Queries about the New Moon worship day
New moon to new moon, sabbath to sabbath, just periods?
Does the New Moon worship day start at the conjunction?
Will the New Moon worship days fall on a seventh-day in the new earth?
The Lunar Sabbath theory
Does the earth rotate around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?
Suspending the Earth between two balls
Axial Tilt of Earth and Seasons
The Lunar Synodic Month
Should Christians keep or observe the feasts of the Old Testament?
The Lunar Sabbath—a fruit salad collection of stuff
This was a hard page to title. Queries may not be the exact correct name.
One thought was to answer some really odd objections but just objections isn't really right either. In the end I went with queries.
Basically this is to answer any odd points that crop up about the new moon worship day. There aren't really that many but there are some that
just keep cropping up. And one of them really peeves me. So here we go....
Also don't expect full answers here. Some answers may be on other pages I have constructed so to avoid rebuilding the wheel I
will just refer the reader to those pages.
New moon to new moon, sabbath to sabbath, just periods?
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the LORD; so shall your descendants and your name remain.
From new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD.
Isaiah 66:22,23 NRSV.
This is probably one of the most common arguments that is put up against keeping the new moon. The verse is just stating periods of time, not the actual days of worship to be kept. At first this
sounds plausible but having a closer look it becomes obvious that there are actually three problems with this reasoning. Three, not just one, but three!
Problem 1.
Let's just take it as periods of time. So we are worshiping God from new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath. Pretty much all of the time. Every day. Umm why not just say that? Why mention
from new moon to new moon and then also mention from sabbath to sabbath? Just one of them would do. It doesn't make sense to mention both if we are worshiping every day.
Problem 2.
Reason as in problem 1. We are worshiping God every day. Then just what is the new moon and what is the sabbath day? Why are they mentioned in this verse at all? What are they? Further investigation brings to light that these
were worship days kept in the Old Testament period and some Christians keep both of these days also. Then why mention them here in eternity? Umm they must still exist. And as worship days. Worship is mentioned
in the same verse and in regard to the new moon and the sabbath. Must be some reason for this. Think about it.
Problem 3.
This problem is mentioned mainly for those keeping the sabbath now. The period argument is usually brought up against sabbath-keepers by Sunday-keepers. Ouch. We don't need to keep the sabbath because
the sabbath to sabbath in this verse is just a period of time. As I said, Ouch. So if sabbath-keepers want to use this argument against the new moon they are really shooting themselves in the foot.
And then they still have the problem in 2 above.
I think we can leave this query and move on the the next one.
Does the New Moon worship day start at the conjunction?
Actually I was quite impressed with the approach this brother took in his study. He had a really good diagram showing the Earth Moon position at conjunction and a great argument that the moon was then building for the next lunar month. In case anyone isn't following this the conjunction is the exact point
when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun. It would be at the very middle of what we call the astronomical new moon phase that you see on your wall calendar.
The main problem with this of course is that it just isn't that clear how to relate the lunar month to a Bible day. It was this sort of approach that I used as the main basis for the NT Bible
Model I constructed for the new moon worship day. What we call the lunar synodic month is exactly One Moon Day. This is explained completely in my study
And just how does this affect the conjunction theory? Well if the lunar month is building from the very point of conjunction and we use that
for the start of the new moon worship day then we could possibly try to apply the exact same argument to the Biblical day.
Remember, the lunar synodic month is One Moon Day so if we apply this approach to the Bible day it would mean it would start at midnight as this would then give the exact point for the next
day to start building. Try selling that to a Jew. It just won't work. According to the Bible a day starts at sunset, not at midnight.
Though this argument is far from conclusive, it does put a question on the conjunction approach.
Will the New Moon worship days fall on a seventh-day in the new earth?
This is the one that really peeves me. Some sabbath-keeping Christians propose this to get around keeping the New Moon worship day.
Well why keep the day if the New Moon days are going to fall on a seventh-day in the new earth? In case you don't get this, this is referring to
Isaiah where he states God's people will worship from new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath. The argument postulated is that the
new moons will fall on a sabbath so you don't have to worry about any other day than the sabbath!
And just how is this postulated? Well that's easy—this world is pretty messed up especially since the Flood. Everything went out of wack—the
axis of the earth probably tilted and the length of the lunar month changed from exactly 28 days to what it is now. So in the new earth
the Lord puts everything back the way it was and the lunar months being of EXACTLY 28 days the new moon worship day will fall on a seventh-day.
I may not be able to answer this completely but I believe I can show that it is total bunk.
1. None of the other moons in the solar system have integer length orbital periods. Some planets have a LOT of moons. I will just quote the planet, number of moons,
and just one moon randomly selected. Just to quote a few:
Mars 2: Deimos 1.26244 days
Jupiter 67: Europa 3.551181 days
Saturn 62: Dione 2.736915 days
Uranus 27: Ariel 2.520379 days
Neptune 13: Nereid 360.1362 days
http://www.go-astronomy.com/planets/planet-moons.htm
There are also some moons listed for dwarf planets in our solar system. Our most famous dwarf planet is of course Pluto which was
downgraded from full planet status a few years ago.
The site did not state whether these were all Earth days or the day for each planet. But to be consistent they are most likely Earth days.
I also apologise if there are any spelling mistakes or numerical copied mistakes.
Possible problem: these are all orbital lengths. The lunar synodic month is from new moon to new moon and is
different from the orbital or sidereal month lengths given above. Granted the synodic month lengths for all of these moons are different
but it is still very unlikely that any of them would turn out to be an exact integer. If anyone wants to work them out--go ahead and knock yourself out.
And of course to argue that the flood on Earth affected all the orbital lengths of these moons is just plain ridiculous.
2. That the Earth has seasons from the Creation is clear from the scriptures.
And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons
and for days and years,
Genesis 1:14.
That we have seasons and this involves the tilt of the Earth's axis it is clear this is from the Creation. The tilt and the seasons were not brought about by the flood.
3. The difference between the week and the month at Creation. Consider the verses:
God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens
to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for
seasons and for days and years,
and
let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon
the earth." And it was so.
And
God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and
the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.
And
God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the
earth,
to
rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from
the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis
1:14-18.
Thou
hast made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for
setting.
Psalm
104:19.
You
created the moon to mark the months; the sun knows the time to set.
Psalm
104:19 Good News Bible.
The early chapters of Genesis give us the construction of the week. The week has seven days. Each day is a period of 24 hours.
The week is a period of seven days. The day has to do with the rotation of the Earth about its axis. The week is constructed of seven Earth days.
The Biblical lunar month has to do with the rotation of the Moon about the Earth--and not just one rotation, a sidereal month, but from new moon to new moon,
a synodic month. This is completely different from the rotation of the Earth or any multiple of it. There is no intimation whatsoever that the
lunar synodic month is any multiple of a week of seven days!
4. The reasoning from Isaiah. Basically the verses:
For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, says the LORD; so shall your descendants and your name remain.
From new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD.
Isaiah 66:22,23.
The comment from Isaiah has to do with worshipping God. He mentions the new moon AND the sabbath days. If the new moon worship days will
exactly overlap the sabbath worship days then why in the world mention them? Why not just say from sabbath to sabbath?? It just doesn't make any
sense to mention the new moon worship days if they fall on exactly the same days as the sabbaths. There is only one possible conclusion that can
be drawn. And that is that there is no exact overlap.
Because the current synodic month length is not an exact multiple of 7 the new moon worship days as we have them
now cycle through the week nearly twice each year. There is no reason to believe that this will change in the new earth.
5. The silence of the Jews about the lunar month length being messed up from the Creation. To date I have not read anything from the Jews about
how upset they are that the original length of the lunar synodic month has been messed up. The conclusion from this is clear. It hasn't.
The postulation that the Moon will have a synodic month length of exactly 28 days in the new earth is no longer worthy of any comment.
Postscript on this
Some people push a calendar based on this premise: the correct lunar synodic month length being exactly 28 days in the new earth.
Or 30 days or any integer length for that matter. The above answer to an exact integer length of 28 days shows that any such calendar
proposed is not correct.
For example:
Between the second month's seventeenth day and the seventh month's seventeenth day were 150 days. Thus five months averaging thirty days each were involved. A very regular order in the
"very good" (Genesis 1:31) is implied. Today's 365¼ day year must be an altered remnant of created order.
What could happen to change Earth's orbit? Its angular momentum is vast, and just like a spinning gyroscope is hard to adjust, the earth's motion resists change. It would take a mighty force
to alter it.
The Bible does speak of such an event. Without giving all the details it indicates that the great Flood of Noah's day forever altered Earth's systems. ... the length of the day, the length
of the year, and the tilt of the axis could have all changed.
http://www.icr.org/article/early-earth-were-all-months-exactly-thirty-days-lo/
Point 2 above answered the seasons question.
And see our answer to the axial tilt of the earth query below which also answers this question.
The Lunar Sabbath theory
The current version of the Lunar Sabbath theory dates from around 1998 though there is a suggestion that an earlier version was around in the 1800s. We mention more about this later.
From a couple of sites I have looked at which are pushing this theory it would be safe to conclude that the mechanics behind it are a bit messy. And it appears to be directly linked to another recent
invention, the Creation Calendar.
Before discussing this theory we need to know just what it is and the implications it has for any church that is currently keeping the seventh-day sabbath which is commonly kept from Friday sunset to
Saturday sunset. The Jews have kept the seventh-day sabbath for millenia, and some Christian groups currently keep the same day.
The sabbath is one of the defining characteristics of seventh-day denominations, including Seventh Day Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, the Seventh-Day Evangelist Church, the Church of God
(7th Day) headquartered in Salem, West Virginia, the Church of God (Seventh Day) conferences, True Jesus Church, and the United Church of God, among many others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_seventh-day_churches
The Lunar Sabbath approach however, is to completely reconstruct a calendar using lunar months similar to the calendar the Jews follow but without keeping the same number of seven days to each
weekly sabbath. The Jewish calendar is lunar based but does not break this cycle of seven days. A seventh-day sabbath in the Jewish calendar will be followed by another seventh-day sabbath seven
days later.
The first day of the Jewish calendar lunar month is the New Moon day. This is how the Jews constructed their calendar in the past and in the time of Christ. By an accepted visual sighting of the
New Moon the first day of each Jewish month was determined. There were always some inaccuracy allowances in this approach. So by the fourth century A.D. the visual sighting approach was replaced
by astronomical calculations and computational rules for the construction of the Jewish calendar.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3920-calendar-history-of
Another important point to note is that the Jewish view of the new moon was when they could see the first sliver of the waxing crescent:
Rosh Chodesh, the new month, is marked by the appearance of the first sliver of the new moon in the sky above Jerusalem in Israel.
http://bje.org.au/course/judaism/jewish-calendar/
[THE NSW BOARD OF JEWISH EDUCATION]
This usually takes place 1 to 2 days past the astronomical new moon or time of conjunction. This point is actually very important as the Lunar Sabbath groups appear to be very divided in just what
is the new moon. Keep that in mind.
The reconstructed calendar the Lunar Sabbath groups use is generally known as the Creation Calendar or the Creator's Calendar or some similar name. As with the Jewish calendar they use the New
Moon day as the first day of the lunar month. But using a questionable interpretation of Ezekiel 46:1 they separate the New Moon day from the ordinary week days and have it completely separate from
the following weeks in their calendar.
And because the actual synodic lunar month is not an integer length but approximately 29.5 days in length their calendar approach is to allow for this by having one month 29 days long and the next
30 days or some mix of this. Each month the seven day cycle is broken and the week days will also fall one or two days earlier depending on the length of the previous month.
Example of 2 lunar sabbath creation calendar months with sabbath rests at the end of each week
The Jews take a similar approach to keep their calendar in sync with the moon but without breaking the sabbath-day cycle of seven days. But with the Lunar Sabbath groups, it means any month
following a 30-day month the sabbath days will be 2 days out of cycle after the New Moon day.
