Signs in the sky: the day the sun moved
by Michael H. Brown
It was on October 13, 1917, that newspapers around the world carried a dramatic report of happenings in a tiny hamlet called Fatima, Portugal. There, on that date, between 50,000 and 70,000 people saw the sun move in an inexplicable fashion during the last apparition of the Blessed Mother.
The account has great relevance as we see dramatic natural and supernatural events involving the sun in our own times -- along with sudden signs of the times around us.
First a bit of history: Early in the afternoon on October 13, when the three seers went into ecstasy, the clouds suddenly parted and Lucia dos Santos, the eldest of the visionaries, saw the Virgin dressed in white with Saint Joseph beside her holding the Infant Jesus. Then Lucia saw a sorrowful Madonna and an adult Jesus Who looked with pity on the crowd of pilgrims and raised His hand to bless them.
At the end of her ecstasy Lucia saw Mary as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, dressed in dark brown.
While this was happening, a disc of some sort moved in front of the sun and for ten minutes the sun danced like the firewheels in Ezekiel. Spinning and throwing off stupendous rays of crimson, causing reflections of green, red, orange, blue, and violet on the faces below, it gyrated at least three times, shuddered, and began to plunge downward in a zig-zag fashion, as if to destroy the earth. Then it returned to its normal position, and to the crowd's relief and amazement their clothes -- soaked from a savage storm that had immediately preceded (see previous article) -- were instantly dry.
Even secular reporters were astonished. "The sun has trembled, and the sun has made some brusque movements, unprecedented and outside of all cosmic laws," reported a previously skeptical local newspaper called O Seculo.
Did the miracle symbolize a comet? A nuclear weapon, as would fall on Hiroshima? Or a change in climate?
Since that time we have had reports of sun miracles around the world. I have seen them myself at Betania in Venezuela (I'll write about this at some future time), in the Ukraine, and in Medjugorje in former Yugoslavia. At these places there is the also a "disc" (appearing like a Communion host) and the sun spins, flares, and forms images, including huge crosses. On my first trip to Medjugorje I saw great auras of red and purple around the sun, along with the tremendous whirling and pulsing, and one morning during a subsequent trip the sun sent a streak of light forming a cross right to the ground.
This is all fascinating because recent research is indicating that the sun is at an intense stage (possibly the most intense since medieval times) and may be responsible for some or even most of the global warming. There are a few astrophysicists, such as Dr. Sallie L. Baliunas of Harvard, who believe that greater solar intensity can account for nearly all the temperature increase. The new studies say the main reason is a solar energy surge and a particularly big increase in ultraviolet (UV) light. This has coincided with a doubling in strength of the sun's magnetic field.
No doubt pollution also plays a role, but we forget the forces of nature itself, which we'll be discussing next week because they tie to a book I have coming out on natural disasters, Sent to Earth. “When the sun’s total output of energy changes, ultraviolet radiation changes by quite a bit, and that can change the stratospheric ozone layer and then profoundly affect the circulation of the earth’s climate,” Dr. Baliunas told me.
Ironically, there is also research showing that a stronger sun pushes more meteorites toward earth, and that its tidal force, along with that of the moon, can affect volcanoes and possibly even earthquakes.
Thus God may be telling us something through the gyrating sun, which is the source for so many of the "signs of the times" we now see around us.