The Calendar

Thank you again, Mr. Franklin.

Thank you again, Mr. Call.

I wonder if this is a trait of someone that's about my generation. I know there's some others here. You were young in the late 60s, early 70s, and you remember especially the Apollo space program.

I still remember getting up some mornings and seeing the live feed and the men sitting in front of these banks of computers down in Florida and the others in Texas, and seeing that big rocket with the smoke coming out and the countdown and how exciting it was when they were blasting off.

That's one of the things that stuck with me. I've enjoyed following developments in space exploration.

In fact, I still remember the first time they... Well, not the launch of the shuttle. I think I saw that, but the first time it landed successfully. There was a whole group of us that just skipped class all afternoon. We were in high school and went to the chemistry lab to watch that.

I was pretty excited. Last August, we learned that there was a spacecraft called the Rosetta had been flying throughout our space, and it finally caught up with and rendezvoused with a comet.

Something we'd never heard of before. And I wrote down the name of the comet, which I've been practicing pronouncing as 67P Churyumov-Girasamykul. I'm guessing that was discovered by a couple Russian scientists.

And on November 12th, it actually landed a probe. Or if you heard the accounts, the probe bounced a number of times because comets apparently don't have all that much gravity, but they managed to get it down.

This was after it had been traveling for 10 and a half years.

Circling around to a point five times further out than the Earth is from the Sun.

Interestingly, this one wasn't launched by an American agency. It was the European Space Agency. They launched it back in March of 2004.

Interesting. Talk about planning and preparation.

After that March 2004 launch, two years later, NASA did launch a spacecraft called New Horizons.

New Horizons has spent most of the last nine years traveling three billion miles. That's billion with a B and a sort of hibernation.

So it's been sort of, I don't know, electronically asleep.

But not much more than a month ago, scientists from Earth sent in a radio signal saying, wake up!

And it did.

The electronics have come on, and it's rapidly approaching the planet Pluto. Now, it's got a few million more miles to go, but it's going to pass close enough to Pluto, which we can debate whether now it's a planet or a planetoid.

I'm wondering, how many of you remember before it was considered a planet at all? Is there anyone here who didn't know about it? I grew up with being told nine planets. Pluto is the one that was named after Mickey Mouse's dog.

And then recently, no, it's not a planet after all. Anyways, whatever it is, it's going to meet up pretty soon, right when and where it was planned to happen, you know, for more than eight years.

It astounds me that scientists are able to pull off such accomplishments.

Doing so requires the construction of very sophisticated, complex machines built by actual rocket scientists.

And they have to be able to calculate and predict every little detail. They have to have the movements of the spacecraft and whatever it is out there it's going to meet up with.

Even short flights. There's been a lot of news in space exploration recently. It was also a month ago that NASA launched the Orion space capsule and it orbited the Earth twice.

That's funny to think, wow, now they're able to do what we did 70 years ago.

But, you know, going 3600 miles out, much further than the space shuttle has been doing.

But even something as simple as that, just going around the Earth a couple of times, I say simple.

When compared to meeting with Pluto, it seems pretty simple. But it takes an amazing amount of calculation and planning.

The rockets, the computer equipment, the radio systems, everything has to function exactly as designed.

And of course, these deep space rendezvous depend on something else that we could take for granted.

But really, we should appreciate very much.

That is that those asteroids, the planets and the comets, they all move in regular, predictable paths.

They traverse routes that were designed long ago by the creator God.

Now, that's not something new that rocket scientists recently discovered. That's the way it's been as far back as they've been there.

And it turns out ancient humans determined that as well. They looked up at night and saw that there were regular movements of some of those little lights. Now, they might have had no idea what those little lights were.

But some of them at least discovered that there were recurring patterns that could be counted on. They knew they would happen at the time, at the same time, on a regular basis.

One of the ways we know ancient peoples noticed that is because they built structures. Sometimes very impressive ones with significant features that point these things out. Now, most of you have seen pictures of Stonehenge, of course. That's one of the things you think of at first. But we have some right here in Ohio. For those of you who are from Kentucky, there's probably some down there. But a few months ago, Sue and Connor and I took one afternoon and visited the Serpent Mound in Highland County, which I was excited.

It was only my second time to visit it, and the first time it was covered with snow. So I actually got a decent look at it. Although I should confess this, I grew up all my life seeing pictures of it in textbooks, this great Serpent Mound. It's this example of this or that. And so as a kid, I looked at it, and I imagined the mound must be 15 or 20 feet high. Those of you chuckling have been to the Serpent Mound and realized it's more like 15 or 20 inches high.

But it's interesting, there are signs there, if you visit, that note that the curves in the Serpent match up with certain astronomical events. The furthest movement of the sun to the north or to the south, the Moon's movements, match up with things we call the solstices, which we recently had a winter solstice. One of the things that inspired me to speak on this subject. And of course, the equinoxes that come at the midpoints of the year. In the town of Newark, Ohio, there are a very significant set of mounds.

There's a huge circle mound, and this one is about 20 feet high. You go over the bridge, I don't know if any of you have been to Newark. This circle, you feel like you're going into a different world because you're cut off from everything. And then nearby, there's this octagon that's been there since before white people ever came around. For many, many years, scientists studied this octagon, and they looked at its angles, and the lines that could be drawn from it, trying to figure out what astronomical significance it might have.

One of the reasons it took them so long is they couldn't quite determine, is it in line with the Moon, or is it in line with the Sun? Well, it turns out both. It's set up on basically what we call a lunis solar calendar. Now, I learned a fair bit about these mounds when I worked for the Ohio Humanities Council, and I think I've mentioned this, at least in passing, before. When I worked for the Council, it's amazing how much I learned reading grant proposals. And some of the scholars who study that asked for funding, and so I got to read all these proposals and then the reports.

