The Blood Moon Prophecy

I like this one because it involves astronomy. This apocalyptic theory proposes that it's a bad sign if we see four lunar eclipses coinciding with Jewish holidays (Passover and Tabernacles) with six full moons in between. This is called a tetrad, a series of four lunar eclipses spaced six months apart. I'd call that a superfecta.

This is supposedly described in the Revelation 6:12:

"And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief captains, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to stand?"

What exactly is a blood moon? A blood moon occurs occasionally during a full lunar eclipse. This kind of eclipse happens when the moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra, or main shadow of the Earth. This only occurs when the Earth and Moon are aligned perfectly during a full moon.
The blood reference comes from the fact that the moon has a reddish tint. This happens when a lunar eclipse happens with a supermoon, a moon that's closest to the earth at full moon. When sunlight passes through the Earth's atmosphere and is refracted at this time, the green to violet light is scattered more than red light, and this illuminates the moon, giving it the red cast. This effect is what happens because of physics and the relative position of the moon and Earth. It's astronomy, folks, not an omen.

A Blood Moon has been associated with a bad omen for quite some time, and it's very understandable. The ancients didn't understand how celestial bodies were actually moving around. With the killing going on at that time, it's not surprising that people would be frightened by anything that suggested blood. As far as the tetrad event in Jewish history, which adheres to a lunar calendar, there have been 62 tetrads since the first century AD, but only eight of them coincided with the two Jewish feasts.

Of course the media made a big deal out of this. Surprisingly, two Christian ministers predicted that these astronomical events would lead to apocalyptic events. One of them, Mark Blitz, had predicted the second coming of Christ in 2008. The other nut, John Hagee, profited on Blitz's predictions by writing a book 'The Four Blood Moons,' which became a best seller on Amazon. There's a sucker born every minute. That's not my quote; it's P.T. Barnum's.

The truth is that there is no astronomical events that could by any stretch predict the end time. The planets, stars and moon have been going around for billions of years and what they look like from the Earth is just a coincidence of orbital dynamics.
You would think that in this modern era where we know all about how astronomical objects work that we would avoid seeing doom in anything that appears in the heavens. It's understandable why the ancients saw doom in the appearance of comets, meteors, supernovae and eclipses. They had no idea what they were and assumed that they were messages from the gods. This is the same for the authors of apocalyptical Bible books like Revelations. They knew that omens in the sky would scare readers at that time. When you don't understand something, you tend to fear it. That's true even today, but it shouldn't be the case. Get real!

Thanks for reading.