The Apoceclipse: We Survived! ... or did we?
After starting the week with a spell of night in the middle of the day, a wild war in the Middle East finished the week by lighting up the nighttime sky!
What a wildly weird and chaotic and eerie week! First, we had what I’m awkwardly calling the Apoceclipse, the solar eclipse, which hordes of people believed at the start of the past week would herald the end of the world. That, by itself, was quite a story, as I shall tell; yet, the next day the world was still here and looked much the same.
So, I was ready to write, “We survived!” without any surprise, at all, that we did and not much more to say, other than to comment about some apparently miscued interpretations of prophecy, as I was certain we would survive without it being the end of anything. I did not join the throngs who believed this eclipse was a sign of the end times, though I did see some special peculiarities about it that made it intriguing (to me anyway) to comment on.
From there, I was going to launch directly into my Deeper Dive, which would be all about the heat that is rising in inflation, which is now clearly changing the thinking of market makers, melting down stock results on the “tickers” and Treasury prices in the bond pits of despair.
Then that big writing plan all changed because we closed the week with a brand new war between Israel and Iran—hotter and more frightening in potential than any of the other many wars that are now swirling around the world, especially for those who live in those nations. This war is more likely to burn down markets than the other wars, too, especially piling on top of all of the others as it does. For the first time in its history, Iran directly attacked Israel many times over from Iran’s own soil, as opposed to just through proxies in other lands as has been Iran’s normal way of endlessly molesting Israel (such as through Gaza and Lebanon) and the West (such as it is doing through the Houthis in the Red Sea). That makes this war categorically different. They took the fight inside of Israel and made their intention to do so again with even greater force abundantly clear, should Israel launch a reprisal.
Overnight that made this the kind of war that we all know can rapidly escalate into the total Mid-East nuclear confrontation many people in the world have feared will someday become World War III. We don’t know that it will, of course, but it sure ups the amplitude for that kind of risk, especially with a number of other entities around Israel wanting to tie into this.
With nations around Israel joining the fray and with weapons now flying into the heart of Israel, it could even wind up being fought on the actual ancient battlefield of Armageddon (in biblical Greek or, Hebrew, Har Megiddo, or in English, Mount Megiddo). That battleground is a broad flat valley in central Israel, above which rises the ancient fortified and highly religious city of Megiddo that long preceded even the Roman occupation of that land in the days of Jesus when Rome first named the region “Palestine” to remove the Jewish presence off the face of the map.
This guardian city of an ancient major trade route between the Fertile Crescent, (particularly Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq and Syria) and the Egyptian Empire has been blood-soaked for millennia in wars between many different empires since about 5000 BC. All of them wanted to control that trade route. Many strata of empires stack on top of each other on what is now Tel Megiddo, meaning an archeological hill, which was once a temple mount to one of the the greatest temples in the Middle East and the site of a royal palace.
Just off the northern tip of today’s West Bank, and just a few kilometers southwest of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, the ancient city on a hill was endlessly fought over and conquered through millennia of passing empires, which temporarily seized control time and again. It is nothing but ruins today, but what remains has a grand vista over a valley so vast and largely empty enough it could serve as a major crossroad battlefield still.
Here the apocalyptic Battle of Armageddon described in the original Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which translates Revelation of Jesus Christ, is prophesied to be fought as the ultimate war that brings the nation’s of earth together against Israel, isolated from all of its friends and allies, ending the present epoch of human history as we have known it. It is not the end of the world, but the end of an age tattered with wars and beginning of a new age of peace in which that book called Revelation for short reveals that Jesus will rule the earth and that only his followers will remain to live with him. The meek shall inherit the earth, which I have taken (rightly or wrongly) to indicate all the bad guys will blow each other up in this conflagration (or be destroyed by what sounds like a comet hitting the earth in the verses around Armageddon), leaving what is left of earth behind for Jesus, the Messiah, and all his followers in the Christian telling, whether Jewish or Gentile, described in these prophecies as “one new man” that is “neither Jew nor Greek (Gentile).” The old ways of racial divisions will finally perish and a new world will be born from the ashes of that final war and the cosmic events around it.
