Hope of Israel Ministries (Ecclesia of YEHOVAH):

The history of the Solar System, before the time of man, is a history replete with violence. Scientists are now beginning to piece together amazing segments of the puzzle, and they are shocked at what they have been discovering!

In January 1986 Voyager 2 flew by the distant planet of Uranus, a planet about two billion miles away, invisible to the naked eye, and only discovered in 1781 by Frederick Wilhelm Herschel. Scientists are still poring over the photographs and data gathered from the probe, analyzing the amazing information received. One of the chief puzzles -- why does Uranus lie on its side, as though it had been struck by a large object and knocked over?

Secondly, why do its winds blow in a retrograde motion, contrary to the normal pattern in the Solar System? What caused the unusual shapes and features on some of its moons? Most surprising to astronomers, Uranus was found to be not a gaseous planet like Jupiter and Saturn, but it was found to be covered by an ocean of super-heated water some 6,000 miles thick, its temperature as high as 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit!

Particularly perplexing is the moon Miranda, which NASA astronomers have called "one of the most enigmatic objects in the solar system." On it exists a raised, flattened plateau with a 100-mile long escarpment which forms a strange, unique "right angle."

Voyager 2 at the end of August, 1989, swept by the planet of Neptune, and for the first time earth scientists got a fascinating close-up glimpse of the planet which lies almost three billions miles from Earth. The planet was found to have a rocky core with a slurry mixture of ice above it, and to be circled by several rings made up of rocks and boulders, with no less than eight moons. The largest, Triton, shocked astronomers. Its retrograde motion was confirmed -- it orbits Neptune in a direction completely opposite to that of the other moons, and every other moon in the Solar System, including our own! All other moons orbit in an anti-clockwise motion, but Triton orbits in a clockwise motion. Why?

Triton was revealed to have rugged mountainous features on one side, but smooth, almost crater-less features on the other side. Very odd, to say the least. What happened to cause such an anomaly?

Declared Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, chief scientist of the Voyager program, "It was Voyager that focused our attention on the importance of collisions. The cosmic crashes were potent sculptors of the Solar System."

Writes Zecharia Sitchin in Genesis Revisited:

"Until the Voyager discoveries, the prevailing scientific viewpoint considered the Solar System as we see it today as the way it had taken shape soon after its beginning, formed by immutable laws of celestial motion and the force of gravity. There have been oddballs, to be sure -- meteorites that come from somewhere and collide with the stable members of the Solar System, pockmarking them with craters, and comets that zoom about in greatly elongated orbits . . . But these examples of cosmic debris, it has been assumed, go back to the very beginning of the Solar System, some 4.5 billion years ago, and are pieces of planetary matter that failed to be incorporated into the planets or their moons and rings. A little more baffling has been the asteroid belt, a band of rocks that forms an orbiting chain between Mars and Jupiter. According to Bode's Law, an empirical rule that explains why the planets formed where they did, there should have been a planet, at least twice the size of Earth, between Mars and Jupiter. Is the orbiting debris of the asteroid belt the remains of such a planet? The affirmative answer is plagued by two problems: the total amount of matter in the asteroid belt does not add up to the mass of such a planet, and there is no plausible explanation for what might have caused the breakup of such a hypothetical planet; if a celestial collision -- when, with what, and why?" (Genesis Revisited, Zecharia Sitchin, p.24-25).

Since the Uranus fly-by in 1986, astronomers have known and realized that the new evidence conclusively implies that there must have been one or more major collisions and/or catastrophes that occurred which changed the Solar System from its original form to the present configuration.

The evidence is inescapable.

