Building on the Foundation

  For a number of years now, God’s calendar has been a favorite study topic of mine. It’s also one of the most controversial and hotly debated topics. So today, let’s take a gander at another topic of calendar controversy. When does a year begin on God’s calendar? Some say it begins in the spring; some say it begins in the fall. Who’s right? Surprisingly, both are right — but it depends on what type of year we’re talking about. God’s Word documents two different types of years, as we’ll see momentarily. Just as we have both civil and fiscal years today, so they did in Bible days, too. Nisan: The Religious and Civil Year How do we know that a Biblical year begins in the spring? Simple. We know that Passover is in the spring, and in Exodus 12:1-2, God gave these instructions for the Passover month: “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.’” So the month of Passov...

  Over the past thirty years or so, many people rejected the calculated Hebrew calendar in favor of sighted calendars, solar calendars, and probably others as well. But of all those who reject the Hebrew calendar, very few understand it. It seems to me that if people wish to reject the Hebrew calendar, they should at least understand it first. God’s Word tells us, “He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him” (Prov. 18:13). This post isn’t meant to wade into the calculated calendar vs. sighted calendar issue, but simply to show what the Hebrew calendar seeks to accomplish, and how it works. What Type of Calendar? Today, most of the world follows a solar calendar, the Gregorian calendar. In this system, the sun determines years, and the moon plays no role at all. Each time the earth completes one trip around the sun, that marks roughly one year. The calendar divides the year into twelve parts that are still called “months,” even though they have nothing ...

  Among God’s people who keep the Sabbath and Holy Days, one of the most controversial topics is the calendar. Folks go round and round arguing over which calendar we should use to determine the dates of the Holy Days. We can prove mathematically, Biblically, and historically that the correct calendar is the Hebrew calendar in use today. This calendar matches every known historical date back to at least the destruction of Solomon’s temple in 587 BC. However, that’s well beyond the scope of this post. Those are topics for other days. The purpose of today’s post is to show that the Hebrew calendar reveals Jesus Christ, the Messiah and Savior of mankind. First, let’s fill in a little background on the calendar. For those who might not know, God’s calendar, unlike the Gregorian calendar used by most of the world today, isn’t a solar calendar. Nor is it a lunar calendar like the Muslim calendar. The Biblical calendar is a lunisolar calendar, that is, it uses the moon to calculate months...

Since the invention of the Internet, innumerable calendars have popped up to challenge the Hebrew calendar, each one claiming to be the true calendar of the Bible. This includes numerous "sighted" calendars, that is, calendars that call for gazing up at the night sky and searching for the first visible crescent of the moon. This first visible crescent is said to be the "new moon" of the Bible and to mark the beginning of each month and, in turn, determine the dates of the holy days. First of all, if anyone can point to even one Bible verse that says we must look up at the sky and find the first visible crescent of the moon, I would love to see it. I have never found such a verse, nor have I ever seen anyone else point to such a verse. Secondly, the "new moon" doesn't appear in the Hebrew text of the Bible, as explained in this post . Neither is such a "new moon" defined; some define the new moon as the conjunction, when the moon is dark, and ...