Interesting it was, then, though perhaps nothing but coincidence, that on the same day as the solar eclipse last week the news in The Daily Doom headlines was absolutely dominated by stories about how Israel was losing all its allies and friends. It was becoming isolated. I didn’t stack the deck in choosing the stories. That is just what I came across again and again. Those headlines ran like this:
After six months of war, Israel's isolation grows
"We won't support you": Inside Biden's ultimatum to Bibi
Relationship with Netanyahu 'has changed forever'
US officials’ fury at Biden Gaza policy means mood in State Department now worse than during the Iraq War
Pelosi joins call to stop transfer of weapons
European allies pull back, “appalled” and “outraged."
Even Jews were rebelling en masse against their leader that day:
Protests spark chaos in Tel Aviv as thousands call for Benjamin Netanyahu to resign
Now that Iran is directly attacking Israel, however, the stories have swung to nearly as many stories this weekend about how the US and UK, Jordan and France are flying sorties over Syria as Israel’s allies and helping in other ways to shoot down Iran’s weapons in the air, voicing full-throated support for Israel against Iran. While it seems there is global sympathy for the Palestinians, there is little to none toward Iran. Where those same nations were soured on Israel over the bloodshed in Gaza, their mutual hatred for Iran as the sponsor of terror in the Middle East, has galvanized them together for, at least, that particular cause. For the time being, at least, Israel has friends again.
The world wants its wars
While I’m not counting on Armageddon this year, one can see many paths by which the present war could eventually get there. In fact, in some ways it seems almost inevitable for the following reasons.
I cannot help but wonder if Israel and its allies in this conflict want this war, at least, in some ways because of how close Iran is getting to nuclear weapons. At least, three of these major players in the region have vowed they will never let Iran get nuclear arms, and that day is very near with nothing major having been done to prevent it for a few years. The day when Iran has just one nuclear weapon, it may be too late to do anything about it because they will deploy that weapon if anyone tries. So, I will be kind of surprised if this does not mushroom into a war that takes out in a decisive way Iran’s nuclear facilities, which won’t end there as far as Iran is concerned. Baiting Iran into starting the war might give bombardment of Iran’s nuclear facilities more legitimacy so long as no one sees the West or Israel as baiting Iran by destroying consular buildings, though I’m sure many already do.
At the same time, President Biden has told Netanyahu that the US will not join Israel in any reprisal against Iran, making it apparent the US will not be helping to take out Iranian nuclear plants. He’s told Netanyahu to take the win that Israel and its allies pulled off in short order in their outstanding joint defense of Israel’s air space from being successfully breached by missiles. Some reports say no missiles or drones reached their targets. Others say some strikes were successful on an Israeli air base in the Negev. It appears from video, the success was an empty boast by Iran. It must have blown up some cyclone fence or a storage shed or something of the kind. Planes are still coming and going from the base with no apparent trouble as seen in videos in the news stories presented below.
It’s not clear, however, that Israel will not counter attack on its own. It has already stated emphatically that it will in a time of its own choosing. Initial statements said it may happen on Sunday night, but later reports shied away from that, saying, at least, 24 would be taken to mull the options over. Israel may defy Biden, and Biden has made clear that the US, while it will not join in attacking Iran, will continue its ironclad defense of Israel. That, by itself, may strengthen Israel’s resolve to counterattack Iran’s counterattack, and the Biden administration surely must realize that. The offensive actions, Israel will have to carry out on its own.
Of course, it could be reasonably assumed that the US and UK and others in the coalition that supported Israel defensively would not wish to openly acknowledge any role in a counterattack against Iran, which might bring more reprisals directly upon them. Once again, Biden’s policy appears to be to tell Israel to stand down, rather than to deal decisively with Iran once and for all. Yet, Israel knows it will have full US support in defending its own land during and after those actions.