And I learned that several of them had to get their minds used to the idea of a lunis solar calendar. But not me. I was quite familiar with a lunis solar calendar. Well, not quite familiar, but familiar enough because the Hebrew calendar is what's called a lunis solar calendar. That means it's based on both the movements of the Moon and the movements of the Sun. Now, by the way, I'm not trying to make a case that the earthworks in Newark were built by ancient Hebrews.

But I will admit, I was surprised a few years ago when scholars discovered there's a certain event that happens there once every 19 years. And they submitted a grant proposal and planned to have this special program because once every 19 years they discovered the Moon would rise directly... ...a full Moon. The Moon would be full and it would rise directly within the one opening of the octagon.

I said, wow, that's kind of neat. It happens once every 19 years. So the council gave them money to have people come and observe this and then have several scholars talk and explain what they learned about the mounds. I said, I want to attend that. But I couldn't. Turned out that the night it happened was opening night at the Feast of Tabernacles. Was that a bizarre coincidence? Now, I don't think so.

Not because I think Solomon sent people over to build the octagon, but because the Hebrew calendar includes calculations and the use of leap years that work through a cycle of 19 years. Actually, it's 18 point something, but since I'm not a math person, I'd like to round off. Why? Why would prehistoric American Indians also have some astronomical cycle that works on a 19 or 18 point something year cycle?

Especially if I presume maybe they didn't get it from Jerusalem. Well, it could be both civilizations had learned to look up. I don't want to put that worship thing, but they look up and see the movements. They notice the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. Well, not the movements of the stars. They seem to be moving. You know, people around the world could look up and they could do math. Better than I can do math.

And that makes a difference. Once you know the cycle, because it was set up by God, because God made things in space move on a reliable schedule, where and when they're going to be can be calculated. Years in advance. Decades. Actually centuries or millennia in advance. Makes me wonder if those ancient Indians had had rockets instead of just dirt. Could they have sent something out there to rendezvous with Pluto? You know, like Rosetta and New Horizons. That's speculation. Maybe they needed a little more information than that.

But they had plenty enough for some things. And that's leading me to my main point. Is I want to speak today about the subject of the calendar. And that there is dispute about the calendar. Some people have disagreements over whether we should be using the calendar that we do to determine what days are the annual Holy Days. Now, fortunately, I'm not aware of any dispute here among us. If there is one, it hasn't come to my attention yet. But I'm addressing it because, to be honest, it's a sad fact that over the years, every so often in the Church of God, disputes and arguments arise. People think they've made a great new discovery that no one's realized before about when the Holy Days really should be and how the calendar should work.

And I thought, well, we just turned over a new calendar. Actually, I would say I turned over a new calendar, except I haven't because I still need to buy a new calendar. I'm almost two weeks in and I've got an empty spot. But almost all of the educated and experienced leadership of the Church over decades has turned to the subject and studied it again and again. And every time, they come up with the same conclusions.

So we need to be prepared to have some understanding of the issue so that we won't be caught off guard or misled the next time someone discovers some new truth and they want to convince us of whatever scheme they might have. So, again, since this has been somewhat of a recurring problem, I'll say we don't have to face new questions that no one has faced before. We individually may not have faced them before.

As a matter of fact, I'll speak for myself. I didn't really realize that it was much of an issue until the mid-90s when a lot of other issues were being brought up. And then, of course, things come out of the woodwork. And so I had people say, what about this? What about that? I studied into it then and came up with the same conclusions that I do today. So we don't have to go through uncharted waters to answer questions that no one has faced before.

As a church, we believe that we do have the answers.

And that's enough to say we don't all have to go around with a slide rule calculating a calendar every year. But it's worth us revisiting it now and then to make sure we have it clearer in our own minds. So let me list some of the big questions and what we believe the answers are.

Number one, what calendar does the Bible refer to? Does the Bible have a calendar in it? Here's where I fell down. I was going to say, if I had one of my pocket calendars, a lot of times people have a calendar in their Bible because they've tucked it in there. I don't have one in there. I usually have one in my wallet. But the short answer is, no, the Bible does not have a calendar, unless you've tucked one in the pages.

But within the Bible, God and His servants do refer to various months and days of the year and days of the month.

So the Bible does presume the existence and use of a calendar.

And we could speculate, did God give Moses a calendar? Or did He give one to someone else? Maybe to Abraham or to Noah? Well, if so, it's not recorded in the Bible.

As I said, perhaps God did at one point say, here's this, but whoever He gave it to didn't write that down. Now, as a church, we believe that the Hebrew calendar, or as many people say, the Jewish calendar, as it's been maintained and preserved by the main body of the Jewish religious establishment, is the one that's referred to in Scripture. As I said, the Bible does refer to calendar terms, and we believe that's the one that's referring to. And that's the calendar we follow in keeping the Holy Days. So I'm going to come back to these issues and go into more detail, but I want to cover the big questions. Actually, I only have three major questions. The second one, the second big question is, is it acceptable to Christians that this Hebrew Jewish calendar is based on calculations, not strictly observance? And that it includes various rules of calculations, such as they're known as the postponements and intercalary months. Intercalary is a fancy way of saying leap month, when we're used to leap years or leap days. Again, the answer that we've come to repeatedly is, yes. That's acceptable. That's a part of the calendar and the way it works. And it's not a mystery that we can't know or understand. Any one of us could, if we want to spend the time to study and delve into it, could calculate that out. As I said, it's been done, so there's not a pressing need for us to go through that every year. Third major question, and this seems to have come up more often recently, but this question is, should we be celebrating or observing as holy the monthly new moons? The new moon is a day each month. Should that be a holy day? Should we be doing something special or different? Well, our short answer is, no, we don't do that. Well, with the one exception, of course, is the Feast of Trumpets every year does fall on the first day of the seventh month. It's a new moon. Now, I do want to stop, back up a little bit, and deal with this issue because it's one that I don't think takes a long time, so I'm going to cover it sort of right now. Some people point to Numbers 28, and I do want to turn to Numbers 28, beginning in verse 11, because this is one of the places that people commonly go to to say, well, no, you do have to keep the new moon as a holy day. Numbers 28, verse 11, Here in verse 11, it says, So it goes on there, and it describes all this. Now, you might say, well, I'm not so sure about that. But what this gets, where this leads to a lot of people, is immediately following in verse 17. So the fifteenth day of the first month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And it goes on, you know, there's a holy convocation, and you'll present an offering made by fire. So verses 17 through 24 go on to describe the sacrifices to make on the Holy Day of the first day of Unleavened Bread. And, of course, the last day. Starting in verse 26, through the end of the chapter, it describes the sacrifices to make on the Holy Day of Pentecost. Carries right on into the next chapter, chapter 29, verses 7 through 11, descriptions of what to sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, our next annual Holy Day. Then, starting in verse 12, all the way through verse 34, is what to sacrifice on each of the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles. And the end of the chapter, verses 35 through 38, does the same for the Feast of the Eighth Day that follows Tabernacles.

