John Bradshaw - Countdown to Cataclysm
There's a total solar eclipse going to take place on April the 8th. It's a big deal. I'll tell you why. It ties directly to an important, to a vital prophecy found in the heart of the book of Revelation. You need to know about this, don't go away. Big news, historic news, there's a total solar eclipse about to occur in the United States. And some people are saying this has something to do with the judgment of God. Together we are going to look at that. The eclipse that will occur on Monday, April the 8th and God's judgment. So, is judgment associated with this upcoming eclipse? We're going to be biblical about this. You know that people are thinking about it, they really are.
One man messaged me and he said this, he said, "I'm worried about the eclipse. I've heard Nashville is going to be destroyed. I'm scared and I'm not sure what to think". So what I'm going to do is give you the same answer that I gave him. Now first, what is an eclipse? An eclipse is what happens when the moon passes between the earth and the sun and it temporarily blocks out the light of the sun. It doesn't get really dark outside, it's not pitch black, but it's definitely darker. Now the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it's also 400 times further away from us than the moon. And so the moon and the sun appear to us to be about the same size in the sky. When the moon gets in the right position, the sun gets in the right position, the moon blocks out the light coming from the sun and we see a total solar eclipse. It isn't going to be visible everywhere.
When it happens, I'm going to be in Anchorage, Alaska, so I won't see any of it. But from anywhere underneath the root of the eclipse, it's going to be pretty special and it's going to be pretty spectacular for somewhere between one minute and five minutes. Now there's historical significance when we look at eclipses. An eclipse once saved a lot of lives. It's said that the Greek philosopher and mathematician, Thales of Miletus, predicted a solar eclipse that occurred in May of 585 BC. What's really interesting is that his prediction may have ended a long-standing war between the Medes and the Lydians. They'd been at war for five years or so, but during a battle, day suddenly turned into something approximating night as the eclipse occurred. Both armies were so alarmed and disoriented that they stopped fighting immediately. They thought this sign meant the gods were unhappy with their fighting, so they negotiated a peace deal.
Many lives were saved that would have been lost if they hadn't stopped fighting. But here we are today, more than two and a half thousand years later, an eclipse is going to happen on April the 8th. It's getting people excited. There isn't going to be another one seen for 20 years, so they're not super common. What's happening is people are going to be traveling to places in the path of the eclipse just to get a glimpse of this thing happening. If you're a real, what would you call it, stargazer of some kind, this is super exciting, and you'd be motivated to see it. The eclipse is going to be seen along a certain pathway beginning down in Mexico and then coming up into Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine before heading off out over the maritime provinces of Canada. It'll go through Dallas and Indianapolis and Cleveland and Buffalo and, of course, a whole lot of smaller towns.
In Evansville, Indiana, one hotel is charging $1,000 for a room that would normally cost $100 or less. Of course, as awful as that is, it happens. Hotel rooms in Paris during the Olympics later this year are way up, but that's egregious. We're talking 10x. Many hotels are up 200% just for the eclipse. If you really want to see it, I guess you're going to pay what you need to pay. Weeks ago, it was reported that in Texas, one hotel was charging $809 for a room that you could get one week later for $103. So this is a big deal if you're interested in the stars and the planets and the heavens. It's big, but what about from a prophetic point of view? Here's what we'll do. We'll carefully examine what is exciting people right now. We should look at this.
If there's a reason to be afraid, we ought to be afraid. If there's no reason to be afraid, then we shouldn't be afraid. If judgment is coming, then we ought to go to the Bible and, in faith, prepare for this coming judgment. If judgment isn't coming anytime soon, well, we should be prepared anyway. So let's ask ourselves some of the following questions. Will there be a huge earthquake? Will there be places that have to deal with food and water shortages? Will Nashville be destroyed? Was there a solar eclipse at the time of Jesus' death? And so on. So let's try to be reasonable and biblical as we look at these things together. Some of what you hear sounds impressive. Some of what you hear sounds like, wow, that has to be significant. But the question is, does it have to be significant? Other people say that the eclipse is going to pass over the seven cities named Nineveh in the United States.