Another idiosyncrasy of the Creation Calendar approach is that every 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th day of each month is supposedly a seventh-day sabbath. This appears to be hard-wired into the
Lunar Sabbath theory by a supposedly mathematical connection with the feast days of the Old Testament.
Even a simple investigation of the Lunar Sabbath / Creation Calendar approach will usually yield pages and pages of gobbledegook connecting the feast days with the lunar sabbath days. And
just reading through any of their long-winded answers [usually a short question with a ridiculously long answer] will usually leave you feeling like going and doing something else.
Here are three lunar sabbath calendar month examples to show how all this works.
This may not be that clear so the following is the first two months in the more familiar format:
As you can see, the lunar sabbath days are moving through the week from month to month. The first month they are on Fridays and the second month they have moved to Saturdays. But because the
second month is 30 days long the next month they jump an extra day and occur on Mondays!
The first month is starting on a Friday. The seventh-day sabbath of the Bible would be the next day, day 2 of the calendar. And the true seventh-day sabbaths for this first month occur on the 2nd,
9th, 16th, and 23rd days. But those following the lunar sabbath would ignore this and keep sabbath on the 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th days as the seventh day of each week following the New Moon day.
For this month they are Fridays.
The second month starts on a Saturday since the previous month ended on a Friday. And for this month the 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th days will be Saturdays. But notice this month is 30 days long
and ends on a Sunday, not a Saturday.
So the third month is now starting on a Monday and the lunar sabbath keepers will now be keeping Monday this month.
Simply put, for anyone who wants to keep the true seventh-day sabbath of the Bible with no break in the sabbath cycle of seven days, this calendar is a disaster!
And you may wonder just why are they ignoring the true seventh-day sabbaths and using their own lunar sabbaths? They believe this calendar construct is the true original calendar the Jews used
in antiquity and that it has been corrupted through time to what it now is.
So this lunar calendar revision approach is being pushed by the Lunar Sabbath groups as a hidden truth that has been lost over the millenia and which needs to be restored to God's people.
And without getting into the mechanics of the Lunar Sabbath approach I believe that the following points nevertheless show that it is very unlikely to be correct:
The construction of the original week
The original week is given as seven days. 6 working days followed by the seventh-day sabbath. There are no other days mentioned.
Especially important here is the naming of the days of the week according to the Bible:
the first day to the sabbath
the second day to the sabbath
the third day to the sabbath
the fourth day to the sabbath
the fifth day to the sabbath
the sixth day to the sabbath
the sabbath
You can't add or subtract from this list as the Lunar Sabbath approach does--adding days at the beginning and end of the month. The intimation from Scripture later is that the first day of each
Bible lunar month was called the new moon. But the new moon day was also just one of the week days and did not disrupt the 7 day sabbath cycle.
A questionable interpretation
The Lunar Sabbath theory rests very strongly on a questionable interpretation of Ezekiel 46:1 to build the argument that the new moon day is not a seventh-day sabbath or one of the other
6 days of the week. So it has to go somewhere else and that somewhere else is of course the first day of the month. As mentioned in the first point this messes up the naming of the week
days somewhere.
Not asked to remember
The fourth commandment states we are to remember the sabbath day, not the new moon worship day. The six days are mentioned in relation to the sabbath but not the new moon.
Out of step with the original lunar rest-day Calendar
Counting from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th as "holy-days", also called "evil days" (meaning "unsuitable" for prohibited activities). On these days,
officials were prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to "make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest-day". On each of them, offerings were made to a
different god and goddess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week
The current calendar being promoted by the Lunar Sabbatarians is clearly based on the lunar rest-day calendar of the Babylonians. But due to their questionable interpretation of Ezekiel 46:1
they are out by one day. The Lunar Sabbath is kept on the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th day of each lunar month whereas the Babylonian rest-days were on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days of the lunar month.
Perhaps some reform Lunar Sabbath group will try to resurrect this original Babylonian calendar and go in opposition to the other groups. Could be interesting!
Further on this. Some of the groups are calling people out of Babylon. Well this just begs the question; how in the world can you call people out of Babylon if you are asking them to keep a Lunar
Sabbath calendar which is clearly based on the Babylonian lunar rest-day calendar?
7 does not equal 8 or 9
The fourth commandment states
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work;
but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; ...
for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath
day and hallowed it.
Exodus 20:8-11 RSV.
The seventh day of the week was to be a sabbath rest and there is no indication here that there were to be any extra days between weeks as the Creation Calendar does placing a new moon before the
weeks and sometimes an extra day after the four weeks to keep in cycle with the moon.
For any 29 day month the last day is considered a sabbath. The next day would be New Moon and the following sabbath would then be at the end of the first week after the new moon and hence 8 days later.
For a 30 day month the last sabbath is on day 29 and the first sabbath of the next month will then be 9 days later.
And there is just no way that 7 can equal 8 or 9. Or 10. See the next point.
Numerically Incorrect
Sometimes you need 2 new moon days in the lunar calendar month. The Jews have this problem. If you look at their calendar some months have 2 new moon days:
Why is Rosh Chodesh sometimes one day and sometimes two?
Since the thirtieth day of the month was always potentially Rosh Chodesh, whenever a month has thirty days, the thirtieth day is observed as Rosh Chodesh together with the next day, the first of
the following month.
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/526942/jewish/Why-is-Rosh-Chodesh-sometimes-one-day-and-sometimes-two.htm
A better explanation for this is that the length of the lunar synodic month is not an integer but a value approximately close to 29.53 days:
What is a lunar month? It's the duration between successive new moons. Also called a lunation or synodic month, it has a mean period of 29.53059 days
(29 days 12 hours and 44 minutes). That's the mean,
but the the true length varies throughout the year.
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/lengths-of-lunar-months-in-2017
Technically because of this any lunar phase point can occur at any time of the day—as they must cycle through the day over a period of time. That said, any event being used to determine the new moon
day could occur close to 12 midnight. For those using the midnight to midnight day construct which day would you then choose as the new moon day? And if you say no problem we just choose the next day,
back your method up 12 hours. Which day then?
For the Jews theoretically this problem would be near sunset. Which day for them? They would choose both and have 2 new moon days, one for the last day of the month and the second for the first day of
the new month as their current calendar shows.
The Creation Calendar only allows for one new moon day each month and is therefore numerically incorrect and hence an invalid lunar worship day calendar.
This also means that every few months the Lunar Sabbath calendar itself goes out of sync one day with where it should be and completely wrecks the 1-8-15-22-29 pattern.
The error appears not to be cumulative but self-corrects the following month. Nevertheless it still causes irreparable damage to their calendar. And it means that any Lunar Sabbath days people are
keeping could be wrong as the calendar they are using to select these days is defective.
For an example, see the point: Questionable Calendar Construction.
Historical missing link: the Jews changing their calendar
Where is the historical evidence for the Jews changing from a lunar sabbath calendar?
The mathematical odds of all the Jews worldwide changing from the lunar calendar to the 7-day week without leaving any historical trace are astronomical
– it is virtually impossible. This is an
overwhelming missing link for the lunar Sabbath theory.
Gerhard Pfandl
Weekly Sabbath or Lunar Sabbath: Are Adventists Keeping the Wrong Sabbath?
https://adventistbiblicalresearch.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Weekly%20Sabbath%20or%20Lunar%20Sabbath_0.pdf
But the "lunar sabbath" adherents want people to believe the outlandish: a radical, sweeping shift in time keeping method, uniformly affecting the entire Jewish world, was accomplished (by some
unknown power) without a single protest. Israel went from marking "sabbaths" by reference to moon phases to a "perpetual seven" calendar unattested by creation. Not a complaint was recorded. Or,
all dissenters were silenced forever...
The Looney Tune of a "Sabbath" Moon
Vanhoff_Rob_Looney-Lunar-Sabbath.pdf
https://www.torahresource.com/
Unlikely the very first day preceded by New Moon
If the first day is the first day then you really can't have another day before it.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ...
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis 1:1,5 KJV.
The Creation Calendar groups put a New Moon day before the first day of creation week [go figure]. But whether the moon was there or not the above argument still stands.
Too late in Biblical history
Back to Ezekiel again. Though one of the strongest arguments for the new moon is from Isaiah nevertheless trying to restructure the sabbath days according to Ezekiel is really too late in the
Old Testament to do this. The groundwork for the seventh-day sabbath has been laid well before this starting in Genesis. Trying to reshuffle everything according to a strained interpretation
of a verse in Ezekiel is just too late in Biblical history.
Seventh-day Sabbath not regulated by the Moon
If the moon were regulating the weeks it would have been mentioned before the first week of creation. But the week days were rolling well before the moon is even mentioned. Hence the seventh-day
sabbath was not regulated by the moon. Jewish groups don't think so either:
Nowhere in Scripture is Shabbat reckoned, and nowhere are we commanded to reckon it, by looking at the moon. We are only taught to reckon time in continuing cycles of seven.
http://messianicpublications.com/rob-vanhoff/assessing-the-lunar-sabbath-theory/
Thus, I find no compelling evidence which would indicate ancientness to this theory nor do I find true support for this in the Tanakh.
The Lunar Shabbat Calendar Issues
By Yochanan Zaqantov
http://www.karaitejudaism.org/talks/The_Lunar_Shabbat_Calendar_Issues.htm
Where is the record of early church first-day keepers?
According to the Lunar Sabbath adherents, the Jews kept a lunar sabbath calendar until Constantine who forced them to change their calendar. If this is correct then the early church would have
been following the Jewish lunar sabbath calendar for at least the first few centuries. And if as Sunday keepers claim, the Christian church moved away from the sabbath to the first day of the
week in honour of the resurrection of Christ, then it wouldn't have specifically been on a Sunday!!
The Jews, supposedly, were keeping a variable seventh-day sabbath which changed each month. But it would have been regarded [incorrectly] as the seventh day of the week. Any Christians who wanted
to keep the first day of the week as the day after the sabbath would have had to follow this floating sabbath and keep the next day.
In short, if the Jews were keeping sabbath on Wednesday for one of the months, the first day keepers would have been worshipping on the next day, Thursday. And this state of affairs would have
remained in place until Constantine, supposedly, forced all to follow the Roman calendar.
So just where is the historical record of all these supposed first-day keeping Christians who would have worshipped on a floating week day Christian sabbath for at least a couple of centuries?
Early church Sunday keepers destroy the Jewish lunar sabbath calendar theory
There are historical quotes that show that Sunday keeping did take hold in the early Christian church though the majority kept the seventh-day sabbath, at least until Constantine:
As we have already noted, excepting for the Roman and Alexandrian Christians, the majority of Christians were observing the seventh-day Sabbath at least as late as the middle of the fifth century
[A.D. 450]. The Roman and Alexandrian Christians were among those converted from heathenism. They began observing Sunday as a merry religious festival in honor of the Lord's resurrection, about
the latter half of the second century AD. However, they did not try to teach that the Lord or His apostles commanded it.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hebrew_Roots/Neglected_Commandments/Sabbath/Statements_of_Historians
This is more than a century before Constantine's supposed forcing the Jews to change from a lunar sabbath calendar! But what were these Christians doing? Though only a small group, they were
observing Sunday in honour of the resurrection, which took place on the first day of the week, the day after the seventh day sabbath. If they were keeping Sunday, then this means the day before
this, Saturday, was the seventh-day sabbath and did not float through the week from month to month following a supposed Jewish lunar sabbath calendar as the lunar sabbath adherents believe.
In short, these early church Sunday-keepers destroy the supposed Jewish lunar sabbath calendar!
Jews continually attacked on the seventh-day sabbath, our Saturday
The following information is stated to be obtained from The Anchor Bible Dictionary Vol. 5; Pg. 853f. The attacks mentioned follow:
#1. Assyrians capture Lachish on the sabbath, the day when its defenders rested.
#2. Babylonians capture Jerusalem on the second day of the month of Adar, a sabbath.
