The Hebrew Calendar

I'm going to turn to Mrs. Dobson. She has lobbied me for 35 years. Please, please give a sermon on the Hebrew calendar sometime. And so I'm going to attempt that today. No, she has not been lobbying me for that. In fact, when I told her the topic yesterday, well, I won't go any further on that. But in the round of regional conferences that are about to conclude, one of the classes was on some of the common doctrinal challenges that tend to come through.

One of those has to do with those who question whether we should use the Hebrew or the Jewish calendar. And that is important for the determination of the dates of the Holy Days throughout the year, the seven festivals, which again will be very important to us coming up quite soon. It is a matter that we were encouraged to cover this from time to time.

And since I have never ever given a sermon on the Hebrew calendar, it's probably past time. I think that in some assignments it's been dealt with in some Bible study questions, but at any rate, let us ask the question, do we use the correct calendar for the determination of annual Holy Days?

Now, I have a 2016 yearly planner that the church puts out, and it has the dates of the Holy Days on it. So we are going to be observing on Thursday night, April 21st, we'll gather right here to observe the Passover. And then that Sabbath the 23rd we keep the first day of Unleavened Bread. It happens to be a weekly Sabbath, but also an annual Sabbath. The following Friday is Friday the 29th when we'll gather to keep the last day of Unleavened Bread. So the question simply is, do we have the right calendar? And from time to time, somebody comes along and they question the Hebrew calendar. Because I think all of you are aware that is what the church has used for decades.

That goes back into the 1930s. We have used the Hebrew calendar as the basis for determining the annual feast dates. But some will question it. And generally they will seek to reject the Hebrew calendar. And then the other side of the argument is that they found a calendar they want us to use. And so a few years ago, in an assignment far away, there was one man who came across a moon calendar.

It was strictly a lunar calendar. And he was putting all of his bet on that. And, as often happens, went out away from the church with his own pet belief. Oftentimes, a lot of the attacks against the Hebrew calendar fall into certain categories, such as some say it actually came from Babylon. And so it's a calendar of man. Now, it's hard to prove. Actually, it's hard to determine exactly where it came from. Others will attack the four rules of postponement. Now, I'm not even going to go into those.

There are study papers the church has on the website. If you go look up study papers, you can find this shorter one on the Hebrew calendar and a longer one on the summary of the Hebrew calendar. I don't know why the summary is longer than the other one, but that's the way they are.

And these will list the rules for postponement, which some say, well, by postponing, you're moving the Holy Days, but it's all a part of the calculations of determining the calendar. Others have claimed that they have found a calendar in the Bible. The only problem is they can't clearly show it to any of us from the Bible. So, there are all kinds of arguments, but we should ask the question, does the Bible provide us with a calendar? If it does, it would include days, weeks, months, years, things like that.

Can we find that in the Bible? The short answer is no, we can't. There are too many questions that are left hanging. Now, creating a calendar is very challenging. We'll go to Genesis 1 with the creation story in a little bit. But before we go there, let's just consider the challenges, because you have lunar cycles and you have an annual solar cycle.

The lunar month is just a hair over 29 and a half days long. Wouldn't it be nice if it were so simple that the earth revolved around the sun in 360 days exactly precisely?

And wouldn't it be nice if the lunar cycle was precisely 30 days? .0000? And then you have 12 months and it all works out. Well, it's not that simple. It's 29 and a half days.

Now, the problem is that the solar year, as we commonly have been taught in growing up, a year is 365 days and about a quarter. Slightly off from that, but that's real close. So that leaves us more than 11 days off.

12 lunar months are more than 11 days shorter than a solar year. If we take 13 months, 13 lunar months of 29 and a half days, we come out with 383 and a half days. So it's 18 and a half days longer than a solar year.

There's really not a simple way to reconcile the lunar and solar cycles. Now, let's talk about some calendars. Back in the days of the Roman Republic, they had an early Roman calendar. This is before the Julian calendar. But the Roman calendar was based on the lunar schedule, and they only made the calendar for 10 months.

Well, we already know it won't work, but see what they did was, during the winter, they just forgot about a calendar. So in the spring, they started again with another 10-month cycle. So each year, they'd go 10 months and then just forget about it for the winter and then start all over again.

