2

The heavens declare the

glory of God, and the sky
proclaims the work of His
hands. Day after day
they pour out speech;
night after night they
communicate knowledge.
There is no speech; there
are no words; their voice
is not heard. Their
message has gone out to
all the earth, and their
words to the ends of the
inhabited world. Psalm
19:1-4 (HCSB)

The instruction of the LORD is perfect, reviving the

soul; the testimony of the LORD is trustworthy,
making the inexperienced wise. The precepts of
the LORD are right, making the heart glad; the
commandment of the LORD is radiant, making the
eyes light up. The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever; the ordinances of the LORD are
reliable and altogether righteous. They are more
desirable than gold — than an abundance of pure
gold; and sweeter than honey — than honey
dripping from the comb. Psalm 19:7-10 (HCSB)

Before those inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote the

scriptures, Almighty God had already etched the
revelation of his plans and purposes in the starry
sky. Generation after generation of God-fearing
men pointed their children to the heavens to
explain the divine saga. When the time was right,
 3

God gave the Holy Bible to his people, and linked it

to the ancient sidereal revelation.
 4

Revelation in the
Stars
The Sidereal and Written Word

© C.L.Peppler 2007

Full book available at

www.chrispy.co.za
 5

Revelation in the Stars

© C.L.Peppler All rights reserved. No portion of this book

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for
brief quotations in printed or electronic reviews or books
without the prior permission of the author.

Published by Chrispy Publications,

348 Beverley Estate, Concourse Crescent, Lonehill, 2191

ISBN 978-0-620-39944-9

All scriptural quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are

taken from the
New International Version of the Bible.

Printed and bound by: Interpak Books, Pietermaritzburg

 6

www.chrispy.co.za
 7

Acknowledgements

I have not produced this book alone. Over the

years several scholars have researched and written
on similar subjects, and I am indebted to them. The
Elders of the Village Church have allowed me time
to research and write. Michael Smith subedited and
proofread the manuscript. Natalya Bassani
produced the cover artwork and design. My wife
Patricia provided the practical support which
enabled me to focus. Thank you all so very much.
 8

Contents
............................................................................1
...........................................................................2
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky
proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they
pour out speech; night after night they communicate
knowledge. There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard. Their message has gone out to
all the earth, and their words to the ends of the
inhabited world. Psalm 19:1-4 (HCSB).................2
The instruction of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is trustworthy, making the
inexperienced wise. The precepts of the LORD are right,
making the heart glad; the commandment of the LORD
is radiant, making the eyes light up. The fear of the
LORD is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the
LORD are reliable and altogether righteous. They are
more desirable than gold — than an abundance of pure
gold; and sweeter than honey — than honey dripping
from the comb. Psalm 19:7-10 (HCSB)................2
Before those inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote the
scriptures, Almighty God had already etched the
revelation of his plans and purposes in the starry sky.
Generation after generation of God-fearing men pointed
their children to the heavens to explain the divine saga.
When the time was right, God gave the Holy Bible to his
people, and linked it to the ancient sidereal revelation.
............................................................................2
Revelation in the Stars.........................................5
Preface...............................................................10
The Sidereal Gospel...........................................13
Chapter One: Introduction................................13
Popular Understanding ......................................... .....................15
Astrological Absurdities..................................................... ..........16
Modern Astrology is scripturally invalid.......................................22
Traces of the Zodiac in Scripture................................................23
The Tabernacle and Tribes......................................................... .25
 9

References in the Book of Acts....................................... ............26

The Antiquity of the Zodiac.........................................................28
The Abraham connection............................................ ................29
Jewish Zodiacs................................................... ........................30
............................................................................................ .......31
The Concept of a Sidereal Gospel................................. .............31
Early traces in Genesis................................................ ...............33
Psalm 19........................................................................... ..........37
Other works on this subject................................................... ......38
 10

Preface

I have something fascinating to share with you. It

is that God inspired his ancient people to record
the story of time and eternity on the parchment of
the night sky. I have more to share with you. God
keyed the enigmatic last book of the Bible, the
Revelation of John, to this saga in the stars. He
linked the sidereal word and the scriptural word.

Even if Moses composed the book of Genesis as

early as 1400 BC, what record did those prior to
him have of God’s purposes and plans? The
ancients must have had an oral tradition
concerning what God revealed to them. However,
without a written record, how did they manage to
pass down an accurate rendition of this
knowledge?

