Thursday, April 16, 2026

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Image used by permission

Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are five major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first four of the following five are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "Thanks To Readers". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  

Other Blogs And Books

                                                                                                                                            

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

A Journey Across Siberia

Russia is by far the largest country in the world, in terms of geographical land area. The country spans two continents. The western part of Russia is in Europe and the eastern part in Asia. The dividing line between the two continents is the Ural Mountains. Siberia is usually defined as the part of Russia that is in Asia.

Did you know that when you look at a full moon you are looking at an area that is just about exactly the size of Russia?

As far as physical geography goes, Europe and Asia are not really separate continents. It is more like Eurasia is one land mass. But there is a definite division between the two with regard to history and culture and, for this reason, we usually consider Europe and Asia as separate continents.

Siberia is a vast land area, comprising maybe 1 / 7 of the earth's total land area. But it is, on the average, sparsely populated. The European part of Russia is only about 1 / 4 of Russia's total land area, but has about 3 / 4 of the country's population.

While the average population density of Siberia is low it's population is concentrated in cities with the southern, and warmer, part of the region holding most of the population. Russia's two most populous cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, are both in European Russia, but the next two cities by population are in Siberia.

Siberia is known today for being very rich in resources. Much of the region is seafloor that was forced upward by tectonic movement, which made room for oil and natural gas to collect underground. Aside from energy, there are also vast mineral resources.

It was in the Sixteenth Century that the Rurik Dynasty of Russia began to explore and build outposts in lands far to the east of Moscow. This policy was continued by the following Romanov Dynasty. This eventually included Alaska and Hawaii and extended all the way to California.

One thing that we can see just by looking around Siberia is that it seems to be more conservative in outlook than European Russia. For one thing, there are still statues of Lenin in city squares that are usually no longer seen in European Russia.

We will start our journey in the west, at the edge of European Russia, and proceed eastward across Siberia.

THERE ARE FOUR PRECEDING IMAGES WITH EACH STOP. ALL OF THESE IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW 

The city of Ufa is actually on the European side of the Ural Mountains but it was one of the eastern outposts and settlements established during the time of Ivan the Terrible, who first proclaimed the Tsardom of Russia from territories that had been consolidated by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The following scenes are in the central area of Ufa.





There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.7351488,55.9587644,3a,75y,283.82h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMwQ4B2461mhnDPz6MOrpJGFOpTMhqYph9tQbRn!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMwQ4B2461mhnDPz6MOrpJGFOpTMhqYph9tQbRn%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya3.073558-ro-0-fo100!7i10000!8i5000

The name of Yekaterinburg, sometimes spelled as Ekaterinburg, means "The City of Catherine". This city is just on the Asian side of a gap in the Ural Mountains and so is sometimes considered as the "gateway to Siberia". The Catherine that the city is named for is Catherine I. She was the wife of Peter the Great, who founded St. Petersburg. Catherine I is not the same as the later Catherine the Great.

Had anyone thought about the irony that the city named for Catherine I is primarily known today as the place where the last Romanov emperor and his family were executed in 1917. But then Boris Yeltsin, who ended the Communism in Russia that had begun with the Bolsheviks who had executed the Romanovs and restored the Romanov flag as Russia's national flag, was from the Yekaterinburg area.

On maps and atlases from before the 1990s this city is named Sverdlovsk, which is what the Communists called it. During the following presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the name of Yekaterinburg was restored. The house where the Romanovs had been staying and were executed, the Ipatiev House, has since been demolished but the site is marked with the Cathedral on the Blood. The last two of the following four images are of this cathedral.

But this city is far more than just the place where the Romanovs were executed. Today it is the fourth-largest city in the country by population, and is known for it's prosperity and for being a good place to live. This is central Yekaterinburg.






The city of Chelyabinsk was in the news in 2013 when a meteor entered the atmosphere and exploded above the city, doing quite a bit of damage. Siberia as a whole is known for the Tunguska Event, although this was not near Chelyabinsk. A large meteor or, as I believe, a small comet exploded in the atmosphere. The shock waves were felt across the world and the force of the explosion knocked over millions of trees over thousands of square kilometers in Siberia.

