Can’t a solar eclipse just be a solar eclipse?

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 27, 2024.

With echoes of “You’re so vain; you probably think the Bible’s about you,” today’s conservative American conspiracy theorists are raising money for Christian broadcasters by claiming the upcoming solar eclipse is a prophetic word from God revealed in the stars and in the Scriptures about the return of Jesus and the Confederacy.

The Great North American Eclipse will darken the skies from Sinaloa, Mexico, to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, April 8.

Unidentified expert on InfoWars video

“The biblical implications are massive,” claims an InfoWars video posted last week by Alex Jones, the alt-right conspiracy theorist who was ordered to pay $1.487 billion in damages in a defamation lawsuit over spreading conspiracies related to the Sandy Hook school shooting.

The InfoWars video points to Genesis 1:14 and claims: “God declared the sun and the moon were for signs. The only signs they can give is eclipses. And the nice thing about eclipses, no false prophet can manipulate it.”

Some of the conspiracies about April 8 are being spread by the science deniers of the flat earth movement. According to Jeffery Blevins at the University of Cincinnati: “They’re not just primed to believe the earth is flat, they’re primed to believe you can’t trust science, academics, the media or government. And it might also lead you to see other extremist views as plausible.”

Even though many conservatives reject the idea of a flat earth, they share a lack of trust in science, academics, the media and government. And as we saw during the January 6 insurrection attempt and in recent calls for violent retribution, the extremist views of authoritarian Christians are becoming more concerning for many Americans.

So imagine what might happen if these extremists who are obsessed with spiritual warfare apocalypticism began interpreting a solar eclipse as a sign in the heavens to sacralize their demonization of immigrants in a promotion of Civil War.

Troy Brewer in the video promoted by Lance Wallnau

Signs in the stars

Lance Wallnau, one of the New Apostolic Reformation preachers who helped fuel the January 6 insurrection, shared a video last week from Texas pastor Troy Brewer.

Brewer says the constellations Scorpio, Orion and Cassiopeia point to Jesus by being pictures of death, light and being turned upright. “The reason why the same stories are in the Bible that are also in the heavens is because the author is the same,” he explains. “Jesus Christ is the author of the heavens the same as he is the author of the word of God.”

In what Brewer assumes to be an airtight case, he concludes, “So he put up all these prophetic signs in the heavens to actually be the voice of God.”

Eclipses as signs during times of war

Unlike the science deniers of the flat earth movement, Jones and Brewer appear to accept how scientists say eclipses work. “The sun is 400 times further from the earth than the moon. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon,” the InfoWars video explains.

But then they sensationalize the science. “And because of that, we can have an eclipse that God created as signs, which is why we come to the (Hebrew) letter ‘tav,’ which means a sign or a mark. And its numerical value is 400.”

“As one would expect from Christian nationalists, they center the cosmic story on the United States.”

And as one would expect from Christian nationalists, they center the cosmic story on the United States.

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