Asteroids, Dreams, and Wormwood: The Pundits Pollute Another Prophecy (Revelation 8:10-11)
By Robert E. Cruickshank
Karen Ogea (Editor)
Copyright © Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (May 21, 2025)
All Rights Reserved
“The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. The star is named Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the waters because they were made bitter” (Revelation 8:10-11).
As a true child of the 80s, one of my favorite songs growing up was Wake Up, by Run–D.M.C. It was a song…about a dream. In 2019, Christian media giant and former CEO of SkyWatch TV, Thomas Horn, had a dream of his own.[1] But he didn’t write a song about it; he wrote a book.
Unlike Run–D.M.C., Horn’s dream wasn’t about the world working as a team; it was about an asteroid blowing the world apart at the seams. Enter yet another pulp-prophecy paperback pushing the pundits’ end times schemes: The Wormwood Prophecy: NASA, Donald Trump, and a Cosmic Cover-up of End-Time Proportions.
Like many people, Horn believed that dreams mean things, so he set out to find out what his dream could mean. According to Horn, this was the “most vivid dream” he’d “ever had” and “was frankly frightening.”[2] To echo the words of the Run–D.M.C. song, Horn woke up that morning and got out of bed – with some really fresh thoughts running through (his) head. As he explains,
“When I woke up…a single word seemed to be whispered through my bedroom, and that was the word Apophis. Now I knew that there was an ancient Egyptian god of chaos, a chaos dragon, the enemy of light, called Apophis. I also knew that NASA had named a particular asteroid ‘Apophis,’ but I didn’t know anything about it. So, when I got out of bed, I went to my computer, and I started immediately doing research into the asteroid Apophis.”[3]
Apparently, Horn must have watched an episode of Stargate SG-1 before he went to sleep that night. The classic sci-fi show featured the Egyptian chaos god (Apophis) as the main antagonist for the first two seasons. Fittingly, Horn’s resulting book has about as much to do with Bible prophecy as a storyline from a science fiction show.
What’s Really Going On – According to Horn
Upon conducting his “research into the asteroid Apophis,” Horn became “convinced that NASA and other international space agencies are involved in a cover-up” that is linked to Revelation 8. Revelation 8:1-11 speaks of a falling “star” called “wormwood.” The Greek word for “star” is aster, and, according to Horn, it really means “asteroid.”[4]
Horn continues: Since Donald Trump “is surrounded by a faith community” of “prophecy believers,” he “has wisely allowed his ear to be attuned to some of the things they are telling him.”[5] Seeing the connection between Revelation 8 and the planet’s fate, he’s taken action to minimize the impact of the coming attraction. Space Force isn’t really about exploration, after all. It’s about cosmic damage control. But the public is not ready to know the true purpose behind the military’s newest branch.
So, the asteroid called “Apophis” is really the falling star named “wormwood,” and President Trump’s Space Force is actually just a cover story. The true purpose behind Space Force is the installation of an elaborate “asteroid deflection” system to prepare for “Apophis,” also known as “wormwood,” crashing into the earth.[6] Sadly, believers continue to fall for this type of sensationalism, trading careful exegesis for clickbait eschatology.
Is this the best way to do theology?
Have parlor tricks replaced hermeneutics?
Rather than looking to asteroids 284,852,698.5 kilometers away[7] or last night’s dreams, perhaps we should let the Bible say what the passage means?
John speaks of a “star” called “wormwood” in Revelation 8:10-11. We must go to other passages in Scripture to see where this “wormwood” imagery is used in conjunction with a “star,” to help us understand how the imagery is being used in Revelation. In the case of wormwood, John’s imagery is taken from Amos chapters 5 and 6.
Amos: Covenant Enforcer
As a prophet of God, enforcing the terms of the covenant was Amos’s main job.[8] In his covenant lawsuit against ancient Israel, Amos charges the apostates of his time with turning “justice into wormwood” and casting “righteousness down to the earth” (Amos 5:7). The language is obviously metaphoric. Justice can’t literally be turned into wormwood and righteousness can’t literally be cast down to the earth.
These metaphors are repeated and strengthened in chapter 6: “You have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood” (Amos 6:12).
And right there, we have yet another metaphor – “fruit.” Real fruit grows on trees. The phrase, “fruit of righteousness,” is a simile. The imagery is that of turning something pleasant and sweet (i.e., fruit) into something disgusting and bitter (i.e., wormwood). So, “wormwood” symbolizes something. Specifically, it symbolizes the bitter abandonment of justice and righteousness. This Old Testament usage of the imagery should inform our thinking when John uses that same imagery in Revelation.
But John says that wormwood is a “star” in Revelation 8:11. The next question we need to ask is if there is anything in the Old Testament that would inform us in this regard? There is, and it is likewise right there in the book of Amos.
After denouncing apostate Israel for abandoning justice and righteousness (wormwood), Amos seems to make a somewhat unrelated statement. He speaks of the Lord as “He who made the Pleiades and Orion” (Amos 5:8). Of course, God made these celestial patterns in the sky, but what’s the connection between star constellations and wormwood? The answer to this is also found later in the chapter.
