We have been studying Jude in church for the last few months, and will be for the remainder of the year. Often, the preacher comments that Jude is the most overlooked book of the bible. It is short and near the end, right before Revelation. Obadiah may try to push the point with Jude, but overall I believe he is right. The verse Sunday (13) covered a spot where the metaphor included wandering stars. Taking this in context with the times, Jude is comparing the blaspheming, misdirecting leaders with heavenly bodies because the stars were the main way to navigate back then. There were no LORAN towers (and soon won't be any here either) or GPS devices to guide your way. You could not pick up a handy-dandy folded up map at the local convenience store if you happened to be lost either. The wandering stars were those that were used for navigation that ended up not being stars at all. Planets were often referred to as wandering stars, and of course there were comets as well that did not travel as the majority of the stars did. The one in particular that Dr. T chose to point out were shooting stars.
I have dwelled on this concept since because of two points that he did not include in his explanation of the metaphor. The first is the fact that if an object, particularly an astronomic object, is coming right at you (rather than across your field of vision) it can appear to be a stationary object until it comes close enough that you can detect its lateral movement. The second deals with colors.
The eye consists of rods and cones, which in turn detect light and color respectively. The cones make up less than 7% of the detection receptors in the eye. Because of their location, generally speaking when watching meteor showers you will detect a particularly colorful "shooting star" out of the side of your view rather than directly where you are looking. Once you notice the movement, your eyes switch to focus on that.
Similarly, if we focus on just that area in front of our eyes we can miss the fact that the object we are staring at is not a true direction giving body.
Sometimes we are simply looking in the wrong direction, other times we stare until we finally see it move the wrong way. That is why it is so important to ensure we are looking at someone who is not a misguided, blaspheming leader.
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