#3. First assault on Jerusalem on a sabbath.
#4. Fall of Jerusalem on the 9th day of the 4th month of Zedekiah's 11th year, a sabbath.
#5. Seleucids attack the Jews on the sabbath (Maccabean period)
http://nazarenespace.com/group/alternatecalendardebate/forum/topics/fall-of-the-lunar-sabbath?commentId=2182335%3AComment%3A205530&groupId=2182335%3AGroup%3A70391
The writer then goes on to say about some of these attacks:
Importantly, note that in Evidences #2 and #4 the Sabbath falls on the second and ninth days (respectively) of their respective months, contradicting a Babylonian-style lunar-shappatu system
(or a system that goes 1-8-15-22-29).
In Evidence #3, the Sabbath falls on the tenth day of the tenth month indicating there was no synchronization of the weekly Sabbath with the lunar cycle in this time period. Not only do the days of
the attacks calculate to be on the weekly Sabbath, but they also do not correspond to the necessary lunar days to substantiate a Lunar-Sabbath theory.
http://nazarenespace.com/group/alternatecalendardebate/forum/topics/fall-of-the-lunar-sabbath?commentId=2182335%3AComment%3A205530&groupId=2182335%3AGroup%3A70391
And his final conclusion?
These historical records indicate that Sabbath observance was kept by many Israelites, both pre-Exilicly and post-Exilicly, on a repeating 7 day cycle on the day we call Saturday.
http://nazarenespace.com/group/alternatecalendardebate/forum/topics/fall-of-the-lunar-sabbath?commentId=2182335%3AComment%3A205530&groupId=2182335%3AGroup%3A70391
Bible missing manna instructions for lunar sabbath months
If the Jews kept a lunar sabbath calendar from antiquity as the Lunar Sabbatarians claim, then the Bible appears to be missing instructions for how the Israelites were to handle the end of the
month in gathering manna in the wilderness:
YHWH instructed the Israelites to gather manna for six days and rest on the seventh day (Ex. 16:22-23,26-27). If the Israelites were keeping a
"lunar Sabbath" then where is the mention of gathering enough manna once each month at the end of the month to last not just for one day, but for up to
three days while awaiting the arrival of the new moon and hence the first day of the week?
THE "LUNAR SABBATH" OR SATURDAY SABBATH?
By Ya'acov N'tan Lawrence of Hoshana Rabbah Messianic Community
https://www.hoshanarabbah.org/pdfs/lunar_sbth.pdf
Disunity
There also appears to be little uniformity among the groups keeping the Lunar Sabbath. A simple search reveals the following New Moon approaches:
[Note: all quotes, comments from/about various sites]
Dark Moon
"a dark New moon today (Day of the new moon)"
opening their USA Sabbath Calendar for 2016-2017 shows a completely dark new moon.
Waxing Crescent
"New Moon which according to the Book of Enoch is defined as a waxing crescent moon"
begins each month with the observance of the first visible crescent of the moon"
Full Moon [or close]
"lunar cycle begins with the full moon"
"We now recognize only the full moon as the new moon."
"new moon day is day after full moon"
And there are also conflicts in the day construct:
"Our Creators days begin at sunrise"
"Recently we realized the day begins at 6am, not at sunrise."
"the Biblical day—and thus, the Sabbath—begins at dawn."
"the biblical day begins at night, instead of dusk/evening"
And since according to them the moon is supposed to regulate the sabbath days then using a different new moon day will result in different sabbaths.
So for anyone who wants to keep the Lunar Sabbath, just which one do you want to keep?
Though very unlikely, suppose that eventually all the groups did keep the same new moon. There would still be inconsistent time where one groups starts a day and another group is still waiting
or even working through the night for their sabbath day to start.
Which brings us to...
A correct standard rule for sin?
This just flows from the last point. If it is a sin to break God's law and the Lunar Sabbath groups are supporting three or more different new moons meaning they are all keeping different
days as sabbath, then just who is sinning? Something to think about.
An Approximate Method A Danger for Sabbath-breaking
The determination of the new moon worship day in the Old Testament was never an exact science. Even the Muslims have a problem with this and they go to the extreme of having people fly around in
planes to sight the new moon. There will usually be a difference of a day among Muslim lunar calendars because of disunity in new moon sightings.
In the Biblical period of the Jewish calendar new moons were determined by visual sighting:
Long ago, the appearance of the new moon each month was attested by witnesses. Once their testimony was deemed credible, fires were set on the hilltops to announce the new month to neighboring
communities who, in turn, passed the message along. This system proved both dangerous and cumbersome, ...
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rosh-chodesh
Many groups still use a visual sighting approach to determine the new moon. The Jews however, did eventually move on...
Eventually the Samaritans began lighting fires on hilltops in order to mislead the Jews, and so instead of fires, messengers were sent out from Jerusalem. By the later Amoraic period, a
fixed calendar was set, and there was no longer any need for witnesses or messengers.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/rosh-chodesh-101/
So has the fixing of the new moon times using numerical calculations and astronomy for the Jewish calendar resolved this possible problem of an exact date to determine the sabbath days [for the Lunar Sabbath groups]? Not really:
JUDAISM 101
The Jewish Calendar: A Closer Look
Note that the calculated molad does not necessarily correspond precisely to the astronomical new moon. The length of time from one astronomical new moon to the next varies somewhat because of the
eccentric orbits of the Earth and Moon; however, the moladot of Rabbi Hillel's calendar are set using a fixed average length of time: 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 "parts" (or in Hebrew, chalakim).
The amount of time is commonly written in an abbreviated form: 29d 12h 793p.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendr2.htm
As a result the Jewish calendar can sometimes get out of sync with the moon. It is possible to find Jewish calendar new moon days that occur BEFORE the astronomical new moon date. 2013 was an
interesting year. HALF of the Jewish calendar new moon days fell on the SAME day as the astronomical new moon and a couple of them fell BEFORE the astronomical new moon date!
Now do any of these irregularities cause any problems for the Jews with the seventh-day sabbath? Not at all. The cycle for the seventh-day sabbath in the Jewish calendar is a fixed amount of time:
7 days. And the setting of new moon days has absolutely no impact on these sabbath days.
But trying to use a calendar that uses the new moon to regulate the sabbath days is just asking for trouble. How can you set days of worship that if people do not keep would place them in danger
of sinning where the wages of sin is death and the day could be wrong? And with the Lunar Sabbath groups there is no unanimity of what is a new moon and which day it is! This is beyond belief.
Jewish calendar bunk
Really I don't have a better word for this. Here's the quote from the Lunar Sabbatarians:
Modern Israel and the Jews follow two calendars instead of just one. These are the luni-solar calendar for their dark conjunction New Moons and Feast days; and the Roman Gregorian calendar for
their weeks and Saturday Sabbaths.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/when-will-the-new-moon-and-sabbath-be-past/
This is complete and absolute bunk. The Jewish luni-solar calendar uses the crescent New Moon not the conjunction.* And the Jews have NEVER followed the
Gregorian calendar for their "weeks and Saturday Sabbaths." It just happens that their seven-day cycle sabbath falls on Saturday in the current calendar.
*Though they use a fixed calendar, they state the new moon is the crescent new moon.
The civil calendar used by most of the world has abandoned any correlation between the moon cycles and the month, arbitrarily setting the length of months
to 28, 30 or 31 days.
The Jewish calendar, however, coordinates all three of these astronomical phenomena. Months are either 29 or 30 days, corresponding to the 29½-day
lunar cycle. Years are either 12 or 13 months, corresponding to the 12.4 month solar cycle.
The lunar month on the Jewish calendar begins when the first sliver of moon becomes visible after the dark of the moon.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm
Shavua is a weekly cycle of seven days, mirroring the seven-day period of the Book of Genesis in which the world is created. The names for the days of the week, like those in the creation account, are simply the day number within the week, with Shabbat being the seventh day.
The Hebrew calendar follows a seven-day weekly cycle, which runs concurrently with but independently of the monthly and annual cycles. The names for the days of the week are simply the day number within the week. ...
The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the creation story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
With the exception of the Shabbat, the weekdays have no names. They are simply numbered:
1.yom rishon = "first day" = (Sunday)
2.yom sheni = "second day" = (Monday)
3.yom sh'lishi = "third day" = (Tuesday)
4.yom revi'i = "fourth day" = (Wednesday)
5.yom chamishi = "fifth day" = (Thursday)
6.yom shishi = "sixth day" = (Friday)
The week culminates in the seventh day, the Holy Shabbat
Introduction to the Jewish Calendar
http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/m_calint.htm
Note: opening a Jewish calendar for August 2017 gives "AV — ELUL 5777." Which means?
The year number on the Jewish calendar represents the number of years since creation, calculated by adding up the ages of people in the Bible back to the time of creation.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm
There is no intimation here that the Jews are following any civil calendar but instead are completely doing their own thing.
Very unlikely the Jews would have listened to Constantine
The argument is put forward that Constantine forbade the Jews from using their original Lunar Sabbath calendar so they gave it up and accepted the calendar they are now using. This is the same people who were so rebellious that eventually the Romans attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Do you really think the Jews would have listened to anything that Constantine had to say about their calendar? I don't think so.
History tells us they didn't listen to Josephus so what chance would Constantine have?
After Jewish allies killed a number of Roman soldiers, Titus sent Josephus, the Jewish historian, to negotiate with the defenders; this ended with Jews wounding the negotiator with an arrow, and
another sally was launched shortly after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(AD_70)
Israelites kept sabbath every seventh day for 40 years in the wilderness on our Saturday
Well this point blows the Lunar Sabbath and Creation Calendar right out of the water. See the next point. Mentioned in there.
A reconstruction of History
With little or no support from the Bible and Jewish and Christian history for the Lunar Sabbath approach the only other avenue left for people to find support for this theory is to reconstruct
history. But just because they write about Constantine doing such and such and the Jews following this does not make it so. Here's an example:
"But what they fail to understand is that Constantine did not change it from Saturday to Sunday, as the Jews and Christians did not observe it on Saturday.
What he did was forbid Jews and the Early Church from following the luni-solar calendar, which resets the calendar each month based on the 29 1/2 day lunar cycle, which caused the day that the
Sabbath was observed on to change every month."
http://christianitybeliefs.org/the-falling-away/the-sabbath-was-changed-to-sunday/
This is an attempt to rewrite history. The Jews have kept the seventh-day sabbath from antiquity. On a very well known Jewish site, a page outlining a brief history of the Sabbath, starting with the Genesis creation account, we find the following comments:
Every day, that is, except Friday. "It came to pass on the sixth day that they gathered a double portion of bread, two omers for each one. ...
"'See, G-d has given you the Shabbat. Therefore, on the sixth day, He gives you bread for two days. Let each man remain in his place; let no man leave
his place on the seventh day.' So the people rested on the seventh day." (Exodus 16:29–30) ...
Shabbat is the eternal soulmate of the people of Israel, and our source of strength and endurance. This was recognized by friend and foe alike.
Throughout the generations, our enemies have repeatedly attempted to take away the Shabbat from us. ...
And yet it has also been said that "more than the Jews have kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jews."
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/261818/jewish/A-Brief-History-of-Shabbat.htm
Even this Jewish site is saying that the sixth day was our Friday when they were gathering manna in the wilderness!! Which means the sabbath day then was the same day it is now. And this is eternal!
And more than this...
The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.
Exodus 16:35 NRSV.
The above Jewish site is then telling us that the Israelites gathered a double portion of manna every sixth day for forty years and that this sixth day was our Friday! That means for forty years
every seventh day was our Saturday! Clearly through this period of time there was no lunar month change of the sabbath day. And it is still the same day three and a half thousand years later! So there is definitely no intimation that the Israelites ever kept a lunar sabbath!
And the early Christians also kept the seventh-day sabbath:
The scriptures show that Paul and the other disciples of Y'shua continued to keep the Sabbath after Messiah's death and resurrection. Nowhere in the New Testament is the commandment to observe
the Sabbath negated. Instead, the New Testament shows that the Sabbath was still kept by the early believers. ...
