Category: Standing With Israel


Standing With Israel

‘I See a Blood Moon Rising’

Shawn A. Akers

In 2013, I had the special privilege to meet pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries. Pastor Mark is bright, friendly and engaging.

He expresses a unique love and support for Israel and immediately jumped on board as a partner and supporter of Heart to Heart, the virtual blood donation program I have the privilege of running from Israel. Ever respectful of Jewish tradition, we met at one of Seattle’s kosher restaurants and became fast friends.

While I had heard of and been questioned about the blood moons for months before we met, I knew that Pastor Mark had a special role in the awareness of this heavenly sign. In fact, he is the one who broke the code—so to speak—in 2008, brilliantly overlaying the occurrences of blood moons dating back thousands of years—no, he’s not that old; he used the NASA website—with the Hebrew calendar. His discovery is the talk among many pastors, churches and ministries, which even was the topic of conversation over Shabbat dinner in my orthodox Jewish home recently.

I am not as qualified to provide a detailed understanding of blood moons as Pastor Mark. It’s clear that he’s discovered something quite extraordinary, and it’s essential that we pay attention. While using excerpts from his book noted below, which I devoured, I want to refer deeper questions to him and his website, where videos and books are available for those who want more background: www.elshaddaiministries.us.

Essentially, blood moons are total lunar eclipses. He writes, “During the five millennium period from 2000 BC to 3000 AD, we will experience 12,064 of one of the three types of lunar eclipses, averaging about 2.4 per year. Over a period of 5,000 years—from 1999 BC to AD 3000—there will be a total of 3,479 total lunar eclipses. Four consecutive total lunar eclipses, without any partial eclipses in between, are known as a tetrad” (p. 144).

The significance of lunar eclipses is noted in “the Babylonian Talmud, written almost two thousand years ago, and it records in Jewish thinking that whenever the sun is in total eclipse, it is a bad omen for the nations” (p. 31).

But Pastor Mark went back further, to Genesis 1:14, for the first clue that we need to pay attention to such acts of nature and when they occur: “And God said let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years,” (p. 38).

What he realized is the significance of overlaying these occurrences with the Hebrew (biblical) calendar and how God is sending us His signs: “Many people believe in divine appointments, but did you ever imagine that there are scheduled ones? The creator of the universe declares that He wants to interact with us at set times” (p. 48).

However, if only looking at the world through the prism of a Western or Gregorian calendar, one misses the boat entirely: “If we are not on the biblical calendar, we lose all the significance of the totally incredible signs God is revealing to us” (p. 147).

In a presentation I was privileged to hear in Nashville before reading his book, Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs, Pastor Mark explained things quite clearly. He alluded to our paying attention to this phenomenon as the “Super Bowl of human history.” While refreshingly making it clear that he doesn’t know what the sign means other than something big is coming, based on previous occurrences, he did cite the possibility of a prophetic war. He also observed, “In the context of the prophet Joel, it mentions twice the moon turning to blood in the context of God’s warning against the nations who divide His land. I believe these could be prophetic warnings not to divide the land of Israel.”

In his book, he asks, “Wouldn’t you want to know in advance of a major catastrophe that would impact your life? Wouldn’t you like to be told when a tornado was about to strike your house or when the stock market was about to tank? … God always warns before He brings judgment. In His mercy, He is sending big time warnings from his heavenly billboards. You can ignore them at your own peril, pooh-pooh them and try to ride out the storm, or you can come to the dress rehearsals and be prepared for what is coming” (p. 63).


Standing With Israel

Joel Rosenberg: The True Story of a Miraculous Escape From Death

Shawn A. Akers

Seventy years ago today, two men pulled off the greatest escape in human history—from a Nazi death camp in southern Poland.

Most of the world doesn’t know their names, but we should. Rudolf Vrba was only 19 when he escaped Auschwitz. Fred Wetzler was only 25.

They are my heroes. They executed their ingenious plan on April 7, 1944, and not simply to save their own lives but to tell the world the truth about what Adolf Hitler was really doing to annihilate the Jewish people. They risked their lives to proclaim the truth, and in the process they helped save more than 100,000 Jewish lives.

It is their stories that inspired me to write The Auschwitz Escape. Now here is a brief version of the true story:

To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.

In 1933, the world was blindsided by the rise of Adolf Hitler. 

In 1939, it was stunned by the German invasion of Poland and the Nazi leader’s bloodthirsty quest for global domination. Perhaps most tragically, most of the world did not understand Hitler’s plan to annihilate the Jews until it was almost too late.

