Calendar

By: Josh and Marly King

Lam 2: 4 He has bent His bow like an enemy. He has set His right hand like an adversary. And He slays all who delighted the eye. In the tent of the daughter of Tsiyon, He has poured out His wrath like fire.
5 יהוה has been like an enemy. He has swallowed up Yisra’ĕl, He has swallowed up all her palaces, He has destroyed her strongholds. And He increases mourning and lamentation In the daughter of Yehuḏah.
6 He has demolished His booth like a garden, He has destroyed His place of meeting. יהוה has made the appointed times1 and Sabbaths To be forgotten in Tsiyon, And despises sovereign and priest In His raging displeasure.
7 יהוה has cast off His altar, He has rejected His set-apart place, He has delivered the walls of her palaces Into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the House of יהוה As on the day of an appointed time.

Who decided when the Sabbath would be? How do we know what day of the week the seventh day falls? These are two questions that have been plaguing me of late. In the last few months we have met and become friends with some folks that have really opened our eyes to the inconsistencies of our “Messianic” life and these are two questions that we had never considered before. We, like sheep, just took the word of our previous teachers that the Sabbath (when we were Mormon) was on Sunday, and when we became Messianic that the Sabbath was on Saturday.

You see for centuries now we have all been following a calendar that has set days of the week. Some months have 31 days and there is even a month that has 28 days! But what does our calendar have to do with Elohims’ time reckoning? Nothing that’s what! The current calendar we are all forced to use is a made up system that has nothing to do with times and seasons, nothing to do with Elohims Feasts and Festivals, and God forbid you get stuck on a desert island with that being your only way of keeping time.
Gen 1: 14 And Elohim said, “Let lights come to be in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and appointed times, and for days and years, Ps 136:7; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.” And it came to be so.

Where in the Bible does Elohim tell us that our days of the week are set? I have yet to find it, and trust me I‘ve looked, so once again the original two questions come into play. If יהוה has made the appointed times1 and Sabbaths To be forgotten in Tsiyon (Lam 2: 6) How would we ever find our way back? How could we possibly think we are on the right track now? I don’t think we are I think we are in the middle of the forgotten times. If we weren’t, I think that we all would be on the same page as far as the calendar goes. In my little area of Idaho we have people celebrating Yah’s Feasts (which is awesome) the only problem is that they are all celebrating them on different days from one another. In the same town people can’t even get the appointed times straight.

Here’s another question, in Biblical days how did the farmers and sheep herders know when to go into Jerusalem for Feasts and Festivals? There were no postal services and no e mail to spread the word… They knew by watching the lunar cycle. So let’s talk for a minute about ‘sighting’ the new moon. Where in the Torah does it tell us to start a month at the “sighting” of the new moon? It doesn’t! From what I understand a moon is considered ’new’ when it is dark, at the conjunction (when earth, moon &sun are aligned), not when you see the first sliver. So starting your month at the sighting does not seem to be the way to go, considering that we see it at different days all over the world due to weather.

Back to the farmer, he lives on the outskirts of Israel, and has cloud cover in his area and spots the sliver of the new moon on let’s say Wednesday. Well the new moon was spotted in Jerusalem on Tuesday (no cloud cover), but Farmer has no way of knowing that, since he has no internet and didn’t get the e-mail letting him know that 10 people from around Israel spotted it Tuesday. So he gets ready to leave for Jerusalem for the Feast, and since he spotted the moon on a Wednesday he leaves according to that, well he left a day late considering that the moon was sighted in Jerusalem on Tuesday so farmer shows up to the feast the afternoon of the actual feast and has been traveling all day and misses everything! Um yeah that doesn’t make much sense to me, how about you?

Exo 12:2 “This month is the beginning of months for you, it is the first month of the year for you. Keep in mind that in Hebrew it actually says “This New Moon is the beginning of New Moons for you,” Do a study for yourself on the New Moon and Shabbat. What you will find is what I found, that the New Moon and the Shabbat are not ever the same day, in fact the New Moon is a set apart day not one of the six working day’s or the Shabbat.

2 Kings 4:23 And he said, “Why are you going to him today? It is neither the New Moon nor the Sabbath.” And she said, “It is well!”