And reading through that, you might tend to say, wow, this seems to include the new moons right along with the Holy Days. But let's back up to the beginning of chapter 28. We'll see why it seems to include them. And see what the purpose of these two chapters is. Numbers 28 and verse 1, Now the Eternal spoke to Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel and say to them, My offering, My food for My offering, made by fire as a sweet aroma to Me. You'll be careful to offer to Me at their appointed times. Okay, appointed times for making sacrificial offerings. And this is the offering that you'll be made by fire. You'll offer to the Eternal two male lambs and their first lamb.

Wait a minute, let me make sure I said that right. The offering made by fire which you'll offer to the Eternal two male lambs and their first year without blemish, day by day, as a regular burnt offering. The one lamb you'll offer in the morning, the other lamb you'll offer in the evening. Now we see references to this many times in scriptures, what we call the evening sacrifice or the morning sacrifice. There was a regular sacrifice day by day that had to be done.

And what happens is these chapters are basically summarizing the sacrifices to make. Sacrifices to be made on a daily basis. Actually, if you'll look at verse 9, I could have started here, but it says also, On the Sabbath day, two lambs of the first year, there was a special sacrifice to make on a weekly basis, and thus also on a monthly basis, there was a sacrifice. So, every day, certain sacrifices, once a week, once a month, and then the annual Holy Days were very special.

This is a listing that's all about sacrifices, not necessarily about Holy Days. Now, I'm not going to go in and say, well, we sacrifice this on these days and not on those. We've mostly all read the book of Hebrews, I'm guessing. But we're not going to go there to remind us that we, as Christians, don't offer animal sacrifice. We're all covered by the one true and effective sacrifice that Jesus Christ made. But let's take one last look. I'm going to turn away, but reminding you again, at the beginning of these chapters, in verse 2, where it says, Command the children of Israel, say to them, My offerings, My food for My offerings.

If we turn back to Numbers 23, we'll see a different emphasis. Did I say Numbers? I meant Leviticus. Sorry. When I say Leviticus 23, that should ring a bell for most of us. We know what's listed there. In Leviticus 23, He doesn't start off saying, My offerings, or food for sacrifice. Instead, Leviticus 23, in verse 2, He says, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, The feasts of the Eternal, which you will proclaim holy convocations.

These are My feasts. Now, throughout this chapter, it does mention sacrifices that are made in conjunction with the feasts. But this is specifically a listing of holy convocations, days that God made holy. And it's the one definitive list that's in one chapter of the Bible. And it doesn't include or say anything about new moons. That's because the new moon is not a holy day. It's the start of a month. It's the day when, figuratively, you would turn over the calendar. And I'm saying figuratively, because some people might say, Well, why? Why does God command specific sacrifices to commemorate the new moon then?

If it's nothing special, why would He have you do it? And while the Bible doesn't specifically say so, but I think the answer actually is pretty obvious. This was a society where people did not have calendars hanging on their wall. They didn't have something that beeps programmed into their phone that they carried in their pocket. How would they know when a new month had begun? Well, there was an elaborate ceremony once a month done at the headquarters city, and news spread. Oh, it's a new month! There's a sacrifice. There's blowing of trumpets. That happened once a month.

And, of course, also once a week. The Sabbath let people know the passing of the weeks. And, of course, the Sabbath is explicitly a holy day. But as we see, if we read Leviticus 23 and throughout the Bible, the new moons are not specifically holy days. So, I'm not sure. I guess I'm making an argument by absence of evidence. If it was a holy day, God certainly would have told us.

And the reason he said to do certain sacrifices at the start of each month was so people would know it's the start of a month. Now, you might wonder, why in the world do you waste time telling us about this anyways? We're not doing this. Well, there are people out there that have been arguing that the new moons are holy days. There is a movement that says the new moon is how you determine when the Sabbath day is. Well, I'll just say simply that's not correct.

The Bible nowhere gives us that indication. The Sabbath is the seventh day. And it comes around, matter of fact, the word Sabbath in Hebrew means seven. It's the seventh. So, you know, the new moon does, however, play an important role in maintaining an orderly calendar. So, let's turn back to that. Let's consider, again, why as a church we've accepted and used the traditional Jewish calendar. Why do we do that? One major reason is we accept its historical authority. We look to history, and that tells us it's been around a long time and that the people maintaining it all those years had the authority to do so.

Now, I think it's obvious to all of us that, you know, the calendar that's in general use in our society is not what tells us when the Holy Days are. Most of the world currently uses what's called the Gregorian calendar. Gregorian was actually named for Pope Gregory the 13th, who introduced it to the Holy Roman Empire in the year 1582. That was a little before my time.

Interestingly, the British Empire liked to do things their own way. They wouldn't adopt it for nearly 200 years. So they stuck with the old calendar, and they were several days off of the rest of the world. By the way, when the Gregorian calendar came along, it was replacing the Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar, and that goes back to 45 BC.

