Super Blood Moon To Create Celestial Dyad Of Apocalyptic Proportions? Not Likely, Says NASA

Tonight’s celestial duet of a super moon and blood moon, or lunar eclipse — together being called a “super blood moon” — has created a stir among conspiracy theorists and religious extremists who are claiming the rare event signals the coming apocalypse. Normally, neither super moons nor eclipses signify the end times, but the fact that this particular lunar eclipse is the fourth, and final, in the tetrad that began in April of 2014, and that it coincides with the super moon has many people worried.

Couple the super blood moon with the fact that all four of the lunar eclipses of the last two years have seemingly landed on Jewish holidays — April 15, 2014 (Passover), October 8, 2014 (Sukkot), April 4, 2015 (Passover), and September 28, 2015 (Sukkot) — and you have a recipe for literal disaster that has doomsday Christians quoting the Book of Joel to add credence to their fears, according to Times of Israel.

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord comes.”

Irvin Baxter, who runs Endtime Ministries in Texas, regularly posts videos on his YouTube account pontificating about this particular series of blood moons. The Guardian reports that Baxter spends a lot of time discussing God’s use of celestial events to deliver “signs” to his devotees — mentioning that the three wise men were led to the baby Jesus via a star — an example of God using “the heavens” to send signs.

Baxter also points out that previous tetrads — a series of four lunar eclipses, or blood moons — didn’t end favorably for Jewish people.

“The Spanish inquisition took place before the tetrad of 1493-94. The tetrad of 1948-49 occurred just after the founding of Israel. The tetrad of 1967-1968 occurred as the Six-Day War was fought in Jerusalem.”

Another YouTuber, Chris White, denies Baxter’s claims about previous tetrads, and exposes the truth behind the previous blood moons and the events they supposedly coincided with.

“The Spanish Inquisition started in 1478 and ended 350 years later. They have tried to give it credibility by saying it coincided with the ohambra decree being issued on March 31, 1492, when they expelled the jews, but the first eclipse did not occur until over a year later and the last eclipse was two years later. Unless saying over a year out is God’s prediction way, then this is not a match.”

White adds that the next blood moon occurred in 1949-1950, and that the eclipse believed to have occurred during the Six-Day War, actually happened 10 months after the war ended. He also mentions that there were two other blood moon tetrads that didn’t coincide with any significant events that Baxter has “conveniently” left out.

While the convergence of the super moon and blood moon is indeed a rare event — the last one was in 1982, and it won’t be seen again until 2033 — there’s certainly no evidence that with the super blood moon comes the apocalypse. To calm fears, even NASA put a statement up on their website regarding the super blood moon, which states “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”

[Image Credit: David McNew/Getty Images]