Following the flyby of late October, 1080 B.C. (the Philistine Phalanx), just discussed, there must have been a flyby in March of 1025 B.C. according to our model. Unless the following catastrophic scene relates to 1025 B.C., there is no account to be found. The model indicates that the flyby of 1025 B.C. should have been at night (Palestine Time) and on the opposite side of the planet. It also should have been among the more distant of the mid-March flybys, perhaps 60,000 miles. Either of these reasons may suffice for an explanation as to why it does not appear in the Scripture.

There seem to be three descriptions in Scripture of the flyby of 972 B.C., technically four. One is given twice. The following celestial scenario is found in Psalm 18:7-15. The authorship of this Psalm is ascribed to David. If so, David must have composed it in the last year, or next to the last year of his life, in 972 B.C. or in 971 B.C. Since this description is also found in II Samuel 22:8-16, we conclude it must be a Psalm of more than average import. Some call this the Great Psalm.

Account # 1

Then the earth shook and trembled;
the foundations of heaven moved and shook,
because he was wroth.

There went up a smoke out of his nostrils,
and fire out of his mouth devoured:
coals were kindled by it.

He bowed the heavens also, and came down;
and darkness was under his feet.

And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly:
and he was seen upon the wings of the wind.

And he made darkness pavilions round about him,
dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.

Through the brightness before him
were coals of fire kindled.

The Lord thundered from heaven,
and the most High uttered his voice.

And he sent out arrows, and scattered them;
lightning, and discomfited them.

And the channels of the sea appeared,
the foundations of the world were discovered ...
at the blast of the breath of his nostrils ...

II Samuel 22:8-16 and Psalm 18:7-15

The "cherub" or angel in this passage was discussed in Chapter II as one of the forms of Mars in the Old Testament. A "cherub" was to the Hebrews an angel of destruction. In modern parlance, the word has taken quite a different connotation. As the fifteen subsequent categories of observations are made about the flyby of 972 B.C., having a familiarity with this scenario will contribute to the over all understanding.

The next two descriptions (along with the previous one) comprise a literary and an astronomical gold mine. For analysis these are a triad of "mother lodes" out of which rich veins of golden perspectives emanate. This triad comprises one of the richest concise literary accounts of catastrophism found in any language, be that language Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Incan, Mayan, Persian, Punic (Phoenician), Roman or whatever the alphabet of origin. The eye-witness aspect of these next two accounts must not be under-estimated.

Account # 2

And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning EVEN TO THE TIME APPOINTED: and there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men.

And when THE ANGEL STRETCHED OUT HIS HAND upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough: stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing place of Araunah the Jebusite.
II Samuel 24:14-17 (Caps ours)

Account # 3

So the Lord sent A PESTILENCE upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, "It is enough, stay now thine hand." And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David LIFTED UP HIS EYES, AND SAW THE ANGEL OF THE LORD STAND BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE HEAVEN, HAVING A DRAWN SWORD IN HIS HAND STRETCHED OUT OVER JERUSALEM. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
I Chronicles 21:14-16 (Caps ours)

Clues abound in these two magnificent eye-witness accounts of the flyby scene, as they also do in Psalm 18, which may or may not be an eye-witness account. It is presumed that these two eye-witness accounts are by two different persons. Perhaps one of those two sources was the prophet Gad. Solomon, in his late twenties at the time, is a possibility as a reporter or editor. From these two flyby accounts, no less than fifteen categories of information can be sifted and sorted out.

OBSERVATION-A: THE APPARENT NEED FORA CENSUS. By 973 B.C., the land was already filled with apprehension. Jupiter was in its 9th cycle since the Philistine Phalanx, and it was next door in the zodiac to Cancer. It was the 107th year since the previous October flyby. Another destructive flyby was scheduled within a year. There were apprehensions. There were questions. Would the flyby occur during the daytime or the nighttime? Would the flyby discharge on cities such as Jerusalem? Would deadly shock waves radiate out from the site of striking lightning? Would earthquakes level many of the structures of Jerusalem? Would there be renewed volcanism? Would there be out-of-control prairie fires ravaging croplands and orchards? How many people would be killed during the pestilence? The questions that David and his cabinet were asking concerned the severity of the coming destruction rather than whether or not it would come.

