Return To The Mount Of Olives

The disciples asked, “Lord give us a sign.” The first sign was the Matthew 12:39-40. “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” This is Jesus death, burial, and resurrection.

Another sign was the first blood moon. Luke 23:44 "It was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until the light of the sun was gone.” This was preached about by Peter in Acts chapter 2:19-20 “And I will cause wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below—blood and fire and clouds and smoke. 20 The sun will be turned into darkness and moon will turn blood red, before that great and glorious day of the Lord arrives.” What most people miss is that this is not Peter preaching about something that will happen in the future. Instead it is Peter telling us what he just witnessed was this fulfilled prophecy of Joel 2:31 “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” The sun’s light stopped shinning. As you know the moon only reflects light mainly off the sun. As the sun light stopped shining while Jesus was on the cross the moon reflected only the other celestial light giving it that red glow known as a blood moon. As Jesus red blood was shed on the cross this was the first red blood moon. It wasn’t caused by a solar eclipse it was caused by God who stopped the sun’s light from shinning and the moon to turn blood red to fulfill the prophesy of Joel so that all the world could see salvation had arrived! Acts 2:21 “And anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

We could talk the rest of the day about the meaning and prophecies about the blood moon and truthfully none of us have the answers. But I encourage you to go back and read these prophecies of Joel and teaching of Luke and Peter in Acts and see how they all connect to point to salvation on the cross and the second coming of Jesus.

I told you at the beginning of the sermon that I was going to talk about the Jewish cemetery on the southern part of the Mount of Olives. It was over 3000 years old with an estimated over 150,000 graves. The bible is clear about this. On that first resurrection morning Matthew 27:52-53 “And the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, 53 and came out of the graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto man.”

Easter is about the same promise that when Jesus Returns to the Mount of Olives at his Second Coming. First Corinthians 15:51 says, “Behold I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.”