What Does the Bible Say About the Sea of Galilee Turning Red?
The Sea of Galilee turning red is a natural event that can be understood within a biblical framework in which God works through creation to communicate spiritual realities. Such events should not be treated as precise indicators of an imminent end, but as part of recurring patterns seen throughout Scripture. Waters turning to blood often signify judgment, divine authority, and redemption, pointing to God’s control over chaos and the effects of sin in the world.
These signs are meant to lead to inward reflection and readiness rather than fear or speculation. They remind people of God’s sovereignty and the promise of restoration through Christ. Believers are called to interpret these events through Scripture, reject sensationalism, and remain grounded in hope, peace, and the kingship of Christ.
Okay, so quite a few months ago, the Sea of Galilee turned red due to an algae bloom, and of course that means that a lot of people said, “Hey, this is a sign of the end times coming.” What’s interesting is that I wrote a quick article on my website way back then, and as of late, that article started gaining a bunch more traction, and so I started to look into it and say, why are people searching for this again? It’s all search engine traffic that’s going to my website, and it really just shows that whenever things are happening in the world, whether it’s wars or other things happening, people start to think about these as signs of the end of time. So they start to look into different corners and different avenues.
So I actually wanted to provide some more thoughtful responses to why we should think about the Sea of Galilee turning red in a prophetic sense, and also where some of the guardrails are and how we should think about those things, to make sure that we’re thinking biblically about these things and not thinking in other ways. So I think in some ways you’ve got kind of two camps. You’ve got the people that are like, “It’s just nature. It’s not God giving a sign of the end times,” and they’re like, “Stop worrying about it.” I’m going to argue with those people a little bit and say no, there is something to signs happening in the world. God is working through the world, and there are signs that we should be paying attention to. On the other side, I don’t know if there’s real warrant always to take these things as signs of an imminent end, and so we’re going to talk about that as well.
So let’s just jump in here. I think the first guardrail that we need to understand, just as we think about nature and the supernatural, is that God is the God over nature as much as he is the God over what you might call supernature. He’s the God of the natural as much as he is the God of the supernatural. All creation comes from God. Natural processes in the world are still his work. We don’t have nature without God’s continued working. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). So we can understand things this way, that there’s a sense in which everything that exists in the natural world has a supernatural origin. This is apologetics. This is how we argue for the existence of God in the first place—that we can’t have a creation unless there is a supernatural originator, a supernatural designer of all these things.
And so we believe that within that, God, the creator and sovereign one of all things, is the provident one. He governs all things. I think of Colossians 1:16–17. And so what I want people to do here is not create a strict divide between nature and supernature, between the natural and the supernatural, between the physical and the metaphysical. I’ve often said this in other videos and podcasts and articles I’ve written that we need to be careful about creating too much separation between those two. The corporeal world is far more engaged in incorporeal things than we realize, and the incorporeal world is far more engaged in corporeal things than we realize. So there’s a great integration in God’s beautiful design between the physical and the spiritual, between the natural and the supernatural.
And I think that will help us as a hermeneutic for how to understand and think about things like the Sea of Galilee turning red. But really this video isn’t just going to be about that. It’s going to be about how we think about all these types of signs. I want you to gain this hermeneutic for thinking about these things. I don’t want you to go around thinking everything is a sign of the end, because I think that can be dangerous as well. But as we interpret signs in the world according to Scripture—I think of 2 Peter 1:20, that no prophecy comes from your own interpretation—we don’t go around thinking, “Well, this teacher says this and that teacher says that, and I think this,” creating patterns in our own minds. Don’t attribute these things to the human psyche, because it’s not for us to interpret the signs, but to interpret these signs according to Scripture and think about them on Scripture’s ground.
