I was watching a rerun of a documentary on the sun on the Science Channel, and was reminded of something I'd written in Future History (Chapter 23: Days of Wrath) about the likely cause of the fourth bowl judgment. That event, if you'll recall, said, "Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory." (Revelation 16:8-9) I had suggested that a likely cause for such a phenomenon might be a "superflare" of a type scientists had observed in other stars quite like our own sun, but had apparently never happened to the sun, at least in historical times. Superflares are like ordinary flares or X-class events, except that they're far more powerful. Such flares are caused by "magnetic reconnection" on the star's surface, something far more likely to happen in periods of intense magnetic activity---of which sunspots are the prime indicator.

Sunspot activity ebbs and flows in rough eleven-year cycles; in other words, the maximums are spaced approximately eleven years apart. Since the three series of Tribulation judgments (seals, trumpets, and bowls) each seem to be chronological within itself (although the series overlap each other) I went back and looked at the bowl judgment series, beginning with the fourth. It appears to me (though no chronological data is presented in scripture) that the last four bowl judgments could easily come on the heels of each other---one seems to lead inexhorably to the next. (The fifth is darkness, the sixth is the drying up of the Euphrates, and the seventh is, among other things, the great Yom Kippurim 2033 earthquake.) So I was interested in finding out when the solar maximum would fall---how closely God's revealed timeline would line up with the expectations of the solar scientists.

As it turns out, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who tracks such things, announced on April 26, 2007, that "The next 11-year cycle of solar storms will most likely start next March and peak in late 2011 or mid-2012—up to a year later than expected—according to a forecast issued by the NOAA Space Environment Center in coordination with an international panel of solar experts." That means that solar cycle #26 (the one with the potential to be the implement Yahweh will employ to fulfill the prophesied fourth bowl judgment) will peak sometime in late 2033--or a bit earlier, if the cycle readjusts back to its historic pattern in the meantime. At the very least, the cycle will be approaching its peak early in 2033, when I expect (according the the scriptural clues) the event to occur. Once again, the data of science confirms the Word of God, if only we'd pay attention to both disciplines.

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