To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. – Thomas Jefferson

“For myself, I must say, that having for many years made the evidences of Christianity the subject of close study,…It is indeed the Word of God.”  - Simon Greenleaf, Harvard Law
Professor Royall

The Feast of Trumpets – “Rosh HaShanah” or the “Head of the Year.”

2009 – 2012 Rosh HaShanah Beginning and Ending Dates

(Israeli time).

• Sunset September 18, 2009 – nightfall September 20, 2009
• Sunset September 8, 2010 – nightfall September 10, 2010
• Sunset September 28, 2011 – nightfall September 30, 2011
• Sunset September 16, 2012 – nightfall September 18, 2012

According to this website, the first visible sign of this September’s new moon will occur on September 21st, which would mark the traditional Biblical beginning of Rosh HaShanah. In other words,  this year’s traditional Rosh HaShanah would be from:

Sunset September 21, 2009 - nightfall September 23, 2009.

 There is going to be a conjuncition (alignment) of planets Mercury and Saturn on September 22 (right in the middle of the traditional Rosh HaShanah) which is also the first day of fall.  Early in the morning over North America, the planets Mercury and Saturn will appear in the sky only 0.3 degrees apart.    During this conjunction both the sun and moon will also be in this alignment for a brief time.

More information about Rosh HaShanah    - 

The shofar (trumpet pictured above) is blown to usher in the beginning of the civil year and to begin the Ten Days of Awe from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). This begins the TEN DAYS OF AWE and is a time of introspection and self-examination in anticipation of the trumpet sounds that will announce the Lord’s arrival. The Shabbat (The Jewish Sabbath) that occurs during the Day’s of Awe is known as Shabbat Shuvah (the Sabbath of Return) which happens on Saturday,  September 25, 2009.

Shabbat Shuvah

The first special Shabbat of the Jewish year–Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return –occurs between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; it receives its name from a verse in the day’s haftarah: “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have fallen because of your sin” (Hosea 14:2).

Some call the day Shabbat Teshuvah, the Sabbath of Repentance, because it is observed during the Ten Days of Repentance. The defining custom of this Shabbat is an admonitory sermon by the rabbi designed to inspire and awaken listeners to examine their deeds and return to God. The rabbi may also review the laws of Yom Kippur. Some communities add readings from Joel 2:15-27 and Micah 7:18-20 that elaborate the Yom Kippur themes of repentance and forgiveness. Joel focuses on purification and fasting by the people and Micah on God’s promise to forgive the people: “He will take us back in love; He will cover up our iniquities, You will hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).

“[W]ith respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age…” –Thomas Jefferson

I’m glad to say that nothing significant (that I’m aware of) happened on July 30 in connection to the Jewish remembrance day, Tisha B’Av.  The Venezuelans recalled their ambassador from Colombia again and there was a shoot-out in Africa but that’s about it.  So was I superstitious when I described my concerns about Tish B’Av which last year, this year and in 2010  total solar eclipses occur a before the Jewish observance? 

I’m interested in your comments regarding that question.

Here I am sitting at my computer and as I usually do check the world Seismic Monitor and have seen something I’ve never seen before.  I’m not sure if this is a glitch on the Seismic Monitor website, but for some reason they don’t show any earthquakes for today, July 28, 2009, anywhere in the world.   None. 

 July 30th begins the Jewish observance of Tisha B’Av or the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. (see my previous article).  Could the absence of earthquakes be the ‘quiet before the storm?’