So we haven't changed the calendar a lot over the millennia. And I have no idea what the Romans were using before 45 BC, but I am sure what the Jews in Palestine were using. At that time, they were already using a calendar that was specific to them, which we would call the Jewish calendar. And the fact that the main religious governing body of Judaism, and past times known as the Sanhedrin, the fact that they've maintained that calendar from ancient times since before the Julian calendar was introduced, is a matter of historical record.

In other words, the documents show that they haven't had a change they've been using at all this time. That body preserved and continued that calendar. Now, there's something else they preserved and continued that's very important to us. We simply call it the Old Testament, and I think those two are not unrelated. Now, I do want to acknowledge, in about the 700s AD, there was a breakaway rabbinic group known as the Karaites, if I'm pronouncing it correctly.

The Karaites made a claim, as I said, about 700 years after Jesus Christ's time. They said that, no, the Holy Days have to be determined solely by observation. By observation, that means somebody's got to put an eyeball on the fact that it's a new moon, or else they don't trust it.

And the writings of that group that appeared in the 700s is the first time we see some claims that the Hebrew calendar had not been consistently maintained since ancient times. What I would say, though, is a claim made hundreds of years after an event of something supposedly happening with no cooperating evidence at the time is pretty dubious.

As a historian, that's why I'd say, it's like, wait, hundreds of years... It's sort of like if someone came up with something now that says, oh, George Washington wasn't really the general during the American Revolution, and they couldn't find any documents to prove it that are from that period, I'd be saying, no, I'm going to stick with Washington. Sort of like, I'm going to stick with that Jewish calendar. We don't consider the Karaite movement to be authoritative. They did not preserve a different calendar since before the time of Christ, and they didn't preserve the Holy Scriptures.

I've been referring to that. If you will, let's turn to Romans chapter 3. I don't have a whole lot of Scriptures I'm turning to today because a lot of this is based on just logic and history. But Romans 3, verses 1 and 2 is a very important Scripture along these lines.

There's the Apostle Paul writing to members of the church, actually to Gentile members of the church, wants to say something important about the Jews of his time and going back before then and looking into the future. Because he's making the case, of course, that Gentiles can become a part of the church and be just as valid. So he asked the question then, well, what advantage has the Jew? What's the prophet of circumcision? And he says, well, much in every way and chiefly.

In other words, the biggest advantage to them is, to them were committed the oracles of God. To them were committed the oracles. Oracles means words of God. This seems to be an authoritative statement in Christian Scripture by the author of the biggest part of the New Testament saying, God gave the Jewish people the responsibility of keeping, preserving and passing on his word. Now, the word they had at that time was what we call the Old Testament.

Now, we would ask the question, does oracles of God also include a calendar? The Bible doesn't specifically say so. Now, note worthy, notable, note worth saying, is that it doesn't say anything to the contrary. The Bible doesn't say, no, they're not, they're keeping the word but not the calendar. And where else do you look for one? There is no other, there's not a competing one that's been around all along. Now, there's just no competitor. Let's go back to Exodus 12. I made sort of an inference to this. Let's go see Exodus 12 beginning in verse 1.

This is one of those places where, excuse me, the Bible seems to refer to a calendar. Exodus 12. Now, we often cite this because it introduces the idea of Passover. I'm not going to go all the way to Passover, but it says here, The Eternal spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginning of months. It'll be the first month of the year to you.

I always like to stop and say, you know, God didn't say, Moses, now let me explain to you what a month is. And by the way, I want to tell you what a year is. Rather, God seems to be referring to a calendar already in existence, or presuming that Moses knows what a month is and what a year is. What we, you know, tradition says God is changing just which month of the year they call the first month, going from the month that we now call the seventh month, saying, no, that's not the first month. You know, this month is the month that we call ABIB or NISON. That might logically lead us to infer one of two things. Either God actually did give Moses a calendar at that time, but he didn't bother to record that. Now I'm a little skeptical of that because Moses recorded a lot of other things God told him. You know, how many cubits do you make? The boards and the tabernacle and all that? You know, or the other presumption is Moses and the Israelites already had a calendar. God was giving them references or giving them commands in reference to that calendar. And we can say both here and throughout the Pentateuch, especially in Leviticus chapter 23. Jewish tradition and history say that that's what happened. And I'll go on record. That's what I personally believe. That might not carry a lot of weight. I know it doesn't with some people, but I tend to believe, yeah, they had a calendar that they'd been keeping for who knows how long. And so God was just saying, now, okay, I want you to switch and start calling this the first month. Now, sometimes it frustrates me because a lot of times you see on a calendar what we call the Feast of Trumpets and it says Jewish New Year. I'm still curious why if the Jews read this like I did, why don't they just call ABIB the first of New Year? You know, they want to have a separate civil year and a religious year. I'd just soon have them in one. But then again, you know, Mr. Call and I had to work together a budget to send to the home office for starting in June, which they call the fiscal year. And I haven't called up Mr. Cubic and said, hey, why don't we just make it the one calendar? So I'm not going to argue that.

But wherever the Hebrew calendar came from, we do know that Jesus Christ, when He lived on earth, did not correct or seem to disagree with that calendar. And we can say Jesus Christ was the ultimate authority. He was God in the flesh. If they had the calendar wrong, He would have known it and He might have taken it upon Him to correct them.

Rather, let's turn to Matthew 23 and see what He did say. Because He had a lot of dealings with the religious authorities, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Matthew 23, beginning in verse 1, And Jesus spoke to the multitude and to His disciples, and He said, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Now, that doesn't mean they had an old chair that belonged to Moses they were carrying around.

It meant a position of authority. And He explains that here in verse 3. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, do it! Whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do! Now, don't do after their works, because they say one thing and do something else. But He was saying, what they tell you to do, they've studied into it, they're in a position of authority. So, He was making a point about hypocrisy on one hand, saying, you know, they say one thing and they don't do it.