1. The Sea of Galilee in the Bible
Okay, so Sea of Galilee turning red. Let’s think about that within the context of the Scriptures. Then we’re going to talk both about the Sea of Galilee, and we’re going to talk about things turning red and blood and all of that. So the Sea of Galilee in the Bible—it’s a freshwater lake in northern Israel. It has cliffs and mountains surrounding it, and there’s a southern opening that opens up into a valley. Environmentally, you get some really interesting things. You get what is sometimes called wind funneling. It’s this compressed wind that comes between the hills, and it gusts through the hills. It allows for some really interesting pressure shifts, and ecologically the Sea of Galilee is a pretty interesting sort of area.
And one of the effects of that is that sudden storms come upon the Sea of Galilee, and you see that in Mark 4 and in a number of places in the Scriptures, that there are storms on the sea and they seem to spring up without a lot of notice. They’re not predictable weather patterns.
The Sea of Galilee, and also the region of Galilee, go by different names in the Scriptures. In Numbers 34 it’s called Kinnereth. In Luke 5:1 it’s called Gennesaret. It also seems to be affiliated with the Roman city Tiberias in John 6:1. So when we try to look at this, I’m not going to dig into all of this and create a biblical theology right now, but when we start to think about the Sea of Galilee and how it operates in the region of Galilee and in Israel, you need to know that it goes by other names and that there’s crossover with the regions and the cities and all of that.
But really here at the sea, there are a number of things that happen. It’s the calling of the first disciples—you’ll remember the calling of the fishermen in Matthew 4. You’ve also got, in Matthew 4, one of the miracles that happens on the water where Jesus calms the storm, and we’ll talk about that more in a little bit. Jesus calms the storm here on the Sea of Galilee. In John 21, it’s the miraculous catch of fish where they bring in so many fish that the nets are breaking. This is the scene in Mark 3 where the crowds are coming to Jesus and he pushes out on the water and teaches from the boat.
And so you’ve got a number of things happening here at this very chaotic sea, and yet Jesus is using this as a ministry center, at least for a period of his ministry.
2. Why the Sea of Galilee Might Look Red
Now let’s talk about this sea that has an important place in the biblical storyline, especially in the Gospels, and think about why the Sea of Galilee might look red.
So we know scientifically that this last event was because of an algae bloom, and especially at certain times when the sun hits it just right, it’s vibrant red. I will say this also, though—a lot of the images that you find online of the Sea of Galilee turning red, it’s almost impossible to tell which ones are actually real. A lot of them are photoshopped or AI-generated. The one I used for the thumbnail of this video I think is obviously AI-enhanced or photoshopped. It’s not as red as most of these make it out, and yet if you were to go there, it’s definitely like, why is the water red?
So I do want to paint the picture that way, to help you understand that what you’re seeing online in some of the videos and images is not precisely right—what you would see if you were there. And yet there is something to this.
Now these algae blooms are sometimes called something like red tide, and it happens periodically. I didn’t look into how often it happens at the Sea of Galilee, but this happens periodically in various places. It’s not like this is a phenomenological event even from a natural perspective. This is something that we know happens.
It actually makes me think of blood moons and things like that. We have some pretty good science as to why those things happen. And so whenever there’s a blood moon and people are going, “Oh, it’s the end of days,” and they’re expecting the heavens to divide and Christ to descend—now that is what the Scriptures describe as going to happen when Christ returns—but we should probably not say that every blood moon, when we understand it as a scientific event, is a sign of Christ’s imminent coming. And yet it is a sign that I think we should pay attention to. So we’ll talk about that more. We’ll talk about why we need to pay attention to these signs as we go throughout.
So we need to avoid overreach when we see these signs, and yet also not ignore them. Don’t think too categorically. Some people will say something like a rainbow would be a natural sign. We were given the rainbow—we’re told this in the Scriptures—as a sign that God won’t flood the earth again. So that’s a sign that God has given us that we can easily interpret. It’s a promise. And so whenever we see a rainbow, we can remember this promise of God, that he’s not going to flood the earth again.
