The Great Christ Comet

by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)

  Where is the wise man? Where is the debater? Where is the boasting of those who are deemed intelligent? Our God, Jesus the Messiah, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit. . . . Now Mary’s virginal conception and her giving birth [to the Messiah] had been kept hidden from the Prince of this Age (likewise also the death of the Lord—these are three mysteries to be loudly proclaimed, which were done in the quietness of God).51 How, then, was [the virgin birth]52 revealed to the Aeons?53

  A star shone in heaven

  with a brightness beyond all the stars;

  its light was indescribable,

  and its newness caused astonishment.

  And all the rest of the stars,

  together with the Sun and the Moon,

  formed a chorus to the star,

  yet its light far exceeded them all.

  And there was perplexity regarding from where this new entity came,

  so unlike anything else [in the heavens] was it.

  Consequently, all Magianism54 began to be destroyed,55

  every bond of wickedness began to disappear,

  ignorance began to be removed,

  and the old kingdom began to be destroyed,

  when God was manifest as man to bring the newness of eternal life.

  That which had been prepared by God began to come into effect. Therefore all things were perturbed, because the abolishing of Death was being worked out.

  12

  “The Light Everlasting That Fades Not Away”

  The Ongoing Story

  In the course of this book we have made mention of many participants in the Christmas narrative—especially the Magi, the king of Judea, Mary and Joseph, Jesus, and the Star. It now remains to update the story. What became of these main characters, in particular Jesus and the Star?

  The Magi

  The Magi went back home to Bab­ylon, no doubt excitedly telling others about their amazing adventure with the comet and the one whom it represented and to whom it led them. Ignatius (Eph. 19:3) may imply that the Magi who followed the Star turned away from the theology of the Magians (mageia) and the practices of sorcery. Likewise, Justin Martyr (Dial. 78–79) claims that the Magi escaped the demonic dominion of evil when they came to worship Jesus as Messiah.1

  Herod the Great

  Herod—Hydra in human form—failed in his horrendous quest to assassinate the messianic child. As Matthew tells the story, he was, quite simply, outmaneuvered by God. A dream warned the Magi of Herod’s malicious scheming against the Messiah, prompting them to avoid Jerusalem and Herod on their way back home to Bab­ylon. Thus deprived of the information necessary to mount a targeted strike at the Messiah (Plan A), Herod sent in his troops to massacre the baby boys of Bethlehem (Plan B). However, Joseph was warned in a dream about Herod’s assassination attempt and so fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt and remained there until Herod died.

  FIG. 12.1 An imagined portrait of Herod the Great. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

  The hard-hearted king of Judea got his comeuppance. On March 12/13 in 4 BC there was a striking omen in the heavens that seemed to proclaim in terms the sick king could well understand that he would soon die: the dreaded partial lunar eclipse.2

  When Herod awoke, he found that his illness had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. As soon as the report of the location of the lunar eclipse in the sky reached him, the thought must have crossed his brain that God had issued the death penalty against him for his attack on the baby Messiah. For, incredibly, the lunar eclipse was over the womb of Virgo, right where the Sun had been on September 15, 6 BC, and where the cometary coma had been on September 29/30 and over the following days (fig. 12.2). Instead of determining to worship the Messiah upon hearing of the great sign in the eastern sky that had brought the Magi to Judea, Herod had sought to assassinate him. Indeed he had even tried to outwit God, using information gleaned from the Magi’s records of the comet (in particular, when it first appeared) and from Scripture to assist him in this enterprise. Herod, the chief agent of Hydra, had schemed to murder the one whose birth had been announced by a great wonder focused on Virgo’s womb. Ironically, it was in this same womb that the divine realm seemed to announce Herod’s death sentence. Within the next few weeks, despite his desperate efforts to resist his fate, he died a horrendous death.3

  FIG. 12.2 The partially eclipsed Moon (enlarged) in Virgo’s womb on the night of March 12/13, 4 BC. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl; credit for the eclipsed Moon: Starry Night® Pro 6.4.3.

