Author	: Bill Kochman
Publish	: Jan. 29, 2026
Update	: Jan. 29, 2026
Parts	: 01

Synopsis:



It has come to my attention that since around July of 2025 -- and possibly earlier -- a rumor has been floating around the Internet -- particularly on Facebook, which as many of you will already know, is the mother of all rumor mills -- which erroneously claims that recently, the Mount of Olives began cracking or splitting, in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ, as we find described in Zechariah 14. I am of course referring to the following well-known group of Bible verse:

"Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light."


My dear friends, let me be perfectly clear about this. There is NOT a single word of truth in the aforementioned claim regarding the Mount of Olives currently being in the process of splitting open. While there is indeed a fault line which runs through the Mount of Olives, it is most certainly NOT a recent event. In fact, the fault line -- or fissure -- which is mentioned in these bogus online claims which are currently in circulation has been known about for at least sixty-one years, and quite possibly even much longer than that. I would have to conduct more research in order to provide you with a more accurate figure.

Furthermore, personally, I first wrote about this well known fault line in a number of my Bill's Bible Basics articles beginning over twenty-seven years ago as of the time of this writing. For example, following is a verbatim quote that is taken from my February 1998 article called "The Triumphant Touchdown of Jesus Christ":

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While I have never been to the nation state of Israel, I can report that several decades ago while conducting some online Bible research, I did discover that according to a number of different websites, in 1964 when now-deceased King Hussein of Jordan had the Intercontinental Hotel constructed on the summit of the Mount of Olives, his engineers discovered an east/west fissure -- or fault line -- running through their intended construction site. This fault line in fact passes just to the east of the Temple Mount, or Mount Moriah, as it was known in former days. As a result of this complication, they were forced to relocate the hotel site from the brow of this famous mountain, to a more stable area to the south. It has also been said that being as the Mount of Olives holds as many as 150,000 Jewish graves, hundreds of these graves were desecrated when the hotel -- which today is know as the Seven Arches Hotel -- was finally built.

As I have mentioned before, Israel is a seismically-active region due to the fact that it borders the Jordan Rift Valley, which is also known as the Syro-African Depression, or the Syrian-African Rift. This rift -- or tear -- in the Earth's crust runs the enter length of the border region which separates Israel and Jordan. The Jordan Rift Valley itself results from tectonic movements within the Dead Sea Transform fault system. The Dead Sea Transform forms the transform boundary between the African Plate to the west, and the Arabian Plate to the east. It is also referred to as the Dead Sea Rift. Furthermore, the Dead Sea Transform is part of the Great Rift Valley, which itself extends from northern Syria, all the way down to Mozambique in Africa.

To give you an idea of what kind of geological contrasts we are discussing here, consider that the lowest elevation point in the Jordan Rift Valley is in the Dead Sea, and stands at 2,590 feet below sea level. Furthermore, the actual shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest land on earth, standing at 1,300 feet below sea level. In contrast, both sides of the Jordan Rift Valley rise sharply to an elevation of just about three thousand feet. The main point to consider here is the fact that because of the geological nature of this region, Israel is riddled with fault lines. Not only that, but geologists in Israel recognize that the nation is long overdue for a major earthquake, and they are very worried about it. Why? Because for many years now, building construction codes in Israel have been substandard. Obviously, that is asking for trouble, and they fear that many thousands of people could die when the next big earthquake strikes that region.

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In addition to the above quote, let me also add that if you visit any reputable seismology website -- such as the two I have listed below -- you'll quickly discover that the Mount of Olives has NOT experienced a single significant or major earthquake in many years. In fact, my dear friends, the last significant temblor was the Jericho earthquake in 1927 which had a magnitude of about 6.3, and which killed some 300-500 people.

