The seventh sign in John’s gospel is the manifestation of resurrection life and the climax insofar as it represents the seventh day of Tabernacles. The eighth sign is the result and the outworking of the first seven signs, as eight is the biblical number of new beginnings. Moving from seven to eight is like turning the page with a fresh start that essentially provides a practical look at the meaning and purpose of the seven.

John Lightfoot suggests that when the chief priests said in John 11:48, “If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come,” they were afraid that the Romans themselves would believe in Him. As rulers, there was a distinct danger that the Romans would forcibly make Jesus the god of Judea and thus “take away both our place and our nation.”

A recently discovered mask of the Greek god Pan was featured on the front page of the November/December 2015 issue of the Biblical Archaeological Review. This large, bronze mask is not only impressive and unique but helps shed light on a passage of scripture in the New Testament text of the Book of Matthew Chapter 16 as well as Jerome’s fifth century Vulgate translation of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah Chapter 14.

During the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England on July 28, a giant mechanical bull with glowing red eyes was rolled out into the center of Alexander Stadium. The bull was approximately 10 meters high, and it took more than five months to build. It had been given the nickname “Raging Bull,” and it absolutely dwarfed all of the human participants that were involved in the performance.

The sun was not very high when Granny Coe, her hair weaved back into a long white braid, noticed her Rhode Island Red being chased from the dog’s bowl again. She pulled on her smock and grumbled to herself, “One of these days Princess is gonna catch that stupid chicken. She’s gonna bite ’im and shake ’im and leave ’im for dead.”

Returning to Granny’s farm, Joe parked Allie’s car and entered the farmhouse through the weathered back porch door. He carried the suitcase with its cargo to the guest room upstairs and laid it on the bed, then exited the house and found Allie in the field, helping Granny with the chores. 

It was midnight at Montero and Secretary of Defense William H. Layton stood beside the joint chiefs of staff and the secretaries of the army, air force, and navy. Like the others, he was here to witness what promised to be the definitive step in the future of warfare—the insertion of the Nibiruan Key and the flight of the Reindeer.

According to this prophecy, sudden judgment is coming upon the earth, and it will change everything in a single hour. Within that short span, the whole world will witness fast-falling destruction upon a city and a nation, and the world will never be the same.