Theories are still being put forth today about this great explosion of 1908 in the sky above a remote part of Siberia. The lack of an impact crater seems to indicate that it was a comet, made primarily of ice that turned to water, rater than a meteor made of rock or metal. But some claim that there is a small lake that was not there before and that this is the impact crater.

At any rate, here is the city of Chelyabinsk.





Tyumen is one of the cities that grew from outposts established in Siberia in the late Sixteenth Century.






Tobolsk, another Siberian city originating in the Sixteenth Century, is where the Romanov family was originally sent, for their own safety during the Russian Civil War, before being moved back westward to Yekaterinburg. The following scenes begin in the Tobolsk Kremlin. Remember that the best-known Russian kremlin is the one in Moscow, but a kremlin actually means a fortified citadel that is found in some other Russian cities as well.













https://www.google.com/maps/@55.030126,82.920433,3a,75y,40h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYnbR56MBCO0sFcJh_s_oZX9KiU_SKMmEjZRmm!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYnbR56MBCO0sFcJh_s_oZX9KiU_SKMmEjZRmm%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya132.00002-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

The cities in Siberia that are further to the west, closer to European Russia, grew from outposts that were founded in the Sixteenth Century. As exploration of Siberia proceeded further eastward, other cities were founded in the following century. This is the city of Tomsk.






Krasnoyarsk is another city that first began in the Seventeenth Century.






Irkutsk originated in the mid-Seventeenth Century.






Finally, we arrive on Russia's Pacific coast. This is the city of Vladivostok. It is not a very old city, only from the Nineteenth Century. But it is Russia's window on the Pacific Ocean and the Far East, and is possibly the most strategically-located city in the world. St. Petersburg, at the opposite end of Russia, is over 6500 km, or 4,000 miles, away.




AI Image Of Donald Trump As Jesus

Many people are upset about an AI image this week supposedly showing Donald Trump as Jesus, or a Christ-like figure, although I don't think that was specifically stated. Donald Trump also expressed a negative opinion about the Pope. This came after Donald Trump's planned arch, which will resemble Napoleon's arch, and his White House ballroom, which will resemble the Palace of Versailles, were in the news.

Let's review what is happening.

We saw in the posting "The Intersection Theory Of History", November 2025, how Donald Trump is actually reenacting two, apparently contradictory, historical lines. These are the French Bourbon Dynasty but also that of Napoleon, which replaced it.

We saw "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of Napoleon", July 2025.

The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Coronation Of Napoleon". The Pope was holding Napoleon's crown. But, instead of being crowned by the Pope, Napoleon took the crown from him and put it on himself. According to one story he snatched the crown from the Pope. This put Napoleon above the Pope.

A church was being built in central Paris. Napoleon took over the church and turned it into a temple dedicated to the glory of his army. It is now known as La Madeleine, and has been turned back into a church. A great painting was done in the temple called "The History of Christianity". It features Napoleon as a prominent figure, with the Pope to his left. In the following image, from Google Street View, Napoleon is shown as a holy figure, in the red robe above the green dot.

Donald Trump is reenacting this.

Apocalyptic Developments

This is in regard to the parallel postings "The End Of The World As We Know It" and "Inducing The Apocalypse", both January 2026.

Donald Trump is setting up the model for the Antichrist. All that the Antichrist will have to do is to step into the role that Donald Trump has created. The reign of the Antichrist will be a terrible time, particularly the second half of it, but it will be followed by the Millennium led by Jesus. This is when the world will be the godly paradise that it was always intended to be.

The Book of Revelation explains that the False Prophet, the deputy of the Antichrist, will create an "image" of the Antichrist that can talk. This can now easily be done with AI chatbots and this week's AI image of Donald Trump as Jesus, although not a chatbot, is a precedent of this. There is a figure in the background of the image of Donald Trump that looks like it has horns. It will be Satan that empowers the Antichrist.

Why Doesn't The Moon Have A Name?

