The recent excitement over blood moons began when Mark Biltz noticed that NASA listed a tetrad of four lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015, falling on Jewish holy days, something that has happened only eight times since Christ. John Hagee later popularized the idea. Evangelicals are double-minded here, finding significance in holy days they believe are no longer holy, and seeking a sign in the heavens while avoiding the sign of Jonah, which disproves Sunday-worship. Those who do not keep God's Sabbaths have darkened understanding (Psalm 111:10). Joel 2:31 speaks of the moon turning to blood before the day of the Lord, but other passages clarify its timing. The Sixth Seal of Revelation 6 pairs the red moon with a darkened sun, falling stars, and a receding sky, which go far beyond eclipses. Eclipses are predictable only because the heavens are now stable, whereas the Sixth Seal upends that stability. God promises to shake the heavens (Haggai 2:6, 21), Christ says the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Matthew 24:29), and Isaiah 13:13 says the earth will be moved out of its place. Any such events will therefore be unpredictable by NASA. They also come after the Fifth Seal's martyrdom and after the great tribulation described in the Olivet Prophecy, which has not yet arrived. The tetrad does not match all that Scripture says about the Sixth Seal, but it remains worth considering for its symbolism and for God's intent for the holy days.

The verses usually cited for the tetrad of blood moons actually describe the Sixth Seal of Revelation (6:12-14), which includes disturbances in the sun, moon, stars, and sky as a whole, so the lunar eclipses alone cannot fulfill it. Even so, the eclipses are not meaningless. They fall on days God marked out in Scripture: lunar eclipses on the Feasts of Unleavened Bread and Tabernacles, a solar eclipse on the last day of the previous Hebrew year, and a partial eclipse on Elul 29, the last day of the shemitah year, just before the Feast of Trumpets. The year of release matters because a nation that confuses debt with wealth invites economic collapse when God enforces the releasing of debts, as in 2001 and 2008. Such a convergence seems beyond coincidence. Genesis 1:14 says the lights were set in the firmament for signs and seasons (moedim), meaning God's appointed times of gathering, not summer and winter. When those lights darken on those times, there is at least an open invitation to consider what God is doing. Scripture links darkened sun and moon with judgment: Joel (2:10, 31; 3:15) places them before the Day of the Lord, Isaiah 13:10 applies them to Babylon, and Ezekiel 32:7-8 to Egypt, where the nation's light is extinguished. Ecclesiastes 12 uses the same imagery for a dying man's fading vitality. In each case the darkening signals the approaching end of a period of judgment.

While lunar eclipses are not necessarily rare events, what is unusual is for them to occur on God's holy days. Understanding those days is key to finding the right significance to these blood moons. Based on their arrangement, there is a connection between the first day of Unleavened Bread and the first day of Tabernacles, and it is on these appointed times that the eclipses are occurring. In this regard, it is quite fitting that we should see a darkening of heavenly lights on the second and seventh festival days and in relation to the changing of the year and the year of release because the nations of Israel have spit the law of God out of their mouths and certainly do not fear before Him. Perhaps the eclipses of 2014 and 2015 are only a coincidental natural phenomenon, but they may also serve as a prod to evaluate whether we are still walking in the light or whether the lights above us are growing dark.