Signs in the Heavens

73 Pages·1995·1.25 MB·English

by  Chuck Missler

Signs in the Heavens
Copyright 2014 by Chuck Missler
Published by Koinonia House
P.O. Box D
Coeur d’Alene, ID 83816-0347
www.khouse.org
ISBN: 1-57821-592-8
All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form
whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.
All Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
1: What’s Your Sign?
2: The Glory of God
3: The Mazzaroth
4: The Seed of the Virgin
5: Heroes and Archers
6: The Camp of Israel and the Throne of God
7: Prophecy and the Old Testament
8: When the Sun Stood Still
9: Calendar Changes and Laputa
10: Joshua and the End Times
Endnotes
Bibliography
SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS
By Chuck Missler
Chapter 1: What’s Your Sign?
What’s your sign?
This was once a favorite pick-up line for young men who used terms like “Far
out,” and “Groovy, man.” It’s a question that immediately brings to mind the
horoscope and daily notices about how Cancers love a change of scenery
concerning love and romance and how Aries should avoid Cancers.
This small book is not about astrology.
Why Not Astrology?
Astrology is a capital crime under the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Fortune
telling and “observing times” as soothsayers were condemned, along with
sacrificing children in the fire, consulting familiar (evil) spirits and witchcraft:
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or
his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For
all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and
because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them
out from before thee.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12
I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of
the Chemarims with the priests; And them that worship the host of
heaven upon the housetops;
Zephaniah 1:4b-5a
King Josiah tried to cleanse the land of idolatry during his reign, removing the
high places and forbidding the worship of any god but the LORD. By the time he
arrived on the scene, though, idolatry and the worship of the “host of heaven”
had grown widespread and endemic:
And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah
had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of
Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that
burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the
planets, and to all the host of heaven.
2 Kings 23:5
Even though he sought to serve the LORD with all his heart, Josiah’s purges of
idolatry were not enough to save Judah from God’s judgment (2 Kings 22:16-
20).
There are a variety of verses that warned the Israelites not to give undue honor to
the “hosts of heaven,” which tells us it’s not a harmless superstition. There are a
number of superstitions the Bible is silent about, but the fact that astrology was
marked as a crime worthy of death tells us there is spiritual danger in depending
on the stars and planets to give us direction.
In serious astrology, an astrologer creates a natal chart, or horoscope, which is a
picture of the night sky at the time and location of birth, stylized with symbols.
The positions of the symbols are then interpreted by the astrologist, who uses his
or her psychic ability to read the birth chart almost like a crystal ball. Because
astrologers claim to access transcendental knowledge, a mystical or spiritual
consciousness outside our physical reality, astrology can be an entry into the
occult with demonic influences we should avoid like an infectious disease.
A second reason to reject astrology is that there’s little if any empirical evidence
to support it. No astronomer takes astrology seriously, because there’s nothing
scientific about it. Mars is not actually the god of war flying through the
heavens; it’s a hunk of red rock. Venus is not the goddess of love; it’s a planet
smothered in choking toxic gasses. There is no mechanism for planet locations
to affect our personalities or our love lives.
The Forer Effect
In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer performed an experiment in which he
gave 39 of his students a personality test (which he created) and then purportedly
produced personality profiles for each of them based on their answers.
He asked them to rate their own profiles (no peeking at other people’s) from 0
(poor) to 5 (excellent) based on the accuracy of the description. In reality, Forer
gave all 39 students the exact same profile, which he pulled together from a
collection of horoscope readings. It said:
1. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
2. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
3. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your
advantage.
4. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to
compensate for them.
5. Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
6. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and
insecure inside.
7. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right
decision or done the right thing.
8. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied
when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
9. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’
statements without satisfactory proof.
10. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
11. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you
are introverted, wary, reserved.
12. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
13. Security is one of your major goals in life.
It’s easy to see that these kinds of statement apply to most of the people on the
planet. The students gave ratings of 4 and 5 to nearly each of the above 13
descriptions, with an average rating of 4.26/5.
As a whole, therefore, the class agreed that Professor Forer’s methodology for
determining their personalities had an 85% accuracy.1 In reality, the students
were demonstrating the power of “subjective validation,” in which people see a
relationship between two unrelated events because they expect to see a
relationship. The students did not say, “Hey Dr. Forer. This profile could apply
to anybody, not just me.”
When people read their horoscopes and find themselves in the descriptions, they
are allowing themselves to be taken in by subjective validation, now often called
the Forer Effect.
It’s also called the Barnum Effect after the great entertainer P.T. Barnum, who is
often credited with saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”2
Astrology is full of these kinds of “Barnum statements” that most people can
apply to themselves.
Guaquelin’s Experiment
In a similar kind of test, Michel Gauquelin famously placed an ad in an April
1968 issue of Ici Paris, urging readers to send him their addresses and dates of
birth that he might give them a free 10-page personal horoscope analysis.
“Benefit from a unique experience” the ad declares in French. The experience
was no such thing. He sent out the exact same birth chart analysis to more than
500 people under all astrological signs. Specifically, he sent them a birth chart
analysis for the mass murderer Dr. Marcel Petiot, who was convicted in 1946 of
ruthlessly killing 27 people (although he admitted to more than 60).
Gauquelin also sent respondents a self-addressed envelope with a request for
comments on his accuracy. Ninety-four percent of the first 150 responses that
came were enthusiastically positive, and 90% had friends and family agree that
the descriptions were accurate.
After all, Petiot’s birth chart didn’t describe terrible things. It did not say, “You
appear like a kindly local doctor, but you’ll promise Jews safe passage from
Nazi-occupied France to South America, then slaughter them in your basement
and take their money.”
Astrological birth charts don’t generally offer details quite that specific or quite
that negative. The analysis said things like, “instinctive warmth . . . adaptable . . .
bathed in a sea of sensitivity . . .”
Time Twins
In order for an area of study to have scientific value, it has to have predictive
ability. The validity of astronomical calculations is tested every time NASA
predicts a total lunar eclipse.
Empirically, astrology doesn’t offer true predictability. It offers vague results
that can apply to a broad base, or it offers descriptions that people interpret after
the fact, as in the Forer Effect.
If astrology were at all scientific, then individuals born under the same
astrological chart should have similar personalities, interests and swings of luck
and misfortune. That’s what astrology would predict. In 2003, former astrologist
Geoffrey Dean and Ivan Kelly, a psychologist at the University of
Saskatchewan, reported on a multi-decade experiment in which 2101 babies
born in London from March 3-9, 1958 were paired up according to birth time –
most born just minutes apart – and tracked throughout their lives.3
At ages 11, 16 and 23, 110 variables were measured, including IQ test scores,
math and reading test scores, behavior ratings by teachers and parents regarding
anxiety, aggressiveness and social skills, aptitude at music and sports, and even
physical characteristics like height and weight, vision and hearing – all of which
astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.
The scientists failed to find any evidence of real similarities between sets of
“time twins.” They reported in the Journal of Consciousness Studies: “So the
test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success. But the
results are uniformly negative . . .”4
Double-Blind Test
Shawn Carlson, once of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and founder of