2Chr 2:4 see, I am building a House for the Name of יהוה my Elohim, to set it apart to Him, to burn before Him sweet incense, and for the continual showbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, and on the New Moons, and on the appointed times of יהוה our Elohim. This is for Yisra’ĕl forever.

The New Moon has its own offerings….

2Chr 8:13 even as the duty of every day required, offering according to the command of Mosheh, for the Sabbaths, and for the New Moons, and for the appointed times three times a year: the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths.

Neh 10:33 for the showbread, and for the continual grain offering, and for the continual burnt offering of the Sabbaths, of the New Moons, for the appointed times, and for the set-apart offerings, and for the sin offerings to make atonement for Yisra’ĕl, and all the work of the House of our Elohim.

2Chr 31:3 And the sovereign appointed a portion of his possessions for the burnt offerings, for the morning and evening burnt offerings, and the burnt offerings for the Sabbaths and for the New Moons and for the appointed times, as it is written in the Torah of יהוה.

We are starting to see a pattern here, and that pattern is that the New Moon is a set apart day, and by set apart I mean set apart from all other days, from Sabbaths and the six working days, not set apart as a Sabbath itself. There are eight or nine other scriptures which back up that train of thought look them up.

So, Yahowah tells us that we are to use the ‘lights’ in the sky for signs, appointed times, days and years, why aren’t we doing that now?

How complicated do you really believe that Yah wanted to make keeping time? I doubt He wanted the body of believers splintered this way, having to rely on some man or some organization to let people know when they are supposed to observe a Sabbath or a Feast. How did Noah keep track of time on the ark? And how do you reconcile Lam 2:6 יהוה has made the appointed times1 and Sabbaths To be forgotten in Tsiyon, with our current state of believers being on 2 or more calendar systems. It tells me that we are not following His time, that we have in fact forgotten His appointed times and Sabbaths, and until we all get on the same ‘calendar’ we are going to be stuck, and WAY outside of His will and instruction.

Let’s talk for a moment about the moon, we all know that Yahowah said we were to use it as a way to keep track of times and seasons days and weeks, did you know that there is a natural 29 or 30 day cycle that takes place as the moon renews its self monthly? Not 28 or 31. We only have a 30 day lunar month when the conjunction happens after sundown, which is not often. The natural cycle can easily be recognized by just looking up and observing at the moon the way our biblical brothers did nightly, and within a couple of months you will see the pattern:

So, if the lunar cycle is the same every month (new moon) no matter what, wouldn’t it then make sense that our months that we observe should be the same, no matter what? I think so. Yah tells us to use the Moon as a guide to keep time, and the lunar cycle is the same every month, He also tells us to guard the New Moon and we see in scripture that it is set apart from the Sabbaths and the six working days.

So as we follow the lunar cycle we see that first we have a New Moon (conjunction) it is a set apart day, not a Sabbath or one of the 6 working days… then we count 6 days and on the 7th we have the First Quarter…. Count 6 days then we have the Full Moon…. Count 6 days then we have the Last quarter….count 6 days then we have the last visible sliver… the very next night is the conjunction again where the whole process starts anew.

It’s all very simple really and as far as I can tell the correct way to keep time is a combination of the 2 most popular calendar systems of our time used by believers and Jews. The Hillel II calendar and the ‘Biblical’ calendar used by Michael Rood. Both have accurate information, the Hillel calendar starts the month at the Conjunction, only it does not set the New Moon apart from the other days. And the ‘Biblical’ calendar starts from the sighting of the sliver which in most cases would be correct (if visibility permits) which would put the count right as long as they observed the New Moon which at this time they do not. Where both are stuck in my opinion is having set days of the week, which isn’t biblical and we have no proof that time was ever kept this way before the Julian calendar which is the calendar in use before the Gregorian calendar we are all using today. When you have a calendar with set days of the week whether you use the pagan names of Monday-Sunday or 1st day–Shabbat, something very important gets lost, the New Moon. And aren’t we commanded to observe it and set it apart? Wouldn’t it make more sense that as the Moon renews itself that the calendar should also renew itself?

