Happy As Kings:

Anyone can be 'published'

A Yahoo writer wrote that God means the earthquake-tsunami in Japan to be a sign about Jesus returning to earth. The person used three disaster dates, allegedly with 11 in them (World Trade Center, Haiti and Japan), and a Bible verse numbered 11 that includes the word "earthquakes." The writer got one of the dates wrong (the Haitian earthquake was on a 12th, which eliminates one of the 11s) and chose only a single '11-verse' out of 260 possible '11-verses' throughout the New Testament.

As disasters go, the writer failed to include the recent flooding in Australia (31 December), and the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand (22 February).

Stacking the Bible

Biblically, John is left out of the earthquake prediction business, but in the book of Luke, the earthquake verse is 11. In the book of Matthew, it's number 7. In Mark, the earth quakes verse 8. If sending coded messages by natural disaster is the way the Almighty communicates with people, does this mean that when the Holy Spirit was guiding the hands of those who divvied up the Greek writings into chapters and verses for Bibles that the Holy Spirit was hedging the Holy Spirit's bets for staging disasters? [insert coy tone] "I'm coming!"

With earthquake verses having different numbers, did the Holy Spirit choose the 7th, 8th or 11th of … of what? Wouldn't the likely dating be in Jewish months? Since time-counting by lunar cycles does not synchronize with solar cycles - lunar calendars slip 'ahead' of the solar calendar we're accustomed to use - was the Holy Spirit thinking ahead? Is this why the Holy Spirit went with synchronizing New Testament verses with dates using Western months long before people who would be Western needed months? The Holy Spirit was also savvy about figuring in the calendrical changes convenient for catastrophes, such as the time the calendar "lost" eleven days.

Can't you just see the H.S. scratching His Head as he 'did the math' for that one so that after 2001, all natural catastrophes would fall on the 11th of each month?

I would think that in a court of law that these 11-connections wouldn't qualify even as circumstantial evidence.

Probability and science

That devastating events happen on similarly-numbered days is coincidence. As a non-mathematician, non-statistician, non-probability figurer-outer (no clue as to what that person's job title is), I'm guessing the odds of events happening on similarly-numbered days is roughly 1-in-30. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century we code events as happening on roughly one of more or less 30 days per month.

Over millennia, with 'stuff' happening all the time, it is likely that there will be significant events that fall on the 'same day,' but since 2001, if it has an 11 in it (instead of 10 for the hurricane of 1780, or 8 for the Chicago fire, or 31 for the Johnstown flood or the Galveston hurricane, or 18 for the San Francisco earthquake, or 25 for the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, or 1 for a Mississippi River flood and an Aleutian tsunami, or 3 for Hurricane Diane, or 9 for the Rapid Creek flood in South Dakota, or 17 for another San Francisco earthquake that people watching the World Series saw on television) we all see the numerical equivalent of Tarot's Death card.

Back to the Bible

Now even if you take these connections seriously, what is it that you're actually serious about?

In Luke, since that was the Yahoo Writer's choice of verse, it appears to be the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. We would file that under "old news."
In Mark, it's not so clear. Could be the temple, could be Jesus' return.
Matthew is equally unclear.

What is clear, though, is who, in this cast of characters, is going to 'know.'

Go to Mark, chapter 13. Skip down from the earthquake verse, number eight, to verse 32. We'll leave aside verses 30 and 31 about that generation not passing before all the earthquakes, wars and nations rising against each other, that was about 100 generations ago, and we're here, not them. Mark 13:32 states in English (depending on your translation), "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Only the Father, not Jesus the Son, not Luke the disciple, and definitely not the Yahoo Writer. Since the Father apparently keeps his lip zipped, no HeaveniLeaks that I've noticed, can we stop with the scare stuff?

What's the point?

I can't tell what the Yahoo writer means by writing what s/he did. Warning? Threat? What? What's the point? The Earth has been seismically active throughout its life. It's going to stay that way because of plate tectonics and magma. Scientists have documented at least 27 earthquakes of the magnitude of the Japan catastrophe since the 'time of Jesus' (as that's when the destruction was first promised).

As people try to find some small comfort in which to wrap themselves against the effects of the power of nature, and our helplessness against much of it, this person seems to revel in the idea of divine global catastrophe. Isn't it enough for the Yahoo Writer that tens of thousands of people are dead, drowned in terror as the deep crashed over them, suffocating their screams as the fouled nightmare water rolled them like ants being washed away by a stream from a gardener's hose?

Not only do I not understand that way of looking at things, I don't want to understand it.

Because of the tragedy in Japan, I turned on television news tonight. The comments of a reporter underscored for me why I rarely watch these programs. "Is America in danger?"

Of, for the love of pete, can nothing happen without it being about "us?"

Yes, I understand a little of the dynamics of underwater earthquakes and that the shock wave of any underseaquake, the tsunami, will travel through the water until it makes landfall. It's as if the earth roughly did a kind of underwater swimming pool cannonball but instead of the airborne splash from the shock of the sudden water displacement, the shock waves caused the 'ripple' to slosh up over the edges of any land surrounding the Pacific. Typical for water. But little happened here. California, Oregon and Washington are safe. So is the rest of "America." Until the shock wave sloshed on this side of the Pacific, concern was legitimate, but the wave had already passed by the time I heard the reporter late tonight.

Japan suffered devastation not seen outside of Hollywood apocalypse movies. The speeding water swept away livelihoods and lives. The tsunami destroyed people, fieldmice, cats, dogs, cars, trucks, boats, houses, fields, farms, roads and towns. The six-miles-invading waves drowned the land. And a reporter -- national level -- asks if "America" is in danger.

What a narcissistic reaction.