But as far as the authority they had from God, He's making a state that they're in Moses' seat. They have that responsibility. Without turning to it, we could find several places where Jesus did disagree with the Pharisees over how to keep the Sabbath. There's no indication that He ever disagreed with them about when it was. Yeah, they agreed they knew when the Sabbath was. And the same goes for the annual Holy Days. Turn with me to John 7, if you will. John 7, beginning in verse 2, John 7, now John was writing much later than the other apostles, knowing a lot of Gentiles would be reading this.

I think it's one of the reasons he referred to the Jews' Holy Days. And he says, now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. It doesn't mean John didn't know that it was God's Feast of Tabernacles, but he was explaining it to others. The Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. And, of course, Jesus' brother is talking about, hey, go up and keep the Feast so people will pay attention.

Let's drop down to verse 8. Jesus told his brothers, you go up to this Feast. I'm not yet going to this Feast, for my time has not yet come. Now, when he'd said these things, he remained in Galilee, but was the only temporary. But when his brothers had gone up, then he also went to the Feast. Not openly, but as it were in secret. So when Jesus said, it's not time, I'm not yet going, he didn't mean... Let me say what he did mean first. He meant, I'm not ready to draw a whole bunch of attention and get myself killed just yet.

I'm not supposed to be killed until Passover. This is the Feast of Tabernacles. So he went up secretly and would make himself known later. But he did not say to his brothers, I'm not going because they got the calendar wrong. They put in an intercalary month this year, and I kept the Feast 28 days ago. He didn't say that. He doesn't say, oh, you know, they used some postponements. The Feast was supposed to have started two days ago. None of that comes up. You know, he went up and he kept the Feast. And as far as we know, throughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus kept the Feast days on the same times as the rest of the people of his country, according to the calendar that the Pharisees and Sadducees maintained.

Now, we'll note going forward, we say Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees generally refers to the priests and the scribes. And I'm mentioning that because after 70 AD, the temple was destroyed, and they didn't have a particular job. So you don't hear about the Sadducees so much after that. And the Pharisees took on the main role of being in control, and they dominated the Sanhedrin. Their traditions developed into what we commonly call rabbinic Judaism. So what we see, the Pharisees of the New Testament didn't practice exactly Judaism as we see it today, but the roots were there.

And of course, subgroups would have risen. The Karaites in the 700s, different ways of practicing Judaism have come and gone over the years. Now, before the temple was destroyed, Jews had already spread out and lived all over the Middle East and into Europe. Of course, many of them, because Babylon had hauled them off, and they didn't all go back to the Promised Land.

Many of them did maintain their identity. And wherever they were, they relied on communication from that Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to maintain things like the Bible, but also to send them word of an accurate calendar. Which is important, because wherever they were, the Roman Empire had switched to this new Julian calendar that was all the rage. But they knew the Holy Days were determined by the sacred calendar. Now, after the temple was destroyed, the Sanhedrin moved to another town, but they continued their function and responsibility, including maintaining the calendar, keeping track of it, and sending the information out. Now, during the years 330 to 365 AD, there was a very famous rabbi whose name has gone down in history, Rabbi Hillel, and Hillel II, to be specific.

Now, he's known for a number of things, and during the time he was in charge of the Sanhedrin, Judaism came under some pretty strong persecution from the Empire. Emperor Constantine was putting it to the Jews. And Rabbi Hillel became worried that he might just kill off all the Sanhedrin. And if so, a lot of important information would be lost, including how to maintain the calendar. So in the year 359 AD, Hillel did something that had not been done before.

He decided to publish the instructions for how to calculate the calendar. He shared that information and sent it out throughout the Empire so that it wouldn't be known only there in the Middle East, in Palestine. And you could say he was making somewhat of a rather unselfish move, because the Sanhedrin, by doing this, was giving up a lot of its central authority. Now, people didn't have to check with them.

Now, I'm saying this because, now, other versions of history, some historians will say that what happened in 359 was Hillel invented a new calendar. He came up with some new calculations, and that's what he sent out. Now, do we have definitive proof of which happened in the 300s? Whether Hillel simply made public something they already had, or had he made up something new and sent that out? Boy, I wish we did. Again, as a historian, I'd love to have a letter in Hillel's handwriting signed by him saying, this is what I'm doing and this is why, and we can look in the documents and then we'd know. We just don't have that.

Now, there is some bits of evidence here and there, and I believe there's more evidence supporting the view of history that I maintain, that Hillel was sharing what had already been there, not making up something new. One of the things, as I said, the earliest objection to this calendar didn't come until, like, 350 years later when the Karaites made the claim that he had just made up something. Before that, everyone presumed he'd shared what was already there.

But I'll say our biggest reason, well, the biggest reason that many people objected back then was that they learned that a lot of what makes the calendar relies on calculations, not just visual observation. Oh, New Moon is the start of a new month. And that calculation included certain rules that are what we call the postponements and the intercalary months. So I want to shift gears a little and turn to those questions now.

First, let's address the claim by some that the only way God would accept for determining a new moon, and thus, when the calendar is, is by having someone in Jerusalem actually see it.

Now, and some people do claim that. If you don't have someone in Jerusalem looking up at the sky, you're not keeping the right calendar. But does the Bible say that? No? It doesn't say that. What does it say? I got my concordance out for this, and the Bible mentions new moons a number of times. It never tells you what that is exactly. Well, I can say, but common usage in culture does, you know, we sort of know what a new moon is.

And basically what it is, is a certain point in the cycle of the moon. If you were to go out and look up every night, over the course of about 29 days, the appearance of the moon changes. It goes from not being there at all to this little sliver, which is, you know, the subject of a lot of poems and such. And that sliver gets bigger and bigger during a phase that's called waxing.

