It all began when Pastor Mark Biltz of el Shaddai Ministries discovered a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses on NASA's website and connected them to the Jewish calendar. Four lunar eclipses (known as "Blood Moons" for their reddish color) will occur on God's annual Holy days of Passover and Sukkot in the years 2014 and 2015. Two solar eclipses will also take place during that same 12-month period, one on Nisan 1 (the Jewish New Year) and the other during the Feast of Trumpets (aka Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the seventh Hebrew month). Yeah, so what's the big deal?
Apparently, this unusual phenomenon of four consecutive total lunar eclipses, known as a tetrad, falling on Jewish feast days is quite rare. So rare, in fact, that it's only happened seven other times in history, and won't happen again for about a thousand years.
And get this--each of the seven times a tetrad fell on Jewish feast days in the past, it marked a major event in Jewish history.
Biltz, intrigued by Scriptures connecting the coming of the Messiah with signs in the heavens, (particularly those describing the sun going dark and a Blood Red moon) has been the target of much criticism. People accuse him of being a 'date-setter'. He defends himself by declaring, "The only dates I am giving is the dates NASA gives us for eclipses and the dates God gives us on His calendar and then I bring in the connection. You can do whatever you want according to your own theology with this information."
Fair enough.
But with 2014/2015 fast approaching, the end-time speculation is bound to go into overdrive again.
What should our approach be?
While we're all hoping for the soon return of Christ, let's not jump to any conclusions. In the past, tetrads that fell on Jewish feast days marked an event in Jewish history. The coming tetrad could signal something similar or nothing at all. Venturing more than that will only fuel speculation. For an interesting example of how some are interpreting these eclipses, click here:
"The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Joel 2:31, 32
A wise man once said: "Creation's design points to the Master Designer." -- Dave Branon, author
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[Hi, Pegge & Steve. Saw the following while webbing away, Reaction?]
ReplyDeleteBlood Moons, Pretrib Rapture, Etc.
Heard of the coming blood moons? Is the pretrib rapture symbolized by anything in the heavens?
Hal Lindsey, influenced by occultic astrology, asserts on p. 124 in "The Late Great Planet Earth" that the famous Sphinx in Egypt has the head of a "woman" - even though encyclopedias say it's the head of a "man"! Hal's plagiarism on that page of a 19th century British theologian is his acceptance of the occultic Virgo-to-Leo theory - a "Christian" zodiac arbitrarily starting with Virgo (Virgin Mary) and ending with Leo (Christ returning as "Lion," Rev. 5:5).
Those who swallow this guesswork often see Ursa Minor (part of Cancer which precedes Leo) as a heavenly "symbol" of a pretrib rapture!
Pretribs also insist on separating the "church" from "Israel" - but when you aren't looking (or thinking) they blithely "prove" pretrib by the Jewish feasts in Leviticus, the stages of a Hebrew wedding (Google "Pretrib Rapture: A Staged Event"), and the one "taken" and the other "left" in "Jewish" Matthew 24.
Amazingly, Jewishness (and even anti-Jewishness) has been uncovered even in pretrib dispensationalism's 19th century foundation (Google "Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism")!
The current "blood moons" craze (promoted by lunar persons including rock musician Scottie Clarke and John Hagee) is tied to - you guessed it - the same old Jewish feast days.
Yes, there's something colored red in the future of the church, but I don't have moons in mind. What will really turn red will be the collective faces of many when it finally dawns on them that their any-moment fly-away was nothing more than an end time hoax!
Shalo, The Lord showed me this several years ago, before the info on the trtrades came out. They sever to confirm my 'Psalm 119: Time for the End of Days: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.religion.christian.baptist/9hngEUPmqrY/-C3ovPEt0BMJ
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