Many Republicans disagree with Biden. Naturally. As can be expected, perma-war-mongers like Lindsay Graham are saying such things as “It’s long past time for Iran to pay.” You can always count on Graham and John Bolton, for whom every answer to Iran is “nuke ‘em,” to take that position, as well as many others who run the US military-industrial complex. Still, to Graham’s point, it’s hard to imagine the situation with Iran will become more manageable in the future if Iran does attain nuclear weapons; however, these GOP members are not just advocating that Israel take offensive action against Iran, but that the US take such action directly, too.
Republican lawmakers on Saturday demanded the U.S. launch a retaliatory strike against Iran for the drone and missile attacked launched against Israel…. However, aid to Israel amid the country’s war with Hamas has been delayed due to division within the Republican party.
“In light of Iran’s unjustified attack on Israel, the House will move from its previously announced legislative schedule next week to instead consider legislation that supports our ally Israel and holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable,” Scalise wrote. “The House of Representatives stands strongly with Israel, and there must be consequences for this unprovoked attack….”
Sen. Linsday Graham (R-SC) praised the decision by House leadership while adding that Iran must face consequcnces for attacking a U.S. ally….
“It is long past time for Iran to pay a heavy price for the terrorism they sow throughout the world. I’m glad to see the House will take up the Israel aid package next week and hope they will do the same for Ukraine, making it a loan as President Trump suggested,” Graham wrote on X….
Sen. Marsha Blackburn also took to X, formerly Twitter, to demand Biden launch … immediate “aggressive retaliatory strikes on Iran.”
I am not claiming Israel made its attack on the embassy complex in Syria to bait Iran, though I mention the possibility, because I have no evidence support that; but I will, at least, say I can see this war rapidly moving in the direction of becoming an opportunity to finally deal with the Iran nuclear conflict outside of any of the former agreements that were made between the West and Iran, which happened much to the ire of Israel at the time. Iran has been moving at an accelerated pace to develop its nuclear capacity since Trump ended US support of those agreements, as there is no longer any effective agreement slowing Iran down, and Biden has released money that might help them. It doesn’t likely leave much more time to dither, and Netanyahu has been waring the world it must act sooner than later for many years.
I am also not arguing for whether action against Fordow, Natanz and other nuclear facilities in Iran should be undertaken (or should not) before it is too late to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear superpower. I’m just saying this conflict has likely reached a crucially dangerous point, given that Iran loves to sponsor terrorism against many in the Middle East and particularly Israel, so I would be surprised if such an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities IS NOT being planned and imminent. In which case, if Iran has attained unknown nuclear weapons—even just one, given how secretive its work has been— then this could become a nuclear war as it may be Iran’s last chance to make that kind of move against Israel with whatever nuclear material it has achieved.
Nuclear wars and rumors of nuclear wars
There has been a lot of talk in alternative media since the Ukraine War began and Russia started flapping its silo doors about imminent nuclear war that has gone nowhere so far. I think one needs to be careful not to engage in fear-mongering that clearly has the effect of empowering those who do have nuclear weapons to use their existence as a way to hold the world hostage to their own imperial demands. That said, the threat of nuclear war is a lot more likely after this event than it was just a week ago, and Iran has made it clear for decades that it does have imperial ambitions of establishing a caliphate under its rule throughout as much of the Middle East as it can.
Regardless of what should happen or needs to happen, which I don’t have the vast wisdom to know, the world is clearly increasingly at war, and this weekend war has become white hot in the Middle East, directly over Israel and even particularly Jerusalem as missiles and drones fired from Iran lit up the skies there on Saturday night, despite claims by one Israeli report that no such missiles or drones breached Israeli air space—an odd claim at a time when those missiles were flashing overhead as they were shot down. Maybe part of the fog of war with the report written before all of that was fully known.
Graham added,
The world is a dangerous place, and we have to show resolve for our friends and determination against our enemies.
