Four Blood Moons Page 4

  TETRAD

  A Tetrad is defined as four total lunar eclipses (Blood Moons) that consecutively occur during specific intervals of time. Lunar eclipses are relatively common, but total lunar eclipses are less common. A Tetrad is a rare occurrence and a Tetrad with a total solar eclipse within its series is even rarer. Furthermore, a Tetrad linked to Jewish history has only happened three times in the past five hundred-plus years—it’s very rare!3

  THE ROMAN CALENDAR

  The Roman or “pre-Julian” calendar was created during the founding of Rome and is believed to have been a lunar calendar. The calendar originally consisted of “hollow” months that were 29 days long or “full” months that had 30 days.

  The original Roman calendar was said to be invented by Romulus, the first king of Rome, at around 753 BCE (Before Common Era). The calendar started the year in March (Martius) and consisted of 10 months, with 6 months of 30 days and 4 months of 31 days. The winter season was not assigned to any month, so the calendar year lasted only 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for in the winter.4

  JULIAN CALENDAR

  The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar and replaced the Roman calendar in 45 BCE. It has a regular (common) year of 365 days divided into 12 months with a leap day added to the month of February every four years (leap year), thus making the Julian year 365.25 days long on average.5

  THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR

  The Gregorian calendar is today’s internationally accepted civil calendar and is also known as the “Western calendar” or “Christian calendar.” It was named after Pope Gregory XIII, who first introduced it. It reformed the Julian calendar in 1582.

  The calendar is strictly a solar calendar based on a 365-day common year, divided into 12 months of irregular lengths. Each month consists of either 30 or 31 days with 1 month consisting of 28 days during the common year.6

  THE JEWISH CALENDAR

  The Jewish calendar, also referred to as the Hebrew Calendar (Hebcal) is based on three astronomical phenomena: the rotation of the earth about its axis (a day); the revolution of the moon about the earth (a month); and the revolution of the earth about the sun (a year).

  On average, the moon revolves around the earth in about 29.5 days. The earth revolves around the sun in about 365.25 days, that is, about 12.4 lunar months.

  The Jewish calendar coordinates all three of these astronomical phenomena. The civil calendar used by most of the world has abandoned any correlation between the moon cycles and the month, but God’s chosen people did not!

  A BOOK OF SEVENS

  The Bible is a book of very sophisticated and exact numbers. Take Genesis 1:1 as an example: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

  Seven Hebrew words produce this sentence in English. There are twenty-eight Hebrew letters in those seven words. Four times seven equals twenty-eight. Four in Bible numerology represents the earth, and seven is the number of completion. Therefore, the mathematical message of Genesis 1:1 is that at the end of Genesis 1:1, God had created a perfect world.

  The Bible is a book of sevens. There are seven days in creation. God worked six days and rested the seventh. Through this timetable God signified that there would be six days of one thousand years, and the seventh day of glorious and perfect rest called the Millennial Reign. Second Peter 3:8 confirms God’s timetable: “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

  Continue with the concept of the Bible being a book of sevens. The apostle John addresses the seven churches of Asia (Revelation 2–3). In the book of Revelation there are seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials pronouncing the Great Tribulation judgments.

  There are:

  • Seven days in the week (Genesis 2:2)

  • Seven Ages and Dispensations (Genesis 1:3 through Revelation 21:1)

  • 7 x 7 = 49; the year of Jubilee; a time of full restoration (Leviticus 25:8–12)

  • 49 x 10 = 490; in the Bible God does something that changes the course of history every 490 years

  Dr. Clarence Larkin presents a brilliant and extensive study of the theme of sevens in the Bible in his book, Dispensational Truth.

  Larkin establishes the birth of Abraham as 2111 BC; 490 years (70 x 7) passed until the Exodus of the Israel from Egypt’s bondage.7

  The actual time was 505 years, but for fifteen years, according to Genesis 16:16 and Genesis 21:15, Abraham looked at Ishmael as the promised seed. It was, in fact, Isaac who was the promised seed. God did not count those fifteen years because the promised seed had not arrived. As I stated before, God establishes His own timetable.

  From the Exodus to the dedication of Solomon’s Temple was 490 years, as God counts time. The historical fact is that in this span of time God allowed Israel to be captured six times for a total of 111 years. When Israel is out of the land, God’s timetable stops!

  From the dedication of Solomon’s Temple to the edict of Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was 490 years, not counting the seventy years Israel was in Babylonian captivity; again, when Israel is out of the land, God’s timetable stops!

  From the edict of Artaxerxes to the coming of Christ was 490 years. From AD 47 to AD 537 is 490 years; from AD 537 to AD 1027 is 490 years; from AD 1027 to AD 1517 is 490 years. As far as we know, these three spans of 490 year intervals from AD 47 to AD 1517 are silent in which nothing significant occurred. Their biblical value is to continue the 490 year chronology that takes us to the Reformation and the Turk’s invasion of Israel, which occurred AD 1517.

