“The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.”  (Joel 2:31)

On Monday night / Tuesday morning, just after many in North and South America were finishing their first Passover Seder, here in Israel we were excited to watch the first lunar eclipse of the year being streamed live on the NASA website.

John Hagee presents information on the coming Blood Moon Tetrad.  (YouTube capture)

This first eclipse of the year is not only remarkable because it coincided with the first night of Passover, but also because it is the first of four consecutive lunar eclipses that will coincide with the Jewish feasts of Passover and Sukkot in 2014 and 2015.

This series of four eclipses will occur at approximately six month intervals and is called a Tetrad.  And because the moon turns red (from the reflection of all the sunsets and sunrises around the earth) as it passes through the earth’s shadow, some call the eclipse a Blood Moon.

Full lunar eclipse on April 15, 2014

It is likely no coincidence that this Tetrad will coincide with Passover and Sukkot in both 2014 and 2015.

Genesis 1:14 states that the stars will be used as signs: “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for appointed times and for days and years.”

And over the last two thousand years, when Tetrads coincided with the Jewish festivals of Passover and Sukkot, they coincided with major events in Jewish history that also fulfilled Bible prophecy:

• The Tetrad of 1493–94 occurred after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, which took place in 1492.
• The Tetrad of 1949–50, followed the establishment of the modern-day independent State of Israel and the subsequent War of Independence.  In 1949, Israel had its first legislative election.
• The Tetrad of 1967–68 coincided with the 1967 Six-Day War and the reuniting of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel Defense Forces paratroopers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall shortly after its recapture in 1967.

In 2007, after a lunar eclipse that was visible in Israel, American Pastor Mark Biltz first noticed the blood moon phenomenon when he compared NASA’s estimates of eclipses with the Jewish calendar.

“We are on the verge of witnessing something historic.  This has happened only eight times over the last 2,000 years!  And the last two times these occurred on the Jewish holidays there was a war in the Middle East regarding the nation of Israel.  These are patterns and historical facts that cannot be disregarded.  The Jewish Talmud records that total lunar eclipses are indicators or omens for the nation of Israel,” he said.

Of course, lunar eclipses don’t have to happen in sets of four to have significance.  The eclipse in 2007 that Biltz took notice of occurred the same year that Hamas took control of Gaza (June 7–15).  The Annapolis Conference held that year in November in Annapolis, the capital of the US state of Maryland, marked the first time a two-state solution was considered as the means to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Whether the Blood Moon Tetrad concerns the peace talks, the Iranian nuclear threat or some other event, something BIG is going to happen here in Israel over the next year or two, and we will keep you posted.