Amos tells the rebellious Israelites, “You pick up your images of Sikkuth (Molech), your king, and Kiyyun (Saturn), the images of your star gods which you have made for yourselves” (Amos 6:26). So, the ancient Israelites, who were turning justice and righteousness into wormwood, were doing so because they were worshipping false deities called “star gods.”
Following in Amos’s Footsteps
Fast forward to the New Testament, and Stephen brings the covenant lawsuit against the apostate Israelites of his own day. Following in Amos’s footsteps, Stephen invokes Amos’s words as he prosecutes his case: “You also took along the tabernacle of Molech, and the star of the god Rompha (Saturn), the images which you made to worship them, but I will deport you beyond Babylon” (Acts 7:43).
After recounting this and other apostacies, Stephen rests his case: “…you are doing just as your fathers did” (Acts 7:51). Like the apostates of previous generations, they too had become “betrayers and murders” by opposing “the Righteous One” (Acts 7:35). In other words, they weren’t carrying around images of Molech and Saturn anymore, but by perverting justice and righteousness, they might as well have been. It was wormwood all over again!
By importing all this background information into Revelation 8:10-11, the meaning of the passage opens. The Jewish religious leaders of the first century perverted justice by crucifying a righteous man. They continued to do so through the persecution of His righteous followers. They had rejected righteousness and chosen their false and fallen gods. They walked in the footsteps of their unjust fathers, casting righteousness down to the ground (Amos 5:7). Stephen and John walked in the footsteps of Amos, bringing the hammer of justice down.
By rejecting Christ, perverting justice, and distorting righteousness, the Israelites of John’s day were following in their ancestors’ ways. They were following in the ways of those who followed false and fallen “star gods” – like Molech and Saturn. The imagery of the star falling in Revelation 8:10-11 speaks to the fallen state of those who denied their Messiah. The poisoned waters speak to their contaminated teachings, which only led their followers to death. The imagery of “wormwood” as a fallen “star” speaks to the place in Scripture where John wants his readers to go to understand that imagery – the book of Amos.
In short, the wormwood that poisoned the waters of Amos’s day had resurfaced in Stephen’s day. In Acts 7, Stephen reopens the case. The book of Revelation, in turn, closes that case and renders the verdict.
Recap and Reflection
According to the Psalmist, the righteous are like trees planted by the water – yielding their fruit in due season (Ps. 1:3). As the religious leaders of the day, the Scribes and Pharisees should have been those trees. Instead, they “turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood” (Amos 6:12). As such, their false doctrine became like bitter contamination infesting the water.
As history would have it, those who followed their teachings “died from the waters” which “they made bitter” (Rev. 8:11). Conversely, those who rejected the religious leaders’ rejection of Christ, and recognized Him as the Messiah, found life by partaking of “the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).
In like manner as believers today, we must stay connected to Jesus, the water of life (Rev. 22:17). We must be that tree planted by the living water (Ps. 1:3) And we must avoid the “bitter” streams of corrupt doctrine which turn righteousness into wormwood (Amos 5:7; 6:12). We don’t want to be like the apostate Israelites of Amos’s day, or the religious leaders of John’s day. We want to be like Jesus’s original followers and choose living water over wormwood.
Interpretations of Revelation that rely on asteroids, government coverups, and bad dreams pollute the streams of our own time. If we believe the world is ending because an asteroid is going to hit the earth, we become complacent about the world and neglect our responsibility to care for the earth.
As it turns out, Asteroid Apophis is expected to miss us by at least 20,000 miles on Friday, April 29, 2029.[9] To borrow one more phrase from the song Wake UP, a truly “wonderful dream” would be believers abandoning the pop-prophecy scheme. Maybe that will happen before that asteroid passes us by? Doubtful. But we can dream. And we should try.
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[1] The Wormwood Prophecy – the 700 Club (YouTube) https://bit.ly/4jYXwyD
[2] The Wormwood Prophecy, 1:02-1:08.
[3] The Wormwood Prophecy, 2:18-2:52
[4] The Wormwood Prophecy, 3:44-3:56
[5] The Wormwood Prophecy, 4:20-4:38
[6] Thomas Horn, The Wormwood Prophecy: NASA, Donald Trump, and a Cosmic Cover-up of End-Time Proportions (Lake Mary, FA: Charisma House, 2019): 57.
[7] Asteroid 99942 Apophis | TheSkyLive https://bit.ly/4k9DcuK
[8] Thanks for my friend, Brett Prieto, for pointing this out. For more on this, see: David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Tyler, TX: Dominion Press, 1987): 12-20. It’s important to point out that this wasn’t the prophets’ only job, however. All of the prophets contain oracles against the nations outside of Israel. God’s law is universal, invariant, and absolute. As such, all nations, and all peoples, are accountable to the dictates of His law – covenant or not covenant.
[9] Apophis – NASA Science https://go.nasa.gov/3Hg0JeE