So as late as the fifth century, there were still those who kept the Sabbath ...
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hebrew_Roots/Neglected_Commandments/Sabbath/Apologetics/History
There is one other serious problem in the Constantine history rewrite quote. The part about the luni-solar calendar making a change in the sabbath each month. It's true that the luni-solar Lunar Sabbath calendar does this. But the Jewish calendar is a luni-solar calendar also and there is no monthly change in the sabbath with it. A luni-solar calendar is simply a calendar that is lunar based yet makes some sort of adjustment to fit closely to a solar year.
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunisolar_calendar
Not only is the quote an attempt to rewrite history but it is also dishonest and a complete fabrication.
Calendar construction hypocrisy
The Lunar Sabbatarians claim that Constantine was instrumental in the Jews changing from their original, supposedly, lunar sabbath calendar to the one
they are now keeping.
Talking about Constantine, one group states:
What he did was forbid Jews and the Early Church from following the luni-solar calendar, which resets the calendar each month based on the 29 1/2 day lunar cycle, which caused the day that the Sabbath
was observed on to change every month.
http://christianitybeliefs.org/the-falling-away/the-sabbath-was-changed-to-sunday/
Some more information about what supposedly happened back then from another group follows:
Biblical Calendar Annihilated
The significance of the Council of Nicæa is found in the fact that the decree outlawed the Biblical calendar.
"Since the second century A.D. there had been a divergence of opinion about the date for celebrating the paschal (Easter) anniversary of the Lord's passion (death, burial, and resurrection).
The most ancient practice appears to have been to observe the fourteenth (the Passover date), fifteenth, and sixteenth days of the lunar month ... The bishops of Rome, desirous of enhancing the
observance of Sunday as a church festival, ruled that the annual celebration should always be held on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday following the fourteenth day of the lunar month. ... This
controversy lasted almost two centuries, until Constantine intervened in behalf of the Roman bishops and outlawed the other group."
The point of contention appeared deceptively simple: Passover versus Easter. The issues at stake, however, were immense. The only way to determine when Passover occurs is to use the Biblical
luni-solar calendar, for only by observing the moon can one count to the 14th day following the first visible crescent.
http://www.4angelspublications.com/articles/Biblical_Calendar_Outlawed.pdf
This last group follows the crescent new moon approach. But note very carefully the closing line in this quotation states that "only by observing the moon
can one count to the 14th day."
The import of this comment should not be missed. All the groups believe the original calendar the Jews kept is the correct one. This last group states the
original way of determining the new moon was by observation. And historical quotes say this is the way the Jews did it:
In the fourth century, Hillel II established a fixed calendar based on mathematical and astronomical calculations.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm
Until Hillel II instituted a permanent calendar based on calculations (ca. 360), the fixing of the new moon was determined by observation and the evidence
of witnesses.
The new moon was reckoned by actual personal observation, not by astronomical calculation ...
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hebrew_Roots/New_Moon
So the "true" original calendar is one that used visual observation of the new moon each month and that the calendar the Jews adopted, supposedly because
of Constantine, was based on mathematical and astronomical calculations.
Visiting the calendar page for another Lunar Sabbath group [as of Aug 2017] showed 13 calendar months to April the following year.
Spring of 2017 – Winter 2018
These calendars have now been populated. ...
Simply go to www.timeanddate.com make sure through a comparison that in your time zone the first rays of the sun at sunrise occur at least five
minutes prior to moonset.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/2017-2/
This site also has a page discussing various approaches to determine the new moon and the visual sighting approach does have some support there.
However, the above mentioned calendars had already been constructed and obviously NOT by visual observation of the new moon for each month! A table
on the page gives reference to www.timeanddate.com which is a site that uses astronomical calculations.
The Lunar Sabbatarians claim the Jews were led astray by Constantine from using their original visual sighting calendar and instead adopted a fixed
calendar using mathematical and astronomical calculations. But apart from some visual sightings, the Lunar Sabbatarians are clearly constructing
calendars using the same tools! There's a word for that.
It is called hypocrisy.
Israelites unable to kindle a fire for the preparation of the Feast of Unleavened Bread
According to Lunar Sabbath doctrine, the seventh-day Sabbath occurs on the eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second and the twenty-ninth days of the month. The feast of unleavened bread starts on the
fifteenth day of the month. Lunar sabbatarians declare the fifteenth day of every month is the weekly Sabbath. Therefore, fire should not be created on the fifteenth day of any month. The
commandment in Exodus 35:2-3 says, "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be
put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day." However, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread occurs on the fifteenth day of the first
month as Leviticus 23:5-6 commands. ... Exodus 35:2-3 reads you shall not kindle a fire on the weekly Sabbath yet Exodus 12:16 states that you can do work concerning the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
When the fifteenth day of the first month is always a weekly Sabbath, Israel would never be allowed to kindle a fire for the preparation of the feast. Therefore, there would be no need for a
commandment allowing food preparation on the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Clearly, Lunar Sabbath doctrine is not logically supported by Scripture.
http://www.about-torah.org/Teachings/babylonian-lunar-sabbath-conspiracy.html
Feast days added to calendar
You don't have to read far to realize these groups are supporting the Feasts from the Old Testament. Looking at a page of calendars on one website shows calendars displaying Feast days such as:
Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and so on. But the New Testament tells us not to judge anyone with respect to these feast days any more. They are no longer holy days to the Lord.
In fact, God considered these feast days as obsolete, growing old, and ready to vanish away. See Hebrews 8:13. See also the point on Calendar Constructional Problems.
Odd Beliefs
There appear to be some very curious views spread through the groups with most likely not all believing the same. But still very curious. For example, the Sun orbits the Earth and not the other
way round; Jesus Christ a pagan god formulated by Constantine from Greek mythology; the Earth is not a globe but a flat circular plane; and so on.
Questionable References
Some [or all?] of the references the Lunar Sabbath groups use to support their views are questionable.
Lunar Sabbatarians have taken delight in quoting passages from two Jewish Encyclopedias which seem to support the Lunar Sabbath teaching. The problem is that the Lunar Sabbatarians do not seem
to understand that these Encyclopedias are expressing nothing more than a nineteenth century liberal speculation, which even most liberal scholars repudiate and which is decidedly not "Jewish".
http://nazarenespace.com/forum/topics/does-the-jewish-encyclopedia-prove-the-lunar-sabbath
After discussing some of these questionable quotes the writer then goes on to say
These Jewish Encyclopedias do not advocate the Lunar Sabbath theory that is taught today, and even their speculation of a Lunar based week is based on a perspective that the week and the Sabbath
are human inventions which evolved into the modern fixed week long before the time of Yeshua and probably before most of the "Old Testament" period. No such statements appear in the later,
and more accepted Encyclopedia Judaica.
http://nazarenespace.com/forum/topics/does-the-jewish-encyclopedia-prove-the-lunar-sabbath
Luni-Solar Dishonesty
Mentioned above but does deserve it's own point. Some documents pushed by the Lunar Sabbath groups will refer to a luni-solar calendar and then treat this as the calendar that changes the sabbath
each month. So you read the quote, and because the Jews moved [supposedly] away from a luni-solar calendar you think this must be the Lunar Sabbath calendar. Same for the church leaders reading
about a Jewish luni-solar calendar giving some correct date and the reader is made to think this must be the Lunar Sabbath calendar. These articles have been written to give this impression when
in reality the current Jewish calendar is also a luni-solar calendar and it DOES NOT support the Lunar Sabbath theory.
The document stated the church leaders studied some historical date and found it worked with the Karaite Jewish luni-solar calendar again giving the impression this was a Lunar Sabbath calendar.
The truth is the Karaite calendar* though being luni-solar, DOES NOT support the Lunar Sabbath. See later point on Jewish thoughts.
The comments had more to do with the Karaite Jews rejecting the revised fixed Jewish calendar and staying with a visual sighting approach to determine the new moon each month. Both calendars are
luni-solar and neither of them support the Lunar Sabbath. But they won't tell you that.
To give people the wrong impression and use this to their advantage is luni-solar dishonesty.
* Note checking the main Karaite site shows sabbaths on Saturday on their Calendar page. Though this calendar does not look luni-solar they state elsewhere they follow the Biblical month starting
with the crescent new moon:
https://www.karaite-korner.org/new_moon.shtml
The Karaite Jews of America / Calendar
http://www.karaites.org/calendar.html
Luni-Solar calendar does yield 31 AD crucifixion date with Julian calendar
This really comes out of the very questionable document about the church leaders studying the Lunar Sabbath. The comment is made:
"When the luni-solar calendar for AD 31 is overlaid the Julian calendar for the same year, Passover, the sixth day of the week, does not fall on Friday!"
The luni-solar calendar mentioned in this article is the Karaite Jewish calendar with the reader made to think this is a Lunar Sabbath calendar. It's not. But they won't tell you that. Worse, they
are making the claim that the day for the sabbath has been changed and that this calendar shows this since they say you can't get the sixth day of the Passover week to fall on a Friday for 31 AD.
Well maybe they couldn't get it but I did. By using a numerical approximation for a visual sighting approach for the new moon the Jews most likely used in the early years of the first century I
obtained Friday 27 April 31 AD as a very possible date for the crucifixion with the Julian calendar.
It's a Friday and Jesus was crucified on the sixth day of the week. The next day was the seventh-day sabbath and obviously Saturday. Still the same day and it hasn't changed in the last two
thousand years.
Information Overload
Is it really necessary to find yourself wading through pages and pages of material about the Old Testament Feast days to the point that you really feel like you would need to be an Old Testament
scholar in order to understand it all just to learn some new Bible truth?
Foundational Verse Problem
Thus saith the Lord GOD; The gate of the inner court that looketh toward the east shall be shut the six working days; but on the sabbath it shall be opened, and in the day
of the new moon it shall be opened.
Ezekiel 46:1 KJV.
This is the foundational verse for the Lunar Sabbath theory. And if they are wrong about this verse then the whole Lunar Sabbath theory crumbles. And with it, the Creation Calendar.
Those supporting the Lunar Sabbath theory believe that this verse is stating that the six working days, and the sabbath, and the new moon are all different. That is, the new moon is not one of the six working days and goes somewhere else: at the beginning of the month and is separate from the following 4 weeks in the month. That's 29 days in the month and approximate alternate months are 30 days with an extra day added at the end to keep the calendar in sync with the moon.
The problem is, it appears that only those supporting the Lunar Sabbath theory can see this. Just about everyone else can see that the new moon can fall on any one of the six working days, along with the weekly worship day, the sabbath, just as it does now with the Jewish calendar.
To construct a whole calendar and Lunar Sabbath days based on a questionable interpretation of one single verse that only they can see is extremely dangerous. And fraught with all sorts of possible problems.
I don't see it and the fact that it could be argued either way does not really help them as they are the only ones who see it that way. This is really a blinkers-on sort of strategy that really is not a safe foundation approach for any doctrinal point, let alone a complete calendar which regulates days of worship and is completely out of step with Christian groups that keep the seventh-day sabbath, not to mention the Jews who have been keeping the day for millenia.
Really, the warning bells should be ringing loud and clear for anyone wanting to follow the Lunar Sabbath theory.
Calendar Constructional Problems and Colossians
There is usually a strong link for the Lunar Sabbath days with the Old Testament Feasts according to those supporting the Lunar Sabbath theory. The problem with this is the judgment advice in
Colossians:
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Colossians 2:16,17 KJV.
By constructing a calendar that has a new moon day that regulates the weekly sabbath days and links with the Old Testament Feast days is judging people. If you do not keep these sabbaths then you are breaking God's Law, sinning, of which the wages is death. If that is not judging what is?
If we are not to judge anyone with respect to the new moon or the Feast days then how can we judge anyone for not keeping sabbath days which are defined by a Lunar Sabbath calendar constructed using the new moon and the Feast days?
