The contemporary voices and self-proclaimed interpreters of Jewish prophecy (such as John Hagee) have created great concern in the Neo-Evangelical and Charismatic churches over the re-appearances of “red” or (as they have identified them) “blood” moons. Because these men believe such moons are part of the End-time fulfillment of biblical prophecy, they are warning the Evangelical world of some inevitable judgment or earthshaking event which will occur soon.
The Red Moon Defined
A “red moon” is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is often witnessed with a lunar eclipse. Note the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) definition of a lunar eclipse:
An eclipse of the Moon (lunar eclipse) can only occur at Full Moon, and only if the Moon passes through some portion of Earth’s shadow. That shadow is actually composed of two cone-shaped components, one nested inside the other. The outer or penumbral shadow is a zone where the Earth blocks part but not all of the Sun’s rays from reaching the Moon. In contrast, the inner or umbral shadow is a region where the Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.
More simply, a lunar eclipse takes place when the earth passes between the sun and the moon, and thus the earth blocks the sun’s rays from reflecting off the moon. If our moon orbits our earth every 29.5 days and lunar eclipses only occur at full moon, does this mean that we have a lunar eclipse once a month? Note NASA’s answer:
The moon’s orbit around Earth is actually tipped about 5 degrees to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. This means that the Moon spends most of the time either above or below the plane of Earth’s orbit. And the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun is important because Earth’s shadows lie exactly in the same plane. During full Moon, our natural satellite usually passes above or below Earth’s shadows and misses them entirely. No eclipse takes place. But two to four times each year, the Moon passes through some portion of the Earth’s penumbral or umbral shadows and one of three types of eclipses occurs.
These three types of lunar eclipses are penumbral lunar eclipse, which is very difficult to observe; partial lunar eclipse, where only a portion of the moon passes through earth’s umbral shadow; and total lunar eclipse, where the entire moon passes through earth’s umbral shadow.
It is during this third type of eclipse that the moon (during the total phase) reflects back to earth a very bright red color, or blood-like color. Once again, note NASA’s explanation:
During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth blocks the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon. Astronauts on the Moon would then see the Earth completely eclipse the Sun. (They would see a bright red ring around the earth as they watched all the sunrises and sunsets happening simultaneously around the world!) While the Moon remains completely within Earth’s umbral shadow, indirect sunlight still manages to reach and illuminate it. However, this sunlight must first pass deep through the Earth’s atmosphere which filters out most of the blue colored light. The remaining light is a deep red or orange in color and is much dimmer than pure white sunlight. Earth’s atmosphere also bends or refracts some of this light so that a small fraction of it can reach and illuminate the Moon. . . .
The total phase of a lunar eclipse is so interesting and beautiful precisely because of the filtering and refracting effect of Earth’s atmosphere. If the Earth had no atmosphere, then the Moon would be completely black during a total eclipse. Instead, the Moon can take on a range of colors from dark brown and red to bright orange and yellow. The exact appearance depends on how much dust and clouds are present in Earth’s atmosphere.
The Red Moons of History
So far in our observation a red moon is a natural occurrence and prompts no concern of Bible pro-phecy. However, concern can arise when we observe the “timing” of these full-moon eclipses reflecting a reddish color. When four of these red moons are seen in close succession of time (within two years), astronomy calls this occurrence a tetrad. In the past two thousand years, according to NASA’s calculations, such tetrads have occurred fifty-five times.
Again, how does this fall into the plan of prophecy? What is presently drawing curiosity are the ten tetrads that have occurred during Jewish feast days. Jewish scholars since the destruction of Jerusalem have noted interesting parallels between unique events before and during feasts days and the ten seasons of blood moons. (We must keep in mind that the concept of the Jewish calendar is different than that the modern Julian calendar.) These scholars have carefully noted that life-changing events for the Jewish people have transpired in the wake of what they believe to be these heavenly omens.
One example concerns the tetrad (four lunar eclipses in close succession) of red moons that happened in 1493–1494 (all four surrounding Jewish feast days). Looking back, it has been viewed as an omen announcing the discovery of the new world and the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition against the Jewish world. This was a dark hour for the Jews of Spain; an estimated 400,000 Jews were forced to leave that country. However, any Jew who professed to be converted to Romanism (in order to stay in Spain) was then brought to the newly formed Inquisitional trials where under extreme torture they were tested to see if their conversion was genuine. Tens of thousands were put to death by that Inquisition.
