Mercury rising, end-times prophets' credibility falling

As I write these words, Mercury is transiting across the face of the sun. It's a tiny black dot against a disc of blinding light (literally so, if you aren't careful) but it is a genuine planet, so pretty amazing.

I ought to be really worried, but frankly I'm not.

Another internet scare story provoked by a so-called Bible expert links the transit of Mercury to all sorts of biblical prophecies. According to YouTube channel The Prophetico, it's a sign of the coming End.

Matthew Miller's logic is extremely convoluted, but he says May 6 marks the start of a new moon cycle and three days later it's in a crescent or sickle state if you're looking at it from Jerusalem. Match that up with traditional constellations and it "turns Orion's club into a mace" (they're pretty much the same thing, actually) as he "smites the lion's whelp". We then get the prophet Micah and lots of judgment before God's reign is established.

It is, from beginning to end, absolute tosh. Even NASA says so: "Sounds like another hoax. Mercury transits take place about 13 times each century. Last one was 2006."

But there are three things worth noting about it.

1. It's so labour-intensive. Miller – and he's not the only one, these so-called "prophecies" are quite an industry – devotes a huge amount of effort to it. Here's an example from his website: "The biblical phrase 'having eyes to see' comes into direct correlation to the planet Mercury. To the beholder, Mercury appears to make one orbit around the sun every 115.88 days. The fact of the matter is that it actually takes 87.97 days. This prophetically produces 40 day periods of visibility alternating between evening-star and morning-star phases.

"This entire phase is repeated 22 times every 7 years. The marvel of Mercury's orbit is in itself of mathematical genius. One could say the Designer was wanting the observer to come to grips with Isochronal Eschatology for 115.88 [divided by] 87.97 = 1.317. In other words, 22/7, the common rational fraction used to approximate Pi."

There are reams of this stuff, all of which must have taken someone pretty good at maths to work out. The effort and the conspicuous display of intelligence are designed to lead readers to believe that this man knows what he's talking about.

2. It's wrong. See what Miller's calculations lead to. In a post from April 28, he says (cunningly putting his statements in the form of questions): "Will Mercury transit the sun in the wrong position? (No) Will its parallax be off causing it to appear too large or too small? (No) If not could we witness a massive impact that knocks it out of orbit altogether? (No)."

The Bible is very clear about false prophets: "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him" (Deuteronomy 18:22).

3. It's a sign of the times. Why do people believe this stuff?  I think there are three reasons. First, we live in troubled times. We're worried about all sorts of things. The world is changing and we don't really like it. We worry about money, jobs, Islamic State, North Korea. It's at times like this that we look to end-times prophets to help us make sense of the world. Someone has to be able to explain it to us, and these people sound very certain.

Second, we defer too much to 'experts'. One reason for this is that pastors and teachers shy away from teaching the difficult 'apocalyptic' books of the Old and New Testaments, and Revelation in particular. They were written at times of huge social stress, they drew on traditional imagery, they created an alternate reality in which the wicked were punished, the good were rewarded and God and his people won the victory. They don't provide an unfolding timetable of future events. But because Revelation isn't well and clearly taught, congregations are a prey to so-called scholars who claim to know what's happening when they really don't.

Last, people forget all about William Tyndale. He was the great translator of the English Bible, who once told an infuriated priest: "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause the boy that drives the plough to know more of the scriptures than you!"

The Bible is not always an easy book. But generally speaking, its meaning is plain. It doesn't need someone with the code-breaking abilities of MI5 or the CIA to be able to understand it. By and large, if someone tells you something about the Bible that's new and terrifying, they're almost certainly wrong. It isn't a cryptic crossword, it's God's word of life to us – to all of us, not just to those who can do the maths.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods