Prediction and Prophecy; Declaration of the Stars;Bible and Astrology;Christianity and Astrology

Prediction, Prophecy, and Divination


Prophecy

The use of astrology in daily life was common for Christians for centuries. The stars were used to determine the appropriate time. Planting, harvest, breeding animals, slaughtering, curing, sailing, marrying, and conceiving were all done "by the signs". Everybody knows you don't plant and you don't harvest in the wane of the moon. But that would be a good time to have a wart removed from Aunt Matilda's face.

Christian people who planted by the signs all their lives still live in the South today. They farmed just like their parents before them. And they'll guarantee, based on a lifetime's experience in the fields, that planting by the signs is just following the directive that God has given us to wait upon Him in every matter.

If you tell these people that this is a practice of witchcraft, you'll horrify them (or make them burst out laughing). After all, God made the signs in the heavens, and the Bible says He put them there to tell us the appropriate times to do things on earth.

When a farmer waits for the next waxing of the moon right before fullness after the Worm moon has passed, he's not making any revelatory predictions as he prepares to plant his crop. He is not adding to Scripture. But he is using the signs in the heavens.

Based on astrology, the farmer predicts the best time to plant. In other words, he's making a prediction that his crop will succeed based on the signs and what they indicate. But he is not prophecying.

God commands in Scripture (Old Testament) that any prophet who prophecies erroneously must be put to death. When I was engaging in debate with some secular astrologers online who claimed that astrology is prophetic, they were so amazed by this innocent reminder from me that they refused to believe it, so I opened up my electronic Bible and wrote them a complete guide to God's restrictions on what makes a prophet a true prophet. Our discussion ended soon after, with them being quite disgruntled as they realized that a Bible-believing Christian would never accept the New Age movement. To us, an astrologer can be only that, an astrologer, not a prophet.

The judeo-Christian idea of the prophet is probably unique in ancient cultures simply because pagan religions relied upon astrologers and seers to tell the people what was forthcoming, based on signs in nature: stars, entrails, bones, etc. These pagan "prophets," usually suggested only propitiation or appeasement of the gods according to custom and for the most part focused on helping their masters attain security and prosperity.

Old Testament prophets, with their emphasis on repentance from sin and the righteousness of God as part of His unchanging character, were probably unique. The judeo-Christian prophet was primarily concerned with helping people understand why they were alienated from God. These prophets talked about matters of the heart, not which customs of sacrifice to engage in. Truly, they spoke for the living God as He revealed to His chosen people that He is concerned with righteousness from the feet up in a man, and not mere sacrifice. Our God is not to merely be propitiated so that we can do what we like. He is to be propitiated, then known, loved, and understood. In other words, He must become what we want. For this purpose, the stars are not enough. Only God Himself can reveal Himself to man, and for this purpose He has ordained His prophets, though at times He has validated their mission by supplying them with correct predictions as part of their prophecies.

According to Scripture, a prophet speaks by direct revelation, and his (or her) words are completely accurate and true. Prophecy in Scripture is not always predictive in the sense of foretelling future events. A prophet told David what had already happened in the murder of Uriah the Hittite. In fact, the prophet's words about the future were grim but vague: "The sword shall not depart out of your house." He added one specific, that David would be shamed for his adultery by having his women shared out in sight of everybody. Otherwise, Nathan didn't get specific as far as when or who or by what manner these things would happen. The reason for this is that the purpose of prophecy is to reveal the character of God, and prediction is sometimes used to validate the prophecy or vindicate the prophet, but the emphasis is on the revelation of God.

Prediction

When the Christian farmer waits until after the Worm moon has passed, and then prepares his soil so that he can plant as the next moon waxes towards fullness, he is selecting the best time to plant. According to the heavenly cycle that has been appointed to show us the times and the seasons, the ground is at its most fertile, and the last frost should be past.

Every now and then, freak weather conditions bring a late frost. Or the seed is bad. Or some man-made catastrophe occurs that destroys his crop. Planting by the signs is not a promise that all will go well. Prediction is simply the best assessment that can be made, based upon the signs. And if prediction is not perfect in farming, the art of prediction gets even more difficult as we start to deal with human events.