Then we get to 45 BC, and Julius Caesar, under his calendar. It was the time of his reign, but the Julian calendar came out. And it was a great improvement, but it still was not perfect. In fact, there is no perfect calendar. The present calendar that we have is not perfect, although it is amazingly accurate also for what it does. But it's not used to determine holy days. But the Julian calendar consisted of 12 months that alternated between either 30 or 31 days. And then likewise, February was shorter. It had 29 days, and then a certain leap years, it had an extra day.

So something that the Julian calendar did was that they moved the beginning of the year from March 1st to January 1st. So we can thank Julius Caesar and the Romans at that time for giving us the beginning of the year and the dead of winter, January 1st. However arrived at that, I don't know, but that's what became.

Now, the problem is that the seasons began getting further and further out of their season. It was adjusted a number of times, but at any rate, it continued to be used into the 1580s AD. We today use the Gregorian calendar. I can see already you are so excited about this topic. But I think it will get better in a little bit. It will get better. But we do need to lay this foundation once in a while. The Gregorian calendar, it's named after Pope Gregory because it took place. I mean, he wasn't the brains behind it, but he was the one whose name was attached to it.

And the Gregorian calendar was a great improvement, but it ended up where the Julian calendar had got quite a few days out of the normal routine or seasons that they just dropped 10 days. So from October 4th, the next day was supposed to be October 5th, but that year, 1582, they made it October 15th. And just there went 10 days. And the good news is, the first thing I know we all wonder about is, did they tamper with the weekly cycle? And the answer is, no, they didn't. It didn't affect the weekly cycle. Thankfully, we can document that from history, that the weekly cycle of 7 days, which has to do with our keeping of the Sabbath, has not been affected.

One lunar month, I said a while ago, is about 29 and a half days. Actually, it's 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds. That's from one new moon until the next new moon, which is a very random number, very irregular to try to work with.

It's not as simple as if it had been precisely 30 days from one new moon to the next. The solar year, again, 365 days, plus not quite 6 hours. 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds. Give or take a few seconds. Somewhere in there. The solar year also, very complex and an irregular number to try to work with. So how do we construct a calendar that takes into effect the lunar cycle and the solar cycle? The answer is we don't. We don't. It's not that simple. Putting together a calendar is a very complex matter.

Now let's consider another question, and that is, does the Bible give us enough information to even begin to build a calendar? A short answer once again? No, it doesn't. Now let's go to Genesis 1. Because here we have a story of the creation. We have a creation story that is divided into days and nights. The evening and the morning was the first day and the second day. But in Genesis 1, notice verse 3, then God said, let there be light, and there was light.

And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

So this, of course, understands that there is a sun that provides the light, and then a planet called earth that revolves around it, but as it revolves it rotates, giving from the point of view of a particular geographical point on the earth day. There's no light, or there is light. Now in verse 14, verse 14, as we get to day 4, then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years.

Verse 16 speaks of two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also, God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth. So it is a matter that the sun, moon, stars are addressed, they are here as signs, seasons, days, and years. The earth rotates also on an axis, and it has a tilt. The moon revolves around the earth every 29 and a half days, and yet we're not given enough information to invent a calendar from what we've read thus far.

Now there are places where a day is defined. We read verse 5. He called the light day, the darkness, night, the evening, and the morning were the first day. There is a place in Leviticus where it talks about the day of atonement and that you will keep it from even, even of that ninth day until even of the tenth day, you shall keep your day of atonement.

So a day is a 24 hour. That tends to work out fairly well. It consists of the evening and then the morning, the night and then the day. A week is defined here in Genesis 1 and into Genesis 2. You have a listing of what happened on six days, and then on the seventh day, chapter 2, verse 2, on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created in me. And throughout the Bible, it continues to refer back to the creation. The Sabbath is tied back to creation. God created it. God modeled that behavior for us. God rested that day, and God is the one who said it is holy. So the week goes all the way back to creation. In Genesis 7, we read of months. In Genesis 7, of course, is in the story of the flood of Noah's day.

In Genesis 7, and notice verse 11, in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month. So there is a monthly cycle. There are at least, but as we know, there are more than seventeen days in a month. And it begins to tell the story of what transpired. In chapter 8, verse 4, then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

The waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. So we do find that there are months, verses 13 and 14, go on and discuss months. We aren't in the creation, or excuse me, the flood, the Noah's flood story. We're not. It just understands that there's a reckoning of time. So generally, it did it then from a certain perspective of a person, and in this case Noah in his six hundredth year, his six hundred first year, and then certain months of that year, certain days of that year.

