Another blood moon rose this weekend, stirring fresh questions about what the Bible says and doesn’t say about heavenly signs. What should we make of it?



Another blood moon rose over the weekend, fascinating astronomers and sky-gazers worldwide while also captivating Christians who see a connection to biblical prophecy.

A blood moon occurs when the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, casting a reddish shadow on the lunar surface during a total lunar eclipse.

Blood moons -- which are simply total lunar eclipses that give the moon a reddish tint -- usually take place about once every two to three years at any given location on Earth. Globally, though, they’re a bit more frequent. There are typically around one to three total lunar eclipses somewhere in the world each year, but whether you can see one depends on where you live.

Sunday’s total lunar eclipse did not pass over the United States, but instead over parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. (The most recent total lunar eclipse in the U.S. took place in March.)

Many Christians see a tie between blood moons and biblical prophecy, pointing to multiple passages in Scripture about the astronomical event.

Joel 2:31 says of the last days, “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”

Revelation 6:12 says of that time, “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red.”

Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 24:29 of the End Times, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

The Apostle Peter cited Joel when he said in his sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:20), “The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.”

Some Christian leaders have found symbolism in the frequency of blood moons.

John Hagee, in his book Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change, argued that a rare sequence of four total lunar eclipses in two consecutive years in 2014-15 (a “tetrad”), all occurring around Jewish holy days, was a divine signal of prophetic significance.

“Historically, blood moon tetrads have occurred during some truly world-changing events directly related to Israel,” CBN reported. “Three tetrads stand out over the last millennium, coinciding with major events for the Jewish people. They occurred from 1493-1494, 1949-1950, and 1967-1968. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain after severe persecution, and Christopher Columbus also discovered America, which would eventually become a safe haven for the Jewish people. In 1948, the modern state of Israel was reborn as a nation in its original homeland. … Finally, in 1967, Israel recaptured their capital of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.”

The tetrad, Hagee said, was not coincidental but part of God’s plan to announce major events concerning Israel and the world.

“The evidence is very clear Scripturally that God controls the sun, moon, and stars – that God is sending us a signal through the sun, the moon, and the stars,” Hagee recently told CBN. “The question is, are we listening?”

CBN noted that this month’s blood moon was the second of four consecutive heavenly events that could hold prophecy significance, beginning with the March 2025 lunar eclipse, continuing with another one in March 2026, and capping with a total solar eclipse (not visible in the U.S.) in September 2026.

Other Christian leaders, though, say blood moons are natural phenomena without prophetic meaning.

Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted in a 2014 podcast that there have been “hundreds” of blood moons since the time of Christ.

“They took place so many times that there are more occasions in which blood moons took place and nothing happened than blood moons took place and something happened,” Mohler said.

Mohler also pushed back against the idea of tetrads playing a role in biblical prophecy.

“There will be heavenly signs when the Lord returns,” Mohler said. “As a matter of fact, we are told that the sun and the moon will actually disappear because in the new heaven and the new Earth, the Father and the Son will be our lights. …But we are not told that as Christians we’re supposed to be paying attention to the stars or paying attention to the planets or paying attention to the moon. As a matter of fact, we are supposed to be paying attention to the Word, and we’re supposed to understand that God has revealed all things in His Word. We don’t need the heavens as a billboard in which God is speaking to us because God has told us that He speaks to us in His Word, and the sufficiency of Scripture is undermined by this kind of Christian speculation.”

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