We were taught in elementary school that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and that his financial backing was from the Spanish King and Queen Ferdinand and Isabella. However, there is the growing belief among Jews that Columbus was really a Jew seeking a new world for his people to flee from the Spanish Inquisition that took place in 1493 against the Jewish race in Spain. Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005), an Austrian writer, a Jewish Austrian holocaust survivor (and a Nazi hunter after WW II), wrote the book Sails of Hope: The Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus (New York: Macmillan, 1973). In this book he proposes the theory that Columbus was not only a Jew but also seeking a refuge for his people from the Inquisition. Amidst this growing theory, there is also the belief that Columbus was not financed by the King and Queen but by two Jewish men who had the hope that he would find such a place of sanctuary for the Spanish Jews. Therefore many have come to believe that this red-moon tetrad was an omen concerning the great oppression of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition.
Another tetrad occurred in 1949 and 1950. Some see this tetrad as an obvious omen in the light of the birth of Israel as a nation in 1948. The conflagration of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 scattered the Jews to the ends of the earth, where they were assimilated into the geographies of many nations. Amazingly, the Jews maintained their identity of race and lifestyle. God later moved in a most peculiar and glorious way to bring them back into their own land. Though the Jews were victims of Hitler’s holocaust (comprising six of its thirteen million victims), the Lord’s good providence appointed the birth of their nation right after that brutal slaughter. The date May 14, 1948 will forever be etched in the minds of the Jewish world as they became a nation among the nations. And initially through the Balfour Declaration the geography of Canaan was given to them. The Jewish leaders today believe this tetrad of red moons of 1949–1950 became an omen for the birth of their nation.
Yet another tetrad took place in 1967 and 1968. The Jews note during this time the great Six-day War that started on June 7, 1967. This was another wonder of God’s providence for the Jewish world. From the time of Israel’s becoming a nation, their United Nations’ appointed capital was on the coast of Canaan at Tel Aviv. But the Six-Day War allowed Israel to possess its religious capital of Jerusalem. This was an overwhelming miracle by providence that stunned the world. Were the Jewish Feasts and tetrad of red moons an omen of this? Many Jewish scholars looking back believe this to be so.
The Present Omen
The present excitement in a number of prophetic newsletters and sermons of prophecy is the ominous, present tetrad of red moons, two of which have occurred on April 15, 2014 and October 8, 2014. The third red moon will occur on April 4, 2015; the final lunar eclipse is to take place on September 28, 2015. As mixed feelings have arisen among the Jewish scholars and Evangelical pastors, there is concern of what this tetrad will reveal to the Jewish nation. We have witnessed in the month of March 2015, the reelection of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The nation of Israel has a president, but his powers are basically ceremonial; it is the prime minister (as in so many other nations) who has the political power. Mr. Netanyahu is considered the more conservative man who ran in this recent election. He is the one in this same month who, contrary to the desires of our president, spoke to our Congress in Washington. This prime minister now controls the majority of the seats in the government. The final days leading up to his election were filled with his speeches declaring his conservative plans for Israel. He also was in political struggle over the Iranian crisis and the Palestinian situation as well as with our own president’s dislike for him. At the time of the writing of this article, it is yet to be seen what he will do in the aftermath of his reelection. Though his political coalition is more conservative, this most recent election will grant him greater freedom from restraints that were upon him in his last term of office. How will the Jewish rabbis view Mr. Netanyahu’s recent reelection and its outcome in the light of this tetrad of the red moons?
There is also the concern for the pressure of our country’s State Department upon Netanyahu for the nation of Israel to sign the peace accord that will establish a Palestinian state. Many Neo-Evangelicals believe that if this peace accord is signed, it will commence Daniel’s Last Week (prophetically rendered in Daniel 9:27). If this accord is signed, according to its ramifications, there is the belief that the present-day Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock is located, will bring about a mutual distribution of the geography of Mount Moriah between the Muslims and Jews, with the hope of a Temple being built by the Jews on the Mount. Those who take this position are individuals who believe we are already in the Great Tribulation Period and that this will be the very accord between Antichrist and the Jews. One of their concerns is that if this is true, it will lead not only to the Battle of Armageddon but also to the return of Christ (Revelation 19).