But it doesn't tell us how to piece together a calendar. It just doesn't take that next step. Now, in the book of Genesis, there are no other references to a calendar. About as close as you can get is when the angels told, or the God of the Old Testament told, that about this time next year, Sarah's going to give birth.

Other than that, there's no reference here to specifically two days, months, year, in a sense of a calendar. So we're left with a lot of questions. When does a new moon, a new month, begin? Some people like to argue those things. Is it the last, faintest crescent of the old, outgoing moon? Is that when you declare a new month is here? Is it at the point whenever the moon is completely fully new in that sense that it's obscured? It's black.

It's dark. Some claim that. Is it with the first visible crescent of the new incoming moon? And that has been the one that Jewish practice at different times has leaned toward using. But the problem is, the Bible doesn't say. You'll get tired of that answer. The Bible doesn't say, but it's a true answer. The Bible doesn't tell us. No scripture defines when a new moon begins, and yet some want to argue that statement.

Some claim that it has to be determined by observation. You have to see it with the eyes. The Sanhedrin had a procedure whereby they had it verified by two or three. I forget which one it was. Reputable sources who came and pronounced that I've seen the first faint crescent moon of the new moon. And so they would proclaim it's now a new month. The Bible doesn't say.

And to that also, if it has to be by observation, what if it's cloudy that night? We were in the Philippines one time when there was one of the blood moons, and it was cloudy. So we never got to see one. It was cloudy.

When does a full moon begin? Well, the Bible doesn't say. And in reality, to the naked human eye, you've got about a three-day period where you cannot discern one moon from the next. Three days. Which one of those three days do you choose? Well, the Bible doesn't say. It doesn't tell us. Once again, what if there was a cloud cover? Again, to those who say it has to be by observation to proclaim a calendar, I would ask them, what about this story in David's time?

Let's go to 1 Samuel 20. And notice verse 5. Just breaking in the story here, David fleeing from Saul, the close friendship with Jonathan, the beginning of a month when there was a feast, and David was supposed to be there, but Jonathan was watching out for his friend. But just notice David's statement in 1 Samuel 20, verse 5. And David said to Jonathan, Indeed, tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit with a king to eat.

Now, that's as far as we need to read. David said to Jonathan, Tomorrow is a new moon. Now, to those who say the determination has to be by observation, how could he say that the day before even? Unless the calendar that they used may have been revealed by God and may have included calculations. We don't know. That's the only way. If you have to observe it, he couldn't say the day before tomorrow is the new moon. Another problem, another challenge we have is, if we're going to determine a calendar for declaring the Holy Day dates, what precise point on the globe are we going to stand in order to make those determinations?

Now, let me try to explain. The Bible doesn't say we need to stand in a certain geographical point to be able to determine, because we've got 24 time zones as man has determined them today. It's complicated. We have this arbitrary line that zigzags down through the Pacific, and that's the International Date Line. You get across it, you're into a new day.

You lose a day or gain a day, depending on which way you're flying, across that line. It is confusing. But, you know, the geographic center of the Bible story, I mean, think of Genesis. Those early chapters up through, say, Chapter 11, the geographic focal point was Mesopotamia. And it wasn't until Chapter 12 when God told Abram, get up and go to this place who must show you. And he went to the area of the Holy Land. But then he meandered and wandered around. And, of course, over the generations, Israel ends up down in Egypt.

And actually, we're down in Egypt, which is over 250 miles away from Jerusalem, whenever God began saying, all right, this is the beginning of months. On the 10th day, set aside the Lamb. On the 14th day, even, you're going to kill the Lamb. The first holy days were down in Egypt that we have record of. And unleavened bread as they were coming out. So, there are those who say, well, we can only determine the calendar from Jerusalem.

But, you know, Jerusalem didn't even become the geographic focal point of the Bible until the time of David. He is the one that led the men that went and took the city of David at Jerusalem. Now, another question that we have and we don't have an answer to is, when does a new year begin? We do know a little bit from Exodus 12. This month, in fact, let's just go to Exodus 12. This month will be the beginning of months, he was told. And it's in the spring of the year. But, precisely when in the spring of the year, it doesn't really say. Exodus 12, verses 1 and 2.

Now, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. And this is about as close as we can get. As it goes on, of course, the context shows it was in the spring.

