The Blood Moons: The Tetrad That Announced the End of Times

On April 15, 2014, the Moon turned a coppery red color during a total eclipse that was visible across most of the Americas. That astronomical event marked the beginning of a tetrad: a series of four consecutive total lunar eclipses with no partial eclipses in between. American evangelical pastors John Hagee and Mark Biltz publicly announced that this alignment was not a simple celestial phenomenon, but the exact fulfillment of the apocalyptic signs from Judeo-Christian scriptures that heralded a geopolitical catastrophe of biblical proportions in the Middle East.

The blood moon prophecy asserts that these eclipses are divine signs sent to warn humanity of imminent events that will change the course of history. It is based on the coincidence of the tetrad's four eclipses with two of the most important holidays on the Hebrew calendar: Passover (the Jewish Passover) and Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). The coincidence of blood in the sky with sacred dates on Earth was interpreted as the starting of the clock of the Apocalypse.

The Origin of the Sign in Scripture

The root of this prophecy is found in the Old Testament. The prophet Joel wrote in chapter 2 of his book: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and dreadful day of Yahweh comes." This same warning was repeated by the Apostle Peter in the New Testament during the day of Pentecost, and appears again in the Book of Revelation, in the passage of the sixth seal, where it is described that "the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became entirely like blood."

Pastor Mark Biltz, founder of El Shaddai Ministries, discovered in 2008 using NASA data that a tetrad would occur in the years 2014 and 2015 that would coincide exactly with Passover and Sukkot. Biltz researched history and pointed out that the few previous tetrads that had coincided with these Jewish holidays had been accompanied by traumatic and momentous historical events for the Jewish people: the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, and the Six-Day War in 1967.

The Spread of Apocalyptic Fear

The prophecy gained massive traction when Pastor John Hagee, leader of one of the most influential churches in Texas, published his book *Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change* (Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change) in 2013. The book quickly became a bestseller and gave rise to a television documentary that was broadcast in movie theaters across the United States.

Hagee and Biltz argued that the 2014-2015 tetrad indicated that a large-scale military conflict would involve Israel, marking the beginning of the Great Tribulation described in scripture. During the eighteen months that the eclipse cycle lasted, millions of people closely followed the news from the Middle East, expecting that the beginning of each red moon would unleash the end of the global geopolitical order or the rapture of the Church.

The Passing of the Tetrad and Astronomical Reality

The four eclipses of the tetrad occurred on the dates predicted by science: April 15, 2014, October 8, 2014, April 4, 2015, and September 28, 2015. Despite the great anticipation generated by religious leaders, none of these dates brought about a devastating war in Israel, global financial collapse, or the end of the world.

Astronomers explained that the red color of the Moon during a total eclipse is due to Rayleigh scattering: Earth's atmosphere filters out the blue light from the Sun and projects red light onto the lunar surface, a constant and predictable physical phenomenon. Furthermore, they pointed out that tetrads are not spiritual anomalies; 62 tetrads have been recorded since the 1st century AD, and eight more will occur in the 21st century. Although the cycle ended without the prophesied cataclysm, the images of the bloodied moon against the night sky continue to feed the archetypal fear of celestial signs that science has not managed to eradicate from the human imagination.