On Monday, the moon briefly passed in front of the Sun causing a lot of easily entertained people to lose their minds and damage their retinas simultaneously. Maybe you saw it and thought it was a lot of hype for nothing, or maybe you skipped it because you already figured it was a lot of hype for nothing.
Regardless, it was an opportunity to create a ton of buzz around an otherwise "meh" event, whether you were a business owner looking to unload a lot of undesirable backroom crap with a "Solar Eclipse Blowout!!" or you're a Christian radio host looking to pin this rare, but otherwise routine, event on Satan.
That's exactly what some guy named Bryan Fischer did when the host of the Focal Point radio program wondered on his Facebook page whether there was a message from God in Monday's eclipse. He wrote:
The path of this total eclipse of the sun is remarkable, in that it crosses over the entire continental United States, almost perfectly bisecting America from the Northwest to the Southeast. And in that path, the sun will be perfectly blotted out, by the ruler of the night, plunging all of America in its path into virtual total darkness.
In case you're having trouble following that, which is likely, Fischer also added this caveat, which is like adding an editor's note that admits: I just made this shit up.
I am not all pretending that I have received some form of revelation from God about the meaning he wants us to attach to a total eclipse of the sun. This is simply an effort to ponder this sign in the heavens and speculate as to its possible spiritual implications. God knew that this precise event would come at this precise moment in our nation’s history, and it is entirely appropriate for us to ponder its significance.
He also tweeted this out, which elicited several responses suggesting that people aren't buying into his theory:
For example:
Fischer's theory also got a response from the official Twitter account of the Church of Satan. Wow, what an honor:
This response will probably only serve to validate his point. But, damn, sometimes going the grifter route is harder than those Sunday morning TV preachers make it look.