And a bib actually means spring, the Hebrew word for this first month. By God appearing to Moses and Aaron and giving them a calendar, it is obvious that whatever Noah had, had been lost. Somewhere along the line in their captivity, I suppose. And so God is giving them a calendar. Israel was going to need a calendar. And they needed to understand the weekly cycle, which was made very clear to them in chapter 16 with the giving of Manah.

But Israel was also going to need a calendar for the determination of the annual Sabbath. And so God is giving them a calendar. A calendar is revealed, it is spoken of, but we are not given instruction about how it was pieced together, how it was constructed, how it was invented. Now, does the first month of a new year begin with the new moon following the spring equinox? Some claim that's what has to happen.

Show me the Scripture. It's not there. Some say that the new moon, the year can start with the new moon that is even before the spring equinox. Again, the Bible doesn't say. Some say the Passover has to be after the spring equinox. Or it can be before the spring equinox. It's hard to prove it one way or the other from the Bible. I bring up these questions because, again, those who reject the Hebrew calendar generally start throwing out all these questions and posing all these problems and claiming them to have found the biblical calendar that doesn't answer all the questions either.

And they can't show it to us from the Scripture. So the knowledge of how to construct a calendar does not appear in the Bible. And God here gave a calendar to Moses and Aaron. Was it the Hebrew calendar? We don't know. The Hebrew or the Jewish calendar as we know today? We don't know.

We, the Bible, doesn't give us enough information. Now, let's talk about the Hebrew calendar a little bit. As I showed you a while ago, we've got these lengthy doctrinal papers. One is 22 pages. The other one, I think, is 7. A lot of material. It seemed like when the United Church of God began in 1995, the Council of Elders was inundated with a lot of people who had been quiet for a long time about some of their pet calendar doctrines. And they came out of the woodworks.

And so one of the first orders of the day for the Council was, we need to put out some kind of a statement on the issue of the calendar, which they did. But it is a marvelous calendar. Twelve months, most years, alternating between 30 and 29 days. So the first month, Nice and has 30 days. The next month, ER has 29. The third month, SIVEN has 30. Fourth month, I forget the name, has 29. Fifth month, ABB has 30. And so it alternates. And that brings you out to 354 days, covering 12 months, which is a problem.

Because you're 11 days short of, more than 11 days short from the solar year. But there are these 19-year time cycles that are just fascinating to some of us. And to keep it in the proper seasons, seven out of 19 years, the 13th month is inserted.

And this happens to be one of those months. That's why, see, last Sunday of March is Easter, and we don't keep Passover until, you know, more than three and a half weeks later. Because this year, that will end soon, it'll end the first week of April. This year has had 8-hour seconds inserted a month of 30 days.

And so in doing that in a series of every second or third year, you add a 13th month. And at the end of 19 years, it is amazingly accurate. It also you have, that 13th month is called an intercular month, by the way. You have four rules of postponements that keep the holy days within their intended seasons. Some of them deal with avoiding in the fall, having double Sabbath.

We always have a double Sabbath with Pentecost weekend. But then in the fall, it's... again, I won't go into that. But we might ask the question, how accurate is the Hebrew calendar? I have a copy of a personal correspondence department. There are a number of form letters that are posted online. You can do a search and find those. There are a couple of those on calendar, Hebrew calendar.

And there's, I think, one on... there's a Karaite Jewish calendar that's a little different. There's a statement on that. And then there's one on the calendar, postponements. In that letter, there is a paragraph quote from a work called, The Essence of the Holy Days, insight from the Jewish Sages.

But basically, The Essence of the Holy Days. The author is Avraham Yaakov Finkel. And here is one paragraph, and it shows, it comments on how accurate the Hebrew calendar turns out to be. Finkel wrote, quote, The calculation of the calendar was transmitted to the Sages in an unbroken chain going back to Moses.

