Dear John and all -

Much has recently been made of the lunar tetrads but a quick search of the scriptures shows that there is no "match" between lunar eclipses on feast days and any signs the Lord told us to watch for.  The sole appearances of "blood moons" occur in Joel 2, Acts 2 (Peter quoting Joel), and Revelation 6.

In Joel 2/Acts 2 the Lord tells us of a specific sign that will precede the Day of the Lord.  That sign is NOT a tetrad of blood moons.  It is, rather, a sun turned to darkness (total solar eclipse) followed by a blood moon (total lunar eclipse).

THAT IS THE SIGN!  And as most of you probably know, there will be a total solar eclipse on March 20th followed by a total lunar eclipse on April 4th.  What you may not know is how rare this is:  according to research done by Renee Moses and Paul Begley, this is the ONLY time this sign occurs in the timeframe they investigated, which was from 1000 BC to 3000 AD.

I think a lot of the "tetrad" and "shemitah" discussion is distraction and may lead some people to miss the sign.  It is later than many of us think.  Remember, the sign is not for us: it's for the Jews.  It's certainly possible and not inconsistent with scripture for us to be gathered before the sign happens.

It's been suggested that the sun could be darkened by huge amounts of volcanic ash and similar debris, and that since we don't know when all the volcanoes may blow and create this condition, we won't know the day of the sign beforehand.   I would suggest that the required amount of volcanic or nuclear activity to darken the sun would not be a sign that the Day of the Lord was coming, but rather that the Day of the Lord had arrived.  This, I believe, is what is in view in Revelation 6, as the text explicitly states.

For this reason, I'm strongly inclined to believe that this is the year.

I discussed this more extensively on a recent podcast, linked here:  https://soundcloud.com/anakypto/the-black-and-red-signal

Hope to see you soon.

Best,

Steve
http://www.anakypto.com