MOON OF DOOM
This week’s blood-red moon signals Armageddon, say the Bible thumpers. Time to head for the hills!
On September 15 next year, Britain will witness an extraordinary sight. High in the heavens, the moon will turn an eerie blood-red — filling the night sky with fiery radiance, as if Mars, the planet of war, has suddenly burst from its natural orbit and arrived on our doorstep.
This spectacular vision will be the culmination of a rare — and, in the eyes of some, deeply ominous — astrological event, which began this week.
On Tuesday, millions of people across America and much of the rest of the Western hemisphere saw exactly such a blood-red moon glowing above their heads for around an hour-and-ahalf. That same moon will return over Earth three times in the next 17 months, making its final dramatic appearance over Britain.
Astronomers call this run of red moons a ‘tetrad’ but some doom-mongers have a different name for it: the End of the World. They insist that between the first and last eclipse, the world will be plunged into a cataclysmic downward spiral predicted by the Bible.
This decline presages Armageddon, the arrival of the Anti-Christ and the Second Coming of Christ. Forget rising sea levels, the Mayan calendar and nostradamus — this is the big one. ‘There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars… now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.’ So said Jesus in Luke’s gospel.
In times gone by, people were understandably terrified of these ‘ blood moons’. Our ancestors greeted these infrequent and inexplicable arrivals in the night sky as harbingers of disaster or great change.
As superstition gave way to greater scientific understanding in the 15th century, scientists
Forget Nostradamus and rising sea levels — this is the big one
discovered the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Moon spins around the Earth.
A blood moon, they came to realise, occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon align, and the Moon slips into the Earth’s shadow. It doesn’t darken completely because some sunlight still reaches it after passing through the Earth’s atmosphere. But the light — and therefore the Moon — takes on a reddish hue.
However, there are still many who have looked upon this week’s moon with apprehension. For Tuesday’s was a very special one. It was the first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses, with no partial eclipses in between.
Rational-minded astronomers will point out that while such tetrads are rare, they are not unheard of. And they have never yet heralded the end of days. Indeed, there have been 62 since the First Century AD.
Ah, counter the prophets of doom, but this one is different.
This particular tetrad coincides with two of Judaism’s holiest days. And the Jews, the Holy Land and God’s Chosen People inevitably figure large in the Biblical predictions of the Apocalypse.
This week’s eclipse coincided with Passover, the most important festival in the Jewish calendar, as will the third eclipse, which falls on April 4 next year. The second and fourth eclipses, on October 8 this year and September 15 next year, both fall on Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. So these eclipses are deemed to be especially significant.
But there’s still more, say advocates of what has been dubbed the Blood Moon Prophecy.
According to a clutch of numbercrunching American pastors, each of the last three occasions when tetrads have fallen over Passover and Sukkot coincided with traumatic events for the Jews. A tetrad in 1493-1494 came just after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain, while a 1949-1950 tetrad followed just after the establishment of the state of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War.
As for the most recent tetrad, in 1967-1968, it started just before the Six Day War, when Israel was once again threatened by its enemies.
The Bible’s Book of Revelations, which tells how the world will end, makes clear the Second Coming will be preceded by Jerusalem being surrounded by armies. The resulting strife, plague and pestilence, during which God will judge non-believers, will last seven years before Christ returns to Earth.
With Syria aflame, Egypt in turmoil, Russia throwing its weight around and the Iranians threatening Israel, you don’t need to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist (though it helps) to see signs of impending destruction.
The tetrad isn’t just a sign of things to come, says Texan pastor John Hagee, a popular U.S. ‘televangelist’ who’s made a fortune from predicting Armageddon. He claims the four blood moons are messages from God projected on to the heavens. ‘The question,’ he asks, ‘is are we listening?’
He and another pastor, Mark Biltz, of Washington state, are ‘Blood Moon Prophets’. They first stumbled on the theory in 2008 after matching NASA eclipse records with moments in Jewish history.
They can quote Bible-verse after verse about how the ‘End Times’ will be presaged by a bloody or darkened moon. They argue that the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis, makes clear that God wanted to communicate with Man through nature, creating the Sun, Moon and stars to provide ‘signs’.
The Old Testament’s Book of Joel speaks of how ‘the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord comes’.
The Book of Revelations also talks of how, just before the Day of Judgment, ‘the whole moon turned blood red’. In a prophecy that is repeated again and again, Isaiah speaks of the Second Coming: ‘The Sun will be dark when it rises and the Moon will not shed its light.’
Pastor Biltz says he has sold more than 70,000 copies of his new book, Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs, in just four weeks. But that’s nothing compared with his prophet- of- doom rival, Mr Hagee, whose Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change was one of Ameri-
Around 3 million Americans are stockpiling food
ca’s best- selling books for several weeks when it came out last year.
Mr Biltz initially claimed the tetrad’s final eclipse of September next year would coincide with the Second Coming. But that ignored the golden rule of successful apocalypse prediction — if you don’t want to look silly, don’t tie yourself down to dates.
He is now wisely hedging his bets. ‘I’m not saying whether it is or isn’t going to be the Second Coming in a year and a half. I don’t have the word “stupid” written on my head,’ he told me. ‘But we are living in the Last Days. I believe the Second Coming is approaching.’
Pastor John Hagee believes the same. Tuesday marked the dawn of a ‘ hugely significant event’ for the world, he said. ‘God is shouting to us: “Something big is about to happen!”’
Centuries ago, people would bang on pots and pans during a red eclipse, trying to scare away the monster that was eating the moon. What are the fearful doing now?
America is rife with ‘ Doomsday Preppers’, an estimated three million people who are stockpiling food and weapons — some even digging bunkers — in preparation for what they see as the imminent collapse of the U.S.
Some believe Barack Obama’s administration will cause this nightmare scenario but just as many believe in an Apocalypse as predicted in the Bible and set into motion by this week’s blood moon.
Of course, those who fervently believe in this particular doomsday theoretically have nothing to be scared about. They are the God-fearing folks who’ll be taken up to Heaven. It’s the rest of the world that has to worry.
Pastor Biltz insists nobody in his 800-strong congregation is fretting about the approaching storm: ‘When there’s a Second Coming and they’re righteous, they have nothing to fear.’
However many Christians, even in America’s fundamentalist Bible Belt, have no time for the prophecy. Mark Hitchcock, a preacher and biblical prophecy expert, has written his own book telling the faithful not to worry about blood moons.
‘ I know people who are very concerned over this blood moon prophecy,’ he says. ‘ These sorts of theories are gaining traction because people are fearful.
‘With Syria, Ukraine and Iran, as well as mounting social and economic problems, a lot of people are ready to believe that everything is spinning out of control and coming to an end.’
There is, he insists, no need to panic. Let’s hope he’s right.