  Mary and Joseph

  Joseph and Mary remained in Egypt until Herod the Great died. At that point, “an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel’” (Matt. 2:19b–20a). Straightaway, that is, in the immediate aftermath of Herod’s death, Joseph “rose,” “took the child and his mother,” and “went to the land of Israel” (v. 21). Joseph and the holy family entered the territory of Greater Israel and prepared to go into Judea, obviously assuming that the angel meant Judea when he said “Israel.” However, when the announcement that Archelaus had been made ruler (ethnarch) of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea in Herod’s place reached Joseph’s ears, he was surprised and filled with fear. That Joseph had to be warned in another dream not to enter Judea implies that his fear concerning Archelaus was entirely justified—the ruler did constitute a serious threat to Jesus. In response to the dream, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to another part of Greater Israel, namely lower Galilee, and in particular Nazareth, where they could live in safety. This was familiar territory to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:1–5).

  Joseph evidently died before Jesus began his ministry. Mary, however, remained alive throughout Jesus’s ministry and suffered the trauma of watching her precious son being executed in the most brutal way imaginable—by crucifixion. It was almost certainly she who was the primary source of the birth narratives preserved in the Gospels.

  Jesus

  Jesus grew up in lower Galilee, in the town of Nazareth, with his mother and father and, in due course, brothers and sisters. He seems to have labored as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). When he was in his 30s, Jesus began a ministry of teaching and healing from a base in the Galilean village of Capernaum. Although Jesus did travel outside of lower Galilee, for example visiting Judea and Tyre and Sidon, he spent the lion’s share of his time in rural Galilee, the very area which Tiglath-pileser had crushed so devastatingly in 733/732 BC. According to the Gospels, Jesus taught and preached and did miracles throughout the region. It was there that he preached the Sermon on the Mount and did countless wonders. His impact in Galilee was seismic, with multitudes from all across Galilee, as well as surrounding areas like Judea and the Decapolis, flocking to him (Matt. 4:23–25).

  Yet, astonishingly, he was treated with contempt by many who should have known better. His own hometown of Nazareth rejected him and tried to kill him (Luke 4:29–30). Early in his Galilean ministry his own unbelieving siblings tried to seize him against his will (Mark 3:21). And, in the end, one of his own disciples betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver (14:10–22, 43–46). The religious leaders in Galilee and especially Jerusalem hated him and were eager to discredit and kill him. They denounced him as mad or demon-possessed. And eventually the Jewish Sanhedrin had him arrested and handed him over to the Roman authorities to be tried for fomenting revolutionary sentiment within the nation, forbidding the giving of tribute to the Roman emperor, and claiming to be the King of the Jews (Luke 23:2–3). By order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, Jesus was flogged and condemned to death, in fulfillment of his own repeated predictions (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34, 45). Pilate sentenced him to be crucified, which he was, along with two criminals. And so he died and was buried. . . .

  In light of what has been presented in the preceding chapters, any consideration of Jesus’s life must answer the question, Did he live up to his celestial billing? Did he fulfill what the Hebrew Scriptures an
d in particular Isaiah had prophesied concerning the Messiah?

  Isaiah 9:1–2 foretold that the Messiah would be metaphorically what the comet signaling his birth would be literally: a great light shining in the deep darkness. The prophet also claimed that the Messiah would glorify Galilee in particular by his presence and work. According to him, the Messiah would be divine in nature (“God with us” [7:14] and “Mighty God” [9:6]). At the same time, Isaiah made it clear that the execution of the divine plan would have a hidden aspect and not only would escape the notice of the people of Israel as a whole but also would offend them (8:14–15; cf. 6:9–10). Indeed Isaiah 53 disclosed that the Messiah would be rejected by his own and suffer and die as an atonement for sins. Nevertheless, he would ultimately reign over the earth (e.g., 11:4, 9–10).

