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Iran and the Blood Moon: Prophetic Signs or Sensationalism? | Joe Hawkins | The Week in Bible Prophe
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- [00:02]
A
The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers Podcast hey everyone, Mondo Gonzalez here in studio. We have a Bible prophecy update with our good friend Joe Hawkins. And before we get to Joe, I just want to remind everybody about a couple things that we're just inviting you to join us June 4th through 7th at our Colorado Springs Conference, which we are calling Rapture in the Rockies and which we're hoping that we get raptured during the conference. Wouldn't that be awesome? And we just invite you to come. It's always a great time to be in Colorado during that time of the year. It's just really, it's just a phenomenal time. And so you can get more information@precywise watchers.com the conference is filling up and so we just invite you to join us. It'll be good. Prophecywatchers.com you can see the banner there. And if you can't make it in person, then we certainly invite you to join us through Live Stream, which will be in information about that will be coming out here pretty soon. But in the meantime, we're going to have 18 different speakers there. As always, it's such a good time to fellowship with people and to sit around and enjoy the beauty of God's creations. Love, love mountains. And so it's great to go there. I also want to remind everybody that we're going to Israel. Yes, Israel is at war. We're going to Israel May, May of this year that that trip is full. However, if you are still interested, we have another trip planned for January, late January into February of 2027. You can go to israel2027.com plenty of information there. We'll be going to Israel as well as Jordan. That'll be Mount Nebo and Petra and a couple other sites. It's going to just be a phenomenal it's a great time to be there because it's cooler. So israel2027.com check it out. And again, again we're hoping that for our trip coming up in May that everything will be calmed down by then. Today, what we want to talk about is certainly over the past few days we've seen again war number two with with Israel and Iran and this time with the United States at the forefront of it as well because of some of the threats that have been happening. And then after that, we're going to talk about tomorrow. There's a lunar eclipse tomorrow morning, March 3rd, and we're going to talk a little bit about what that means, what it doesn't means. As always, there's, there's a lot of people online that are creating a prophetic hysteria and sensationalism, I think personally, on the whole lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, blood moon idea. And so we want to address that as well. Should we be excited about it? Does it mean anything? What does it mean? A lot of people are claiming it means something and so we'll talk about that. But Joe, here we are.
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B
Welcome, man. I tell you what, we got a lot to talk about, don't we?
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A
Absolutely. So for the audience here, you know, people probably heard, you know, there was the negotiations were going on with Iran for a while and they kept getting dragged on, dragged on. And this is typical for people who have watched negotiations, even going back to Obama, that Iran is their masters at delay, their masters at equivocation. And for them, they, they, they chose wrong on this part with Trump and Trump was Trump gave many, many opportunities, as we saw last June, you know, the United States bombed some of their nuclear thing. But kind of tell us what happened here recently, what's been happening over the weekend? Give us an update.
- [03:26]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, unless you're under Iraq, you definitely haven't missed out what's going on in the news cycle. So we can go back to February 19th. You know, Trump gave his ultimatum to Iran, you know, 10 or 15 days. If you don't get right, if you don't come to the table, we're going to attack you. And what happened? Well, over the weekend, Saturday morning, early our time, I think it was around 9 o', clock, you know, in Tehran, where they just got massacred, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, Khmeini, he was gone. And it was, it was started by this trigger event is we have Operation Epic Fury on the, the United States side and Operation Roaring Line on the Israeli side. And Operation Epic Fury was started by this trigger event. And I believe that that trigger event was the, the compound that held Khomeini, that, that ultimately killed him with that strike. And then what ensued afterwards was just a barrage of attacks by the Americans and the Israelis. So much so. And as of right now, of course, you know, at the recording of this video, we're right around 2,000 missiles that have gone off there in Iran. You know, their leadership has been absolutely decimated. It seems like it's non existent. Trump came out on Saturday morning, you know, before this really went down, and he basically gave the people of Iran an opportunity. You know, amnesty, lay down your weapons, join the revolution, join the resistance. You know, we're going to give you your country back. It's going to be up to you whether or not you do the right thing. And you know, we see a lot of resistance still going on there. We see a lot of celebration going on there. Right? There's definitely an opportunity for the, the, the people of Iran to take, you know, take this opportunity and run with it and have a little bit of peace. Now of course we know, you know, from our Bible that it's not going to be a long lived peace if there even is one there in Iran, because we know eventually they're going to come back against Israel in the Ezekiel 38 invasion. But we do know that and we pray for a short time that a lot of the people there, that they come to know Jesus, that they come to know Christ as their Savior and that they could turn away from these wicked things that have been going on. But it seems like the, the leadership there, they've already put in place their new interim