WND EXCLUSIVE
1-ON-1 WITH 'BLOOD MOONS' AUTHOR MARK BILTZ
Pastor on Mediterranean Cruise says watch for wars, economic panic
Leo Hohmann
Several cutting-edge Bible teachers will be on board WND’s upcoming Hebrew Roots of Our Faith Mediterranean Cruise but none focus more laser-like on the theme than Mark Biltz.
The 59-year-old pastor of El Shaddai Ministries near Tacoma, Washington, is known for his bestselling book, “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs,” which explains the biblical significance of a rare tetrad of four lunar eclipses occurring between Passover 2014 and the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall of 2015.
Those who sign up for the cruise, set for June 8-19, will get considerable one-on-one discussion time and have opportunities for personal interaction with Biltz, as well as Bill Cloud of Shoreshim Ministries, and Joseph and Elizabeth Farah of WND.
One of the main goals of Biltz’s ministry is to counter replacement theology, the idea that Christianity and Christians have “replaced” the Jewish people as God’s covenant people and that God no longer has a plan for the Jews or Israel.
Biltz counters this doctrine by restoring the Jewishness of Yeshua, Jesus, to the Body of Christ. He is capable of launching at any moment into an in-depth teaching on any of the biblical feasts, why Jesus celebrated them, and why that’s important for Christians today.
You want to know the true meaning of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well?
Ask Biltz. He’s got a fresh take on the ancient biblical account.
While most Bible teachers say the Samaritan woman was an adulteress because she had five husbands, Biltz says that was likely not the case.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/09/efarah.jpg
Elizabeth Farah
“If she had that many husbands and was an adulteress, she would have been stoned,” Biltz says. “Did women have any rights in the Middle East? Could a woman initiate a divorce? No. So the fact she’s had five husbands means this woman had been dumped five times. She was righteous. She wasn’t an adulteress. So the whole setting is one of rejection. That’s why she wasn’t at the well in the morning with the other women – she went in the heat of the day – because she did not want to be reminded of the rejection and did not want to be harassed by all the other women.”
The main point of the passage is that Jesus, himself a man of sorrows and a man of rejection, “allows her to be the first woman to take the gospel to a nation,” Biltz said.
Have you ever wondered about the cock crowing three times before Peter denied Christ?
Biltz has studied this passage in depth. From a Hebraic perspective, he believes the language used by Jesus was a metaphor for something other than a literal rooster.
“The gospels say the cock crowed three times after Peter denied Jesus. It never happened, at least not like we perceived it to happen,” he said. “There never were roosters. It was the Jewish priest who was known as the ‘cock crowing.’ What Jesus was saying was that by the time of the call to worship, to begin the service, you will have denied me three times.”
Middle Easterners in general and Jews in particular communicate differently than Westerners, Biltz said. They speak in more visual terms.
“It’s all word pictures. Just like the word Zion, for Jerusalem,” he said. The root word for Zion or Sion is “tzod” meaning “to catch” or “to capture” and the phrase can be used to describe a fishing hook.
“If I hook it up I’ll catch all men,” Biltz said.
And Biltz has been catching a lot of men, and women, netting them into the modern-day kingdom of God by hearkening back to the original roots of Christianity.
His leadership has garnered an explosive online ministry, now reaching 207 countries with 4 million monthly page views for his website, ElShaddaiMinistries.us. His local congregation, which he started 14 years ago with his wife and two other couples, now attracts about 800 attendees for weekly services while his “online congregation” attracts 250,000 viewers per week.
“We’re really different because every service we will have a Catholic, a Lutheran, a non-denominational Christian come to join us,” he said. “We have people from India, Europe. We are there to serve every tribe, nation and tongue. I think the message is universal. I’m teaching getting back to the roots of our faith, which is what the cruise is all about. I teach things that nobody’s ever heard before.”
Biltz’s knowledge of the Hebraic roots of Christianity and how the apostles – Peter, Paul, Matthew and the others – incorporated their understanding of the Jewish Torah and Hebrew prophets into their New Testament gospels and epistles is perhaps unparalleled, said Joseph Farah, president and founder of WND.
Farah said it was Biltz’s teaching on the blood moons that first got his attention years ago. But then he discovered there was much more to the man than moons.
“It didn’t take me long to discern that Biltz was hardly a one-note-johnny. His teachings on the Feasts of the Lord are unsurpassed by anyone,” he said.
WND ended up recording those teachings for the world to hear.
