IT'S NO MERE COINCIDENCE that God and the Gospels represents Jesus' divinity with celestial signs and marvels, for his ancient Galilean (Syro-Phoenician) culture formerly embraced the heavens in their worship. This old religion thus anticipated the future Christ with perhaps divinely inspired mythology, which permeates the Old Testament.  

Astral religion (i.e., Phoenician nature mythology and the belief that God signaled His intentions in the sky) was the true backdrop for Jesus' Advent.  Considering the following points of evidence: 

• At his birth, the Star of Bethlehem signified his divinity.(Mt.2.2 etc.)   
  
• Jesus spoke emphatically of celestial signs and portents (e.g. Mt. 24.29, Mk 13.25) presaging the End Times.
  
• When Jesus prayed, he gazed up into Heaven (Mt. 14.19); likewise he taught us that the wind itself could be regarded as the Holy Spirit (pneuma), if only we could re-instruct our minds (metanoia) to regard it so. In the wind, the stars, the sun, earth, plants and sky, Jesus found a vast metaphor and a real experience of Divine omnipresence.  In reverence for God in the sky, manifesting Himself in nature and the land, in the eating of bread and drinking of wine, humanity could dine on the Body and Blood of God himself, and bond mystically together.
  
• At his Crucifixion, celestial signs appeared:

"And it was about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour." And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the Holy Place was torn in the middle." And crying with a loud voice, Jesus said, Father, "into Your hands I commit My spirit." And saying this, He breathed out the spirit.

Luke 23:44-46
Matt 27.45, Mk 15.33

• Jesus' post-Resurrection Ascension occurred on a white cloud which rose into Heaven (Acts 1.7-11) just before Pentecost
  
• St. Stephen, as he was being martyred by stoning, gazed up into Heaven; there he saw a vision of Christ. (Acts 7.55-56) 
  
• In Revelation 22.16  Jesus in heaven says: " I am the Root and Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star." (alluding to ancient astral titles). 

Modernists naturally disdain this notion of God sending us celestial signals, but in truth, the theme of signs proves to be both persistent in biblical tradition, and empirical in personal experience.. The spectacular Fatima apparition is obviously a celestial sign par excellence.  And, along with it, similar skyward-looking events such as bright lights in the night have been pervading contemporary Marian apparitions.  Mystic visionaries throughout the ages, and modern near-death experience accounts, are rife with reports of people looking up into the sky, in day or night, and seeing heavenly lights.  The only "signs" indicated at a downward subterranean direction are those referring to the pit of Hell.

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Thallos' witness: Another intriguing  fact here is that the above-quoted reference to the sign at Christ's death in Luke's Gospel happens to be historically confirmed by an independent source.  The earliest known reference to Jesus Christ in antiquity, from a hostile pagan rather than Christian author, just happens to describe a solar eclipse or darkening.  

This extraordinary sighting and historical datum apparently was discussed in a history book penned in approximately 55 AD by a Greek-writing author named Thallos. In that year (only two decades after Christ's death) he produced a three-volume history of the Eastern Mediterranean, culminating in the year 50 AD. 

(The original version of Thallos work itself is gone, but he is quoted by Sextus Julium Africanus [160-240], author of the History of the World), and also quoted by the Byzantine historian Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle.) Syncellus wrote:

"In the third book of his histories Thallos calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun, which seems to me wrong."

This is quoted by Sextus in a section discussing portents of the Crucifixion. Sextus believes Thallos is "wrong" in his interpretation of the darkness, because Thallos interprets it as an ordinary eclipse, when in fact, (as Sextus believes) it must have been a celestial miracle: astronomically speaking, an eclipse could not have occurred by natural means during that period, according to Sextus.

What is the historical and evidential significance of this text?  An anti-Christian pagan Greek sought to undermine and deny the miraculousness attending Jesus’ death--but, in actuality, by discussing its source, he unwittingly confirmed for us that the event did indeed occur.  And this record was made at a very early date in Christian development. Clearly, Thallos and others of the day knew that darkness was widely believed to have occurred at Christ's death.  He also knew that it was ascribed to divine intervention. And, as a pagan, he wished to refute the Christians' "superstitious" understanding of the indisputable darkness, by offering the naturalistic explanation that it was merely a regular solar eclipse.

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WE CAN NOW SEE that, indeed, God signals and confirm His momentous actions with these celestial proofs.  God graciously offers them as divine "signatures" of His self-revelation. Such events become far more plausible and difficult to dismiss now, in an intellectually honest manner,  in the wake of the undeniable Fatima miracles.

All such apparitions (along with numberless private "upward gazing" visions) are intentionally constructed and coordinated for us, by Heaven, in order to produce a coherence and a proof.   God is affirming the New Testament cosmology, which frequently alludes to celestial signs and portents and to the reality of a Heavenly Christ above. Astral signs concerning both Christ's Advent and of Fatima were prophesied.  This pattern is an authentic hallmark of the Heavenly God, as opposed to often false and pretentious earthly counterfeit works which men devise.

Moreover, prior to Christ's Advent, God seems to have inspired the ancient Syro-Phoenicians of his homeland to be star-gazers, as if the rich mythology of that region was meant as a precursor to Christ.  Jesus spiritualized and personified the old religion, 'fulfilling' its myths  in himself.  

Underlying all of these signs is the message of Salvation from God to Man, and, if you will, of a kind of escape-valve for the ever-oppressed human spirit. At the core of much misery there are certain imposed structures causing alienation and eternal conflict.  Jesus opposed these; he came to earth to "undo the devil's works" (1Jo 3:8), and sought to restore to each person's mind a sacralized sense that nature Above (i.e., the sun, the stars, the sky, the wind, the grain, the wine) can become constantly "alive" to us as signs of God's real presence.  All are all manifestations of the same miraculous channel, if we have eyes to see.  All of this was prophesied and affirmed in Scripture, with consistency, for a good reason:  Jesus said:

"People will faint with fear and apprehension because of the things that are to come on the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken loose. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.

"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, for your deliverance is near."

Luke 21:26-28