I’d been holding this one in reserve, praying about it. Right after it happened, some numbers ‘clicked’ but I wasn’t quite sure how they fit until I did yesterday’s post. I think it’s now time to lay this out. File it in the category of ‘interesting’ — in close synchronicity with the eclipse material I outlined in the post yesterday. Without that background, this won’t make much sense, so be sure to read it first.

Last Wednesday (July 15th) at 11:49AM local (Iran) time (7:19AM UTC), a Caspian Airways jet on its way to Yerevan, Armenia plunged out of the sky, killing everyone on board. Below is a Associated Press video showing eyewitness testimony, as well as the massive crater it left when it hit the ground.

Why do I mention it? I don’t want to belittle the intense suffering those who may have lost loved ones in the crash, or to make light of tragedy in general, but I believe this event harbors much larger symbolism.

As many are aware, Armenia is the site of what is “widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides… [given] the systematic, organized manner [in which] the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians.” As the Armenian National Institute notes:

…between the years 1915 and 1918… the Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity.

Sadly, these events have been a political football, with dhimminized Western politicians of all stripes citing ‘tolerance’ and ’sensitivity’ as reasons for not wanting to put a name to what was plainly the largest islam-on-Christian slaughter in centuries, the culmination of decades of outrageous religious and ethnic persecution at the hands of the islamic Ottoman empire. At least several hundred thousand were killed directly with many estimates ranging well over a million. Modern Turkey is the center of the ongoing push to recognize this historical fact because, well… Turkey WAS the Ottoman empire.

End-times prophecy buffs as well as Catholics familiar with Leo XII’s visions will note the significance of 1915 (satan being unleashed for 100 years) and 2015, when many believe Christ will return (not to be confused with the rapture, when he meets believers “in the air”.)

But let’s move on…

So we have an otherwise routine flight from the capital of a regime I don’t need to tell anyone is controlled by an islamic nut-bag convinced it’s his destiny to take out Israel with nukes to please the 12th mahdi to the site of the last century’s most horrific islam-on-Christian slaughter and all 168 on board are killed.

As I wrote a week ago (July 12th, three days before the crash):

…when Antiochus Epiphanes [IV] desecrated the temple in Jerusalem in 168 BC, he gave the order on his birthday, (the 24th of Kislev, which spans Nov-Dec). The order was carried out and the temple desecrated the following day. The letters of BHO’s boyhood name (Barry Soetoro) add up to 168 in English.

In other words, 168 years after the temple was desecrated, Christ came for the first time.

168 also happens to be the number of hours in a week. Exactly one week from the time of the Caspian Airways crash brings us to 7:19AM UTC this coming Wednesday, July 22nd. That’s 3:19AM on the U.S. East Coast.

And THAT, is exactly (to the very minute) three hours after the zone of solar eclipse totality veers off the earth into space. (The partial eclipse area persists for a bit longer). Does three hours remind you of anything? C’mon people, think.

Hint: Ever been to a Good Friday service?

And you East Coasters thought our prayer vigil was going to end at midnight. Ha! Better have some strong coffee handy. Jesus wasn’t pleased when his followers fell asleep the first time (Matt 26:37-46).

And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

Or consider Paul’s words in 1st Thessalonians 5:3-10:

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.

Oh but wait. It gets even more interesting.    Consider John 21:8-12, in which the resurrected Christ gives fishing instructions and then prepares breakfast for the disciples on the shore after a very long and tiring night out on the water (’sea’ being used often in scripture as a metaphor for unbelieving gentiles)

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.

On the doomed Caspian Airways flight from Tehran, Iran to Yerevan Armenia were 153 passengers, (two of them children; witnesses?) and 15 crew (symbolic of 12 disciples plus Father, Son and Holy Spirit?) Note that the flight was plucked out of the air, whereas, we’re told that Jesus will meet us in the air (1st Thessalonians 4:17-18 — “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”)

Now how ’bout that all-night prayer vigil people?

The catered breakfast afterward should be out of this world.  

UPDATE I (Monday, ~7AM): After focusing on Turkey here yesterday, I recalled that their ascension into the EU has been a hot topic for decades. Earliest possible: 2013 (more likely with a rapture, I suspect). I also noted that a Turkish family moved in next door to us a couple of weeks ago. (I just learned they are Turkish.) That’s neither here nor there (love the coffee!), but it’s a first; out-of-state license plate: SULTANM. Hmm…

I also did a little thing this morning that God showed me the other day when I was pondering whether or not to do the ‘It’s Him’ post. (Clear answer: yes). It goes like this: Take the previous day’s blog traffic and parse the number in to a Bible verse. A lot of you were very busy yesterday, it seems and so the number was 2,666 (yeah, I know… those last three digits…) The twenty-sixth book of the Bible (at least my Protestant ESV) is Ezekiel, chapter 6, verse 6 reads:

“Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out.”

My, my… isn’t that interesting…

UPDATE II (Monday, ~10AM): Google ‘168′ and the first site to come up after Wikipedia is 168 Hour Film Project (never heard of it, though the list of past participants includes some real ‘names’)

168 is a faith-based, worldwide competition, in which teams make a short film in 168 hours (1 week). The 168 Film Festival is in March 2010 in L.A. …producers have 168 hours (1 week) to film and edit a 11-minute movie based on a theme and a Bible verse. All films are created during production week and premiere at the 168 Film Festival. At the end of the festival, awards are given to producers for all artistic and technical merit. 168 aims to illuminate the Word of God through short film… We encourage fair treatment of subjects, with emphasis on story and subtlety. But, more importantly, filmmakers are advised to honesty portray the tale that God inspires. Truth, solid stories and high production value speak loudly to this generation and the next.

I know at least one regular commenter here who absolutely must enter this! (He knows who he is.) 

Further musing on the number 168, I realize I was off by a century in recalling a high-water-mark for American Christian revival (the sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’, by Jonathan Edwards, Enfield, CT, July 8th, 1741). It bears (re-)reading anyway, especially now. The date remains interesting. E.g., 168 years plus a Leo XII-overheard extra century (see above) and a date that I’m not yet convinced was devoid of spiritual-warfare significance, e.g., the kind of stuff that would have Reagan positively spinning in his grave:

At Moscow’s New Economic School on July 8, Obama made special note of the presence in his audience of Mikhail Gorbachev. “We have President Mikhail Gorbachev here today, and I want everybody to give him a big round of applause,” said our nation’s chief executive.

Should a U.S. president lead the applause for Gorbachev? Isn’t he the man who served in the USSR’s Politburo beginning in 1980 and then rose to become the Soviet Union’s leader in 1985? Doesn’t he bear more responsibility than anyone for the 10-year rape of Afghanistan carried out by Soviet invaders? During the decade beginning in 1979, more than a million Afghans perished; six million fled to refugee camps in neighboring nations; tens of thousands of teenagers were kidnapped and sent to the USSR for indoctrination; and Soviet aircraft and ground personnel spread booby-trapped toys in the streets and villages that maimed and killed unsuspecting children, who picked them up and had their faces blown away and their limbs destroyed.

In 1987, Gorbachev told fellow communists at the 70th-anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, “We are moving toward a new world, the world of communism; we shall never turn off that road.” In 1989, he told another Moscow audience, “I am a communist, a convinced communist.” While never retracting these statements, he managed — with an incredibly compliant media — to con many in the West into thinking he was something new and different. How different? He came to the United States and told a convocation at Missouri’s Westminster College that the United Nations should be “authorized to impose sanctions and make use of other measures of compulsion” to deal with his claims about ecological matters. No difference!

Further on the Russia trip: For a guy with NPD, this has got to be tremendously humiliating.