2008-09-07: Plague of Flies ends, warning on Cattle.

On this date the plague of flies ends. The date also includes a warning about the cattle.

Note that traditionally this is called the plague of flies but the key word that carries the meaning is the word for swarm the word fly being added by the KJV translators in 1611. Properly this is either the Plague of Swarms (storms with eyes) or the Plague of Arabs, an alternate translation.

The following is the text.

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14: Plague: Flies: Ends; Moses Prays.

Theoretical Time:

• 12999/9/15 1:1:1 AA
• 2008-09-07 18:00:00 TMMT
• 2008-09-07 15:39:06 GMT
• 2008-09-07 11:39:06 EDT

Associated Scripture:

Fulfillment Part 1: Hurricane Ike

There were 2 key fulfillments that went with this passage of scripture. The first, left over from the tail end of the plague on swarms was hurricane Ike. At one point Ike was the largest hurricane ever recorded. The second headline was Paulson’s visit to capital hill and the nationalization of Freddie and Fannie, we’ll get to that below.

On September 1, 2008, Hurricane Ike was named off the coast of Africa. It reached maximum intensity on September 4 and then first hit land on September 7, 2008 when it crossed the Turks and Caicos Islands and made initial landfall in Cuba. This, the last of the plague of swarms, was making initial landfall on exactly the prophetic date.

By September 9 the storm had crossed Cuba, and was now in open waters of the Gulf of Mexico and headed for landfall in Texas. Ike finally touched mainland at Galveston, Texas, on September 13, 2008 at 2:10 AM local time.

The storm had an unusually large wind field, and had a storm surge consistent with a typical Category 4 Hurricane, even though this one was only a category 2. Much of the residential areas surrounding Galveston were destroyed.

Office towers lost windows, including the JPMorgan Chase tower in downtown Houston. Morgan is one of the players in the other fulfillment stories for this plague, so the damage to the tower is not unrelated to the general story.

The storm then proceeded in a north north-easterly direction eventually entering southern Canada with major power outages and wind related destruction all along its path. Roughly 8,000,000 people lost electrical power because of Hurricane Ike, one of the largest naturally caused power outages in history.

The "Plague of Swarms" had begun near Waco, Texas, on May 10, 2008, when Bush held a wedding at his ranch outside Crawford. Bush’s daughter’s new husband’s last name was "Hagar" which is the biblical name for the mother of all the Arabs. Bush had both a swarm and an Arab in his house that day. Local storms on the night before the wedding had upended the tent and catering equipment, and then from there the storms moved up across the mid west, eventually leading to a major destruction and wide tornados in Iowa.

Ike retraced a very similar route, with another wide swath of destruction.

More on the Date

The start of the Plague of Flies included a textual detail the plague would even enter Pharaoh’s house. That house is both Bush’s family in a general sense, and the White House in a national sense.

The key Hebrew term for that plague is Eyin-Resh-Bet, YRB, which can either be translated as swarm or as the much more common term ARaB.

At the start of the plague, on May 10, 2008, President Bush gave his daughter in marriage to a fellow by the name of Hager, a prophetic match to Hagar, the mother of all the Arabs, and someone who was allowed into Bush’s house. Bush also had a small tornado touch down on his ranch the evening before the wedding.

Just as the plague opened with both a storm-with-an-eye, and an Arab, at Crawford, Texas, so too, did this plague end with a storm-with-an-eye and a headline about Arabs, though the end was much more severe than the start. The storm at the end turned out to be Ike. But, where was the Arab at the end?

The date was Sunday morning, September 7, 2008, at essentially the exact theoretical time, and Barack Obama, candidate for United States President, made a terrible slip of the tongue on Sunday morning TV.

It seems he was trying to talk about his "Christian Faith" but instead he used the words "Muslim Faith." Now I’ve hung around Christian churches for a very long time, and I’ve never heard anyone have a slip of the tongue where their faith became Muslim. In fact most Christian viewers also recognized what was going on. He’s wired Muslim, and uses the term Christian to seduce his audience, and when he’s tired or not thinking, the true shines through.