Not waxing your car, but means getting bigger, till it's this beautiful big full moon. And then it starts diminishing from the other side, or doing what's called waning, till it's down to a sliver of the other side, and then you can't see it anymore. So that's the 29 day cycle. The day when nothing is visible is what's called the new moon. And many of you have known this all your lives, or at least for a long time. I still remember as a kid, looking at the calendar, some calendars have the phases, and it always say new moon, and I'd look and say, well, there's no moon.

How can it be new? It's not even there. To me, I always thought the full moon should have been called new. But anyways, one of the reasons for disagreement is that when the new moon starts, isn't always easy to tell. What if it happens during the day? Is that day the new moon, or is it not till the next day? And then we can complicate things, because modern astronomy has allowed us to determine that it's not just a day. As I said, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, then it gets smaller and smaller, and then it'll start getting bigger again. They've determined we can know that there's an actual moment when it stops getting smaller and starts getting bigger.

An actual moment. In my mind, I thought, what's a good representative? It's like if you've ever played with a yo-yo. You put it down, there's a moment when it hits bottom and starts coming back up. The moon's not a yo-yo, but it's like that. That exact time can be relatively easily calculated. And for the purposes of the Hebrew calendar, that moment is called the Molad.

M-O-L-A-D. And it appears in Hebrew often that's synonymous with the new moon, which they would use for the whole day. I wrote this down. A Molad occurs once every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3 1 3rd seconds. They've got it down to that precise. Interestingly, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, NOAA, has calculated it, and then they compared it to the calculations of Hillel II and the 300s.

And they only differ by two millionths of a day. So, modern scientists today can only do it two millionths of a day more accurately than Hillel could back in the Middle Ages. So, the exact timing of a new moon can be known very precisely, and it has been known precisely for millennia, even though it can only rarely be observed so precisely. Now, I wonder how many years of observation did it take for astronomers to determine that calculation?

I don't know. Probably a long time. But I'm sure God knew it right from the start. Whenever it was, if he did hand someone a calendar, he might have told him right then, okay, this is when it is, because I already know.

God, it works just like, I think, millions of years ago, God knew where Pluto was going to be in a few weeks when that space probe reaches it. And, you know, of course, the NASA scientists knew it ten or so years ago when they were planning the mission. Now, my personal opinion is saying that we can't know when a new month is going to start until a rabbi on a hill in Palestine sees it and sends us a text message. It would be like saying, well, NASA can't know where Pluto is until they send a probe out there and look around and see if it's there.

There's a better way. You know, we can calculate in advance and know when and where these things will be. God made the movements of the heavenly body so precise that back in Genesis 1 and verse 44, he said, there are signs, seasons, days, and years. I know I couldn't give the sermon without mentioning that scripture, but I'm not going to turn there. But from the creation, God said, okay, this is how you determine signs, seasons, days, and years.

So, if someone were to ask me, should the calendar be based on calculation instead of observation?

I'd be tempted to answer while saying, well, can we count? Can we add and subtract, divide and multiply? Well, then, of course the calendar should be based on calculation, because God also created cloudy days. But, you know, we know what's up there above the clouds.

Because the calendar is based on the movements of astronomical bodies and it is calculated, it's possible to calculate the calendar, including when the Holy Days are, far in advance. And you can calculate back for centuries, even thousands of years. And we can go as far either direction as we want if you're good at math, and that's not me. But that's part of why the Church can send you a pocket calu- not a pocket calu- a par- pocket calendar has five years worth of Holy Days on it.

When I was young, I used to think, well, they must not be able to calculate it further out than that. Oh, that's just because they only wanted you to do just so big a piece of paper. They could send you a hundred-day calendar if they want- or a hundred-year calendar.

But that ability helps us to provide an answer to that next big question.

Are postponements a legitimate part of that calendar? And this is where some of the big questions come up. And before I answer that, I should answer the question that a lot of you probably have. What are postponements? I remember first dealing with that, and then I got the answer. I was like, oh, I wish I hadn't asked. Basically, there are a set of rules that are built into how the calendar is calculated, and they're all based on what's called the Molad of Tishri. Doesn't that sound really Hebrew and scholarly? Molad of Tishri is basically the start of the seventh month. It's what the beginning of the Feast of Trumpets.

Now, I'm not sure, again, why they want to call that the first day of the year, when it's the first day of the seventh month, but that's it. We already dealt with that. But in either case, the postponements are part of these calculations that serve... Well, I'm not sure if they serve, but they're expressed as showing that basically the Sabbath never falls on the day before atonement or the day after atonement. And that's part of the overall calculation.

And they're based on both the time of the day the Molad occurs. There are some rules that say if it happens after noon, then the first day isn't until the next day. And then if they come after noon on... I can't remember if it's a Sunday or another day, then it's postponed to another day. And when you see it in those terms, you say, wait a minute! You can't just switch what day atonement is. And I'd say, well, of course, that's right. The Hebrew calendar never switches what day it is. The postponements never say, well, atonement this year will be on the 11th day of the 7th month.

And next year, perhaps the 12th day of the 7th month. No, atonement is always the 10th day of the 7th month. And the Molad of Tishri is always the first day of the 7th month. But the postponements are part of an overall calculation that tells you which day is the first day of the month and which day is the 10th of the month. Now, you might say, how does that work? And it's an overall thing. It's like shifting the whole paradigm.

And it includes the fact that in the Hebrew calendar some months have 29 days, some have 30, and then some years have a 13th month. And the overall calculations tell you exactly which is which, and I don't have that in my head. But it's important, of course, to have that because 12 months of either 29 or 30 days don't fill the time it takes the earth to go around the sun.

And if you didn't put in an extra...you could do it different ways. There could be leap days, but this calendar has leap months. Or we call them intercalary months. And the whole process goes through a complete cycle once every 19 years. And then it repeats itself. And it all works. It fits. When you contrast that to the Roman calendar that we commonly use, it seems like the Holy Days are moving.

