davidbowerkingwood

What Happened?

Bullets grazing heads sounds like some sort of detective fiction and the reader knows when reading those words someone had a close call. So what does bullets grazing heads have to do with “Life from a Christian Perspective” you may well ask? There is a simple answer to that question, Asteroid 2012 DA14 which on February 15, 2013 passed around 17,000 miles above the surface of our planet essentially grazed our earthly heads. Now 17,000 miles may sound like a great distance but when compared to typical astronomical distances it’s like a bullet grazing the forehead.

What made February 15th an interesting day for astronomers was the fact that just hours earlier a meteor exploded above Russia’s Ural Mountains causing considerable damage and injury. It appears the two events were completely unrelated but the timing was interesting coming as close together time-wise as they did. Neither the meteor nor the 150 foot asteroid was large enough to threaten all life on the planet by either explosive forces or the creation of a world-wide winter.

2012 DA14 Grazing Earth [NASA/JPL-Cal Tech]

What Would Happen If?

What if that asteriod had hit the earth? I had to do some research to find an answer on that one as I am not an astrophysicist. From my research it appears the impact of an asteroid hitting the earth will depend on its size, density, speed, and its angle of entry into the earth’s atmosphere; the greater the size and density the greater the mass, the steeper the angle of entry the greater the potential for penetration into the earth’s atmosphere. Smaller and less dense asteroids will explode in the atmosphere and the less the angle of entry, say less than 20 degrees, the more likely to explode at a higher altitudes.

 On June 30, 1908 an  asteroid slightly larger than 2012 DA14 exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia destroying around 80,000,000 trees over an area of around 830 square miles. New York City has a reported land area of around 468 square miles and an estimated population in 2011 of 8,244,910. Whereas the likelihood of an asteroid strike over New York City is remote, the results could be devastating but localized to that area.

In Revelation 8:10-11 we read, “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water–the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.”

                  Meteor Over Russia           

One can see the similarity of a burning meteor or asteroid to a blazing torch flying across the sky.

What Can You Do?

The news today seems to be filled with stories of troubles, fear and disaster. Wars and rumors of wars fill the media with stories of developments that threaten individuals and whole societies with terrible acts of violence and death. This begins to ring bells for the student of Bible prophecy. In several places in Scripture descriptions are given of the end times and those things we are seeing in the news today bear a striking resemblance to what the Bible predicted.

The potential enormity of these events makes any steps we, as individuals, can take seem pathetically small and inadequate. We live in the perfect time to trust in the Lord and walk by faith. It’s only when we think there is something we can do to ameliorate the consequences of those events that we search and struggle to make adequate preparations for survival.

 The Bible warns us these days are coming and tells us that God does not want His church to experience these troubles. Instead of an ark of gopher wood He has prepared a vast removal called the Rapture of the Church to deliver us from this coming time of great judgment. We can know with certainty before things get really bad that we will be given new eternal bodies and removed from the earth. What we do not know is just how bad things are going to get before the removal takes place.

We can know with complete assurance that we are individually and collectively objects of God’s love. We can know that He is working all things together for our good and that He is conforming us to the image of His Son. In light of that reality our only valid option is to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Such an alternative is extremely liberating.