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It’s Great American Solar Eclipse 2017 day. Is it the end of the world?
That depends on your belief system.
According to UK Express, some religions consider the “Black Moon” to be a prophecy, and it’s not a good one.
“Many fundamentalist Christians see this as a significant warning of the impending apocalypse, the second coming of Christ and the rapture,” the site reported. According to UK Express, Pastor Paul Begley, host of the Coming Apocalypse radio show, “said the eclipse could possibly fulfil a prophecy recorded in the book of Joel,” which says, “The sun shall be turned to darkness before the Day of the Lord come.”
GettyA total solar eclipse is seen from Palembang city on March 9, 2016 in Palembang, South Sumatra province, Indonesia.
“We are living in the last days,” he added, according to UK Express. UK Daily Star also noted, “The Old Testament book of Isaiah says the ‘stars in heaven…will not show their light, the Sun will be darkened and the Moon will not give its light,’ before the Second Coming. God’s ‘fierce anger’ will destroy the Earth, leaving the land ‘desolate.'”
UK Daily Star reports that some who believe this prophecy are pointing to tensions between the United States and North Korea as a possible trigger for the eventual End of the World.
End of the world prophecies tied to a solar eclipse are also found in other religious belief systems. Susan Milbrath, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told The New York Times, “The Ch’orti’, indigenous Mayas, believed ‘an eclipse of the sun that lasts more than a day will bring the end of the world, and the spirits of the dead will come to life and eat those on earth.’”
She added that “Other Mayas including the Yucatec and the Lacandón associated eclipses with total destruction,” according to The Times.
According to Exploratorium, “The word eclipse comes from a Greek word meaning ‘abandonment.’ Quite literally, an eclipse was seen as the sun abandoning the earth.”
Not surprisingly, this provoked terror in some ancient cultures. The site notes, “A recurring and pervasive embodiment of the eclipse was a dragon, or a demon, who devours the sun. The ancient Chinese would produce great noise and commotion during an eclipse, banging on pots and drums to frighten away the dragon.” There were similar beliefs in India.
Some to think of it, it’s interesting that, in so many corners, the eclipse is being treated as a moment of excitement in the U.S., in contrast to so many ancient cultures that feared it.
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According to UK Telegraph, modern-day conspiracy theorists “are claiming that a planet will collide with Earth this September – and that the coming solar eclipse will signal the apocalypse’s beginning.” They think the planet is called Nibiru or Planet X. The date of doom? September 23, 2017.
This theory derives from a Christian numerologist. “Christian numerologist David Meade claims he has discovered a ‘date marker’ that reveals when Planet X – and the reported resulting apocalypse – is coming,” reports UK Express. The planet “is reportedly a huge planet with a vast orbit that conspiracy theorists claim will one day pass so close to Earth that its gravitational pull could wreak havoc on our planet, triggering earthquakes and other catastrophic events.” He’s claimed he used Bible verses for the prediction. You can read more about that here.
Such prophecies have been foretold before and didn’t come true.
David Baron, in the book American Eclipse, wrote about how people became terrified and predicted end times during an 1878 total solar eclipse.“They were absolutely convinced that this was Jesus returning, and this was Judgment Day,” Baron said, according to ScienceFriday.com.
“As you can imagine, they fell to their knee, they ran to church and in one tragic instance, a father decided he wanted to get to the other side as fast as possible to avoid Armageddon and he ran home with an ax. He killed his young son. And then he took a razor, sliced his own throat and killed himself,” Baron said, ScienceFriday reports. Of course, the earth lived on.
According to BeliefNet.com, “Gary Ray, who writes for Unsealed, believes that the end is coming. But the pending eclipse is another astronomical sign the end is near and that the Rapture is fast approaching. He told the Washington Post that the image will be created in the sky on Sept. 23. He explained that Virgo represents the woman in Revelations 12 who will be clothed in sunlight. She will be in position over the moon and under the nine stars and three planets. Ray said that image will be created in the sky on Sept. 23.”
On the Unsealed website, Ray notes that some have falsely said his group believes the end of the world is coming in August. However, they think the eclipse is a sign. “The Bible says a number of times that there’s going to be signs in the heavens before Jesus Christ returns to Earth. We see this as possibly one of those,” Ray said about the eclipse to The Washington Post, which noted, “He is even more interested in another astronomical event that will occur 33 days after the eclipse, on Sept. 23, 2017.” Ray, the Post wrote, “thinks the two eclipses that are slated to travel across the United States in 2017 and 2024, together marking an X across the nation, could be the starting and ending signs bookmarking a seven-year period of awful tribulations that Revelations says waits in store for nonbelievers who are left behind on Earth when the Rapture occurs.”
In other words, he doesn’t think the world is about to end…yet.
What does Revelations 12 say? Believe.net explained.
“According to Revelation 12, a pregnant woman will be hunted by a satanic seven-headed dragon eager to eat her unborn child. The woman will be clothed with the “sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God and to his throne. The Scripture continues to explain that the ‘woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.'”
However, Eclipse2017.org argues that everyone needs to chill out. “Could an eclipse possibly spell doom for all time?” the site asks, and then answers its own question:
“In a word – no. There is no danger at all to the Earth from solar rays, cosmic cataclysms, volcanic or tectonic eruptions, or any other eclipse-induced phenomenon that any self-anointed “authority” writes a book about. Eclipses have been happening on earth for a VERY long time, and we’re all magically still here. The world didn’t end during the total eclipses of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, or 2016. And there simply isn’t any chance that the 2017 eclipse will be any different from any of its predecessors: Cool to observe, and that’s about it.”