leader, which I just read that he may be, have already been taken out as well. You know, there's nothing, you know, no confirmation on this. And that's one thing that I would implore. The people that are really on social media, that are looking at the news outlets, take pretty much everything that you see with a grain of salt right now unless it's 100% confirmed. I mean, even whenever I was reading that Khomeini had been killed, I was like, I'm not going to believe it until it's 100% verified because you just, you just don't know. There's so much information out there that's false. But you know, we're, we're looking, I mean this is all out war. We're looking at, you know, hundreds and thousands of people have already been killed. I want to say around 2,000 have been killed on the Iranian side. Unfortunately we've had, I think six at the moment, American soldiers have lost their lives. We've even had some unfortunate friendly fire incidents. There was an incident at, in Kuwait where three of our fighter jets were shot down. Fortunately friendly fire, but fortunately the, the, the pilots were able to eject and they, they survived that. But, but this is all due to, we're having this, these friendly fire incidents because once the, the head of the snake was cut off, basically once KH was killed, it, you know, they didn't know what to do. And what did they start doing? They said, you know, what if we're going to go down, we're going to take everybody down with us. And they just started throwing missiles out. They Started hitting their own, all areas that they didn't even care about. And we have, you know, we have residential areas that have been hit and decimated. Civilians have lost their lives. And that's one of the, the most horrible things when it comes to war is the loss of innocent lives. And it's, it's something that, that we definitely need to continue to pray about and pray for those that are in the, in the midst of this battle that they can be protected, but ultimately that they have their faith and trust and hope in Jesus Christ as their savior.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, let's make sure that we keep this in context. So here you have this regime that has been a master of terror in the area for generations now, really since the revolution 1979. And so when you think about that, the snake that has his tentacles into Syria, into even with Turkey, certainly all the way into even many places in Iraq and other places, Qatar, when you look at that overall, the amount of money that they put in every single year for terrorism is tremendous. This goes back as well to the Obama era where Obama is releasing to them hundreds of billions of dollars. And so it's really unfortunate. But so the fact that many people are rejoicing over this, as you said, there are people in the streets are rejoicing that Khomeini was killed, that they had a picture of his body in the compound amongst many of his, many of his associates. There's, as you said, there's estimates of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of key leadership people in the Revolutionary Guard have been killed, defense officials, etc. So nevertheless, what did they do? They, they began to launch indiscriminately these ballistic missiles because what they were hoping was, well, if they start bombing, you know, Oman and especially the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, all across the, the Persian Gulf, they were hoping, even Saudi Arabia, they were hoping that if, if there's this indiscriminate bombing that there would be pressure by Oman and Saudi Arabia on the United States, like hey, hey, can you, you need to stop this. So they were hoping for international pressure to be put on the United States to stop their, their offensive. But it backfired because now Saudi Arabia is like, well, we're going to get involved, we're actually going to attack. UAE has, has decided they want to possibly join in the attack on Iran. Certainly Jordan has had missiles towards them as well. And so I just read earlier that the, that Britain and Greece, because some of the missiles are been heading towards Cyprus or drones. A lot of the, Iran has been one of the leading world advancers of technology, of suicide drones. And so it's fascinating all these things are happening. So you do have a very almost united coalition now against Iran. Many countries, European Union has condemned Iran. The, the ones that are the outliers here is you don't see anything from China or Russia. Russia came out, comment said this unprovoked attack needs to stop. And you're like, talk about hypocrisy. Here you are, you're actually saying this while you're in Ukraine. So nobody puts them, gives them any credibility at all. But the fascinating thing is the United States has, has attacked over 1200 targets. Israel has attacked at least that many. And what they've discussed was there are over 20,000 targets that are, that are going to be targeted. And they're hitting again over the first few days. Of course, they're hitting probably about a thousand targets a day. So that's a massive amount of munitions firepower. And so you figure how long is this going to last? Well, Trump has come out, others have said it's going to be a few weeks at least, in order to really destroy all, you know, the, whether they're bases, missile launchers, other, they're going to, they're going to certainly go after the nuclear, nuclear sites to bring those to smithereens as well as Israel is getting rid of all of the court systems, any sort of court police stations massively bombed, because that is the power structure that the Iranian regime is using in order to squash protests and to kill civilians. So they're getting rid of all of that police, really, communications, buildings, that allows for all of the integration of responses. So this is absolutely phenomenal. And you know, Joe, you bring up a good question. A lot of people asking two things and we'll get into it, but how does this affect Ezekiel 38, how does this affect Jeremiah 49, other things like that. But what we're seeing right now, you had a good quote earlier. Let's talk about some of the things that Hegseth has been saying, which I think is, is really poetic justice.
