The Third Trumpet: Wormwood
"The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter." (Revelation 8:10,11 - New International Version)
Verses ten and eleven describe a great star named Wormwood. This star could be a star, a meteor or a comet. The one which best fits the description would be a comet. There is no record of a comet of significant size hitting the earth, so we have no historical event upon which to understand what might occur.
In his book, Tibulation Triad (Bogard Press, 1983, page 67), Tom McElmurry writes about what might happen if a comet hits the earth:
The main parts of a comet are the tail, the nucleus, and the coma. The nucleus is made up of dust, frozen hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and cyanogen. . . . Cyanogen [is] a poisonous gas that liquefies at minus 21 degrees centigrade. Cyanogen may be thought of as the parent substance of cyanides of all types. . . . Our most recent spectrographical observations of a comet, the comet Kohoutek, at radio wavelengths revealed the presence of methyl cyanide and hydrogen cyanide. “Wormwood” means “undrinkable” - and I believe that the chemical composition of a comet is capable of generating sufficient poison into the earth's water supply to kill the “many men” of Revelation 8:11.
Verses ten and eleven describe a great star named Wormwood. This star could be a star, a meteor or a comet. The one which best fits the description would be a comet. There is no record of a comet of significant size hitting the earth, so we have no historical event upon which to understand what might occur.
In his book, Tibulation Triad (Bogard Press, 1983, page 67), Tom McElmurry writes about what might happen if a comet hits the earth:
The main parts of a comet are the tail, the nucleus, and the coma. The nucleus is made up of dust, frozen hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and cyanogen. . . . Cyanogen [is] a poisonous gas that liquefies at minus 21 degrees centigrade. Cyanogen may be thought of as the parent substance of cyanides of all types. . . . Our most recent spectrographical observations of a comet, the comet Kohoutek, at radio wavelengths revealed the presence of methyl cyanide and hydrogen cyanide. “Wormwood” means “undrinkable” - and I believe that the chemical composition of a comet is capable of generating sufficient poison into the earth's water supply to kill the “many men” of Revelation 8:11.
posted by David Frank Wilson | 6:27 AM
6 Comments:
Revelation 8:10-11 says “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” This may seem pretty vague up front, but let’s examine it a little closer. First, let’s start with the name of the star, “Wormwood”. Did you ever hear about Chernobyl? Chernobyl was a Russian city that was destroyed by a nuclear reactor malfunctioning. The result was a nuclear meltdown, which destroyed the town and poisoned the water. Chernobyl is Russian, and it can be translated into English. The English translation of “Chernobyl” is Wormwood. ”...a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water”. Remember, when John wrote this book, there was no such thing as a nuclear bomb. If you’ve ever seen one, “a great star, blazing like a torch” is a very accurate description of what it looks like. “...the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” Bitter water means bad water. In the case of Chernobyl, the "bitter water" was water tainted with nuclear poisoning. If you drink “bitter water", you will die.
Well, that's all for now. I hope this helps!
-Nathan
I have heard this before. One problem is that Chernobyl means "black grass" not wormwood. Another problem is that the Chernobyl disaster was not caused by a bomb falling from the sky, but by a nuclear reactor failure. Also, this was a local event. John describes an international event.
I've alwasy been under the impression that Chernobyl translated to Wormwood. There are many different ways to translate words into any language. I don't know Russian, so I'm just going off of what I've heard and read.
What I was getting at with Wormwood, though, was an explanation of "bitter water". I'm not saying Chernobyl was the prophecy fulfilled, I'm just saying it may be another piece of the puzzle that God has revealed to us. If "Wormwood" is indeed an accurate translation of Chernobyl, this prophesy could be talking about possible nuclear warfare. It's suspected that if there ever is a World War 3 (I personally believe there will be one during the Tribulation), nuclear weapons will be a huge part of it. The destruction Chernobyl could be a foreshadow to the prediction the Bible has made.
I also think that Nuclear weapons will be used during the Tribulation. You may be right that this passage is describing such an event, but I do not think so. However, in my post on Revelation 9:17-19, "Second Woe: Battle" from March 8, 2006, I give my reasons for thinking that John is describing the use of Nuclear weapons when the sixth trumpet sounds.
Very interesting. Revelation is such a tough book to understand, as nearly all of it is like the other prophecies in the Bible: impossible to translate until the event has occurred. The purpose of the prophecies in the Bible in the Bible isn't to tell the future, but to serve as evidence to the Bible's legitimacy. During the tribulation after the prophecies of Revelation begin to come true, people will start to see that there may be something to the Bible due to the fact that it predicted events that just happened recently. Anyways, your interpretation of the second woe was very interesting and sounded pretty accurate. I looked some more at this article, and the comet interpretation also sounds reasonable. I do recall hearing a couple months ago that a monster comet was spotted and was headed straight for Earth. Some scientists jokingly named it "Wormwood". It makes you wonder...
The word Chernobyl means WORMWOOD.
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