APOCALYPSE COUNTDOWN 666

APOCALYPSE COUNTDOWN 666

Preface

THE QUEST FOR MEANINGS

          We always have that vague sense of purpose, that sense of direction that we feel inside directing our every move. Even a child has a wish that seems so near and yet so far. Some of us spend a whole lifetime trying to reach that elusive goal, and although some find a sense of purpose, others don’t.

          In this book, I have included a brief autobiography not because I found the meaning of my own existence, although maybe I have, but for reasons unrelated to what I am or where I am right now. I feel that if I found a lot of humor and mystery in my growing up, others would find it even more hilarious and maybe more mysterious than I ever will.

          It is truly amazing that strange phenomena bordering on the occult should keep me away from certain death at least four times in my childhood and beyond. There are other events that I didn’t give much credit for, like driving in the mountains of Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen. The rough terrain was passable only to four-wheel drive vehicles. I drove my 13-year-old non-four-wheel drive Mazda for 3-4 hours each way, depending upon the condition of the unpaved, rocky trails, to a small dispensary (Primary Health Care Center) in one of the Tihama Villages. During my weekend drive to town, my car stopped a little after the halfway mark of a steep road curved out of the side of a mountain. The slope was too much for my aging car. My mistake was shifting the gear to neutral, causing my car to back speed downhill at lightning speed. My brain went numb and confused in a split second. Fortunately, my car (as if someone had taken over the wheel) veered towards my left against the mountain wall. Had it veered to my right, I would have tumbled down the cliff.

          At another time, I took a flight from the newly emerging summer capital of Saudi Arabia, Abha, to Jeddah. The plane took off again as soon as it touched the ground at the Jeddah International Airport. The stewardess turned deathly pale, and so did I. I was seated in the front row facing the seats where the stewardesses belt themselves on take-offs and landings. As soon as we were on the Air again, the stewardess unfastened herself and walked towards the first-class cabin. Her color was better when she returned. I asked (in our vernacular, being a Filipina) what happened. “There was an airport van in the middle of the run-away,” she replied calmly.

That was my fifth and sixth encounter with the ugly face of death.

          When I became a doctor of medicine, I was sure (like any young idealist of my age) that I found my reason for living. I would go home to my tribe in the south of the Philippines and serve my people, not quite. Seventeen years have passed (1980-97), and I am still here in Saudi Arabia. I see no way out. My children are home back in Manila, attending school. My salary is just enough for me, for them, and for some friends and relatives, and I am helping them through college.

           Although I may have progressed a little materially, I feel I have matured spiritually. This book is a testament to that spiritual growth, and it all began with the number of the beast: 666.

          As aliens in Saudi Arabia, we used to stand in the queue waiting for the English papers to come to our town during the Gulf War. We watched a single TV broadcast, although in Arabic, until the wee hours of the morning.

          When I read about United Nations Resolution 666, my skin crawled, giving me Goosebumps. I borrowed a Bible from the Indians in the hospital and asked where I could find the number of the Beast in it. This book is the result of that query.

          Exotic texts in religious books can effectively weaken the faith of many unless someone comes up with rational and believable explanations.

          Muslims, Christians, and Jews believe in the six-day creation. Some Muslim scholars agree that the six-day can also be interpreted as six periods. Ironically, these scholars are not aware of a short but very significant verse in the Holy Qur’an that will settle the six-day controversy once and for all. Similarly, it will liberate the Christians from the dilemma of the six-day creation as written in the book of genesis.

          How can there be first, second, and third days if God created the moon and the sun on the fourth day, two heavenly bodies upon which our conception of time is based? How can there be a morning and an evening each day of the first three days of creation if the sun did not exist then? This is the dilemma of the six-day creation that Christians either did not understand or simply ignored. I have yet to find a Christian who rationalizes this dilemma.

          Qur’an 22:47 states, ‘Verily, a day in the sight of thy Lord is like a thousand years of your reckoning.’

Obviously, God was referring to His time, not Earthlings' time, in the same manner that we use Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) instead of local time zones. Each day of the Qur’an/Bible's six-day creation is 1,000 years of Earthlings' time. It is even very possible that the first three days of creation referred to other solar systems, ours having been created on the fourth.

          The most sensible order of creation would have been to create the sun (light) followed by the planets, in contrast to the Book of Genesis. We know scientifically that the planets and moons were formed from the debris of rocks caught in the gravitational field of the sun following the Big Bang. Those beyond the orbit of Neptune, including Pluto, known as the Kuiper Belt, remained unformed like an ocean of rocks orbiting our solar system, casting doubts on the status of Pluto as a planet. This is one of the beauties that make the Big Bang theory so believable.

          Qur’an 21:30; ‘do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined as one unit of creation before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?’ Qur’an 51:47: ‘Verily: we are able to extend the vastness of space thereof.’(Expanding universe)

          Panspermia is one word in the May 1997 issue of Discover Magazine that jolted my mind. It is the fanciful notion that life spread through space, which can be defined beautifully by the Qur’an verse 42:29 - ‘And one of His signs is the creations of the heavens and the earth and the living creatures that He scattered through them, and He has the power to gather them together when He wills.’ This verse is one of the many concrete proofs in the Holy Qur’an that life may not be unique to Earth.

          The science fiction space tunnels (wormholes) that short-cut the stars and galaxies may turn out to be correct. God speaks in the Holy Qur’an of passages and pillars in space that the eyes cannot see. Qur’an Verse 13:1-4 states - ‘Allah is He who raised the heavens without pillars that you can see’ (with pillars that you cannot see). Muslims interpret the passages as orbital paths of the planets and the invisible pillars as gravity and centrifugal forces. I disagree. The orbital paths of the planets, the sun, and the solar system are clearly defined as paths upon which the mentioned heavenly bodies are not supposed to deviate. Long before man ever learned that our Solar system is moving in space, not fixed, the Holy Qur’an already spoke of its movement towards a certain point in space. The secret passages and invisible pillars are waiting to be discovered unless they have already been found. It is very possible that the theoretical Black Holes in space are the hallowed pillars of space in the Qur’an that the eyes cannot see. It could be the secret passages of the heavens. I like to think of black holes as massive invisible nails pinning the universe into space, without which the universe will either collapse or galaxies will continuously collide. Black Holes are the pillars the eyes cannot see that give the universe a semblance of stability.

          Whether the claim is true or not, while Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon, he heard the Adhan, the Muslims' call to prayer, Allah ho Akhbar (God is the Greatest). There is no doubt that God will always be ahead.

          Verse 55:33 of the Holy Qur’an says, ‘O ye assembly of Jinns and Men! If it be ye can pass beyond the heavens and earth zones, pass ye! Not without authority shall ye be able to pass!’

          I have tried a dozen times to leave Saudi Arabia for good, but something always comes up to prevent me from doing so. I felt that there had to be a reason for my being here.

          It was seventeen years ago when I sought employment in Saudi Arabia.

“I’m sorry,” the secretary had said, “recruitment was closed two weeks ago. All available posts had been filled.” But she took my papers anyway after perhaps learning I was a Muslim and disappeared behind a closed door. The Arab recruiter came out of his office and searched for me in the crowd.

“Don’t give your passport to anyone but to me,” the Arab had said. “I will make sure that you get your visa before I leave for Saudi Arabia. My work here is done.” Only now did I realize the significance of those words. He had been sitting in his office virtually doing nothing for two weeks as if he was only waiting for me to show up. The year was 1980.

https://www.amazon.com/Nosca-Khalid/e/B01NA7APYQ

Nosca Khalid

"Apocalypse Countdown 666"

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