This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A total solar eclipse will darken skies across many points in America on Monday, and while clouds are predicted to be present over shadowed portions of southern and central United States, other points are forecast to have a clearer view of the darkness.
The eclipse will be visible across parts of Mexico, Canada and in the U.S. on a path from Texas moving to the northeast through Maine.
The moon will pass between the sun and the earth, completely blocking the sun for several minutes, and it will be the last time such an event happens over the U.S. until 2044.
The path will cover Eagle Pass and Dallas, Texas, Little Rock, Arkansas, Carbondale, Illinois, Indianapolis, Buffalo, New York and Burlington, Vermont, and points in between.
Such events, in history, have been viewed as signs of events that are happening, or will happen, and while the scientific explanations of such events are not complicated, the impact on society may be more.
WND has reported Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries, an expert on those historical perceptions, noted in the Bible, solar events are recorded as having a remarkable and sometimes supernatural significance.
He explained control over the sun was demonstrated by God in the three-day Plague of Darkness, and is prophesied to be an essential part of the End Times. The Prophet Joel (2:31) predicted, "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." The Prophet Amos makes a similar prediction: "And in that day – declares my God – I will make the sun set at noon, I will darken the earth on a sunny day."
The report noted, "In giving rebuke to Hezekiah to inform him that he would die from his illness, the prophet Isaiah (13:9) wrote, 'The stars and constellations of heaven shall not give off their light; The sun shall be dark when it rises, And the moon shall diffuse no glow.' As Isaiah predicted – and as much later calculated by NASA – on March 5 in 702 BC, the 16th year before Hezekiah’s death, a prominent solar eclipse appeared over the Middle East. Its path crossed the Arabian Peninsula and the obscuration of the sun over Israel was more than 60 percent."
The report noted a similar darkness is described in the New Testament after Jesus’ crucifixion (Mark 15: 32-33) and again in Revelation 6:12 as a sign of the End Times.
Biltz, who authored "Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs," is an expert in both Christian and Jewish sources, and correlates solar and lunar eclipses with biblical prophecy. He went to great lengths to explain the prophetic implications of the 2017 solar eclipse, though at the time, skeptics scoffed at his explanations.
But the world in current times has been left unsettled, in fact, in chaos in many places, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a war triggered by Hamas terrorists in the Middle East, and the war Russia brought to Ukrainian lands.
"From a biblical point of view, a solar eclipse is meant to be a sign from God," said Biltz, citing Genesis 1:14. "It is a sign that is beyond man’s control, something he cannot manipulate."
Biltz revealed his research has brought out the timing of eclipses, and the events around them. "A solar eclipse took place in 1948, the year Israel declared itself a nation, and again in 1967, when Israel emerged victorious from the Six-Day War and unified Jerusalem," the report said.
Another was in 1492, the year the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal. Remarkably, a partial solar eclipse appeared above both Rome and Jerusalem in 67 A.D. One year later, Nero committed suicide and in the year 70, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.
He then looked at the appearance of four blood moons in 2014-2015, and noticed a link to the seven-year Shemitah (sabbatical) cycle.
"This is not a random seven-year cycle,” Biltz emphasized. “Rosh Hashanah in 2014 marked the beginning of the Hebrew year 5775. The Shemittah years all go back to Creation. If you divide 5775 by 7, it is precisely 825. September 2014, or, more accurately, the first of Tishrei 5775, was the 825th Shemitah cycle since God created the world.”
He noted, "The Yom Kippur War in 1973 was followed by four blood moons in 1968 and happened on the very day of the beginning of the 50-year Jubilee cycle. In 2014, we had four blood moons which preceded the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, exactly one Shemitah cycle later. It fell on the holy day of Shemini Atzeret and on the last day of the High Holidays. Hamas attacked Israel and started the Iron Swords War. That was the last day of that 50-year Jubilee cycle that began in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War."
The coming eclipse, he said, will happen on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the new moon marking the beginning of the month which is referred to in the Bible as “the first month."
There was a total solar eclipse whose shadow path crossed the continental U.S. in August 2017, just before the "most devastating hurricane season in U.S. history. Four days after the eclipse, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Texas, the first major hurricane to do so in over a decade," the report said.
Watch Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz's interview with Pastor Mark Biltz on the upcoming total solar eclipse and its prophetic meaning for the U.S.