The fact that Uranus is tilted on its side, unlike all the other planets, poses a riddle that the Uranus fly-by has helped to solve. Was it created that way, originally, or did it become that way, due to a cosmic collision of some sort? Voyager revealed that the moons of Uranus revolve around its equator in its present tilted position. Evolutionary theory postulates that if formed at the beginning, the heavier moons would be closest to Uranus, and the lighter moons farther out from the planet. By the same principle, the moons of Neptune, farther out in the Solar System, should be lighter than those of Uranus. However, contrary to these expectations, a comprehensive report on the Uranus encounter published in Science magazine, July 4, 1986, reveals that the density of the moons of Uranus, except for Miranda, are significantly heavier than that of the moons of Saturn, nearer the sun.

Likewise, Voyager 2 data showed that the two inner moons of Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel, are lighter in composition than the outer moons of Titania and Oberon. These findings suggest that the moons were not formed at the same time as the planet itself!

Another intriguing anomaly is the fact that astronomers found, from the Voyager probe, that the rings of Uranus are pitch-black, "blacker than coal dust," and therefore probably are composed of "carbon-rich material, a sort of primordial tar scavenged from outer space." These dark rings are warped, tilted, and "bizarrely elliptical." Six of the moonlets discovered orbiting Uranus were also pitch-black, acting like "shepherds" for the rings. The conclusion scientists reached was that the rings and moonlets are the debris resulting from a "violent event in Uranus's past." Said assistant project scientist Ellis Miner, "A likely possibility is that an interloper from outside the Uranus system came in and struck a once larger moon and sufficiently hard to have fractured it" (ibid., p.26).

In other words, scientists have come to see that the theory of a catastrophic celestial collision could explain the evidence seen in the moons and rings of Uranus, as well as the fact that it is so strangely tilted on its side. Further buttressing this theory is the discovery that the boulder-sized black debris forming the rings of Uranus circles the planet once every eight hours -- a speed twice that of the planet's own rotation on its axis. How was this much higher speed imparted to the rings?

The team of 40 NASA scientists in their analysis of the Uranus fly-by and its discoveries, in a press conference, stated: "A collision with something the size of Earth, traveling at about 40,000 miles per hour, could have done it." Astronomer Gary Hunt, of the Imperial College, London, summed up the findings, saying, "Uranus took an almighty bang early on."

The planet Neptune also shows the results of celestial collisions. Were these related to the collision that effected Uranus so dramatically? Nereid, one of its moons, has an elongated elliptical orbit that carries it six millions miles from the planet, and as close as one million miles. Its orbit is tilted at 28 degrees from the equatorial plane of the planet. Although planetary formation rules indicate it should be spherical, it looks like a "twisted doughnut," says Zecharia Sitchin, and is "bright on one side and pitch-black on the other." What caused this phenomena?

In a major study published in Nature magazine, June 2, 1987, Martha W. Schaefer and Bradley E. Schaefer concluded:

"Neirid accreted into a moon around Neptune or another planet and that both it and Triton were knocked into their peculiar orbits by some large body or planet."

The dark matter that is seen on one side of Nereid could be explained two different ways, but both explanations require a collision in space. Such a collision could have scraped off the outer lighter material on the surface of the moon, thus revealing the darker substrata; or, more likely, the dark matter could have been deposited on that side of the moon from the encounter with the visitor from outer space. The dark matter could have belonged to the impacting body and "went splat on one side of Nereid." All six of the new satellites of Neptune discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989 are similarly "very dark" and have "irregular shapes."

The moon Triton, with its elongated and retrograde orbit around Neptune, also can only be logically explained as a result of a cosmic encounter or collision in the remote past. A team of Cal Tech scientists, including P. Goldberg, N. Murray, P.Y. Longaretti, and D. Banfield, writing in Science magazine, postulated that:

"Triton was captured from a heliocentric orbit [an orbit around the sun] as a result of a collision with what was then one of Neptune's regular satellites."

In this scenario the original Neptune moon would have been "devoured" by Triton and the force of the collision would have caused Triton to slow down enough so that it was "captured" by the planet itself as a new "moon."

Thus we see evidence from the Voyager 2 interplanetary mission that there is unmistakable evidence for cosmic collisions in the history of the Solar System. But why? When? and how did they occur?

