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1054 A.D.: The Heavens Mark A Crucial Event
The heavens above us are extravagantly beautiful, and in a more rural age when there was no hemisphere of night time electrical lighting around each city to hinder the viewing of the stars there was a true unfolding of majesty in the sky on a clear night. The stars would have shown more clearly in the past centuries; both from no appreciable artificial lighting and from less man made pollution in the air. Most of us today would probably be surprised at just how much the stars stood out at you from their settings in the vast reaches of the sky where the mighty Father had set them and ordained the courses that they would travel. There are still places on Earth that you can go and see the difference, but it's hard to say if any vantage point remains entirely unaffected by modern activities.
The heavens are one of the truly staggering evidences of our Father's might and glory. The distances, the sizes, the colors, and the shapes have only become more amazing as the improving telescope continued to open up the vista. In fact, so mind boggling are the celestial objects in space that those who defy God and try to steal away the glory due unto the Father for creating it all use those same staggering statistics about the heavens to suggest that God doesn't exist or at least couldn't have 'created' everything - that space is just too staggering to have been created by God!?!
Some of them suggest that there is simply too much of everything, and that God's word in scripture should be ignored, or at least viewed skeptically, as you might a partial myth. They say "Oh look, this star is 20 million light years away, and yet we see its light today. And the Bible says that the Earth is around 6,000 years old. Now that's a problem." In their minds, God would have needed to create the star, then wait 20 million years before the light could hit the Earth that He made.
They imagine God's design skills and foresight to be just a wee bit weaker than they demonstrably are! Didn't every living creature need to be created with the proper amount of food in its stomach, the correct bacteria in its gut right from the first moment of its life? Didn't each creature's blood need to hold the right amount of sugar so that they wouldn't collapse immediately the very second that they were made and filled with the breath of God? Didn't their blood need the right amount of oxygen. Didn't the first babies need to have 'wired in' instincts for nursing, etc., etc., etc.
Didn't each pollen gathering creature need to find plants already fully grown and producing pollen, from the day that they were made? There are many examples you could bring up of the same sorts of things. The Creation was almost certainly created as an already functional group of systems - probably filled with creations of varying ages - a work that was fully functional from birth.
So, if God created not only the distant star, but at the same time the stream of emitted light that connected it to Earth, is that an unthinkable thing? Isn't that totally in keeping with how he must have made many other things as well? When He created trees, might He not have created full grown trees, saplings just emerging, trees bearing fruit, fruits on the ground (for the squirrels and mice), fruit rotting (for the fly), maybe even trees fallen down and rotting (for the termites, molds, and bacteria), fruit lying dormant in the warm moist soil, almost ready to germinate, etc. It is likely, right? Or at least possible.
And so it would also have been with the stars. Some of them might have been 'old', some 'new', some exploded, some imploded, and everything before, after, and in between and elsewise that we see in the night time sky. It is astounding in scope, but so is God. The heavens are essentially immeasurable, but so is the Father. God's knowledge of light, stars, life, chemistry, physics, math, gravity, geology and every other field of knowledge would probably explode the mind of tiny man.
On judgement day, I'm betting there will be no scientists that stride confidently forward to correct God or Jesus on their knowledge of the Creation. Jesus was beside the Father when all of it was created. Jesus Himself is called the 'first fruits of creation' in the scripture in one spot that comes to mind, yet He is a Son directly of His Father. What's their exact relationship? Unanswerable for man right now, I think. I picture something like a giant mass of ice breaking off of the Antarctic ice shelf. That ice mass is of the same material as the shelf that it broke off of. It is as old as the shelf it broke off of. But, in separating, it became a thing that was from and of another larger thing. It was 'created', by an event. That's just a thought, though. A weak man-thought about a Holy thing. There have been denominational schisms about this point.
But, in making the heavens, one thing God said is:
Gen 1:14 "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days, and the years, and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, so to shed light upon the Earth." That was the 4th day of creation.
So stars can be for marking the times, scripture says. And hey, atheists and scientists, if the major religious events seem to often happen on the days of the major astrological events, that could be something you want to take note of!! Start giving God His due; after all, He loves you just as much as us, and made you just as much as us. He's your Father too, and therefore His Son is your Savior too.
So it is kind of interesting timing that a massive star - the Star of Bethlehem as we call it - appeared at the time Jesus was born, but also that an eclipse happened on the day Jesus's Earthly body was crucified (it's possible, some report, that on April 3, 33 A.D., Jesus died at about 3 P.M.)
