Satan’s 1st Countermove — The Seed

Peter turns to the jury.

Peter

Thank you, Your Honor.

You will remember when I told you that God made the first move in the end game of the eternal chess match with Satan. Satan acted with great fury because he knew his time was short.

This is a critical fact — because although it will find its final fulfillment in the tribulation, this is where it began.

Now it’s logical that he had to plant his forty-seven trees very quickly — because the battle was on. That is the premise of my entire argument. God planted His tree. And Satan planted at least forty-seven trees as counter moves — to try to defeat Jesus at His second coming — all in 1948.

Now the question is — can I prove it beyond any reasonable doubt in your mind?

So here’s what we know. The fig tree was replanted on May 14th, 1948.

After replanting Israel in their homeland, He continued. Telling us exactly what would happen next — in fact it is another major prophecy, if not the most major, in the very next sentence. And it’s something that nobody can deny in our day.

Look at Jesus’s next sentence.

He reads from his notes.

When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.

Now first of all, Jesus specifically points to multiple trees. And says in the very next sentence of the same prophecy — when they are budding.

That’s what brings me before you today. When the fig tree was replanted, it means that summer is now near. And in saying that, He gave us an exact date for Satan’s most dramatic counter move.

Peter hesitates. He turns to his podium and grabs a glass of water. Takes a healthy gulp.

Peter

He did not say summer is coming. He said it is now near. Near enough to see.

So I grabbed an Almanac and looked it up. June 21st is the first day of summer. Not approximately summer. Not near summer. The precise day summer begins.

First, I found a ton of pagan festivals on that day. The Day of the Summer Solstice. The day the light begins to retreat.

He clicks the remote. The full passage appears on the exhibit monitor.

Now get ready for this.

Peter sets down his notes. He moves away from the podium entirely. Stands in the center of the floor — closer to the jury than at any point. No papers. No remote. Just him.

And on that precise day — thirty-eight days after God replanted His fig tree — Satan replanted his first tree. The seed of the exact one from the Garden of Eden. And they called it a baby. The Manchester Baby.

A beat. He lets the name land.

What it reminded me of was the film Rosemary’s Baby. The story of a child that looked innocent — but was something else entirely. Something ancient. Something that had been waiting a very long time.

Ladies and gentlemen — hold that image.

Because the Manchester Baby was born on June 21, 1948. At eleven o’clock in the morning. On the first day of summer. Thirty-eight days after God replanted His fig tree.

Peter

He turns back to the jury. Begins counting on his fingers.

Seventeen feet long. Seven feet four inches tall. One ton. Five hundred and fifty vacuum tubes. Thirty-five hundred watts of power. Post office racks all around the room. No air conditioning — windows open to keep the temperature sensible. Dirt blowing in from the centre of Manchester. One hand in your pocket at all times so you didn’t electrocute yourself.

He stops. Looks at the jury.

That’s quite the baby.

A few smiles. Then silence.

The jury studies the image. The hulking machine. The dials. The cables. The men in white lab coats who look like they’re not entirely sure what they’ve done.

Peter

Actually, the experts thought two would serve the whole country. The government agreed. Ferranti — the first industrial firm brave enough to collaborate — was told there was nothing for them in the computer business. Because if only two computers were ever required, how could there be?

Freddie Williams wasn’t the only one who found the whole thing a bit mysterious.

He looks at a sheet of paper. Then at the jury.

Tom Kilburn — the man who actually wrote the first program the Manchester Baby ever ran — said this about the period when he designed the machine:

Peter sets the paper down. He does not explain it. He does not editorialize. He looks at the jury for a long moment.

They thought they were building a machine.

A beat.

They were not. They were replanting a tree. And the Manchester Baby was the seed.

A juror in the back row folds a small piece of paper. He passes it to the juror beside him. It moves hand to hand along the front row until it reaches the end nearest the bench. The court clerk collects it without a word and places it in front of Special Master Wright. Wright opens it. Reads it. Looks up.

Special Master Wright

Juror Two asks — are you saying the timing was intentional?

Peter

I’m saying it’s documented.

Peter pauses. Walks slowly back toward the exhibit monitor.

Three months after that machine ran for the first time, a man arrived in Manchester. He had been working on his own computing vision in London and was frustrated. When he heard what Williams and Kilburn had built — he came. He became the first person outside the builders to use it. He ran a program for long division. It had a bug. One of Kilburn’s colleagues had to fix it for him. And then it ran.

His name was Alan Turing. And the following year, he sat down with The Times of London and told them how he saw something completely different.

Peter

Only a foretaste. Only the shadow of what is going to be.

He saw the tree. He just didn’t know who planted it.

Freddie Williams ultimately summed it all up.

One of the men who built the Baby — Geoff Tootill — described what happened next in the simplest possible terms.

Peter

A thousand bits. To a million million million.

In seventy-five years.

That is not a computer getting faster. That is a seed becoming a tree.

And Tootill said one more thing.

Peter

Unimaginable to the pioneers. The men who built it had no idea what they’d done. As you just heard — Williams himself told you.

Ladies and gentlemen — I am going to show you what that seed became. Counter-move by counter-move. Branch by branch. Forty-six more prophecies — every one of them Satan’s answer to God’s opening move. Every one of them planted in the same year. 1948. Not 1947. Not 1949.

He turns back to the exhibit monitor. The passage appears once more — with the key words illuminated.

Peter

It wasn’t just the fig tree we’ve heard about so many times. Prophecy buried within a parable.

Peter turns from the jury and walks slowly back toward his podium. A long pause.

Again — why haven’t we been focusing on all the trees?

He turns back to face the jury.

Exactly at that moment — on June 21st — it was game on.

End of Prophetic Fulfillment 2

Prophetic Fulfillment 3 follows.