It’s far from clear that proving such resolve by attacking Iran will make the world less dangerous, but it is also far from clear that hand-wringing about nuclear war that allows Iran to gain nuclear weapons in the near future to avoid a potential nuclear conflict now won’t make the nuclear risks far worse to deal with in the near future. It is one of those very dark conundrums where one can pontificate about what is right, but the risks are very high either way.
The war in Gaza has never just been about Palestinian liberation and Israel’s response to a Palestinian attack:
This latest development in the Middle East shows that this is not just a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The war in Gaza was initiated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both Iranian proxies, and has been joined since the start, in the form of attacks on Israel, by Tehran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank.
The ayatollahs have been declaring their intention to eradicate the Jewish state for many years and have built a proxy “ring of fire” around Israel to achieve that, as well as working on a nuclear weapons programme.
However this conflict develops, Israel’s allies, including the US and UK, must do all that is needed to stand strongly by their main ally in the Middle East, if necessary with military action. Failure to do so will increase the prospects of escalating conflict in the region.
Iran is constantly playing the Palestinians to try to create war at arm’s length with Israel. Now they have raised their involvement to direct war with Israel, and there is almost no chance Netanyahu will listen to Biden and stand down. I’m not sure Biden is doing anything more than posturing in order to keep the US out of any Iranian reprisals when he says that. I’m not sure Netanyahu thinks Biden is doing anything more than posturing!
Strong arguments are being made for decisive engagement:
At times like these, we don’t need proclamations of dismay from our leaders. We need action. The hour is already advanced. And still, the fast-dwindling powers of the West do nothing. With Iran, Obama seemed to work as hard as he could to keep his head in the sand, pretending that his laughable “deal” would somehow change Iran’s spots and convince it to put on hold its ambitions to be the most evilly powerful regime in the world. Trump cut off the bargain, and while Biden tried to keep it on life support, it now appears to be dead.
I think it has become quite clear in the past year that that deal is never coming back, so the powers that be would have to seek some other approach to fulfill their promise that Iran would never achieve nuclear weapons. Of course, Biden’s and Obama’s White House freed up billions of dollars that Iran is now putting to use. Iran sent hundreds of millions of dollars that were released in 2014 to Hamas to prepare such attacks as the one made on October 7th of last year. Biden even lifted the longstanding US terror designation off the heads of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to try to appease Iran. Iran’s proxies have carried out terror throughout the Middle East for decades, so appeasement and sometimes working with them via negotiation has not been notably effective overall. It seems to just drag out the inevitable as they slowly strengthen themselves and extend their reach throughout the ME and add to their nuclear materials.
However ineffective Western actions have been in keeping the world from this juncture between Iran and Israel, we’re clearly here now, and it does not appear over we are likely to avoid a hotter conflict in the coming week.
The oooeeeooo of the Apoceclipse
So, without intending to suggest what course should happen or would be most effective, I am saying that this new conflict will have more serious economic repercussions than Ukraine and maybe even more serious than the Houthis, driving the price of oil even higher and, by that means, driving up the price of everything else. That will seriously force the Fed’s hand to more tightening, which will impact the US economy for the worse, especially banks that are already struggling; but it may easily have much more cataclysmic repercussions in the world than financial ones, as we can all easily imagine but cannot know. That is my essential economic prediction out of this.
The broader repercussions are the realm of pure speculation, as even those fighting a war or planning a war cannot predict the outcome. Yet, there were many who predicted (or surmised) the outcome of the past week’s Apoceclipse would be cataclysmic. Many Christians (but not most) tied the eclipse to apocalyptic prophecies during what became, indeed, a most inauspicious week for the world. Seeing eclipses as omens did not originate with Christians. Solar eclipses have a long pre-Christian history as omens of disaster, though the Bible does indicate something like a solar eclipse and a great earthquake happened when Jesus was crucified. The sky went black in the middle of the day and the ground shook.