"The moon" isn't a name. It is a word or a noun. A moon is a natural object that is in orbit around a planet. There are many other moons in the Solar System. Saying "the moon" is like saying "the city".

The reason is obviously that, until the invention of telescopes, it was not known that there are other moons. There was no pressing reason to differentiate the moon from any similar objects.

"The sun" was so-called before it was understood that it was a star but it now acts as a name to differentiate it from other stars. In the same way, "the earth" was so-called before it was understood that the earth was a planet, and only one of the planets. Now it serves as a name to differentiate it from the other planets. But the same cannot be said of "the moon".

Is it about time that the moon had a name? I wonder if Donald Trump could think of something.

Craters On The Moon

With the Artemis mission around the moon this week, let's review my view of it's craters.

An interesting question is why meteors traveling through space often fall into orbit around the earth but don't immediately impact it's surface. If it will be under the influence of the earth's gravitational field then why wouldn't it fall to the surface? It is because that would be creating energy out of nothing and that is something that can never be done. This simple fact actually explains a lot.

A natural object, made of rock or metal, passing through space is called a "meteor". After it impacts a planet or moon it is called a "meteorite". 

Meteors usually come from the Asteroid Belt. It is generally believed that the asteroids would have coalesced by gravity into a planet but the powerful gravity of Jupiter, the most massive of the planets, prevented them from coalescing. 

A higher position or a higher orbit is a higher energy position. An object ten meters above the ground can be seen to have more potential energy than one five meters above the ground because, if both objects are dropped, the one that was higher will impact the ground with greater force. Likewise a higher orbit has more energy than a lower one. Gravity operates by the Inverse Square Law so that if we give an object in orbit three times the orbital energy it will orbit at nine times the original altitude, but with only one-third the speed. 

What happens is that the orbit of Jupiter is further from the sun, and thus a higher-energy orbit, than the orbits of the asteroids. The mutual gravity between Jupiter and an asteroid gradually slows the asteroid, every time it passes Jupiter in it's orbit. This transfers orbital energy from the asteroid to Jupiter, causing the asteroid to fall into a lower orbit closer to the sun. Eventually the asteroid encounters the inner planets, and may collide with one of them or the moon. 

Here is the mystery. We can see that there has been countless meteorite Impacts on the moon and on Mercury, as evidenced by the number of craters, but much fewer on the earth and on Mars. Part of the explanation is erosion that can erase evidence of meteorite impacts over time. There is weather on earth and wind and dust on now-dry Mars. But that cannot fully explain why there are so many more meteorite impacts on the moon and Mercury than there is on earth and Mars. There is another explanation that I have noticed.

Venus is also an inner planet but I am leaving it out of this explanation because it is shrouded in dense cloud and we cannot see it's surface.

Now here is what we must remember, and it is simple. It is that energy can never be created out of nothing. 

When an object falls toward a planet it undergoes acceleration due to the planet's gravity. On earth the acceleration due to gravity of a falling object is 32 feet, or 9.8 meters, per second squared. For an object to fall into orbit around the earth it will have come from further away from the sun than the earth. When it is in orbit around the earth it is still also in orbit around the sun, since the earth itself is in orbit around the sun, the additional orbital energy from it's original higher orbit will go into it's orbit around the earth. The total orbital energy of the object will be that of it's orbit around the sun plus that of it's orbit around the earth.

But the fact that energy can never be created out of nothing determines whether the object will fall to earth as a meteorite or remain in orbit. If the object falls to earth it will be subject to the acceleration due to gravity of a falling object and will impact the ground with force. But there is no energy in gravity itself, it is just a force, and if the energy with which it would impact the earth exceeds it's original orbital energy around the sun, minus the orbital energy of the earth around the sun, then it would be creating energy out of nothing for it to impact the earth. Since this can never be done the object has to stay in orbit around the earth, rather than impacting the earth. 