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B
Yeah, I mean, you know, he, Seth came out whenever he did this press conference today, and he said that, you know, that the regime that chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted. Death from America and death from Israel. I mean, that's, that is poetic. That's exactly what happened. They, they, they wanted it, and that's exactly what they got, maybe not necessarily in the way that they wanted. I was listening to a few earlier today, and they were talking about well, well, this is exactly what Khomeini wanted. He wanted to go out in this way, and I definitely think that he wanted to go out with a bang. This is the way that he envisioned the end of his life. I don't necessarily think that he envisioned it happening this way. I do think that this was taken by surprise, in a sense, but they weren't completely ready for this, which is why we see the type of response that we've seen. And you talk about the tentacles of basically terrorism that have reached out into the countries surrounding them, the proxies that they have in these other regions. You know, unfortunately, we have those even here in America. And we saw that come to play yesterday morning, on Sunday morning when this guy in Austin, Texas went and killed two, injured 14. Had a property of Allah shirt on or sweater on, and he had things in his vehicle that would lead us to believe that he was a Iranian sympathizer, that he was upset about this. You know, the FBI released statements prior to that that we should be on the lookout for the sleeper cell activity here in America, you know, on this stuff. Now, thankfully, that's the only thing that's happened to this point. I know that a lot of people are drawing the, the situation that happened in Cincinnati and even in D.C. in that. I don't think there's any, any evidence that would point those events to be in Iranian sleeper cells. But we definitely have sympathizers here in America that are upset that we did what we did, that, that here, here Israel is again dragging America into a war that we don't need to be in. And, you know, and our, our soldiers are gonna, are gonna suffer for it, you know, that, that they don't really quite understand the, the ramifications of what's going on and, and, and really what's happening here and the, the prophetic significance of what's happening here. Just like you mentioned, Ezekiel 38, you know, Ezekiel 38 has been one of those passages that's been on people's minds for years. And Jeremiah 49 kind of often times gets overlooked. And our good brother Bill Salas has done a lot of extensive writing and a lot of videos on this one that we actually posted earlier today on our channel. But Jeremiah 49, it specifically references this area there in southern Iran. And just, and, and I know you're going to read through Jeremiah 49 here in a minute, but just to give people a little bit of context on who, who is alarm. What is it? Where did these people come from? Well, well, Elam is the son of Shem, which is the son of Noah. Right. This is, this is the, the people that we're referring to. And, and, and the historical context behind Jeremiah 49 is the question is, has this prophecy been historically fulfilled? We know that the prophecy in and itself has not been fulfilled in its entirety because that's not going to occur until the latter days. And we're talking about in the millennial kingdom. This is not going to reach 100% fulfillment until then. But has it been historically fulfilled? As far as the bow of Elam being broken, what do you have to say about this? Because I know it's a lot of questions going on with whether or not Jeremiah 49 or what we're seeing right now is this Jeremiah 49.
