The great sign of Revelation

Short on time? Read a summary.

3I/ATLAS is unlike any heavenly object we've ever seen.

From the moment of its discovery on July 1, 2025, this strange interstellar object began raising questions. Now months later, the puzzling observations continue to mount, causing telescopes to swing its direction.

What could this mysterious object be?

Is it just a very unique comet, as some scientists believe? Or is it an alien ship about to shift course toward our planet, a probe sent by another intelligence?

This post will explore a different theory.

Incredible as it sounds, over the next several posts we are going to explore the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is a message sent to us from God.

A message meant to make us sit up and take notice.

You had me at hello

Whether intended by design or not, a growing series of unexpected findings surrounding 3I/ATLAS has gotten the world's attention.

Among the interstellar object's curious characteristics are the facts that:

• It is large ...at least the size of Manhattan, weighing as much as 33 billion tons
• It is not from around here ...coming from very far away, with almost no gravitational influence from other stars for millions of years
• It is perhaps 7-10 billion years old ...existing for billions of years before our sun and solar system were formed 4.6 billion years ago
• It is traveling an improbable path ...timed in way that allows close encounters with Mars, Venus and Jupiter ...allowing months for us to take notice and observe it, not only from Earth, but from other angles and with different scientific instruments in place across our solar system
• Its composition is the opposite we would expect ...at one point displaying a tail facing the sun, exuding nickel instead of iron, carbon dioxide instead of water, and high amounts of cyanide
• And strangely... it is reported to have exhibited light pulses that mimic the numeric Fibonacci sequence ...and comes from the same direction as an unexplained SETI signal received almost fifty years ago

Each of these anomalies has less than a 1% chance of occurring individually. Two or three of them would have scientists scratching their heads.

But all of them appearing together? The cumulative likelihood has been calculated at one in ten quadrillion. That's one chance in 10 followed by 16 zeros.

No wonder researchers are scrambling to gather data. No wonder the UFO crowd is pondering possibilities.

We will wonder too – and look in a different direction.

The Wow! Signal

We begin our investigation with the Wow! Signal.

In the summer of 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman was scanning printouts from Ohio State University's Big Ear telescope, when he came across a highly unusual signal. The big radio telescope had recently been repurposed for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and was tuned to listen on 1420 MHz (the resonant frequency of hydrogen), which SETI presumed an outside intelligence would expect us to monitor.

The stunning signal was received on August 15, 1977 at 11:16 p.m. EDT. 

The letters 6EQUJ5 on the printout indicated a powerful signal 30 times greater than background levels, causing Ehman to circle the letters with a red pen, and famously scrawl the word 'Wow!'

The signal was recorded only once and lasted just 72 seconds. Analysis showed it was blue-shifted, meaning it was sent by something coming our direction. 

Yet despite much searching and listening, it was never heard again. In the decades since, many theories attempted and failed to find a conclusive natural explanation for the signal. And so for nearly fifty years, the signal has remained the best candidate for artificial extraterrestrial intelligence ever discovered.

Then, on Sept. 28, 2025, Harvard scientist Avi Loeb added an interesting twist to the story – a twist perhaps worthy of a lowercase 'wow'...

Loeb made the surprising observation that the strange 3I/ATLAS object came from the same direction as the Wow! Signal. 

At the time the signal was received in 1977, the interstellar object was over 55 billion miles away, and the signal would have taken three days to reach the Big Ear telescope on Earth. The chance of two random directions being this close together was calculated at 0.6%.

Could this strange 3I/ATLAS object have sent us a signal almost fifty years ago? 

It almost seems like a movie.

Decoding the signal

In the movie Contact, an interstellar message is encoded in a signal received from outer space. The signal's pulses are repeated over and over, allowing time to record and decipher them, whereby they are eventually found to contain plans for building a machine that enables humankind's first interaction with an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Unfortunately, there are no repeating pulses for us to investigate here. 

In contrast, our real-world Wow! signal came in a single 72-second burst, and was never repeated again. That presents an obvious challenge, but it also poses a question. 

If the Wow! signal came from extraterrestrials, then what was the message? And if there was no message, what was the point? 

Our hypothesis requires us to answer to the same question. 

If the fifty-year-old Wow! signal, in combination with this strange 3I/ATLAS object, are somehow a message from God, then... 

Where is the message?

Now admittedly, it sounds a bit strange to consider getting a message from God like this in the first place. But messages from God are not unheard of. After all, millions of believers all over the world believe God has sent messages in the past. They believe those messages took the form of divinely inspired scripture. 

And then, of course, there is that time God put a rising star in the sky as a message to some wise men, who followed it to a nativity scene in Bethlehem. 

But even minding that, this would be the first time God sent a message in the form of an interstellar radio signal. And the signal still contains no content, so where is the message?

Two hunches come to mind. 

Both relate to the only other piece of data we have... 

...the date the Wow! Signal was received.

Finding the primer

The thinking behind the first hunch goes like this:

1. God sent us previous messages, which we can reference in scripture. 
2. God sent us a message with this intelligent signal. 
3. The signal contained no data, but arrived on a specific date.

Could God be using the date of the Wow! signal to point us to a message in scripture? 

If so, we need to identify a primer that can help us decode the message and see where it leads, just like in Contact. If we could find a way to connect the date of the signal with a specific reference to scripture, it might provide a mechanism that points to a longer message.

And as providence would have it, there is such a primer. 

It's called...

The Lectionary

If you are unfamiliar, the Lectionary is essentially a calendar of scripture readings. 

But it is more than a simple calendar with a random list of verses. It is an integrated system of thousands of scripture verses from the Old and New Testaments, organized in a way that synchronizes the life and message of Christ with the seasons of the liturgical calendar of the ancient Christian church.

For our purposes, you can think of the Lectionary like a scriptural time machine, intertwining and synchronizing readings related to holy seasons and feasts with dates on the liturgical calendar. 

This means we can use the lectionary as a key, using it to map any date with a set of corresponding scripture readings. We can wind it back to any date in modern history and see what scripture was read in liturgical celebrations on that day – which means we can use it to see what the Signal might have been pointing to.

What scripture verses, then, were being read in churches all over the world on August 15, 1977, the day we received the Wow! signal?

A great sign appeared in the sky

Monday, August 15, 1977 was the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It is a feast day of the highest order, a solemnity, celebrating the dogma that "the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." In other words, it is the belief that Mary's body was taken directly to heaven at the end of her life.

This solemnity is a holy day of obligation, which means all Catholics are required to attend Mass. So even though the feast landed on a weekday in 1977 – on a Monday – hundreds of thousands of Masses were being said around the world, with millions of people in attendance.

And what was the subject of the readings at Mass on this day?

The coming of Christ.

Not only the first coming of Christ, but also the second coming of Christ ...and the coming of the end.

The lectionary readings on August 15, 1977 were as follows.

• First reading: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1–6a, 10ab
• Second reading: 1 Corinthians 15:20–27
• Gospel: Luke 1:39–56

The first reading should raise an eyebrow. It's from the heart of the Book of Revelation, and begins this way:

God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet...
(Rev 11:19a, 12:1)

Hmmm...

• We received a signal that's the best candidate for another intelligence ever recorded...
• coming from the same direction as 3I/ATLAS...
• on a day when the scripture readings in churches around the world were proclaiming the second coming of Christ, the coming of the end...
• and a great sign appearing in the sky.

Very curious.

And potentially very ominous.

Timing is everything

But the 'sign in the sky' hadn't appeared yet back in 1977.

We didn't know 3I/ATLAS was out there, billions of miles away in the direction of this signal, heading our way. And even if we connected the dots with these readings, we couldn't have seen 3I/ATLAS from that distance in 1977.

So how can we connect the two today? What else points us from the Wow! Signal in the seventies to the mysterious object we now observe in our sky?

I mentioned two hunches. The second hunch is based on the period of time since the signal was received, and follows this line of thinking...

1. The Wow! signal arrived nearly fifty years ago.
2. 49 years is bible code, a prophecy related to the time from an announcement to restore Jerusalem, until the coming of an anointed one, a prince
3. 49 years ago is nearly fifty years ago.

Could these time periods be related? Restoring Jerusalem was in part about restoring a temple. Didn't we just read about a temple?

The opening line of our reading begins by speaking about a temple in heaven being opened and then immediately announces a great sign appearing in the sky.

God's temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.
A great sign appeared...
(Rev 11:19a)

So there is a biblical prophecy about forty-nine years from a signal to restore a temple... and our reading begins with a temple in heaven opening, and a great sign appearing.

Putting these together, we might have a symbolic indicator of the time in the future when the great sign will appear...

• There is a prophecy foretelling a signal to restore a temple followed by 49 years...
• The Wow! Signal was received on August 15, 1977, when daily Mass readings spoke of God's temple in heaven being opened...
• And now 3I/ATLAS, which came from the same direction as the Signal, is appearing in the heavens roughly 49 years later.

Very interesting.

This might make you wonder where 3I/ATLAS will be in the sky, exactly 49 years from the day we received the Wow! signal.

And this leads us to a first prediction we might make from our theory.

PREDICTION ONE

If God is sending us a message with the Wow! signal and 3I/ATLAS, via the readings when the signal was received on August 15, 1977 – and those readings lead to a prophecy pointing 49 years into the future – we should find a correlated part of the message on this future date.

So what day is this in the future? The obvious guess is August 15, 2026, on the same date forty-nine years later, right?

Not exactly. If we simply jump 49 years forward from August 15, 1977, we would be doing it wrong. That is because prophetic years in the bible are not the same as calendar years on our timeline.

A prophetic year is 360 days (12 months of 30 days), not the 365 ¼ days that make up our calendar.

So what we need to do is calculate 17,640 days (49 prophetic years x 360 days) after August 15, 1977 – the day the signal was received.

This lands us at December 1, 2025 ...just in time for 3I/ATLAS to reappear in our sky after its closest approach to the sun.

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet...
(Rev 12:1a)

And where will 3I/ATLAS be located on this day?

A woman clothed with the sun

In the early morning hours of December 1, 2025... we find 3I/ATLAS in the constellation Virgo.

A constellation named for a woman.

And that's not all. We've also got...

• 3I/ATLAS appearing in a constellation named Virgo (the Latin word for virgin)...
• on December 1, 2025... 17,640 days (49 prophetic years) from the Wow! signal on August 15, 1977, when the church was celebrating the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven...
• with scripture on that day speaking of a great sign and a woman appearing in the sky.

That's quite a coincidence.

But what about this woman being 'clothed with the sun'?

Advancing the clock to sunrise on the morning of December 1, 2025, the sun will start rising directly beneath the constellation Virgo and begin to lighten the sky...

...portraying 'a woman clothed by the sun'.

Interesting that Virgo would be in precisely the right position for the rising sun to paint the picture described in our reading... on the prophesied date... with the 'great sign' 3I/ATLAS right there.

But where is the moon? According to our scripture verse, the woman should not only be clothed by the sun, but also 'with the moon under her feet'. It looks like the sun is under her feet, not the moon...

Until you look at the bigger picture....

If you watch the above animation, you'll notice that as Virgo begins to rise in the east on the morning of December 1, the moon will be setting in the west... timed in such a way that precisely as the moon drops below the horizon, the legs and feet of the woman begin to rise above it.

As the heavenly bodies on their graceful journey would have it, at this very moment the moon is on the other side of Earth, exactly opposite Virgo.

In other words, the moon is not only under the woman's feet, but under the entire constellation Virgo... on the opposite side the Earth.

