(Marsha West – Christian Research Network) A total lunar eclipse will occur May 26, 2021 and will be visible in North America, South America, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Some call the full moon “Super Flower Blood Moon.” The moon will turn a reddish color; thus the term Blood Moon. It will be the second of 2021’s two supermoons and it is going to be the largest and brightest moon of 2021.
EarthSky writer Bruce McClure examines the Blood Moon phenomena in “What’s A Blood Moon?” McClure informs us that:
Around the year 2013, when the expression Blood Moon first gained widespread popularity, a Blood Moon didn’t refer to just any total lunar eclipse, but to a member of a special series: four totally eclipsed moons in a row, each separated by six lunar months, with no partial lunar eclipses in between. Such a series is called a lunar tetrad [four things in a row]. Two Christian pastors popularized the term Blood Moon in their book, in which they discussed the upcoming lunar tetrad (April 14 and October 8, 2014; April 8 and September 28, 2015) in apocalyptic terms.
The four lunar eclipses came and went, and, although the world didn’t end, we gained another dubious meme: Blood Moon.
It’s not that the words “blood” and “moon” never appeared together in the same sentence before 2013, especially as regards eclipses. A full moon nearly always appears coppery red during a total lunar eclipse. That’s because the dispersed light from all the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets falls on the face of the moon at mid-eclipse. For some decades at least, it’s been common for astronomy writers like us to describe an eclipsed moon as blood red. You just didn’t, until recently, hear the same eclipsed moon called a Blood Moon.
John Hagee and Mark Biltz, “spoke of the 2014-2015 lunar tetrad as representing a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. After all, the moon is supposed to turn blood red before the end times, isn’t it?” These men speculated that this would fulfill the last days prophecies in Joel 2:28-32: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes” and the passage from Revelation 6:12: ”When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood.”
“That description,” says McClure, “sounds like two different astronomical events: a total solar eclipse and total lunar eclipse. Sun turned to darkness = moon directly between the Earth and sun in a total solar eclipse. Moon turned to blood = Earth directly between the sun and moon, Earth’s shadow falling on the moon in a total lunar eclipse. Solar and lunar eclipses are very ordinary and frequent happenings that have occurred many times in our lifetimes. In fact, every year there are four to seven eclipses, some lunar, some solar, some total, some partial.”
Later in his article McClure answers the burning question: How common is a tetrad of total lunar eclipses? Continue reading →