Long before John Hagee, the current well-heeled purveyor of this crap, there was Hal Linsdey's (the list is quite long actually but these are two I am most familiar with) Late Great Planet Earth?. To borrow from Wiki, Late Great Planet Earth? was a "premillennial, dispensational eschatology, comparing end-time prophecies in the Bible with then-current events in an attempt to broadly predict future scenarios leading to the rapture of believers before the tribulation and Second Coming of Christ to establish his thousand-year (i.e. millennial) Kingdom on Earth." During Lindsey's run of popularity, only three books of the Bible existed, or so would think, "focsing on key passages in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation,"
So End-Time predictions are not new, they have been with a long time (like, first century long time). But what many may not be aware of, is that Hagee's "Blood Moon" bullshit isn't new either. In 2008, Mark Biltz was interviewed on Prophecy in the News by the late J. R. Church and Gary Stearman; Later that month WorldNetDaily.com did an article summarizing the interview.
A minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God’s annual holy days seven years from now could herald what’s come to be known as the “Second Coming” of Jesus.What is rather odd, in that same article Lindsey is quoted as saying that Biltz's theory is “pure speculation.”
“God wants us to look at the biblical calendar,” says Mark Biltz, pastor of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. “The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as well. So we need to be watching the biblical holidays.”
In a video interview on the Prophecy in the News website, Biltz said he’s been studying prophecies that focus on the sun and moon, even going back to the book of Genesis where it states the lights in the sky would be “be for signs, and for seasons.” [The URL provided does not appear to be working, but I did find this, which I believe is the original interview. Biltz is also interviewed here in 2013.]
,,,
Gary Stearman of Prophecy in the News noted, “When we think of the sun being darkened and the moon not giving her light, we usually think of some astronomical catastrophe – perhaps the sun sputtering and the moon being affected by all this. But maybe it’s time to rethink this a little bit and think of it as a natural cycle, the cycle of the eclipses.”
Thus, Biltz began focusing on the precise times of both solar and lunar eclipses, sometimes called “blood moons” since the moon often takes on a bloody color. He logged onto NASA’s eclipse website which provides precision tracking of the celestial events.
He noted a rare phenomenon of four consecutive total lunar eclipses, known as a tetrad.
He says during this century, tetrads occur at least six times, but what’s interesting is that the only string of four consecutive blood moons that coincide with God’s holy days of Passover in the spring and the autumn’s Feast of Tabernacles (also called Succoth) occurs between 2014 and 2015 on today’s Gregorian calendar.
“The fact that it doesn’t happen again in this century I think is very significant,” Biltz explains. “So then I looked at last century, and, believe it or not, the last time that four blood red moons occurred together was in 1967 and 1968 tied to Jerusalem recaptured by Israel.”
“In my 50-something years of studying prophecy, to me the greatest indication of the time of Christ’s return is based around the general things of prophecies coming together in the same time frame.”
He mentioned not only Israel’s birth as a political state in 1948, but the increase in tensions with Muslims, the rise of Russia, China and the European Union, which he says is even “calling itself the revived Roman Empire.”
“I see the whole sweep and panorama spinning together in a precise scenario,” he said.What is interesting to note, we have the same event(s) but varying degrees of "what it all means". While Blitz focused on the "return of Christ" in 2014/15, others like Hagee, now have the idea that the "Blood Moon" shtick may herald the Great Tribulation or a war involving Israel or persecution against Israel. On the flip-side, others outright refute the idea because it contradicts their view as to the timing of the rapture.
Besides the obvious that
Hagee’s four blood moons refer to eclipses at the start of the Jewish festivals of Passover and Sukkot (also called the Feast of Tabernacles), twice each, all in a row.With the caveat,
You might think that this is an incredible coincidence, but remember that these two holidays start on the day of a full moon by definition, and lunar eclipses can only happen during full moons. There are 2.3 lunar eclipses per year out of 12.4 full moons per year. (If more than two eclipses per year sounds high, remember that they don’t last long. If the eclipse is happening during the day in your part of the world, you obviously won’t see it.)
That any particular Passover or Sukkot begins with a lunar eclipse isn’t surprising, though four of these eclipsed holidays in a row is much less common.There are many more issues that "need" to be dealt with.
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Blood moon has some expecting end of the world - CNN.com