You must have played that game communications

lecturers are so fond of, where the audience
whispers a simple message from one person to
another. After they have passed the message
through a dozen or so ears, the facilitator asks the
last recipient to speak out the message as she has
received it. He then reads out the original
message, and everyone laughs at how distorted
the final version is.

Here is a viable solution to the problem of how a

verbal message maintained its integrity over
thousands of years. The stars do not change their
positions relative to each other. Although over the
millennia, they appear to wheel majestically in the
heavens, yet their position relative to one another
 11

remains the same. They form a network of fixed

points, which people of all ages can easily use to
portray a complex message. Think of those join-
the-dots pictures children love. Imagine a father
standing with his son under the canopy of the night
sky. “Look my son, do you see that bright star
there?” He gestures with his finger. “Yes, Father”.
“Well, imagine a line connecting it to that other
star below it. Do you see what I mean?” “Yes,
Father”. “Good, now take that line across to the
right…” The explanation continues until the father
eventually says, “What does it represent, my son?”
“It looks like a giant ‘X’ on its side, Father, but the
vertical is longer than the horizontal.” “Exactly my
son, it’s called the northern cross. Let me tell its
story”.

What a simple yet effective method of ensuring

that illiterate people could carry the message of
God’s purposes and plans down from generation to
generation. Only God could have thought of that!
Yet, about three thousand years ago, after
humanity had become literate, God inspired men
to record the message in writing. So, what real
value is there to us now to know that prior to the
Bible, God wrote his story in the stars?

There are two major reasons why the message in

the stars is still important. Firstly, it provides
atheists and agnostics with powerful evidence of
God’s existence, plans, and purposes. The second
reason is that the message in the stars provides us
with new and better ways of understanding parts
of the Bible, especially the book of Revelation.

I have written this book in two parts. The first part

deals with the validity and the meaning of the
 12

message in the stars. In this section, I also show

how the star gospel appears in many parts of the
Bible, not just in Revelation. However, I have
devoted the second part of the book to interpreting
the book of Revelation, using the message in the
stars as a key hermeneutical tool.

Discovering and decoding the message in the stars

is not a simple matter, because Satan has
corrupted the original story considerably. He has
influenced people down through the ages to
change the names and configurations of the
constellations, to read the story from the wrong
starting point and in the wrong direction, and to
alter the ancient names assigned to key stars. He
has even corrupted the entire system into fortune-
telling astrology. You are probably aware that
Hebrew is written from right to left using an
alphabet of twenty-two letters. Imagine if someone
took a key piece of Hebrew literature, erased some
letters of the alphabet, and instructed that people
should read the literature from left to right, and
from the bottom up. What kind of sense would the
message make? Well, Satan has corrupted the
message in the stars just as badly!

It has taken me more than two decades to gather

all the information for this book, but the task has
fascinated and inspired me. I hope and pray that as
you read this work the Holy Spirit will fill you with
awe and wonder at the greatness of God. I also
hope that you will better understand the book of
Revelation, and so be able to apply it and teach it.
 13

The Sidereal Gospel

Chapter One: Introduction

T his is a book about the constellations. More

specifically, it is about the ancient message
they depict. It is not about modern astrology or
anything occult. It is about how the stars declare
the glory of God. It is about ancient history,
astronomy, and the Gospel. It is about how an
understanding of the Zodiac and its purpose can
unlock parts of scripture long mystifying to most of
us. It is a story of discovery and enlightenment. It
is an important story.

This book is also about the last book of the Bible,

the book of Revelation. Many commentators have
remarked on the incomprehensibility of much of
this mysterious book. However, if we reference it to
the revelation in the stars, then we can appreciate
most of its previously hidden meaning. Whilst
several others have written on the message in the
stars, I am aware of only a few who have dealt with
the sidereal construction of the book of Revelation.
So, this will be a major contribution I hope to bring
in this work.

Before going
any further, I
need to
explain the
terms
sidereal and
 14

zodiac, as I will use them many times in this book.