Sometimes they're in late September, then they're in October, then they're later October. Sue and I have been looking. Sometimes every now and then, Connor will have a birthday during the Feast of Tabernacles. Most years not. But if we were looking solely at the Hebrew calendar, we'd see, no, the Holy Days are on the same day of the month every single year. They're not moving around. What happens is the seasons seem to be beginning earlier or later other times. Although in my experience, have any of you noticed, it seems like the weather follows the Holy Days more than it does the Roman calendar? I think that's God's way of showing that He endorses it, but that's just a personal opinion.

Now, where am I going to show you anything about postponements in the Bible? Well, I'm not. They're not there. They're not described. They're not promoted. They're also not condemned. And I should say, neither is any other way of determining a calendar. The Bible is, I would say, oddly silent, but maybe it's not so odd. Again, our strongest reason for accepting the inclusion of the postponements in the intercalary months is that it's always been a part of this calendar that's been maintained by the main religious authority of the Jewish people, and we believe that that was part of their job that was given them by God to preserve that calendar along with the Holy Scriptures, the oracles of God, as it says in Romans 3, verse 1.

And they've been doing that for a long time. Now, there is one thing in the Bible that does lend some fairly strong support for postponements. I debated whether or not I should put this in, not because it's not valid, but I was questioning how well I could explain it, but I'm going to give it a shot anyways. Because this is based on the fact that Jesus Christ kept the Holy Days on the same calendar as the people around Him. And added to that, that we can calculate the Holy Days, as I said, by math, we can go back as far as we want and see the Holy Day calendar for that time of year.

So we already read in John 7 that Jesus did go up and keep the Feast of Tabernacles the same time as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Looking ahead in that chapter, I want to go to John 7, verse 37. If you're like me, your Bible is already still open to John 7.

And in verse 37, this is when we commonly read this because it gives us a great illustration about the Holy Spirit. On the last day, that great day of the Feast, Jesus stood and cried out and said, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes on me, as the Scripture is said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. I almost can't read that. The old King James says his belly. And that's where it seems like the water should be coming from.

Now, years ago, we had some confusion, but we're pretty certain now that this was actually the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles. That's why it says, the last day of the Feast. Now, you might say, wait a minute, I always thought it was the eighth, because that's where we got the idea of calling the eighth day the last great day. But we've looked into it. The scholarship shows that on the seventh day of the Feast, the Jewish rabbis, or the priests, went through an elaborate ritual of drawing water from the spring in Gihon and bringing it up and pouring it out. So there was this great water ritual going on, and Jesus was playing off of that, saying, hey, if you really want a thirst, come to me. I'm going to give you living water. And then we also, if you look ahead to chapter 8, the end of this day, it says, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Actually, at the end of verse 53 of chapter 7, it says, everyone went to his own house. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And verse 2, early the next morning, he packed up and went home? No, early the next morning, he came again to the temple, and all the people came to him. Why? It was a holy day. And they weren't going home yet. They finished the seventh day of the Feast. Now, this day 8, they come back. And there's a series of events described. We know this is the point where the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught in adultery to Christ, and he writes on the ground, and he shames them into all leaving, tells the woman, go and sin no more. I'm not going to condemn you either. And if you read through this section of Scriptures, it's interesting because it's one series where John doesn't give a time break. It seems that he's describing the events one after another of one very eventful day. So a lot of scholars believe that John chapter 8, chapter 9, and much of chapter 10, all the way up to verse 21, occurred on one day, that eighth day of the Feast, the last day they were going to be there before they went home. Okay, with that in mind, if you're open to chapter 9 and look at verse 14, some people say, well, this is a time designation, but it's a mentioning of something that happened. It says, now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. In other words, there was a blind man that Jesus, you know, he sent him, he made clay, put on his eyes, said, go wash in the pool of Siloam and the guy could see. Which, something is sort of an aside. We always love the Pharisees, or later question him and say, well, where is the guy? You know, that healed your eyes, he says, I don't know. And he could have, in the parenthesis, said, I was blind the last time I saw him, you know, so I don't know where he is. But what this seems to be telling us is, and if you look at the Hebrew for that's you saying the Sabbath, he's saying that on that year, the last day of the feet, or the eighth day, was also a Sabbath. Okay, so they're doing all these things on the last holy day of the year, and it's also a Sabbath. That's not unfamiliar to us. We have that happen all the time. Or, not all the time, but it comes up every so often that, you know, the first day of the feast will be a Sabbath, and then the last day will be a Sabbath. Now, it seems to be the case here.

Now, I'm going to take a break having established that I believe that's what happened. There's a lot of scholarly writing to get into the why's we believe this, and I'm not going to go any further, but I will say the Church's study paper on the calendar examines this in more detail, and I'll invite you, if you want to get into that, to read it. It's convincing to me, but the other thing I could add that's not in dispute. Most people agree that this Feast of Tabernacles was the last Feast of Tabernacles that Jesus Christ kept in the flesh. He would proceed through the winter, and then in the spring was the Passover when He died. He became the Great Sacrifice.

In the year that He was died, we pretty much know which day of the week the festivals came. He was crucified and died on the 14th of Abib, late on a Wednesday afternoon.

Three days and three nights later, He arose right at the end of the Sabbath. Of course, it would be Sunday morning when Mary Magdalene came and saw Him. He appeared to her, the disciples came, and the tomb was rolled away.

So we know what days of the week that were in the spring. If we use the calculation of the calendar, looking back to the period of time when we believe Jesus lived, and I know there is some debate, but we believe it was close to what we call zero BC, though there is no zero BC, but around that time period when we know Christ lived, and we find that in the year 31 AD, the weeks align with the Holy Days to put the crucifixion on a Wednesday afternoon and the resurrection then occurring at the end of the Sabbath so the empty tomb could be found Sunday morning. It fits on that day of the year, but only if the postponements and the intercalary months are part of that calculation.