To one of these questions, a human answer could be engineered. That question concerned the expected casualty count. There were two possible solutions. One was to unpile collapsed buildings and count dead bodies, but such a procedure would not allow for persons vaporized directly at the spot of celestial discharges, nor would it allow for bodies missed. The other and easier solution was to take two roll calls, or censuses, one before the flyby and one following it. With the exception of some who might die from natural causes, a simple subtraction of the second list from the first list would indicate the general extent of the casualties in each district, in each community and in each town. When totaled, this procedure would provide a composite sum for the whole land.

In II Samuel 24:1, it is reported that David did authorize a national census, and furthermore his action was viewed as a sin. Why it was regarded as a sin isn't stated, but it is implied that such reflected a lack of faith on David's part. Whether this is the correct interpretation or not, a census was taken before the celestial flyby. It probably required several months to organize and to complete. It is implicit that there must have been in fact two censuses taken, one before and one after the flyby, because there was a totaling of the casualty counts from throughout the land. There was no criticism in Scripture of the second census.

As a consequence of David's sin as leader of the nation, Gad (the prophet) advised David that he had three choices in his punishment.

• Three years of famine.
• Three months of military defeat by his enemies.
• Three days of pestilence from on high.

See I Chronicles 21:11-12. The Lord, in His foreknowledge, no doubt realized that David would choose that punishment which was coming anyhow, the pestilential flyby. It approached, and like the train, it was on schedule.

OBSERVATION-B: THE SECOND ROLL CALL AFTER THE FLYBY. After the pestilence passed over, a second roll call was taken to count the survivors. By comparing census lists, it was found that there were 70,000 who had been killed. BUT, traditionally only men over the age of 20 would have been counted in either the first or the second census. Comparable numbers of women (60,000) and children and youths under 20 (100,000) can be presumed as casualties also. This is a total of over 200,000.

The census extended to all 12 provinces of Israel. It was from Dan (in the far north) to Beersheba (in the arid south). A Belgian counterpart is from Ostend on the North Sea to the Ardennes in the extreme east of Belguim. The casualties occurred throughout the land, not in just one or two cities, communities or provinces.

What was the population of Israel (including all 12 tribes) at that time? It was probably between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000, conservatively speaking. A casualty total of 250,000 out of 4,000,000 is 6¼%. One can thus roughly estimate the casualty rate as having been between 5% and 7% throughout the land. By comparison, if a catastrophe hit the United States and produced 15 million fatalities (not including the injured) in a 36 or 48 hour period, such would be recorded in the annals of American history as a dreadful fact even if later historians did not understand the nature of it. So it was with Israel in 972 B.C.

OBSERVATION-C: THE CYCLIC TIMING. In our citation from II Samuel 24, there was a capitalization of the phrase "even to the time appointed." This phrase is much like the phrase in The Epic of Gilgamesh, "the fixed time arrived." (English translators chose the word "fixed" on both occasions.) To a Planetary Catastrophist, there is little doubt that the ancients were aware of the cyclicism of ancient catastrophes, even though their methods might have varied.