Sidereal simply means ‘relating to the stars’. So,
Sidereal Gospel essentially means ‘star gospel’.
The Zodiac is a part of the sky containing the major
star constellations. It is a narrow band in the
heavens in which the apparent movements of the
major planets, Sun, and Moon take place. It
divides into twelve sections named after the major
constellations in each section.
So then, the Zodiac is an imaginary band in the
heavens around the Earth, lying within eight
degrees on either side of the apparent path of the
Sun’s annual motion relative to the stars. From our
position on Earth, the Sun, Moon and major planets
appear to travel along this pathway. This ‘path’
through the heavens is the elliptic, and it divides
into twelve divisions of thirty degrees each. These
twelve divisions constitute the signs of the Zodiac.
Each has a name and an image superimposed over
the major stars in that particular sector of the
heavens. In each of these twelve divisions there
are three other constellations, commonly called
Decans. Each star sign therefore consists of four
constellations, each represented by a picture of a
person, animal, or some inanimate object.

The glyphs
represented are a
sort of shorthand
used to identify the
 twelve major
constellations. For
instance,
represents the
constellation of
 15

Since ancient times, men of learning have used the

forty-eight constellations of the Zodiac as a sort of
celestial map. Modern astronomers still use this
system as a convenient way of cataloguing and
locating stars and deep space objects. However,
most people are not trained astronomers, and to
the average person the word ‘Zodiac’ has a very
different association… Astrology.

Popular Understanding

To the uninformed, the word Zodiac evokes images

of crystal balls and Tarot cards, and is usually
associated with astrology.

Most people think the word ‘Zodiac’ derives from

the Greek word for life, zoë. This is because of the
various animals and other forms depicted in most
zodiacs. However, the word is more likely to derive
from the Hebrew word zodi, which means ‘a way’.
At some time, quite far back, linguists incorporated
this Hebrew root into the Greek word, zodiakos.
This word translates into English as ‘the path’ or
more literally, ‘the way of steps’. It refers to the
path the sun appears to take through the twelve
steps making up the circle of the heavens known
as the Zodiac. Interestingly, the early Christians
were called the people of The Way (Acts 9:2, 19:9,
23, 24:14, 22).

The popular association of the Zodiac is with

astrology. This pseudo-science purports to classify
human characteristics and to predict the future.
The basic idea behind astrology is that the sun,
 16

moon, and planets interact with each other within

a particular Zodiacal sign to influence each person
at the time of their birth. Practitioners of astrology
believe this interaction determines human
character and temperament, and forms a pattern
for each individual’s future. I do not believe this.
This book is definitely not about astrology.

Over the years, many people have tried

unsuccessfully to justify astrology from a scientific
perspective. All attempts I have read fall short. This
is because astrology's underlying presuppositions
are logically and scientifically insupportable.
Consider the following.

Astrological Absurdities

Modern astrology is suspect on a number of

grounds:

• The number of signs assigned to the Zodiac

by astrologers differs between ten and
fourteen, depending on historic period or
interpretive method. There is therefore
inconsistency over time and culture. The
result is much like telling someone using a
Jewish calendar that all people born in
January are alike. The Jewish calendar has
different months starting on different Julian
calendar days. The statement just would not
make any sense.
 17

• The calendar periods assigned to the signs of

the Zodiac originally coincided with the
actual location of the constellations in the
night sky. That was several thousands of
years ago. Now, the time periods originally
associated with the signs bear no
relationship to the current positions of the
constellations they purport to represent. For
instance, whilst Sagittarius is now associated
with November/December, a thousand years
ago it was associated with different months
of the year because its constellations were
located in different parts of the heavens. The
precession of the equinoxes causes this
phenomenon. The Earth wobbles much like a
slowly spinning top, and its axis prescribes a
huge imaginary circle in the heavens. So,
from Earth’s vantage, the constellations
appear to revolve.

• We have discovered several new planets

since the original formulation of the
astrological method. Despite this, astrologers
continue to use only the original seven
(actually five, plus sun and moon).

• A main astrological contention is that the

planets exert a gravitational pull on the
human baby at birth. This, they say, sets up
the conditions which determine character
and destiny. Scientifically, the gravitational
pull of close objects, such as mountains or
even very large trees, is far greater than that
of even the nearest planet. Even if we apply
the theory of gravitational attraction to the
moment of conception, rather than birth, the
 18

environmental factors would be just as

problematic.

