posted on Apr, 13 2009 @ 03:45 AM
Prophecies of the future, eh? I've only ever encountered one prophecy of the end times future which seemed likely to occur.
As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then - though I was still travelling with
prodigious velocity - the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more
marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the
sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a
comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set - it
simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower
and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the
horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more
brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the
tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth.
I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the
stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts
one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun - a little larger, a little duller -
the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the
westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.
So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a
strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million
years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the
crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was
flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under
the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with
drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.
I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I
saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in
the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I
looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and
seemed to me to twinkle very little.
Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow
larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning.
Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline
me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth.
The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number.
From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the
stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives
- all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense.
At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I
saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity.
The sky was absolutely black.
An exerpt: H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
Of course, that's fiction, not a true prophecy of the end times. However, as our sun goes red giant - this may paint a moderately accurate picture of
what it might be like, provided the Earth isn't entirely consumed by the enveloping corona. This might be possible, as some suggest that as the Sun
sheds it's outer mass, the pull of gravity may lessen just enough for the Earth to swing out into a higher orbit. Of course, humanity will be long
gone by then. Time, however, will not stop it's march even if we are not there to record it's progress.
I find it far more likely that the OP's scenario.