And so when we see things that are natural, like the Sea of Galilee turning red, we should say, “This is God communicating something, a sign to us through creation.” When we see a blood moon, when we see wars and rumors of wars, we can say God is communicating this to us as a sign. But we should be careful with equating it with specific signs of specific events that particular theological systems might tie to the coming of the end, because we’ve seen this pattern over and over—that everybody says, “This is it, everything’s lining up, this is the end,” and then it isn’t.
There’s a reason for that. It’s because we are creating a system and a structure around these signs that isn’t actually what has been given to us in the Scriptures. In Ecclesiastes, we’re told that there is a season for everything.
And I think that’s Ecclesiastes 3. And when I think about that, it makes me realize that there’s going to be a season when the Sea of Galilee turns red. There’s going to be a season when the Nile turns red. There’s going to be a season when the water turns red. And that points us to specific realities regarding God’s extraordinary working, even if we are observing God’s ordinary working. That when we observe natural phenomena, what is ultimately ordinary, it should move us to reflect on God’s extraordinary working in all things.
3. Waters Turning Red in the Bible
So let’s think about waters turning red in the Bible. What does that mean? Where do we see it? We see it in a number of places, but I think the very clear place is in the first plague back in Exodus 7. This is where Moses comes to Pharaoh. And here’s what’s interesting: yes, the water turns red, but what we’re told is that the Nile turns to blood.
A lot of people—it is interesting—sometimes it’s the same people who are saying the Sea of Galilee turned red, it turns to blood, but it’s just an algae bloom, will then go to Exodus and say, “Hey, the Nile turned red, but it’s just an algae bloom.” It’s almost a way of justifying the theological thinking about the modern event by saying that the old event was really the same thing as the modern event. It’s just a natural phenomenon that God is using.
And it’s interesting, because that’s kind of what I’m saying—we should think about these things as natural phenomena, yet also as what God is using to point us to greater things. The problem is that the Scriptures describe the issue with the Nile as blood. I’m open to the idea that that might be symbolic, but I’m a big fan of reading Scripture on its own ground. What happens is that blood is a very specific image that points us to things like sacrifice. It makes us think about atonement and different things like that in the Old Testament. If you take the blood out of it and make it about an algae bloom, you start to lose things.
We also need to maintain that however you want to naturally explain the Nile turning red, it was also causing other problems for the Egyptians, because the water was no longer pure. So you need to understand it in the context of those things as well. My preference when I read Exodus is to read it as literal blood, because that’s what it says. If it simply said that the Nile turned red, then this could be a different discussion. But I want to make sure that I’m reading it in the context of the Nile correctly and understanding it as this judgment on the Egyptians because of their refusal to follow Yahweh.
And that’s what is central there—you start to get this image of the Nile turning red as judgment on the Egyptians. And yet we need to understand that the judgment on the Egyptians is also what is moving forward God’s plan for the Exodus, the redemption of his people Israel.
So here’s what you have to do with that. You can think about the Sea of Galilee and say, when the Sea of Galilee turns red, it’s a sign pointing us to this new Exodus that we have in Christ. Yes, it reminds us that Christ returns, that there’s going to be a judgment on the earth, and that we will pass through that judgment. We’ll pass through the waters and come into the promised land. So it is a sign of the end times.
The piece that we’re missing when we reflect on the Nile is that it’s not a sign of his imminent return. When we read things like the Olivet Discourse and other parts of Scripture, they are always being fulfilled over and over again. Ecclesiastes 3 seems to be the hermeneutic for this—that there is a time and a season for everything.
So we see ourselves going through seasons of being reminded through various events that there is a day coming. And we’re told to always be ready in the Scriptures, that we don’t know the day or the hour. We’re not going to know the day or the hour, and so we should always be awake and always be ready for when the master returns.