This means that, the more massive a planet is, the more likely that a passing object will fall into orbit around it, rather than impacting it, to avoid the impossibility of creating energy out of nothing. Also the closer a planet is to the sun the less it's orbital energy and thus the more likely that a passing object will have sufficiently more orbital energy so that impacting the planet, after undergoing it's acceleration due to gravity, would not be creating energy out of nothing. So the less massive a planet is, or the closer to the sun it is, the more likely it is to be impacted by meteors. 

This explains why there are so many more meteorite impacts on the moon and Mercury than there are on earth and Mars. 

Mars is not really a massive planet. But it is the furthest of the inner planets from the sun, thus having the highest orbital energy per mass. It is also the closest inner planet to the asteroid belt. This means that an asteroid that was descending to a lower orbit around the sun, due to lost orbital energy, would have the least orbital energy difference with Mars, compared to the other inner planets. Thus the asteroid would have less chance to not have to create energy out of nothing, which is impossible, if it impacted Mars after undergoing it's acceleration due to gravity. 

This is why Mars does not have that many meteorite impacts and it's two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, are widely believed to have originated as asteroids that fell into orbit around the planet but have never impacted it, because to impact Mars would have required creating energy out of nothing. 

Since the moon is in orbit around the earth it is the same average distance as the earth from the sun. But the moon is much less massive than the earth, it's surface gravity is only 1 / 6 that of the earth. This means that approaching meteors require much less additional energy than the orbital energy of the moon, per mass, to be able to impact the moon without creating energy out of nothing. This is why the moon gets struck by meteorites much more than the earth, at least per area. 

Mercury is the planet that is closest to the sun, meaning that it has the least orbital energy of the planets. This is why it really gets hammered by meteorite impacts. It is also the smallest planet, if Pluto isn't included, although Mercury does have a high density because so much of it's interior is made of iron. Mercury was impacted with such force by one meteorite, the Caloris Impact, that the resulting shock wave affected the terrain on the diametrically opposite side of the planet.

The Space Age Calendar

Since we are back to sending humans far into space, why don't we have a calendar for the Space Age? Let me explain my calendar.

THE SPACE AGE CALENDAR

Have you ever thought that we could use a new calendar? The Gregorian Calendar, named for Pope Gregory, that we now use is from a medieval time when most people worked in agriculture. The idea of calendar reform is not new. The days do not fit evenly into a year and there has been the idea of "leap weeks" instead of an extra day in a "leap year", every four years.

I have a calendar too. My calendar is called the "Space Age Calendar". As the name implies it is intended to help with space exploration. The calendar is based on the earth's distance from the sun. 

The earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical, rather than circular. The point at which the earth is closest to the sun is known as perihelion, and the furthest point from the sun is aphelion.

Why on earth do we need months? Months were based on the orbit of the moon around the earth, which is 29 days and does not fit evenly into the year. This might have been useful in agriculture, to keep track of the best time to plant, but months are completely irrelevant today except as a convenient billing cycle.

In my calendar the days are simply numbered, from 1 to 365, with day 366 added every fourth year. We will still keep the weekdays. Today we live much more by the clock than by the calendar, and much more by the week than by the month. Months have been mostly irrelevant since the Industrial Revolution, except for setting holidays and religious observances by the lunar cycle.

The convenient monthly billing cycle can continue on multiples of 30. Day 30, Day 60, Day 90, etc. The date will be expressed with three digits following the year. Today will be 2024004

The solstices and equinoxes, when the day or night is longest and the other shortest and when the two are equal, will still be there. But today it really matters to very few people exactly when the seasons begin. It is only temperate latitudes that really have four seasons anyway.

If the year were to begin with either perihelion or aphelion the date, the number of the day, would tell us how far the earth was from the sun. There is a difference of about 3 million miles, or 5 million kilometers, between perihelion and aphelion. This distance makes a difference. For an example spring tides, where the gravitational pull of the sun and moon is coordinated, will be stronger at perihelion but weaker at aphelion. But neap tides, when the sun and moon are at right angles to each other, will be the opposite.

One issue with space travel is that there is no ready way to tell directions in space. There is no north, south, east or, west. We might refer to the northern or southern hemisphere of the moon or sun or one of the planets. But we are only going by earth's northern or southern hemisphere. This is less-than accurate because each planet has a different axis of rotation that is not parallel to earth's.