• Statistically, it is a simple matter to show

that the more than 250 000 babies born
each day on planet Earth do not all share the
same characteristics, let alone the same
destiny. Even twins, born within minutes of
each other, often have very different
personalities, pursue different careers, and
end their lives entirely differently.
• The configurations of the actual
constellations are in most cases inconsistent
with the shapes and forms they represent.
For instance, look up at the constellation of
Bootes and try to find the actual shape of a
man holding a sickle in his upraised hand.
Here is a depiction of the portion of night sky
that contains Bootes; see if you can spot
him.
 19

OK, here he is on the next page…

 20

The actual star configurations just do not

naturally suggest most of the shapes ascribed
to them. Therefore, it is illogical to claim that
the stars portray pictures which represent
human characteristics.

If you are an agnostic and approach things from

an essentially scientific perspective, then what I
have already pointed out should cause you to
doubt the validity of astrology. If you are a
Christian, then there is an even more telling
 21

argument against the main principles of

astrology. The Bible contains stern prohibitions
against it.
 22

Modern Astrology is scripturally invalid

There are two main branches of astrology:

• Predictive Astrology stands on the underlying

belief that the sidereal bodies control the
destinies of men.

• Determinative Astrology holds that the stars

and planets determine who we are.

Both of these philosophies violate the important

scriptural revelation that God, not the stars,
influences the nature and destinies of men and
women. Yet despite his sovereign will, he has
granted humans a meaningful degree of discretion.
The idea that we are puppets on the end of cosmic
strings is both unscriptural and offensive to human
dignity.

The scriptures also plainly condemn astrology.

Consider the following:

Deuteronomy 4:19 ‘And when you look up to the

sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars -- all
the heavenly array -- do not be enticed into bowing
down to them and worshipping things the Lord
your God has apportioned to all the nations under
heaven’. (See also 2 Kings 23:4-5)

Isaiah 47:12-15 ‘Keep on, then, with your magic

spells and with your many sorceries, which you
have laboured at since childhood. Perhaps you will
succeed, perhaps you will cause terror. All the
counsel you have received has only worn you out!
Let your astrologers come forward, those
 23

stargazers who make predictions month by month,

let them save you from what is coming upon you.
Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them
up. They cannot even save themselves from the
power of the flame. Here are no coals to warm
anyone; here is no fire to sit by. That is all they
can do for you -- these you have laboured with and
trafficked with since childhood. Each of them goes
on in his error; there is not one that can save you’.

Acts 7:42-43 ‘But God turned away and gave them

over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This
agrees with what is written in the book of the
prophets: ‘Did you bring me sacrifices and
offerings forty years in the desert, O house of
Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of Molech
and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you
made to worship. Therefore I will send you into
exile beyond Babylon’.

Yet, despite such condemnations, references to the

names of some of the constellations are indeed in
the Bible. So we can conclude that the Zodiac, in
itself, is not the problem; the way humankind uses
it is the real offence.

Traces of the Zodiac in Scripture

The names of certain constellations appear a

number of times in the Bible. Consider the
following:

Job 38:31-32: ‘Can you bind the beautiful

Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?
 24

Can you bring forth the constellations in their

seasons or lead out Arcturus with its satellites?’

Amos 5:8: ‘He who made the Pleiades and Orion,

who turns blackness into dawn and darkens day
into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and
pours them out over the face of the land -- the
Lord is his name.’

Job 9:9: ‘He is the Maker of Arcturus and Orion

the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.’

The Pleiades is the name given to a cluster of stars

in the shoulder of the constellation Taurus. The
constellation Orion is also in the sign of Taurus.
Although the NIV translates Job 38:32 as ‘The Bear
with her cubs’, it gives an alternate translation as
‘Leo’. Young’s Literal Translation has transliterated
the Hebrew word used as ‘Ayish’. Holman’s
translates the word as ‘Aldebaran.’ The only reason
I can see for some translations having ‘The Bear’ is
the traditional terminology used at the time of
translation. Certainly, a heavenly body is in view
here, but we do not know if it is a planet, star, or
constellation. I will show later on in this book that
the images of bears (Ursa Major and Minor) are a
corruption of the pictures originally assigned to
these constellations.

Job 26:13: ‘By his breath the skies became fair; his
hand pierced the gliding serpent.’

There is no real scholarly consensus on what ‘the

gliding serpent’ is, but the reference here could
quite feasibly be to the constellation of Hydra.
Almost all Zodiacs portray this particular
 25

constellation as a huge serpent occupying about

one third of the Zodiacal circle.