Note: the Biblical seventh-day sabbath is not defined by the Jewish calendar lunar month. The determination of the new moon day for the Jewish calendar has zero effect on the seventh-day sabbath with follows a seven day cycle and is independent of the Jewish luni-solar calendar lunar month.
A call to circumcision and other rites from the Law of Moses
At least one group is making this call. Well, they have a link to a site promoting it:
"Circumcision. Indeed, circumcision was given Abraham as a covenant. It is a statute that has never been revoked."
And this flies directly in the face of New Testament Christianity:
But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.
And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.
And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;
And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.
Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me:
Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:
But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
Acts 15:5-10,13,19,20 KJV.
Nowhere in the New Testament told to keep the New Moon
There is no command in the New Testament for Christians to keep the new moon. There also may be no command not to, but if we are told not to judge anyone with respect to the new moon then that
holds for any calendar constructed using the new moon and any worship days defined by such a calendar. This means Christians are under no obligation whatsoever to keep any such Lunar Sabbath day.
Questionable Calendar Construction
The following table was found on one group's site showing their calendar construction approach:
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/2017-2/
There are some problems with this table. The UTC column is correct but some of the dates in the Full Moon column are wrong. That's for Coordinated Universal Time:
For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
But could these dates have been for the PST column? The page states
Please remember these calendars represent the Pacific Standard Time Zone only. Meaning that depending upon your time zone the New Moon Day and the four successive Sabbaths may occur on the
previous day or the day following.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/2017-2/
And for PST?
Pacific Standard Time (PST) is 8 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/pst
The Pacific Time Zone observes standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC-8). During daylight saving time, its time
offset is UTC-7 and is thus based on the mean
solar time of the 105th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory.
... Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) when observing daylight saving time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Time_Zone
And if you subtract 7 or 8 hours from the UTC column you obtain most of the times in the PST column to within a minute except one. September 12:02pm should be am. Probably a transcription error? And
further checking this column with San Francisco time gives all the times correctly to the minute—excepting the September time which did come in as am, not pm.
https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/usa/san-francisco?year=2017
However, 3 of the Full Moon dates appear to be wrong. If you compare these dates with the astronomical tables they are wrong. June 8 should be 9, September 5 should be 6, and Mar 30 should be 31. But
if instead of the astronomical tables they chose these dates according to the PST column would this explain these differences?
Simply put, using their day construct, the times in the PST column could affect the day they would choose. This group believe the Biblical 24 hour day period starts at sunrise:
Also, following the time of Constantine the Roman weekly cycle was adopted for the seventh-day Sabbath, and the "day" was changed to begin at sunset instead of sunrise.
Day and night are the two halves of a full lunar calendar date. Genesis 1:4, 5.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/sunrise-or-sunset-when-does-the-day-begin/
So let's look at these 3 dates more closely. With the day construct sunrise to sunrise we will need the sunrise times also.
Jun 9 6:09am with 5:47 sunrise. This is the closest of the 3 dates and means using this day construct this is just too close to call the day. The day before could also be considered a full moon and
this suggests why they may have chosen Jun 8.
Sep 6 12:02am with 6:44 sunrise. 12:02am is well before sunrise and may suggest why they chose Sep 5. But Sep 6 may also be possible.
Mar 31 5:35am with 6:56 sunrise. As with Jun 9 these are too close and either day could be considered. But this does suggest why they may have chosen Mar 30.
But in all these cases both days could be full moons. Then it just depends on the convention being used as to which one this group would choose to select their new moon date. These groups are
obviously doing their own thing so a few different answers are possible.
So does all this explain these dates? It could but using this same reasoning we would now have a problem with December and the second date in January.
Dec 3 7:46am with 7:08 sunrise definitely suggests we could choose Dec 2 & 3 as full moon days.
Jan 31 5:26am with 7:14 sunrise suggests we could choose Jan 30 & 31 as full moon days.
So with the table dates a few are definitely in question. And if we allow all the possible full moon dates this would give some extra "new moons". And they definitely should be allowable as the
Jewish calendar always has added in extra new moon days when needed.
According to the dates in the table a couple of these will just fall on the last day of the previous month but still have some impact, being an extra
"new moon" day to observe. An amended table would be:
Month Full Moon LSNM [Lunar Sabbath "New Moon"] Apr 10 11 May 10 11 Jun 8,9 9,10 EXTREME IMPACT Jul 8 9 Aug 7 8 Sep 5,6 6,7 EXTREME IMPACT Oct 5 6 Nov 3 4 Dec 2,3 3,4 IMPACT Jan 1 2 Jan 30,31 31,1 IMPACT Mar 1 2 Mar 30,31 31,1 EXTREME IMPACT Apr 29 30And the following shows the impact this has on the third and fourth month on the page.
The third month starts with Friday June 9:
For the third month, the 1-8-15-22-29 pattern is completely destroyed and replaced by 1-2-9-16-23-30 there being 2 new moon days at the beginning of the month. The next month doesn't have an extra
new moon day and reverts to the old pattern.
But this still puts the whole Lunar Sabbath theory with the supposed connection with the feasts relating to the 1-8-15-22-29 pattern in a complete shambles. And the admission that there can easily
be a discrepancy of one day between groups setting their lunar sabbath days shows that it is very unlikely that the Lord ever planned for the moon to regulate the seventh-day sabbath.
And it really is much more than just one day. Considering that the various groups keep different new moons: the dark moon, crescent moon, full moon, and possibly others, this can easily lead
to a variation of up to 15 days each month! And you can't really get more than that as a lunar month is only about 29.5 days long. But it really does show that this is definitely not what the
Lord had in mind.
Though the construction here was for a group keeping the full moon, similar results would be obtainable for other groups keeping different new moon days.
And as stated before, this all means that any Lunar Sabbath days people are keeping could be wrong as the calendar they are using to select these days is defective.
New moon not a sabbath rest--Jews can't find Torah quote
The Lunar Sabbatarians claim the New Moon is a sabbath rest day:
... the Torah Law of Israel required them to cease from their labors not only upon the Sabbath day, but also on the Day of the New Moon. ...
The New Moon Day is a qadosh (sacred) worship day, all day, from sunrise to sunset, in the days of Amos the prophet, as it was required in the Torah.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/when-will-the-new-moon-and-sabbath-be-past/
A very interesting quote that supports the premise that the Jewish new moon is not in the same category as a sabbath rest is given as follows:
The Gemora in Er'chin (10b) tells us that even though Rosh Chodesh is referred to as a "holiday," the day does not have the great measure of holiness which would necessitate cessation from work,
as we find on the holidays and on Shabbos.
ROSH CHODESH - A special holiday for Women
http://www.shortvort.com/2337/
About 2011 I found this quote at
http://www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/assorted/rcwomen.html#
but after a few years the site closed and I then found it at
http://gt.torah.org/learning/yomtov/assorted/rcwomen.html
Now it looks like gt.torah.org is closing and they are reopening torah.org but the quote's not there yet but can be found at the above location. And this
site states that "a vort refers to words of Torah presented verbally or in writing." So as one of my old work colleagues would say, we are definitely
in the right ball park!
And as for the lunar sabbatarians claiming that the Torah law requires ceasing from labour on the new moon day, the funny thing about this is that the Jews can't find this Torah quote. In fact,
the lunar sabbatarians should find the following completely devastating:
If every New Moon Day is a Sabbath, why do we find God commanding labor upon the day, and labor being exacted upon the day?
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, On the first day of the first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation. ... Thus did Moses: according to all that the LORD
commanded him, so did he. And it came to pass in the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, that the tabernacle was reared up. (Exodus 40:1,2,16,17 -- read all of Exodus 40:1-33 to see how much labor was done this New Moon Day)
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and
to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built. ... Go up to the
mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. ... Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the
high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the
LORD. (Haggai 1:1,2,8,12)
If every New Moon Day is a Sabbath, why do we find God commanding Zerubbabel to gather wood and build upon the first day of the month? Recall God's judgment against the man who gathered wood on the
Sabbath in Numbers 15:32-36.
http://www.truthontheweb.org/shabbatu.htm
Lunar Sabbath new moon not determined according to Jerusalem
Though Lunar Sabbath groups show some interest in the International Date Line they don't seem to consider this. And for groups that keep the seventh-day sabbath wouldn't a good place to start be
with the Jews?
Rosh Chodesh, the new month, is marked by the appearance of the first sliver of the new moon in the sky above Jerusalem in Israel.
http://bje.org.au/course/judaism/jewish-calendar/
[THE NSW BOARD OF JEWISH EDUCATION]
Rabbi Yechiel Michel Tucazinsky says that the date line runs 180° east of Jerusalem. He explains that because Jerusalem is considered the center of the land given to the Jewish people, it is also
considered the center of the world according to Jewish law. Therefore, the date line would be located exactly 180° opposite Jerusalem, which would also enable every Jew in the world to observe at
least 12 hours of the Sabbath together with those who live in Jerusalem.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1736567/jewish/The-Sabbath-the-International-Date-Line-and-Jewish-Law.htm
Simply put, using Jerusalem to determine the day, you then keep the day according to your global location. For example, the Jews are keeping sabbath on Saturday. So wherever you are globally, you keep the same day. And use a day construct accordingly. For most seventh-day sabbath keeping Christians this will be from sunset to sunset and determined at your global location. But the Lunar Sabbatarians don't appear to be doing this. One group has taken a very curious approach:
Because we have only been keeping the full New Moon a short time, some things are subject to revision. ...
Whether one is in the northern or southern hemisphere, the full New Moon will be seen, and sets an imaginary line from pole to pole.
This allows the entire world to be in harmony with the definitive lunar phases, with one phase followed by the next. ... The entire world will experience the full New Moon during a single revolution
of the earth, allowing commerce and trade to take place across borders, followed the next morning at sunrise with the celebration of New Moon day. ...
"FM: Full Moon, which announces the next day at sunrise to be the original Biblical New Moon Day.
NMD: New Moon Day, the first day of the lunar month, following the sighting of the full moon, the CLID* in the heavens." [from chart on page]
Here are five differing methods utilized by some full New Moon believers to identify their Rosh Chodesh (New Moon Day), first day of the lunar month. With each method there are some months in which
they will all commence Rosh Chodesh on the same day, and months when they will be a day different.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/step-by-step-guide-for-locating-the-apparent-full-new-moon-day
* Creator's Lunar International Date Line.
The CLID was a travelling date line which changed position each month. They appear to have moved on from this but how they get the whole world to be in harmony for a single revolution and yet refer
to 5 different methods which can yield different days is still a little puzzling. And this does show the Lunar Sabbath construction approach is not exact and a very questionable method for
regulating seventh-day sabbaths.
Weirdness
Well if you want weirdness you don't have to look any further than the Lunar Sabbath movement! With views on the Sun orbiting a flat planar Earth to the full moon being the new moon and day time
being exactly 12 hours long irrespective of long and short days there is plenty here. But the moon existing before it was created is a bit hard to beat. A fascinating quote and complete with its
own weirdness:
It is impossible for Yahuah to lie, but it is equally impossible for Him to create anything, including the New Moon on the New Moon day. Why? Because this is a SACRED DAY in which He rests and does
NO WORKS of any kind. On the New Moon day prior to creation, our Creator, Yahuah Alahim was sequestered to the Kodesh city above to receive the worship of all the divine messenger host of the
shamayim. Therefore, Creation, while synchronized to the precise time of Yahuah's very seat of power, could NOT begin until the first day of His work week, following the SACRED NEW MOON DAY.