Several months ago, shortly after the WTC attack, I saw in the chart of Washington DC that Neptune, ruler of water, pharmaceuticals, and deception, was 120 degrees from Saturn in an angle called a trine. Saturn rules restriction, steel structures, bridges, law, and anything that imprisons or restrains. As this trine was taking effect, Mars, planet of war and explosions, was going to conjunct Neptune. With Saturn trine to Neptune, the Mars-Neptune conjunction was going form directly over Washington right at morning rush hour.

Based on this somewhat alarming configuration, I tried to figure out what would happen. It looked to me like a bridge(Saturn) over the Potomac or some other river (Neptune) in the DC area would collapse (or be blown up)(Mars). As Neptune also rules pharmaceuticals, I guessed that if not a bridge collapse, there might be a chemical attack from terrorists.

When the day dawned, I stayed glued to the news, and just after rush hour, a report came over CNN that a water main in Washington DC, right in the downtown area, had ruptured unexpectedly, and water was gushing everywhere during rush hour. The situation was so bad that part of the downtown area had to be closed off during the busiest part of the morning because it was flooded, and traffic had been turned back.

I was very relieved to have been wrong, yet I saw how close to right I had been. Piping, of course, is an iron restraint of water, so the astrological configuration had been a pointer of some event in Washington DC, just not the great tragedy I had thought would occur. I had made a mistake common to astrologers: correctly reading that an event related to the rulerships of the planets involved would occur, but incorrectly interpreting the details.

My actual record of mundane (world events) predictions stands at nine incorrect predictions and four correct predictions. Another Christian astrologer, Johanne Kepler, earned a much better record for correct prediction. He accurately predicted an invasion of the Turks, a famine, the death of a duke, and several other events that won him recognition for his skills. But in "the old days," mundane astrological skills were paid great heed by royal families. Kepler despised having to write astrological almanacs, but he did it to earn his money. But he thought that such work was beneath true astrology.

In a sense, I agree with him. The maxim to do good and trust God is excellent for living a productive life. And the Lord Jesus told us that evil of the given day is sufficient for our concerns. We don't need to worry excessively about Saturn crossing our eighth house cusp tomorrow.

On the other hand, Tem Tariktar came very close to predicting disaster on September 11, 2001. One cannot help but wonder---if he had known the natal chart of the World Trade Center---could he have made a prediction that would have saved lives?

As I write this essay on April 29, 2002, the heavens are lowering. The Saturn - Pluto opposition, now stressed further by Mars entering on Saturn's side, will reach its greatest intensity on May 25 - 28. What building, I wonder, what thoroughfare, what city has Mars, Saturn, or Pluto stressed by this tough opposition in its natal chart. If I knew, I would warn them. But mundane astrology has dwindled so much that astrologers cannot know the significant charts for their country. The knowledge is too hard to get, and some of its not available at all. Unlike prophecy, prediction rests on the interpretation of signs. Prediction is part of the human endeavour to comprehend God's wisdom by observing and interpreting the declaration of Him in nature. Therefore, the more fallible the human being, the more fallible the prediction. People can be poorly educated in the principles of astrology, blinded by prejudices, sidetracked by nonessentials, or dedicated to showmanship ratehr than the dispassionate study of the stars. The stars perfectly declare the glory of God, but people can interpret them incorrectly. Therefore, mere prediction can be flawed.

Is my record really 9 and 4? Yup. And these days, that's a pretty good record. Most astrologers make wrong predicitons or don't predict at all. Then after a major event, they pull up some old vague words they used and try to convince people that they actually had made a correct prediction. Or, after an event, they assemble all the astrological information and inform people that the heavens had indicated the event very clearly. This is called post-dicting. It's prediction after the fact. Postdicting is useful to show astrologers why and how they muffed seeing a major event before it arrived. Otherwise, it's just another useless form of self-justification. It doesn't matter if we can read an event after it's happened, but professional and commercial astrologers use postdiction all the time.

And actually, with my 9 losses and 4 wins record, I am 400 percent more accurate than any preacher who has ever predicted the rapture. I am 400 percent more accurate than all the Christian Fundamentalists who, as a group, have predicted the rapture, set a rapture date, believed a rapture date, or are going to set a date. Because the fact is, they have never been right, and I've been right four times.

