Efrain Rodriguez Asteroid Tsunami Prophecy vs. Bible Prophecy

Is an asteroid impact at Puerto Rico going to cause a 200-foot tsunami which strikes America’s East Coast? "Prophet" Ephrain Rodriguez says so based on prophecy he received 40 years ago. Is his word accurate compared the Bible? Proper understanding of Wormwood (Rev 6-8) and America (Rev 17-18) in Revelation shows where he may have heard from God and where he probably let Christian eschatology and conspiracy theory slip in.

The Efrain Rodriguez Asteroid Prediction

Per usual with popular prophecy theories, I'm writing this article on "prophet" Efrain Rodriguez's prediction of an asteroid impact because many readers have asked me about it.

If you have not heard his spiel, you will find some of what I cover of it a bit paranoid-sounding. Nevertheless, a couple of his claims are especially intriguing if you are familiar with Wormwood of Revelation. Efrain's vision resembles part of the global catastrophes of Revelation 6 - 8 caused by the dwarf-planet Wormwood, as I will cover.

Let's look at his claims and judge them carefully as Paul directed the Corinthian church:

1 Corinthians 14:29 (NKJV) — Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge

I started out by listening to the entire 180 minute Prophecy Club talk of Efrain Rodriguez from January 2014. He shares details of his asteroid impact vision received at the age of 16 as follows:

Efrain Rodriguiz's claims?

• "God" is sending a large meteor to hit near Puerto Rico. (The first event of six in three days.)
• The second event is a shock wave wind blast spreading out from the impact site.
• Since there is supposedly a fault line there at Puerto Rico, an earthquake of 12 magnitude (!) follows next. (How he knows it's going to be 12 still escapes me when the highest ever reported is about 9. Note that a 12 is 1000 times stronger than a 9 is.)
• Then a tsunami 1,000 feet high which will destroy most of Puerto Rico and up to 100 miles inland of the East Coast of the United States.
• Three days of darkness (?).
• One year of famine and drought.
• Plague breaks out due to the many dead bodies around.
• Somewhere in there, earth "will stop rotating for three days." (Yes, he really says and insists on this and defends it because Joshua asked the "Sun to stand still." But it does not say the earth stopped rotating then and there are other better ways to explain how God fulfilled Joshua's wish other than the earth stopping its rotation. And besides, why is God sending an asteroid at all if he is just going to mess with the earth supernaturally to that degree?)

When will all this happen? In the Prophecy Club talk he wisely avoids getting into date-setting. His response to the timing question is simply "at any time." Nevertheless, in a later interview on Puerto Rico Chanel 25, he said "este ano"/"this year" a few times such as at 18:17 (notice the interviewer facepalming in response a couple times!). In other words, he is on record that the asteroid will happen in 2014.

He mentions "previous events" that must come first. On his website you learn that he tied the timing of the asteroid to sometime after the death of the "Billy Graham" of Puerto Rico, Yiye Ávila, who died already in 2013. Also another big earthquake (7.0+) must happen first according to Rodriguez.

Conspiracy Theory Tangents

Unfortunately, Rodriguez does not limit his Prophecy Club talk to the details of his teenage asteroid. He also covers ideas from other sources leading to many odd-sounding claims in his talk.

For example, he continually speaks directly to Obama. He makes it clear that he considers him a wicked man and his enemy. He says to Obama that "you cannot deport me because Puerto Ricans are US citizens." He suggests that Obama might even want to try to kill him, but warns him that angels would prevent that.

Worse, over most of the two and a half hours, he touches upon many common conspiracy theories familiar to end time prophecy students. You cannot research prophecy on the internet without hearing lots of conspiracy theories tied to predictions.

Examples of his more conspiratorial beliefs from the video:

• The president (Obama) is signing laws to violate our rights so he can grab power.
• The president is planning to use the next disaster to declare martial law and suspend elections so he can stay in power like a dictator.
• FEMA has already ordered and stockpiled three million body bags and coffins to prepare.
• Concentration camps are already constructed for people fleeing (debunked here by Glenn Beck ^[1]).
• The president will (wickedly) force Israel to give up land.
• Martial Law in the US and worldwide
• Obama knows and plans to use it to stay in power
• Country has prepared huge warehouses of food in the center of America
• There are 40 anti-asteroid missiles in Puerto Rico prepared to try to hit the asteroid and stop it from hitting.