The Tabernacle and Tribes

There is another fascinating reference to the

prominence of the Zodiac in the life and worship of
the people of Israel. Josephus, a first-century AD
Jewish historian, wrote, concerning the furniture in
the Tabernacle, that the seven lamps of the
Menorah, the seven-armed lamp, symbolized the
planets. He also stated that the twelve loaves on
the Table of Shewbread represented the Zodiac
circle. This is what he wrote;

‘This part of the temple therefore was in

height sixty cubits, and its length the
same; whereas its breadth was but
twenty cubits: but still that sixty cubits in
length was divided again, and the first
part of it was cut off at forty cubits, and
had in it three things that were very
wonderful and famous among all
mankind, the candlestick, the table [of
shew-bread], and the altar of incense.
Now the seven lamps signified the
seven planets; for so many there were
springing out of the candlestick. Now the
twelve loaves that were upon the table
signified the circle of the zodiac and
the year;’ (Josephus: Wars of the Jews,
Chap. 5, para. 5)

Josephus also wrote that the High Priest’s garments

and adornments represented the constellations;
 26

‘Each of the sardonyxes declares to us

the sun and the moon; those, I mean,
that were in the nature of buttons on the
high priest's shoulders. And for the twelve
stones, whether we understand by them
the months, or whether we understand
the like number of the signs of that
circle which the Greeks call the
Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their
meaning.’ (Josephus: Antiquities of the
Jews, Chap. 7, para. 7)

There is also some evidence for the tribes of Israel

having the signs of the Zodiac emblazoned on their
standards.

Josephus was a Jewish general conscripted by

the Romans around
AD 70 to act as their Jewish historian. There is no
reason to think that his interpretation of the temple
furnishings and the High Priest’s garments did not
reflect the thinking of the Jewish theologians of his
time.

Both the references in Job and Amos, and the

writings of Josephus, reveal that the planets and
stars featured significantly in the Jewish religious
worldview. This overflows into the New Testament
witness.

References in the Book of Acts

 27

Acts Chapter 7 verses 39 to 43 record Stephen’s

speech to the Jewish ruling council (Sanhedrin) as
follows:

‘But our fathers refused to obey him.

Instead, they rejected him and in their
hearts turned back to Egypt. They told
Aaron, 'Make us gods who will go before
us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out
of Egypt — we don't know what has
happened to him!' That was the time they
made an idol in the form of a calf. They
brought sacrifices to it and held a
celebration in honour of what their hands
had made. But God turned away and gave
them over to the worship of the heavenly
bodies. This agrees with what is written in
the book of the prophets: "Did you bring
me sacrifices and offerings forty years in
the desert, O house of Israel? You have
lifted up the shrine of Molech and the
star of your god Rephan, the idols you
made to worship. Therefore I will send you
into exile beyond Babylon…’

I have read many explanations of why the Israelites

wanted to worship a golden calf. The most obvious
understanding is to associate it with ‘the worship of
the heavenly bodies’ and the reference to ‘the star
of your god Rephan’. It is obvious, at least to me,
that the golden calf was part of the worship of the
stars, the heavenly bodies. Taurus is a Zodiacal
sign representing a bull. A star cluster known as
the Pleiades appears in the shoulder of this
constellation. Both Taurus and the Pleiades were
well known to the Egyptians and played significant
roles in their worship system. Concerning the star
 28

mentioned in Acts 7, scholars of antiquity generally

believe the star of Rephan to be the planet Saturn.
To the ancients, planets were merely wandering
stars. So, the Golden Calf idolatry had to do with
the Egyptian deities they ascribed to the
constellation of Taurus and the planet Saturn.

Whilst the ancient Jews knew the Zodiac, its origins

date back even further.

The Antiquity of the

Zodiac

Archaeologists discovered
the earliest known
graphical depiction of the
Zodiac in the ceiling of the
ancient temple at
Denderah in Egypt. The Egyptians built the temple
of Hathor, in which the Zodiac was located, in
c.125 BC, or according to the antiquities scholar
Fagan, in 137 BC. However, the positions of the
planets indicated in this Zodiac are consistent with
the night sky of about 4 500 years ago. That means
the Zodiac was already in use at least before 2500
BC.