Divination

Divination is the practice of interpreting signs in order to get an answer or determine a course of action. David used divination when he took up the ephod to ask God specific questions. The apostles used divination when they cast lots to select a replacement for the dead Judas Iscariot. Divination by slaughter or entrails is forbidden in Scripture, but David was never rebuked for using the ephod to inquire of God, and apostles were not rebuked. In fact, the apostles got a result that (in terms of the odds of getting a perfectly matched result) was so astronomically impossible that it was clear that their divination was successful.

This is not to say that all divination will be so rewarded by God. Because we live in a universe that God created, every event is meaningful. So that would mean if you looked at the way dice fell or straws fell, they should fall in a meaningful pattern, and they do. Implicitly, this means that human beings ought to be able to read signs around them to divine what the signs mean. The drawback is that no human being knows enough of the total morality of a situation---or the universe---to read all divination correctly. We cannot even figure out all the possible answers that exist, so we can hardly pick the right one or recognize it.

So if you ask a question and cast the dice or throw down yarrow stalks, they might just give you an answer. They will certainly fall according to the Will of God. But how can you read the answer? Let's make an example: a young woman who is attractive but very immature is so infautated with a young man that she consults a divinator. She asks the question: "Will Bob ever love me?" And the divinator casts the straws. They fall in a pattern that means, "The only reason you like Bob is infatuation. You just want somebody because you lack the courage to face life with your own integrity. And furthermore, your mother is right about Bob being inconsiderate." The divinator looks at them and says, "Oh yes, Bob will love you if you show more interest in him."

In the above instance, the young woman didn't even know herself or the root of her own question enough to get the answer. And the divinator certainly didn't know.

The danger of divination is that people use it to determine their choice of action, and this is wrong if those choices are already answered in Scripture. We often hear of Christians who claim to "get a word from the Lord" that tells them to go do some hare-brained or unscriptural thing. But they can recite a verse that they say has been specifically applied to them. Yet they are using divination to abrogate what the Scripture has already declared. No matter what we think God has shown us by a private consultation, stealing is wrong, fornication is wrong, abandoning our responsibilities is wrong, etc.

Probably the greatest source of divination in Christendom today is the use of the Book of Revelation, combined with world events, to try to divine what the nation should do and what we should do to prepare for the rapture. As though God has not already told us to prepare for Him at any moment. I think the worst result of this divination, and the greatest reproach on the name and honor of God, is the belief that since Israel should re-form into a nation in order to herald the rapture, the abuses against innocent Palestinaians are permissable.

I deplore Islamic terrorism, but there is no doubt that Israel cheated agrarian Palestinians out of their land decades ago by using a land title system that was foreign to the Palestinian culture. And they did this with US support and approval. I also deplore Israeli terrorism. Israel has continued to oppress a people that most Christian Americans view as savages and dehumanized barbarians, when actually there are many Christian Palestinians and many peaceful Moslem Palestinians. But their own culture makes them foreign to us, and Israel has used this to its advantage. But no Christian should be fooled by appearance. We have God's law that demands justice for all.

Israel has not repented, and they have claimed that land for their own. God has not given it to them. We Christians are to oppose theft and the defrauding of the poor as commanded by Scripture. And yet many Christians, hoodwinked by Rapture-fascination and operating under the false belief that somehow TWO chosen people of God can exist, (even when one utterly rejects Christ), uses divination by newspaper headlines to convince themselves that these atrocities should continue and the nation of Israel should be exempt from the laws that God has spelled out for all people. While they hold Palestine responsible for terrorism, they exempt Israel from charges of defrauding the poor and they turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses carried out by the IDF.

Using the Bible as a source of divination, many Christians have divined that God will first restore Israel as a nation, and then bring repentance to Israel. But over and over again in the the Old Testament, God has declared that He brings repentance first and then restores a nation. And God demands righteousness and justice before He will bless and protect. What Israel, a completely secular nation, has done is a purely secular thing. Yet Christians who labor under a modern superstition encourage it, and they use divination of current events as their justification.

This is why I'm amazed when Christians reproach me over these matters. At least I know the difference between Prophecy and prediction, and I know full well that divination must never be used to justify one's actions.


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