Very creative.

And how precisely aligned are these heavenly bodies?

Zooming out and looking back at the scene from space, we see the moon located 'under' the woman in the constellation Virgo, positioned on the opposite side of earth on December 1.

We can see this more precisely if we view the scene from the surface of the moon.

Constellations are more than stick figures drawn between stars in the sky. Each constellation has a defined boundary that modern astronomers use to locate astronomical bodies.

Here we see the Earth (mostly in shadow) at the midpoint of its transit across Virgo, as viewed from the surface of the moon at midnight EST on December 1 – positioning the moon precisely 'under' the constellation on the opposite side of the earth, on this exact date.

Enter the dragon

At this point we've only been looking at the first part of the reading, though.

We've got another sign that should be appearing in the sky. The next two verses speak of a red dragon.

Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.
(Rev 12:3-4)

And what do we find entering stage left, but the constellation Draco – the dragon. In position before the woman, with its head waiting to devour her child.

As for 'its tail sweeping away a third of the stars in the sky and hurling them down to earth', take a look at the ɸ-Cassiopeids meteor shower setting on the horizon to the north, in the lower left of the image.

When is this annual meteor shower scheduled to appear under the dragon's tail? Right on cue, beginning December 1 and lasting through December 8.

Meteors are commonly known as falling stars. And in this particular case, as the night progresses to dawn, this shower of falling stars is 'hurled down to the earth' – with the centroid of the ɸ-Cassiopeids meteor shower setting out of view, touching the horizon precisely at daybreak.

So now we have... the great sign appearing in the sky ...the woman ...clothed in the sun ...moon under her feet ...the dragon ...and the stars hurled down to earth.

Check, check, check, check, check, and check. All in position, as predicted, on the 1st of December.

All that leaves is the child.

She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne.
Rev 12:5

The lion of Judah

So where does the child appear in our scene?

You've no doubt picked up on this, but if the woman in our theory is the Virgin Mary, the dragon is the Devil. And the child he is seeking to devour at birth is obviously Mary's son, Jesus.

Jesus goes by many names, but in the Book of Revelation where this heavenly scene is playing out, he is earlier called the lion of the tribe of Judah (Rev 5:5).

In our scene then, the child is represented by the constellation Leo – the lion. The lion of the tribe of Judah. He is positioned above the woman, nearly straight up in the sky... 'caught up to God and his throne'.

All of which leaves us with one more coincidence.

The current pope – the vicar of Christ on earth, elected just weeks prior to 3I/ATLAS appearing in the sky – has taken the name Pope Leo.

Completing the picture

We've come a long way using the date of the Wow! signal.

But we're still looking for another message that might complete the picture. The scene in the heavens matches our original reading, so it seems we're in the right place. But where is the message?

Looking for something more to guide us, we return to the premise of our theory. Might God have given us any additional information regarding the timing of this signal?

Which raises another question...

If God is really pointing us to scripture with the Wow! signal – why would He limit himself to only using the date?

An all-powerful God could easily be more precise. If God is in control of all things, He could have coordinated not only the date, but the time we received the signal. In fact, it would be reasonable to assume that He did.

So let's investigate.

The signal pointing to the readings was received at 11:16 p.m. Aug. 15, 1977 local time. Assuming this time might be intentional, we notice a curious thing when looking at the verses in the first reading from August 15.

The signal came in at 11:16. The reading begins at Revelation 11:19.

Interesting when you write it out like that. Time and date.

If the date of the signal points to a reading starting at verse Revelation 11:19, could the time of the signal be pointing to the verse at Revelation 11:16?

Let's look it up.

And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God...
Rev 11:16

Assuming this verse is intentional, we have some more context to consider.

Our time-driven and date-driven readings straddle the end of the eleventh chapter and the beginning of twelfth chapter of Revelation, with different types of things happening in each.