In the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I,

archaeologists found a relief they dated as c.1290
BC. This relief shows the star Sirius rising as the
marker indicating the start of the Sothic (ancient
Egyptian) calendar. From the data displayed, Fagan
calculated that the year represented was 2767 BC.
 29

Researchers have found Zodiac depictions in the

archaeological digs of many ancient cultures.
Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian, Arabian,
Chinese, Mexican, Indian, and Hebrew cultures all
made use of some form of Zodiac. Many of the
names of actual stars have Arabic or Babylonian
origins, and so it is likely that the Zodiac had its
origin somewhere in the Near East. Unfortunately,
the first order research trails get cold sometime
around 410 BC. Therefore, most current literature
concerning the Zodiac derives from Greek and
Babylonian records of the fifth century BC.

Historians are undecided about the original

intended use of the ancient Zodiacs. Most think the
ancients used them to indicate both agricultural
seasons and the timing of religious observances.
There is no evidence for the use of Zodiacs as
predictive tools before the fifth century BC. Even
then, the predictions made from zodiacal readings
concerned nations and epochs, and were not
personal prognostications.

The Abraham connection

The book of Genesis records how Abram (God had

not yet changed his name to Abraham) travelled
from Ur in Babylonia to make his eventual home in
Palestine. Flavius Josephus refers to the Chaldean
astronomer Berosus as mentioning Abram when he
wrote that ‘in the tenth generation after the Flood,
there was among the Chaldeans a man righteous
and great, and skilful in the celestial science.’ It is
quite likely that Abram exported astronomy and
 30

the Zodiac from Babylonia to the Promised Land.

This could account for the several Old Testament
allusions to zodiacal signs.

Josephus gives the reason for Abram leaving Ur as

religious persecution. He believed Abram had
concluded that there was but one God and creator
of all things. Josephus held, in fact, that astronomy
predated Abram and that Enoch had first
introduced it. Perhaps Abram refined or adapted an
age-old stellar identification system and then
exported it first to Palestine and later to Egypt.
Zodiacs appear to predate Abram, and so he most
probably was working with an existing system. If
Josephus was correct, then Abram would have
been working with Enoch’s astronomical scheme.

The latest historical research indicates that Zodiacs

appeared almost simultaneously in Babylonia,
Assyria, and Egypt. Significantly, Abram left
Babylonia (Ur of the Chaldees), stayed for a season
in Haran, just north-west of Assyria and, after a
period in Palestine, ended up in Egypt. Could he
have been the one who introduced the Zodiac and
its mysterious message to these three great
nations? The evidence is scant yet compelling.

Jewish Zodiacs

Several synagogues in Israel contained Zodiacs.

Today, you can see some of them in the ruins and
reconstructions of synagogues in the Holy Land.
Many have theorized about why they were there.
The most widely accepted theory is that the Jews
 31

adopted Astrology from the Greeks, but

reinterpreted the planets to represent angels and
not gods. The idea here is that Palestinian Jews of
around Jesus’ time had moved away from the
taboo of graven images, and had adopted the
symbols and art of the Hellenized world to express
their religion. This could be partially true, although
unlikely considering the religious zeal of the
Pharisees of Jesus’ time. A more reasonable
explanation is that the Zodiac had an ancient place
in Jewish mystical tradition. Abraham was the
spiritual father of the Jewish faith, and I have
already made the point that he could well have
been the one whom God used to convey the
sidereal gospel first revealed to Enoch. Moreover, I
believe the Zodiac was not merely an astrological
map or agricultural calendar. Mystical Jews would
have embraced it as an encoded story of God’s
providence and salvation plan.

The Concept of a Sidereal Gospel

It is my belief that, in the most ancient times, God

placed a huge picture story in the heavens. This
star story, this sidereal gospel, predated the
written record, the scriptures. Its purpose was to
reveal to humankind the divine plan for the ages.

I further contend that the devil corrupted the use

and interpretation of these heavenly signs into
astrology. Instead of reading God’s plans and
purposes in the stars, men and women now try to
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determine their personality traits and destinies

from those same stars.

I use the word ‘gospel’ in its linguistically qualified

sense. The word means ‘good news’, and the story
depicted in the heavens is indeed good news to
those who will believe it. It is the story of God’s
great plan of redemption and reconciliation.
Salvation came through Jesus Christ alone, and the
scriptures constitute the witness to this great
salvation. But remember, the Zodiac constitutes a
record preceding the written revelation of the
scriptures. Its value to us is that it both
authenticates the biblical record and helps us to
understand previously veiled parts of the Bible.