According to "Bode's Law," the planetary distances from the sun more or less follow a mathematical formula which progresses as follows: 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. If the formula is altered by multiplying by 3 and adding 4 and dividing by 10, each number, using as a measure the distance of the Earth from the Sun (one Astronomical Unit or AU), the formula indicates that there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter, where the asteroid belt lies. The formula predicted the discovery of Uranus, but for some reason the outer planets of Neptune and Pluto (which at one time may have been a moon of Neptune, pulled out of its lunar orbit by some crossing celestial body) are at this time in violation of "Bode's Law."

Bode's Law predicts the orbits of the planets to the following tolerance:

The planets all seem to fit remarkably into this formula with relative precision. Could the deviations that exist be due to the influence of cosmic encounters and collisions which occurred earth in the history of the Solar System? In particular, could the vast and unexpected deviations of the orbits of Neptune, and especially Pluto, have been caused by such celestial encounter and massive conflict? And could the remains of the "asteroids" between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars be tell-tale evidence that formerly a planet did exist there, but was destroyed subsequently in an incredibly violent cosmic event?

Is there a "hint" or "clue" to the cause of these ancient events in the pages of Scripture? Indeed there is! Let's examine the Scriptural record and see what the Word of YEHOVAH God has to say about violent celestial cataclysms in primordial aeons.

In the pages of the Bible, we read in the opening words of the book of Genesis: "And God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was [the Hebrew word can just as easily be translated "became"] without form and void" (Gen.1:1-2). This word usually translated "was" as it is in this verse in the King James Version, is translated "became" in Genesis 19:26 regarding Lot's wife: "and she became a pillar of salt."

The words translated "without form and void" are from the Hebrew tohu va vohu, and mean, "empty, chaotic, confused." The word tohu is #8414 in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, and is defined as "be waste, a desolation (of surface), i.e., a desert," figuratively "a worthless thing," "in vain, confusion, empty place, waste, wilderness." The word vohu is #922 and means "to be empty, a vacuity, an undistinguishable ruin."

But did YEHOVAH God create the Earth originally in such a condition? Or did it become that way due to some ancient cosmic event, which could have included a collision with another celestial body, such as a massive planet with an elongated orbit, such as that of a comet?

In the book of Isaiah, we read:

"For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:18).

In this verse we see that YEHOVAH God did NOT create the Earth "in vain." The Hebrew word here, also, is tohu, and means -- as above -- "a waste, desolation, desert, a worthless thing, empty place," etc. So we see that originally YEHOVAH God did NOT create the Earth in a condition of tohu! Therefore, the logical explanation is that somehow, in the process of time, at some point after it was originally created, the Earth BECAME tohu -- a vain, empty, wasted desolation and ruin!

The logical question is -- what happened?

Once again, the answer to puzzles and enigmas that greet astronomers, when they see evidence of destruction, and VIOLENCE documenting the primordial history of the Solar System, is found in the pages of Holy Scripture!

Yeshua the Messiah, himself, gave a clue when he stated unswervingly and dramatically:

"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18).

The prophet Isaiah tells us more about this ancient cataclysmic event, when one of the original archangels and cherubim rebelled against YEHOVAH God and led an attempt to overthrow the Ruler of the Universe!

We read in Isaiah 14:

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

"For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into the heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.

"Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, saying, is this ` the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness . . ." (Isa.14:12-17).

This passage is dual in nature and fulfillment, referring to the one who rebelled against YEHOVAH God anciently, as well as to his earthly anti-type, the "king of Babylon," otherwise defined in Scripture as the "beast" (Rev.13:1-5), and the "Anti-christ." However, the main reference is to "Satan" the devil. The King James Version in this passage calls him "Lucifer," and so his name was popularized in the English language. The original Hebrew word is Heylel, #1966 in Strong's, and means "brightness, the morning star." The word only occurs in this one passage in the Bible. It also means "wail, lament" (Ezek.21:17, Zech.11:2). Both definitions apply equally to this ancient being, the source of so much suffering and grief in the Universe!