- [16:20]
A
Yeah, even, even in the prophecy camp, you have a lot of different perspectives on this. But as you mentioned, our brother Bill Salas has done extensive work on this. And, you know, he's done a lot of stuff over the years where he's interacted with other prophecy teachers who. There's many prophecy teachers that say, no, this has been historically fulfilled. We. I even saw a comment just in the last 24 hours, 48 hours from Amir Tsarfatti who said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw this. And it's, it's fulfilled. It's been fulfilled. And, and Elam is, is, you know, basically Persia is Iran, and Elam is not. I think there's a couple things wrong with that. I think that again, Bill Salas has done so much work on it and he's provided verification. In fact, he's. He even will say publicly that one of the, the detractors was Mark Hitchcock, which we love Mark Hitchcock, great scholar. And Mark had believed this was fulfilled. Fulfilled historically. And, you know, Bill was just like, hey, bro, let's talk about it. You know, can you show me where it is? And so Bill has mentioned recently that Mark has since acknowledged that there. It has not been historic fulfilled historically from Nebuchadnezzar and other passages, because the prophecy in, in Jeremiah 49 was given around 597 B.C. so there was no subsequent thing after that where this has been fulfilled. Fulfilled. And you still have other prophecy teachers that are maybe trying to hold strong. But if you look again at some of Bill's work, he has shown John Walvoord and others, Charles Dyer, they have very clearly said, look, there's no history of this being fulfilled. Now let's talk about a couple other things we know. For example, in Ezekiel 38, it talks about Persia. Well, that's Easy. Persia is definitely an area that we know is easy. Wrong. But when it talks about Gog and Magog and the land of Rosh and Meshach and Cubal and Togarmah, you have all these other ancient phrases, these ancient labels for either lands or people groups. And so the important thing is to say that, well, the Elamites are all gone. Okay? That's one of the arguments by many is the Elamites are gone. They're no longer around today. It's, it's. They're all Iranians. Well, if you're going to say that, then what do you say about Ezekiel 38? Most of those people are gone. But what you do see in Ezekiel 38 again are labels for geographical locations. And so yes, peoples migrate, they ebb and flow. Certainly we know that from history. So when you think about, as you mentioned, for the, the geographical location of Elam, it's southwestern Iran. It's right along again the northeastern side of the Persian Gulf across. You have Qatar, you have Bahrain, you have basically Saudi Arabia. It all centers around that. But that southeastern portion of modern day Iran is the geographical location of the Elamites. And this is Elam. And it's again, it's a prophecy against Elam. So just like in Ezekiel 38, even though you've had a migration of people, the location is whom God is discussing. And what do we see? Well, again, as Christians, we don't want to see anybody die, let's be honest. We want everybody to come to faith and salvation through Jesus Christ. So, you know, Ezekiel 18, God says, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Okay? And that's our attitude. So when Khomeini dies, I'm not necessarily rejoicing because, you know, he's in hell now according to what the scripture would say, because he doesn't have faith in Jesus. Okay, that's a sad event. But the fact of the matter is it is good that he's gone because he was again, the blood on his hands is phenomenal. And again for sending indiscriminately, even going to, to last year where you have them sending missiles that are landing, just industry, it doesn't matter. He didn't care if it landed on a hospital, a elementary school, they sent them indiscriminate. So here's a guy that was extremely evil and wicked and it's good that he's no longer on the face of the earth. So. But in Jeremiah 49, I'll just, let's. It's not very long. It's Only a few verses, five verses. It says, the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah, the prophet, against Elam. Okay, so this is again right here out of the gate, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Judah. So right out of the gate, Elam is a location. If you notice, people are trying to say, well, the elites are no longer Elamites. They're gone. They've been scattered. It's against a geographical location here. Okay, so again, like me, like Meshach and Tubal, as we mentioned in Ezekiel 38, which is typical, it says, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the foremost of their might. So right here, out of the gate, I find this extremely interesting. The question is, is what we're witnessing right now, Is this Jeremiah 49 being fulfilled? I, I won't say 100% because I have to wait and see what happens. But it sure is fascinating that if you look at this and if you look at what's being attacked, a lot of the places in southwestern Iran, which is the Elam, geographical location, Bashur and other there, a lot of the nuclear sites are in this area. It's, it's pretty amazing when you look at it. The second thing I would say is that when, when you look at the, the geographical locations of this stuff, the, the mountains are there. And so you, you have, coming along the coast, the mountains are up kind of more towards Tehran and more of the, the initial sites of the, of the, of the area. But down here, Shiraz, down, I would say south, is where you have a lot of these reactors. So what else is Iran known for? Amongst everything else, if you, if you were to ask them, and this is what we've seen, what is their greatest weaponry? Well, it's their ballistic missiles and it's, and it's their, it's their drone technology. There's no doubt. And in fact, there was an interesting thing a few years ago, not even a few years ago, just, well, the last since Trump has been in. Iran is known for its shot drone. And Trump came in and said, hey, we're behind the game here. I want some drones like this. And so, and I want them cheap. $35,000, $40,000 each. So the, the military industry responded and said, yeah, we got a great drone. It's $40 billion. He said, you didn't listen to me. I said, 40,000. These, these. And so what they did is they basically reverse engineered Iran's drone and they matched it. And of course they did their own advancements on it. And so now we have our own fleet of basically kamikaze drones that we use now with, with again, no, no human potential of death. And so it's been again, kind of like poetic justice that one thing that Iran has been known for has now been used by others and especially the United States military. But it's interesting here