Why did the ancient stargazers assign names to

the constellations which in most cases bear little
resemblance to their visual configurations? Look up
at the night sky towards the constellation of Virgo,
for instance. See if you can discern any particular
female form in the star configurations. To see a
woman in that constellation requires more than
imagination, it requires a code. The logical answer
to the question I have posed is that someone
superimposed the images upon the star
formations. In other words, someone used the
bright stars in each constellation as points to
‘draw’ a picture on the canvas of the night sky. As I
have already pointed out, the stars do not change
their location relative to each other, and so this
sort of ‘join-the-dots’ picture would remain
unchanged over time. In this way, one generation
after another could pass on a story sketched in
pictures on the heavens. Read Psalm 19:1-6 in this
light.
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‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the

skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day
after day they pour forth speech; night after
night they display knowledge. There is no
speech or language where their voice is not
heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. In the
heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from
his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run
his course. It rises at one end of the
heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.’

I do not want to rush into this revelation. Rather, I

want to build up the concept of a sidereal gospel,
not from Psalm 19, but from the very beginning of
the Bible.

Early traces in Genesis

‘And God said, “Let there be lights in the

expanse of the sky to separate the day from
the night, and let them serve as signs to
mark seasons and days and years, and let
them be lights in the expanse of the sky to
give light on the earth.” And it was so.’
(Genesis 1:14-15)
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The ‘lights in the expanse of the sky’ are obviously

stellar objects, stars. According to this passage,
God placed these stars in the heavens for three
stated purposes, other than that of shedding
reflected light on the Earth during the night hours.
The New American Standard Version of the Bible
phrases this part of verse 14 as, ‘and let them be
for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.’

I will comment on these in reverse order. Firstly,

days and years. Due to the inclination of the Earth
on its axis, the stars appear to move slowly across
the heavens as the year progresses. Different
constellations appear on the eastern horizon at
dawn in different months of the year. The ancient
civilizations based their calendars on these stellar
positions. Egypt, for instance, divided their year
into twelve thirty-day periods, each presided over
by a particular constellation.

The second stated purpose given in verse 14 is to

mark the seasons. Even before the formalization of
a calendar in Egypt, the periodic flooding of the
river Nile was associated with the position of the
stars and major planets. The heavenly
configurations acted as an annual marker for the
different agricultural seasons.

The word signs in verse 14 is a translation of the

Hebrew word oth, meaning ‘things to come’.
Jeremiah 10:2 uses this same word where it has,
‘This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not learn the ways
of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky,
though the nations are terrified by them.’

According to Keil and Delitzesch, ‘The signs of

heaven are unwonted phenomena in the heavens,
 35

eclipses of the sun and moon, comets, and unusual

conjunctions of the stars, which were regarded as
the precursors of extraordinary and disastrous
events.’ This is the current view concerning the
meaning of the word ‘signs’ in this passage of
scripture. However, it is just as feasible that the
heavenly ‘signs’ refer to the constellations of the
Zodiac and the story they convey.

I find the next step in the construction of the

concept of a sidereal gospel in the account of the
tower of Babel in Genesis Chapter 11. Some
historians believe the tower of Babel was a
Ziggurat, a stepped pyramid. On top of this was a
temple to the starry host, complete with a Zodiac.
Josephus wrote that astronomy originated with the
family of Seth, and he claimed that Enoch made
provision for the preservation of this knowledge by
building two ‘pillars’ (Josephus: Antiquities of the
Jews, Chap.12, para. 3), one of brick and the other
of stone, to contain the whole of the predictions of
the stars. The Tower of Babel was made of baked
bricks, and the Great Pyramid of Egypt was made
of cut stone.

Lieut-Gen. Chesney researched and excavated the

ruins of Babylon and reported as follows:

‘About five miles S.W. of Hillah, the most

remarkable of all the ruins, the Birs Nimroud
of the Arabs, rises to a height of 153 feet
above the plain from a base covering a
square of 400 feet, or almost four acres. It
was constructed of kiln-dried bricks in seven
stages to correspond with the planets to
which they were dedicated: the lowermost
black, the colour of Saturn; the next orange,
 36

for Jupiter; the third red, for Mars; and so on.