We know this because Ezekiel 20:12 says that Yahuah gave us His Sabbath to be a sign. If He gave us His Sabbaths, and He did, then He also gave us His work week that followed His sacred New Moon day.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/sunrise-or-sunset-when-does-the-day-begin/
Jewish Calendar Change Contradiction
This is mainly one of the groups but it is an interesting point. Here's the quote:
In contrast, soon after the crucifixion plans were laid by the Jewish leaders to change Israel's calendation. The New Moon was changed 180 degrees from
the full moon" to Babylon's "first visible crescent," the moon god "Sin." The modern Zodiac was adopted that utilizes the sun to define which constellation
among the wheel of the stars was to rule for the solar month. This is nothing other than the sun worship of the heathens who set their time according to
the sun and at the time of occulted moon, or crescent.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/sunrise-or-sunset-when-does-the-day-begin/
Wait a minute. Aren't we told elsewhere that Constantine forbade the Jews from keeping their supposed Lunar Sabbath calendar and this is where they gave up the Lunar Sabbath and adopted the weekly seven day cycle sabbath along with the crescent new moon?
But what they fail to understand is that Constantine did not change it from Saturday to Sunday, as the Jews and Christians did not observe it on Saturday.
What he did was forbid Jews and the Early Church from following the luni-solar calendar, which resets the calendar each month based on the 29 1/2 day lunar cycle, which caused the day that the
Sabbath was observed on to change every month."
http://christianitybeliefs.org/the-falling-away/the-sabbath-was-changed-to-sunday/
So the calendar the Jews kept before Constantine was the correct calendar and history states that the Jews were keeping the crescent new moon in the early centuries. So when did the Jews supposedly
change to the crescent new moon? Soon after the crucifixion or at the time of Constantine? You can't have your cake and eat it!
Generally agreed day differences in methods among groups
It is generally agreed that using different methods can give differences of a day among groups keeping the full new moon. And this of course can be extended to other new moon constructions. But
having differences in new moon days means that any regulated seventh-day sabbaths will also be different. This has been mentioned in the Disunity point but here it is a general admission among
Lunar Sabbath groups. And if this doesn't give some indication that the Lunar Sabbath approach is not an exact method then I am not sure what else would.
Claim of sabbath adjusted to Roman time then why sunset?
Here's the quote:
a full civil calendar date ... commences at sunrise and not at midnight or sunset. A day is only the first half of a full lunar calendar date, while the night is the second half. ...
Also, following the time of Constantine the Roman weekly cycle was adopted for the seventh-day Sabbath, and the "day" was changed to begin at sunset instead of sunrise.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/sunrise-or-sunset-when-does-the-day-begin/
So this group claim the original Bible day construct was from sunrise to sunrise and Constantine changed this, for the Jews, to from sunset to sunset. A quote on early Roman timekeeping gives:
Since local habits varied across the empire, local Roman habits also varied. In particular, whether the day started from sunrise, or later midnight (as Romans), or from sunset as Athenians and Jews.
The Romans also divided the day into other periods, such as media noctis inclinatio "midnight," gallicinium "cock-crow", conticinium (with variants such as conticuum) "hush of the night," and
diluculum, "decline of the day." The Jewish and early Christian subjects of the empire often had different methods of timekeeping.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_timekeeping
Note this quote states that the Jews already kept the sunset construct and does not support the Lunar Sabbatarian reconstructed historical view that they originally kept a sunrise construct!
And if, as they suppose, Constantine forbade the Jews from keeping their own day construct then why would he force them to accept a sunset construct if this was not the general Roman one? The above
historical quote suggests the Roman construct was from midnight to midnight and the Lunar Sabbatarians claim the Jews moved from sunrise to sunset. Why? As usual it just doesn't make any sense
except that the Lunar Sabbatarians are simply attempting to rewrite history in an effort to push their own religious agenda.
Feast of Pentecost completely destroys the Creation Calendar
In early Judaism, the Festival of Weeks (Hebrew: Shavuot) was a harvest festival that was celebrated seven weeks after the beginning of the harvest in Deuteronomy 16:9 or seven weeks "after the
Sabbath" in Leviticus 23:16.
The date for the "Feast of Weeks" originally came the day after seven full weeks following the first harvest of grain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecost#Old_Testament
And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:
Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
Leviticus 23:15,16 KJV.
fiftieth from Passover, that is, the festival of "pentecost"
Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries.
Pentecost the fiftieth day after the Passover, ...
the second of the three great Jewish feasts, celebrated at Jerusalem yearly, the seventh week after the Passover, in grateful recognition of the completed harvest
Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
PENTECOST, FEAST OF.
'fifty days', referring to the number of days from the offering of the barley sheaf at the beginning of the Passover. On the 50th day was the Feast of
Pentecost. Since the time elapsed was 7 weeks,
it was called hag sabuot, 'feast of weeks'
New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, I.H.Marshall, A.R.Millard, J.I.Packer, D.J.Wiseman, 2009, Inter-Varsity Press.
The day after seven full weeks. And not just weeks, but sabbaths. 7x7+1=50. Hence 50 days.
It is not possible to get this construction of 50 days using the Creation Calendar. According to the above, the Feast of Pentecost was the day after seven full week sabbaths. And you cannot get
seven full weeks from the Creation Calendar. Pick a month. Any month. A Creation Calendar month consists of the New Moon followed by 4 weeks giving 29 days or an extra day added at the end of the
month if it is 30 days long. The next month starts again with the New Moon and then the next 4 weeks.
It is just not possible to get the seven full week sabbaths in a row for this Feast from this calendar. Hence the Creation Calendar is not valid and neither is the Lunar Sabbath theory.
In fact, this Feast completely destroys the Creation Calendar and the Lunar Sabbath theory.
Some Jewish thoughts on the Lunar Sabbath theory
From a Messianic Jewish / Christian site:
So this general idea has been around for over 100 years. But only since the late 1990s have I been aware that there were actually a few teachers pushing
its observance, claiming that the whole Bible-believing world's sense of time got bumped like a record, with no one thinking the wiser of it. Why someone
would want to believe this I'm not sure. But needless to say, this doctrine is not based upon Scripture; though the "lunar sabbatarians" would like to
convince us otherwise.
The Bible teaches from Genesis 1, Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, and elsewhere that we are to reckon an every-seventh-day Shabbat. Six days of work, and a
seventh day resting in His holiness and shalom. This is a wonderful approach to accounting time, a heavenly gift for mankind (cf: Mark 2:27), and over
the last 2,000 years it has permeated most of the world's calendars. Embedded within it is the remembrance that the Creator of heaven and earth is
Sovereign over all His works, and that His people belong to Him and not to the superstitious rulers of the world. The sun worship and moon worship of the
ancient world was (and is!) to be rejected outright. Therefore we can see how the observance of the every-seventh-day Shabbat is, at its core, a statement
of allegiance to the God of Israel, Creator of all, to His economy, as well as a testimony against man's innate but idolatrous fear of natural forces
and heavenly cycles.
Nowhere in Scripture is Shabbat reckoned, and nowhere are we commanded to reckon it, by looking at the moon. We are only taught to reckon time in continuing cycles of seven.
http://messianicpublications.com/rob-vanhoff/assessing-the-lunar-sabbath-theory/
And from Karaite Judaism:
In conclusion, I have looked at this theory which claims ancient origin and find it a modified Babylonian system which has no connection to the weekly Shabbat based on seven day week. In order
to make this system work one must not count the New Moon day and adjust the Babylonian 7,14, 21, 28 to be 8, 15, 22, 29 or follow the Greek method I show by Pletho. Thus, creating a set of dates
that would align with the 15 day as a Sabbath in which Chagim Matzot and Sukkot would start. Thus, do this to try to give credence to such a system. Clearly, this system violates rules which
are established in the Hebrew text for a day and counting of weeks for Shavuot. I have also shown two previous sources to the encyclopedia reference they use to proof of a so-called pure
Solar Lunar calendar for weeks. The Pletho system looks the most close to the modern innovation. Thus, I find no compelling evidence which would indicate ancientness to this theory nor do
I find true support for this in the Tanakh.
The Lunar Shabbat Calendar Issues
By Yochanan Zaqantov
http://www.karaitejudaism.org/talks/The_Lunar_Shabbat_Calendar_Issues.htm
The Tanakh or Mikra or Hebrew Bible is the canonical collection of Jewish texts, which is also a textual source for the Christian Old Testament. These texts are composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew,
with some passages in Biblical Aramaic (in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few others). The traditional Hebrew text is known as the Masoretic Text. The Tanakh consists of twenty-four books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanakh
There appear to be quite a few websites which show the Lunar Sabbath theory is not correct.
For a PDF version of the Lunar Sabbath material here presented see our stand-alone page:Does the earth rotate around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?2
Really? Where did this come from? And why here in a queries page about the New Moon worship day?
Actually a pretty simple answer: a document pushing this was found on a site dedicated to the creation calendar and lunar sabbath theory.
And now we can add to the list the point that these people also believe that the Sun orbits the Earth, and not the Earth orbiting the Sun.
Yes, you read this right. We are now dealing with stuff like straight out of the Flat Earth Society. So here we go...
Now before leaping into this we should in all fairness commend these people for wanting to follow the Bible. There is nothing wrong with that.
However, God does expect His people to also use a bit of common sense. As it says in His holy word: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." 1 Thess 5:21 KJV. Newer versions use "test"
instead of prove.
OK. First their justification. They refer to some verses in the Bible about the sun rising and setting etc and conclude that the Bible teaches that the Sun orbits the Earth.
Well the Bible may have verses saying something like this but we need to consider some points here:
Point 1. The Bible was given in simple language and observing the Sun through the day one could easily conclude that the Sun is orbiting the Earth
so there should be no problem writing this observation to other people in language that is easy to understand. And we still use this sort of language in
this modern age of the 21st Century. We still talk of sunsets and sunrises but the majority of people in this world probably don't believe that the Sun
is orbiting the Earth when they say this.
Point 2. This is using the Bible as it was not meant to be used. God did not bring the Bible into existence as a text book on how this
Solar System works. It is a spiritual book which outlines a spiritual path that His people are to follow on their walk to Heaven and eternity.
And the Bible clearly tells us this. The weapons of our warfare are spiritual, not carnal or earthy.
Those who try to use the Bible in other ways can easily fall into a mess like these people who want to believe that the Sun orbits the Earth.
And the above mentioning of the Flat Earth Society apparently is not without some relevance.
An investigation of their origins shows that they believed that the Bible supported the idea that the Earth was flat and immovable.
For more info, see page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
Point 3. Anyone can do a simple scientific experiment that shows that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way around, though we can probably
credit Galileo with leading the charge here. Remember his famous experiment about dropping two metal balls from the leaning tower of Pisa? He proved that
under the force of gravitation, the two metal balls of different mass fell at the same rate of acceleration.
And what did gravity cause the balls to do? They fell to the Earth. Observation for this Solar System shows planets with orbiting moons. No planet has a
moon larger than itself. All orbiting moons are much smaller than their orbit planet. Gravity is pulling each moon to its planet but because they are orbiting
they stay at pretty much a constant distance from their planet. The smaller body always orbits the larger body. Using rules of trigonometry and science
the distance and size and mass of the Sun in comparison to the Earth has been determined by scientists. And very few people would doubt these results.
The size and mass of the Sun is so large in comparison with the Earth that the only conclusion that could be drawn is that the Earth orbits the Sun.
It would be a scientific impossibility or absurdity to even think that the Sun would orbit the Earth.
And an extension of Galileo's experiment can be easily done to prove this. Take two balls to the top of a building. OK you may need to get proper
authorization to do this safely. And have them dropped closely in distance [from the same height] and time. Allow a second or two. Any building over 64ft or 20 meters high
should suffice. Drop the first ball. Count one second and then drop the second ball. If the Sun is orbiting the Earth [the much larger body being pulled to the smaller]
as these people postulate then the Earth should rush up to contact the first ball dropped. As the Earth is rushing up you then drop
the second ball one second after the first. Since the Earth is already accelerating toward the first ball dropped its initial
velocity is no longer zero in relation to the balls and adding the act of gravity toward the second ball will mean that less time will
be needed for its impact. This simple scientific experiment will show that the total impact time for each of these two balls from
the same height is in fact the same just as Galileo found out.
