Author: Kevin Dickinson / Source: Big Think
“The blood moon is upon us again.” It sounds like a tagline for the latest Castlevania sequel, but the reality is a tad less theatrical. EarthSky reports that on the night of July 27–28, sky watchers in the Eastern Hemisphere will be treated to the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, hanging out for a stunning one hour and 43 minutes.
As we’ve come to expect whenever a blood moon arises, conspiracy theorists and fringe Christian evangelicals are heralding the event as a sign of the imminent apocalypse. Undeterred by previous predictions that didn’t pan out, these apocalypse prophets have taken to the tabloids, YouTube, and online forums to pronounce the fulfillment of prophecies that signal the end times are nigh.
Is the blood moon a sign of an end-times prophecy? No. Absolutely not.
But that doesn’t make for a very interesting article, does it? Instead, let’s see if we can’t find out why some people think it is.
By any other name
Before we get into the prophetic stuff, let’s quickly recap what exactly a blood moon is.
Typically, the moon reflects the sun’s light, but during a lunar eclipse, the moon’s orbit takes it through the Earth’s shadow. A total lunar eclipse occurs when this shadow completely covers the moon. Some sunlight still reaches the moon though, and since the Earth’s atmosphere filters out the blue, the light that reaches the moon has a ruddy hue.1 Hence the name.
As such, there’s nothing special about a blood moon. It’s simply a total lunar eclipse that’s been given a poetic nickname.
Although eclipses can be spectacular natural sights, they aren’t incredibly rare. NASA has calculated all of the lunar eclipsesEarth will experience in the 21st century, and it comes to a whopping 228 (85 total eclipses, 57 partial eclipses, and 86 penumbral eclipses).
In fact, we’ve already had one this year. On Jan. 31, 2018, the western United States was treated to a “super blue blood moon” — a name so stirring that NASA gave the event its own cinematic trailer.
Opening the sixth seal, film at 11
Many religions and folk traditions hold eclipses as the harbingers of divine change, not just in Christianity. Today’s version of the blood moon prophecy, however, gained traction back in 2014, when Mark Biltz and John Hagee released the books Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs and Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change respectively.
Both men argued that the four blood moons occurring between April 15, 2014, and September 28, 2015, were significant because they formed a tetrad — that is, four total lunar eclipses with no partial eclipses in between and each separated by six lunar months — that fell on significant Jewish holidays.2 Citing scripture to support their ideas, the two men argued that these eclipses provided evidence for the fulfillment of prophecy and the coming of the end times.
Examples of scriptures linking blood moons to Tribulation are Joel 2:31, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come,” and 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.”
Of course, September 28, 2015,…
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