There’s a Blood Moon on the Rise: Pop-Prophecy’s Lunar Lunacy
By Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr.
Copyright © Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (January 20, 2026)
Daniel E. Harden and Brett Prieto (Editors)
All Rights Reserved
The month of March is historically associated with the Ides of March (March 15), signaling a season of doom on the Roman Calendar.[1] Here in the year 2026, the pop-prophecy pundits are cueing up their own version of seasonal doom, as they once again march to one of their favorite tunes. Only their single won’t be released on the 15th of March, but on the 3rd instead – with the year’s first Total Lunar Blood-Moon Eclipse[2] since September 7, 2025.[3] That’s right, folks, There’s a Blood Moon on the Rise![4]
March is also associated with March Madness, and modern-day prophecy punditry is truly maddening. They keep shooting the ball in the wrong direction.[5]
Marching to the Madness
The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), prophecy-madness central, was quick to jump on the story – with its headline reading: “CELESTIAL SIGNS in 2026: Another ‘Blood Moon,’ a ‘Ring of Fire’ and Total Solar Eclipse.”[6]
So, it appears as though one of Johnny Cash’s hits, Ring of Fire, has also made it into the pundits’ 2026 playlist,[7] along with Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.[8] Apparently, every good song needs a good apocalyptic remix, and the prophecy pundits are always ready to supply the lyrics.
Based on their early speculations, 2026 is shaping up to be another big year in end-times sensation. In previous articles, we’ve seen that Donald Trump has been crowned as both this year’s Beast and this year’s Antichrist – which the pundits mistakenly think is the same entity [9] At any rate, CBN was also quick to point out that Trump was “Born on a ‘Blood Moon’”[10] – which sounds a lot like yet another CCR classic tune.[11]
Born on a Blood Moon
In the article on Trump’s blood-moon birth date, CBN reports some stats given by Pastor Steve Cioccolanti on a podcast called The Strang Report.
According to Ciocconlanti, not only was Trump born on a blood moon, but we’ve had “10 symmetric Blood Moons” between 2010 and 2019. Four of those occurred between 2014 and 2015, when Trump was getting ready to run for his first four years as president. Putting it all together, if you can call it that, Ciocconlanti says,
“Then we’ve got another blood moon, the 10th and final in the series that occurred at the midpoint of his first term as president,” the pastor told Strang during the podcast. “That happened on the night of the 20th to the 21st of January 2019. They’re symmetric, they fall on feast days and they keep pointing to Trump.”[12]
Once again, an overactive imagination breeds reckless speculation and leads to more spurious correlations. This will be added to the list of failed predictions that have crippled our witness, decade after decade. Past failures of the blood moons to produce their desired effect resulted in GotQuestions.org having to answer questions like: “Why didn’t Jesus return during the blood-red moon of 2015?[13] Ciocconlanti’s claims are just more of the same, and it’s time for a change.
We need to change the way we look at Bible prophecy. We need to change our focus from today’s headlines to yesterday’s history. We need to change our lens from newsfeed exegesis to textually-driven exegesis.
We need to ask: what does the Bible say about these things?
The Bible’s Use of Astral Imagery
With that said, the New Testament twice mentions the idea of the moon turning to blood. Peter says it on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:20), and John says it in the book of Revelation (Rev. 6:12). It’s important to point out that no one takes this literally, not even the prophecy pundits. The moon has never literally turned to blood – not on the day Donald Trump was born in 1946, nor during all the blood moons between 2000 and 2019, nor will the moon literally become blood on March 3, 2026.
As pointed out in a previous article, some think that Acts 2:20 and Revelation 6:12 mean that the moon is “rusting.”[14] But rust is not blood, and there are Greek words that the Biblical writers could have used if they meant rust instead of blood.[15] If we want to know what the Biblical writers meant by the moon turning to blood, we have let the Bible itself provide us with the answer.
Jesus used similar language as Peter and John when he said that “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give it’s light, and the stars will fall from the sky” (Matt. 24:29). As James Jordan writes, “Anyone familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures would recognize immediately that what Jesus says about the sun, moon, and stars is not to be taken to refer to the physical cosmos but to the political cosmos.”[16]
One example of this prophetic language would be Daniel 8:23, where Antiochus Epiphanes is pictured as throwing stars down to the earth and trampling them.[17] This cruel ruler didn’t literally trample literal stars under his literal feet, but he did oppress and trample the Jewish people and their leadership for 3 ½ years.[18]
Another example would be Obadiah 4, where the towering nation of Edom is said to have set its “nest among the stars.” The Edomites didn’t literally live in nests like birds, nor were they part of the crew of the Starship Enterprise trekking among the literal stars. The language speaks to the lofty and exalted position of its leaders – of whom God says, “I will bring you down” (Obad. 4).
The same type of prophetic language is used in the New Testament, and the collapsing astral imagery is meant to telegraph the idea that God is going to shake up the geopolitical world of the first century.[19] Consequently, Ken Gentry comments on Revelation 6:12:
“…a blackened sun and a blood-colored moon (6:12b), along with the stars that fall to the earth (6:13), dramatically picture the collapse of political authority. Stars appear to be fixed in the sky (Isa. 40:6), but in apocalyptic images they are shaken loose. The obscuring and or removal of the sun, moon, and stars signifies diminished governmental rule, the collapse of the political order – here the fall of Jerusalem and its high priestly aristocracy.”[20]
Gentry’s commentary[21] is a beneficial resource in helping us to change the way we approach Bible prophecy, which in turn will help us change the way we approach the world around us.