The prophet Ezekiel tells us more about this creature who was once a splendid, shining, marvelous to behold being:

"Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering . . . the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, TILL INIQUITY was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled thee with VIOLENCE, and thou hast SINNED: therefore I will CAST THEE as profane OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD: and I will DESTROY thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

"Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries . . . therefore will I bring forth a FIRE from the midst of thee, and I will bring thee to ASHES upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be [exist] any more" (Ezek.28:12-19).

In the time before time began, as human beings know time, Lucifer, or Heylel, led a massive attempt to overthrow the Throne of Almighty God. The exact reasons are unknown, but obviously he became grossly dissatisfied with YEHOVAH's government and his position in it. Vanity, greed, avarice, lust and ambition came to rule in his heart. He became jealous, and began plotting and hatching a conspiracy against YEHOVAH God Himself. He wasn't satisfied with his position in the scheme of things, and began to sow seeds of dissension and strife. As he contemplated his position, he began to lust after the power and glory of YEHOVAH God Himself. He wanted to become just like YEHOVAH -- he began to see himself "as God" and smoldered in anger that he was a lesser being!

Yeshua the Messiah says of this age-old arch villain, "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a LIAR, and the father of it" (John 8:44).

Satan's "fall" from grace, and his ancient rebellion, are described in the book of Revelation in vivid prose. The apostle John writes:

"And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the THIRD PART OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN, and did cast them to the earth . . ." (Rev.12:3-4).

The term "stars" in the Scriptures is often a symbol for "angels." In Revelation 1:20 we read, "The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand . . . The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches . . ." In the book of Job, we also read that at the creation of the Earth, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . When the morning stars [like Lucifer] sang together, and all the sons of God [the rest of the angels] shouted for joy?" (Job 39:4-7). Lucifer or Heylel, was a "morning star" (Isa.14:12). He was also a "cherub" or one of the "cherubim," great exalted angels who had four wings each, and four faces -- the face of a lion, of an eagle, of an ox, and of a man (Ezekiel 1, 10). All the cherubim were glorious creatures, surpassing in beauty, and so undoubtedly all the cherubim were "morning stars" in brilliance, as compared with the normal angels here differentiated by the term "sons of God."

Heylel obviously was very influential. With his cunning, whispering campaign, and wiles and promises of glamour and glory to the angels under his domain, he persuaded one third of the heavenly host to follow him in an uprising against YEHOVAH God, storming the gates of Heaven itself!

He was cast down to the Earth, and all his wicked angels who followed him were cast out of Heaven along with him. According to Scripture, Satan and his wicked host will once again attempt their age-old mutiny, in these last days which are upon us. The description of this final battle in heaven gives us also a clue to the struggle which must have occurred aeons ago, in the original "Star Wars" when he attempted to overthrow the Dominion of YEHOVAH God. Notice!

"And there was WAR IN HEAVEN: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon [Satan]; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not [they never learn their lesson!]; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was CAST OUT, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which DECEIVETH THE WHOLE WORLD: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him" (Rev.12:7-9).

War in Heaven! Consider the consequences of such a cosmic, celestial event! Would the very planets and Solar System have been effected? War breeds violence; violence causes chaos!

The apostle Jude also describes this ancient battle, writing, "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6). The apostle Peter also alludes to them in his second epistle, where he writes, "For . . . God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [Greek, Tartarus, meaning "a place of restraint"], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment" (II Pet.3:4).

