Shalom chaverim.

You don't need me to tell you what today is being billed as by numerous astrologers, numerologists and pop 'prophets' amongst both evangelicals and messianics. I discussed this nearly two months ago in an earlier article, The 9/23 Scam. Yes, the sun and moon are in the constellation of Virgo today, along with the planet Jupiter, but what these people don't tell you is that this happens every 12 years. Others are talking about a rare alignment dubbed 'the lion of the tribe of Judah' but this planetary coincidence has happened four times in the last millennium. These things prove nothing, nor does the latest total eclipse of the sun in the USA, nor do the four hurricanes in the Caribbean and southern USA (Maria, Harvey, Irma & José) nor the two big earthquakes in Mexico. There is no way to biblically establish that these are related.

Jonathan Sarfati, writer for the British Express newspaper (18 September 2017), rightly said:

"As usual with any astrology (or Christian adaptations of it), one cherry-picks the stars that fit the desired conclusion. There is nothing to suggest that 23 September is a momentous date for biblical prophecy, and Christians need to be careful about being drawn into such sensationalist claims"

I'll state it again: 23 September 2017 has nothing to do with Revelation 12:1–2 and today does not signal the start of any Rapture or the Second Coming of Christ. Those who are expecting something to happen are waiting in vain not because Yah'shua (Jesus) isn't coming back because He is, just not now and not through this semi-occultic nonsense. This is just the latest episode of 'cherry-picking' the stars and planets to make them mean what these sensationalist psychics and amateur scriptorians want them to say. This is just a modern form of skrying, however intellectual and scripturally plausible it may look on the surface. This what happens when there is a famine of true nevi'im (prophets).

PLEASE - it is time for those caught up in this nonsense to COME CLEAN and ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG. Whatever you do, DON'T go and start another denomination or cult in order to explain away false prophecy. Don't do what Ellen White of the Seventh day Adventists did when the 1866 Millerite prophecy failed by creating the nonsense doctrine called the 'investigative judgment'. Don't to what the Jehovah's Witnesses did when Yah'shua (Jesus) failed to appear in 1914 the way they had prophesied by cooking up the balloney that He had come back, only invisibly. Don't do what the charismatic 'prophets' do when their prophecies fail, time and time again, by either quietly going on as though nothing had happened or inventing 'postponment' drivel. Just repent and return to sanity!

I had a couple of older Jehovah's Witnesses in my home the other day. When the 1914 prophecy of the literal Second Coming didn't happen and they said Yah'shua's (Jesus)'s parousia was invisible, they added that the those alive in 1914 would witness the Millennium. I reminded them that that generation was dead and gone now and that they could chalk up yet another false prophecy. Yet they continue to maintain that the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society's leaders are still 'The Prophet'. How can they be? They have got everything they ever predicted wrong. I even showed them a rare book from my library in which the JW founder, Charles Taze Russel, made hundreds of prophecies all of which were false! Yet they stubbornly continued to cling onto the lie. They chose to hold onto the idol that is their vain religion.

So don't go and invent a bunch of bull to justify your error. Come clean, repent, and get back onto the strait and narrow. Don't go and say that angels came and invisibly sealed up the elect on 23 September who believed the fleshy nonsense of a failed prophet and give people false hope all over again. Save your own soul and have a heart for others who don't know better. Have mercy on yourself and others by swallowing your pride. Get your feet back on terra firma and serve Yahweh humbly without the limelight.

By the end of today, nobody is going to be raptured, an asteroid isn't going to collide with the earth, the Great Tribulation isn't going to start, nor anything else that makes for rivetting drama. Tribulation is all around us and it is going to continue to mount but it will have nothing to do with the astrological cherry-pickers and their heavenly yarns who want either attention or a following...or both.

We are not told in Scripture to go looking for great wonders in heaven so don't do it. We are never commanded to star-gaze in order to divine the future like the pagan astrologers did and still do. We're told that great wonders will appear in heaven for everyone to see - you won't need to look for them! That's the difference.

