Leonard: The Messiah’s lunar eclipse
About 20 years ago a lawyer in Texas named Rick Larson took an interest in the Jewish and Christian scripture references to things about the sky: most notably the stars. In Genesis 1: 14, it is written: “Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years …” In other words, according to the Bible, God put the stars in the sky for a few reasons, one of them being “for signs.”
After years and years of research, along with a trip or two to NASA (so that they could check his math), Larson was beside himself with a few of his findings. He was able to mix ancient texts with modern technology to “illuminate the sky” with a computer program called “Starry Night.” With “Starry Night” anyone can pick any point on the planet, at any time, on any date, and see exactly (exactly!) where the stars were and what they looked like from any point of reference on Earth. Thanks to the math of Johannes Kepler we can know, almost like clockwork, where the stars and planets were and will be on any given night. Pretty cool, eh?
Here’s the amazing historical part: Larson wanted to see what was going on in the sky during a certain Jewish Passover in Jerusalem in the first century. He needed to find an exact date and then account for the differences between our Gregorian calendar and the Hebrew calendar to type it into the program. He also needed to find a Passover that took place on a Friday (just like your birthday isn’t always on the same day of the week, neither are holidays) while a Roman Curator by the name of Pontius Pilate was in Judea because the date he was looking for named that holiday and that man.
Ancient non-Biblical historians tell us that Pontius Pilate was the procurator during the years 26 AD to 36 AD. From the second book in the Bible, Exodus, we know that Passover falls on Nisan 14. Larson needed a Nisan 14 Passover that landed on a Friday when Pilate was Procurator: Let’s go!
Ultimately, he was looking for a Passover where the Preparation day before it had a mysterious darkness fall over the land (what today we would refer to as a lunar eclipse) from noon until 3 p.m. (written about in Matthew 27:45). Lo and behold there was a Passover on a Friday on Nisan 14 in the year 33 AD, the date which corresponds to our April 3.
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The moment had come when he typed April 3, 33 AD into Starry Night with Jerusalem as his reference point. Sure enough, on that date at those times, one can see a lunar eclipse bring mid-day darkness in Jerusalem (for more info go to Bethlehemstar.com).
This day is what is referred to by billions around the globe as “Good Friday.” At the exact time Jesus was crucified on the cross, God’s stars were giving a sign to all mankind (and we are still talking about it today). It happened just as the Jewish prophet Isaiah said it would happen in chapter 53, verses 3-10. Isaiah wrote in the prophetic perfect tense where a future event is seen as having already happened. Read this and see if you can see how clearly it speaks of Jesus:
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.”
A few thousand years ago Phlegon Trallianus, in his history entitled “Olympiades,” wrote in Greek, “In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (32-33A.D.) a failure of the sun took place greater than any previously known, and night came on at the sixth hour of the day (noon), so that stars actually appeared in the sky; and a great earthquake took place in Bithynia and overthrew the greater part of Niceaea.”
Fascinating.
Scott Leonard is the president of Ascend Vail. You can reach him at ascendvail@gmail.com