• The elders seated on their thrones fall down and worship in end of Revelation chapter 11 (as pointed by the signal's time)
• ...then heavenly signs appear in the beginning of Revelation chapter 12 (as pointed by the signal's date)

Notice the parallel with our timeline.

• Our heavenly signs appear in the early morning hours of December 1, the beginning of the twelfth month
• ...leading us to expect something noteworthy related to worship might be happening just prior, on November 30, the end of the eleventh month.

And there is.

November 30, 2025 is a Sunday. A very significant Sunday, especially as it pertains to this story.

At Mass on this Sunday, in churches all over the world, the focus will be...

Preparing for the Second Coming of Christ

And now we've found it...

The corresponding message 49 prophetic years in the future... on the last day of the eleventh month... preceding the prophesied scene of Revelation on the first day of the twelfth... and a perfect match with the focus of the earlier readings from the Wow! signal.

Sunday, November 30, 2025 is the First Sunday of Advent. The first day of the season devoted to preparing for the coming of Christ not only at Christmas...

...but preparing for the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world.

The readings give multiple ominous warnings...

"it is the hour now for you to wake from your sleep..."
"the night is advanced, the day is at hand..."
"they did not know until the flood came and carried them all away...
"so will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man..."
"for you do not know on which day your Lord will come..."
"for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come..."

• First Reading: Isaiah 2:1–5
• Second Reading: Romans 13:11–14
• Gospel: Matthew 24:37–44

So what does all this mean?

Let's start with what it doesn't mean.

The world is not coming to an end on December 1, 2025.

The message about a sign of the end – not the end itself. And according to scripture, no one can know the specific day and hour of the end.

However... there is no prohibition against knowing other dates on the timeline.

And what would that mean if our theory is correct?

It means that December 1, 2025 is the date of the great sign appearing in Revelation – a clear sign of the end times, with many ramifications.

And what about that mysterious signal from space in 1977? What if it really is pointing to scripture, and connected to 3I/ATLAS?

Let's just say Jerry Ehman was right in adding that exclamation point.

Wow! Signal indeed.

Summary

We began this post with a novel theory – a theory that the strange interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is a message sent to us from God.

That sounds pretty wild on first hearing, but here is the reasoning and where it has taken us so far:

• A highly unusual interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is discovered entering our inner solar system in July, and continues gather attention.
• It is ancient, traveling toward us for millions if not billions of years, exhibiting characteristics we've never seen, resulting a wide range of speculation with no verified explanations.
• Nearly fifty years ago, we received a stunning signal coming from the same direction as 3I/ATLAS, far outside our solar system. It remains the best candidate for communication from an extraterrestrial intelligence ever discovered.
• The strong signal contained no recorded information. Could its purpose have been just that – of a signal, pointing to something on that date – appearing as it did on August 15, 1977, when hundreds of thousands of churches around the world were celebrating the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
• The scripture readings at those churches on August 15, 1977 proclaimed the second coming of Christ, the coming of the end, and in the first reading from Revelation on that day, foretold a great sign appearing in the sky, alongside a woman, a dragon, and a child.
• Turning the astronomical clock forward to December 1, 2025, a prophetic number of days exactly 'seven weeks of years' after receiving the signal, we discover that 3I/ATLAS will appear in the constellation Virgo (the virgin), in a heavenly scene remarkably resembling the one prophesied in this reading from Revelation – with both the sun and the moon in perfect alignment to complete the scene as described.

Remarkable as it sounds, this is quite a string of circumstances.

And very creative. Like something a creative Creator might do. Like something only a Creator could do...

Apocalyptic scripture woven into the most prominent SETI signal ever discovered – tied to a strange interstellar object now set to appear in the indicated heavenly scene, prophesied precisely from the signal's date?

Pointing to the end of the world?

Could it actually be?

This is part one in a series investigating the theory that God is behind the appearance of 3I/ATLAS.

Check back as we continue to investigate 3I/ATLAS and see where the theory takes us.

Or sign up to get an email the moment we post the next update.