Why didn't Jesus return during the blood-red moon of 2015?

And what will be the end of all this? The Lord says, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the pow ers of the heavens shall be shaken" (Matt. 24:29). This is the symbolical language of prophecy; but how is it to he interpreted? Peter tells us that no prophecy of the scripture is of its own or isolated interpretation(idias epiluseos); that is, the whole of the scripture hangs together, and there is a consistency, if not uniformity, in the use of prophetic figures. Now in Genesis the greater light, the lesser light, and the stars are described as ruling the day and the night respectively; and it will be found throughout the Revelation and prophecy generally, that the heavenly bodies are symbols of rule — the sun supreme authority, the moon reflected, while the stars represent the minor and subordinate vessels of rule. In the 29th verse then is symbolically portrayed the complete upsettal of all government immediately upon the conclusion of Daniel's seventieth week. What follows the great political convulsion? "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the land lament, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). To all, except the godly, how appalling will be this sight; but to the Jews who will have accepted, and glorified in, the "lawless" king, the antichrist, how terrible will it be to see the Jesus whom they had crucified and despised, suddenly appear on the clouds of heaven in supernal glory!

The tribulation will come to its end in final convulsions that will affect even the heavens, as verses 24 and 25 show. Sun, moon and stars are sometimes used in Scripture as symbols of supreme power, derived power and subordinate power respectively; and "powers that are in heaven" are in view, as the latter part of verse 25 shows. Still this discourse of the Lord is not marked by a large use of symbols, as the book of Revelation is, so we think that literal convulsions affecting the heavenly bodies must not be excluded, especially as we know there was a literal darkening of the sun when Jesus died. The darkening of that day will serve to throw into greater relief the brightness of His shining forth, when He comes in the clouds with great power and glory.

Not so prominently, but still clearly there, the Spirit of God had brought home to them the reality of judgment: "I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come" (Acts 2:19-20). All nature would quake in the presence of its Judge, and this judgment was imminent.

The external signs here named will precede the day which is still unfulfilled. It is vain to apply verses 30, 31 to the first advent. "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth" is evidently another character of things. "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of Jehovah come." There will be a remarkable outward manifestation of divine power before the judgment is executed. God always sends a testimony before the thing itself. He does not strike before He warns. It is so in His dealings with us every day. What Christian has a chastening upon him before he is admonished of the Spirit of God? There is always a sense of wrong, and a lack of communion sensible to the spirit before the Lord inflicts the blow which tells of His watchful love over our careless ways. He gives the opportunity, if one may say so, of setting ourselves morally right; and if we do not heed the teaching, then comes the sorrow. And so it is here. These wonders cannot but attract the mind and attention of men, but they will not really be heeded. Infatuated and under judicial hardness, they will turn a deaf ear to all, and so the great and terrible day of Jehovah will overtake them like a thief. But God at least will not fail. He had foretold that so it should be, and His people will take heed. There will be a remnant enabled to see, and pre-eminently, as we know, from among the Jews, though by no means limited to them, as we learn from the second half of Rev. 7 and the end of Matt. 25. There will be still the witness of "all flesh" prepared for the glory of Jehovah about to be revealed.

Of course this is not to be literally taken. Such a convulsion would be the total destruction of the universe, whereas the world exists long after these events. It is then a figurative description, borrowed from the magnificent prophecy of Joel concerning the events preceding the day of the Lord "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." (Joel 2:30-31.) A portion of the imagery is taken also from the words of Isaiah, describing "the indignation of the Lord upon all the nations" [or Gentiles], where he says, "All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll and all their hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falls from off the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree." (Isa. 34:2, 4.) These passages show not only the time and circumstances, but the proper interpretation of the figures used in the Revelation. The time is before the coming of "the great and terrible day of the Lord." The circumstances are God's judgment of the nations. The interpretation of the figures is the overthrow of the powers of the earth by great social and political convulsions. This is the meaning to be attached here to the "great earthquake." The sun, the supreme authority, is obscured, and the lesser powers, the moon and stars, are either disturbed or utterly overthrown. Places of strength and security, the mountains and islands, are removed; and a general shaking of all the kingdoms follows the wars that have raged, and the wretchedness and anarchy they have brought in their train.

'Times and seasons' as relating to the earth are first mentioned in Genesis 1:14. We have the exact words here, and we meet with them again in Acts 1:7 and 1 Thessalonians 5:1. It is clear that this expression refers to God's dispensations and dealings on the earth. In Acts 1, the disciples were not to know the time of God's dealings. Yet the Thessalonians did know the manner of God's predicted dealings, and the order in which they would transpire: indeed they knew this perfectly, though they were ignorant of the coming of the Lord for His saints, as revealed in the previous chapter. But then, that coming has to do with a heavenly calling, while 'times and seasons' relate to the earth.

It was necessary that the Apostle should write to these believers concerning the true Christian hope, in order to correct their erroneous thoughts as to the coming of the Lord for His saints. But as to the “the times and the seasons”, which relate to the day of the Lord, there was no need to write in detail. Times and seasons, do not refer directly to the Church; they look on to the times, and conditions, in which God will carry out His ways with the earth, as foretold in the prophetic Scriptures. The Lord had said to His disciples, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in his own power” (Acts 1:7). Hence any attempt to calculate and predict the date of the Lord’s coming, from Daniel’s prophecies, or other Scriptures, will be futile, and worse, for it will be an attempt to find out what the Lord definitely says is not for us to know.

In His last conversation with His disciples, in which we know He had spoken of all power being given to Him in heaven and on earth, and in which He promised that they should, not many days thence, receive power from on high, they asked Him, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" His reply was, not that they were wrong in expecting that such an event would ever take place, but — "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power." Who would imagine, from such a reply, that their question had reference to something which at no time, and in no season, was ever to take place?

The fixing of dates as to the coming of the Lord is a pernicious thing, and those who do it are presumptuous people. The Lord Himself said, "But of that day and that hour knows no man, no, nor the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13:32). Yes, says some one, but we know the year. Indeed? Then why did the Lord add, "Watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is" (verse 33), and again, "for ye know not when the Master of the house comes, at even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning" (verse 35)? To the apostles who have given us the Word of God by the Holy Spirit's inspiration, the Lord said, "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power" (Acts 1). If this knowledge was withheld from them in the Father's wisdom, where is there any indication in the Word that it would be revealed to us? These sayings of the Lord have to do with His coming in glory, and they surely abide true in regard to it. The church period has intervened, it will close with the Rapture, but not a word or a hint is given in relation to the Rapture that the time of it may be known. Days, months, years and numbers are given in the Scriptures, but they have their relation to Israel and the earth, and are all in abeyance until the heavenly company is secured and caught up, then the clock of prophecy will start again, and God's calendar will justify itself. Meanwhile we must accept the words of the Lord, and wait and watch and work.

There appears to be a contradiction between verse 7, and what Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:1 and 2. But there the point is that they knew well what was going to transpire as regards God's dealing with the earth: here that we may not know when, since that is a matter reserved by the Father for Himself alone. Our business is to render true and diligent witness to Christ. What that witness will effect is not plainly stated until we reach Acts 15:14.