Why didn’t Jesus return during the blood-red moon of 2015?

Response

A prevalent belief in recent years suggested that a sequence of crimson moons in 2014 and 2015 would serve as a sign of Jesus’ second coming and the realization of biblical prophecy. A lunar eclipse is commonly known as a “blood moon” or “blood-red moon” due to the reddish or orangish hue the moon takes on during this event. There were four lunar eclipses during 2014 and 2015. Some prophecy teachers foresaw that this series of blood moons, known as a tetrad, would fulfill end-times prophecies found in Joel and Revelation.

What intrigued prophecy scholars was not only the quantity of lunar eclipses during those years but also the specific timing of these events. In both 2014 and 2015, a total lunar eclipse coincided with the first day of Passover and the first day of Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). Additionally, in 2015, there were two solar eclipses in addition to the two lunar eclipses. Similar sequences of lunar eclipses occurring in consecutive years have occurred seven times since the era of Christ. Some of these occurrences have coincided with significant years for the Jewish people, such as 1948 (the year of Israel’s statehood) and 1967 (the year of the Six-Day War).

The Bible contains references to a moon appearing as “blood” in two passages. Joel 2:30–31 states, “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.” In Revelation 6:12, John describes one of the seal judgments during the Tribulation: “I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” Other passages also speak of the moon being “darkened.”

(Matthew 24:29; Joel 2:10).

A tetrad of lunar eclipses—and the timing of those eclipses in the Jewish calendar—is quite uncommon, but not unprecedented. Therefore, the occurrence of the eclipses, though intriguing, did not prove that Jesus would return by 2015. Additionally, the descriptions of the signs of the Day of the Lord by John and Joel could possibly allude to solar and lunar eclipses, but there are alternative explanations for those phenomena, such as the atmospheric changes mentioned in Revelation 6:12.

The theory of the blood-red moon was always just that—a theory, regardless of the insistence of some teachers. Even as a theory, it came perilously close to violating the Bible’s warning against setting dates for the return of the Lord. “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” « But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. », (Mark 13:32). Why did Jesus not return during the blood-red moon of 2015? Because the time for His return had not yet come.