According to the ancient calculations, the exact time between one new moon and the next is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 halequin, Hebrew word meaning parts, parts of an hour. They divided the hour into 1080 halequin. So, 29 days, 12 hours, 793 halequin. In other words, the lunar month has 29.53059 days. It is interesting to note that according to NASA, the time between one new moon and the next is 29.530588 days. Of course, NASA has at its disposal the most advanced and sophisticated telescopes and computers. Nevertheless, the difference between NASA's figures and that that was used by Hillel II. Hillel II, in 361 AD, was at the home of a revision of the Hebrew calendar. So, the difference between NASA and Hillel's calendar is .00002, or two millionths of a day, calculated for the period of one month. That's the end of his quote. So, that just gives a tiny glimpse of how, to me, amazingly accurate the Hebrew calendar turns out to be. It is so accurate that my conclusion is that it was revealed by a creator. Otherwise, how could . . . I mean, no calendar made by man has been that accurate. The poor Mayans didn't go far enough with theirs. They stopped making it, what, 2012 or was it 13? So, we should focus, and I think the main part of what I want to do here, is focus on what we do know from the Bible and from history. As far as why we in the United Church of God have used or used the Hebrew calendar for establishing the Days of Holy Days. What do we know? Well, we know that a calendar was preserved across the ages by the Jews. We also know that the lunisolar, is the term, the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, reconciles the challenges of the lunar and solar cycles in a precise, coherent way. It is extremely accurate. We know nothing about its origin, but we see that it works. When you look at it extended across 19 years or across the ages. God appeared here in Exodus 12 to Moses and Aaron. God gave them, obviously, the means for calculating Sabbath and annual Sabbath. God gave further instructions in Leviticus 23 to them, Sabbath, and then all of the festivals are mentioned.

But this is around 1400-ish BC. More than 1400 years later, we know that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men. That the God of the Old Testament came here as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, to give His life on that Passover, that coming Passover, the end of His life.

Yet He walked on this earth and He had an earthly minister. When He was here on the earth, He kept Holy Days, just like He kept the Sabbath. He kept them according to the way the Jews kept them. Again, you do find in the New Testament you had some differences among the Jews on the Feast of Passover on Love and Bread. At any rate, Jesus was at Jerusalem with a Passover. His family went and kept it when He was 12. Jesus was keeping the Feast in Jerusalem all the way to the end of His life. The Feast was near. His brothers said, Well, why don't you go on down to Jerusalem that your disciples can see your great works? And then He went and He stood up to speak. So we have Christ keeping them. Let's turn to Acts 7. This is a chapter that deals with Stephen's defense. Stephen's life is being weighed in the balances, and they got quite an answer from him. He really did speak from the heart. He didn't have a teleprompter. I think we can be fairly sure of. But it was a part of him. The message was, He was the message. And let's go on over to Acts 7, verse 37. Because He has addressed Moses and Israel and coming out of Egypt and the wilderness 40 years. Verse 37, This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear. And that was a prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ. A prophet like unto Moses. And Moses mediated the old covenant, and the one who was to come, whom they were to hear, would be the mediator of the new. This is He who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to Him on Mount Sinai. And with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us. Interesting. This is one of the places where this word oracles is used. It comes from the Greek logion. And Jesus was the one who gave living oracles to us. Stephen speaking a Jew standing before the Jewish Sanhedrin. He gave living oracles to us. Now let's go over to Romans 3.

Romans 3, and we only need to read verses 1 and 2. Because as Paul writes to the church at Rome, it's largely a gen child church, and he jumped all over them in chapter 1. And then in chapter 2, he was pretty hard on his own people of the house of Judah. And then after correcting them heavily in chapter 3, verse 1, the advantage then has the Jew, or what is the prophet of circumcision?

Much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. The oracles of God. The sayings. The marginal note says the Scriptures. So, oracles, living utterances, living oracles, living words, depending on the translation you look at, were given to the Jews. And these living utterances may be in the form of written or oral traditions. The Hebrew calendar may be, I said may, may be a part of these oral utterances given to and preserved by the Jewish people.

They received the Scriptures and served as the custodians. Now, let's go back to Luke 24, because here at the end of Luke's Gospel, as Jesus has been resurrected and He is appearing unto disciples at different places at different times, and one thing they stated was upholding the law of the prophets and the writings, or the Psalms. Luke 24, verse 44, and He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all these things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.

Now, His choice of words is interesting. The order of His words is interesting as well. The Torah, the Hebrew Scriptures, if you have a copy of the Jewish Tanakh, they actually take that Tanakh comes from the three divisions, the Torah, the law. Then you have the prophets from the Hebrew Nevi'im. The N goes into Tanakh. And then you have the K from Ketavim, the writings. Or here it says the Psalms. Sometimes it's called the writings. Sometimes the Psalms. The Psalms is the large, dominant first book of the writings section.

So Jesus upheld that what the Jews had preserved, they had preserved faithfully and carefully. If they faithfully preserved the Holy Scriptures, could they have also preserved and kept a calendar? I believe that's within the realm of possibility, although the Bible doesn't say. The Bible doesn't say.