  Matthew explicitly asserts that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 9:1–2 by his ministry in Galilee (Matt. 4:12–16).

  According to the Gospel of John, Jesus himself expressly claimed to be “the light of the world” shining in the darkness in fulfillment of Isaiah’s oracle (John 8:12; cf. 12:35).

  However, the Gospels also indicate that Jesus regularly made efforts to restrict the disclosure of his identity as the Messiah. The reason for Jesus’s reticence to go public regarding it is not difficult to explain. Most Jews in the first century AD had a strongly political conception of the Messiah—they expected him to be a human ruler who would overthrow the Roman government and establish a new world kingdom centered in Jerusalem—and the Roman authorities were well aware of this. Careless disclosure of the messianic claim would inevitably have stirred up misguided revolutionary hopes centered on Jesus, increasing crowd densities and provoking governmental intervention, and thus preventing Jesus from fulfilling his mission. Nevertheless, those who listened carefully to what he said and watched what he did were able to work out the fundamental claim Jesus was making about himself.

  According to Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus’s chief disciple Peter declared to him, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29), Jesus endorsed his judgment (v. 30) and privately took him, along with James and John, to the top of a mountain to give them a glimpse of his future messianic glory (9:1–8; cf. 2 Pet. 1:16–18).

  Jesus declared that the Hebrew Bible portrayed the Messiah as divine in nature. He strongly challenged the contemporary understanding of the Messiah as a mere mortal—since David, in Psalm 110:1, referred to the Messiah as distinct from God and yet as being “my Lord,” there could be no doubt that the Messiah was a distinct person of the Godhead (Mark 12:35–37).

  According to the Gospels, Jesus did great deeds that implied that he had authority over nature—for example, he calmed a storm, walked on water, and fed multitudes; over death—for example, he raised from the dead the daughter of a synagogue ruler and a young man from Nain; and over disease—for example, he restored the limbs of paralytics, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, and healed those with leprosy, epilepsy, dropsy, and hemorrhages.

  Moreover, Jesus had an extraordinary divine self-consciousness. According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he maintained that he possessed “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18–20a) and that he was Immanuel (“God with us”) (v. 20b). Furthermore, to substantiate his assertion that he shared the divine prerogative to forgive sins, he publicly healed a paralytic (Mark 2:1–12). Elsewhere Jesus strongly intimated that he was the unique Son of God (12:6–12) with a wholly unique relationship to God the Father (Matt. 11:27). John 8:56–58 reports that Jesus stated to unbelieving Jewish opponents that “before Abraham was, I am,” plainly claiming preexistence and indeed the divine name (Ex. 3:14) for himself. According to John, Jesus also proclaimed that he and the Father were “one,” prompting the Jews to try to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:30–33), and he accepted Thomas’s remarkable appellation, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28–29).

  At his trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus was asked straightforwardly whether he was “the Messiah, the Son of God,” and he responded, “I am,” and proceeded to declare that he would soon be seated at the right hand of God the Father and would eventually return to the earth on clouds (Mark 14:60–62; cf. Matt. 26:63–65; Luke 22:67–70). Jesus’s statement was rightly interpreted by the Jewish high priest as a claim to deity, and on this basis, without any evaluation of its truthfulness, the high priest called on the Sanhedrin to sentence him to death for blasphemy (Mark 14:63–64).

  Furthermore, when Jesus was executed, his death was far from ordinary. The Roman centurion overseeing the execution was so deeply moved by the circumstances of his death, particularly Jesus’s loud triumphant cry just before he breathed his last, that he exclaimed, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39).

  When Jesus was buried, his tomb was sealed and guarded by Roman soldiers (Matt. 27:57–66) and yet, two days later, this very tomb was found to be empty (Matt. 28:1–8; Luke 24:1–12, 22–24). Over the following weeks, many hundreds of people testified that they saw him in individual and/or group encounters (1 Cor. 15:3–7). At the end of this period, his closest disciples insisted that they had seen him ascend into heaven in a cloud, and that angels in attendance had pledged that he would return in the same manner (Acts 1:9–11).