So the way that Jesus teaches us to interpret these signs is sort of idealistically, so that as we see the signs, we understand that we’re passing through a season of reflection on judgment. We are not passing into the final season of the end. Now that doesn’t mean that all of these signs won’t precede the final end when it comes. It just means that we’ll never know if we’re in a cyclical season of approaching the end or if this is finally the end, because we’re always moving through these times.
Well, if that’s how it works, then how are we supposed to think about that? Let’s go back to the Exodus, because there’s some theological thinking that we can approach there. A lot of people have noted this, that all of the different plagues on Egypt had to do with their gods.
And so this Nile River turning red, turning to blood, seems to have something to do with a challenge being placed to the Nile River god of the Egyptians. And so this is a symbolic attack on the deities of Egypt when the Nile River turns to blood. This becomes about Yahweh’s supremacy over the gods. It becomes like a Deuteronomy 32 or a divine council worldview issue, where it’s Yahweh saying, you are not gods like I am God. It’s Yahweh saying, I am the same supreme creator. I am the sovereign one over all things. You think Egypt belongs to you, but even Egypt comes under the sovereign purview of the one true and ultimate God who created all things.
And so it’s this divine supremacy motif where this river god is not supreme. He is not supreme. We see this in other places, like in Genesis 1, where the Spirit is hovering over the waters, where the chaos that is in the world and the spirits that cause chaos are under the control of the one true God.
Psalm 74:13–14 reflects on the Exodus. This is the division of the Red Sea, but it reflects on the Exodus: “You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” It shows that even this sea that destroys, that man cannot tame, God tames the seas. God is always in control of those things.
And so then you start to get scared, because there’s this war in Iran now and this war between Israel and Palestine, and let’s not forget all of the other wars being fought all over the world. People are watching the news and getting scared about a coming world war and all these types of things, and you’re going, well, there’s got to be something to the Sea of Galilee turning red then.
The biblical answer to that is that God has this chaos under control. There’s nothing happening in the world that is outside the control of God. The Spirit hovers upon the waters. The chaos and even the tyranny in this world do not escape God’s ultimate sovereignty. And so it’s interesting how, when we reflect on these things, we become fearful, because what God is really doing in these things, and what he is allowing us to see when these signs spring up, is actually supposed to remove our fear and instill in us trust in the supremacy of our God, the supremacy of Christ as the creator of all things.
And yet certain theological systems twist that and make it do the opposite, so that it makes you fearful. Now you’re afraid about world war, and you’re afraid about a coming judgment, and what if you’re not accepted when Christ comes. It becomes this thing of fear about coming destruction and judgment, instead of looking and saying, I remember that God is indeed in control of all things. And that’s what we’re supposed to do with these.
4. Avoiding Over-Spiritualization
Let’s talk about avoiding over-spiritualization a little bit more, because I’m talking about certain theological systems that kind of warp how we’re supposed to think about these. We’re warned constantly in Scripture. I think of Ephesians 4:14, where we’re warned about false teaching, that we would be tossed around on the waves like small children.
This idea that we are tossed around, that we get caught in the waves, that we become part of the chaos—God is showing us that he has control over the chaos, and then certain approaches that twist Scripture move us into the waves and into the hype, so that we get consumed by it. That becomes what consumes our thinking instead of us becoming people of peace and people of confidence in the return of Christ and in the eternal hope that we have in him.
And so it’s very interesting how certain teachings—false teachings—get us anxious about the end, when all of these images of the end and these returns of seasons that demonstrate images about the end are supposed to give us peace about the current day. It’s an ironic thing that’s happening here.
We’re called to a maturity in the faith. I resonate with Paul’s words when he says you should be ready for solid food by now, but you still can only consume milk. And yet he says he’s going to give solid food anyway, because ultimately that is what is needed. And I resonate with that, that if we don’t grow up in our understanding of Scripture—and I’m a biblical theology guy—I want you to read the Scripture from beginning to end.