that the, the foremost of their might has been their bow and their ability to launch from a distance ballistic missiles. And now that's exactly what Israel's goal is to take, to get rid of all of their ballistic missile abilities to construction, manufacturing technology. The United States is primarily more interested in the nuclear efforts. But it goes on. It says, against Elam I will bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven and scatter them toward all those winds. There shall be no nations where the outcasts of Elam will not go. So it's interesting here that you have a description of God coming in that is going to attack and get rid of the ballistic, you know, the bow, the four might of their strength. But he's going to do it from all different directions. And that is exactly, it's not like, again, you look, for example, in Ezekiel 38, they come from the north, right? That was pretty typical in warfare in Israel because you didn't really come from the south too much, you came from the north. But in this sense there isn't just some force coming in from one direction. God says they're going to come from everywhere. And so you see, whether it's Diego Garcia, whether it's Israel, whether it's, it's all the bases surrounding, from the south in the Persian Gulf, our aircraft carriers, all these things are coming from all the different directions. I find that very fascinating. It says in verse 37, for I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies and before those who seek their life. I will bring disaster upon them. My fierce anger, says the Lord, and I will send the sword after them until I have consumed them. I will set my throne in Elam and will destroy from there the king and their princes or their leadership. He says, but it shall come to pass in the latter days that I will bring back the captives of Elam. So that's it, that's, that's the prophecy. So there's a lot going on here. I find it interesting that, that God says that you have a connection to the latter days, which again, historically there's no evidence anywhere that this was fulfilled. You have evidence that God is going to break the bow, which is their long range Efforts, which is their strength. God is also going to destroy the leadership, but he's going to set up his throne in Elam. There's other, that phraseology is used in other prophets in speaking about just the sovereignty of God. I find it interesting that one of the largest revivals in the world right now is happening in Iran. People are, are coming and are reaching out to the Lord Jesus Christ. We know from for years that Jesus has been appearing to many in dreams because again, there's not a lot of churches going on there in the sense of overt public churches. So all those seeds that have been planted in the past, people are rejoicing in the streets because Khomeini is gone, his leadership's gone. So there's a lot of hope and confidence that there could be an even greater spiritual revival of the gospel in Iran. Is that what God means by setting his throne in Elam? We do know that again, Persia is a variety, is a big area. Persia is going, this is, that's what Ezekiel 38. Persia is going to still be involved in Ezekiel 38, but they're down on the list. They're not some of the key leaders. So in that sense they have this future involvement, but it's not as strong. They're not the ones leading the charge. And so the hatred of Israel by many there right now you have two groups. You have those that are pro regime and there was a massive, basically march or protest that was pro regime. There was a lot of people, I mean, thousands and thousands of people. So no doubt you have those that hate the government and those that are favorable of the government. But when we look overall, this last thing I'll say in Jeremiah 49 is that it's a little too early to say, yep, this is happening in our time, but man, it sure has a lot of similarities to what we're seeing in the text.
- [27:44]
B
Oh, 100%. And I think it would be certainly irresponsible of us to say factually that this is Jeremiah 49. It certainly seems like there's a lot of moving parts that could potentially lead to that as being a fulfillment. I, I, I hold the same position as you do. I don't know, I'm, I'm always one of those guys that's kind of a hurry up and wait kind of. Yeah, let's just see how this plays out because. And let's let the dust settle and we'll go from there. But you know, the terminology there that's used in Jeremiah 49, the breaking the bow of Elam you know, in some of the research that I've done, the Elamites were known to be archers. I think that we have a little bit of confirmation of that. And I think it's in Isaiah 22, if I'm not mistaken, the Elamites are referred to as those that have their quivers in their chariots. So I mean, you know, I think that there's some, some terminology there that would tie that to being archers. And like you said, the, the nuclear capabilities, the bow is the mechanism that would hold the missiles. Right? The, or that that would hold the arrows. And from the nuclear side, the, the nuclear facilities is what would hold the missiles. That would, you know, the launching mechanism, I guess is what I'm trying to get at there. So, you know, it would certainly makes sense if we see all of their nuclear facilities being taken out and there's absolutely zero nuclear capabilities. You know, at this, at that point, yeah, we could revisit it and say, yeah, Iran has no more nuclear capabilities, everything's been decimated. That's very possible that that was fulfillment of Jeremiah 49. But let's just kind of wait and see what happens because, but we definitely know that, that Persia, Iran, they're not going away because we know, we read about them again in Ezekiel 38. So whatever short lived potential peace that there may be, and like I said, and there's no guarantee that these people are going to turn, turn that way. They may just go the complete opposite of what they're doing. You know, they're, they're being given a, a golden opportunity. And I don't, you know, pun intended when I say golden. You know, the golden age. Are we about to see the golden age of Iran? You know, there's a lot of people that are hoping for that. I certainly hope that a lot of people do turn their faith and hope to Jesus. And we do know that there's a large revival going on there. But, but look, and you kind of touched on this a little bit at the beginning. You know, a lot of people are talking about the fact that this is happening around the same time that Purim is happening. But also there's this blood moon that's coming and, and, and is this lost on what's going on? I mean, is there any significance to this blood moon that we're going to be seeing tomorrow morning and the, and what's happening right now?
