There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars

Are we in the end times? Check out theses verses and read the following news articles and decide for yourself. Mercury, Mars, Venus in Rare Alignment, Mystery Clouds Glow Blue, Meteor shower to brighten heavens, When Meteors Explode. For more information on these signs and others go to Last Trumpet Ministries

verses

Acts 2:14-36
19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Luke 21:20-28
until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. 25 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see "the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

We have had more astronomical events happen during the last 20 than has happen since man first walked the earth.

Mercury, Mars, Venus in Rare Alignment DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Three planets will align over the weekend, giving Iowans a glimpse at something they haven't seen for at least 100 years, astronomy experts said. Mercury, Mars and Venus will be able to be seen in the southeastern part of the sky before sunrise from Saturday through Wednesday, said Michael Bakich, associate editor at Astronomy Magazine. ``Next to the sun and the moon, (Venus is) the brightest in the sky, so it'll be brilliant,'' he said. Mars will be to the upper right of Venus and Mercury will be noticeable at its left. It's been at least 100 years since the planets have aligned this way, Bakich said. He speculated that the bright star the Bible says wise men followed to Bethlehem to find Jesus may have been a similar grouping of planets. ``Nobody really knows what's called the Star of Bethlehem was,'' he said.

Edge of Space: Mystery Clouds Glow Blue They're thin, wispy, and shiny. They glow an unmistakable shade of electric blue. Clearly visible to the astronauts on the International Space Station, the mysterious clouds float on the edge of space in the same region where the space shuttle Columbia broke up. What are they? The official name for these high-altitude ice clouds is "noctilucent clouds" or "night-shining clouds." Some even speculate they may have contributed to the Columbia disaster. Others think they are seeded by space dust, while still others suspect they're a sign of global warming. Whatever they are, they're growing in abundance and are a great puzzle to scientists, reports ABCNews.com and Space.com. They are visible from Earth only in the summer months, so right now they can be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. "We've seen definite changes," admitted John Olivero, a professor of physical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., to ABCNews.com reporter Amanda Onion. "It appears the particles that make up the clouds have gotten slightly bigger with time, and it appears the clouds are now visible further away from the poles than they have been before." The only other reported sighting of such clouds was more than a century ago in 1883 when Krakatoa, an island volcano in Indonesia, erupted. The ash spewed some 50 miles into the air and anchored water vapor at high altitudes. The vapor condensed to ice, and the blue clouds were formed. In addition to enjoying magnificent sunsets, Indonesians who stayed up late enough reported seeing the shimmering, blue clouds. Long after the sunsets returned to normal, the night-shining clouds were still visible. "It's puzzling," Gary Thomas, a professor at the University of Colorado, told Space.com reporter Tony Phillips. "Noctilucent clouds have not only persisted, but also spread." A volcano eruption caused them in 1883. What has caused them to appear now? Scientists are stumped. They're up too high--some 30 to 60 miles above the Earth--to reach them by weather balloon, but they're too close to our planet for an orbiting satellite to check it out. There are theories. Global warming and the effect of greenhouse gasses on the mesosphere is the most popular one. Even the space shuttle Columbia astronauts reported seeing them over the Southern Hemisphere. Because so little is understood about the night-shining clouds, some are wondering if they might have played a role in the Columbia disaster. Others dismiss that since Columbia broke up in the Northern Hemisphere, far away from the clouds. All these questions may be answered in 2006 when NASA launches a small satellite that will take wide angle photographs of the noctilucent clouds, measure their temperatures and chemicals, and more. Until then, enjoy the view.

Meteor shower to brighten heavens (SPACE.com) -- The annual Lyrid meteor shower will peak before dawn on Thursday, April 22. Skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere with dark skies away from city lights could see anywhere from five to 25 shootings stars per hour, or one every few minutes. The timing of this year's version is good, because the moon just passed its new phase and its otherwise bright light not a factor. The Lyrids are best seen between about 2 a.m. and daybreak local time, regardless of where you live, astronomers say. That's when the shower's radiant -- the point from which they appear to emanate -- is highest in the sky. The Lyrid radiant is in the constellation Lyra, and very near to the bright star Vega. Vega is easy to find. It's in the eastern sky but nearly overhead in the predawn hours. It is the brightest star in that region of the sky and the 5th brightest star overall. Lyrid meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. But if you trace each one back, it will point toward Vega. The shower is a result of Earth passing through a trail of debris left by a comet called Thatcher, which last passed through the inner solar system in 1861. The Lyrid event is typically modest -- not as busy as the November Leonids or the August Perseids. But they are still cherished by devout meteor observers. "The Lyrids are the first major annual shower of the season," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society. But this April shower sometimes generates a brief outburst, when the rate can climb to more than one a minute. Seasoned observers might notice that the Lyrids move more quickly than typical meteors. Bright and persistent trails are common with the Lyrids. Most shooting stars are generated by bits no larger than sand grains that vaporize when they plow into Earth's atmosphere. An occasional bright fireball is sometimes sighted amid the Lyrids, caused by debris perhaps the size of a pea or marble. City and suburban dwellers will see significantly fewer of the meteors than those in rural areas away from all light pollution. The shower is not visible from the Southern Hemisphere. To look for meteors, experts advise taking along a blanket or lounge chair, so you can recline and avoid neck strain. Dress warmer than you think necessary if you plan to be out for more than a few minutes. Find a spot with wide-open sky. Face east but scan as much of the sky as possible. Allow 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Another half-dozen or so meteors not associated with the Lyrids could be visible in any given pre-dawn hour, from dark rural locations, according to Lunsford. These other shooting stars could appear anywhere and move in any direction.

When Meteors Explode: Full Account of a Wild Chicago Night You might think meteor expert Steven Simon knew exactly what was happening one evening when the skies over his home were lit up by an exploding, 2,000-pound space rock bigger than a refrigerator. But it was only the next day, when nearby residents brought him chunks of the extraterrestrial visitor that had landed in the street and punched through their roofs, that Simon began to understand the true nature of the frightening event. One of the Chicago-area fragments collected in 2003, with a scale of inches and centimeters for reference. It was embedded in the street. Note the yellow paint on the far right side, picked up on impact. Now after a year of study, the University of Chicago researcher has helped produce a full account of the giant rock that tore through the atmosphere at 54 times the speed of sound. Simon was in his Park Forest home about 30 miles south of Chicago with the drapes drawn near midnight on March 26, 2003. "I saw the flash, and although it lasted longer than a lightning flash, that's what I thought it was," he told SPACE.com last week. "I knew it had rained that night, and thought maybe it was multiple flashes, perhaps diffused by the clouds." Lawrence Grossman, a geophysicist who oversees Simon's research, got a different impression of the incoming object from his home in nearby Flossmoor. "I heard a detonation," Grossman said the morning after the event. "It was sharp enough to wake me up." The fireball in the sky was witnessed across a wide area, from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. Simon and Grossman teamed up with other researchers to gather rocks and eyewitness accounts and then calculate the space rock's original size, composition and origin, and to trace its fragmented path from space to Earth. Their findings are detailed in the April issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. Daily barrage Several tons of space stuff rain down on the planet every day. Much of it is dust. Objects no larger than sand grains generate typical "shooting stars" when they vaporize. Playing marble-sized objects can create dramatic fireballs that prompt phone calls to local law enforcement. Asteroids bigger than about 100 feet (30 meters) can mostly survive the plunge, possibly hitting the surface or exploding devastatingly close to the ground. The latter events are very rare. Scientists call all these things meteors once they enter the atmosphere. When in space, the same objects might be referred to as asteroids if they are large, or meteoroids if they are small. If they hit the ground, they're called meteorites. Whether the things vaporize, break apart or reach the surface intact depends in part on whether they are made mostly of fragile stone or of more durable iron. The Chicago rock was stony and about 6 feet in diameter, the researchers conclude. About 10 objects of this size enter the atmosphere every year, according Doug ReVelle of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which uses satellites and other means to monitor the resulting explosions and separate them from possible rogue-nation nuclear detonations. Most of these in-air explosions are not noticed by eyewitnesses because so much of the world, including the two-thirds that is water, is unpopulated. Chicago fireball Here's what happened over Chicago: "It hit the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph," Simon said. "At this great speed, air pressure builds up in front of the object and is much greater than the pressure behind it. This will pull apart many meteors, especially if they already had some cracks. This object probably went though four fragmentation events as it passed through the atmosphere." Tremendous heat created by the pressure lit much of the object in a fiery display. Park Forest resident Noe Garza was asleep when a fragment burst through his ceiling, sliced some window blinds, then bounced across the room and broke a mirror. "I thought somebody was breaking in," Garza told a new agency the next day. "It was a big bang. I can't really describe it." Another resident whose home was hit said the room lit up and it sounded like a plane had crashed. Simon's team examined hundreds of fragments -- 65 pounds worth that were picked up and delivered to the scientists -- to estimate the original rock's size and weight. The measurements are difficult to pin down, he explained, because a lot of fragments probably hit wooded areas and were not found. And some of the original meteor was probably broken into particles too small to notice. The scientists also analyzed the fragments for a certain radioactive form of cobalt, which can reveal the rock's minimum size. "If the object is too small [while in space for eons] the cosmic rays will just pass through and not make 60 cobalt," Simon said. He said the original rock weighed at least 1,980 pounds as it entered the atmosphere. Long ago, the analysis shows, it was probably heated for a long period of time inside a larger parent asteroid. That asteroid then broke apart, again a long time ago, perhaps in a collision with another asteroid. The researchers found in the fragments a mineral called shocked feldspar, which suggests the ancient collision between two asteroids. There are no records of a meteorite ever killing anyone. But there have been injuries. A dog was killed by a space rock in Egypt in 1911. The Park Forest meteorite event is not totally unlike others that have been reported in recent years. A similar meteorite shower rattled a village in India last September, apparently injuring three people. Other reports of fireballs in the sky are fairly common, and the occasional small rock slices through a home. But Simon and his colleagues write in their report of an important distinction with the Chicago event: "This is the most densely populated region to be hit by a meteorite shower in modern times." This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday series.