In that era, Jupiter was in a precise 12:1 orbital resonance with the Earth, which means it traversed one-twelfth of the celestial circuit each year. Very conveniently, the Sumerians or their predecessors arranged the zodiac (the celestial circuit of the fixed stars) into twelve regions, one region for each year of Jupiter. In our sequel, we will present our research which will reveal how we know that the ancient catastrophic cyclicism was 108 years. It will be of a technical nature.¹

It is known that the ancients were interested in tracking the various planets in their journeys around the zodiac. Since 108 years (the catastrophic cycle) is divided by twelve equals nine, it follows necessarily that every 9th cycle meant a celestial upheaval. Also, we know that Jupiter was in Cancer (the crab) during the catastrophic October flybys, as it was in Capricorn during the catastrophic mid-March flybys. Therefore, it follows that Jupiter could have served as a silvery celestial clock in its 12-year orbit. We speculate that "the fixed time" for the year was when Jupiter arrived in Cancer for the ninth time. In addition, we know that, within the calendric year, it was the month of October or Marchesvan (Mars' month). From the Celtics and their Samhain (Halloween), and from the Romans and their armilustrium, and from the Book of Genesis, which cites The Flood as occurring on the 17th day of the 2nd month, we observe that the autumn catastrophic day was in late October. The 17th day of Marchesvan in the Hebrew calendar is our 24th of October. Such was the date every 108 years when the citizens of Palestine "buttoned up" and perhaps stocked their caves, root cellars or their fox holes.

OBSERVATION-D: THE CALENDRIC TIMING. Our model indicates that catastrophes occurred either in mid-March or in late October, and on anniversaries of earlier flybys only. There is some indication here of an autumn flyby. Scripture refers to the "threshingplace" of Araunah (or Ornan), a Jebusite farmer. Both wheat and barley stalks in mid-March are only ankle high and green. These two grains typically were harvested in late May or early June. By harvesting, we mean the stalks were cut and gathered in bunches. Later, winnowing and threshing would occur, even up into the late autumn.² The threshing activity is a hint of this flyby being autumnal.

OBSERVATION-E: THE THREE-DAY DURATION OF THE PESTILENCE. In I Chronicles 21:11, the duration of the "pestilence" was cited as three days. This need not mean a full 72 hours. It may mean, in the thinking of the ancients, one full day and fractions of the day on either side, which would comprise 3 days to them. We identify Mars with the Angel of the Lord, and in its catastrophic orbit as sketched in Figure 1, Mars had a certain velocity (as did the planet Earth). Also if their orbits crossed, there was an angle formed by those two orbital lines.

Figure 14 (like Figure 9 in Chapter IV) illustrates our team analysis of the trajectory of Mars, with Deimos and Phobos in its ancient, catastrophic orbit. The velocity of Mars varied, being more rapid toward perihelion and being slower toward aphelion. When Mars was crossing the 92.1 million- mile region from the Sun, its velocity was between 77,000 and 78,000 m.p.h. The Earth's velocity was close to 67,000 m.p.h. Thus Mars was about 11,000 m.p.h. faster.

Our research team, led in this phase by Ron Hatch, has determined that the angle formed by the orbits was 19°. This should be considered accurate within 1°. By combining the differing velocities and the different trajectory angles, it turns out that Mars approached the Earth during late October and during mid-March at a rate of about 27,000 m.p.h. This translates into about 650,000 miles per day. Figure 14 illustrates this velocity on a map with a half million-mile scale.

From modern astronomy, the diameters of the Earth, the Moon and Mars are known. Those diameters are 7900 miles, 2170 miles and 4200 miles respectively. In addition it is known that Mars reflects 16% of the sunlight it receives (its albedo) compared to only 7% for the darker surface of the Moon. In addition, it is known that the orbit of the Moon averages 239,000 miles, which can be rounded to 240,000 miles for most purposes.

From this data, we can understand that the approaching Mars reflected 9 or 10 times as much sunlight as the Moon at 240,000 miles, the lunar orbit, if they were in the same phase (full moon or a comparable crescent). Again, if they were in the same phase, Mars-shine would equal Moon's glow when Mars was at 600,000 miles, both coming and going. By dividing 1200,000 miles (the distance for which Mars-shine exceeded the Moons luminosity) by 27,000 m.p.h., that time period of greater Mars-shine is estimated at 44 hours.