  If we believe the testimony of the Gospels, therefore, Jesus certainly did live up to his celestial billing. In particular, what Isaiah prophesied concerning the Messiah came to fulfillment in and through him. Jesus was indeed Immanuel; he was indeed the metaphorical great light that shone in the deep darkness. The comet not only had taken Jesus’s part in a celestial drama, but had also by its extraordinary brightness revealed his glory.

  The Comet

  With respect to what happened to the comet after the Magi’s arrival at their destination, we simply do not know for sure. If it maintained the same brightness slope as it had around the time of its U-turn around the Sun, it would have remained potentially visible for many months thereafter (although it would have been below the horizon for a few weeks in March/April).4 According to our orbital elements, the comet would have gone on to spend the latter part of the spring and most of the summer in Aries the Ram5 before slowly returning to Pisces. But the Bible gives us no explicit indication of what happened with respect to the comet from the end of November of 6 BC onward, and comets are so variable in their rates of fading that it would be unwise to make any dogmatic pronouncements. Besides, whatever happened in the rest of the cometary apparition after the comet had stood over the house in Bethlehem is basically irrelevant. After all, the most magnificent comet in human history had announced that the Messiah was born, who he was, what he was destined to do, and where he was.6

  Will the comet soon return to the inner solar system? The slight ambiguity in the orbit, particularly its shape (or eccentricity), means that we cannot at this point be sure when, if ever, the comet will be back. If the comet has an eccentricity of 1.0, it is now 900 times farther away from the Sun than Earth is.7 However, the orbit may be less elongated (i.e., have an eccentricity of less than 1.0), in which case the comet might be closer to our part of the solar system than that. It is even possible that the comet is already well on its way back toward the Sun and may soon make a reappearance. If it does return, it will no doubt put on another majestic show for all humans, a display that will inevitably push every human spectator to reflect on the religious significance of what it did in 6 BC.

  What the Great Christ Comet did in 7–6 BC was extraordinary and merits wide telling. People of all disciplines—astronomers, theologians, historians, artists, etc.—must come to grips with its story. In an era when science is often viewed as the enemy of religion, the Christ Comet suggests that science may be the best friend of religion. In a period when the claims of Christ are commonly disregarded, the Star calls upon all to give his claims a fresh reappraisal. At a time when humans are so preoccupied with “the now,” this Comet of comets exhorts us to reflect on the past and the future, giving us perspective for the present. I
n a world where Creation’s wonders are often assigned to nothing other than random chance, the Magi’s Star prompts us to consider whether there is not in truth a Sovereign Creator and Governor of it all.

  Could there be a clearer example of God’s mastery over the Cosmos than the celestial events that marked the birth of Jesus? The comet’s size, shape, and chemical composition were all tailor-made for this occasion. Its orbit had its programmer’s fingerprints all over it. In fact, the plan for the messianic sign was already in motion at the point that the solar system came into existence, and the precise moment of the Messiah’s birth was firmly established then, guaranteed by the laws of physics. After all, the comet, the planets, and the Moon all had to be in their appointed locations within their orbits, as did Earth, for only then could the Sun, the stars, the constellations, and the meteoroids be in their proper positions. Moreover, Earth’s revolution had to be in perfect sync with the comet’s for this wonder to unfold. In addition, Earth’s atmosphere and weather had to cooperate fully. A different comet had to have a fragmentation event at one particular historical moment so that its meteoroids could be in place, at their ascending node, to give rise to the Hydrid meteor storm on the eve of Christ’s birth. The precession of the equinoxes (the slight wobble of Earth on its axis) played a key role in determining where within Virgo the cometary baby was located and where the radiant of the meteor storm was. Further, Earth’s historical rate of rotation had to be such that the meteor storm occurred over the Middle East.