Only watching on TV leaves Obama with an ability to plausibly deny what he said.

But, the Bible story behind the date says otherwise. We’re looking for an Arab to enter Pharaoh’s house, as a closing thought from the Plague of Arabs that began with events on May 10, 2008.

Obama will most likely take Bush’s place as the next president. Obama will occupy Bush’s chair, Pharaoh’s chair. Obama will take over Pharaoh’s house.

What that slip on Sunday morning TV did was give us the identity of the Arab who will enter the White House. The Plague of Arab’s will continue in 2009...

Details of the morning show are at the Washington Times.

Part 2: Plague on Cattle Warning

Hurricane Ike, a swarm with an eye, marked the close of the Plague of Swarms. What follows that plague is popularly called the Plague on Cattle. In this plague, like so many of the others, the English rendition well known to readers of modern Bibles hides much of the depth of what the plague is about.

In this case the general name for the plague is Mem-Qoof-Nun-Hey, or MQNE. Commonly translated cattle as everyone knows. The term, though, can also be translated stock and it carries meaning in the sense of shares of stock. The term is also a Hebrew root for the modern English word MONE(y). Again, another certificate system.

The word-picture system suggests the following defining sentence: True-Backed-by-Live-Orderly. In the sense that certificates are created, alive, and they back something true, like gold or partial ownership in a company, or an insurance policy or some similar financial instrument. They are alive, and trade freely in the economy, and they are orderly because they bring order, denominations of currency, to otherwise disorderly, irregular, nuggets of gold.

There are other heavy hitting words in the description of this plague, the most interesting being Bet-Qoof-Resh, or BQR from which we get the modern word BaNKeR. This term is consistently translated Cattle, but the word picture is "House-Behind-Head" or head (of animals) penned behind the house. Considering that the overall plague is dealing with Money, the specifics of this animal type suggests certificates that are behind houses, what we call today mortgages, perhaps credit cards, are the things being plagued.

The other animal types can also be tentatively matched to various types of money systems. The most interesting is the Hebrew behind the word field Sheen-Dalet-Hey, SDE, from which we get the English word SoD. This word pictures the "Orderly-Opening-and-Revealing" which is what happens when a field is plowed. In terms of financial systems this is probably pointing at the way insurance companies take an orderly, usually monthly, premium, and then open their door back to their clients only when the client reveals, proves, that the condition for the insurance payout has been met.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the KJV translators in 1611 normalized this event to look like all the other plagues. All the other plagues use a term that is consistently translated as plague. Not so this one. The original Hebrew does not call this a plague at all, but instead uses the term Dalet-Bet-Resh, DBR, translated commonly as the word "Word," but this word, DBR, has the sense of decree, as in decree from the king. DBR’s word picture meaning is "Door-of-the-House-of-the-King." So the sense is this is a formal, even governmental, communication.

What this slight of translator’s hand means is that if we look for an animal plague, something like, say, anthrax, which the English suggests, we miss that this destruction does not come from the biological sphere at all, but from a decree of the king, or decree from some other similar ruler or rulers.

So this plague is targeted not on animals that walk around in fields, but it involves a decree that destroys stock certificate, and money certificate systems and destroys bankers themselves. The various animal types covered in the account of this plague are simply types of financial institutions that go with certificate based money systems. The word picture definitions give the financial patterns being plagued.

Timing Notes

This passage is technically a warning about the soon plague on cattle. It does not expect a full death of cattle on this date. That date is November 6, 2008 2 days after elections in the United States.

Fulfillment: Warning of Plague on Cattle

With this background it is possible to look more closely at the fulfillment.

Part A: Paulson Visits Congress, Cattle Start Dropping

The theoretical time for this plague was Sunday September 7, 2008, at about 11:40 AM on the east coast of the United States. (See the report at the top of this page for exact times.)

Normally, this is a sleepy time, but not on that Sunday. United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went to Capital Hill that Sunday and announced to Congress that the government was taking the two GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, into receivership.  This was basically a direct hit on the theoretical time for when the start of this next plague, the Plague on Cattle should begin.