By further analysis, if it is assumed that the time when the two planets were the closest (the perigee) was at 10:00 a.m. on October 24th, it follows that the time when Mars-shine became brighter than the glow of the Moon (assuming comparable crescents) began about noon of October 23. It continued through mid-morning of October 25, one full day and fractions of two others. There is no doubt that the ancient Hebrews (among others) compared the brightness of the two bodies, Mars with a 4200-mile diameter and the Moon's of 2,160.

By the same line of reasoning, the brighter disc of Mars looked as big in diameter as the Moon at 470,000 miles distant. Mars looked bigger than the Moon for about 36 hours. This would have been from 8:00 p.m. on the evening of October 23 until 4:00 a.m. on October 25. The significant earthquakes and the sweeping of the Sword of the Lord (the flux tube) were both limited to 7 or 8 hours, which would have been from 6:00 a.m. of October 24th until 2:00 p.m. of the same day. We have ascertained that the "Destructive Cherub" possessed (1) a gravitational field, (2) a planetary magnetic field, (3) rotation like a generator and (4) reflection. Further, the time period of the destructive flyby given in I Chronicles is based on the visual reflection, three days (including fractional days) and was not based on the timing of the earthquake duration or the duration of the flux tube, the Sword of the Lord.

OBSERVATION-F: THE DIRECTION OF THE SWORD OF THE LORD. David and his cabinet looked and did see the oncoming danger in the form of the cherub or angel. It is recorded exactly which direction the entourage looked. It was not north toward the Hittites and the Assyrians. It was not south toward Egypt. It was not west; toward Greece. It was primarily UP. "David lifted up his eyes. He saw the angel of the Lord standing between the Earth and heaven." Earlier, it was reported by Apollodorus that Typhon was observed similarly by the sea-going Greeks, "standing on the sea," amid celestial scenery with his hair brushing the stars. The Sword of the Lord is apparently the same phenomenon the Greeks called Typhon, and this dual phenomenon is very similar to the Io-Jupiter flux tube of our time.

The degree of fear displayed by the Hebrews to the Sword of the Lord and by the Greeks to Typhon was comparable. (From Typhon comes our modern English word, "typhoon.") Since the Earth rotates on a west-to-east direction, that direction which David looked to see the Sword of the Lord was upward modified by eastward. Furthermore, the direction which the Sword of the Lord progressed (east-to-west) was logically the opposite of the Earth's west-to-east rotation.

OBSERVATION-G: THE DAYTIME FLYBY. Our Seattle research team has done work in some depth on this model. Even as Hatch led in the research in discovering the cyclicism, so it is that Loren Steinhauer assisted by having created a computer model of the catastrophic orbit of Mars. What was learned was that if Mars were to make a nightside flyby, the perturbations (or pulls or yanks) on Mars would be reversed, and with that reversal, the catastrophic orbit would unravel rapidly into a non-resonant, more circular orbit. Thus, in a computer program of the catastrophic orbit of Mars, it is seen as essential that Mars make a sunward side flyby on each and every occasion if there are to be successive, later catastrophes. The text indicates indeed that this was a sunward side flyby. Furthermore, a broader review of a succession of October catastrophes reveals that all of those which are recorded in the Bible and fall into the October pattern were daytime flybys, whereas all of those recorded as March flybys or passovers were at nighttime for citizens of Palestine and for those of the entire Eastern Hemisphere.

Yet another feature of this mid-morning flyby is the nature of the torque which Mars apparently put on the Earth's spin axis, and the direction of any crustal skidding which occurred. In both cases (spin axis precession and crustal skidding), for daytime flybys as reported from Palestine's longitude, such relocation of the North Pole as might occur will be in the direction toward Alaska and away from Norway and Eastern Europe and Palestine. Palestine will shift slightly closer to the equator, and slightly closer to the heart of the dry belt, the so-called "horse latitudes" where deserts predominate on the westerly side of all continents.