1. https://earthquaketrack.com

2. https://eq.gsi.gov.il/en/earthquake/lastEarthquakes.php

Israel -- including Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives -- is a seismic area for sure, as I already explained to you. As such, there are minor tremors occasionally, but this is in fact normal for the region due to the topography I already described to you earlier. So, to reiterate the main point, the Mount of Olives is currently NOT cracking or splitting open as some of you may have heard, or may have been led to believe. It is just a typical, false Internet rumor. This rumor was apparently started by misguided Christians who long for the return of Jesus Christ. As a result, they are inventing things in their own minds which simply are NOT true. Not by a long shot. Either that, or else such people are being deceived by others, or simply misunderstanding certain information they have read.

In some cases, such people are Futurist-leaning Christians who are trying to force the Scriptures to conform to their particular understanding of God's prophetic Word, which is obviously wrong to do. If you don't know what Futurism is, then allow me to invite you to read some of the prophecy related articles which are included in the short list of articles that is found at the end of this same article.

Digging into this issue even further, I discovered that this particular false Internet rumor may possibly have been begun by a misguided Facebook user by the name of Steve Doornbos. About a month ago, when I first heard about this new rumor, I shared this very same message with Steve, in the hope of showing him his error. Sadly, to date, he has not responded to my comment to him on his timeline, so I am not sure what happened there. He and I are not Facebook friends. Maybe he simply deleted my comment because he didn't like it. Who knows.

At any rate, my friends, please don't allow such uneducated, misguided social network posts to trouble you. Rather than freak out and get all bent out of shape when you come across such alarming online posts, ask the Lord for His wisdom and spiritual discernment so that you won't be deceived by such things. Equally important, as you should already know, don't accept anything at face value on the Internet, particularly not any of the nonsense that is found on the social networks such as Facebook. Rather than being so naive and gullible, what you really need to do is to research, investigate and verify for yourself before you naively embrace any online content that you read. Last of all, as I have advised you a number of times before, investigate before you propagate. In your haste to post something juicy, don't allow yourself to become a conduit for false information. Before you make that post, verify the information.



In short, my friends, always strive to speak the truth, and only the truth, at all times. As the following set of verses advise us, speak the pure language of truth, and let no guile be found in your words, whether offline or online:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."


"For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:"


"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few."


"Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer."


"For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent . . . The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid."


Continuing our discussion, as some of my longtime friends will already know, I live on the island of Guam, which is the largest island in the Mariana Islands archipelago. We are a part of the so-called "ring of fire". Guam in fact sits on the Mariana Plate, which is a microplate that is located between the Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. The immense Pacific Plate -- the western edge of which is situated just to the east of our island -- is diving, or subducting, beneath the Philippine Sea Plate, which sits just to the west of us. So we are sandwiched between these two plates on the smaller Mariana Plate.

It is in fact this subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Philippine Plate which has resulted in the formation of the world-famous and extremely deep Mariana Trench. Many of you will no doubt already be familiar with it. It runs to the east, south and southwest of us. This same subduction activity is likewise responsible for the formation of the volcanic arc upon which our entire island chain now sits. If you look at a map of the Western Pacific Ocean, and zoom in, you can easily see the volcanic arc and all of our islands which sit on top of the submarine volcanic mountain peaks.

In fact, it may also interest you to know that because our northernmost islands are still volcanically active, on rare occasions, the VOG -- sulfur-smelling smog -- drifts down to our island of Guam, even though the volcanoes are located a few hundred miles to the north of us. It smells like rotten eggs or farts. Now, because of this constant plate movement, we do have frequent earthquakes here on Guam. Most are 5.5 or weaker in magnitude, and many are too small for us to even notice. In fact, it usually requires a 4.5 or stronger tremor before I will even realize that we are experiencing another earthquake. Anything weaker, and I simply sit here wondering to myself "Was that an earthquake?" At my age, you just never know.

Anyway, that is exactly what happened a little over a month ago, and not even thirty minutes after I had begun writing this article, and typing out the aforementioned information regarding the Mount of Olives rumor. I was sitting in my bed when we got hit with a very quick 5.0 earthquake which only lasted a few seconds. However, a 5.0 shaker for us here on Guam is really nothing, and simply doesn't raise any serious concerns. I mean, there's a little bit of brief shaking, but the ground does NOT split open and buildings do NOT suddenly collapse. I've attached an image from my iPhone's earthquake app called "LastQuake" as proof, for any doubters.



