a “Purpose”. That’s just one example… Need another?

Example # 2.

Why where the Dinosaurs wiped out? Was it coincidence? Think about it… They had their time to reign on Earth and they did for millions of years. But what if they were still around today? Could you imagine getting into your car and hitting one of those on the highway? Hitting a deer is bad enough and in some parts of the United States people hit Elk and Moose. Those are big animals by today’s standards. But what if you hit an animal six stories tall? Or as long as city bus? You would probably just make it upset and if you were injured and couldn’t flee from it you probably would become its next meal… Dinosaurs had to go…So they did.

Every since the dawn of man we have looked to the heavens and pondered our existence. Are we alone? We all have asked that. Is there life out there? Is there really a “Man in the moon”? Even in man’s early existence it was pondered and some say we have already been visited by “aliens”… Not sure if I buy that or not but to each their own interpretations.

So we have the moon in the sky and stars to light the night. But they are more than that. The moon is instrumental in controlling our tides for one thing. It keeps our oceans from sweeping over the land and flooding us all out. The moon is also a “night light”. So we aren’t in total darkness when the Earth rotates around the Sun and our side is not bathed in Sunlight and vice versa for the other side of the world. Religious people look at it as a sign from God; He created it on the fourth day to “rule the Night”. Science folks look at it from a different perspective, meaning it once was a part of earth and was knocked loose and trapped in our gravitational pull and eventually all that tugging and pulling rounded it out into a sphere shaped “satellite” that’s illuminated by the Sun. In reality, maybe that is how it happened looking through both sets of eyes. Wouldn’t or couldn’t God be that greatest scientist of all time?

Even before we were able to venture out into outer space, man has had a desire to go and search. It’s built into us. We had to leave the cave, or before that “the garden”. What’s over the next hill he probably asked himself and decided to go look. Before The “New World” was discovered by Europeans, some believed that at the edge of the horizon the world fell off. So if you sailed out past a certain point you would fall off the earth. But some explorers dared to dream above that and set to sail to prove they were right and everyone else was wrong. And they discovered that they didn’t fall off of the edge of the world but instead found a whole new world with people living there. They were Native Americans or Indians as they were called by the Europeans’. .

So, “man” set out to see what was on the other side of the earth and he did and what did he find? He found life and another world. A world that with work could support him. It had water and soil to support life. The “New World” had a purpose. It was already there waiting on him to arrive.

The Journey continues

Thankfully, “Man” continued to look toward the heavens and dream. And he now had rockets. Rockets have been around in one form or another for hundreds of years. The first use of them in war was reported way back in 1232 when the Chinese used them in battle. As time went on improvements were slowly made and as we made it into the 20th century they had been developed enough to launch small artificial satellites into orbit. The first one being from Russia and was called Sputnik in 1957. It caused a great commotion here in America. The Russians had beat us to space…But It did light a fire under the ass of our Government and in 1962 then President Kennedy declared that we would put a man on the moon within the decade. And guess what? Despite all the conspiracy theories saying otherwise, on July 20th, 1969 we put a man on the moon and brought him back home safety.

If everything has a “purpose” or was created, here is another example. NASAS speculated that they found water in the moon soil back in the early 70’s on rock samples but weren’t sure the samples weren’t contaminated when they were brought back to earth so the discovery of water remained in “question”. Did we find it or didn’t we? Recently NASA intentionally crashed two spacecrafts onto the lunar surface to measure the debris field. In the debris plume they found water and lots of it. So why does the Moon have water on it? There is no life there that we are aware of. But why is it there? I believe it is like the coal seems we have here on Earth. When we are ready to inhabit the Moon, the Moon will be “ready” for us. The building blocks are already in place. The moon soil also contains Oxygen. And it contains many of the same metals that are found here on earth. Minerals that can be easily mined once we are there. So why are they there? It is because sometime in the future we will need it. There will be a large jump in technology just like it was during the industrial revolution and “Man” will take that step to populate the Moon. So to the religious people I want to say. If God put or created everything and everything had a purpose, the Moon has yet to fulfill its purpose for “man” since it has those elements on it and we haven’t used them yet. If that purpose hasn’t been fulfilled, then the “rapture’ still can’t take place. To the scientists among us, the Moon is beckoning us to explore it and to conquer it. Just like we did the Americas so long ago. It is a wilderness needing tamed. It draws us to it. It is now close to 2010 but in my eyes we are around 1492, the year Columbus set sail.

There is another planet that draws us nigh too. Mars. The red planet. It has called to us from days of old. In 1906, Percival Lowell wrote a book about the canals on Mars describing what he thought were canals or tunnels representing life on the Red Planet. Orson Welles read from the book “War of the Worlds” during the early days of radio on October 30th, 1938 and basically started a panic as people tuning it thought it was a real invasion by “Martins”…The United States and Russia have been trying to send unmanned probes to Mars since 1960. We finally had some success in the 1970’s with the Viking 1 and Viking II as they broadcasted back to Earth the first colored photographs of the Red planet. Today as I write, we have two rovers on the surface of mars moving around and exploring the surface of the planet. They have discovered that Mars once had flowing water on it and have found evidence that Mars recently had water on it and that the Mars Caps contain water. Wet chemistry testing also has proved that Martine soil can support life. Though to date we haven’t found evidence of anything growing there, the soil is “ready”.

So what am I getting at? Everything has a purpose. I only covered two other “beings” in our solar system. The Moon and Mars. We still have the other planets in our solar system. We have stepped foot on the moon, yet to step foot on Mars, our closest neighbor. And yet to step foot on the other planets and Moons in our little solar system we float around in with.

The Hubble telescope has taken breath taking photos of other solar systems and galaxies that have literally thousands upon thousands of Moons, Stars and Planets. All waiting for us to explore them and set foot on them. No telling what is waiting out there for us to discover but we got to get there first. We are on the brink of amazing discoveries..

To tie all this together. If everything was “created” and has a purpose, man has yet to fulfill his purpose. We still have a long way to go and that is my reasoning behind my statement that the rapture “or the taking away of the church” is no were near ready. For my Christian friends, of course be “ready” but in my opinion you will live your life and die like everyone else before you and not see the “rapture”. That doesn’t mean we won’t have wars or rumors of wars and all the other things we are told to “look for” Of course we will.… That is human nature but our “exploring” nature has yet to even crack the surface. Tonight, go outside and look up… We are supposed to go see all of that… Isn’t that amazing? To my scientific friends, think about exploring those new places, it’s as if “Man” is standing on the beach for the first time and looking out over the Ocean and wondering what is on the other side…Who knows what we might see… water? To date we have found it everywhere we have looked. Soil? Same thing, to date both the Moon and Mars has soil that is compatible for growing food… what’s next… Life?

I say, let’s go and take a look. Wicks lit of course.
Journey on…

Chuck Gee
2009