What happens when mighty creatures, like angels, rebel? What happens when there is awesome WAR? Our earthly experience with warfare, which is so common to the human plane, reveals that "war is hell," as General Patton exclaimed during World War II. War leads to incredible suffering, destruction, decimation, waste, charred ruins, and desert like conditions -- the perfect description of what the Bible calls tohu va vohu. Thus the original tohu va vohu that is described in the second verse of Genesis, chapter 1, is nothing less than the summary result of the ancient conflict and its aftermath, when Heylel the cherub led his band of mutinous angels and celestial renegades to fight against the cosmic Godhead -- YEHOVAH God the Father, and His angels!

This sedition in heaven was the worst conceivable nightmare. Heylel is described as "the anointed cherub that covereth" (Ezek.28:14). He had been entrusted with awesome responsibility. He was evidently one of the two "covering cherubs" that guarded the Throne of YEHOVAH God -- a leader of the "Palace Guard," as it were. He was a "Commander" in the Army of YEHOVAH God with one of the highest ranks possible -- "anointed cherub." He had been specially chosen, "anointed," and fitted for this awesome task and duty.

It was he, one of YEHOVAH's trusted supreme lieutenants, one of His highest and most decorated "soldiers," that led an armed "coup" attempt. The fact that he failed only adds to his disgrace, chagrin, and seething reservoir of hatred and bitterness.

When angels rebel, and war occurs in the vault of Heaven, then we can conclude that awesome destruction would occur as a result. Judging from the evidence of Genesis 1, the indication is that all life on Earth was destroyed in the celestial conflict, with the surface of the Earth becoming tohu va vohu. Out of this wasted planet's surface, YEHOVAH God then begins to "reconstruct" and "re-create" life on the Earth, as it is described in the rest of the first chapter of Genesis!

Were the other planets affected? Was the Moon itself affected? Huge craters on the Moon suggest that it was also the target of celestial fireworks, and collisions with massive numbers of asteroids, meteorites, and astral bodies. Was there once a planet, as Bode's Law suggests there should be, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter? If so, what happened to it? Is part of its "remains" the orbital debris still circling the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter? Did another large chunk of it -- the preponderance of it -- become a huge orbiting planet or "comet" which is still circling the Sun in an elongated orbit?

According to Immanuel Velikovsky, there is incredible evidence that such a huge planet-like "comet" came near the Earth during the time of Moses and the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt. This would have been roughly 3,500 years ago. At that time, disasters and violence came upon the Earth. Plagues fell upon Egypt, the waters of the Red Sea parted for the Israelites to cross dryshod, and the "Sun stood still" during the "long day" of Joshua. Velikovsky shows that these events were accompanied by the presence of a huge comet in the sky in the shape of a globe. Is this "comet" possibly part of the remains of the previous planet which orbited between Jupiter and Mars?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, it is clear from the rest of the Scriptural record, as well as the evidence in the Solar System itself, especially evidence gathered by Voyager 2, that our Solar System has had a rocky, violent, turbulent history. And violence is often the result of WAR! YEHOVAH God said of Heylel, or Satan, ". . . they have filled the midst of thee with VIOLENCE" (Ezek.28:16).

The evidence of cosmic violence, and dramatic conflict, with ensuing collisions and destruction on an interplanetary scale unmatched in human history, lies before us. The key to its interpretation, I believe, lies in the Scriptural record which gives us incredible insight and invaluable hints and clues as to the original causes of that violence! Nothing happens without a "cause."

As the apostle James wrote:

"Whence come WARS and FIGHTINGS among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:1-3).

We can learn much about the history of the Earth, and of the Solar System, by studying the sciences of geology, paleontology, astronomy, astro-physics, and related disciplines. In fact, YEHOVAH God Himself says: "Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee" (Job 12:8).

Moses wrote long ago, "The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deut.29:29). Solomon adds: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable" (Proverbs 25:3).

The more we study the Heavens, and the Solar System, the more evidence we find supporting and confirming the Scriptural record -- the Bible. Even the cosmic "star war" between the servants of YEHOVAH God and the minions of Heylel is attested to by the discoveries of violent celestial encounters in the Solar System. How wonderful is the Word of YEHOVAH God!