On the 3rd of April 33 AD Israel suffered a massive earthquake. This quake had been proceeded by 3 hours of darkness. Once the darkness had passed the Moon glowed blood red.
This was the first Good Friday, the day that Jesus was crucified and gave His life on the cross. This greatest act of love and salvation the world has ever known was marked by these natural events.
Today on Good Friday 2011, nearly 2,000 years later, we at Redskynews.com identify and explain these events for the first time in history.
We also point our readers to the near future when we will all witness similar events marking the fulfilment of Jesus’ act of love and salvation and His soon to come return.
The Crucifixion.
On Friday April 3rd 33 AD, Jesus was crucified at 9.00am and at midday the Sun was darkened. This darkness continued for 3 hours and at three O’clock there was a massive earthquake seconds after Jesus died.
Some reports outside of the New Testament also support this account and talk of the Moon being blood red.
The purported Letter from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius claimed the darkness had started at the sixth hour, covered the whole world and, during the subsequent evening, the full moon resembled blood for the entire night.
The Gospel of Peter stated that the darkness began at midday (the sixth hour), covered the whole of Judaea, and led people to go about with lamps believing it to be night.
The Darkness.
Many people have tried to attribute the darkness to a solar eclipse. There are two problems with this theory.
The first one is the period of darkness: The longest ever recorded total eclipse lasted only 7 minutes and 31 seconds, nowhere near the required 3 hours.
The second problem is that there was no eclipse of the Sun in 33 AD. There had been one 4 years earlier, but the path of the darkness completely missed Jerusalem and there is still the problem of the 3 hours.
A much more plausible explanation is that the darkness was caused by a volcanic ash cloud. Now there are no active volcanoes in Israel, but just over the Jordan border in Syria is Jabal ad Druze which consists of 118 holocene volcanoes that could have been responsible for producing an ash cloud. These volcanoes are on the African Rift Zone which travels from North Africa across the Red Sea and up through Israel which would have also been the cause of the earthquake.
The Earthquake
There is geological evidence for the earthquake which can be calculated as having a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale.
An outcrop of laminated Dead Sea sediment can be seen at Wadi Ze’elim above the south western shore of the modern Dead Sea near the fortress of Masada. In this sediment outcrop is a distinctive one-foot thick “mixed layer” of sediment that is tied strongly to the Qumran earthquake’s onshore ground ruptures of 31 B.C. Thirteen inches above the 31 B.C. event bed is another distinctive “mixed layer” less than one inch thick. The sedimentation rate puts this second earthquake about 65 years after the 31 B.C. earthquake. The crucifixion earthquake of 33 AD left direct physical evidence in a thin layer of disturbed sediment from the Dead Sea.
The Blood Red Moon
Some scholars have tried to attribute the red Moon to a Lunar Eclipse.
If there was a red Moon then it couldn’t have been caused by a Lunar Eclipse simply because of the timescale. A Lunar Eclipse only lasts for a few minutes in its total stage and not all night.
Some scholars believe there was a blood red Moon because Paul quotes the prophet Joel in Acts Chapter 2 V 20 when he is talking about Christ’s Crucifixion. The prophet Joel however was not referring to Christ’s crucifixion and Paul knew this, he was in fact referring to the end times we are now living in. What he spoke about in his prophecy we will all see by the end of this decade and is explained in “The Global Meltdown Domino Effect” which you can download free from this website.
If there was a blood red Moon at Christ’s crucifixion, then the most likely cause were fine particles of volcanic ash in the atmosphere filtering out all but red light from the Moon.
In Conclusion
On the first Good Friday there was clearly geological activity on the African Rift Zone in Israel and over the border into Syria. This resulted in some volcanic activity at Jabal ad Druze which produced an ash cloud that drifted south over Israel. Three hours later, the Rift Zone produced the earthquake. As the ash dissipated, the moon appeared blood red.
These are all events that we will see again shortly, as God uses His creation to mark the end of one age and the start of another, but amidst all of this, there is one message and one message only that is important and this is it. “Hear the Words of Jesus and believe in Him”
Article by Andrew Inns (Redsky)