Because these "enterprises" (not businesses) were so tangled into the fabric of the world financial system they were not allowed to fail outright.  The US taxpayer foots the bill. Later reports from the GAO suggested the US deficit should be restated to absorb the entire outstanding debt of the GSEs. In one morning Paulson effectively, and personally, doubled the national debt of the United States.

The GSE bailout left the US Congress with the job of fixing the GSE problem by December 31, 2009.   The date is already known to the time line, and is the "last day of your year", to badly paraphrase a quote from that prophetic story.  The very next day is the first day of "your year," the calendar system used across the world.   Note the biblical jubilee breaks within weeks after that date.

This was in effect a decree, a DBR, a word with authority, spoken from the house of the people, the capital building in Washington DC. That decree killed the first 2 cattle. Many more were to come.

Details include: treasury press release and more and more

Part B: Paulson Lets Lehman Collapse, Merrill Lynch Bought out

One week later, within this warning of the Plague on Cattle, there was the collapse of Lehman Brothers in New York City. This was the 4th largest investment bank.

Various meetings had been held in the week before, Lehman stock had collapsed on the 9th of September, 2 days after theoretical for the plague date. Bank of America was offered the firm, would declined, and bought Merrill Lynch instead.

By Sunday it was announced that Lehman would be going bankrupt, and there was a special trading session on Sunday to allow traders to plan their unwinding strategy.

Merrill Lynch was also bought out over the weekend by Bank of America. It too was unable to find an equity partner.

Part C: AIG

The Lehman collapse caused investors to look at the books of other firms, especially the valuations of Sub-prime mortgage assets and found that AIG had still booked assets at much higher values than Lehman. One week later this lead to a collapse in the share price AIG.

On Sunday, September 14, 2008, AIG announced it was selling its airplane leasing division in order to raise cash, but by the 16th it was clear that AIG would need a government bailout or face bankruptcy.

On the evening of September 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced it had set up an $85 Billion credit facility, in effect a government bailout, of AIG. An additional $37.5 Billion would be needed in early October, 2008. In return the Treasury took at 80 percent equity stake in the firm.

Part D: The Decree

The text for this plague calls out a Decree that eventually kills the stock, MQNE, or money of Egypt. The process for passing the decree began on the morning of September 19, 2008. Paulson alone, and then Bush on national television, announced a $700 Billion plan to bailout the banking system in the United States by buying mortgage backed securities.

The initial bailout bill, all of 7 pages, was amazing, including explicit exclusion of judicial oversight of this entire operation.

Over the following weekend the House expanded the bill to 110 pages, but when it came up for a vote on September 29, 2008, the vote failed, 228-205.

The page count at this revision is importantly a match to the 110 stories of the World Trade Center towers that had collapsed 7 years before the start of this plague event. It was Federal Reserve actions after 911 that flooded the financial system with cheep money that caused the housing bubble that caused the crisis this decree was setting out to solve. The problem, of course, is that the text for this Bible story says the Decree causes the death of Egypt’s Cattle.

Because the bill failed to pass in the House, the Senate is constitutionally blocked from taking up the matter and many in the public felt the issue had died. But, the Senate, in order to keep the process rolling, revised (gutted) a bill from March of 2007, and passed its own version. This slight of hand circumvented constitutional clauses the prevents the Senate from originating financial bills, and allowed the Senate to pass the bill before the House.

The Senate eventually added an additional $150 Billion to the bill, and passed it on September 1, 2008 by a 74 to 25 margin. The bill then went back to the House and was passed on October 3, 2008, by a margin of 263 to 171.

From the hour that the bill passed, the United States stock markets began to collapse, loosing 500 points from the time of passage until market closing.

The collapse continued, with more than 3000 points lost over the next 10 days.

Final Comments

I’ve only highlighted the main features of this prophetic date, really a prophetic month. There were many additional sub-stories that drew the world’s attention to the massive US Government bailout of financial institutions.

That bailout was the expected Decree that would cause the death of Pharaoh’s Cattle.

This was only the warning, the full death of cattle awaited November 6, 2008.

Phil Stone
Revised: 2008-10-11
Updated: 2008-10-18