On Saturday evening, right-wing televangelist John Hagee hosted a special program designed to promote his “Four Blood Moons” theory which contends that the occurrence of four lunar eclipses on Jewish feast days over the last two years is a sign from God that “something dramatic [will] happen in the Middle East involving Israel that will change the course of history in the Middle East and impact the whole world.”
Moderated by conservative radio host Joe Pagliarulo, the program featured Hagee, pseudo-historian David Barton, Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, and astronomer Hugh Ross, a creationist who runs a ministry called Reasons to Believe which seeks to “spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research” support Creationist beliefs.
Ross’ participation in the event was something of a mystery since, from his opening remarks, he made it very clear that he did not subscribe to Hagee’s premise in the slightest, saying that there is no statistical significance to these blood moons because they are very common and that Hagee is merely retroactively attaching spiritual significance to these routine events.
Hagee, of course, did not particularly appreciate the fact that Ross was completely undermining the entire premise of the show, as well as his book and movie based upon this premise, and so he challenged him to explain how it was possible for blood moons to occur on significant Jewish holiday in two consecutive years.
Ross responded that lunar eclipses are so common that it is “mathematically inevitable” that one would be able to link them up to significant events in the Bible or in the history of Israel if that is what one set out to do. The Bible, Ross said, does say that there will be signs from God, but they will be rare things like an asteroid hitting a body of water and turning the water to poison, not common things like a lunar eclipse.
“My problem with the blood moons is that it’s not rare,” Ross said. “It’s hindsight. You’re looking at different events in Israel’s history and looking at different events in America’s history and you’re finding fits.”
“These blood moons are visible here but not in Israel,” Ross stated at one point, much to Hagee’s surprise. Explaining that “a total lunar eclipse basically is visible to about one-third to one-half the earth,” Ross asked why, if these blood moons are so significant to Israel, they are visible in America but not in Israel.
Hagee clearly was not aware of this fact, as all he could come up with as a response was that “I don’t have an answer for why Israel can’t see it”:
