Does the bible talk about dead birds falling from the sky and fish dying in the sea as signs in the bible?
Brad
Answer:
In the original response found here we stated that the verses in Hosea and Zephaniah referring to the death of birds and fish was an ancient prophecy that had already been fulfilled during the days of the prophets Zephaniah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel found in the sixth century BC on the Biblical timeline. A reader argued otherwise stating that in each case God extends the prophecy to the last days or to all unrighteous people.
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Reader Danny Harder (http://twitter.com/DeadBirdUpdate) comments:
(the scriptures below link to King James Bible with links to commentaries under them): Ezekiel 14:12-21 says that when a nation gets to a certain level of sinfulness, God starts killing the animals (Jer 12:4)
Birds in the sky
If you look at Zephaniah, God expands the prophecy to include His judgment on the entire earth: Zeph 2:8-14, 3:8-10.
Hosea 4:3 could be taken as a principle that God kills off birds, fish, beasts as a warning when a nation sins (Ezekiel 14)
Does the bible talk about dead birds falling from the sky and fish dying in the sea as signs in the bible? Brad
Answer: Two prophets, Hosea and Zephaniah, in the Old Testament speak of birds and fish being swept away or consumed. The question is, are these prophets referring to end times or to prior times Israel was destroyed? Here are the verses referring to these calamities: Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel:
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for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because [there is] no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. Hosea 4:1-3 KJV I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD. Zephaniah 1:3 KJV We should never take verses out of the context of the whole chapter. Read the book.
These men were prophesying of specific kings and during the times of specific kings. Hosea speaks of Jeroboam while Zephaniah prophecies during the reign of the righteous King Josiah – so the people could not blame their unrighteousness on the king’s command. We can be assured that they were prophesying of times of destruction of ancient Israel, and their prophecies came to pass. In other words, these prophecies have been fulfilled. But the pestilences and famines foretold as signs of the times for the last days most likely involve animals as well as man. Here’s more on the signs of the times. Here is the opposite viewpoint: Yes these are signs of the times.
Where does the Apostlic faith go in your Biblical timeline. Have you ever heard of the Vapostori group of people in Zimbabwe? Is their religion based on the Old Testament? Is it similar to Judaism? Sincerely, mshioura
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Summary:The religion was founded in the 1930’s by Johane Masowe after a religious experience that led him to believe he was another John the Baptist and led to preach in Africa. The religion is based on the New Testament; specifically on the scriptures on the Holy Spirit. It is not similar to Judaism.
Apostolic Churches
Apostolic, Latin Apostolicus, plural Apostolici, a member of any of the various Christian sects that sought to reestablish the life and discipline of the primitive church by a literal observance of the precepts of continence and poverty. The earliest Apostolics (Also known as Apotactici, meaning “abstinents”) appeared in Anatolia about the 3rd century AD on the Bible Timeline Chart. They were extremely austere and renounced property and marriage. In the 12th century certain groups of heretical itinerant preachers called Apostolics were found in various centres of France, Flanders, and the Rhineland. (100 of 291 words) Encyclopedia Britannica.
The Vopostori, Madzibabas or Masowe Apostolics of Zimbabwe
The founder Johane Masowe
A man named Shoniwa Masedza founded the Friday Masowe Church in the 1930s after having a transformational encounter with the Holy Spirit, which led to a name change. The newly christened Johane Masowe, or John of the Wilderness, became the self-proclaimed John the Baptist of Africa. This history has tremendous resonance for the particular Friday congregation … the Juranifiri Santa (meaning “place of healing”). http://www.practicalmattersjournal.org/issue/3/reviews/a-problem-of-presence accessed Jan 20, 2011 Johane Masowe was born in 1914 or 1915 in Gandanzara village in Makoni district of eastern Zimbabwe, the second of six sons and a daughter born to Jack and Efie Masedza, of the Manyika subgroup of the Shona people. His parents named him Shoniwa Masedza Tandi Moyo, but the change of name to Johane Masowe came about through the religious experience that launched him into an itinerant preaching ministry from 1932 until his death in 1973.
Police records from the white colonial regime of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) indicate that Johane Masowe first got the attention of the authorities when he was arrested in 1932 for traveling around preaching without proper documents. In the police interrogation, he explained that he began having severe pains in the head that culminated in a dream that he had died. After that, he heard voices saying that his name was now John, which he interpreted to mean John the Baptist.
This new name carried a mandate to preach to the African people. His commission came from spending forty days in prayer on Marimba Hill, near the town of Norton, during which time he did not sleep and survived only on wild honey. A voice from a burning bush told him, “I have blessed you. Carry on with the good work. Tell the natives to throw away their witchcraft medicines, not to commit adultery or rape.” After these experiences, his headaches ceased.
He told police, “I really do believe that I have been sent from heaven to carry out religious work among the natives. I think that I am ‘John the Baptist,’ as the voice told me so. No human being has guided me in my teachings” . Masowe’s commission, as described in his own words, resembled that of Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus in spending time alone in the wilderness, hence the name Johane Masowe, meaning “John of the wilderness”. http://www.dacb.org/stories/zimbabwe/johane_masowe.html accessed January 20, 2011
The Apostolic Church of Zimbabwe
According to a 28 October 1996 AP Worldstream report, the Johanne Masowe Apostolic Faith is an apostolic sect founded by the late Johanne Masowe. According to a 23 October Africa News report, it is based in Eastern Manicaland province. AP Worldstream reports that the faith has a shrine, the Johanne Masowe shrine, located about 120 miles east of Harare (ibid.). The faith has reportedly split into two factions, one led by Johanne Masowe’s widow, and the other by his son, Magaga Masedza (ibid.). Violent clashes between rival factions reportedly broke out at the shrine. This source further states that cars and a bus were damaged, four people injured, and 380 rival followers were arrested during the clashes (ibid.). According to the Africa News report, the sect is purist and is “notorious for its total rejection of any form of scientific medication,” which has resulted in the death of many of its adherents. (from the Canadian Immigration site) Beliefs of the Friday Masowe Apostolics From the book A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church by Matthew Engelke The Friday Masowe apostolics of Zimbabwe refer to themselves as “the Christians who don’t read the Bible.” They claim they do not need the Bible because they receive the Word of God “live and direct” from the Holy Spirit. In this insightful and sensitive historical ethnography, Matthew Engelke documents how this rejection of scripture speaks to longstanding concerns within Christianity over mediation and authority. The Bible, of course, has been a key medium through which Christians have recognized God’s presence. But the apostolics perceive scripture as an unnecessary, even dangerous, mediator. For them, the materiality of the Bible marks a distance from the divine and prohibits the realization of a live and direct faith. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church by Matthew Engelke
From a member of this church comes this response to belief on a discussion board:
The thing that makes us (madzibaba nemadzimai) unique is the holy spirit. We have the power of the holy spirit in our blood which is a blessing that was shunned by the white people not knowing that the power we shall behold it our blood. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=134425595340&topic=11425 accessed January 20, 2011
The voyages of Paul to his first captivity in Rome found in Acts 27 took place from 60-61 AD on the bible timeline. At one point on this trip, the sailors express fear of the Syrtis Sands (Acts 27:17.) You have to wonder why sailors in the ocean would be afraid of sand. Here is why. According to ancient historians and geographers such as Dio Chrysostom and Strabo, who lived at about the same time as Luke and Paul the sands are shallow gulfs off the coast of Africa. There is a greater and lesser gulf. We know these today as the Gulf of Sirte off the coast of Libya and the Gulf of Gabes off of Tunisia. Once caught in the gulf it is impossible for a large sailing vessel to pull back out or to land safely on the rocky shoals.
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The Gulf has fearsome cross currents and long sand bars extending miles out to sea. Once caught inside a ship is either destroyed on the rocks or marooned on a sandbar miles from shore. The ship taking Paul to Rome was one of the largest of its day as it carried a heavy load of grain. If the ship was caught in the quicksands of Syrtis death was inevitable. The sailors had good reason to fear.
You think keeping track of time zones is bad? Imagine, if crossing a border meant you had a completely different calendar. You couldn’t even agree on the date! That was the case when no BC and AD timeline existed. Charlemagne came up with the solution to make life easier for everyone else and put a bit of power in his own pocket at the same time. Here’s the story as told in the book The Forge of Christendom by Tim Holland describing the events.
Events Leading to BC and AD Timeline
Prior to Charlemagne, dating systems had been pegged to a prominent date such as the beginning of a recent or contemporary monarch’s rule. Charlemagne began a new system of dating pegged to the birth of Christ and had himself crowned on Christmas Day to form a dramatic link between his reign and Christ. At the beginning of the ninth century A.D., with Rome long since crumbled and Constantine‘s capital still dominant in the East, Charlemagne had built a new Western empire extending across much of modern-day Europe to eclipse it.
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“You think keeping track of time zones is bad? Imagine if crossing a border meant you had a completely different calendar. “
With that achievement firmly in hand, he came to Rome and knelt during Christmas Mass at the shrine of St. Peter in the Vatican. Where Pope Leo suddenly and dramatically crowned him emperor: “So it was that Charlemagne came to rule as a second Constantine. … The whole coronation, Charlemagne would later declare, had come as a surprise to him, a bolt from the blue. Indeed, ‘he made it clear that he would not have entered the cathedral that day at all. Although it was the very greatest of the festivals of the Church, if he had known in advance what the Pope was planning to do.’ … “Yet still an aura of mystery lingered around the ceremony.
Had Charlemagne truly been as ignorant of Leo’s plans as he subsequently claimed to be, then it was all the more eerie a coincidence that he should have been in Rome and in St. Peter’s on the very morning that he was. Eight hundred years had passed to the day since the birth of the Son of Man: an anniversary of which Charlemagne and his advisers would have been perfectly aware. Over the preceding decades, the great program of correction had begun to embrace even the dimensions of time itself.
Traditionally, just as popes had employed the regnal year of the emperor in Constantinople on their documents. So other churchmen had derived dates from a bewildering array of starting points: the accession of their local ruler perhaps, or an ancient persecution, or most extravagantly the creation of the world. “Such confusion, however, to scholars sponsored by the Frankish king, was intolerable. A universal Christian order such as Charlemagne was laboring to raise required a universal chronology. How fortunate it was then that the perfect solution had lain conveniently ready at hand. The years preceding Charlemagne’s accession to the Frankish throne had witnessed a momentous intellectual revolution. Monks both in Francia itself and in the British Isles, looking to calibrate the mysterious complexities of time, had found themselves arriving at a framework that was as practical as it was profound.
From whose accession date, if not that of some earthly emperor or king, were years to be numbered?
The answer once given was obvious. Christ alone was the ruler of all mankind – and His reign had begun when He had first been born into the world. It was the Incarnation – that cosmos-shaking moment when the Divine had become flesh – that served as the pivot around which all of history turned.
Where were the Christians who could possibly argue with that?
Not at the Frankish court to be sure. Clerics in Charlemagne’s service had accordingly begun to measure dates from ‘the year of our Lord’ – ‘anno Domini.’ “Here was a sense of time Christian time that far transcended the local: perfectly suited to a monarchy that extended to the outermost limits of Christendom. Charlemagne crowned upon the exact turning point of a century could hardly have done more to identify himself with it.” (from http://www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php?1577 accessed on Dec 22, 2010) Read the full story including the meanings of the terms BC and AD in Timeline, who determined it and how we began using BC and AD here.
Esther became queen to the Persian King Ahasuerus traditionally identified with Xerxes I of Persia. Xerxes I of Persia reigned from 486 BC when he was 36 until he was assassinated in 465 BC. Xerxes figures prominently in the Greco-Persian Wars building the bridge across the Hellespont and taking part in the famous Battle of Thermopylae.
Esther is known for her beauty, but she was also a woman of great courage. She was willing to do God’s will even though she risked her life. She had a deep understanding of the power of fasting and prayer.
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Esther’s story is written across a backdrop of great wars and epic battles. Phoenicia was subject to Persia at the time. Rome was ruled by consuls (and had not yet become the great Roman Empire), and the great Greek historian Herodotus was alive and writing at the time. See Esther on the Bible Timeline.Esther’s story is found in the book of Esther in the Old Testament.
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The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Some say Matthew and/or Mark were originally written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ, but that is disputed. Here’s an in-depth study on the languages of the Bible.