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A
Well, it's interesting that, that you know, I have very strong opinions about some of this only because, Joe, I've been doing this a long Time. Okay, so I've been around a long time and I've seen, unfortunately, a lot of sensationalism. And I just, I despise sensationalism and hype because I deal a lot with apologetics and over the years, evangelism, because. And I've seen the way that prophecy has been hijacked, especially the blood moon hysteria going back to 2014 and 15, and how it gives a black eye to those that are trying to evangelize and talk. Because then these comments get made, these. These potential prophecies or predictions get made, and then nothing happens. And then people will come to me and they'll. They'll mock prophecy people because, oh, yeah, what happened?
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B
And I.
- [31:25]
A
What happened with the blood moons? You know, we're still here. And so look, I understand to be excited about Jesus coming back. Man, I am excited. Let's just do it without predictions. And so just today I was reading something. I won't say the name because it's not worth it, but people are going, this blood moon's happening tomorrow. It has potential. It has tremendous. Not potential, has tremendous significance. You need to look at this. And I just think, here we go again with this nonsense. Because if you go back to the eclipse of April of 2024, same thing. I mean, millions upon millions of hits and views and everything else, and all these things about its significance. And here we are almost two years later now, in March, next month it'll be two years. And there was nothing specific in any of those comments and predictions that came true. Zero. And so what I want to say is that I wrote an article and we're going to share this in our substack. We just encourage people to check out prophecywatchers.substack.com and I have an article that I wrote about what does the Bible say about signs in the heavens? What are the limits to what it says? What does it really mean? We. There's no doubt that we see stuff in the book of Revelation, these very amazing events with the heavens. Jesus said the heavens would be shaken. Other Matthew 24. But in the book of relation, we see a lot of things. So we're gonna post that if people want to go to prophecywatchers.com bloodmoon or they can go to our substack page. They can see it there too. That should be up by tomorrow. But the fact of the matter is. Let me just outline a couple things here, Joe, because what people will say is, well, it can't be coincidence. It can't be coincidence. Well, what we say is Coincidence, God means other things. Many times we know that God's sovereignty, He works over all things. I find it very fascinating. There's certainly a sense of, of interesting and irony that here we are at Purim, going back the story of Esther, which, the story of Esther takes place in the location roughly of Susa, which is where Elam, ancient Elam. And so you have the story of Esther where Haman was going to kill the Jews. And of course, it turned back on its head, kind of what we said earlier. So here you have Khomeini doing something similar, even though he wasn't down in Elam specifically. So you don't have complete correspondence, but you do have similar things, which again, I'm not opposed to God having a sense of humor. But in the book of Genesis we see again, God make the statement. And I just want to read it because people have used this again, the blood moon hysteria, the solar eclipse hysteria. They've made all these comments and it just simply doesn't hold, hold water at all. And so in, in Genesis, it says this, this is Genesis 1:14, it says, and God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let there be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. So from this passage we see that God set up the heavenly realm. If you want to say stars, constellations, the moon, the sun, he set them up for five things to separate the day and the night. Well, there's your son. Let them be for signs. I could talk about that. For seasons. There's no doubt. Like, for example, I tell this people often, if you look at the Big Dipper at midnight, it'll tell you exactly which month you're in. And so if you want to talk about a harvest season or planting season, if you go out on the spring equinox and you look, for example, at the Big Dipper, it'll be in a very specific 12 o', clock, 9 o', clock, 3 o', clock, 6 o'. Clock. So it's, it's fascinating to me of where it's at in, in the summer or the winter. It's very specific. So the stars give you the seasons, certainly for days. We know again, even the moon cycle years, we see the overall Maserath. So all these things were given for all those reasons. Day and night signs, seasons, days and years. Well, what about signs, Mondo? What about signs? Well, people will use this as, that the sun and the moon were given as omens. They will equate signs with like A negative omen. But that, that simply is, is just not true. If you look at the word there, the word oat, it has a lot of different meanings in Hebrew, but one of them, in Joshua chapter four, it says, I've given these things as a memorial to you. That's really the word where it's the idea of a sign or a memorial or remembrance. And there's no doubt that when you look at the constellations or the other things, they are meant as a remembrance. They also help to bring, bring the, the festival cycles, the, the