I want you to read it according to the grand narrative—that what God began in Genesis 1 and 2, he brings to completion in the end, in Revelation 21 and 22. That’s what I want to see—the gospel that restores all things to paradise, to the garden, unfolding in your life, and for you to have this hope and this trust and this peace that you were supposed to have in the garden, at least to have it in part now.
And I just think these voices that tell us, “Hey, you’re not going to have that peace, you’re not going to have that trust,” we need to return to Scripture and believe Scripture. We need to test claims. “Test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). If this teaching is raising hype and anxiety, is that a teaching that really comes from God? Is that what we’re reading in the New Testament? Is that what we’re reading in the Psalms—that God is a God of anxiety and oppression of his own people? Or are we reading that God is a God who preserves his people with peace and joy and longsuffering, even in times of trial and tribulation?
So we need to be like Acts 17:11. We need to go to the Scriptures and weigh things carefully—against the character of God, against the plan and purpose of God, against the theological narrative of Scripture—so that we would not be those who are tossed around on the waves of false doctrine.
5. The Sea of Galilee as a Place of Revelation
Let’s talk about the Sea of Galilee again for a minute. I want to talk about the Sea of Galilee as a place of revelation. When we think about the Sea of Galilee turning red, I think the first thing we need to understand is Christ’s authority being displayed over creation.
We should equate when Jesus calms the storm with Genesis 1, with the Holy Spirit on the waters. When we see Jesus walking on the waters and the disciples become fearful and say, “It’s a ghost,” and then he says, “No, it’s me,” they become people of peace—so much so that Peter wants to walk out on the water with Christ. And even when he, as a human, falls prey to the fears and anxieties of the world and starts to become afraid, Jesus reaches out and saves him. That’s what we need to do with these types of things. These are not things that move us into anxiety, but things that move us into hope and love and into the grasp of God.
Christ’s authority is on display. All kinds of things happen around the Sea of Galilee. You have demons being cast out and oppression being silenced. You have Jesus repeatedly revealed as the Son of God at the Sea of Galilee—the one who has true authority over all things. He is the Son of God, even over every “son of God.” And so Christ’s authority is connected with the Sea of Galilee.
So I think we can remember that, and that can help us. When naturalists or materialists want to say, “It’s just an algae bloom, don’t worry about it,” biblical supernaturalists can say, no, God is sovereign, and Jesus has authority over all these things. The Sea of Galilee doesn’t turn red from an algae bloom unless Jesus says so. We can have that kind of confidence in Christ’s authority without letting it push us into hype on the other extreme.
There is also a creation and fall motif at play here. At the Sea of Galilee, we start to understand creation’s purpose—that even the Sea of Galilee, even all things, “declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). I would have you think about it that way. Like the Garden of Eden, this paradise of God, everything was created good. God created, and it was good—day two, it was good; day three, it was good. Everything in that creation, particularly in the garden, and as it spreads into the world, is declaring the glory of the Creator God, who is Christ according to Scripture.
So there’s a creation motif, but we also need to understand the impact of sin in the world—that there is a corruption to man’s nature, where our nature in Adam originally was good.
That original nature allowed him to glorify God according to the Spirit of God within him. But in the fall, as he descends the mountain of God, being exiled from the garden, and goes into the wilderness, into the desert, into the chaos, to begin to work the soil by the sweat of his brow just to survive, and to build the city of man, which Cain ultimately does—as Adam does—we are born into Adam in the wilderness. We’re not born into Adam in the garden.
So there’s a corruption. Paul says in Romans 8 that there’s a corruption of our nature. Sometimes we talk about the sinful nature of man, and we need to be careful with that, because we can start to think about the sinful nature as who we are supposed to be in Adam, even though we have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We need to remember Adam’s original nature—that is our restored and ultimate nature. But still, there is a corruption of the nature of man generally in the world, where most of the world is awaiting redemption.
So when we see things that look like brokenness—things that look like blood, that look like chaos, that look like death—we understand that as the impact of sin on God’s glorious creation. There is glory, but there is brokenness in the world. There is order, but there is also chaos in the world. There is evil, but there is also goodness in the world, because of how God created things.
And so we have this creation and fall motif that we have to be aware of whenever we see these signs. So that when you ask, why is there war in the world? Why do we have nation rising against nation and so many people dying? It grieves me when I see political leaders, especially in our own country, say things like, “casualties are going to happen,” because it should grieve us. It is part of the impact of sin in the world that this happens. Is that a reality of war? Yes, it is. But should we take that lightly? No. We should always grieve that. We should understand that human sin has brought us to this point, that people who were designed for eternal life are dying in this world, and it is tragic.
And that tragedy is moving within God’s redemptive design toward a fulfillment of perfection, that things are being brought back together. From the arrival of Christ, there is a turning point. I talk about this repeatedly in my book The Gospel is Bigger than You Think, that there is a turning point where redemption is moving back toward paradise, toward the garden.
And so then we see that in Jesus. You get these redemptive foreshadowings even at the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus calms the water, he is restoring, just for a moment in that particular place in time, he is restoring Eden, he is restoring paradise. So it is a preview of ultimate restoration. It is a reversal, or an implantation of the garden in that moment, a reversal of the chaos.
And yet the whole thing is using natural elements—water and wind. Though the ancients would say that’s Leviathan, that it’s the monster in the sea that churns the waters and brings the winds, we should be able to look at that and see Jesus calm the winds and the waves and say, these are instruments of God. Go read Job, and you see that even Leviathan, the monster that causes chaos in the seas, is God’s. He is God’s creature. He is the instrument of God for use in particular ways in the world.
So even when we think about things like chaos, evil, and tyranny, God is over all of those things. All of those things exist within his ultimate plan and purview. And so this redemptive foreshadowing that we see should always bring us into that place of who God is.
If the Sea of Galilee turns red today—which it just did—the most fitting biblical response is to remember that all creation testifies of God’s glory and that Christ still rules the waters. And to let that shape our hearts, and even shape our imagination about how we think about the end times, so that we are not caught up in anxiety and hype. It should produce hope.
6. Symbolism of Red in the Bible
Okay, so that’s the Sea of Galilee, but let’s talk about the symbolism of red in the Bible, because there’s a lot happening here also.
Red is associated with judgment. You have this blood imagery. In Revelation 16, for example, you have this image of blood that means death. There are covenant implications of blood. You read the law, the Torah, and the Old Testament, and you see blood being used to consecrate and purify, to bring people into the presence of God. So you’ve got all of this imagery tied to blood that has to do with the ways that—there’s a lot of argument here about atonement, so I don’t want to get too much into that—but the way that the shedding of blood and the use of the blood of sheep and goats in the Old Testament reflect on the blood of Christ in the New Testament, how that moves us back into the presence of God.
At the very least, what we see clearest in the Old Testament is blood as a purifying agent—blood as what takes impurities out of man and what takes the world out of man so that man can enter back into the kingdom of God. Blood does a lot of different things. We’ll do videos on that in the future. But you’ve got blood required, for example, in Leviticus 17 for purification.
I do think there is something to blood reflecting substitution—that in the shedding of blood, part of the forgiveness of sins that allows us back into the presence of God involves a life for life within the sacrificial system. I recognize that a lot of scholarship has been done recently, and some scholars say that’s not in the Old Testament, not in Leviticus. But you can’t say it’s not in the Old Testament and therefore not in the New Testament. As I read the Scriptures and see how Christ asks us to reflect on the Old Testament, I’m going to take what the New Testament says and see that in the Old Testament. That, to me, is biblical theology—that we are moving christologically through the Old Testament according to what’s been taught about Christ in the New.