These stages were surmounted by a lofty
tower, on the summit of which, we are told,
were the signs of the Zodiac and other
astronomical figures; thus having (as it should
have been translated) “a representation of
the heavens” instead of 'a top which reached
unto heaven.’ 1

Could it be that the ancients corrupted this

repository of knowledge into a temple of worship to
the starry host? Could modern astrology, with its
focus on godless determination and prediction,
have had its birth here? Did this cause God's
anger, the destruction of the tower and the
scattering of the nations? Evidence, as in most
things regarding antiquity, is scant, and so we
need to rely quite heavily on logic and a sense of
right fit. On this basis I believe that it is reasonable
to answer ‘yes’ to all three questions.

Next, I ask you to consider

Genesis 3:15, which reads,
‘And I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and
between your offspring and
hers; he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.’
We know this verse as the
‘proto evangeli’, the first
Gospel, with the woman's
offspring being Jesus and the
serpent’s offspring being the
devil.

1
Quoted from E.W.Bullinger’s book ‘Message in the stars’
 37

Now, right near the centre of the ancient star chart

of the heavens, the Zodiac, is a picture of a man,
commonly called Hercules, with his foot upon the
head of a snake named Draco. The ancient name
for the man was not Hercules but Bau, meaning
‘who cometh’, and the brightest star, situated in
the man’s head, is named Ras Al Gethi, meaning
‘The head of him who bruises’. The name Draco is
from the Greek and means ‘trodden on’, and its
brightest star is Thuban, which means ‘the subtle
one’. Thuban used to be the polar star some 4 700
years ago. You might know this star by its more
common name of Alpha Draconis. There is another
star in the very head of Draco called Al Waid,
meaning ‘who is to be destroyed’.

Both the picture and the star names depict the

proto evangeli; an ancient dragon under the foot of
a mighty saviour figure. It is clear, is it not? The
one who comes, tramples, and crushes the
serpent, the subtle one who is to be destroyed,
Satan, is … Jesus!

Now I need to take you once more to Psalm 19.

Psalm 19

This Psalm is in two parts. The first part (vv. 1 - 6)

speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God
and the skies proclaiming the work of his hands.
The second half of verse 4 together with verse 5
describes the sun’s apparent movement along its
zodiacal course through the sky. The psalm
equates the arrangements in the heavens to a
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message from God declared to all of humanity. Just

to make sure we do not miss the point, the second
half of the psalm speaks of the written revelation of
God in the scriptures. Is it stretching the meaning
of the psalm to say that its message is that God
has given us the good news, the Gospel, of his
purposes both in the heavens and in the Bible? Did
God present humanity with a sidereal gospel
before he caused the scriptural gospel to be
composed? You know by now that my answer to
the first question is ‘no, I don’t believe it is
unreasonable to interpret the psalm in this way’,
and to the second question is ‘yes, I believe that a
sidereal gospel existed before the Bible was
composed’.

It is time to consider other literary works on the

subject of a Sidereal Gospel.

Other works on this subject

I sometimes read books on this sort of subject,

where the author presents a body of knowledge as
though he or she were the first to discover it. I do
not want to give you the impression that I am the
first to investigate the concept of a sidereal gospel.
There have been a number of books published on
this subject from 1970 to date, but most of them
take their material from a book entitled ‘Witness of
the Stars’ by E.W.Bullinger written in 1893. Some
eleven years earlier, Joseph A. Seiss published his
book ‘The Gospel in the Stars’. Both he and Dr
Bullinger leaned heavily on research by Frances
Rolleston published in 1863 under the title
‘Mazzarorth – The Constellations’. Dr Bullinger
 39

acknowledged both Seiss and Rolleston in the

preface to his first edition, and stated that his work
was an effort to ‘set forth, in a more complete
form, the witness of the stars to prophetic truth, so
necessary in these last days.’

More recently, William D. Banks produced a book

based largely on the research of Frances Rolleston
entitled ‘The heavens declare…’ (1985). His
bibliography contains references to works on the
same theme by Dent (The Testimony of the Stars),
Rolleston, Seiss, and Bullinger.

My interpretation of the data differs substantially in

several places from that of these scholars. I have
also added many insights and conclusions not
included in their works.

More recently, three scholars have published their

research into an astronomical and astrological
interpretation of the book of Revelation. In 1997,
Jacques M. Chevalier published ‘A Postmodern
Revelation – Signs of Astrology and the
Apocalypse’. In 2000, Bruce J. Malina and John J.
Pilch published ‘Social-Science Commentary on the
Book of Revelation’. Both works are essentially
humanistic in orientation, but they do open the
door to serious academic research into the
astronomical coding of the book of Revelation.
 40

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