The Slavic name for the bitter Wormwood plant is Chornobyl (Ukrainian spelling). In Russian, the name of the plant is Polyn, also known as Chernobyl. Chernyi means dark/black while byl literally means story (the past tense of existence) and connotes the bitterness of being, the blackness of existence, the darkness of reality.
In Ukrainian and Russian Bibles, the Greek word apsinthos (absinthe) in Revelation 8:11 is understood as Chornobyl/Chernobyl which invites its association with the 1986 disaster near the historic town of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl/Wormwood proclaimed as
fulfillment of Bible prophecy at the Forty-fifth session
of the UN (IAEA) by Belarrus president.
United Nations A
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General Assembly A/45/PV.32
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Forty-fifth session
Excerpts from the provisional verbatim record of the thirty- second
meeting held at Headquarters, New York on Tuesday, 23 October 1990,
at 10 a.m. Mr. Blix (IAEA):
'In Slavic languages, including the Ukrainian and Byelorussian languages, there is a word "chernobyl", which means wormwood, bitter grass. This has striking relevance to the Chernobyl tragedy. I am no fatalist. I do not believe in the blind inevitability of fate, but who can fail to be moved by these tragic and elegiac words from Revelation, which must leave their indelible imprint on the heart:
"... and there fell a great star from the sky, burning as it were a lamp,
and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of
water; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the
waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (The Holy Bible, Revelation 8:10-11)
At the end of the twentieth century the human intellect-educated in rationalism, in faith, in the creative power of science and knowledge-refuses to accept that those words may prove prophetic and fateful for the Byelorussian people."
http://chernobyl.undp.org/spanish/documentos/45pv32.htm
Mankinds worst man made disaster (a portent of things to come)
On April 26, 1986, an explosion at Chernobyl nuclear reactor one occurred blowing the lid off the reactor and releasing seven tons of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. A mile-high nuclear cloud rained down isotopes on an unsuspecting population of five million. Because of the direction of the winds after the explosion, Belarus received 70% of the fallout (Ukraine received 20% and Russia 5%. The rest fell on western Europe) and reached the east coast of America. The Chernobyl disaster is internationally regarded as the worlds worst nuclear accident. The actual explosion was only the size of a small atomic bomb. However, in terms of fallout, Chernobyl produced 20 times the radioactive contamination of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The prophetic significance:
Revelation 8:10
"The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, burning like a lamp, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water - 11 the name of the star is Wormwood." A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become poisonous."
The immediate effects
A star is literally a nuclear reactor. Chernobyl exploded over a mile into the atmosphere and fell back to earth "burning like a lamp". The disaster was made worse because it rained for 3 weeks all over Europe, in Finland the reindeer died, in Italy tens of thousands of acres of fruit farms were destroyed. The fall out got into the waters, the rivers and aquifers and was recorded particularly high in areas of Wales which provided drinking water to central England. The area of the earth affected was roughly one third, due to the radioactive fall out getting into the waters.
"A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become poisonous."
Effects of Chernobyl disaster
According to Paul Brown, environment correspondent, The Guardian 26 April 2000, the Chernobyl disaster was predicted to cause 50,000 new cases of thyroid cancer among young people living in the worst-affected region, World Health Organisation researchers say. The figures show that in Gomel, Belarus, 36.4% of children aged under four on April 26, 1986 - the day of the disaster -- can expect to develop thyroid cancer. This percentage is much higher than was originally expected, as well as being well above rates following previous exposures to nuclear fallout. A second, more general, report on the effects of Chernobyl released by the UN predicted that that the worst was still to come for more than 7m people affected by the disaster.