Now, to this main body of Jews, they faithfully preserved the Old Testament canon, the books of the Bible, the Old Testament. They also preserved a method of calculating a calendar. And Christ observed Holy Days in accordance with the Jewish practice of that calendar. Let's go to Matthew 23. It is interesting also to me that at this point, as He refers to the scribes and Pharisees, who were the dominant leaders, they had the power more so than the Sadducees, it is interesting what He says here. The scribes and the Pharisees, verse 2, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, all the way back to Moses.

God gave the law to Moses. God also appeared, as we read, to Moses and Aaron, and said, this month is the beginning of the year. This is the beginning of months. And here's how you do it. But then He also said, therefore, whatever they tell you to observe that, observe and do. But do not do according to their works, for they say, and do not do.

But it's interesting, do what they say to do. Just don't follow the fruits of their life. Well, the Pharisees, as the first century ran its course, the Pharisees ended up the dominant force of rabbinic Judaism. They preserved the calendar, and they have preserved the calendar until today. You had the Sanhedrin, which was the dominant force through the middle of the first century. And then the other book, Acts of Sanhedrin, is referred to a number of times.

But then it began to shift. You have a calendar that has been preserved. There have been upgrades and revisions to that calendar, as it has become obvious that things need to be tweaked a bit. As I said earlier, it seems there is no perfect calendar. Revisions were made in the days of Hillel II, 361 AD.

And you have breakaway Jewish groups, like the Karaite Jews, who have their own alternate calendar. That's off a little bit. They're not the group who kept the Holy Scriptures, so we don't look to them for a Hebrew calendar either, for a Jewish calendar either. So, we are left with this. If God gave a calendar to Israel in Moses' day, and over 1,400 years later, Jesus had no question about the calendar used in the first century. Should we have any reason to question the same calendar 2,000 years later? I don't think so. The Jews kept the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. The Jews kept a calendar. Now, let's look at three Scriptures, and then we'll wrap it up.

It'll take us a little bit of time. Leviticus 23. And this is a place where God speaks to Moses. And, of course, Moses was of the tribe of Levi. His brother Aaron had become the first high priest.

His line within Levi was to consist of the priests. Leviticus 23, verse 1, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them the feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim. So, it's interesting that Moses was told, You're being given the authority to proclaim the dates of these feasts that are going to follow, including the weekly Sabbath, to be holy convocations. And a convocation is to convoke an assembly to come together, like we're doing today. These are my feasts, God says. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation, you should do no work on it.

It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. You shall proclaim on the right dates. So, the Israelites, and more specifically, the Levites, with the priests, were given the responsibility and the authority to maintain a calendar and to use it to determine and then proclaim the weekly and annual Sabbaths. Let's go to Ephesians 4, because as we come to the New Testament, the Gospel is to go to all nations, and we find that the Jews had rejected Christ, and they have largely disqualified themselves from preaching the Gospel.

But in Ephesians 4, we realize that when Christ was here, He founded a church. He trained the first foundational stones, who were called apostles, and here in this chapter, it speaks of the fact that there are those who are given ecclesiastical authority, and with that responsibility to determine and proclaim dates for the feasts. Verse 11, and He, speaking of Christ up above, Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Why? Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, and the edifies to build up.

Till we all come to the unity of the faith, so unity of the faith, holding fast to sound doctrine is important. It unifies the body. Whenever there are alternate calendars or alternate doctrines that come along, it generally seems that it pulls people apart within the body. Unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love, that He may grow up in all things into Him who is the Head Christ.

Verse 16, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. So it continues speaking of binding the body more firmly together. According to the effective working by which every part does, its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Jesus Christ gave His ministry, starting with the apostles whom He trained, the responsibility and the authority to spiritually build up, to edify the church in the unity of worship that knits God's people firmly together.

Again, from the fruits, those who bring along doctrines that are outside the realm of the church, which after all, as Paul wrote to Timothy, that would be 1 Timothy 3 verse 15. He's writing to Timothy about how you would conduct yourself. And He spoke of the church being the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the foundation of the truth, not some lone ranger coming in out of the sunset. From fruits, at times, we look and we see various calendars that have been used to pull God's people apart.