Time for God’s People to Shine
Taken in this light, all of this really does have relevance today, but not in the pop-prophecy way. 2 Samuel 23:3-4 tells us that “He who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God, is as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds.” This is what leadership is supposed to look like when it’s functioning properly and ruling “in the fear of the Lord.” It’s supposed to be like the sun shining brightly on a morning without clouds.
When leadership fails and falls, however, the day of the Lord draws near like “a day of clouds” (Ezek. 30:3).[22] Or, as Micah says, “The sun will go down over the prophets, the day will become dark over them” (Mic. 1:6). The brightness of leadership becomes engulfed in the dark clouds of judgment when the leaders neglect to walk in righteousness and truth.
This is as true today as it was then.
Psalm 2:10 calls upon the kings of the earth to “worship the Lord with reverence,” and Revelation 1:7 calls Jesus “the ruler of the kings of the earth.” As God’s people today, we still have a prophetic role to play. Not in the sense of foretelling, but in the sense of forthtelling. We need to bring forth the dictates and demands of God’s word to “do justice and love mercy” (Mic. 6:8) and call our leaders into account when they don’t. If they fail and fall, their stars will fall, their sun will be darkened, and the moon over their heads will turn to blood. This is what we need to take away from the text, rather than looking to the sky for whatever is coming next.
In short, we need to focus on the issues of the here and now. We need to start making a difference in this world, instead of waiting for it to end. We need to stop watching the sky and start walking in the light.
March 3, 2026 will come and go, along with the next blood moon, and another failed prediction by the prophecy pundits will go down in the books. Perhaps it’s time for God’s people to start shining like the “stars in this world” that they’re called to be (Phil 2:15) and let the sun go down on pop-prophecy?
Instead of singing There’s a Blood Moon Rising, we should be singing Rise Up O Men of God![23]
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] “Ides of March: day in the ancient Roman calendar that falls on March 15 and is associated with misfortune and doom. It became renowned as the date on which Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE” (Ides of March – Britannica https://bit.ly/4qZn9lU )
[2] Total Lunar Eclipse on March 2–3, 2026 – Where and When to See https://bit.ly/3NqkC60
[3] When Was the Last Blood Moon Eclipse? – Biology Insights https://bit.ly/4a2pR4s
[4] CCR Bad Moon Rising (lyrics) https://bit.ly/3NS446X ; Incidentally, the song itself is apocalyptic in tone and genre, See: Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., From Pop-Prophecy to Pop-Culture – The American Vision https://bit.ly/4qETBu4
[5] A heartfelt thanks to Daniel E. Harden and Brett Preito for all of their valuable input and suggestions, and for catching all of my blunders and mistakes, on the early drafts of this article. I get by with a little help from my friends!
[6] CELESTIAL SIGNS in 2026: Another ‘Blood Moon,’ a ‘Ring of Fire’ and Total Solar Eclipse | CBN News https://bit.ly/3Zg14DY
[7] Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire (lyrics) https://bit.ly/4sLzzzx
[8] Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart (lyrics) https://bit.ly/4sOxR0i
[9] See: Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., Spinning the Wheel of Speculation: Another Year of Playing Name the Antichrist – The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/49f6O6U ; Favicon for burrosofberea.com
Prophetic Profiling: Pinning Down the Antichrist – The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/4qNSuIp ; This Isn’t the Antichrist You’re Looking For – The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/3LKmgid
[10] Trump Was Born on a ‘Blood Moon’ – Australian Pastor Points to Prophecy Being Fulfilled | CBN News https://bit.ly/4r2RBf7
[11] CCR – Born on the Bayou (lyrics) https://bit.ly/3Nqx6ul
[12] Trump Was Born on a ‘Blood Moon’ | CBN News
[13] Why didn’t Jesus return during the blood-red moon of 2015? | GotQuestions.org https://bit.ly/49E51XP
[14] Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., There’s a Rusty Moon Rising? | It’s about time https://bit.ly/4qMsde5
[15] See: Cruickshank, Rusty Moon Rising?
[16] James B. Jordan, MATTHEW 23-25: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2022), 164.
[17] See: Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., Spinning the Wheel of Speculation: Another Year of Playing Name the Antichrist – The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/49f6O6U
[18] See: James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision Press, [2007] 2010), 426-427; see also: Hank Hanegraaff, Did Daniel Prophesy a Seven-Year Great Tribulation? | Christian Research Institute https://bit.ly/4b4siog
[19] The astral imagery also points to rulers and powers in the unseen ream, as well. For more on this, see: Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., Identifying Christ’s Enemies in 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 | It’s about time https://bit.ly/4jQ4l6h
[20] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., Th. D., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation – Volume I, Revelation 1-9 (Acworth, GA: Tolle Legg Press, 2024), 674.
[21] Available here: Ken Gentry | Divorce of Israel https://bit.ly/4jN67oI
[22] Shout out to my friend, Brett Prieto, for this reference.
[23] Rise Up O Men of God – Phil Keaggy (HQ) | YouTube https://bit.ly/4b9cz7w