  God uses the number seven to measure time and judgments which brings us to the Shemittah year which happens every seven years.

  THE SHEMITTAH YEAR

  Shemittah is the Sabbatical year, which occurs every seventh year. Shemittah is “Shabbat” (the Sabbath) for the land of Israel; the land “rests” in a fashion, similar to the way the Jewish people rest every seventh day (Leviticus 25:4).

  While observing Shemittah guarantees abundant produce, neglecting it leads to judgment. Jeremiah foretold that the Jewish people would be exiled for not keeping Shemittah by not allowing the land to rest (Jeremiah 17:4). When the Jewish people violated the law of Shemittah, God exiled them for seventy years until the land “enjoyed her Sabbaths” (2 Chronicles 36:19–21).

  Jewish tradition teaches that exile is the penalty for the three cardinal sins of murder, idolatry, sexual immorality, and for neglecting to keep the laws of Shemittah! The next Shemittah year occurs in 2015, which is also the appearance of the final Four Blood Moons that align with the Feasts of the Lord within this century.

  AMERICA UNDER JUDGMENT

  In America the judgment of violating Shemittah is not linked to the land of Israel but to our national disobedience to the Word of God. We give our allegiance to the idols of self-indulgence and greed, and our immorality is equivalent to that of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  The year 2001 was a Shemittah year. What happened that year in America? On September 11, 2001, we were attacked for the first time on our soil since the British burned the White House in 1813. (The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred before Hawaii became a state of the Union.)

  Radical Islamic terrorists came to our country and hijacked three commercial planes with box cutters and flew them into New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly three thousand of our citizens and crushing the illusion that America would never be attacked on our soil by an invading foreign power. September 11, 2001, will forever be remembered as America’s new Day of Infamy!

  Add seven years to the year 2001, and you have the year 2008, another Shemittah year. What happened that year in America? The Wall Street Journal reported8 that the economic collapse of the American economy began at the end of November 2007, the results of which became obvious and painfully real when the stock market collapsed 777 points on September 29, 2008.

  What’s next?

  The next Shemittah year occurs in 2014–15, which takes
place within the series of the next Four Blood Moons.

  God always sends a nation warning before He sends judgment; are we listening?

  Will America be at war? Will America’s mountain of debt come crashing down, destroying the dollar? Will global terrorists attack our nation again with a force that will make 9/11 pale by comparison?

  The attacks on the Twin Towers were on September 11, 2001.

  The Wall Street crash was on September 29, 2008.

  The next Tetrad will end in September 2015, which will include the Year of Shemittah. Will a crisis happen as before? What earthshaking event will it be?

  This we know: things are about to change forever!

  THE ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF PROPHECY

  When discussing the signs of the times you want to find someone who is an absolute authority on Bible prophecy; someone who is always right and has never had to change his prophecy chart. Well, I have found that Someone. He is the Living Word! He is the Word that “became flesh and dwelt among us”:

  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

  (JOHN 1:14 NIV)

  Jesus took His twelve disciples up the slopes of the Mount of Olives to give them the Spine of Prophecy—it was everything they needed to know from that moment until His glorious second coming.

  The Spine of Prophecy is revealed in chapter 4.

  SECTION 2

  THE SPINE OF PROPHECY

  CHAPTER 4

  The Spine of Prophecy

  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

  —MATTHEW 23:37

  The spinal column is the articulated series of thirty-three vertebrae in the human body from the base of the skull to the tailbone. This is the support pillar of our divinely crafted physical body. Let one vertebra become dislocated, and the body immediately begins to suffer. Let two become dislocated and the body becomes incapacitated and surgery is required. In many ways the spine determines the health of the whole body.

  That’s the reason I have titled this seminal chapter “The Spine of Prophecy.” As long as each prophetic vertebra is in place, it produces peace and confidence concerning our future and the future of the world. Let one element (vertebra) of prophecy get distorted and you begin to suffer spiritually. Let more than one element get dislocated and your theology is skewed needing a scriptural adjustment to correct.

  Before we can fully grasp the significance of the coming Four Blood Moons, we must know and understand the spine of biblical prophecy concerning the end of the world as we know it. We will look closer at the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew to reveal the blueprint of things to come.

  The Author of Matthew 24 is the only Master Teacher of Prophecy who ever lived—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of David, our King, and our Redeemer. Let’s join Jesus, the Rabbi, and the twelve disciples at His Prophecy Conference on the Mount of Olives.

  THE PROPHECY CONFERENCE

  In the theater of your mind, go back with me two thousand years as Jesus of Nazareth is leading His twelve disciples out of the majestic Temple of Jerusalem toward the Mount of Olives.

  They cross the Kidron Valley and start to climb the rocky slopes of the Mount, which is studded with ancient olive trees that have witnessed biblical prophecy unfold through the ages. As they climb toward a clearing of trees, the mood is somber for the disciples are beginning to feel that their future is uncertain.

