Strange Weather: Revelation or Global Warming
Strange Weather: Revelation or Global Warming
By J.L. Robb
“From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.” (Revelation 16:21 NIV)
When John wrote of this vision nearly 2,000 years ago, he probably wondered what he was seeing. Hundred-pound hailstones? Surely not. There were a lot of surely nots in Revelation.
Actually, when the verse was written, the Hebrew didn’t mention hailstones weighing “a hundred pounds.” The weight of the hailstones was described as a talent each. A talent, in Hebrew, ranges in weight depending on the commodity. For example, a talent of silver weighed 125 pounds; and a talent of gold weighed 250 pounds. Whatever the gauge, these hailstones in the last days are going to be large, and heavy.
As a kid growing up in the 1950s, our activities were somewhat limited when compared to today’s. Television was relatively new, but most had radios and looked forward every Sunday to listening to The Shadow. We also had a Bible.
During the summer my cousin and I would sit on his bed each night in hot and hotter Waynesboro, Georgia, and read the book of Revelation. By the time we were through, we were scared to death. Then we would lie in bed talking about it for an hour or so, knowing with absolute certainty that the writer just had to be talking about atomic bombs, another recent innovation that ended World War II.
I would use my ten year old imagination and try to envision the disasters that were to befall mankind during the last days, pondering when that might happen. How could a mountain be thrown into the sea? How could a star fall into the ocean? How big was that final Earthquake going to be? But the most intriguing prediction to me was the one about the coming hailstorms during those days. These hailstorms were described by John as the “worst” of all the plagues, with hundred-pound hailstones falling from the sky. That was really scary, so my cousin and I went to Woolworth’s and bought football helmets.
As I grew older I maintained an interest in science and graduated from North Carolina State University in 1973 with a degree in Zoology. One thing I knew by then, purely as a matter of science; it would not be possible for a hailstone to grow to a hundred pound weight. As a science major, I thought I was pretty smart and was having numerous doubts about God’s existence. This fallacy of a hundred pound hailstone was just another nail in that proverbial coffin of doubt.
Fortunately, a decade later I found out how wrong I was about a lot of things. I decided to research the Bible, do a little homework; and I became even more fascinated with its prophecies, still troubled by the hundred pound hailstones that were to come.
According to National Geographic News, in June, 2003, a record-breaking hailstone fell to the ground in Nebraska. Almost the size of a soccer ball, the hailstone measured 7 inches in diameter and weighed almost 3 pounds, still a long way from the 100 pounders predicted. My research continued. There were reports of a hailstorm in China in the 1980s with hailstones weighing in excess of 30 pounds each. Several hundred Chinese and tens of thousands of livestock were killed. This report was never confirmed. In 1882, long before “airplane ice” occasionally fell from the sky a reported “boulder-sized” hailstone fell near Salina, Kansas. It weighed in at 80 pounds. The hailstone was packed in sawdust and put on display until it melted. Close but no cigar!
Reading a science journal one day, the word megacryometeorites jumped out at me. A weather phenomenon that had been rumored for years but only recently confirmed, huge chunks of ice, now referred to as ice bombs, would suddenly fall out of the sky on a perfectly clear day. No thunder. No lightening. Just sunshine and blue sky. Some reports indicate they have knocked at least one plane from the sky.
Megacryometeorites were first confirmed in January, 2000, by Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias of Spain, after large chunks of ice started falling from a perfectly clear, blue sky. Though some of the ice clusters vaguely resembled hailstones, they were much too large, most weighing seven pounds or more; and some much larger. No storms were involved.
Dr. Martinez-Frias began his research after the unknown objects rained down on Spain for ten consecutive days, always from a clear sky. Since then, more than a hundred incidents have occurred around the world with most of the ice bombs weighing 25-30 pounds each, some more.
On December 8, 2003, Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias was quoted in the Toledo Blade:
“I’m not worried that a block of ice may fall on your head,” said Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias of the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid. “I’m worried that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn’t exist.” Now that’s scary.
Dr. Martinez-Frias also has a facebook page if you would like to follow him.
In the world of hailstorms, deaths are rare; but injuries are common, many severe. People can usually find a safe place. Wildlife is a different story; and cows, sheep, goats, chickens and birds are killed by the multitudes each year. Plants and trees that have been stripped bare die from the inability to create photosynthesis, turning light into life.
Many historians attributed a hailstorm for the beginning of the French Revolution. Already poor and desperate, the land was hit in 1788 with a massive hailstorm that destroyed all crops. The farmers rioted at the lack of help from the Royal Family, and the French revolution began.
If in the whole scheme of things, death from hail was a rare occurrence; why would people curse God and call the hail the worst of plagues?
Megacryometeorites may very well be the answer. Could you imagine sitting at home one night and in the distance a quiet roar became a rumble; and as the ground shook, the roar growing louder with each second of approach, thousands of one hundred pound chunks of ice fell to the ground? There would be no place to hide, unless you happened to be in a cave, deep underground. Everything, buildings, plants and animals, would be hammered into the ground like a finely-ground spice. That would be really scary.
There is one thing certain. The hundred pound hailstorms will happen, the people will curse and smite god; and things will continue to get worse.
Megacryometeorites are discussed in The End The Book: Part One and their possible role in the predicted hailstorms in Revelation.
People all over the world are smiting God today. Really bad things happen like 9/11, and we legalize men marrying men. New Orleans gets cleaned up from Hurricane Katrina, and their first parade was the annual Decadence Parade. Sexual predation is overtaking the continent, but thanks to “free speech” we allow web pages for pedophiles.
The large hailstorms are coming soon, and the huge chunks of ice have been falling for years, as described in this report from Ord, Scotland in 1849:
“A curious phenomenon occurred at the farm of Balvullich, on the estate of Ord, occupied by Mr. Moffat, on the evening of Monday last. Immediately after one of the loudest peals of thunder heard there, a large and irregular-shaped mass of ice, reckoned to be nearly 20 feet in circumference, and of a proportionate thickness, fell near the farm-house. It had a beautiful crystalline appearance, being nearly all quite transparent, if we except a small portion of it which consisted of hailstones of uncommon size, fixed together. It was principally composed of small, square, diamond-shaped, of from 1 to 3 inches in size, all firmly congealed together. The weight of this large piece of ice could not be ascertained; but it is a most fortunate circumstance, that it did not fall on Mr. Moffat’s house, or it would have crushed it, and undoubtedly have caused the death of some of the inmates. No appearance whatever of either hail or snow was discernible in the surrounding district.” (Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 47:371. 1849)
Get a helmet!