Beyond that, in the year 1054 A.D., during the 23 day time span that a certain amazing super nova sight was in the sky in the constellation group called Taurus during the daylight hours, the Catholic church decided to part ways officially and forever from the Eastern Orthodox church. They delivered a bull of excommunication to a certain eminent person in the Orthodox church, saying in affect that Rome was split from the Eastern church now. It was delivered by a delegation from Rome that intruded right into a church where a mass was in progress, and the paper - the Papal 'bull' - was placed on the alter. Now that's disrespect!!
We might speculate that this 'ideological civil war' within the body of Christ was keenly viewed from heaven, and meant much up there. The super nova's appearance might add weight to that idea. After all, on Earth, a 'bull' from the Pope told of a great change occurring within Jesus's church. And in the heavens, a great change occurred as well, also found in a 'bull' that is up there, the constellation Taurus. Taurus is 'the Bull', astrologically speaking, and the super nova which occurred within it is now called the Crab Nebulae. The Crab is related to Cancer, astrologically. Was there a cancer for the church in the bull that the pope sent? Was the church being formed into a 'crab' of sorts, with a pincer on each hand, (Rome on one side, Constantinople on the other), one pincer more powerful than another, as crab pincers usually are? Think of this oddity: a crab is a creature that has it's 'witnesses' (it's eyes) attached up on 'poles'. Their eyes are on the end of those stalks that they wave around to look at things. But, how many Chirstian 'witnesses' for Jesus the Lord were crucified, placed up on 'poles'?
The 'big five' bishoprics of the day in 1054 A.D. were Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. At the time of the division, four of those bishoprics became part of the Eastern Church, and Rome became the Western.
In that way, it can seem a little like when red, hairy Esau became enemies with his brother Jacob/Israel. Jacob ended up having 4 wives (2 wives and 2 concubines) just like the Eastern Church ended up being composed of 4 principal Bishoprics after this schism occurred. And just as Jacob and Esau sort of made up when Jacob returned home, but then not really, there were times when the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox church have sort of made up....but not really. Gestures of peace, but no reunification.
The Eastern churches had seen quite a few heresies rise up within it, which had needed to be dealt with over the years. And the Western church was seen as being politicized and power hungry by the Eastern church. But that's a simplification. Their rift had been a very long time in coming, and language played a large part also. Latin and other tongues in the West. Greek and other tongues in the East.
In today's dating system, this astrological event seems to have first appeared on July 4th, 1054 A.D., per the Chinese. For 23 days the new 'star' was visible in the daytime, about three times brighter than Venus. It was very bright. It was marked and commented on by many major civilized cultures of the world - the ones where writing was in existence. It is nearly unmentioned by the Catholic church according to the articles that I found. Even in the USA there appears to be a certain petroglyph on a sandstone wall possibly depicting it. It looks more like a ring. The Chinese called it a 'guest star', and said it had four 'rays' that emanated from it, pointing North, East, South, and West. I wonder if the rays were equal lengths, or if it was cross shaped? The Chinese recorded such things that appeared in the sky, and 'guest star' was often the term that they used.
The Church in the larger sense is the body of Christ on Earth. The Body of Christ on Earth was 'broken in two' that day, in a way, by the egos of men. The Church, the bride of the Son of Man, had divided into two that day, because of men seeking power within the kingdom of God. It was a very wise Jesus that said to his Apostles that the one wishing to be the greatest among them should make himself the servant to all of the others. Not their master....their servant.
We men almost always put our own things before the things of God. Almost always. Where ever power collects, the strongest angels of Satan rush there to begin working on the minds of men, seeing who they can influence, even win over. The only defense is trying to always teach ourself humility, trying to always love even the people who hate us. And reminding ourself daily (by reading the word of God) who it is that really matters (God and Jesus and the Spirit).
And stay in the Word - read it often and regularlyt. Manna was gathered 'daily'. Manna was bread from heaven. The word of God is 'bread' from heaven. So 'daily' we should partake of it, the scriptures seem to hint. That's one apparent metaphor offered by the reality of the 40 years of wandering done by the Israelites in the Sinai Peninsula.
And we should help our neighbor and love our neighbor, and gather together often in Christ's name. These are things that can successfully help keep us safe from the Wicked One and from doing wrong. And they are fun and fulfilling.
And the scriptures say that Jesus's sign will appear in the sky in the last days also...the days of his second coming. What will it be? Let's just hope we're ready to see it.