Alright, let's go to Matthew 16. Matthew 16, because here it speaks of binding and loosing. Matthew 16, and we will read verses 18 and 19. This is the Caesarea Philippi, Christ is revealing Himself as the rock upon which the church is built. Verse 18, and I say to you that you are Peter. Now, up in verse 13, He is addressing His disciples. And he says, only speaking here to Peter, but the Greek word is petros.

You are the little stones of this church. On this rock, I will build my church. And the gates of Hades, the grave, shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Marginal notes there says, or will have been bound, or will have been loosed.

The duty to build up the church clearly includes identifying, maintaining, and authoritative calendar, determining dates upon which commanded assemblies of the brethren are called. And that includes the weekly Sabbath along with the annual Sabbath and festivals. We come together to worship God in spirit and in truth. And I would add to that, in peace and in unity as well. But calling the commanded assemblies of God's people is the duty of those who have been given ecclesiastical authority and responsibility.

And the organized True Church of God scattered across various organizations of which UCG is a part, has been given ecclesiastical authority to do so. It's interesting if you look, you want to know, well, when is the Passover this year? You check United Calendar. It says, where did I put my calendar? There it is. And it says April 22nd, but the evening before is when the service is kept. You check a living Church of God.

You check Christian Biblical Church of God, Church of God International. I mean, you go through the main bodies of the Church of God, and you're going to come up the same date. Because from the 1930s to present, the Church had used the Hebrew Calendar. Mr. Armstrong was called into question, actually had an exchange of letters with C.O. Dodd. Some of you might remember the old book, The True History of the True Religion, written by A.N.

Duggar and C.O. Dodd, names from back in the 1930s and earlier, actually. C.O. Dodd moved his headquarters later to Jerusalem, and there was an exchange of letters between Mr. Dodd and Mr. Armstrong. And Mr. Armstrong's letter said, well, after looking at it, there's no other option but to use the Hebrew Calendar. Now, that being said, we use it in good faith. There were years where we kept Pentecost on a Monday. That's what we understood at the time. And that was a time, 1974 was the first year we changed, we kept it on a Sunday. And that was a time of phenomenal growth within the Church.

It's kind of been all that displeased. Would he have been pouring out his blessing? I don't think so. But Mr. Dodd went on to move his headquarters to Jerusalem, Israel, and began the Jerusalem Church of God. So, historically, we go back into the 1930s of using the Hebrew, or also called the Jewish Calendar, for proclaiming the biblically sanctioned Holy Days.

And the years God has blessed our Church. And I believe, based on Matthew 16, that our practice has been bound in Heaven. But whenever individuals choose, or they say they discover their own calendar, their own sacred calendar, and call their own sacred assemblies, it has the effect of pulling the body apart instead of building the body up together in love.

So, the United Church of God accepts the Hebrew calendar and uses it for the determination of Holy Days. And we believe that God preserved that through the Jews for us to do today. Now, I've mentioned study papers that the Church website has. There are personal correspondence form letters. There is an article. You can do a search. Did God give a calendar? That's posted on the website for four pages long. If you want to know more about the Hebrew calendar or Jewish calendar, you can go to Judaism 101.

Look up Jewish calendar. You can find all kinds of information. But I'd like to read a few statements in closing here from Mr. Walker's article on Did God Give a Calendar? Toward the end, the latter paragraphs, he says, Those who reject the Hebrew calendar claim that the Bible gives the essential elements needed for a calendar. But if the Hebrew calendar is rejected, and if the Bible does not give any specific elements needed for a calendar, then it is impossible to have a calendar based on any authority other than that of the individual or individuals who created that calendar.

Therefore, since God did not reveal in the Bible the essential elements for a calendar, those who reject the Hebrew calendar must rely solely on their own opinions regarding how to create a calendar. They cannot legitimately claim that their opinions are based on God's instructions, for He did not outline the elements for these individuals to use in their calendars.

Therefore, we have two options. Either we accept the Hebrew calendar in its entirety, or we choose one of the calendars created by one of the several who have created their own calendars in recent years.

And the latter is simply not a logical choice. While we do not know the history of the Hebrew calendar, we do know that God used the Jewish people to preserve His Word. Isn't it also logical to conclude that He used the same Jewish people to preserve a calendar that will enable us to keep His Holy Days at the correct time? So if we do not accept the logic of that conclusion, then we have no other alternative than to accept one of the calendars created in recent times by men with no other authority than their own. And these do not have any biblical basis or history to prove that their calendar is the correct one. So, this year, Passover 2016, April 21st, Thursday night, be there or be square.