The major problem with this is that most of these ideas are rehashed old conspiracy theories that have circled around the Internet for over a decade, morphing as they go, like urban legends. I actually heard such theories starting in 1998 when I first got exposed to short wave radio programs. This was at the very start of my own studies to understand end time prophecy.

If, like me, you have more than a couple years of fringe research under your belt, you have heard variations of the same theories repeated without proof and without any predictions based on them coming to pass. As such, repeating them does nothing to help someone's credibility.

Now this is not to deny that conspiracies of evil men are real and do exist. However, nearly all of his conspiracy claims are unprovable or without credible sources behind them. This is why in all fairness you have to label them conspiracy theories, not conspiracy fact.

Regardless of what you want to call them, they certainly don't help his credibility as a "prophet of God."

FEMA Stocking Body Bags and Coffins in Puerto Rico?

Even worse, some of the theories he shares have either been outright debunked or, as stated earlier, have repeatedly cropped up over time with differing variations in true "urban legend" fashion.

For example, the stockpiling of body bags claim has been tied to varying locations long before Puerto Rico. Check out this report on Snopes about a 2004 terrorism prediction based on 3000 body bags being ordered ahead of time ^[2]. Nothing happened as predicted for June 11 that year. Of course, stockpiling showing it's not a good indicator of disaster coming or of the government knowing disaster is coming.

Likewise with the alleged FEMA coffins stockpiling in Puerto Rico. This stockpiling rumor was causing enough fear to have been reported on a news channel there. But like the body bags rumor, the FEMA coffins rumor has appeared before and been debunked ^[3].

But even if the alleged FEMA preparations in Puerto Rico were true, it would be a stretch to conclude this means "they know" an asteroid is going to hit there. A hurricane is a million times more likely event in the Caribbean requiring disaster preparation. Further, a hurricane would actually leave bodies behind while a asteroid strike and "1000 foot tsunami" would wash nearly every human away from Puerto Rico without a trace.

As you might imagine, by the end of the talk, I felt bad for Rodriguez. If only he had googled the urban legends before repeating (or even believing) them, he could have avoided marginalizing himself and his vision--which I think has merit as I will explain next.

The Wormwood Connection

If one can set aside the paranoia and bizarro theories, I think it's possible Efrain Rodriguez may have actually received an end time vision from God, and a helpful one at that.

Am I saying Efrain Rodriguez is a prophet of God? No, you don't have to be a prophet to get a prophecy/vision from God. On the contrary, according to many observers, he has made other predictions that have failed, which is not very prophet-like. For example, he predicted the death of a Puerto Rican critic of his, Jorge Raschke, by September, 2014 (see video with statement in Spanish from 0:40 to 1:25 ^[5]. Jorge Raschke is still very much alive.

Nevertheless, I believe he saw the Wormwood catastrophe of Revelation 6-8. The problem is he does not seem to know it himself! On his website he flatly states he did not see the Wormwood events. (Yet he also contradicts himself in that as I shall explain.) Since he has not connected his vision properly to Revelation, he is forced to mix in plenty of mistaken Christian theology, eschatology and theory to try to fill in the blanks.

But this is understandable. Prophets tend not to understand their own prophecies, such a Daniel (Dan 12:8). Even Paul who had much revelation on the rapture seemed to hold out hope that Christ would return in his lifetime (1Th 4:17). Daniel and Paul did not have the New Testament including especially the Book of Revelation nor did they live in the end times when the prophecies would be unsealed (Dan 12:4, 10).

Of course, having Revelation and the rest of the NT prophecies is not enough. You have to understand them literally and that takes wisdom and "knowledge" which today can be "increased" by "going to and fro" on the Internet (Dan 12:4).