So I see substitution, and I see a trajectory as we think about blood. But I think this trajectory, when we see blood, shouldn’t only move us forward—it should move us inward. What do I mean by that? When we see the Sea of Galilee turn red, or we see blood moons or things like that—whether it’s a harvest moon or an eclipse—what it should do is not primarily point us forward—“Is the end coming?”—but point us inward. Have I received the forgiveness of sins and the purification that comes through Christ’s blood?
It should move us inward to reflect on ourselves. Am I the servant of the master who is at home beating the servants and wasting the master’s resources, or am I at work, ready, accomplishing God’s purposes, pursuing holiness and righteousness according to the Holy Spirit who has regenerated me? Am I living as if in the eternal kingdom of God, to the best of my ability now, as the Holy Spirit is sanctifying and bringing me to perfection? That is the trajectory. It points us inward as we think about the forward.
And so there is a symbolic dimension to this, but there is also a literal dimension, where real events are described as real events. The Sea of Galilee really did turn red, and it really was because of an algae bloom. Literal events are described as literal events. So you read about the flood, and we say, yes, we believe the earth was flooded, that the land came under the waters and the wicked people died. But we don’t say that because we believe that’s the only thing it means. Peter, for example, uses the flood as an image of baptism, and the flood becomes an image all over the Bible. Even in the Old Testament prophets and the Psalms, we see reflection on the flood symbolically, even though we believe it is a real event.
So there is this two-sided, or double dimension, to the way we think about things—the physical and the symbolic operating together. That’s why we can get an image of blood, and that image of blood does not need to be interpreted merely as a sign in the physical world of something about to happen, but it should also, and perhaps even more so, point us inward to the symbolic purpose of blood throughout the Scriptures.
7. How This Connects to the Gospel
All right, how does this connect to the gospel? I want to talk about how this connects to the gospel a little bit. I’m a gospel guy. I’ve become fascinated with the gospel throughout the Scriptures and seeing the New Testament motifs of the gospel play out from Genesis to Revelation. That’s really the thesis of the book I mentioned a minute ago, The Gospel is Bigger than You Think. This idea that God is at work in many ways, and these threads of all that has been accomplished through Christ begin, most of them, in Genesis, and they are traced all the way through Revelation until there is a perfection of these things in the end.
We already talked about Jesus and his creative authority, but you’ve got that here, and Jesus’ authority is probably the central gospel motif that we see in the Scriptures. In fact, I argue in the book that Jesus’ authority—his kingship, his “King of kings,” “God of gods,” “Lord of lords” authority—is central to the gospel. The greatest gift that we receive in Christ is that, in eternity, in Revelation 21–22 extending forever, we no longer come under the tyranny of the kings of this world because we have the perfect King. We no longer come under the tyranny of the gods of the nations because we have Jesus, the God of gods, who is also the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
So you’ve got this authority theme happening within the Sea of Galilee when we reflect on it. If we speak symbolically, though the Sea of Galilee turns to blood, we believe that Jesus is ultimately in control of all things. It’s interesting, because the seas reflect chaos, and they are a threat of danger. So if we think about the Sea of Galilee, especially if it turns to blood, you’re seeing chaos turn to death. That is a kind of ordering, but it’s a false ordering—it’s a tyranny of the physical world.
So the wilderness is ordered according to the city of man, according to the tyranny of human kings. But when the Sea of Galilee turns red, when chaos turns to blood, what it should do is not move us toward instability, but cause us to consider what it looks like to bring land out of the water and for that land to have the Garden of Eden planted within it. That means it is ordered rightly according to God’s plan and design, so that it is not the city of man but the city of God.
This is why in Revelation 21–22, by the way, it says that the sea is no more. People say, “But I love the beach—how can there be no sea in the kingdom of God?” That misses the point of the symbolism and imagery. What this imagery is doing is bringing the image of chaos all the way through to the end and saying that there is no more chaos. The land that is God’s land—paradise, Eden, not the wilderness outside of Eden—has consumed all the chaos, so that there is no more sea because the land has risen out of the waters.
