Moon
Making the Moon Stop in Place
When the LORD discomfited the Amorites, then slew them with great hailstones at Gibeon, it turned out that more Amorites were killed by the hailstones than by the swords of the children of Israel. “Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.” (Joshua 10:12-14, KJV) It’s fair to say that the Amorites fought with the wrong group of people. The Creator of sun and moon takes sides; He sides with the good and the lovely and will put down evil. The moon was made to stay over the valley of Ajalon, so as to help the children of Israel in their military campaign against the Amorites. This is an important lesson for the believer—it’s something that Noah and his family knew all too well, but quite simply, the God of creation can reach down and adjust His creation at will. The weather and different things don’t just tick along like metronomes, as the uniformitarianists think they do (2 Peter 3: 3-7). God can cause mountains to blow up and oceans to heave up; He can cause great snowfall, great hail storms, and great winds; and then there are the earthquakes and droughts and famines, et cetera. The creation is below its Maker, and answers to Him, for His purposes. Why did the God of Israel cause Mt. St. Helens to blow? I don’t know. But I do know that the canyonlands beneath St. Helens—which got etched during the violent pyroclastic flow of the early 1980’s—lend support and credence to the fact that the Flood scoured out huge canyons all around the earth. Good examples of big canyons are America’s Grand Canyon, Mexico’s Copper Canyon, and China’s Yangtze River Gorge. Anyway, if God can send the waters a’tumbling and a’roaring, then He can certainly stop the moon and the sun if He so desires. The moon is His, after all; He made it. In Psalms 8 we see that God’s heavens are the work of His fingers—that is to say, the moon and the stars which the LORD has ordained.The New Moon Points to ChristIn Colossians 2:16-19, and Colossians 3:1-4, we see that the new moon is not an end in an of itself, but rather a shadow of what is to come:
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-debasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. . . . Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (Colossians 2:16-19, 3:1-4, NASB)
Indeed, the substance of the new moon—or the Sabbath day, or a festival, or food and drink—is Christ! How is it that Christ is the substance of the new moon, which itself is a foreshadowing of things to come? Given that a new moon is the brightest beacon in the sky, that it is perfect and whole, it would be an excellent signpost to the LORD God of creation, a signpost to Jesus the Christ. In an otherwise darkened sky, the new moon stands out and call us to look at it; it lights our way; it gives us our bearings as we trod a difficult path in the midst of night; similarly, Jesus the Christ calls out to people through His creation, exhorting them to set their sights on higher things and to cling to the salvation He alone offers.
False Solemnity in Some New Moon Festivals
Clearly, the matter of Christ being the substance of the new moon was sometimes lost on people. In 2 Chronicles 8:12-13, we see that Solomon offered up burnt offerings to the LORD for the new moons—this according to the commandment of Moses. As long as the offerings were to the LORD and signified the substance of the new moon which was Christ, then that was alright. By contrast, in Amos 8, we see that the LORD lost His patience with the people of Israel because they trampled the needy, did away with the humble of the land, and just wanted the new moon to be over so they could sell their grain. Similarly, in Isaiah 2, we see that the LORD hated new moon festivals, and He noted that the offerings were worthless when iniquity had crept into the solemn assemblies; through Isaiah, the LORD reminded the rebellious people of Israel that they had despised the Holy One of Israel, referring to them variously as “you rulers of Sodom” and “you people of Gomorrah” (NASB), in a clear reference to the unholy conduct of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah more than 1,000 years earlier in the time of Abraham and Lot; through Isaiah, the LORD implied that the rebellious people of Israel had not been reproving the ruthless or defending the orphan as they should have. In this social context, then, the LORD did not want to be bothered with the false solemnity of misdirected new moon festivals that failed to honor the Holy One of Israel.
The Moon Will Be Dark
In Matthew 24, we learn that when the abomination of desolation occurs, those living in Judea will be hunted mercilessly and they will have to flee. Many false Christs and false prophets will arise with signs and wonders, so as to deceive the very elect, if that were possible; the believers should resist the false allure of the false Christs and false prophets. Then, immediately after the tribulation high above a corpse-ridden landscape, the Son of Man will come just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west. The sun will go dark, as will the moon, and stars will fall from the sky—indeed, the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The Son of Man’s sign will appear in the sky, the tribes of the earth will mourn, and the people of the earth will behold the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky in power and glory, and He will dispatch His angels with a great trumpet and these angels will gather His elect from the four winds—that is, from one end of the sky to the other end of the sky. This coming of the Son of Man will take the world by surprise, just as the flood took the world by surprise in the days of Noah. In Matthew 25, we see that when the Son of Man comes in His glory, with all His angels, He will sit on His throne and He will separate the nations by way of judgment, putting the sheep (the righteous) on His right and the goats (the accursed) on His left. For our purposes here, we see that the moon will go dark prior to the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds: the created light will give way to the Creator’s light. Luke 21 gives us some other details regarding the time leading up to the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds. As Matthew and Mark had noted, Luke also notes that there will be signs in the aspect of the sun, the moon, and the stars; Luke also notes that people will be perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. The powers of the heavens will be shaken and they will see the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud in power and glory. Luke notes Jesus’s exhortation that believers should avoid being weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and worries, and should stay alert and pray that they may have the strength necessary to escape the things [of the tribulation] that are about to take place and to stand before the Son of Man. In Luke’s account, Jesus noted that before the nation-against-nation and kingdom-against-kingdom fighting, before the great earthquakes, before the plagues and famines, and before the terrors and signs from heaven—before all these things, the believers will be persecuted, brought to synagogues and prisons, brought before kings and governors for Jesus’s name sake; Jesus reminds that in this way the believers will have an opportunity to give their testimony, that they should not prepare in advance to defend themselves, but rather they should utter that which He gives them to say; that they will be betrayed by parents and brothers and friends and relatives, and that the believers will be hated because of Jesus’s name and some of them will even be put to death by their betrayers; yet, Jesus noted, not a hair on the heads of the believers will perish; moreover, Jesus exhorts that when one sees armies surrounding Jerusalem, those in Judea must flee to the mountains, those in the city must leave, and those in the country must not enter the city, for those will be days of vengeance, and this people will be distressed, killed, or taken captive until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
In the New Jerusalem, the Moon Will Have Been Done Away With and the LORD Will Give the Light
In Revelation 21:23, we read a description of the New Jerusalem. In this holy city, there will be no need for the shining of a sun or a moon because the city will be lighted by the glory of God—by the Lamb. Regarding a glorified Zion in Isaiah 59:21, we read this:
As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever. . . . For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. . . . The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, the city of the LORD, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel. . . . Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. (Isaiah 59:21, 60:12, 14, 19-21, KJV)
In the city of the LORD, there will be no moon because the LORD’s light will provide enough light for those around. The fact that the moon will not show up in the city of the LORD proves that the LORD God of Israel is above His creation, that He can make the moon and leave the moon in a spot for millennia, and He can just as easily make the moon disappear.