Many noted the present eclipse passed over the New Madrid Fault, which did the same thing a couple hundred years ago when an eclipse passed over it. So, they were expecting an earth-ripping repeat.
Matthew describes that dark day of Jesus’ crucifixion this way:
45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[c] lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[d]
… 50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[e] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27: 48-54)
Astronomically, however, there was no known solar eclipse that lasted for three hours of darkness, unless the three hours was meant to describe the total period of the eclipse, and not just the brief one minute and four seconds of totality that did happen in AD 31, albeit nowhere near Jerusalem.
The maximum period of darkness from a solar eclipse is seven-and-a-half minutes. Still, the sky could have been darkened and the ground shaken severely by some other astronomical event, such as a small asteroid impact near Israel or an asteroid explosion in the sky (like the one that shook buildings in Russia a few years ago hard enough to break windows all across the nearest city, or the even greater asteroid explosion over Tunguska that leveled a forest like an atom bomb, or like something in between those historic events). Such a celestial bomb could cause considerable darkness and a large earthquake to coincide with the darkness as either the debris of the asteroid or of its impact on the earth blackened the sky. Smoke clouds have also been known to make the moon blood red for several nights, as some prophecies in the Bible describe the moon at the second coming turning to blood, likely meaning blood red.
That is more how I’ve interpreted those prophecies … as somehow knowing way back then as much about mankind’s eventual end as scientists now predict for our likely end today. Still, events like a solar eclipse capture attention and imagination, and there may be more to them than our science can know. Some things remain in the realm of mystery. Revelation’s description of hundred-pound chunks of ice raining down around Armageddon sound more like a comet impact. A nuclear explosion could accomplish the earthquake and darkened blood-red skies as well. We saw something like that when a comet a few decades ago shattered going around the sun and then pummeled Jupiter with its line of broken chunks.
As for the celestial and geological events of the crucifixion, the time of Jesus’ death was stated in all the gospels as being Passover, which always happens at a full moon, and a solar eclipse always requires a new moon—the exact opposite phase, so it is impossible that the darkness on that day was due to a solar eclipse. Nothing fits, except the fact that it got dark, and even that doesn’t fit how long things get dark during an eclipse. The handy thing about interpreting these recorded biblical events and future prophecies as solar eclipses, though, is that solar eclipses happen often enough to line up with the timing you are hoping for, especially if you decide they don’t have to happen over or near Jerusalem where all these prophecies are said to take place. (They happen every 1-3 years, and the one on April 8th came nowhere near Israel.)
The ancients, not just Christians, also associated eclipses with the change of empires or the death of emperors. Some Jewish historians and secular historians noted there was a partial eclipse of the sun in AD 69 when Nero committed suicide and Vespasian became caesar. That was the year before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70 that Jesus predicted just before he was crucified, as though the temple’s destruction were tied with his death. He even tied the temple site with the time of his return. Still, is close good enough for a sign from God? Off by only a year and only a partial eclipse at that?
Of course some Christians also wrote with great concern about the total solar eclipse and four “blood moons” (lunar eclipses) in 2015 as a sign, due to many coincidences at the time, that Jesus was returning. Here we are nearly a decade later, and the Second Coming hasn’t happened yet. The Bible did actually say, we’d never actually know the day nor the hour, but we know when eclipses will occur to the day, hour, minute and second.
This week’s solar eclipse, however, was like none other, as some prophecy gurus of our day pointed out. It formed a cross over the United States with a previous eclipse (why America, rather than Israel, if it marks the end times of biblical prophecy, I suppose can be attributed to American egos thinking an eclipse over America is more important or just to thinking that somewhere in these events America must be destroyed as “Babylon the Great,” also mentioned in the Armageddon prophecy, because surely Amerika is the most evil of all nations on earth, including Iran and North Korea and Afghanistan and nations run by despots for decades. So the thinking goes that nothing could merit God’s wrath and destruction more than America (and I have to admit it has gone downhill a lot lately, but worse than N. Korea and China?).
