By Credo Quia Absurdum
There's a video recently published by Rugby Christadelphians
on their rather strangely named Bible Truth Prophecy Video Vault channel on YouTube
entitled The Coming FOUR Blood Moons and Bible Prophecy Concerning Israel.
It's only 5 minutes long and there is just music on the
audio track backing some really weird animation and texts explaining that the
tetrad of full lunar eclipses starting on 15 April 2014 as well as the total
solar eclipse of 20 March 2015 are sure signs to Israel and to the world that
Jesus is coming!
You will know that Jesus is reported to have said
"there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon..."
And it is prophesied that "The sun shall be turned into
darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the
Lord come."
People noticed long ago that this passage from the prophecy
of Joel, quoted in Acts, might be a description of total solar and lunar
eclipses. Modern science understands how
and why these phenomena occur, and can predict exactly when they will
happen. In contrast, in the ancient
world eclipses were unexpected, and would have been frightening and portentous. The ominous description of the moon being
turned into blood is because the moon can take on a sunset-red colour when it
falls into the shadow of the earth during a lunar eclipse.
The modern notion of the blood moons in the Rugby
Christadelphians video is lifted entirely from an American evangelist named
Mark Blitz who apparently looked at NASA data for eclipses in the hope of
finding something to tie in to bible prophecy.
He found the series of four full lunar eclipses happening on 2014-15 all
fall on Jewish feast days! Passover and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) in both
years. The video tell us that this is
beyond co-incidence!
But it's not really beyond co-incidence at all. It is design! The Jewish calendar is based on lunar months always starting with the
new moon, and Passover and Sukkot are celebrated on the 15th day of the month -
at the time of the full moon. The only
time when a lunar eclipse can occur!
Since a lunar eclipse can occur in any month you would expect that about
1 in 6 chance in any given year of it occurring on one of the feast days. Not really a long shot!
But there are four in a row on Jewish feast days? Well, this would be expected to occur from
time to time given the way the Jewish calendar works. And of course it has happened before, and
Blitz again looked at the data of two previous concatenations of lunar eclipses
and feast days and noted that it happen in 1493-94 and in 1949-50. He couples these dates respectively with the
Jews being expelled from Spain, and the establishment of modern Israel. It's a pity that the banishment of the Jews
from Spain happened in 1492 and modern Israel was established in 1948, making
these signs from heaven a little tardy to say the least!
The video then tells us that even more remarkable is the
solar eclipse that will happen in 20 March 2015 - 1st Nisan in the Jewish
calendar - the day Israel was set free from bondage in Egypt. A sure sign to Israel that something is about
to change! One slight problem with this is that if you put that date into the
Hebrew to Gregorian date converter here you
find that 20 March 2015 is equivalent to 29 Adar 5775 - the day before 1
Nisan. Again, not such a great sign
after all!
The real clincher is that NONE of this eclipses will be
particularly noticeable in Israel - and if they are God's sign to Israel
wouldn't he make sure that they were? The
first of the three lunar eclipses are totally invisible from Israel, only the
last will be seen at all as a partial eclipse.
A partial eclipse does not make a blood red moon!
The Solar eclipse - this great sign to the world - will only
be seen in totality if you are in the Norwegian Sea, all the way up to the North
Pole. The only place it will be visible
from land is on the Norwegian Island of Svalbard - which has a population of
less than 3000 souls.
If this is God's great sign that "something is about to
change" you would think he might consider making it visible to rather more
people!
At about 4:20 the video tells us that "The blood moons
are a Sign to Israel" quickly followed by a picture of the western wall in
Jerusalem like the one at the head of this post with a huge red moon in the sky.
By now I won't have to tell you that that picture is utterly bogus!
The plain facts of the matter are that eclipses are natural
phenomena that we have a good understanding of and are able to predict. By pattern seeking and some confirmation bias
Mark Blitz has spun a story about these perfectly normal natural events being
"signs" to Israel and to the world that the second coming is near,
and the Rugby Christadelphians have been taken in.
Last Sunday evening I set my alarm to wake me in the early hours of Monday morning, so I could go out in the dead of night and under lovely clear skies witness the awesome but totally natural lunar eclipse - the last of the much heralded four blood moons. It's a rare enough event that in a lifetime you'll only get a few chances to see it - and it was worth the tiredness of the following evening!
ReplyDeleteThe tonight I watched again the video at the top of this post. And I thought about that test of a prophet that they used to tell me about in Sunday School.
Rugby Christadelphians told us that the lunar and solar eclipses of the last 18 months or so were a sure sign that "Something is about to change" and they heralded the return of Jesus.
And guess what - nothing has changed, and Jesus hasn't returned.. So abject failure on the prophecy test then, which means we can all ignore everything else they say, because by god's own word they have proved themselves to be false prophets!
I have no doubt that they will explain it all away as disappointed christians have done for two thousand years.
When will they ever realise that it's all fantasy. It's not true! Jesus is never coming back and there will be no future glorious kingdom where all is put to right. We have one life - and it is up to us to live it well and do our best to make the lives of those we share this planet with as good as they can be.
Let's waste no more time on the silly fantasies of our superstitious and ignorant ancestors.
What Christadelphian said Christ would return on the day we had the lunar eclipse?? I thought it said no man knows the day or the hour? We know there are many things we read in prophecy telling us these are the last days BEFORE the return of Christ. I think you misunderstood. If there are any Christadelphians who said it was on that exact day then they also should read what the word of God says more carefully. People make mistakes not God.
ReplyDeleteCredo, I don't think anyone claimed the event would happen on the day. If you look at the historical fulfilments claimed, they're somewhere in the middle of the tetrad (or maybe even a bit before or after?)
ReplyDeleteThat's one of my objections to the blood moon theory. It's too easy to find something that looks like it fits when you've got a two year period to play with. And the poor credulous reader just sees the list of events in the article, not the cherry-picking taking place to produce that list of events or the lack of real predictive power.