Red!

April 26th, 2014| Topic: RaMbLeS | 5

Couple of weeks ago, I woke up early. 2:08 am to be exact. To see the “Blood Moon.”

(If you missed, don’t worry. That’s why Al Gore invented the Internet!)

If you want to really see another one, you’re in luck. There are three more on the way: October 8, this year, and then April 4 and September 28, in 2015.

Unusual. This is called a tetrad. Four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial eclipses in between, and each separated from its neighbors by six lunar months (six full moons).

Normally there are about two lunar eclipses every year. Most of them partial and barely visible. But now you have four total eclipses in a row—a rare lunar poker hand of four of a kind. And equally unusual, all four are visible from most parts of the USA.

In our 21st century, there are a total of eight tetrads. But in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries there were none at all. So I got to see what Newton, Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, Luther and Calvin, George Washington and Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln never got to see! So there!

From the 1st century through the 21st, there will be a total of 62 tetrads (the last was in 2003–2004; after this, the next will be in 2032–2033).

Amazing stuff.

Why “red” moon? All because of earth’s atmosphere, extending 50 miles above our planet’s surface. That’s what causes the sunrise to be reddish. And imagine seeing the sun rise up behind the earth, when you are standing on the moon. It’s light is filtered and refracted. All that reddish light is illuminating the moon. So … red moon.

Why “blood” moon? That term is getting more and more popular. Perhaps it is because of Christian pastor John Hagee’s book, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change (2013).

The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood
Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.
Joel 2:31 (and quoted in Acts 2:20)

I looked when He broke the sixth seal,
and there was a great earthquake;
and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,
and the whole moon became like blood.
Revelation 6:12

BTW, these verses describe both a total solar eclipse, and a total lunar eclipse. And I’m not sure how they happen together.

Hagee and others seem to think there is something significant about these tetrads, especially those that coincide with Passover (last month’s eclipse) and the Feast of Tabernacles (the next one in October). There have only been eight such coincidences in the last 2,000 years. The last in 1967–1968 (Seven-Day War?); before that, in 1949–1950 (creation of Israel?); and before that, in 1493–1494 (Inquisition against the Jews?); for the others, they haven’t come up with anything.

So, who knows?

We know one thing: no one knows.

“But of that day or hour no one knows,
not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”
Mark 13:32

But take to heart this exhortation from Jesus:

“Take heed, keep on the alert;
for you do not know when the appointed time will come.”
Mark 13:33

We are to be on the alert. Ready for the day.

The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds
with great power and glory.
Mark 13:24–26

Jesus is coming!