Well, how could that be significant? First, let's understand that there are not seven cities named Nineveh in the United States, but there are eight. And let's understand that the eclipse is only going to pass over two of them, Nineveh, Indiana and Nineveh, Ohio. So what's going on here? Well, what we need to understand is that is no way to interpret the Bible. Because there's an eclipse and because Jonah was a prophet who went to Nineveh to call the Assyrians to repentance, and because the eclipse will pass over two towns called Nineveh. Think about this. If that really had any significance, if it had any significance at all, we would be celebrating if this was a call to repentance, because back then the Assyrians repented. And we might then conclude that the people of the United States are going to repent based on the biblical historical example that we have.
When I say this, friend, we've got to do better than that. For one, this is speculation. It's kind of out there speculation, and it doesn't help anyone, and it makes all Christians everywhere look bad. Would it matter if the eclipse was, the path of the eclipse covered over a hundred towns named Nineveh? Even if there was a Jerusalem in there somewhere that the eclipse passed over, what would we make of that? Now, I read a watch where someone breathlessly said that the eclipse is going to pass over the town of Rapture, Indiana. And that's getting people excited too. Is this what we're doing now? Is this what we do as Bible students now? Is this what followers of Jesus do? Is this what Christians do? Interpret the Bible based on the names of towns? Do you know how significant it is, Rapture, Indiana?
In 2011, only one person lived in Rapture. Rapture used to be known as Bug Town, and it's thought that they changed the name to Rapture and named the town after a horse, a horse. In fact, it's not even a town. It's barely a wide place in the road, an area named Rapture. So we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is reassess the way we confront and approach the Bible. We're going to reassess the way we look at Scripture and interpret Scripture. Not there's something happening in the sky. This has to speak of the judgment of God because it's crossing over some Ninevehs. It has to do with the sign of Jonah. No. Another one. If you look at where the path of this eclipse and the path of the last solar eclipse intersect. There was a solar eclipse, a total solar eclipse in 2017. There's a road named, I hate to do this to you. There's a road named Salem Road. Salem Road.
You know, Salem means peace. And somehow the Salem Road being in the intersection of the two eclipses means something. Salem Road is a dead end road of another dead end road cut into the woods near Maconda, Illinois. The metropolis of Maconda, Illinois, south of Carbondale, 500 residents. Now, if you really want to start something, let's look into why Maconda used to be known as the star of Egypt. Oh, no, please don't. I made that suggestion in jest. It means nothing. Maybe what we should do is point out that just down the road from Salem Road is Shady Acres Road, right there where the intersection happens. Maybe the sign really is that we should be aware of people who make shady claims about the Bible.
Now stay with me. We're going to look at some of the big issues here. Stay with me. First, let me address a few more of the things that are being said. That this has something to do with Israel, because if you draw the path of the eclipses in recent years, they make a certain shape referencing the Hebrew alphabet, which therefore means something. Well, the answer to that is no. The shape made by tracing the path of eclipses, that's creative thinking, but it isn't biblical thinking. May I share a principle with you from the Bible? Isaiah chapter 28 says that we study the Bible line upon line, precept upon precept, not line upon constellation and precept upon galaxy.
1 Timothy 2:15 talks about rightly dividing the word of truth. We are told that all scripture is given by inspiration of God in the same book, but this kind of interpreting isn't inspired in any way. At least, it's not inspired by God. One commentator, whose name I would not mention, said that this is somehow going to be used by the Department of Homeland Security. No. Someone else has warned that because of the crowds in certain places, with thousands of people flocking to little burgs here and there, that we're going to run into fuel shortages and there won't be any water and there'll be extended wait times in emergency rooms and there'll be increased traffic. You know, if you make a video and you go, "The eclipse is going to cause chaos," then someone's going to say, "Oh, I have to find out about that".