The earth rotates eastward. The moon revolves around the earth in the same direction, as does the earth around the sun. So we might say that the earth revolves eastward around the sun. But it is only eastward relative to the earth, there is no real "eastward" in space.

But using a line between the points of aphelion and perihelion, which remain fixed, gives us a meridian or baseline from which we can establish directions in space. Two lines perpendicular to it, both intersecting the original meridian at the center of the sun, would be all that we need to establish directions in space, just like on earth. We would easily find exactly where in space we were because the date would give us both the position and the distance from the sun. We just have to factor in that the earth does not move at a constant pace in it's orbit around the sun, it moves faster when it is closer to the sun.

I was thinking of beginning the year on January 4, because that would be closer to the present New Year. But aphelion occurs, just by chance, on America's Independence Day. What would Americans think of the year beginning on what is now the Fourth of July?

Satanic Stabbings In Manhattan

A man in Manhattan was attacking people with a machete while claiming to be "Lucifer", the name of Satan before he rebelled against God. Here is something that I have never seen pointed out. If you think the house at Amityville is spooky, just read this.

THE ACID KING OF LONG ISLAND 

So much has been written about the "Acid King" of Long Island, NY, Ricky Kasso. For someone who died at 17 he has a movie made about him and there is a band named "The Acid King", with his photo on the cover of their first album. "Acid" used to be a slang term for LSD.

I remember when this happened and, back in the 1980s, I read the book "Say You Love Satan" about it. Let me state now that I have no direct experience with drugs and, even when I listened to music, I never liked Heavy Metal. All that I know about this is what was in the news.

I have never made a specific study of crime. But I always followed the news and quite a bit of what is in the news is crime.

In Northport, on the north shore of Long Island, there were several high school dropouts who hung around the park on the waterfront, listened to Heavy Metal music, and did drugs. The ringleader was 17-year-old Ricky Kasso. Among them was Gary Lauwers, also 17.

According to news reports the group, particularly Ricky Kasso, was into Satanism. This does seem to have some truth to it as Kasso had been arrested for digging up an old grave, reportedly to get bones for use in a ritual. 

Kasso and some others also went to the famous, reputedly haunted, house in Amityville where a man had once killed his family, in observance of a pagan day. If news reports are to be believed, Kasso would perform rituals and take drugs in cemeteries, seeking to get in contact with Satan. There was satanic graffiti in the park where the group would hang out.

Gary Lauwers reportedly made the mistake of stealing bags of "angel dust" from Ricky Kasso's jacket while Kasso was passed out. Lauwers returned some of the drugs, and promised to pay for the rest. But it would ultimately cost him his life.

One night Ricky Kasso and several other teenagers, including Gary Lauwers, went up to a wooded area in town to take drugs. Kasso had a knife with him and seemed to have decided that Gary Lauwers was going to be a sacrifice to Satan. 

Kasso tried to light a fire with some sticks but they were too wet. He ordered Lauwers to use some of his clothing to get the fire going. When Gary Lauwers wouldn't put any more of his clothing in the fire, Kasso attacked him and stabbed him with the knife. He ordered Lauwers to "say you love Satan", and proceeded to stab him to death. Others at the murder scene later said that Kasso took the cawing of a crow, while he was stabbing Lauwers, as Satan voicing approval. Gary Lauwers' face was reported to be virtually unrecognizable due to knife wounds.

Also according to news reports Kasso openly boasted about the killing, and took a number of people to see the body. Gary Lauwers had run away from home so many times that he hadn't been missed. 

Finally someone notified the police about the body. Kasso and one of the others that had been at the murder were arrested shortly after, sleeping in a car. The famous photo of Kasso sneering like the Devil was taken at the police station. Not long after being arrested Kasso committed suicide in his cell by hanging with a bedsheet.

While Ricky Kasso no doubt killed Gary Lauwers, and had been arrested for digging up an old grave, there is a lot of controversy about this whole subject. I happened to talk to some people from Northport not long after this happened. They described it as a "media circus gone wild" around "a few dropouts who did drugs". They said that the graffiti was relating to Heavy Metal bands, not overt Satanism.

Certainly part of the reason that this got so much attention was that it took place in a town that was well-to-do, and virtually all white, where things like this aren't supposed to happen.

Ricky Kasso was born on March 29, 1967. He killed Gary Lauwers on June 19, 1984. This means that, on the date of the murder Ricky Kasso was 6,293 days old, including the day of the murder. What I have never seen pointed out is that, if we add 6,293 days from the date of the murder it brings us to 9/11, September 11, 2001.

What would Ricky Kasso have thought had he known that, when the ritual killing of Gary Lauwers was exactly as old as he was when he committed the murder, planes would bring down the World Trade Center towers and many people would claim to have seen the face of the Devil in the smoke?

Remember that the way to foil the Devil is with the power of Jesus.

TRIFLING WITH THE DEVIL 

Trifling with the Devil is not a good idea. This hideous creature is very real. I believe that if we trifle with Satan God periodically allows us a glimpse of what he is like, or what he would be like if his character was transmuted into a human being.

The 2015 massacre in Paris was just plain satanic. The terrorists at the concert ordered people to beg for mercy and then laughed while they shot them anyway. The band playing was "Angels of Death" and the song that was playing when the massacre began was "Kiss the Devil". If we want to listen to a song about kissing the Devil, God was just allowing us to see what the Devil is really like.

In 1968 there was a very popular movie, Rosemary's Baby, about a woman having a baby with Satan as the father. It was directed by Roman Polanski. The following year Polanski's own wife, actress Sharon Tate, was not far from giving birth. She was at home with a group of friends. Suddenly several members of Charles Manson's "family" broke in. Manson himself wasn't there but Charles Watson announced "I am the Devil and I am here to do the Devil's work". Everyone in the house, including Sharon Tate and her unborn baby, were horribly massacred. Sharon Tate had been in an earlier movie referencing the Devil. If we are going to make movies about the Devil at least we should remember what he is really like. He is not very nice.

A local high school, in Kenmore NY, has the "Blue Devils" as it's mascot. I can't imagine children with a religious upbringing having to go to a school with the Devil as it's mascot. Anyway one of the school's own honor students once really shocked virtually crime-free Kenmore, and gave a reminder of what the Devil is like, by massacring his own family with a knife and also killing a neighbor.

When it comes to music the popular country-rock song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was released by the Charlie Daniels Band in 1979. The Devil approaches a fiddle player with a fiddle made of solid gold and challenged the fiddle player to a contest, with the stakes of the player's soul against the solid gold fiddle. Satan's fiddle playing was backed up by a band of demons. But Satan's fiddle playing was no match for that of the Georgia fiddle player, named Johnny. Satan graciously laid down the golden fiddle in admission of defeat. Unfortunately that isn't the way Satan works in real life. Just after this song was released what was surely the worst thing to happen to modern Georgia began. It is the murder spree known as the "Atlanta Murders of 1979-81" or "The Atlanta Child Murders". At least 28 people were killed. The killings stopped when Wayne Williams was arrested. He was convicted of two murders but the rest have never been solved. There may, of course, be bodies that have never been found.

The Rolling Stones had an album and a single that referenced Satan, "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and "Sympathy For The Devil". The following year the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones from my native Gloucestershire, died mysteriously in a swimming pool. This turned out to be the founding of the "27 Club", the rock musicians that have died at age 27. Right in a row there was Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, Jim Morrison. Among the other famous musicians who later joined the club was Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.

This creature is nothing to trifle with. 

Satan is trying to outdo God. Jesus was sent into the world as the Savior by God. At some point, Satan will put forth his own savior. The Antichrist will be the greatest leader that the world has ever seen and will seem to have all of the answers to everything, at least for a while.

Satan can work miracles, although limited in scope and not as powerful as God, and the Antichrist will amaze the world with miracles. There will be an assassination attempt on him and he will amaze everyone by apparently coming back to life.