The twin paths of the two eclipses didn't really form a cross over America, however, (at least not the crucifix style) but more of a broad cursive "X.” (Perhaps I’m being too particular.) It also wasn’t actually rare at all that the path of one total eclipse would cross over the path of the previous total eclipse because it turns out that something like eleven of the last fifteen solar eclipses crossed over the path of their predecessor. What was odd, though, was that the path of totality through the US passed over seven towns named “Salem,” which was the original name and is still the root of “Jerusalem.” Exactly seven, and seven is a very prominent number in The Revelation of Jesus Christ when describing the end of this age and beginning of the next. The last trumpet blast that brings the age to a close and Jesus to return is the seventh trumpet. So, Jerusalem was in there anyway, at least in name, if not in reality. It was writ large across the path, and I have to admit that is a somewhat spooky coincidence.
It got even more spooky when it was reported by some Christian prophecy folks that the eclipse also crossed over exactly seven towns name “Nineveh.” (Others say eleven, but why quibble?) Jesus referred to the sign of his coming as “the sign of Jonah,” and Jonah was the prophet who famously prophesied Nineveh’s destruction (Nineveh being the ancient capital of one of the major empires of that time — Assyria (roughly modern-day Syria in location). So seven “Salems” and seven “Ninevehs” all on the US path of this eclipse? More spooky.
Moreover, some prophecy preachers pointed out that there was an eclipse when Jonah prophesied Ninevah’s destruction. How they would know that, however, when no one even knows the year of Jonah’s sermon, I don’t know; but supposedly there was an eclipse that dropped the Ninevehans (Assyrians to be more accurate) to their knees … according to some who want there to have been one.
Only one problem: It turns out there are really only two Ninevah’s in the path of totality. The other five are nearby. Now, I have heard that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades and, as I said as a young man, in being with a woman. So, again, I have to ask is being close good enough for God and his prophecies, interesting as seven Ninevehs along with the seven Salems would be?
I’ve always held this standard in mind where I believe God’s prophets have to be right 100% of the time, or they are just their own prophets, speaking from their own imaginations, regardless of how graphic their imaginations might be … like these:
13 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! 3 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish[a] prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!… 6 Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the Lord has not sent them, they say, “The Lord declares,” and expect him to fulfill their words. 7 Have you not seen false visions and uttered lying divinations when you say, “The Lord declares,” though I have not spoken? (Ezekiel 13:1-3)
or these:
25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ 26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? 27 They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name through Baal worship. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. 29 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
Sometimes these false prophets among the people of God even get each other worked up in copycat prophecies:
30 “Therefore,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who steal from one another words supposedly from me. 31 Yes,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and yet declare, ‘The Lord declares.’32 Indeed, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,” declares the Lord. “They tell them and lead my people astray with their reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit these people in the least,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:25-32)
Bad things will happen to them, says The Word. And the Bible says don’t be easily persuaded by prophets because they very well may be false, no matter how convincing their narratives are.
Apparently, prophesying things from vivid imaginations has been a problem among God’s people for some time. Still, most of those who added up prophecies about the recent eclipse were not claiming to be prophesying for God but were just interpreting prophecies and events. Still, I’d be reluctant to make those claims.
My own eclipse experience
So, the present eclipse had some close coincidences, but maybe no cigar. Still it all had an eerie feel to it, especially when we heard all about Israel being isolated as I noted awhile back in my least popular article about a biblical prophecy that describes the Battle of Armageddon, and then we did end the weak with Iran directly and severely attacking Israel for the first time in my life. Certainly no small thing happening directly over Jerusalem. So, I won’t completely discount the oddities of those coinciding events.
Oddly and coincidentally speaking, I was at another town named Salem during the sister eclipse to the eclipse that happened this past week back on August 21, 2017. I watched that total solar eclipse from just outside Salem, Oregon, and it did blow me away as to how truly spectacular these things are. I had seen blood-red lunar eclipses, which were a little intriguing, and had been told how the sun would go black except for its corona in a solar eclipse so that the sky would darken, but the event was far beyond what I expected, and I could easily see from my experience why the ancients thought such events presaged the end of the world or, at least, end of an empire, or maybe even WERE the end of the world.
