Title: What to Do about a Falling Star Problem

Topic: Second Coming

Summary: We look at stars from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, and see how unstarlike they sometimes are. Stars in Scripture are subject to (1) darkening, and (2) falling, even to the earth. What does this mean?

Use the reference links below to follow along in the Bible as you watch.

References:
Genesis 1:14; 15:5; 37:9
Numbers 24:17
Deuteronomy 1:10; 10:22; 28:62
Job 9:7
Ecclesiastes 12:2
Isaiah 13:10
Joel 2:10; 3:15
Genesis 37:9-10
Daniel 8:10
Job 9:2-9; 15:15; 25:4-6; 38:1-7
Psalms 148:1-3
Ecclesiastes 12:1-2
Isaiah 13:9-10
Ezekiel 32:7-8
Daniel 8:3; 12:3
Joel 2:10, 31; 3:15
Matthew 2:2, 9-10; 24:29
Mark 13:25
Luke 21:25
1 Corinthians 15:41
Revelation 8:12
Matthew 24:29
Mark 13:25
Revelation 6:13; 8:10; 9:1; 12:4; 1:16, 20; 2:1; 3:1; 6:13; 8:10; 9:1; 12:1, 4; 22:16

719. It is said that the Sensual falsifies and adulterates the truths of the Word, but it is important to know how this can falsify and adulterate the truths of the Word; for those who do not know how this is done, and the nature of the Word, might suppose that because the truths of the Word are truths, and exist in the sense of its letter, that they cannot become falsities. An example from nature will serve to illustrate this and make it clear to the natural man. It appears to the eye as though the sun were carried round the earth every day, and also once every year, and it is therefore said in the Word that the sun rises and sets, and causes day, noon, evening, and night, also the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and thus days and years, and yet the sun remains unmoved, while the earth revolves daily, and is carried round the sun yearly; the progression of the sun is therefore merely an appearance, and thus a fallacy. When therefore the truth is known and received that it is not the sun but the earth that moves, then both become true, namely, that the sun remains immovable in the centre of its own system, and that it has its progression; that it remains immovable is true for the rational man, and that it has its progression is true for the sensual, thus both are true, actually for the rational, and apparently for the sensual man. Yet if the rational man does not throw light on that phenomenon, then the false idea is believed that the sun actually progresses, and thus the truth that not the sun but the earth has a motion of its own is falsified, but it is not falsified when the rational man throws light upon the matter. The case is similar with every particular of the Word in the sense of its letter, since this sense, being the ultimate, is natural, and is adapted to the apprehension of the sensual man, thus of children and of the simple; therefore most things in that sense are appearances of truth, and unless these are perceived from a spiritual, that is to say, from an enlightened understanding, they become falsities, for they are then believed to be actually and not merely in appearance true. But it is otherwise when they are perceived at the same time understandingly and spiritually, for then all things of the Word become true, in the genuine sense actually true, and in the sense of the letter apparently true, as stated above concerning the sun. From these things it is evident how innumerable are the things in the Word that are falsified and adulterated - as that God tempts, that He is angry, that He does evil, that He casts into hell - similarly, that at the day of the Last Judgment the Lord will come in the clouds of heaven, that then the sun and the moon will withdraw their light, and that the stars will fall from heaven. Also that the world and the universe will perish, and a new creation of all things take place; besides other things of a similar kind, which are truths of the sense of the letter of the Word, but which become falsities if they are not at the same time seen from an enlightened understanding. But in what follows it shall be explained how faith alone, which is faith separated from charity, falsifies all things of the Word.