Today, we face dangerous new threats from Iran, North Korea and a rising czar in Russia, not from Germany. Yet curiously, in recent weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have each warned that as we confront current challenges, we must be careful to learn the lessons of history regarding how the world failed to understand the threat posed by Hitler and the Nazis and deal with it decisively, before events spin out of control.

I agree, and as an example, I would point to the extraordinary events that occurred in the spring of 1944. 

Four men pulled off the greatest escape in all of human history, and from a Nazi death camp in southern Poland. They did not simply escape to save their own lives. Nor did they escape merely to tell the world about a terrible crime against humanity that had been—and was being—committed. What set these true heroes apart is that they planned and executed their escape in the hope of stopping a horrific crime before it was committed—the extermination of the Jews of Hungary.

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of these escapes, and to draw attention to the significance these unknown—or unremembered—events and the lessons they have to teach us, I recently wrote a work of historical fiction, The Auschwitz Escape. I changed the names of key figures involved so as not to put words in their mouths that cannot be verified to be their own. But it is my deepest hope that the book will cause many to dig into the real history of these remarkable heroes.

Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler were Slovak Jews. They escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944.

(Note: In the novel, I explain exactly how they did it, what supplies they needed, what their escape route was, how they outfoxed the guards, etc.—an extraordinary story.)

Arnost Rosin was also a Slovak Jew. Czeslaw Mordowicz was a Polish Jew. Together they escaped from Auschwitz on May 27, 1944.

Upon making it safely to Czechoslovakia, Vrba, only 19 years old, and Wetzler, 25, linked up with the Jewish underground. They explained Auschwitz was not simply a labor camp, as most thought, but rather a death camp. The Nazis were systematically murdering prisoners, mostly Jews, using poison gas called “Zyklon B,” then burning their bodies in enormous ovens.

The men explained the Nazis were dramatically enlarging an expansion camp a few miles from Auschwitz called Birkenau, building new train tracks, enormous new gas chambers and massive new crematoria. They had also completed ramps leading all those arriving in the cattle cars directly into the gas chambers.

Standing With Israel

BDS: What Does It Really Stand For?

Shawn A. Akers

Recently, I wrote of attacks Israel was facing on two fronts, both threatening Israel’s physical existence each in its own way. Writing from Israel as an Orthodox Jew, sharing perspectives largely with a Christian audience, I am mindful not to commit three main transgressions.

The first is not to be offensive to Christians (or anyone else for that matter) in sharing a perspective from Israel that may be different and through the eyes of an Orthodox Jew.

The second is not to overly portray Israel as a country under siege or as a people constantly threatened and in need. Some do this deliberately for their own agendas. While one cannot diminish the actual threats that we face, Israel is a thriving, blessed country, and to diminish that paints a picture that’s not accurate in the least.

The third is not to commit the sin of the spies Moses sent to scout the land. They reported largely accurately but with twisted reality, and I try to present accurate reports that might not be heard outside Israel to allow others to be informed, assess and draw conclusions.

I say this because it’s been on my heart for months to write about another threat that’s widespread, international and growing. Yet I don’t want my reports to be seen as all about how much we are at risk. This particular threat undermines Israel’s very legitimacy. It’s also based on profound lies, affirming the famous Nazi notion that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

Some may be familiar with this scourge, and many probably not at all. It bears calling out so that good people of faith and conscience can stand up to it, call it the lie that it is and confront its insidious nature. Many Christian Zionists have stepped up, calling it what it is; some are good friends of mine who make me proud and grateful.

I am writing about the BDS movement, an anti-Israel group that actively promotes boycotting Israel, divestment from Israel and placing sanctions upon Israel.

On my most recent trip to the U.S., I was privileged to speak at an event organized by Aglow International in Charleston, S.C. Given Aglow’s unique position of putting support for Israel up front as a central pillar of its ministry, it was fitting to address this challenge. As part of my remarks, I shared:

“The BDS movement is uniquely hateful and anti-Semitic because while they claim to have an agenda of being pro-Palestinian, what’s clear is they want to eliminate Israel, their sense of social righteousness begins and ends at the borders of Israel, they blame all the problems of Palestinian Arabs on Israel, they disregard the qualitative ways in which Palestinian Arabs are benefited by Israel, and they turn a blind eye to how the same Palestinian Arabs they say they seek to help are persecuted and discriminated against in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Gulf states and other places.

“While they have branded themselves under the acronym BDS, they also call for the ‘Palestinian right of return,’ which means flooding Israel with millions of Arabs—the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of those who left Israel in 1948.

“Not only is it wrong, but also their hatred clouds their logic, and the boycott they call for hurts both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. But that reality is too inconvenient and doesn’t help make their case.

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