Total Solar Eclipse and the Ninth of Av

It was on this day of the Hebrew Calendar in 586 BC that Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. It was also on this day in 70 AD that the second (Herod’s) Temple was destroyed, and on it goes.
August 4, 135 AD, the Bar Kochba revolt was put down by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. More than 100,000 Jews were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plowed under and later rebuilt as a pagan city to which Jews were forbidden to enter.
Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed, and many Jewish communities were destroyed.
July 25, 1290 [9 Av 5050] marked the first nation-wide rejection of Jews when the official decree expelling them from England was signed.
In 1492, [9 Av 5252] King Ferdinand of Spain issued the expulsion decree, setting Tish B’Av as the final date by which not a single Jew would be allowed to walk on Spanish soil.
August 6, 1555 [9 Av, 5315] Roman Jews were ordered into the ghetto district near the Tiber.
W.W. I broke out on [9 Av, 5674] August 1, 1914 when Germany declared war on Russia. German resentment from the war set the stage for the Holocaust. A total solar eclipse occurred on August 21st of that year. (This agrees with the theory that solar eclipses occurring within the proximity of Tish B’ Av effect gentile nations more than the Jews who base their calendar on Lunar cycles).
August 2, 1941 [9 Av 5701] Reinhardt Heydrich was ordered to carry out the “final solution” on European Jewry.
August 14, 2005 [9 Av 5765] 8,000 Jewish settlers were forcefully expelled from their homes in Gush Katif, the Southern Gaza strip.
That brings us up to the current trifecta of TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSES that occur around the 1st of Av on each of the year’s 2008, 2009 and 2010.
August 1, 2008 there was a total solar eclipse. On August 8, 2008 [9th of Av] Russia attacked Georgia.
This year, on July 22, 2009 (Today at this writing) a total solar eclipse will occur. It’s the only total Solar Eclipse of the year, anywhere on the globe. The 9th of Av happens about 8 days later. In our Gregorian calendar that translates to July 29th and 30th (since Hebrew days begin and end in the evening, its date straddles the two days on the Gregorian calendar). We’ll see what happens.
If something does occur, then we can expect another event in 2010 when a total solar eclipse repeats on July 11 (1st of Av) and see what happens on July 19 – 20 (9th of Av) of 2010.
What makes me think that these three solar eclipses are significant? Because this is the first time in over 5000 years of (Hebrew) history that they occur in such a pattern in conjunction with this austere Jewish remembrance.
One skeptic has already accused me of inferring that naturally occurring cosmological events determine events on earth. My answer is this: The order and magnitude of cosmological events is repeated throughout the Biblical record. The Magi, for example, knew of the birth of the Christ by observing ‘signs’ in the heavens. The mere motion of heavenly bodies does not in any way govern human events on the earth! I never said that it did; but I am saying that an all-wise, all knowing God has pre-determined their movements, like the intricate workings of a grand clock, set from the beginning of creation. God said that the sun, moon and stars were for signs (Hebrew: “oth” – meaning a signal, flag or warning) and seasons (Heb: “mo-ed” festivals, convocations, events). – Genesis 1:14
It’s God’s ‘alarm clock’ set in advance by His infinite foreknowledge untold centuries ago.  These ‘alarms’ are to alert us of coming events. As for me, I am unashamed in taking this unprecedented ‘trinity’ of total solar eclipses that precede Tish B’Av as God’s signal to prepare for a coming event. Personally, I hope that no catastrophe occurs and this year’s Tish B’Av will pass by unnoticed; but since I actually believe there is danger ahead to prepare for, wouldn’t it be irresponsible for me to keep silent?  God admonished the prophet Ezekiel:  “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.” – Ezekiel 3:17

Let me ask you this – Why does the Bible talk about things like,
“…there will be fearful sights and great signs…from heaven.” – Luke 21:11.
“He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth.” – Daniel 6:27? 
Interestingly however, the Bible also says this to believers, “…be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.” This shows a clear distinction between how the believers and non-believers face such events. Whatever our lot as believers, God has promised to be our Jehovah Jireh, the provider for all our need.
The Bible speaks of the sun being darkened and the moon turning blood red as ‘signs’ in both the Old and New Testaments. Isn’t that also a description of both solar and lunar eclipses?
From this moment you have six days to prepare. I would at least prepare with extra food and water available, to last at least a week up to a month. That is not too bad an idea in the world we live in anyway. Fueling up vehicles and propane containers (by July 27th ) as well is also prudent.
Flashlights, radios extra batteries, lanterns and candles etc. It’s not going to cost any more in the long run whether or not anything actually does happen, but you know the saying – “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That seems to be the most sensible attitude to have now since nobody knows what and where an event (if any) will happen, on this ‘Tish B’Av, July 29th – 30th.
We know the world we live in is becoming more dangerous. Israel has stated that they are not about allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. We know that Iran has been conducting experiments that seem to indicate they are preparing to initiate an EMP* attack. Not to mention North Korea, Venezuela and Myanmar who’ve been radically building up their militaries  while denouncing the the US. 
Does the track of the visible eclipse determine which nations will be affected?  I don’t know if that’s the case but for reference, last year’s eclipse overshadowed Northern Canada, Greenland, Siberia (Russia), Mongolia, and China. Russia invaded Georgia on Tish B’Av, August 8-9, 2008.
This year it overshadows India, Nepal, China and the Central Pacific.
In 2010 it overshadows the South Pacific, Easter Is., Chile and Argentina.
Whatever the future holds, is it written in the sky?

But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.

____________________

*    A Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

“If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure,” the report warned.

“The first indication [of such an attack] would be that the power would go out, and some, but not all, the telecommunications would go out. We would not physically feel anything in our bodies,” (William R.) Graham said.

As electric power, water and gas delivery systems failed, there would be “truly massive traffic jams,” Graham added, since modern automobiles and signaling systems all depend on sophisticated electronics that would be disabled by the EMP wave.

“So you would be walking. You wouldn’t be driving at that point,” Graham said. “And it wouldn’t do any good to call the maintenance or repair people because they wouldn’t be able to get there, even if you could get through to them.”

The food distribution system also would grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline. Even warehouses equipped with backup diesel generators would fail, because “we wouldn’t be able to pump the fuel into the trucks and get the trucks to the warehouses,” Graham said.

The United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources, he said.

“Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,” Graham said.

America would begin to resemble the 2002 TV series, “Jeremiah,” which depicts a world bereft of law, infrastructure, and memory.

In the TV series, an unspecified virus wipes out the entire adult population of the planet. In an EMP attack, the casualties would be caused by our almost total dependence on technology for everything from food and water, to hospital care.