This geometry was a repeat of the Long Day of Joshua geometry, although the passover seems to have been not as close, perhaps in the range of 40,000 to 50,000 miles rather than the 27,000 miles of the "L.D.J." It was also a repeat of the geometry of the Sisera Celestial Centennial and the Philistine Phalanx flyby, 1296 B.C. and 1080 B.C. respectively. This sweep or sequence of observations indicates that the timing of the Mars flyby was rather precise, varying in timing by one to three hours rather than by a day or two.

OBSERVATION-H: THE ANGEL OF THE LORD (seen between heaven and Earth.) The Book of I Chronicles (21:16) records David as seeing the angel. II Samuel 24 confirms this,and Psalm 18 supports the same.

In Hebrew, "angel" is mal'ak, or messenger, a divine dispatcher of judgment. In Psalm 18, "cherub" is keruwb; our sources give the derivation of this word as "uncertain." However, ruwb (a component) is a word containing such meanings as controversy, adversary, debate, contention and strife or striving. Our theory suggests on October 24, 1972 B.C., the two gravitational fields of Mars and the Earth indeed were in strife, in contention (for the satellites of Mars among other things), and were in an adversarial or competitive posture. Similar things could be said about the two planetary magnetic fields as they clashed. In our view, clashing magnetic fields and competing gravitational fields were characteristics of not just one, but of every flyby as described in the Old Testament.

OBSERVATION-I: THE DRAWN SWORD. In Hebrew, "drawn" is from shalaph, a prime root meaning to pull out, to pull up, to pull off, or to draw forth. "Sword" is chereb. The verb chareb means to desolate, to destroy, to lay waste. To this writer it seems apparent that these words are catastrophic and hemispheric words more than they are "cutting" or "piercing" words. In the written accounts, such words seem to have been reserved for the once-or-twice in a lifetime scenes of broadside death and destruction. If Mars was at 40,000 miles (at its closest), the Sword of the Lord, at its brightest and shortest, was 125,000 miles long (40,000 miles times Pi.) Such was a very handsome-sized (and deadly) scimitar indeed. Furthermore it glistened.

OBSERVATION-J: THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE SWORD. This electrical flux tube of charged particles and ions was resplendent at night, in competition with the Moon. But it also was resplendent in the middle of the day, when the prominence of even a full moon fades badly. We have it from two eye-witness accounts that the Sword of the Lord was sufficiently bright to compete with the Sun during midday.

In 1979, the lo-Jupiter flux tube, a splotchy aurora, was photographed for some 13,000 miles of its length. Its brightness has been estimated at 40,000 Rayleighs in visible wave lengths of light and at 60,000 Rayleighs in the ultra violet ranges.³ It is difficult to estimate the brightness of the Sword of the Lord or the Silver Bowstring of Apollo Shootafar, except to suggest luminosity somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 Rayleighs. Its nighttime resplendence must have been dazzling indeed and well beyond any glitter Hollywood could possibly contrive or imagine.

OBSERVATION-K: THE GEOGRAPHICAL RANGE OF DESTRUCTION. Casualty lists came in from each of the 12 provinces, or tribal counties. Both of the editors of II Samuel and I Chronicles clearly were Judeans, probably citizens of Jerusalem. Their geographical horizon was limited to their political horizon, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south. From our general analysis, we project that this pestilence was hemispheric in its geographical spread, but the communications system of these authors only included the 12 tribal counties.

In Chapter VI, we shall see that Amos emerged, suddenly and dramatically, at the court of King Jeroboam, an idolatrous monarch of the Northern Kingdom, in the year 758 B.C. He announced that the coming flyby of Mars would be two years hence (in 756 B.C.). It would bring fire, which would fall upon every one of the capital cities of the 7 or 8 nations surrounding Palestine, including the capital cities of Samaria and Jerusalem. In the pronouncements, we see two things. First there is the wider geographical horizon of Amos, a horizon which is region-wide rather than nation-wide. Second there was the meeting of astronomy, geography, history and, in that case, government. Once again, in 756 B.c. as in 864 B.C. and as in 972 B.C, the scope was hemispheric, the Eastern Hemisphere receiving the brunt in each case.

