Eclipse Fever
by Loren Seibold | 5 April 2024 |
A reader recently sent Adventist Today a note reminding us that next week, April 8, a solar eclipse will be visible in a path across the United States. Their concern wasn’t astronomical, however: they wanted us to know that this eclipse was a sign that God was about to do something sensational.
I followed the included links down the rabbit hole, and indeed, it takes one to a wonderland where loosely connected ideas lead to highly improbable conclusions.
The 2024 eclipse fever didn’t originate with Adventists. But Adventist preachers love catchy headlines. Even John Bradshaw of It is Written started a recent presentation with,
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.
John ends on a more positive note than he began—a case of clickbait and switch—yet he shows that sensational headlines are de rigueur for the successful Adventist evangelist.
Nineveh
Don Frost and MacKenzie Drebit of Amazing Discoveries have a three-part series that floats the claim that there are eight towns named Nineveh in the path of the eclipse. This is significant, they say, because Nineveh was threatened with destruction by God. Plus, someone has “proven” that at the very time that Jonah was preaching to Nineveh, there was a total eclipse of the sun!
I have questions.
First, most of the Ninevehs, except for Indiana and Ohio, don’t appear to be in the path of the total eclipse—and those two Ninevehs are unincorporated communities with just a few houses. (Though filled with, we probably should assume, extremely wicked families.) If you include towns with partial eclipses, well, that’s the whole United States, so there’s nothing special about Nineveh, Virginia, or Nineveh, Missouri, both of which are far outside the total eclipse zone.
Second, even if you can calculate when there was an eclipse in ancient Nineveh, can you prove Jonah was there at that moment? To my knowledge, Jonah is notably lacking any information for dating his ministry.
Third—and this is important—Nineveh wasn’t destroyed! The story says the whole city repented because someone preached to them! (Though if so, why don’t we know it from history as a Jewish city? I’ve always wondered.)
So what’s the strategy here for the two Ninevehs in the path of the eclipse? Don? MacKenzie? Anyone? There are probably no more than 20 houses, maybe 100 people max between them. Someone should at least leave The Great Controversy at their doors.
The Nashville fireball
A few years ago another aspiring evangelist, Jeff Pippenger, predicted the fulfillment of several Ellen White prophecies concerning Nashville. Here’s what Ellen wrote:
When I was at Nashville, I had been speaking to the people, and in the night season, there was an immense ball of fire that came right from heaven and settled in Nashville. There were flames going out like arrows from that ball; houses were being consumed; houses were tottering and falling (Ms 188, 1905).
Pippenger predicted (and golly, Jeff had actual numbers and formulas, which were far too complicated for me—and I suspect, anyone—to follow) the fireball was about to strike Nashville. It became an embarrassing incident in 2020 when Pippenger purchased a full-page ad in The Tennessean newspaper claiming that Muslims would destroy Nashville with a nuclear weapon. Even the North American Division had to make an apology for that!
Then—to Jeff’s disappointment—no fireball!
It turns out that the upcoming eclipse has put the Nashville fireball back on the agenda with the Amazing Discoveries team. Here’s the passage from the Nashville vision that convinced Don and MacKenzie:
I looked out of the window, and there was an immense ball of fire that had come from heaven, and it fell where they were casting buildings with pillars, especially the pillars were presented to me. And it seemed as if the ball came right to the building and crushed it (Ms 152, 1904).
Why Nashville, rather than New York or Los Angeles? Don and MacKenzie showed videos of people from Nashville drinking and dancing—evil, I suppose, but not uniquely evil. They finally lit upon a better reason: back in the 1890s, Nashville, building on its nickname “the Athens of the South,” built a replica of the Parthenon with pillars “cast” (note that word) from a mold of the original Parthenon. And in that replica Parthenon they placed a replica statue of the goddess Athena—just like the original!
But why is God more disturbed by Nashville’s replica Greek temple and statue than by all the original such antiquities in Greece, Italy, the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum, and indeed museums all over the world? The Nashville Parthenon has been there for over 100 years, and the original in Athens for millennia.
None of this should surprise the veteran Adventist watcher. However, after the Pippenger fracas, I was sorry to see that Don and MacKenzie also revived the notion that Muslims could be responsible for the attack on Nashville. It’s not a good look for us to denounce another religion.
(Though that never stopped us with regard to Roman Catholics, so I’m not sure why we wouldn’t do it to Islam, too.)
Don said that whenever he told strangers, like the man who rented him a car in Nashville, that he was exploring the city’s possible destruction by a fireball, repeatedly people said, “I had a dream about that!” and staggered backwards! He cites another line from Ellen White’s prophecies:
Some of our people were standing there. “It is just as we expected,” they said, “We expected this” (Ms 188, 1905).
Why didn’t Nashville get destroyed already? Perhaps, Don hints, it had to do with evangelistic meetings held in Nashville back when the fireball message was preached a few years ago—a bold assertion, that I’d like to see backed up with numbers.
Isn’t Jesus enough?
To their speculations these teachers always add, “Hey, we’re not setting dates. We’re not predicting anything. We’re just informing you of what we know.” That leaves them an “out” when no fireball appears.
But they’re doing more than informing. They’re telling these stories hoping to get people excited. They wouldn’t say it if it didn’t grab attention. I’m pretty sure it brings in donations, too.
Is there more to it than evoking a frisson of excitement among believers? I’m not sure. I haven’t heard of anyone who has moved out of Nashville because a fireball is predicted to strike the city. Nor any mass conversions in Nashville, for that matter.
In one sense, I’m sympathetic. My observation is that most Adventists don’t realize that Jesus’ assurances of salvation are enough. We need something spectacular to happen, and happen soon. We are looking for evidence that God is doing something startling and astonishing for us, something more exciting than everyday life provides.
Our evangelistic preachers know that, too. So every eclipse, every earthquake, every war, every announcement by a pope or a president, every disease—all become fuel for the prophecy machine: thrilling stories that grab eyes and ears, yet have deniability should nothing happen.
And nothing ever does happen. How many such sensational predictions have come and gone?
Yet our preachers keep doing it—because it works. It worked long before there was anything to click, back when a paper flier arrived in your mailbox announcing astonishing discoveries at last to be revealed by a world-famous astronomer, scientist, anthropologist, archaeologist, and Bible scholar.
I think the question we have to ask is not, “Does it work?,” because we know it does.
The questions we should ask are these: “Is this ethical? Is this honest? Is this helpful to a life in Christ? Does it make people better and kinder? Does it bring peace to people’s hearts? Does it make for happier relationships? Does it make churches become more supportive communities?”
I see nothing in another lurid, unfulfilled prediction that will do any of those things. I wish we would return to Paul’s evangelistic method: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
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Loren Seibold is the Executive Editor of Adventist Today.
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