Hence the Earth has not moved in relation to these two balls.
And the conclusion of this experiment is simply that the Earth would orbit the Sun and not the other way round!
Hence the creation calendar and lunar sabbath bunch can easily be shown to be wrong on this belief also.
More fun stuff... Suspending the Earth
The logic of the above experiment may be slightly flawed though its supposed to be since the premise it is built upon of the much larger body
orbiting the smaller is obviously wrong. However overnight I have thought up a much more novel experiment. In fact, if the Sun orbit bunch are correct [they're not] the
results of this experiment will be spectacularly amazing and should be actually workable—in this day of rapid electronic communications. Here it is:
Position two experiment places at exact opposites on the Earth's surface. Have one person at each experiment position hold a ball of equal mass and drop them at
precisely the exact same time. And the timing of this could be electronically determined. Any delay error in time dropping could easily be adjusted for by
using fractions of a second beep pulses. So if it was determined that there is a delay of say 5 seconds then the second place would drop their ball
say at 5 second beep pulses before the first and so on. This could be done until the exact same moment in time is reached. And wallah!
Guess what would happen?
When the exact same point in time is reached and the two balls are released according to the people who believe the Sun is orbiting the Earth, the Earth
will try to fall to the balls at the exact same time. The balls are the same mass so the attraction is equal at the exact opposite sides of the Earth.
If the Sun orbit bunch are correct in their belief the Earth should then be suspended between the two balls and actually not move at all. And to
the observers at both sides of the Earth the balls will not drop but just float in position where they have been released at
their designated height above the ground.
This result should be observable and give some amazing photographs [video etc] that the Sun orbit believers could then display to all the amazed
inhabitants of this planet. So we can all wait with great trepidation for the amazing results of this experiment.
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this one.
And again... Axial Tilt of Earth and Seasons
The Earth has an axial tilt of about 23.4° and this is unlikely to be challenged by the most ardent believer in the Sun orbiting the Earth.
In astronomy, axial tilt (also called obliquity) is the angle between an object's rotational axis and the perpendicular to its Orbital plane,
both oriented by the right hand rule.
Over the course of an orbit, the angle of the axial tilt does not change, and the orientation of the axis remains the same relative to the
background stars. This causes one pole to be directed toward the Sun on one side of the orbit, and the other pole on the other side, the
cause of the seasons on the Earth.
The Earth currently has an axial tilt of about 23.4°. This value remains approximately the same relative to a stationary orbital plane
throughout the cycles of precession.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt
The point? Well we could consider the Earth like a large spinning top. Any child who has played with a spinning top realises that the top does not fall over as expected while it is spinning. It seems to stay in an upright position defying gravity. This effect is used in gyroscopes:
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. Mechanically, a gyroscope is a
spinning wheel or disc in which the axle is free to assume any orientation.
The device's orientation remains nearly fixed, regardless of the mounting platform's motion, because mounting the device in a gimbal
minimizes external torque.
Applications of gyroscopes include inertial navigation systems where magnetic compasses would not work (as in the Hubble telescope) or
would not be precise enough (as in ICBMs), or for the stabilization of flying vehicles like radio-controlled helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles. Due to their precision, gyroscopes are also used in gyrotheodolites to maintain direction in tunnel mining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope
And this should drive home the point of the first quote: that the axial tilt of the Earth does not change and neither does the orientation of
the Earth's axis relative to the stars. And how does this impact the belief of the Sun orbiting the Earth?
Well if the Sun is orbiting the
Earth and the orientation of the Earth's axis does not change then any location on the planet stays in the same position relative to the
Sun at the same time each day.
So any given location on the Earth in either hemisphere in "Summer" would be in that season eternally. Similarly for any location in "Winter".
There would be no change.
No position on the Earth would have a change in season. So for any Earth location there would be no Summer followed by Winter.
There would be no change in seasons anywhere!
And the obvious conclusion? The Sun does not orbit the Earth!
And again... The Lunar Synodic Month!
Well this is embarrassing. Probably something like 6 months from running into this material on the Sun orbiting the Earth and putting up the above
answers I just thought of this. And on a queries page for the new moon worship day! The lunar month! As I said it's a little embarrassing.
OK here it is. If the Sun is orbiting the Earth then just how long would a lunar synodic month be? Think about it. And this really messes up the
lunar sabbath theory, doesn't it?
This needs a bit of an explanation. The lunar synodic month is the time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth from one new moon to the next.
Umm... when is the new moon? When the moon is between the Earth and the Sun! If the Sun is orbiting the Earth on a daily basis how often will this
happen? Like I said, think about it. And this really messes up everything for those wanting to believe in the lunar sabbath theory. A real big mess.
Obviously the Sun does not orbit the Earth!
Should Christians keep or observe the feasts of the Old Testament?
There is a connection here with the New Moon Worship Day as mentioned in Colossians 2:16. And I give these a passing mention on our Worship Day page:
According to Colossians we are not to judge any one with respect to these days. Anyway, a query has come in about this and I can now give a more
lengthy answer to this question.
The correspondence referred me to some verses, the main one from the New Testament being 1 Corinthians 5:8 NKJV:
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
And reference to a video presentation on youtube was also given. So my response to this query follows...
Dear Kelsey
Hi. I didn't say there were no verses in the NT talking about the feasts—just that there appears to be no command in the NT to
keep them. As you have found above in 1 Corinthians 5:8 there is definitely a curious mention. I just had a quick look and found another
curious one: Acts 18:21. "but took leave of them, saying, 'I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem; but I will return
again to you, God willing.' And he sailed from Ephesus." [speaking about Paul]. Note that not all textual authorities mention this and it is
missing in the RSV & NRSV [and maybe other versions].
I had a look at the video and he is pretty much saying we should keep them—whether you want to play with the word mandatory or not. Now don't get me
wrong—I am not strictly saying you shouldn't keep them. That's up to you—but there is definitely no Bible command [from the NT] for you to keep them.
And personally I'm not worried about them as they are no longer necessary. But as a study there is certainly nothing wrong with that—and if that
is the direction the video goes in I certainly have no qualms with that. [see my PS below].
And sure, if some Christians want to put a Christian
spin on them and actually keep them that is their prerogative and I also see no problem with that. But they should be stated to be completely
optional days to be kept. And there is also no reason to keep them as a sabbath day of rest. Well you could even do that if you wanted to but
there is definitely no obligation to God to and He would definitely not consider you as sinning if you did not keep any of these days.
And I did state that since these days are mentioned in Colossians as not to judge in respect to etc that any sabbath status that
any of these days may have had, that is if any of them did, is now completely defunct in the New Testament era. They are no longer
holy days to the Lord.
There was a debate in the early church about keeping these feast days and circumcision etc and the conclusion was not to bother the Gentiles with
these things. The admonition was also given that Christians that try to keep the Old Testament Law with circumcision and the feast days were in
danger of following another Gospel. See Galatians 1 & 2. Considering this I would be very wary of keeping any of the Old Testament feast days.
Sure, the new moon worship day gets mentioned in Colossians too, but it's also mentioned just about everywhere else in the Bible, OT and NT.
Whenever the month is mentioned that also implies the existence of the new moon worship day. So this clearly puts it in a different category
to the feast days.
Only two worship days are mentioned for the ages of eternity
Isaiah clearly mentions two worship days that God's people will keep throughout all the ceaseless ages of eternity. Isaiah 66:22,23.
And the feast days do not get a mention. They are not there. So there is certainly no reason to keep them now.
A shadow of things to come
Colossians 2:17. And just how were these feast days a shadow of things to come? The earthly sanctuary was a shadow
of the one in heaven. And the sacrifices offered on the feast days were a shadow of the final sacrifice of Christ.
Hebrews 8:5; 10:1-14—referring to the sacrificial system which had then come to an end.
With the death of Christ the complete sacrificial system had come to a meaningful end along with all the yearly feast days associated with it. Type had met antitype. The shadow had passed away to the reality. And more on the antitype follows...
Type had met antitype
At least with most of these feast days. Many Christians believe that these yearly feast days are also symbolic of certain times and events in
the Christian period. Some examples follow. These may vary a little according to your Christian beliefs but they do give a reasonable idea
that yes, the feasts do have an antitype:
Firstfruits—resurrection of Christ:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15:20.
Pentecost—actual Pentecost:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. Acts 2:1.
Trumpets—Second Coming:
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall
be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:51,52.
Day of Atonement—Opening of Second Apartment in heavenly sanctuary and Christ's work of final atonement cleansing the heavenly sanctuary. Again depending on your beliefs but one large body of Christians date this as starting in 1844:
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. Revelation 11:19.
Note that the second half of this verse deals with events that will take place when this final ministry of Jesus actually closes.
Anyway you get the idea. It would be pretty pointless trying to keep an annual festival when we are say for example living completely
in the antitypical day of atonement.
A more serious consideration: if you want to keep these feast days since they do get a small mention in the New Testament Christian period
then they should be undertaken exactly as they would have been undertaken by the apostle who mentions them. We mean here 1 Corinthians 5:8
and Acts 18:21. This was Paul. Before commenting further on this note that Paul also states in the previous verse in Corinthians that our
Paschal lamb, Christ, has already been sacrificed.
So this makes the keeping of this feast day completely irrelevant for the Christian. Worse yet, the offering of a lamb on this day would
also place us in danger of following another gospel. And a warning against this is clearly given in Galatians, again by Paul. He
was definitely a very curious character! But following the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the other apostles he no doubt came to
realise that these animal sacrifices all pointed to the cross and were no longer relevant to the Christian period.
And this brings me to my final point. Or two. Again from Paul. Acts 18:21. He was going to keep the coming feast in Jerusalem. There is
only one way back then this feast was going to be kept in Jerusalem. And that is with an animal sacrifice. Yes a big problem with that one.
And no doubt Paul later realised this sort of activity could lead Christians into following another gospel so gave some very good admonition
on this point in his letter to the Galatians.
And the last point of all of this? If you are going to keep these feast days according to Paul's small slip-up in Acts, then you must also
keep these feasts in Jerusalem. That's where he was going to keep them.
"I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem". Pretty clear on that one.
So the conclusion here is that if you are going to keep these feast days according to Acts, then you will need to actually offer an animal
sacrifice and the location you will have to do this in is in fact Jerusalem.
We could still however end all of this on a positive note.
A Christian re-imaging of these days? We already have a simple representation for one of these feasts. Easter could be considered a Christian
response to the Passover festival. Usually this takes the form of an Easter service. Or sermon. And that could easily be done with all of
the other feasts too. And they should not be called feasts [as a day, that is] as this would suggest an animal sacrifice and give people
the wrong impression.
So a simple service or sermon at different times of the year about each feast and it's relevance to the Christian
period would solve this problem completely. And having each feast covered in a sermon on your weekly day of worship also solves the problem
of people thinking you are trying to keep the old feast days from the Old Testament. It solves a lot of problems.
If you try and set up a
completely different set of days through the year then you could very easily end up with different groups trying to enforce these days as
sabbath rest days also and things can very quickly get very messy. If you did go down this track you must clearly state that the days are
completely optional and definitely not sabbath rest days. Except of course for any that you place on the weekly worship day. So staying with
the weekly worship days and just giving a simple sermon solves a lot of problems.
Just some thoughts. Hope all of this is of some help.
Kind regards
Stephen
PS
Now I want to mention a bit more about the video:
It is an interesting presentation but I do have some issues with it. And we only need to mention the bits about the feasts as that is your interest.
At the beginning of the presentation the speaker sets up the premise that forever goes beyond the second coming so these feasts are still
possibly mandatory for Christians. His reasoning here is a little questionable and does not take into account the concept of conditional prophecy.
Another curious point was trying to build a case for God's Calendar with these Holy Days as still being important for us. This was then reinforced
by an approach of making these feasts a rehearsal of better things to come and a good suggestion for Christians to keep them now as it will
prepare us for eternity and the keeping of them better there.