Take some time and pray about this, do an intensive study on the subject, make sure you aren’t holding fast to something that you were taught or told by someone else, which is the knee jerk thing to do when something challenges a ‘fact’ you have always known. It’s a hard thing to do when it comes to breaking away from the social routines in which our culture has us firmly planted. We live in a society where ‘Monday’ through ‘Friday’ are the work days and our ‘weekend’ is ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday’. Whether you are Jewish or Christian isn’t it convenient that the set apart days for worshiping our Elohim fall on this ‘weekend’.

We are supposed to be in this world not of it and just because the pagans around us are following a schedule and calendar of their own making does not mean we have to! I have one basic understanding of our Elohim, simplicity, when it comes to His commandments he makes it simple for us, we are so far removed from the time when Torah was given that we have a hard time letting go of our indoctrination and realizing that the most simple answer to any question tends to be the correct one.

How could anyone believe in evolution?

I am completely in awe with people who believe in evolution. I have never been able to understand how anyone can look around this planet and not see creation. How can you look at the trees and the oceans and the animals and not see that there was a creator involved? The fact that we as humans breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide, and that plants and trees breath in that carbon dioxide and in turn breath out oxygen, should be enough to convince you that there is no way that that symbiotic relationship just happened one day! The fact that if even one thing was out of place, one little molecule that basically the whole planet could not exist, does that not make evolutionists stop and think for a moment?

I would like to take a minute and talk about my baby, Sophie. Isn’t it amazing that there are two sexes of humans, that my husband and I came together and that we exchanged parts of ourselves, his part being nothing like mine, and that those two parts came together and made a baby, she isn’t a carbon copy of either of us, but has parts of both of us. Isn’t it amazing that my body knew just how to carry her and nurture her, and that I gave her nutrients through her placenta and umbilical cord, and in turn my body took care of her waist through the same system. Then when she was good and cooked my body knew just how to get her out, parts of me worked and stretched to accommodate her and give her safe passage into this world. But that was all by happenstance huh, there was no design involved, just chance right?

Now that she is here, I am still giving her nutrients, only now it is through a different part of my body, my breasts. Isn’t it funny how my body makes the perfect food for her and that she needs nothing but that food for well over the first year of her life. How interesting is it that my body knows how to convert my food and fat into this perfect food for her, but that is all coincidence right, there is no way that there is some Higher Power at work here, right?

The cold hard truth of the matter is that people who believe in evolution are in a cult religion! Sounds’ funny considering that is what they are always saying about people who believe in God, and believe that He created this world and all that is in it. They will never admit it, but the truth is a cold reality, how can it not be called a religion when they believe in something that cannot be proven, they are in a faith based relationship with something that has no basis in truth. Is that not the very same definition they themselves give to those who believe in God? Carbon dating is a hoax, and circular logic, and basing your belief system on something that it’s self is a flaw is somewhat silly I say.

The fact that there is a book with eyewitness account of history, the fact that almost every primitive people tell the same account with their different forms of communication tells me that there has to be some truth and reality in those accounts. Did you know that there is archeological proof of the stories in the Bible? Well there is. The day that I saw Pharaoh's corral incrusted chariots laying on the land bridge where God parted the Red Sea with my own eyes, was the day that I stopped questioning the Bible and its accounts. Because to use the very same circular logic that evolutionist use, if most of the accounts of the Bible can be corroborated, which they have, than I myself choose to believe the whole of the Bible. And until I see the half dog half frog, or the actual middle man ape, then I choose to believe what I can see touch taste and smell, that is Torah and Yahuwha (God) He has yet to let me down, and I know that he never will.

A few more question’s for evolutionists, what if you’re wrong? What if there is a God and he did create everything you see around you, what do you think is going to happen when you come face to face with Him on judgment day, what do you think He is going to say? What will you have to say for yourself?

Mama's favorite Iced Sweet Tea!!!!

If you have a large family like I do than you need to make large batches of stuff at once just to keep them all happy. This is my recipe for the perfect Iced Sweet Tea...

What you will need is a 1 gallon glass container, Lipton Green Tea, Luzianne Black Tea, white Stevia powder, and lemons.....

