WASHINGTON – If it’s not too cloudy tonight and tomorrow night, you may be startled by the size of the moon.
It’s the first of three so-called Supermoons this summer.
And the discoverer of the blood moons phenomenon, Pastor Mark Biltz, author of “Blood Moons” and the inspiration for a documentary movie of the same name, sees a connection to the “signs in the sun, moon and stars” promised in the Bible.
This weekend’s sky show will be strongest at 7 p.m. Eastern Saturday when the moon will be large and strangely luminous. It will also be just 222,611 miles away from Earth and in what is known as its perigee. Full moons vary in size because of the oval shape of its orbit and its elliptical path around Earth. When in perigee, the moon is around 50,000 km closer than when it is furthest away, or in apogee.
But an even better show is coming later this summer on Aug. 10 when the moon will be 863 miles closer than on Saturday, and will become full on the same hour as perigree and will appear at its brightest in 2014.
Unlike solar eclipses and other celestial treats, Supermoons occur every 13 months and 18 days. The last time a supermoon made headlines was in June last year, when it appeared to be 14 percent bigger and 30 per cent brighter.
The distance of the moon from Earth varies in its orbit because the orbit is elliptical. The average distance from Earth to the Moon is 238,900 miles. When you have a combination of a full moon that is also closer it is considered a Supermoon. Typically, it is said, this occurs about once a year. But this summer there will be three in a row – July 12, Aug. 10 and Sept. 9.
But, to appreciate what these astronomical signs mean from a biblical standpoint, Biltz says you must check the biblical calendar – sometimes referred to as the “Jewish calendar.”
“Amazingly, according to the biblical calendar months these fall in the month of Tammuz when Israel worshiped the golden calf, the month of Av, when the 10 spies brought the evil report and when the Temple was destroyed twice on the same day, and the month of Elul, which is the month of repentance,” says Biltz, who discovered the blood moon tetrad occurring in 2014 and 2015 coincides with Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles in those successive years. “There is also added significance as it precedes a Shemitah year, or the seventh year of the seven-year cycle beginning this Rosh Hashanah. Next year, it happens again!”
Biltz, of El Shaddai Ministries in Tacoma, Washington, points out that in Genesis, God said He created the sun and the moon for signals about coming events.
“Are we watching?” he asks.
Credit to WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/first-the-blood-moon-now-the-supermoon/#CiOEpupa3zlUFYz7.99