Within a week or two of the attack, people would start dying, Graham says.

“People in hospitals would be dying faster than that, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

America would be reduced to a core of around 30 million people — about the number that existed in the decades after America’s independence from Great Britain.

The modern electronic economy would shut down, and America would most likely revert to “an earlier economy based on barter,” the EMP commission’s report on Critical National Infrastructure concluded earlier this year.

In his recent congressional testimony, Graham revealed that Iranian military journals, translated by the CIA at his commission’s request, “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States.”

Furthermore, if Iran launched its attack from a cargo ship plying the commercial sea lanes off the East coast — a scenario that appears to have been tested during the Caspian Sea tests — U.S. investigators might never determine who was behind the attack. Because of the limits of nuclear forensic technology, it could take months. And to disguise their traces, the Iranians could simply decide to sink the ship that had been used to launch it, Graham said.

Several participants in last weekend’s conference in Dearborn, Mich., hosted by the conservative Claremont Institute argued that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was thinking about an EMP attack when he opined that “a world without America is conceivable.”

In May 2007, then Undersecretary of State John Rood told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States by 2015.

But Iran could put a Scud missile on board a cargo ship and launch from the commercial sea lanes off America’s coasts well before then.

The only thing Iran is lacking for an effective EMP attack is a nuclear warhead, and no one knows with any certainty when that will occur. The latest U.S. intelligence estimate states that Iran could acquire the fissile material for a nuclear weapon as early as 2009, or as late as 2015, or possibly later.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first detailed the “Scud-in-a-bucket” threat during a briefing in Huntsville, Ala., on Aug. 18, 2004.

While not explicitly naming Iran, Rumsfeld revealed that “one of the nations in the Middle East had launched a ballistic missile from a cargo vessel. They had taken a short-range, probably Scud missile, put it on a transporter-erector launcher, lowered it in, taken the vessel out into the water, peeled back the top, erected it, fired it, lowered it, and covered it up. And the ship that they used was using a radar and electronic equipment that was no different than 50, 60, 100 other ships operating in the immediate area.”

Iran’s first test of a ship-launched Scud missile occurred in spring 1998, and was mentioned several months later in veiled terms by the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, a blue-ribbon panel also known as the Rumsfeld Commission.

I was the first reporter to mention the Iran sea-launched missile test in an article appearing in the Washington Times in May 1999.

Intelligence reports on the launch were “well known to the White House but have not been disseminated to the appropriate congressional committees,” I wrote. Such a missile “could be used in a devastating stealth attack against the United States or Israel for which the United States has no known or planned defense.”

Few experts believe that Iran can be deterred from launching such an attack by the threat of massive retaliation against Iran. They point to a December 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who mulled the possibility of Israeli retaliation after an Iranian nuclear strike.

“The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [the same] against the Islamic only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable,” Rafsanjani said at the time.

Rep. Trent Franks, R, Ariz., plans to introduce legislation next week that would require the Pentagon to lay the groundwork for an eventual military strike against Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and EMP capability.

“An EMP attack on America would send us back to the horse and buggy era — without the horse and buggy,” he told the Claremont Institute conference on Saturday. “If you’re a terrorist, this is your ultimate goal, your ultimate asymmetric weapon.”

Noting Iran’s recent sea-launched and mid-flight warhead detonation tests, Rep. Franks concluded, “They could do it — either directly or anonymously by putting some freighter out there on the ocean.”

The only possible deterrent against Iran is the prospect of failure, Dr. Graham and other experts agreed. And the only way the United States could credibly threaten an Iranian missile strike would be to deploy effective national missile defenses.

“It’s well known that people don’t go on a diet until they’ve had a heart attack,” said Claremont Institute president Brian T. Kennedy. “And we as a nation are having a heart attack” when it comes to the threat of an EMP attack from Iran.

“As of today, we have no defense against such an attack. We need space-based missile defenses to protect against an EMP attack,” he told Newsmax.

Rep. Franks said he remains surprised at how partisan the subject of space-based missile defenses remain. “Nuclear missiles don’t discriminate on party lines when they land,” he said.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a long-standing champion of missile defense, told the Claremont conference on Friday that Sen. Obama has opposed missile defense tooth and nail and as president would cut funding for these programs dramatically.

“Senator Obama has been quoted as saying, ‘I don’t agree with a missile defense system,’ and that we can cut $10 billion of the research out — never mind, as I say, that the entire budget is $9.6 billion, or $9.3 billion,” Kyl said.

Like Franks, Kyl believes that the only way to eventually deter Iran from launching an EMP attack on the United States is to deploy robust missile defense systems, including space-based interceptors.

The United States “needs a missile defense that is so strong, in all the different phases we need to defend against . . . that countries will decide it’s not worth coming up against us,” Kyl said.

“That’s one of the things that defeated the Soviet Union. That’s one of the ways we can deal with these rogue states . . . and also the way that we can keep countries that are not enemies today, but are potential enemies, from developing capabilities to challenge us. “