Sounds like there was many changes and stuff added all the time. Does our Lord not say that nothing whatsoever should be changed in the bible? Or there will be punishment? Was there that kind of change? How would we this day and age know if something or maybe a lot was changed past these many years? It could be added or already in there wrote by dis-believers? I pray not. I love your timeline web. I could not stop reading. I am a true believer in our Lord Jesus. I need a lot of work to understand better. I have a lot of trouble remembering what I read and learn. Tina.
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Hi Tina: The Bible is a collection of small books which is why it’s called the Bible. The word Bible is a form of the Latin word Bible or group of books. There are two verses in the Bible where the WRITER commands that the book he wrote should not be changed. Both of those verses apply to only that book of the Bible not the Bible as a whole since The Bible as we know it did not exist when those books were written.
In Deuteronomy 4:2 Moses commands that no words should be added or changed in Deuteronomy. In Revelation (also the last book contained in the Bible) John makes a similar statement. After John wrote Revelation, he then wrote the letters we know as 1st, 2nd and 3rd John.
So even John wrote more of the Bible after writing Revelation. Since these separate books were all compiled into one “Book” known as the Bible, with Revelation at the end, people have confusedly thought John’s statement refers to the whole Bible, not the Book of Revelation.
However, none of this means a man can add to the Bible. While man must not add or change the Bible, from the time of Moses God did add to His word through inspired men. (If He hadn’t we would have a much shorter Bible.) The men who wrote these books are known to be prophetic and inspired. Their words have been carefully kept throughout the years through God’s miraculous hand. Multiple copies are kept and compared.
When copied, men carefully reviewed them to be sure they were accurately copied. The other changes you are referring to are twofold. First – which books are going to be included in the Bible. That has changed over time as inspired men have discussed which writings are true historically and doctrinally and which are not. That’s how we got a set of books known as The Apocrypha which at one time were included in the King James Bible but since have been removed. The second set of changes refers to the translations from the original languages each of the books was written in, into English (or Spanish or Russian or whatever.) Men worked together to translate the Bible from it’s original languages (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic) into the languages we understand today. Again their work is reviewed, and cross-checked to be sure it is true to the original meaning. The Bible, the inspired word of God, is available to people like you and me because of these translations.
Question: We have a cross hanging on our wall and it has the same letters I’ve seen on crosses all over the world many times before. But what do they stand for? Above his head they read INRI.
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INRI stands for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum in Latin, or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
Answer: INRI stands for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum in Latin, or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. John tells us “And Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin (John 19:19-20 KJV). It was this charge that the Sanhedrin or Jewish leaders took to Pontius Pilate to force him to turn Jesus over to them for crucifixion. Some people believe that the fact that Pontius Pilate refused to change the inscription to read “he said he was” rather than “he was” implies Pilate believed Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah.
Bonus Fact: The letter J was not part of the English alphabet until the 16th century, so there are no J’s in the original King James Bible. (Question for the reader: how did they spell James?)
I believe evidence shows that before and after Noah’s flood for a period of time, the year consisted of 12 thirty day months equalling 360 days exactly. The chronology of the flood certainly seems to verify this; It is also evidenced by Deut. 34:8 and 21:13, and Num. 20:29 where mourning for the dead is ordered for a “full Month,” and is carried on for thirty days. There are also many ancient writings from India, Persia, Babylonia, Assyria etc, whose writings describe the year as having 360 days, 12 thirty day months. Their writings go on to say that in the seventh century B.C. 5+ additional days were added. In your knowledge of time and history, can this be confirmed? God bless you, Arnold
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Hi Arnold : I am not sure if you asking if the cultures of the day used a 360 day calendar or if the earth actually rotated around the sun in 360 days rather than the 365 and 1/4 days it actually takes. If you are asking the first question then yes you are correct. Many cultures did use a 360-day calendar that led to season creep. In other words a month that used to be in winter would eventually become a spring month as the decades and centuries progressed because it takes 5 and 1/4 extra days for the earth to rotate around the sun. Eventually, that extra 5 days was recognized and incorporated into calendar systems. However, even that was a problem because of that 1/4 day. Which is why we now have a leap year. And this little tidbit: Leap year was first introduced by King Ptolemy III, Egypt in 238 BC For the short and sweet version of how we got our current calendar, check out the AD and BC article on our site. Or for a much longer but interesting explanation of calendars (there are about 40 different ones still in use around the world today) try this site http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html
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