“Then I began to see the richness of all of his teachings on the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith. So he was a natural pastor to invite on this first-ever cruise designed to focus on that very topic – one that brings a new appreciation and seriousness to believers of every denomination,” Farah said. “We’re truly blessed by Mark Biltz’s willingness and eagerness to share his insights with all of us on this excursion into the places where the faith spread at such incredible speed during the first century – literally turning the world upside-down.”
This tour is an opportunity for each participant to turn their own spiritual world upside-down, providing historical depth and biblical truths in a relaxed vacation setting, Farah said.
Those who sign up for the cruise will trace the steps of the Apostle Paul, learning from expert guides such Biltz, Cloud and the Farahs. They’ll walk through historic ruins in Ephesus, Athens, Istanbul and Santorini.
Getting ready for the Lord’s return
It was back in 2008 that Biltz said he was online and viewed a total lunar eclipse over the Temple Mount. He started thinking of all the Bible verses he’d read about the sun darkening and the moon turning blood-red before the “great and terrible day of the Lord,” when all the nations will be judged.
“And as I’m studying this I thought let’s go to NASA’s website, where everything is based on science, and I noticed there were four total eclipses set to occur from March 2014 to September 2015 and I felt God was saying, ‘Well, put these on the biblical calendar,’” and I started doing the research and found these tetrads don’t happen very often, only eight times in 2,000 years have they fallen on the feast days.”
The four consecutive blood moons have been documented to have occurred 62 times, but the rare tetrad has occurred only eight times on the biblical feast days.
“Then, you look at the significant events that have occurred in history when they do happen, and what blew me away was when I re-read Genesis 1:14,” Biltz said.
The verse says God created the sun and the moon for signs, seasons and days and years, “but the problem word is the word ‘seasons,’” Biltz said.
“The same Hebrew word they translate as ‘seasons’ can also mean ‘feasts.’ It has to do with the biblical calendar, the appointed times, and it’s not referring to our Gregorian calendar. It’s referring to the biblical years and the Shemitah years,” he said.
Genesis 1:14 can be more accurately translated as “God created the sun and the moon for sending signals on Passover, Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Tabernacles and the beginnings of any biblical month,” he said.
“That’s what He is saying. So, yes, according to NASA there’s been 12,000 solar eclipses over 5,000 years and over 12,000 lunar eclipses, but only about 4,000 total lunar eclipses and now when you do the math over 5,000 years that means you average only about one total lunar eclipse every year-and-a-half. Here we have four, which makes it off the charts, and then on top of that we have them falling on the feast days, and then we have these historical happenings that occurred (during previous eclipses) in Israel in 1948-50 and 1967-69.”
A new Shemitah year, 2014-15, is now underway, and this is the first time in modern history where the world will experience a tetrad of four blood moons known to occur in a Shemitah year, all on biblical feast days.
God also provided for a “super Shemitah” after every seventh Shemitah or 49 years. This is called the biblical year of “jubilee” in which not only were debts forgiven but slaves were to be set free.
“We don’t know when the jubilee year is, but we know it has to follow a Shemitah year,” Biltz said. So if we are headed toward a jubilee year, it would be in 2016.
Biltz refrains from making predictions, but he says believers should be watchful for signs of economic collapse and wars involving Israel during this period of lunar phenomena.
Also of significance, the last blood moon of this current series will be a “super moon,” meaning it’s at its closest point to the earth of the entire year, and it will be during the Feast of Tabernacles in the Shemitah year, all of which Biltz finds incredibly exciting.
Growing up in a Catholic home
Those who sign up for the cruise will get to spend time picking Biltz’s brain for biblical insights.
He says he is eager to participate in discussions, sharing whatever knowledge he has gleaned from his research.
“That’s the main thing I want to stress is, I am there to personally meet with each person on the cruise and discuss the Scriptures,” Biltz said. “They’re definitely going to get one-on-one time with pastor Mark. I love talking with people.”
They will also get to learn about Biltz’s own journey toward a greater understanding of the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith.
Not to give away too many details, but Biltz has seen all sides of the cultural divide, having discovered his own Jewish heritage on his father’s side while growing up in a seriously Roman Catholic family.
“I was one of nine kids raised in a tiny German-Catholic town outside of Wichita, Kansas,” he said. “We had the Stations of Cross set up in our house, and in every bedroom we had holy water to bless yourself before you entered.”
When, at age 19, he told his devoutly Catholic father he had become a born-again Christian and was leaving the Catholic Church, there was hell to pay. But he can explain the rest of that story on the cruise.
Are you interested?
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/dont-think-you-can-afford-med-cruise/#X8YM5Bubcg8WUjOG.99
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