OBSERVATION-L: THE RELATED TERMS "PESTILENCE" AND PLAGUE." Pestilence comes from the Hebrew word, deber, which is derived from the verb dabar, meaning to destroy. "Plague" comes from maggephah which is wholesale slaughter. It is derived from the verb magaph, which means to beat, to slay, to dash, to smite, to strike, to inflict, or to gore. The use of the prefix "ma" suggests it was a great or widespread smiting rather than an individual event of violence, such as a stabbing. "Ma" has been seen before in Ma ayish and Me owr, words which describe the bad planet or the destructive planet. "Ma" also appears in Marchesvan, roughly the Hebrew month of October.

Ours is the scientific age. It is also (lamentably) a uniformitarian age in thinking. Since 20th century Americans live in an age of understanding epidemics to be widespread and of a viral or bacterial nature, there is a tendency among modern readers to equate "pestilence" with an epidemic of widespread extent such as small pox, bubonic plague, cholera or typhoid fever. Such, to the modern mind, are "pestilences." However, there was no bacterial, no viral, no insect and no biological meaning to those Hebrew words. "Pestilence" referred to sudden, mass destruction of celestial origin which occurred about once per century. The scope, as indicated earlier, was regional/hemispheric, that is, semi-global.

The Greeks and even the early Romans perceived some of their heroes as being conceived or born during catastrophic conditions. Hercules was one, and Romulus was another. The grandsons of the pioneers of Rome liked to tell of the time of the founding of Rome (750 B.C.) when Rhea Silvia (a daughter of an Etruscan chief) was raped by one no less than Mars. That rape produced a pair of twins, Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Those grandsons of the Pioneers embellished the story to add that as twins, the babies were suckled in the wild by a she-wolf, Lupus Martis. (Wolves also were related to Mars, perhaps because of their general viciousness.)

It is safe to say that neither Romulus nor Remus received any genes or milk from Mars. And it is likewise safe to say that the Earth received from Mars no bubonic plague, no typhoid, no measles, no cholera and no other viral disease. Whoever raped Rhea Silvia wasn't Mars. The fact of the matter is that Mars raped the Earth in 756 B.C., in 864 B.C. and in 972 B.C. The Earth was sometimes known as Hera, a Greek goddess from which comes our term "Earth." The 756 B.C. flyby led to the destruction of the Etruscan State (Tarshish in our opinion) but also to the founding of Rome. In 972 B.C., Mars also assaulted the Earth, with Jerusalem surviving relatively unscathed as a corporate community. But for Palestine it was not entirely so. We cannot overlook the 6% casualty count.

OBSERVATION-M: THE LOCATION OF THE DISCHARGE. An interplanetary electrical discharge fell upon the mesa that was Ornan's farm.

And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and AS HE WAS DESTROYING, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord STOOD BY THE THRESHING FLOOR of Ornan the Jebusite.
I Chronicles 21:15 (Caps ours.)

It would seem that the discharge fell on the mesa which would become the Temple Mount. That discharge must have incinerated the barn and other structures of Ornan and left it a leveled pile of cinders. Apparently Ornan and his family survived just fine in their storm cellar. The discharge must have been for a millisecond in the hundreds of thousands of amperes range, and it would have vitrified any dirt or sand at the discharge spot. It would be interesting if, upon a very careful microscopic examination of dirt from the surface of that mesa, some tiny beads of glass were found, evidence of temperatures over 3,000° F. and of a discharge. A broader search throughout Palestine and other places might prove very interesting in this regard.

As it turned out, Ornan's storm cellar was a better place in time of a catastrophism than was the vaunted Tower of Babel constructed by Nimrod. Ornan's storm cellar was a location that dodged the electricity of Mars, whereas Nimrod's structure was one which attracted, or unwittingly courted Mars' electrical wrath. Ornan's farm was just several hundred yards outside the walls of Jerusalem as they were at that time, to the northeast.