modim, the seasons, the moedim. It's very, very fascinating, but let me say this. Remember all these things were done prior to Genesis chapter three, when sin entered the world. That means their original intention. There was nothing negative about these. The normal astronomical cycle of the sun and the moon and the orbit around the earth and the 24 hours and all the constellations, none of those were meant as omens. Not a single time in the Bible do you ever have the natural order of events being used as something ominous. In Jeremiah chapter 10, the wicked religions would, would worship the sun and the moon and the stars and the hosts of heaven. That's why God was so upset. But they would use them to control people through omens and fear. God didn't create these things to provide fear or judgment or even a sign of judgment, not a single time ever in the Bible. So. But what about in the book of Revelation? Well, if you notice, for example, in Joel chapter two, it talks about the moon turning to blood. Well, that's before the great and terrible day of the Lord. But it also says there that in other portions, Revelation 6, that the sun is darkened. Well, tomorrow morning, 5 o', clock, at least for me, if it's clear there's going to be a blood moon. Well, how do you have that? The sun is shining light. The light is bending around the earth's atmosphere and through dust and other things. And it then, it then shines on the moon, which causes it to be red because the earth is blocking the sun and it casts a shadow on the moon. But that basically light that's bending around is what causes the blood moon. But if the sun is dark, which the Bible says it will be, you can't have a blood moon. So that what that tells me is when those events happen in the book of Revelation or Even in Matthew 26 and 27, where you have the sun going dark for three hours, there is no natural mechanism for that. That is a supernatural event. So what I'm saying is this God set up all of the signs and, or the sun and the moon and the stars to be for those five reasons. None of those are negative. God never says a lunar eclipse is bad. When you do see the blood turning red, it's a supernatural event. There are lunar eclipses, blood red moons, constantly. And in fact this blood moon is not even going to be over the land of Israel at all. And so when people say this is significant, significant, what is it signifying? There's no, there's nowhere in the Bible again, anybody that's trying to say that this is an ominous event or it's predicting judgment, that's Jeremiah chapter 10, verse 2. And well, you know what God says, avoid those people because they are pandering God's natural order for fear. And God never does that with the natural order. Now when you get to the book of Revelation, all bets are off because you have the sun being darkened, the moon being darkened, the stars themselves being darkened, and you have this supernatural, unheard of events that are happening during the book of Revelation. So all that to say is just want to encourage people, do your homework, look at what the Bible says again, we'll have the article put up there, but there is nothing to fear. And anybody that claims to that this is signifying something very specific, avoid them, ignore them. Because that's God tells you to avoid those people in Jeremiah chapter 10, verse 2, because they're pandering God's normal order of things and they're using it to bring fear or something ominous. That is not what the Bible says.
- [40:44]
B
Absolutely. And as the kids say these days, ditto on all that. Mondo. Right, ditto. So but with, with that, you know, there were so many people last year, whenever it came to the feast of Trumpets that got so bowled up in this is going to happen, the rapture is going to happen. And, and it led so many people to walk away that said, you know what, I'm done. I don't want to have anything to do with the church anymore. I don't want to have anything. I'm not watching it. You know, they, they were robbed of the blessed hope. They were robbed of, of, of, you know, looking for the appearing of our Lord and Savior, right? And potentially robbed of a crown that they may receive one day because they're no longer looking. Right. And anytime that we see things like this, these blood moons, that's taken our attention completely, you know, off the, the way that we should be. And I think the, the most profound thing that you said in that entire thing is this Blood moon. It's not even over the nation of Israel. It's not. I mean, like, so, like, why are we even concerning ourselves with it? So, you know, we have to be careful. We have to be more responsible when we, when we look at these types of things, because there are people that are looking to us. There are people that are looking on these YouTube channels, and all of these people, they're looking for direction, they're looking for teaching, they're looking for somebody to tell them what's going on. I hear that there's some kind of significance to this thing, this blood moon thing. Tell me what it is. And then when they go watch these channels, they may get their hopes up just to have them bashed. Just like last year with the, the, the unbelievable date setting that was going on. So many people got their hopes up and they were just dashed. And, you know, it's something that we definitely don't want to do here. I mean, we definitely want to look at what's going on in the world, but we, you know, sensationalism has never done anything good for anybody.