People will in the end get weary of all this sensationism when it goes nowhere, as they did with the blood-red moons. The spiritually attuned will not be duped. Christians and Messianics have been confusing the psyche for the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) for far too long. I am not saying you shouldn't enjoy astronomy or that the heavens do not declare the glory of Yahweh (Ps.19:1) or that you shouldn't use the heavenly bodies for navigation or for establishing the divine calendar. Of course not. Just be done with the apostate notion that Yahweh made the heavens for the purpose for which the superstitious and unrepentant have been using them since time immemorial. To go down this avenue is to arrive at a spiritual cul de sac, a dead-end.

I am challenging those who have been chasing after stars and planets for signs to seriously examine their motives. Why are they doing this? To what end? Stop running around like decapitated chickens with your heads clucking away on the ground. Sober up, let this sign-seeking die and instead seek the face of Messiah. Get those eyes fixed on the Davar (Word), those ears trained on true preachers of the Besorah (Gospel) and move those feet in the worthy service that is evangelism. Souls need saving and discipling. They don't need entertaining or bowling over by titillating intellectual side-shows. Messiah doesn't need more silly people giving Him a bad name in front of the unbelievers and scoffers. Realise that this 23 September lark is just the latest vanity parade of those who have not been walking in the Messiah but in the lusts of their own flesh.

And yet, in a way, I welcome 23 September. Why? Because it's all a part of the necessary separation that's taking place. It is but another sifter. More 23 September's will be along and their pied-pipers will continue to lead the misguided children of Elohim (God) to fatal distraction. I hope that most, if not all, of you caught up in this delusion concerning 23 September will come to your senses. There is no shame in having been deceived so long as you honestly repent and have nothing more to do with these people and their half-baked ideas. Even the elect get swept into this darkness for a time, even as it is written:

"...false messiahs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matt.24:24, NKJV).

Consider - if the elect are going to be enamoured by the passive intellectual stuff of star-divination, imagine what is going to happen when the really dramatic signs start appearing?! 'You ain't seen nothing yet'. The 'big show' has yet to start and millions are going to be swept away by it. You have no idea what the Enemy is assembling, things which even Steven Spielberg could not have dreamed up. I have been watching much of it in vision. If you are swept away by a few planets and constellations, what will you do when fleets of 'space ships' start appearing in our skies for all to see? What will you do when they land and 'beings' emerge posing as aliens claiming to be our ancestors who seeded us millennia ago when allegedly we were apes? Will you be able to deal with that? Will you be awed by their technology and their incredible signs? Well, plenty will, and millions of 'Christians' will adjust their 'faith' to accommodate these 'wonders', not discerning what they truely are.

Some of you will be wryly smiling and telling yourself that you're prepared for that and would never be fooled. Maybe. Aliens and spaceships may indeed not fool you but then the Enemy will not employ just one 'messiah' - he'll set up several, and they'll be fighting one another like the gods of lore. Chances are one won't wear a spacesuit and look a lot like your idealised image of the resurrected Messiah. He'll even apparently 'fulfill' biblical prophecy, only he won't - you'll be fooled because you believed some false doctrine here or there. The carnal - those who have refused to die to self and overcome the flesh - will be fooled by that kind of 'christ' whilst in the meantime having discerned the 'aliens', they won't have realised that the two 'sides' are simply good and bad cop - working for the same dark entity we know as Satan.

There are divers deceptions, tailor-made for every carnal and religious disposition. And the last generation is going to see them all.

I know, some of you will be holding out to the end of the day, and maybe for a day or two after - just don't blame the false prophets when things don't turn out the way you had hoped. 'Who is more foolish? The fool or the one who followed him?' as Obi Wan Kenobi asked in the Star Wars movie. It takes one to follow one.

Take personal responsibility, don't pass the buck, don't act the 'helpless victim', accept responsibility for not being discerning and do something about it. Don't invent a new doctrine to cover your sin. Learn from your mistake, don't succumb to pride, be a man (or a woman). Own up and move on. Once bitten, twice shy.

Don't blame Yahweh no matter how much the false prophet abused His Name or you. It isn't Yahweh's fault that you placed your bet. We all believe what we choose to believe. Be mature. Make right with Yah'shua (Jesus) and adopt a more humble frame-of-mind. Then warn others, strengthen the weak, build them up in the true emunah (faith). Preach Yah'shua (Jesus) and Him crucified because that's what really matters.