On the other hand, the August 1993 earthquake we had was the worst we have ever experienced. That frightening monster of a temblor lasted a good ninety seconds as I vaguely recall. If memory serves me correctly, the preliminary magnitude was 8.3. However, the USGS -- United States Geological Survey -- eventually lowered the magnitude of the quake to 7.8 after they' had conducted additional calculations. You can read about our 1993 earthquake at the following URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Guam_earthquake

Either way, whether it registered 7.8 or 8.3, it was still a very powerful earthquake -- the very worst I have ever been through -- and yet not a soul died as a direct result of it. Thank the Lord. In contrast, as I mentioned earlier in this article, the minor tremors they experience in Israel only average 2.5 to 4.8 in magnitude. Most of those that are on the lower end of that scale you wouldn't even notice because they are simply so weak. They certainly would not split open the ground on the Mount of Olives as some of those misguided and alarmist Christians have been saying. This includes a certain well-meaning but misguided Facebook friend of mine who apparently saw the Mount of Olives post that seems to have been made by Steve Doornbos, who then shared the very same information on her own timeline via a video that she made.

Sadly, as we all know, some social network folks enjoy making sensationalistic posts in order to attract more views, likes, comments, shares and followers. It doesn't matter whether or not what they are posting is true. Some people are so without scruples, that they will post that junk anyway. As many of my readers will also already know, with the deluge of AI-created content which has now flooded the social networks, widespread deception has only grown that much worse. Please understand that I am not saying that this is what motivated my friend. In fact, I am sure that she was very sincere. Nevertheless, in my view, she was still sincerely wrong, because the Mount of Olives is NOT now splitting open as she and others claim.

As I have spoken about and written about a number of times before in BBB articles such as "The Office of Prophets and Teachers" and also "Facebook False Prophets and Misguided Teachers", it is a very serious thing to claim to speak in the name of the Lord. This is something which I personally do NOT take lightly, ever. That is why you'll NEVER see me claiming to be a Prophet of God. Neither will I ever say "Thus saith the Lord", even when I receive understanding which I am strongly convinced was inspired by the Lord. In short, my friends, claiming to speak for the Lord, and to represent the Lord, is just that serious of an issue to me personally. So, I tend to guard my words, as we're advised to do by some of the verses I shared with you earlier in this article.

Yet sadly, as I have demonstrated once again by way of this current article, so many deceived and misguided Christians on Facebook do this very thing. They give false prophecies and make false predictions -- including regarding what they are convinced is the supposed time of the Lord's return -- left and right. But what did the Lord say concerning false prophets in Matthew 7? He said that they would be known by their fruits, exactly as Moses also wrote in Deuteronomy 18. Consider the following group of Bible verses as proof:

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."


"But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him."


So when the Lord speaks of "evil fruit", exactly what is the evil fruit which these false prophets produce? Well, aside from the widespread deception they cause, it is likewise the fact that what they say simply NEVER comes to pass. That is what Jesus appears to have been talking about. But, sadly, that is NOT the only evil fruit that such false prophets can produce. When naive Christians latch on to these deceivers, and their predictions and prophecies are never fulfilled, do you realize what happens next? Those gullible Christians who were so filled with expectation become discouraged. They may even be scarred for life and lose their faith altogether. Do you know anyone that has happened to? This is an issue which I likewise discuss in articles such as "The Day I Am Waiting For."

So, in my opinion, these deceptive online false prophets and misguided teachers are simply empty winds and clouds without rain, similar to what the Apostle Jude likewise wrote in the following two Bible verses which are found in his Epistle:

"These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."


As I told my friend who erroneously claims that tremors are increasing on the Mount of Olives -- again, not true -- and that the ground there has already begun to split wide open in preparation for Jesus' return -- also not true -- I do not doubt her sincerity, or her burden for lost souls. As I said a moment ago, I realize that she is fully and sincerely convinced that God has spoken to her, and that He has shown her that the Lord will supposedly return in 2026. She even said that her video message was specifically focused on our current year, 2026, although she did not provide a specific date.