- [42:39]
A
Nope. I, I tell people, listen, church, be excited about Jesus, but don't be gullible. We saw this two years ago with the solar eclipse. Remember the solar eclipse of August of 17 and then of April of 24? And the x marks a spot. And it was this, this is, this is it. The X is there. It's going to. It's. It's a sign of judgment. It's a sign of this, it's a sign of that. Again, millions upon millions of views and hype and sensationalism. What was it? Nothing. It came to that. So don't be gullible in, in this regard. Now, granted, and I've heard other people say, and it's, it's very unloving. They'll be like, well, it didn't hurt my faith. Even though it came and went. I don't mind the predictions. It didn't hurt my faith. Well, you know, good for you. Yeah, honestly, I really am glad that your faith is able to be strong in that regard. But the loving thing to do in Romans 14, it says to love the brother that has weaker faith in you. Because I had some people go, well, if their faith was weak and it frustrated them, well, then that's on them. That's their problem. Have you not read Romans 14? Paul says, hey, we're supposed to even deny ourselves for our brother or our sister in Christ who has a weaker faith. Show compassion for them, and so don't simply Just dismiss them as having weaker faith. Because I'm not saying that. Paul says those who have more rules and more legalism, whether it's related to drinking or days or days of the week or food or things, yeah, they have a weaker faith. But Paul doesn't. He says, why do you show contempt on them? Why do you think you're more arrogant? Why do you show an arrogance towards them and contempt that just because your faith is stronger, well, don't set a stumbling block before them. So in this regard, what I hear people saying is, well, let the predictions continue because it doesn't hurt my faith. Well, it hurts theirs. Yes, it does hurt theirs. And so it is extremely unloving to encourage predictions or other things or just even insinuations. I think the loving is to recognize, listen, these things don't help anybody. And granted, if you've got strong faith, that's fine. But you know what? For the sake of those that are weak, stop doing it. And again, even for those that are strong, I would say, how strong is it? If you are allowing yourself to be gullible enough to believe these hype people, these sensationalists, just because you, just because your excitement is allowing you, that does. It shows you have a lack of discernment. Be excited, but be excited with discernment. And that's really the key in all of this. Again, listen, I'm ready to go today, okay? I'm as excited as anybody. But I also want to see, again, having a pastor's heart for people. I want to, I don't want to see anybody gullible. I don't want to see the cause of Christ get hurt. Because again, just today I'm telling you, I've seen things that this is super significant, this lunar eclipse for tomorrow. Lunar eclipses every year. There's at least two per year somewhere in the world. And does every single one of them have significance over the last 2000 years or 5000 years or whatever it is? The answer is no, they don't. So anyways, appreciate you bringing that up, Joe.
- [45:48]
B
Oh, yeah. And the last thing that I'll say on that is with all that's going on with Israel, Iran, all these attacks, people are looking for answers. They're looking for hope. They're not looking for a blood moon. So don't, don't, you know, your primary, your primary goal right now to people that are seeking hope, that are seeking answers, is to point them to Jesus. Don't point them to a red moon or a blood moon. Point them to Jesus.
- [46:13]
A
Absolutely. Amen. And well, Joe, it's always good. And giving a a little update here. Thanks everybody for watching today. Again we're we're watching the thing with Israel. We'll continue to be talking about it. No doubt we'll be assessing. I have plans to talk with Bill Salas as well. We're waiting to see some of this unfold a little bit more. We're being cautious as we wait, as we should. I find it interesting so far, no doubt. And as we know in the Middle east things change quickly. I mean over the last couple years after pre October 7th post October 7th, the whole geopolitics of the Middle east has changed dramatically. I mean who would have thought that the potential for the current regime in Iran might go down which again was hoped for. So keep watching as always. We are keep looking up, keep hoping. May the Lord come back today. That would be exciting, wouldn't it? So thanks Joe and thanks everybody for watching and we will catch you next time.