OBSERVATION-N: THE CHOSEN LOCATION FOR THE FIRST TEMPLE. The destructive afternoon of October 24, 972 BC. passed, and pandemonium in the city of Jerusalem rapidly settled down. Relief had come as the flux tube swept westward, out across the Mediterranean Sea. The city had been spared from the electrical havoc, if not from the earthquakes. That evening or the next morning, David and his cabinet inspected the strike site. He interviewed Ornan and inspected the cinders which had been his home and barn. David had wanted to build a temple to the Lord for years. It occurred to one of the party that this would be an ideal site, in suburbia, just a few hundred yards to the northeast of Old Jerusalem. The 450-year old tabernacle needed a permanent location, as did its hardware. This flat mesa was an excellent site for such a memorial to the Lord and to Jerusalem's deliverance. David made a generous offer, and Ornan was a willing seller at this time.

This site was a location where architecture, astronomy, geography, history, religion and even electricity all met and played a role. Other temples come to mind such as the temples constructed by the sons of the pioneers of Rome, dedicated to their favored planetary deities, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Mars Hill in Athens comes to mind, and the ancient order of the Areopagites, the court pages for Mars. The Kaaba, a meteorite that fell at Mecca perhaps in this era, 1½ millennia before Islam, comes to mind. In these cases too, architecture, electricity, astronomy, geography, history, and religion combined in their various roles.

In Northwestern Europe, the numerous Celtic "henges" also come to mind, for there also, architecture, astronomy, geography and religion all met to play a role. Since it was important that those henges be aligned true to the cardinal points of the compass (not to the solstices as some suppose), the ensuing crustal skids and spin axis torques caused subsequent remodeling projects to occur, in century after century, as the North Pole jumped around somewhat during such flybys as 972 B.C., 864 B.C., 756 B.C. and others. The modern triad (Evolutionary Uniformitarians, Fiat Creationists and Theistic Evolutionists) has overlooked everything in this possibility.

OBSERVATION-O: THE ALIGNMENT OF THE FIRST TEMPLE. This temple was conceived by David and his cabinet, but it was built by his successor, Solomon. Its foundation was laid in 967 B.C., just 5 years after this flyby. Perhaps it was well that it was delayed until after the flyby for several reasons. One is that by waiting, it avoided any possibility of general devastation. Another is that the populace was in a more buoyant mood, more expansive-minded. Yet a third reason is that a flyby might have caused another adjustment or correction for north-south and east-west orientation and the cardinal points of the compass.

It is not known if the First Temple was built aligned perfectly with east and west, north and south of that era, but such is presumed. It is known that the First Temple was surveyed and its foundation was established with much care, as indeed the entire building was built with a major concern about lay out patterns and placements.

Charles McDowell, a geographer and a historian, thinks that the First Temple was constructed so carefully that the fixed stars, shining at night, shone through the apertures of the Temple and onto the huge basin filled with water. This basin or bath had a perimeter of 30 cubits (about 45 feet) and a height of 5 cubits or 7½ feet. Its diameter was 15 feet. It contained about 750 cubic feet or 6,000 gallons of water. He believes the Hebrews charted at night the arcs described by the reflected starlight off of the bath, and in this way they would have immediately known if yet another change in the location of true north had occurred.

McDowell points out also that the basin was held by twelve statuesque golden oxen, one for each month of the year. There were 30 cubit markers distributed symmetrically with their dividers so as to comprise 360 units, the day count per year and the degree count per circle.

In our inch, if we divide it into 8 parts, we only use 7 subdividers to record each 1/8 inch. The inch marker is not a subdivision marker. Guided by Dober's remarks, I will give a graphic description of the cubit subdividers:

Here the symbol (illustration) is intended to represent the cubit division marker. In this manner it can be seen that there are 10 sub-unit markers. Accordingly, because there were 30 cubit markers distributed symmetrically around the sea, it was necessarily divided into 360 parts.⁴

He further notes that the Ugaritic alphabet contained 30 letters, as if a harmony was intended with the day count per month. In all of this craftsmanship of which we have mentioned but a little, the Temple Foundation was laid out amid a large, 35-acre mesa where space was abundant. Is it likely that it would be aligned in any way other than according to the cardinal points of the compass?

