Unleashing the Beast

C OSMIC S IGNS AND L AST D AYS P ROPHECY / 255

S IGNS OF THE P LANETS One of the strangest petitions in Scripture is when King Hezekiah requested that the shadow of the sundial go backwards ten degrees (2 Kings 20:11). In order for this to happen, it would necessitate a shifting in the rotation of the earth, and that would cause a global upheaval. Ancient historians Berosus and Seneca said this is what occurred. Plato ascribed the conflagrations of the world to the action of a "celestial body that, changing its path, passed close by the earth." This may be why in about 701 B.C., the ancient global calendars changed from a 360-day-a year calendar to a calendar with five extra days added each year. For an additional five days to be added, some drastic change had to occur. At the time of the Exodus 3,500 years ago, a series of ten plagues struck Egypt. An ancient papyrus, written on both sides, was found in Memphis, Egypt, near the pyramids. In 1828, it was acquired by the museum of Leiden in the Netherlands, and Alan Gardnier translated it in 1909. The papyrus was a lamentation that revealed the horror and ruins of Egypt. The information in the scroll dealt with Upper Egypt, the same area where the Hebrews lived and eventually made their exodus. In his book, Ages in Chaos , author Immanuel Velikovsky believes the papyrus alludes to the plagues that struck Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The plagues of Egypt included three days of darkness (Exodus 10:21), large hail stones (Exodus 9:24) and rivers turning into blood (Exodus 7:20). In Upper Egypt, the fields and cattle