Here is what I experienced:
I travelled with my niece into the countryside just a few miles west of Salem to get out town. We picked a farm in open country with no people around—a wide open view beyond the barn, silos and farm house, of waving fields of summer-dry grass and bordering woodlands. As we got within about half an hour of totality, the scene began to slowly dim in a way that played with our eyes and made both of us feel slightly queasy. As we got to within about ten minutes of totality, everything took on the amber glow of evening, the evensong of the birds began as they got ready to bed down. As it turned into twilight about five minutes before totality, the birds quieted down, and the crickets and frogs began to chirp.
The sun was still far too intense to look at directly, so we periodically donned our anti-radar, UV resistant, welding-approved cardboard-framed solar-eclipse glasses, looking like we were in a 3D movie theater as we stared into the sky to await the coming of something. We watched until that last little jewel of light like a diamond on a ring disappeared, the sun went black and only its corona showed around the edges of the occulting moon. And then we took off our glasses.
Both of us were absolutely stunned by what we saw. We had imagined the sun would look like it did in highly filtered photos of the solar eclipse, but those filters also cut out most of the light of the corona. What we saw was spectacularly different. Long rays of the corona spiked in all directions, filling, at least, a quarter of the sky. The center of the corona looked like an absolutely pitch-black hole ripped through the sky, but around that hole between the streaks of corona fire, the sky was midnight blue, and bright stars were shining through this larger deep blue hole in the sky, fading into a lighter sky as one looked toward the horizon. It was like the heavens were rolled back to see the night in that location of the sky.
The horizon, itself, was different than I had ever seen. Instead of sunlight in the west from the setting sun, the greatest light over the twilight land came from the blazing corona and from sun hitting the atmosphere beyond our patch of totality; however, all around the horizon, 360 degrees, the earth was brighter than where we stood. The distant mountain ranges glowed amber like it was evening in all directions because they were outside the band of totality, which had about a fifty miles radius from where we stood.
While I would have thought it would be only brighter toward the north and sound edges of the totality pathway. It was brighter everywhere on the horizon around us. That is because the path of totality is a band, but at any given moment, the moon’s shadow of total eclipse is a circle—a circle that swings along an arched path over the earth creating a path of totality that plays out on a constantly changing time gradient. So, you see an illuminated horizon about fifty miles off in every direction under a midnight-blue sky in the center that gets lighter toward the edges with the blackest hole I’ve ever seen right where the sun had been a short time before.
And then the jewel of light peaked out from behind the moon after about two minutes, and the sun became immediately too bright to look at; the stars rapidly disappeared, the land started growing brighter like a dawn closing in from all directions; the crickets and frogs stopped chirping, and the birds suddenly began their morning song to greet the new day. A wild and weird day!
I will note nothing unusual or in anyway spectacular happened in the world in my life that year after the eclipse. I’m still here. So, is the world, and Jesus didn’t return, though Trump had already risen to power earlier that year as president of the United States, and some modern self-anointed prophets seem to think he is orange Jesus or, at least, has a special anointing to save America before the second coming. I’m not sure, though, how saving America fits with the destruction of Amerika as Babylon the Great, but then I am not an apostle of the “last Trump,” coincidentally a term also often used in identifying that final trumpet call of Revelation that does herald the return of Jesus, Messiah (“Christ” in Greek for “anointed.”)
So, of odd coincidences, it seems there are many.