It is known that the foundation of the Second Temple, constructed early in the Uniformitarian Era (6th century B.C.) was aligned precisely according to true north and south, east and west. However, the foundation of the First Temple is found to be variant. The following is from personal correspondence with Asher Kaufman, a physicist at the Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

This note is to draw your attention to my research on the Temples of Jerusalem, their plan and precise location. For a popular account, see Biblical Archaeology Review, March-April 1983... There is the interesting fact that the First (Solomonic) Temple built about 997 B.C.E. was aligned 6.0° south of west. One would expect it to have been aligned exactly east-west, as was the Second Temple built about 516 B.C.E.⁵

Our suspicion is that a net shift of 6° occurred compositely from the subsequent flybys of 864 B.C., 809 B.C., 756 B.C. and 701 B.C. Our further suspicion is that another net shift of 4° to 6° in the same direction occurred during the composite shifts from the Long Day of Joshua down to the Davidic Flyby. Thus Jerusalem's latitude indeed has shifted southward. And the North Pole, the spin axis pole, has indeed shifted from the Barents Sea toward Alaska since the time of Moses, and probably in an amount of 600 to 750 miles. A shift of 1° in latitude southward is about 67 miles.

It is in this light that we wish the remodeling of the henges of Great Britain to be viewed. Our suspicion is that their alignments when constructed were also oriented to the cardinal points of the compass and not, as is frequently presumed, to the solstices. A review of those henges in this light might prove fruitful.

The Old Testament is the flagship of ancient catastrophic literature. It is a gold mine for human history and for theology as well. Cited in this chapter are 3 modest passages, from which were mined the preceding 15 observations.

• II Samuel 22:8 to 21 (See also Psalm 18:7-15)
• II Samuel 24: 12 to 25
• I Chronicles 21:7 to 27

Students of catastrophism who are familiar with the details of the Old Testament have a big natural advantage to students lacking a broad familiarity with Old Testament material. Similarly, students of catastrophism who are conversant with the Greek literature of the Heroic Age, prior to 700 B.C., also have automatic advantages in ability to perceive and to correlate. Familiarity with these literatures, ideally, is achieved during a person's teens or twenties where the material can become foundational in decisions and evaluations.

In the climate of Planetary Catastrophism, at some point in time it dawns in a person's mind how shockingly mistaken uniformitarian spokesmen are, and how unauthoritative those spokesmen have been, however widely their views may have been circulated and affirmed. In the case of this writer, the suspicion that the uniformitarian approach was mistaken arose when he was in college, taking courses that related to Earth history, and while he was simultaneously familiarizing himself with the Bible. Penetrating questions presented to the academic figures were fielded poorly.

For instance, there was the class devoted to anthropological topics. In class, your author (then eighteen) asked a question about how the quick-frozen mammoths of Siberia came to be. How did they happen? The lecturer's response was that perhaps the mammoths had walked out too far on a frozen lake, fell through the ice and were drowned. Your writer's retort was that if they had fallen into water, their carcasses would either have rotted or would have become fish food, and would not have become frozen. The lecturer suggested that perhaps, through some miracle, that didn't happen this time. Immediately your author's next question concerned why the mammoths are found quick-frozen in Northern Siberia with subtropical vegetation in their stomachs, and half-swallowed in their mouths also. The lecturer's response was that, maybe, they had walked a long way. This writer's third and final retort was that there were evidences of at least several dozen quick-frozen monsters, including a pair of two-horned quick-frozen rhinoceroses.⁶ The lecturer's third response was that, after all, there were millions of years, weren't there, for such things to happen. Following this, your author disheveled his hair in abject silence. But the conviction was growing that something in the traditional explanation was very wrong.

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