World predicted to end in 2017 thanks to a total solar eclipse hitting America and the UK

A GROUP of hardcore Christians has claimed a solar eclipse due to hit the UK and America next year, will bring about an apocalypse.

The eclipse will plunge countries into darkness and spark the end of the world, doomsayers from Christian website Unsealed have alleged.

A total eclipse is expected to spread across America on August 21 2017, with western Europe experiencing a partial eclipse.

It will be the first total eclipse to travel from one coast of America to the other, for almost a century.

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to passages from The Book of Revelation to support their predictions, the Daily Star reported.

They have highlighted passages describing a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet.

Scripture says the woman will be hunted by a Satanic seven-headed dragon looking to eat her unborn child.

It is said the child will be born and taken unto god, before an army of angels defeats the dragon.

Conspiracy theorists have also pointed to the birth of Israel as a state, which began in 1947, to support the theory.

They give significance to mention of this in accounts of the end of the world and say that next year will mark a biblical generation – 70 years – since it happened.

Unsealed also highlights predictions of twelfth-century Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel, who reportedly said the end of the world would come in 2017.

But, the doomsayers do hint at some uncertainty in their predictions as they’ve also said that scripture warns “no one knows” the hour of the apocalypse.