But if you're telling me that Piggly Wiggly is going to run out of bottled water because hordes are going to descend on little towns, ShopRite is going to run out of bread because all these tourists, eclipse tourists, got to make sandwiches, I think what you're forgetting is that the last eclipse, total solar eclipse, occurred in 2017. Now that's recent enough for us to remember. It was seen right about here in eastern Tennessee, where I'm right now. We sent a team to catch it on video. Oh, a gaggle of people were up on top of a mountain, a generous term, a knoll, a hill, looking upwards. People had telescopes and cameras and eclipse glasses. You really got to be careful if you look at this eclipse. Don't do so with the naked eye. You could burn out your retinas.
But no, there were no crowds thronging the little towns around here, no tourists stripping our supermarkets of bread and water and batteries and essential supplies. There were no communities in disarray. What sounds good on a video headline frequently doesn't read well when you compare it to the Bible. Now, is this significant because there was a solar eclipse when Jesus died on the cross? Nope. Why not? Because there was no solar eclipse when Jesus died on the cross. That was supernatural. That was God recognizing what Jesus was going through as He hung there naked on a cross, bringing some semblance of respectability to the situation, if I could put it that way, and also demonstrating that Heaven was acknowledging what was happening at Calvary. This wasn't just another crucifixion. This was the divine Son of God. And God leaned into that moment and blotted out the light shining from the sun.
Now, will there be a huge earthquake when this eclipse occurs? No, there won't. How can I be so sure? Well, wait just a few days and you'll know. There is no scientific reason for it and no biblical reason for it. And by the way, if there is an earthquake somewhere on the Pacific Ring of Fire where earthquakes happen just about every day, you shouldn't go running to that and saying, "See? There was a connection". There won't be. Yes, God uses signs in the heavens. He has before and He likely will again. I'll give you one. A rainbow.
Now, is that in the heavens? Yes. The Bible refers to three different heavens. One where the birds fly calls it the heavens. Another where the stars are, that's the heavens. And another where God lives. Heaven, the heaven of heavens, if you like. God after Noah's flood or the flood of Noah's day said that He would put His rainbow in the sky. It would be a sign of the covenant between Him, God, and the earth. Every time you see a rainbow now, you are to be reminded God will never again deluge the earth so extremely that the whole place will be flooded. And that rainbow you see is a sign of God's covenant, the covenant between Him and you. Another sign in the heavens, the sun went backwards in Isaiah 38, 10 degrees, a phenomenal thing. This was God intervening for His people and making Himself known in the earth.
Will God cause signs to be seen in the heavens? Yes, He will. Do they happen frequently? No, they don't. Why does God do so? To draw attention to a special situation. By the way, what would the situation be on the earth that God is drawing our attention to? Oh, you might be able to think of some good answers. Hang in there with me. We'll come back to that in a moment. Yes, the earth became dark when Jesus hung on the cross. I mentioned that. That was a sign in the heavens. The wise men followed a star to Bethlehem. Ah, yes, these things happened. They do. Or they did. And they might yet. And they are signs. All right. Signs of what? Will the eclipse on April 8 be a sign of something? Yes, it will.
May I tell you what? If you open the Bible, you read that it says the opening salvo in the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God is saying, "They're mine. I made them". You ought to think that when you see a sunrise, or a shooting star, or a sunset, or a constellation, or a full moon, or a crescent moon. God is the Creator, and He made the things that we see in the heavens. What we see every day are signs that there is a God in the heavens, or in heaven. Hebrews 1 and verse 3 says that God "upholds all things by the word of His power". Let me ask you how the galaxies got there. Was there a big bang in the beginning? Oh, yes, there was. God spoke, and bang, things came into existence. He created what we see out of the things that we don't see.
Oh, I'm not talking about the big bang that you hear spoken of. Can you imagine that somebody is going to look up into the sky with the naked eye? Or someone would take out a telescope and see Betelgeuse, which is huge. Someone will see the sun out there. Someone will see the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the Nullarbor Plain of Australia. Somebody will see the mountains of Papua New Guinea. Somebody will see the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska, and the Pyrenees, and South America, and say it all came from nothing. Can you believe that? You got to have some faith to believe that. Instead, I go to the Bible and I read that Jesus is the Creator. And in the beginning He spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast.