In conclusion about ultimate conclusions
The urge to equate each big solar eclipse that comes along with the end of the age, end of the world, or return of Jesus comes in part from the following prophecy by Jesus, given just before his crucifixion:
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
I still see those words as describing something much bigger for the end of history as we have known it than a solar eclipse, such as a comet or falling star (asteroid) impact, like the one that brought the end of previous ages, such as the Jurassic Period. It has been said by many scientists that an asteroid hitting in the Gulf of Mexico, not far off the Yucatan Peninsula, created such a huge steam and debris cloud that spread through the upper atmosphere that it blocked out the light of the sun, the moon and the stars for a period that may have lasted longer than a year, killing off the dinosaurs and ancient vegetation, probably leaving some areas where enough light fell to maintain some blood-red light and some small life, but enough darkness to bring the end of a very long and very successful age of life on this planet.
So, such events as “falling stars” (even we call them that, knowing better) do happen as the end of epochs in earth’s history, and it amazes me that the ancients foresaw human civilization as we have known it ending that same way scientists now say past ages ended. That speaks of divine inspiration to me since they had never seen such a thing or they wouldn’t be here to write about it anymore than the dinosaurs.
However, if you are someone who is hoping the end will come soon, then you might reach to a solar eclipse as being good enough to fulfill those words, and they are certainly ominous looking and spectacular events with a long history of being seen as omens. So, maybe those who see them that way know more than I. I will certainly admit they are spectacular and almost life-changing to watch. I consider it one of the two most extraordinary experiences in my life. (The other was standing in the eye of a hurricane.)
At any rate, here we are, right after the second of the two “Salem” eclipses that crossed the US skies, and the world did seem to fall apart this week all around Israel in a war that will, at least, be led from Jerusalem and part of which occurred over Jerusalem as shown in the video above, even over the Temple Mount site that Jesus described. There is no question that Israel will retaliate on Iranian soil because Netanyahu and his cabinet have all said already that it will, and the US and UK already said they’ll back Israel on that in terms of its defense but not its offense. However, that backing on defense inevitably frees up more planes for Israel to focus on Iran offensively, which they have said will likely happen tonight (their time).
At the start of the week, on the day of the eclipse, there was an extraordinary amount of news about how Israel was losing all of its friends all over the world. At the end of the week there was an even more extraordinary amount of news about how the nearest nation to a nuclear power in the Middle East, outside of Israel, has started a full-on, fully hot war inside the land of Israel, the only known nuclear power in the Middle East (or, at least, believed by all to have nuclear weapons). And there was a lot of news about Israel’s friends standing by it. So, is the world about to end? Well, it was an odd week to say the last. So, dubious as I am about solar eclipses as being signs of the end, the past week was a doozy in the end that certainly is marked with possibilities of being the end.
With that, here are the headlines that cover today’s substitute for the Deeper Dive, available to all this time, due to this week’s series of extraordinary and misfortunate events followed by a short-and easy survey about this kind of article:
Wars & Rumors of War, Revolts, Hacks & Cyberattacks (+ AI threats)
Iran fires some 300 drones, missiles at Israel in first-ever direct attack; 99% downed
No drones, cruise missiles breached Israeli airspace
Jordan air force defends Israel
Netanyahu says Israel ready to respond in kind to Iran’s attack
Israel war cabinet approves 'powerful response' on Iranian soil coming tonight
The world stands on the brink of all-out war
GOP Lawmakers Demand US Retaliate Against Iran: ‘Long Past Time For Iran To Pay’
The West must remember how to fight. It may already be too late
Israel shut down by Iranian cyber attack telling residents to prepare for war
West Bank sees biggest settler rampage since war in Gaza began as Israeli teen’s body is found
Reader Survey
Please feel free to add your comments below, too, if you wish. I rarely write on such things; however, sometimes they do relate strongly to economics and sometimes seem quite fascinating (to me, anyway, but I don’t know about to others). I don’t plan on writing much on them in the future unless I find there is considerable interest.
Likely the most measured and biblically referenced analysis that has been written. Plus it’s a good thing to get out of the economic window on a regular basis to remind ourselves that while things economic do tend to (sadly) rule our lives to a great extent, they should not be our sole area of focus.
All these things are merely the beginnings of birth pangs. Maybe I’m wrong but it sure seems that way.