In fact, this poor, deceived woman is so convinced that she received her so-called "revelation" regarding the Mount of Olives shaking and splitting open now -- her words, not mine -- from God, that in her video, before telling her viewers exactly what it was that she was going to reveal to them, she repeatedly used enticing, sensationalistic words such as "big", "major" and "huge". Furthermore, she also stated that it was the most important thing God had ever given her to share in her entire life. This in fact reminds me of another five-part series I wrote back in 2013 called "Comet Elenin, Hercolubus, Nibiru, and Planet X". In that series I expose a man by the name of Scott McAllister who was associated with a ministry called "Seven Theory Ministries". Based on the trajectory of Comet Elenin, Scott was absolutely convinced that Jesus was going to return in 2011. Well, we know how that worked out for him, right? If you search YouTube, you may possibly still find his misguided video.

But regarding my aforementioned Facebook friend, she likewise said that she had never heard anyone else teach what she was about to share with her viewers. My dear friends, this point should be a major red flag for anyone who has real spiritual discernment. Let's face it. How many times before have we all seen or heard other misguided Christians make that very same claim? They are a dime a dozen. They will say something such as "This is the very first time that this information is ever being revealed to the world! You won't find this information anywhere else!" Does that sound familiar to any of you? Now, while my friend didn't say it in those exact same words, her attitude and the spirt of her words was pretty close.

Yet as I have already made clear, due to my own understanding of the Scriptures after studying them for almost fifty-five years now, I am absolutely convinced that despite how sincere my friend may be in her current beliefs, just like all of the previous date setters and misguided teachers who have come before her, she is seriously deceived, and simply dead wrong. I just hope that my friend will eventually discover it for herself, and if nothing else, that she will have the humility to admit her error in understanding to herself.

Sadly though, the damage has already gone beyond just her own Facebook timeline. Why is that? Because I observed that some of her friends has already begun to share her misguided video on their OWN timelines. Of course, that is EXACTLY how such deep deception quickly spreads, and Facebook is undoubtedly one of the worst of the Internet rumor mills, sad to say. I am reminded of the following well-known verse that is found in the Apostle Paul's first Epistle to Timothy. It says the following:

"But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived."


To reiterate, I am NOT saying that my Facebook friend is some kind of a wicked person. Nevertheless, she is deceived, and she deceiving other Christians in the process, whether she is willing to realize it or not.

With these thoughts, I will bring this article to a close. It is my hope that you've found it informative and enlightening, and I pray that it has been a blessing in your life as well. If you have an account with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or with any other social network, I would really appreciate if you'd take the time to click or tap on the corresponding link that is found on this page. Thanks so much, and may God bless you abundantly!

For additional information and further study, you may want to refer to the list of reading resources below which were either mentioned in this article, or which contain topics which are related to this article. All of these articles are likewise located on the Bill's Bible Basics web server. To read these articles, simply click or tap on any link you see below.

AI, Chatbots, Daemons and Demons

AI, Deepfakes and Humanoid Robots

Are Personal Tragedies Due to Sin?

Are You Deceived and Don't Even Know It?

Be Careful With ChatGPT and Other AI Chatbots!

Beholding the Evil and the Good

Comet Elenin, Hercolubus, Nibiru, and Planet X

Do You Want Love and Light, or Rod and Wrath?

Does God Cause Natural Disasters?

Facebook False Prophets and Misguided Teachers

Fight Against Futurism!

Hurricane Katrina and Other Natural Disasters

It Is Time to Wake Up!

Preterist or Futurist? It's All by Faith

Speak the Pure Language of Truth

The Day I Am Waiting For

The Fruits of Disobedience

The Office of Prophets and Teachers

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Please avail yourself of other areas of the Bill's Bible Basics website. There are many treasures for you to discover.