What we see, whether it's the sun, the moon, or the sun, and then no sun because an eclipse is taking place, is evidence that we serve a great Creator. We are not here by accident. And every so often God causes the attention of the world to be drawn upwards. And it might be for a sunset or a sunrise. It might be for, I don't know, Jupiter can be seen. It might be for an eclipse. And this is God saying to the men and women and the boys and girls of the earth, how do you think this got here? It didn't get here on its own. It got here because I, the Creator God, have put it there. By the way, there is a clarion call that I'm going to tell you about in just a second that this eclipse points to.
Here's what the eclipse, in a moment, what the eclipse points to. You know that there have been signs in the heavens before and in the earth. 1755, a colossal earthquake, the Lisbon earthquake, Lisbon, Portugal was destroyed and it was felt halfway around the world. What was God saying? God was saying judgment is coming. God was saying Jesus is returning, as that was about the time men and women began to read the Bible. In the United States, in the New England states, the dark day of 1780, the BBC has written about this. And people can't explain the dark day of 1780. I can, sure I can. God caused the earth to get dark, middle of the day. Cattle started wandering back to their barns. Roosters started crowing. Chickens began flying to their roosts.
What was going on? God was saying to a people in this new land, a people largely who came here for religious freedom, it's time to get into your Bible. It's time to read because Jesus is coming back. And why would that be significant in 1780, given He hasn't come back yet? Because for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, men and women were ignoring the second coming of Jesus. And from that time to this, there's been a groundswell, a great increase in discussion and study about the return of Jesus. That was 1780. What about 1833? There was a meteor shower again in the Northeast. Well why there? Because that's where the population was. And the meteor shower, it was, it was, it was supernatural. Nobody could explain it. It was like something that had never been seen before.
And this was pointing people to the God of creation, letting people know that something great is going to happen, all right? Yes, Jesus is coming back soon. If you are tempted to think that the eclipse that's taking place on April the 8th has something to do with judgment, I have no problem with that. No, no, no. Judgment isn't going to come, boom, all of a sudden here on planet Earth. No, that's not what's going to happen. But judgment will take place and is taking place. And if your mind is drawn to the heavens and you stop to say or think there is a God in heaven, I need to be right with this God. I need to have my heart right with them. The Bible says it's appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment. Well, if we're going to be judged, we ought to take it seriously.
You know, the book of Ecclesiastes, fascinating book. At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, the writer Solomon sums it up. There are not too many books that are summed up. He said, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. He said, God will bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. So friend of God, sure, there'll be judgment and we'll come into judgment and we ought to take that seriously. So was there an eclipse at the time of Jonah? Oh, somebody has said there was an eclipse at the time of Jonah, so that's very, very significant. At the time of Jesus' death, nope, wasn't an eclipse. There was supernatural darkness that lasted for a long time. Was Halley's Comet appearing sometime in biblical history? If it did, doesn't matter a bit.
Now is it harmful, is it harmful that people are making inaccurate claims regarding the eclipse? Well, error is never harmless, and that's true, but I would urge you to stay away from false predictions. That's what I would urge. They might be exciting or titillating, but they're not helpful. What we know is that Jesus is going to come back to this earth. There's nothing surer. But nobody knows the day or the hour. We certainly don't know the year. And people have made mistakes with this before. In the mid-1800s, a fine Baptist man named William Miller believed that Jesus was going to return. His mistake was misunderstanding a prophecy in Daniel. This good Baptist preacher wanted to tell others he had the opportunity to do so. He did. Then others started adding a definite date. They said 1843, then 1844. Jesus didn't come back.
I can trust you, Christians didn't look good as a result of that. Pat Robertson, the televangelist, once said, "I guarantee you that by the fall of 1982, there's going to be a judgment on the world". That's four decades plus, and it didn't happen. I'm not going to mention the man's name. I could. But one man who became quite well-known said that in the mid-90s, God would destroy the homosexual community of America. Now, probably the worst thing about that is that when he said that, the congregation actually clapped. "Have mercy, brethren and sisters. If that was true, you would weep, wouldn't you"? But of course, it wasn't true. It was not a divinely inspired prediction. It was a humanly inspired prediction. We had the Heaven's Gate Cult. We had concern about Y2K.
