20k views. Not bad.
Jesus said;
[Mat 24:29 NIV] 29 "Immediately after the distress of those days " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
[Mar 13:24 NIV] 24 "But in those days, following that distress, " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;
Obviously, if the sun stopped emitting light, the moon and indeed everything else orbiting the sun, such as the Earth and the other planets, like Mars, Jupiter and so on, would stop reflecting the sun, although because it takes sunlight longer to reach the outer planets than us, they would reflect longer than us, and rapid global cooling could produce earthquakes, causing stars to apparently fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies to be shaken.
Since many many people in the time of Christ, probably most, did not understand the concept of reflection, and had superstitious ideas about mirrors, reflective water and so on, the simple language used by our Lord, which is scientifically accurate insofar as if the Sun stopped shining, the moon would subsequently stop reflecting sunlight, as happens during a New Moon when the Earth obstructs the flow of photons from the Sun to the Lunar surface, absorbing them directly instead, is appropriate and would be appropriate for almost any audience in 30-33 AD, unless one was talking to philosophers in Athens or Alexandria or Rome, or, possibly, Chaldean astrologers in Seleucia-Cstesiphon, or some “gymnosophists” (Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist ascetics; the phrase means “naked thinker” and in the case of the “sky clad” denomination of Jainists, is
literally true, but there is a rival Jainist denomination whose ascetics do wear simple clothing) and other thinkers in India and the Far East. But since our Lord was sent to preach mainly to the Jews, most Jews were not at that level of scientific comprehension to fully understand reflection, let alone that moonlight is a reflection of solar radiation, and the net impact of losing the Sun and the Moon as sources of light is the same.
All of this also applies if God proposes to use atmospheric phenomena to obstruct our view of the Sun and Moon, and block them out in the way shown in the Matrix films, which by the way could happen due to massive volcanic eruptions or thermonuclear war or a meteor strike.
This also assumes a literal rather than typological interpretation, which is always possible in the case of prophecy. The Disciples had to have our Lord show them how the Old Testament is entirely about Him at the end of Luke, after all.
So please, do not associate beliefs in a flat Earth or other demonstrably false concepts with the Christian faith, as it does cause real harm towards our religion, by encouraging educated young people to buy into the propaganda of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins that Christianity is incompatible with science, which is untrue (unlike mainstream Islam, which actually is contradicted by science; only a few Sufi sects pass possible scientific scrutiny).