Now at this point I would have to say that there is a bit of a mix up occurring here with respect to the covenants and the actual reason
that God gave these feast days. The feast days involved sacrifices in the earthly sanctuary that had to do with the transfer of sin from
the people to the sanctuary. And on the day of atonement these accumulated sins in the sanctuary were removed by the high priest and put
on the scapegoat which was then sent out into the wilderness.
All these sacrifices came to a meaningful end with the death of Christ on
the cross. At that point in time all these feast days no longer held any relevance. In fact all these sacrifices and feast days were a
burden on the Israelites. And with Jesus this burden was removed:
by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making
peace, Ephesians 2:15 RSV.
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
Colossians 2:14,20 KJV.
Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary.
It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect
in regard to the conscience–
concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. Hebrews 9:1,9,10 NKJV.
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is
enacted on better promises.
For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says: "The days will come, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah;
In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:6-8,13 RSV.
And there was some contention in the early church to have new believers keep the law of Moses—which would include all of these feast days:
But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up, and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep
the law of Moses."
The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.
And after there had been much debate, Peter rose and said to them, "Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by
my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?
After they finished speaking, James replied, "Brethren, listen to me.
Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God,
but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood.
Acts 15:5-7,10,13,19,20.
All these extra rules and regulations were contrary to us and a burden and a yoke. These yearly feasts were definitely a shadow of better
things to come, but they are not to be considered as rehearsals for something better we are going to do in heaven.
And note especially Hebrews 8:13. God considered these yearly feasts as obsolete, growing old, and ready to vanish away.
That's a little bit different to what is being presented on the video.
The Lunar Sabbath—a fruit salad collection of stuff
Recently I received an email from a friend at church from some members who had not been attending for a while giving a reason for their absence. In short they said they had found some wonderful
hidden truths and wanted to share them with their church friends. There were some documents attached to the email including a list of links to various articles for us to read.
The websites listed were clearly supportive of the Lunar Sabbath and Creation Calendar theories. The 3 documents attached were:
Warning Words from Jude
Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery
Neither Saturday Nor Sunday
A fourth document attached gave some web site links.
It became very clear on perusing the documents that apart from the Lunar Sabbath theory there were some very curious views being promulgated. My reply to all of this follows...
A very fascinating read but I have some queries or some points I just can't see the same on. Also only a few points need to be mentioned. It is not necessary to show the documents are completely
wrong, just a few points which put the lot in question.
Warning Words from Jude
"Sadly the [] Church2, from it's very beginning has been led astray from the truths of the Scriptures ...
See http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/hiding-lunar-sabbath/"
2. Leaving out the name--you could probably use any church here.
It would be easy to write that this one's a bit of a stretch considering that the Lunar Sabbath theory is a recent invention and did not exist at the beginning of our church.
But there is a claim that some early variant of this belief did exist in the early 1800s.
The "lunar sabbath" suggestion first entered history in the 1800s, when unbelieving scholars of the ancient Near East were trying to reconcile Biblical "literature" with the ancient Mesopotamian
religion (Babylon and Assyria) described in (then) newly-deciphered Akkadian documents.
http://www.torahresource.com/EnglishArticles/Vanhoff_Rob_Looney-Lunar-Sabbath.pdf
And as noted previously the Babylonians did use a Lunar rest-day calendar which appears to be the forerunner of the current Lunar Sabbath version. So let's give them the benefit of a doubt and
assume that our founding church leaders were made aware of this alternative calendar and rejected it. Or a certain person in the group spoke against it so it was never accepted by our church leaders.
If said person did this I think instead of considering this person an apostate they should be commended for not letting this very questionable calendar infiltrate the founding of our church.
Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery
"Biblical Truth is being revealed from the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, ...
What Has Been discovered?
Rome and its powers have deceived the world by removing the true Ancient Names of our Heavenly Father and Saviour Messiah, when Constantine created his new God Jesus Christ."
It's also a stretch that Constantine created the concept of Jesus being God. It is clear in the Scriptures that Jesus accepted worship, forgave sins etc, prerogatives that belonged to God alone. The Old Testament also equates Jesus to the Everlasting Father:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6.
And some more...
"Through manuscripts and records from ancient Rome we find the name Jesus Christ came into being when Constantine rode into Rome and declared the name of a new pagan god Jesus Christ derived from the gods ZEUS CHRISTNA which when translated is "Jesus Christ"."
This is also hard to believe:
The bookG976 of the generationG1078 of JesusG2424 Christ,G5547 the sonG5207 of David,G1138 the sonG5207 of
Abraham.G11
Matthew 1:1 KJV.
G5547
Christos
khris-tos'
From G5548; anointed, that is, the Messiah, an epithet of Jesus: - Christ.
The Greek word Christos in Matthew 1:1 means anointed or the Messiah. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. This was written long before Constantine was born.
In the Ancient Hebrew Writings there was NO 'J' or "W" in their alphabet. ...
The devil using the powers of pagan and papal Rome along with Mary worship has successfully deceived the world by his cunningness in concealing the true Hebrew names of Yahuah and Yahusha
the Father and Son.
The J problem? Well there may not exactly be a letter in the Hebrew or Greek alphabets for our letter J. So Bible translators did the best they could and if we have some words a little off does
it really matter? The Jehovah's Witnesses cop this same flack. But in all honesty if people are really going to be consistent with this one there are a LOT of people in the Bible with J names.
For example, Jonah, Job, Jude, Jeremiah, Jezebel, and a lot more see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_names_starting_with_J
Neither Saturday nor Sunday!
"The real Sabbath was always calculated by the full or new moon,"
Something the Jews are obviously not aware of and they have been meticulously keeping the sabbath for centuries / millenia.
"The full new moon was the first day of each month ..."
This is also a new invention. It certainly wasn't the case in Jesus' time. Jesus died at the time of the passover sacrifice.
"The Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which typically falls in March or April of the Gregorian calendar. Passover is a spring festival, so the 15th day of Nisan typically
begins on the night of a full moon after the northern vernal equinox. However, due to intercalary months or leap months falling after the vernal equinox, Passover sometimes starts on the
second full moon after vernal equinox, as in 2016."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover#Date_and_duration
"One interpretation of the Gospel of John is that Jesus, as the Passover lamb, was crucified at roughly the same time as the Passover lambs were being slain in the temple, on the afternoon of Nisan 14"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter#Theological_significance
At about 14/15 Nisan when Jesus died there should have been a full moon. At the 14th or 15th day of the Biblical Lunar month. This means that it is impossible for the full moon to be the first day
of the Biblical Lunar month.
Important Websites for the Gospel Truth
http://christianitybeliefs.org/the-falling-away/the-creation-of-the-religion-of-christianity/
The title
The Creation Of The Religion Of Christianity
is a bit misleading.
This page appears to be talking about the rise of the church of the middle ages. To label this as the creation of the religion of Christianity is very misleading.
However opening a link they have to "The Sabbath Was Changed To SUNday" shows they are supporting the lunar sabbath creation calendar theory:
"But what they fail to understand is that Constantine did not change it from Saturday to Sunday, as the Jews and Christians did not observe it on Saturday.
What he did was forbid Jews and the Early Church from following the luni-solar calendar, which resets the calendar each month based on the 29 1/2 day lunar cycle, which caused the day that
the Sabbath was observed on to change every month."
http://christianitybeliefs.org/the-falling-away/the-sabbath-was-changed-to-sunday/
This cannot be supported in history. The lunar sabbath / creation calendar is a new invention and did not exist in Constantine's day.
http://www.thecreatorscalendar.com/
This is one of the sites supportive of the Lunar Sabbath and Creation Calendar theories. Some of our earlier queries looked at this and some other views these groups support.
Breaking news??
The Lunar Sabbath theory can be traced to 1998!!
[Jonathan David] Brown published the book Keeping Yahweh's Appointments in 1998, which explained the practice of counting the Sabbath from the New Moon day rather than using the modern seven-day
week. The Lunar Sabbath movement has grown among the Messianic Judaism, Armstrong/Worldwide Church of God, Seventh-day Adventists and Christian Identity movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_David_Brown#Lunar_sabbath
This page deserves a good read--especially the part about Brown's Federal prison time:
"In 1992, Brown was sentenced to a 27-month federal prison term and fined $10,000 for accessory after the fact to a conspiracy to violate civil rights ...
The court established that Brown helped Damion Patton, described by Nashville police as a juvenile "skinhead", hide from authorities and disguise his car after Patton and Leonard William Armstrong,
the Grand Dragon of the Tennessee White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, carried out a pre-dawn drive-by shooting of a Jewish synagogue in Nashville, Tennessee on June 10, 1990.
The court case revealed that in the evening of June 9, 1990, Brown attended a meeting of white supremacists known for their hatred of Jewish people. Patton and Armstrong were there as well. At
1:00 a.m. on June 10, Patton drove past the West End Synagogue in Nashville and Armstrong fired several shots through its windows with a TEC-9 assault pistol, injuring none as the building was
unoccupied. ...
In September 1991, the FBI arrested Patton who plead guilty to his part in the synagogue shooting. ...
Brown refers to his incarceration as his "Federal Sabbatical"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_David_Brown#Federal_prison
There is some debate about this theory being traced to the early 1800s. But nevertheless, this is where the current version of the Lunar Sabbath theory can be traced to!
A Heresy?
When heresy is used today with reference to Christianity, it denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy_in_Christianity
For a church that has as a fundamental belief:
Sabbath —the Sabbath should be observed on the seventh day of the week, specifically, from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.
the only conclusion that could be drawn is that the Lunar Sabbath theory is a Heresy.
But the "lunar sabbath" adherents want people to believe the outlandish: a radical, sweeping
shift in time keeping method, uniformly affecting the entire Jewish world, was accomplished
(by some unknown power) without a single protest. Israel went from marking "sabbaths" by
reference to moon phases to a "perpetual seven" calendar unattested by creation. Not a
complaint was recorded. Or, all dissenters were silenced forever... that is, until now.
Quite the conspiracy! Some potential for a good movie I suppose (or perhaps an animated
"Looney Tune"), but that's about it.
The Looney Tune of a "Sabbath" Moon
Vanhoff_Rob_Looney-Lunar-Sabbath.pdf
https://www.torahresource.com/
References
Bible texts from:
New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1989 unless otherwise referenced.
1. The year 2013 was a bumper year for the Jewish calendar with half of the Jewish new moon days actually falling on the same day as the
astronomical new moon and a couple actually fell BEFORE the astronomical new moon dates!
2. "Does the earth rotate around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?"
OK this title is just badly worded. Really very badly worded. And it is taken straight from the document obtained from the creation calendar site it was found on.
The Earth rotates about its axis. So to say it rotates around the Sun is just plain awful english. Similarly for the Sun revolving.
Yes the Sun also revolves slowly about its own axis. So to say the Sun revolves around the Earth again is also just plain awful english as is maybe this sentence too!
Most Christians keep Sunday as one day in seven in recognition of the weekly cycle of worship set up at the creation of this world. After completing His act of creating this world, the Lord rested on the seventh day and sanctified it and made it holy. As stated previously, in recognition of this fact, most Christians worship on Sunday, following a weekly cycle of seven days. But there is some debate whether Sunday, the first day of the week, is really the correct day for Christians to worship on. See the related study:
New moon to new moon, sabbath to sabbath, just periods?
Does the New Moon worship day start at the conjunction?
Will the New Moon worship days fall on a seventh-day in the new earth?
The Lunar Sabbath theory
Does the earth rotate around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?
Suspending the Earth between two balls
Axial Tilt of Earth and Seasons
The Lunar Synodic Month
Should Christians keep or observe the feasts of the Old Testament?
The Lunar Sabbath—a fruit salad collection of stuff
E-mail: chodesh [at] duck.com
Last revised: 31 Oct 2021.
Construction: 9 Mar 2013.
Page design/construction 2013.