Few have this wisdom, in large part thanks to the popular pretrib rapture eschatology fantasy which blocks understanding of Revelation. This happens because Revelation itself teaches a post-trib rapture at the 7th trumpet (not the 1st seal) when the saints are "rewarded." Not surprisingly, Rodriguez's website reveals that, he too, is a pretrib rapture believer warning the church not to be "left behind". It is therefore to be expected that he misunderstands his vision and where it fits in end time events revealed in the book of Revelation.

How Efrain Contradicts Himself On Wormwood

Further, his website shows typical confusion on Revelation ^[6]:

1. He states his vision has nothing to do with "Wormwood."
2. Yet, he calls the vision "part of the period called 'Beginning of Sorrows.'"

These two points are actually contradictory. Wormwood is the main part of the beginning of sorrows (or "birth pains" as modern versions translate it) (Mt 24:8; Mk 13:8) that Jesus described in the Olivet Discourse. See my article on the "sign of the end" that Jesus tied directly to Revelation's Wormwood (earthquakes and famines in every place caused by a global cataclysm from space).

In other words, I think Rodriguez is right in tying his asteroid to the beginning of birth pains which is Wormwood (and WWIII, fall of America or kingdom vs. kingdom).

On his website he argues that there is no need for God to give anyone a vision of Wormwood since it's already in the Bible. As if it being in the Bible automatically makes it well-known and well understood by Christians...

Wormwood is probably the least understood but most detailed event in Revelation there is. Revelation spends three chapters, four seals and two trumpets covering Wormwood. Yet if you ask a Christian what it is, you'll get a blank stare or you might hear "I heard it's Chernobyl."

Wormwood Explained

To review, Wormwood is the name given by Revelation to the celestial body that causes global catastrophes as it passes close to the earth and breaks up and "falls from heaven" upon the earth (Rev 8:10). What confuses most people is how "a star" "burning like a torch could "fall" on the earth and not destroy the entire earth instantly but only "poison the one third of the fresh waters" (Rev 8:11).

Science explains how this happens and how Wormwood is responsible for everything from the eclipses and earthquakes at the 6th seal to the impacts of the 1st and 2nd trumpets, the post-impact effects of the 3rd and 4th trumpets and even the shortened 360 day year of the Great Tribulation that immediately follows the Wormwood event.

• "A star" = dwarf planet - The Greek word translated "star" is aster which refers to any space body other than the sun, a star, comet, asteroid, or planet. I believe only a dwarf planet fits because a star would bring instant death and asteroids and comets are too small to perturb earth's orbit or to provide all the impact material of the 6th seal, 1st and 2nd trumpet. A dwarf planet would tug on the earth enough to change its orbit and also break up once it passes Earth's Roche limit ^[7] and provide plenty of meteors, meteorites and asteroids explain everything.
• "falls from heaven" - While planet Wormwood will literally fall from heaven on the earth, it won't be an ELE (Extinction Level Event) because only part of it will hit the earth after it disintegrates.
• "burning like a torch" - As the dwarf planet Wormwood breaks up, it would probably put on quite a fireworks display in space and of course as the meteorites and asteroids from it burn up in the atmosphere.
• "poisons the waters" - With all the foreign material falling on the earth, all the dead bodies and toxic manmade chemicals dispersed, it will be hard to find fresh water that is not tainted.

Timing: End of 2014?

As mentioned above, Efrain Rodriguez has said on camera in 2014 to expect the asteroid before the "end of this year." This is another area where you're left wondering if this is part of his vision or just his interpretation of it.

Thankfully when you understand the end time roadmap, you can discern that date. There are many prerequisite events before Wormwood that have to happen. Plus they will take several years themselves to transpire. This means there is no way that Wormwood can happen this year. In fact, it cannot even happen this decade (click here for details) ^[8].

In conclusion, with some wisdom and careful discernment, I think Efrain Rodriguez's vision has value to the body of Christ. Despite Wormwood already being in the Bible, it is sorely misunderstood and therefore neglected by believers. Rodriguez's vision brings some much needed attention to the fact that the real end time threat and beginning of sorrows/birth pains is coming from space--not where most people think.

If you want to understand this great key to the end times and how it opens up all of Revelation's roadmap, see my book available on this website.