When the religious leaders of Israel came to Jesus seeking a sign in the heavens, He appeared disturbed, even angry. The gospel of Mark tells us “he sighed deeply in his spirit” (Mark 8:12) He even called the most learned men in Israel a “wicked and adulterous generation” (Matthew 16:4). Why?

Perhaps he was angry because they should have known he was their messiah without the need for a sign; or perhaps he was disturbed because they were seeking a sign like a blind man gropes about for the path to follow—a path that is obvious to anyone with spiritual eyes to see.

Starting at the very beginning in Genesis, God said of the sun and moon: “…let them be for signs” (Genesis 1:14). Read my article [here] explaning the ways in which the sun and moon act as prophetic signs. Jesus himself admonished his followers to be watchful in these last days of the “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” (Luke 21:25), and yet, the Bible is conspicuously silent on how to read these signs. Could Jesus have given us a clue to unlocking them in his response to the religious leaders?

As the crowd began to press upon him, Jesus said:

“When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and overcast. O ye hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky; but can you not discern the signs of the times?”

Matthew 16:2-3 (KJV)

History is His-story. The story of God’s divine rule over his creation. The secular world likes to portray history as a chaotic sequence of events; and yet, meteorologists, stock brokers, and many other scientific types still rely upon historical patterns to make their predictions.

So what was Jesus saying to the people that wanted to see a sign in the heavens? Jesus was telling them that the signs of heaven are discerned in much the same way that we predict weather: using pattern recognition.

The ancient Chaldeans made a science out of observing the heavens; and for nearly a millennium cataloged everything they saw. Roughly seven hundred years’ worth of their clay tablets are in the British museum today. On one half of these tablets they recorded with precise detail nearly everything they observed the heavens. Eclipses, transits, the retrograde motion of planets, even the mundane periodicity of the sun and moon were observed and analyzed. On the other side of each tablet, they recorded the level of the Euphrates, the occurrences of plagues, of famines, of wars and the death of kings.

Once the Chaldeans began to recognize patterns in their data, they generated what are known as “goal-year texts”. These texts predicted the visibility of stars and eclipses for the upcoming year and attempted to prophesy world events in advance. Then, as every good scientist does, they reconciled their predictions with reality.

This is something that the “youtube prophets” and astrologers fail to do. Instead of learning from their erroneous predictions of “seven Salems” after the 2017 total solar eclipse, they doubled down with the “seven Nineveh’s” theory. But unlike these false prophets, the Chaldean’s committment to the scientific method of observation, prediction and reconciliation rewarded them with the revelation of a new born king.

Looking forward to the eclipse of April 8, 2024, it is tempting to make our own predictions, but before we do, let us revisit the eclipse of August 2017 and see what it told us.

1. Not many people noticed where the moon’s shadow first touched land, but the entry point of the shadow of totality matters alot. In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook was mapping the Oregon coast and recorded in his journal “At the northern extreme the land formed a point which I called Cape Foulweather from the very bad weather we soon after met with.” The violent storm drove him off the coast for four days. At the exact moment Captain Cook was being tossed about, George Washington was drumming an openly gay man out of his army camp.
   Astonishingly, the present followed the past. As the shadow of the eclipse came ashore on August 21, 2017, it did so at “Cape Foulweather”. That same day, Hurricane Harvey, pronounced dead by meteorologists, revived. When the hurricane made landfall four days later, on August 25, 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning openly transgender individuals from military service. And those are only two of the half dozen major events that the entry point alone predicted with perfect accuracy. Now look at the entry point of the 2024 eclipse. What objects are there that might tell us a story?
2. Before the eclipse of August 2017, the internet exploded with rumors of the seven “Salems” along the path of totality. The same thing has happened again with the word “Nineveh” and the April 2024 eclipse. But what did all mean?
   Well, Salem is the Hebrew word for “peace” and is another name for Jerusalem. The first “Salem” along the path of totality was big one. Salem, Oregon. And it told of President Donald Trump’s choice to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel shortly thereafter on December 6, 2017. Coincidentally, there is a city named “Donald” just north of Salem, Oregon. From this we can see that place names along the path of totality can lay out events that will happen in chronological order.
3. Place names can also tell an overall “theme” like the remaining “Salems” which were not so impressive. Salem, Idaho is little more than a historical marker and a cemetery, the main population center having moved east to Sugar City. Which should have given the impression that “peace” would decrease approaching the exit point of the eclipse. And indeed, it did. “Trump Derangement Syndrome” metastasized into the delusional drum beat of “Russian Collusion” which kept on until we reached the exit point.
4. The exit point tells the end of the story for a particular eclipse. The shadow of totality in 2017 departed over Fort Sumter where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired by southern Democrats. Clearly, the eclipse of 2017 signaled a coming civil war.
   In July of 2019, while the leftist media puppets at CNN claimed: “Donald Trump is staging a 4th of July takeover” the Democrats were secretly engaged in their largest insurrection since the Civil War. With the Mueller investigation fizzling into thin air, leftists burned and looted American cities for a year straight. Their wicked desire for dominion, chilled patriotic Americans with “cancel culture” and corporate censorship. And though Donald Trump survived his term in office physically unharmed, the Democrat controlled House brought two impeachment trials against him.

Time would fail to tell how the eclipse path of August 21, 2017 encoded the unprecedented forest fires, the identity of the Vegas shooter or the greatest bull market in history, but these are just random events on the timeline of history without something else.

The Magi never would have found the king they sought if it were not for the Word of God: “In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written of the prophet.” (Matthew 2:5) And the warning given to us by the eclipse of April 8, 2024 can only be understood if we look to the Bible for revelation and meaning.