  Jesus sits on a large boulder under the shade of a massive tree as a cool spring breeze blows His hair away from His face. The Master is sitting on the very place where the prophet Zechariah had predicted that the Messiah would stand when He came to establish His eternal kingdom (14:4).

  The disciples gather closely; this is the moment Jesus has chosen to share the future with them—the very Spine of Prophecy.

  The Twelve were filled with gut-twisting anxiety because Jesus had clearly told them that He was going to die (Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:18–19). The disciples had been certain that Jesus would establish an eternal kingdom now and that they were going to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel now (Matthew 19:28–29)!

  What did Jesus’ foreboding declaration mean?

  The disciples were so certain the glorious kingdom was going to come about in their lifetime that two of them had their mother lobby Jesus for preferment so that one could sit on His right hand (the position of power) and the other on His left.

  When Jesus informed the determined mother that He was going to die, the rabid enthusiasm among His ambitious disciples immediately diminished to an all-time low. They were looking for diadems—not death!

  To make the mood even worse, Jesus had recently blistered the Jewish leaders by publicly calling them “hypocrites” (Matthew 23:13). Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees that their converts were “twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (v. 15). He accused them of being “fools and blind” (vv. 17, 19) and “blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (v. 24).

  This scorching sermon directed at Israel’s elite established religious order continued with Jesus pointing His forefinger in their ashen faces and saying, “You cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence” (v. 25). He called them “whitewashed tombs . . . full of dead men’s bones (v. 27), guilty of “shedding the blood of the prophets” like their forefathers (v. 30–31 NASB). Jesus said to them, “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (v. 33). Obviously Jesus didn’t read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

  There was no organ playing “Just as I Am” in the background, and Jesus wasn’t asking for hands to be raised for those convicted of sin. No one was taking photos for His monthly miracle magazine. Jesus was not wearing a six-inch diamond-studded cross around His neck and a pinkie ring on his finger. There was no limo lurking in the shadows to speed Him away from His adoring audience.

  The truth is . . . Jesus was so common in His appearance that Judas had to kiss Him to identify Him to the Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. The scribes and the Pharisees were flooded with rage at this rogue Rabbi from Nazareth who dared to question their holiness and condemn their unlimited pomposity and offend their endless religious pride.

  This same religious pride continues today as the sermons of many twenty-first-century clergy have become more a mixture of pop psychology and psychobabble than the pure preaching of the gospel. Their purpose is to make the hearers feel good instead of challenging them to do good. These modern day messengers are more concerned about their reputation than winning souls; they need to catch the spirit of Jesus recorded in the book of Matthew.

  SATAN’S SNARE

  “From pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and from all want of charity, Good Lord, deliver us.”1

  Pride is Satan’s snare!

  The spirit that caused Adam and Eve to sin against God was pride; they would rather point fingers at one another than repent of their disobedience. The spirit that caused Cain to murder Abel was pride. The spirit that caused Israel to follow other gods was pride. And the spirit that sent Jesus to the cross . . . that lurked in the heart of every Pharisee . . . was the spirit of self-righteous pride.

  That same demonic spirit is destroying America; it deceives us in believing that we know how to run our lives and lead our nation better than God can. America is going the wrong way, and in our vainglorious pride we have refused to change direction.

  Pride goes before destruction,

  And a haughty spirit before a fall.

  (PROVERBS 16:18)

  Pride is the swelling in a heart filled with self-importance. Pride lifts me up so I can look down on you. Pride is a spiritual cancer that devours
families, destroys marriages, divides churches, and corrupts governments. Pride is what makes half of our country’s leadership look in the mirror every morning and sing “Hail to the Chief”!

  Pride is rooted in idolatry—you worship yourself. You don’t need your wife, your husband, or your children. You don’t even need God . . . because in your world you are God!

  Pride is a poisonous weed that grows in all soils without need of water or care. It consumes and kills everything it touches.

  But for pride, the angels who are in hell would be in heaven.

  But for pride, Nebuchadnezzar, who ate grass in the forest with cows, could have been in his royal palace.

  But for pride, the Pharisees would have received Jesus Christ as freely as His disciples—but the piercing words of the Nazarene cut the pompous religious leaders to the bone, and they began to plot the murder of the Son of God! Don’t ever forget: Jesus was murdered by the pride of the self-righteous religious leaders of the recognized church in Jerusalem.

  Pride is a cancer that kills everything and everyone it touches. Is it in your church? Is it in your family? Is it in you? Get it out now! Your very spiritual survival is at stake.

  America is ensnared in self-indulgence and its future hangs in the balance. Our moral and spiritual foundations are rapidly being destroyed. Our arrogance is producing a socialist state that is becoming our god. The entitlement state of mind has created a nation that looks to the government for the answer to our problems, when the only answer is, “Our Father which art in heaven.”