There was a California radio preacher who predicted the end of the world more than once. What ended was him. The world has so far not ended. We had that nonsense about the Mayan calendar, leading some to think that the end was going to come in 2012. And it didn't. And here's what we're going to do. You know what we're going to do? Number one, we're going to enjoy the eclipse. Thank the Lord for a cool thing like an eclipse. When the last one happened in 2017 on my back doorstep here in eastern Tennessee, I was out of town. I watched the footage that I guys caught after the fact. It was pretty special, pretty significant, but I didn't see it. I'd like to see this one, but I'm going to be out of the path, and so I won't see it. What I'll do is I'll look at pictures and ask people what they saw.
What's the meaning of the eclipse? Is there some great prophetic meaning? No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. What I mean is this. There's nothing in the Bible that says that this particular eclipse has any immediate significance. The Nineveh's, you can forget all about them. Salem Road, please be smarter than that when you interpret the Bible. We don't want wild-eyed predictions and stuff. That just means nothing. I don't know how people are going to explain what they've seen after April 8th, but my guess is somehow they will. Instead, let's think about this. Who made the sun? God did. Who made the moon? God did. And what's the other sphere that's involved in this eclipse? The earth. And who made that? God made the earth. He made the heavens and the earth. When you look up every day, every night, you ought to say, "There's evidence that there is a God".
That stuff didn't get there on its own. God spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. He is the God of creation, which tells me that God created you intentionally. No matter the circumstances of your arrival on this planet, you are here intentionally made by God for the purpose of knowing Him and knowing redemption through Jesus so that by faith you can live in the sin-darkened world knowing that you're going to get out of here one day soon and you will enjoy the world to come. Is that all? Is that all the eclipse does? No, no. It does a little bit more. I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven. I'm reading Revelation 14, 6, and I'll read verse 7. Having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell in the earth. By the way, take a little time out here. You want to see a sign in the heavens? This is it. Angels flying in the midst of heaven.
Now, this is symbolic. It represents messengers with a message that will go to the world. In the end of time, a message to go to the world depicted as being so important that it's proclaimed in the midst of heaven. The messenger is proclaimed with a loud voice. In the Greek, those words are megaphone. So it's as though the angel has a megaphone. You've got to hear this. This is a message depicted as coming from the heavens. It certainly comes from God in heaven. I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven. Having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people, the world is going to hear this. The whole world, if you are being alerted to what's written in Revelation 14 for the first time, then thank God because you're going to hear it sooner or later. The angel says with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come".
I'd like to point you to It Is Written TV. You go over to Hope Awakens or Revelation Today. We go in depth into the hour of His judgment. It's significant. It's not nothing. These aren't just words. God is pointing out something significant. The hour of His judgment has come and now the angel says, "The messenger with the message to go to the world says, 'And worship Him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters.'" Then there's a second angel's message about Babylon, third angel's message about the mark of the beast. You can find out about that at ItIsWritten.tv as well. But look at this. In earth's last days, there's a call to worship the Creator. What is the eclipse? That also is a call to worship the Creator. What a special time. What a cool time.
There'll be little kids and great grandmas looking towards the heavens saying, "Look at that. The moon is passing between the earth and the sun, preventing the light to shine down here". And hopefully someone's going to say, "Grandma, mom, dad, big sister, how'd the sun get there? How'd the earth get here? How did we get here"? And someone's going to say, "Let me tell you, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Little Johnny, little Susie, little Enrique, God made you. Why did He make me? Dad, He made you because He loves you. He made you to inhabit eternity. He made you because He wanted to lavish His love upon you and give you the very best existence you could imagine. April 8th, if you get a chance to see the eclipse take place, thank God for it. And thank the God of the eclipse. The eclipse is a wonder of creation, and I hope you are blessed by it. Hey, thanks for joining me. God bless you.