Now, some people would say, well, maybe He was crucified on another year when He wouldn't have those calculations. That's where we want to include what we looked at for the prior year. The previous year, 30 AD, when we think Jesus preached in the temple and that the last great day, what we call the last great day or the eighth day, was a Sabbath, actually that year wouldn't have needed postponements, but the days of that year line up so that the feast on the eighth day would be a Sabbath.

Is it just a convenient coincidence?

Well, actually, there are the only two years within any reasonable timeframe, during the time when we think Christ lived, where the days of the week do line up for those two years. And it's only possible with the use of the postponements. If you try to calculate the calendar without any postponements, you don't find any two years where they match up properly.

None, unless you want to say Christ lived in 400 AD. It's not that far off, but it's not in the period where it fits.

Now, I would say, is this incontrovertible proof? No. Matter of fact, as I said, it's complex enough. I wondered, should I talk about it? But I think it's, as I said, it's good supporting evidence. But even looking at that, I could see and understand, there are some issues that could be argued from both sides. And that's one of the things I like to do. Sometimes I say, I should have been a lawyer, because I love to argue and try to make a case.

There are some issues, and the calendar is one of them, where you could try to make a convincing case on more than one side. Now, I believe that the evidence supporting the calendar that we do use is convincing.

But before we wrap up today, I think it's worth addressing the question of, who has the authority to decide if there is a questionable issue?

If and when there is a decision or a choice to be made concerning a practice in the church, that is, within the body of Christ, we can turn to Scripture and see that Jesus Christ did vest a substantial authority in the body of the church to make those decisions. We see that in Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, beginning in verse 16.

It's another very well-known passage of Scripture.

Of course, Jesus Christ was speaking to His disciples, and before, when I began reading, He asked them, well, who do people say I am? And they came up with a lot of things people were saying. And Christ said, well, who do you say I am? And Peter said, well, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus said, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I'll also say to you, you're Petros. And I envision him picking up a little pebble. You're Petros. But on this rock, speaking of on this Petra, I'm going to build my church. The gates of hell will never prevail against it.

But I'll give you, and I say you, I imagine him pointing out at this small group of men, saying, I'll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Some people say it was speaking only to Peter. That's outside of what I'm concerned with today. But we know within the church, I'll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Now, I'm not saying that gives the ministry of the church the right to change or negate God's law. We can't say, let's make Wednesday the Sabbath. Wouldn't that be more convenient? No, we can't do that. But there is some definite authority here that is designated. Christ said, I'm giving you the keys. I'm not passing them out to everybody. And there's where we say the leadership of the church makes certain decisions. Besides things like who to ordain into the ministry and where they're going to serve. Just saw some electronic communication last night, mentioning down in Tennessee that Mr. Kellers is about to retire. Mr. Appetty is going to transfer into that area. Some other men are going to pick up responsibilities. That's for the leadership of the church to decide. The leadership of the church decides how we'll conduct Sabbath services. As I said, they give us... we've got some options. But there are policies that say you may do this, you may do that. But you may not just make something up on your own. And the leadership has the final authority to make decisions if there's doubt about which calendar to use.

The leadership of the church makes that decision, and it has authority from God to do that. Let's turn also to Ephesians 4, if you will. Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 11. I just want to lay this alongside of Christ's statement in Matthew 16.

Ephesians 4, verse 11. Because... and the reason I'm turning here is some people would say, well, Christ gave the authority to everyone in the church. Not just to ministers. Who do ministers think they are? They take too much on themselves. Well, being a minister, I'd say, well, maybe sometimes we have done that, but in this particular case, I don't think so. Ephesians 4, verse 11.

And it'd help if I were in Ephesians instead of Galatians.

Here Paul says, He Himself, that is God, Jesus Christ, gave some to the apostles and some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers. Why did He give some of those positions? For the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith. Unity is very important. That's one of the reasons God sets up a ministry and has different jobs so that we can all be built up and come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. To a perfect man, to the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ, and He's still answering, why is this? That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. I wanted to read through that because I could tell you, brethren, these calendar disputes that come up every so often, those are winds of doctrine. And it's an apt description because every now and then they just come blowing in. And they catch some people off guard, and you could say, theoretically, blow up your skirt a little, and it takes you by surprise. And doing so sometimes cause confusion and division. But God established authority in His church, in His ministry, partly to bring unity, to protect the church from division, against heresies like that of competing calendars. Think of this. The calling of commanded assemblies, such as Holy Days, that's a duty and responsibility of the church that's exercised through the leadership, the organization of the church. When individuals decide to take it upon themselves to accept their own calendar, to call their own assemblies, then they're doing something outside of the authority of the church, outside of the authority of Jesus Christ, and they're causing division. That's absolutely something that does not cause unity, it causes division. And as I said, I want to emphasize, I'm not bringing up this subject because I'm aware of any problems. I haven't heard anything like this coming up here in quite some time. My thought is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I'd rather address it and say, we all know about this, so if something does come up, if a wind of doctrine comes blowing in, we'll all say, no, we looked into that. We're comfortable with what we know. And the fact that it's been studied and studied and studied and addressed by the church should leave us free most of the time to not give it much thought. And so, in a few minutes, I'm going to go back to not giving it much thought. But before that, I want to again summarize. The United Church of God believes that the traditional Hebrew Jewish calendar is the proper calendar to use for determining when the Holy Days are, as set apart by God. We understand that that calendar is based on calculations. Of course, those calculations can be confirmed visually, and they are. And the calendar properly includes a complex set of calculations, including those that are known as postponements in the intercalary months. We also believe that, although it shouldn't be a doubtful matter, but as much as some people want to make it a doubtful matter, the ministry of the church, where there is doubt, has authority to make decisions about doubtful matters. The leadership of the church can make a decision about the calendar and has done so. So, having addressed that, as I said, I invite any of you to study in a more depth if you want to, but I spent more than I usually care to in preparing this. So, I'm going to step away and go back to focusing on the space program, because that's a lot more fun.