Is this present tetrad of red moons to be a prophecy of this potential peace accord, or is it the omen of some other catastrophic event that will take place? For what are we realistically looking? Is it an omen of a political change to take place, or will it be a naturally-occurring devastating event to take place? Still others have speculated that the red moons are indicative of a devastating event to take place here in the United States, for this country has the highest Jewish population of any in the world (6.6 million), higher than even the Jewish population in Canaan (6.1 million).
Conclusion
But once again the question needs to be asked, what do these red moons have to do with biblical prophecy? There are those who have drawn from Joel 2:30, 31 as perhaps the fulfillment of these red moons:
And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come.
Another popular passage is Revelation 6:12:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.
It is believed that the “red” color of the tetrads occurring during the Jewish feasts is the fulfillment of the biblical phrases “the moon into blood” and “the moon became as blood.” Such prophetic sign observers believe that the moon will not turn to actual blood, but some phenomenon will bring about a blood-like color. Thus, to many, the red moons on or surrounding the Jewish feasts days have become omens of these prophecies.
Genesis 1:14 reveals that the appointed lights (sun, moon, and stars) are in the firmament for signs and for seasons. They certainly were witnessed in Joshua 10:11 of the famous Joshua’s Long Day and in Judges 5:20 in the days of Deborah and Barak. Christ gave the prophecy of Matthew 24:29 of the heavens contributing to the judgments during the Tribulation Period (Revelation 6–19). There was also the star used by God to guide the Wise Men to the Christ Child and the sun’s becoming dark at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.
We do not undermine the usage of the heavenly bodies in God’s witness to the earth. We read of these at certain seasons of biblical history. Christ gave prophecy in Matthew 24 and 25 of the signs in nature concerning the End Time. The escalating frequency of violent storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other devastating events in nature certainly is part of the witness and signs of our times.
However, to identify the “red moons” with prophecies designated for the Tribulation Period is taking Scripture out of context. This would mean that any time these tetrads took place on Jewish feast days in the past two millennia of history, there would have been an equal prerogative of scholars to interpret them the same way, and for interpretative Scripture ahead of its time. The phenomena of the “red moons” should not be declared as the “blood moons” of Joel 2 and Revelation 6. For God may testify of His prophetic moons more supernaturally than what nature has done for thousands of years.
It is interesting to note that the so-called prophetic signs declared in the past by contemporary preachers as being the fulfillment of Scripture have slipped quietly into the dim memory for most people. Although Harold Camping and Jack Van Impe gave us their elaborately-detailed predictions of the Second Coming of the Lord to the date or the year, their prophesied days came and went. The contemporary prophets now tell us that if the peace accord is signed by the end of this month, “this” will be the beginning of Daniel’s Last Week (seven years) before the Battle of Armageddon. It reminds us of the many books written and sermons preached during the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt during the days of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Those peace agreements were also to be the beginning of that Last Week; the belief now is that this peace accord will be the one. Similarly, many “Christian” publications declared that the Delta Storm invasion of Iraq in 1991 was to be the Battle of Armageddon, anticipating bloodshed up to the bridles of horses. Yet that war was over with very few lives of Americans and their allies taken in death.
We are often reminded of the words of John Lennon of the Beatles in the late 1960s. He was amazed that the Americans had become so obsessed with finding esoteric meanings in his songs. He wondered if he wrote a song about a fly landing on the windshield of his limousine how the Americans would interpret it. It seems that it has become that way with many prophetic preachers with every moment of present history; certain prophetic interpreters seem to have found a Scripture declaring its fulfillment.
Although many prophetic passages of the Bible have clear interpretations, other passages are intentionally limited until an appointed time in history, in order to veil from the Devil God’s unfolding plan and purpose. In the actual moment when these prophecies will be fulfilled, God may surprise us with the reality that “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come” (Joel 2:30, 31), and the “sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood” (Rev. 6:12). We have yet to see what this means.
We must always remember, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10). While the world looks for the Battle of Armageddon soon, we know there must be the bringing to an end of the Church Age, a secret rapture, and then the sequential unfolding of Revelation 6 through 19. The prelude of those days will witness foretastes of many things that are the “actual” reality yet to come “in” their context. It is not to the moons we look, but we wait for the Son from heaven to come and take His waiting people home.