It may just be coincidence, but the Mayan calendar was drawn up in such a way that it ends completely in 2012 and, as we have seen, this is also the year of the third comet in the Bible Code. We have few surviving relics of the Mayans, but there are many impressive stone constructions in South America, and these suggest that there was some relationship with the Egyptian cultures in ancient times. There are reed boats being used in South America today that look like those of ancient Egypt. The main details of the Mayan calendar were worked out nearly a hundred years ago. They believed that human history has distinct epochs of about 4,000 years, after which there is a catastrophic event that completely ends all existing civilizations.

According to the Mayans the present era began 13^th August 3114 BC and ends on 21st December 2012 AD. An interesting book, containing details of the Mayan system; The Mayan Prophecies by Adrian G. Gilbert and Maurice M. Cotterell. The start date of our era (13^th August 3114 BC according to the Mayans) is similar to the start date for the Egyptian civilization, according to modern archaeologists. It is not possible to say how the Maya developed their calendar; they may have acquired it from an earlier civilization. The calendar was complex and used to calculate astronomical tables of eclipses and other events, but there is no evidence that the Maya had any special theoretical knowledge. Maurice Cotterell presents a theory in the above-mentioned book, as to the nature of the Mayan forecast. I did not give it much credence originally, but some new scientific research may provide some support for it.

Prior to his South American researches, Maurice had been interested in the effects of the Sun's magnetic field on the Earth. The Sun has a complex quadripole magnetic field and it also rotates significantly faster at the equator than at the poles. The material in the Sun behaves as an electrically conducting liquid, constrained by gravity and magnetism but stirred by rotation and convection. Maurice modeled this mathematically and found that the configuration of the field should vary in a cyclical way with a predictable period. One of the shorter cycles within this was 11.4 years, only a few months longer than the observed 11.1-year sunspot cycle. Sunspots are like giant twisters that are relatively cooler in the centre. We see a sunspot when it is aligned so that we look down its centre; this peaks every eleven years because they are aligned magnetically. At the sunspot maximum, the fields align the sunspots vertically so they become visible, one pole uppermost on one cycle and the other pole uppermost during the next peak, eleven years later. This much is known to science from observation, but Maurice claims he can derive it mathematically. The Mayan Prophecies book does not include the actual mathematics, however, so it is not possible for me to judge its validity.

When Maurice came to study the Mayan calendar he noticed that there was a great similarity between the time cycles predicted for solar magnetism and the cycles inherent to the Mayan calendar system. In his theory the Sun's magnetic field reverses at the end of a complete cycle, after 1,366,040 days. In the Mayan calendar, a complete cycle of time is 1,366,560 days. The magazine New Scientist, 9 Jan 99, carried an article covering a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. A team of astronomers studying Sun-like stars discovered that most of them seem to produce a super flare about once a century. They studied observational records and found that stars similar to the Sun occasionally become as much as ten times brighter, for periods of hours or days. The astronomers are reported to be baffled as to why the Sun is so stable. Perhaps it does flare, but only every five thousand years, when the magnetic field reverses; causing so much destruction that no eye witness accounts have survived.

Interestingly, every eleven years, at the peak of the sunspot cycle, Coronal Mass Ejections occur. During these events material from the Sun is ejected into space. The last one caused a lengthy power blackout in Quebec, Canada, beginning 31^st March 1989, after magnetic disturbances caused severe voltage fluctuations. The next such event is predicted for the year 2000, and the following one is expected to occur sometime during 2012. (Cover-story 'Bolts of Fire,' New Scientist magazine 27^th Feb 99). Normally these events provide spectacular displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis), but are not bright compared to the Sun.

The Maya describe each era ending with a different elemental causing the destruction; fire, constant rain, and wind. All these could be due to a flare, with the effects on the weather causing most destruction in some places. Although this theory is largely unsupported by the other End Days prophecies, we should remember that the prophecies might not include all the details. The Bible Code only reveals what has been searched for, and 'solar flare' may not have been investigated at this time. The Second End was predicted by Enoch to be an end of fire (the first was flood). In Revelation there is an angel who throws the burning incense onto the Earth.