If you go back to the dominion mandate of Adam in Genesis 1, what was he told to do? He was told to multiply and fill the earth, to have dominion over all things, to spread the goodness of Eden over all the land. Eden was not the whole earth at the time, but it becomes the whole earth in the end. What Christ brings down in the New Jerusalem out of heaven is the perfected creation. It is the final resolution of all things. It is the completion of the gospel.
And so this whole picture of Christ as the authority over the waters and the one who controls the chaos is central to the gospel, because it is the image that shows us our hope in him. Now all these other threads—you might ask, why did Jesus die on the cross?—all these other threads come into play. There is spiritual warfare, there is atonement, there are all these different threads that come into play through that. But that is what I would call the hub of the gospel.
That’s the center of the gospel, as all these other motifs create the spokes. If that doesn’t make sense, read the book, or email me and I’ll talk to you more about it. But there is always this connection that points us toward redemption. When we see the Sea of Galilee turn red, we think there is a coming judgment. But that judgment is not scary if you are confident in Christ. Judgment is joyful if you are confident in Christ.
So when we see the Sea of Galilee turn red, we don’t interpret it as an immediate sign, because I don’t think Scripture allows us to do that. When things return in seasons, we don’t want to force a fear-driven interpretation that pushes people to think about an imminent end of all things. Rather, we should understand it as a sign that reminds us of our redemption, so that we can pursue internal readiness and purification.
Conclusion: Faith Over Fear (3 Things)
All right, let’s wrap it up with three things. I think in the article I called this “Faith Over Fear.” Three things to remember.
Natural events are prophetic signs. I want to say that clearly. Natural events are prophetic signs, but they are not necessarily signs of an imminent return of Christ. That’s where people get hung up. They see the biblical patterning—correct, correct, correct—and then someone says, “That means Jesus is returning tomorrow,” and there’s a logical leap there that Scripture doesn’t allow. We are supposed to say yes, these are signs of the end. They are signs like the rainbow, signs that remind us of our eternal hope in Christ, not signs of an immediate end.
Second, we need to interpret everything through Scripture. What makes people make that leap is that they go Scripture, Scripture, Scripture—and then hype—and they go off the rails. We need to be careful not to let biblical images, even when they do line up, take us into an unbiblical trajectory. That’s what we see happen.
So natural events are prophetic signs. Interpret everything through Scripture. Reject the hype.
Third, focus on Christ, not the chaos. When you’re getting anxious and scared about what people are saying, that is not something that comes from God. God does not want you anxious and afraid about the end. He does not want you anxious about a world war or anything like that. Even if something like that were to happen, people interpreted World War I as the return of Christ, and it wasn’t. World War II was interpreted that way, and it wasn’t. There’s no reason to assume that a future war would automatically be the end.
What we can be confident in is that if we focus on Christ and reject the things that try to drag us into chaos, or even into tyranny, then we will be able to be the kind of Christians the New Testament describes—those who have joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, those who persevere with longsuffering, even when the world is falling apart, even in times of trial and tribulation.
And so I hope that helps as you think about the Sea of Galilee turning red. I hope it gives you hope instead of fear. Remember, Christ is king, and that changes everything.
Bible Verses About the Sea, Galilee, and God’s Power Over Creation
Matthew 4:18–19, "While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.'"
Matthew 8:26–27, "And he said to them, 'Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?' Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, 'What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?'"
Mark 4:39, "And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm."
Luke 5:4–6, "And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, 'Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.' And Simon answered, 'Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.' And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking."
John 6:19–21, "When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, 'It is I; do not be afraid.' Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going."
Exodus 7:20, "Moses and Aaron did so, as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile, and all the water in the Nile turned into blood."
Psalm 93:4, "Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!"
Psalm 107:29, "He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed."
Revelation 8:8, "The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood."
Revelation 16:3, "The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea."