Boil up a quart of water
Pour boiling water into your glass jar (make sure the jar is not cold or it will crack)

Add:
1 (family sized) or 2 (regular sized) Luzianne tea bags
5 regular Lipton Green Tea bags (I like to use 1 mixed berry green tea in place of 1 of the green tea bags, I like my tea a bit fruity)

I usually tie all the bags together, be sure to remove the paper at the ends.

Put the lid on your jar and let it sit on the counter for a few hours.

Remove bags and ring them out into the jar (then put the bags into your composter)

Add:
2 teaspoons of white Stevia Powder
3 lemons juiced

Then fill the jar all the way up to the top, and enjoy!!

You can forgo the boil step and just add the tea bags to your jar full of water and put the jar into the sun, leave all day and then add the Stevia and Lemon. Yum!!!

IS COOKING BREAKING THE SHABBAT

This is one of those topics that has caused a lot of arguments in the Messianic Movement.  As believers we are so zealous for Torah (the first five books in the Bible, God’s Instruction for us on how to live our lives to please Him) that we want to do everything in our power to make YHVH (God) happy and to follow all of His commands to us to the best of our ability.  But is cooking on the Sabbath one of those no no’s, are we to be cut off from Israel if we reheat food or even toast a bagel on the Sabbath?  My husband and I were tired of the argument so we did an in depth study with a really good friend on the subject and this is what we came to for our family on this subject.

The first thing that is so important to have when embarking on any serious study of the Bible is a program that you can search the Bible with, something that can get every single verse about one topic or the other.  Some like to use a Strong’s Concordance, which is awesome by the way, only what do you do when looking for verses that have more than one word you need to find.  Just using Strong’s can be extremely time consuming and difficult, so I prefer to use my computer.  If you do not have an electronic program like this already I have a suggestion, e-sword.  It’s free as are most of the versions of the Bible that you can download including the Hebrew Old Testament, which is really great when you are questioning a word and would like to see the other choices the translators had while translating from the Hebrew to whatever language you are reading in.  http://www.e-sword.net/ 

The next step we went through was deciding whether there are any differences in the Sabbath’s.  Is there a difference between the weekly Shabbat, and say the Sabbaths that we are given for the feasts and festivals?  Since we began our walk with Yah over five years ago we have always heard people refer to the Shabbat, and then the ‘High Holy Days’.  What are the High Holy Days?  Funny question, because the Torah doesn’t refer to any Shabbat or feast of festival as a ‘High Holy Day’!!!  What?  Do the search for yourself, we were surprised as well, since we had been referring to them as High Holy Days to our children and our families for years now, and making a bigger deal out of them than maybe we should have.  In fact there is only one scripture in the whole of the Bible that refers to any Sabbath as a ‘High Day’:

 

John 19:31  The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

So in all of the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings and the New Testament we only see one reference to any Sabbath being a “High Day”, and let’s look at that for a moment, why did Yahshua (Jesus) come to the earth in the first place?  I believe it was to bring His people Israel back to the Torah, like any good prophet he says, ‘Hey people, Torah’s back there!’  Jerking his thumb behind him the whole time, since we had been carried so far from Torah by our associations with the pagans around us and all the man made rules and laws created by perhaps well meaning Rabbi’s and such, who were trying to keep people in Torah with thousands of extra commands that weren’t even in the Torah to begin with.  Were we not warned about EXTRA?

Deu 4:1  Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.

Deu 4:2  Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Deu 4:3  Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from among you.

Deu 4:4  But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day.

Deu 4:5  Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.

Deu 4:6  Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

Deu 4:7  For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?

Deu 4:8  And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?

Deu 4:9  Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;

So we were warned my Moses not to add anything to Torah or take anything away, and he even gave us examples to warn us.  So it doesn’t make much sense to me why the Jews continued to add and take away from the Torah even though they continued to get dispersed and persecuted because of it, I supposes some lessons are hard learned.

Back to the topic at hand, so by the time Yahshua came to save us the Jews had already added TONS of extra to the Torah, including referring to the first day of Unleavened Bread as a “High Day” Which YHVH had never done in all the Torah or the Prophets.  So I conclude that we cannot go by that reference in John to make a blanket policy regarding feasts and festivals as being set higher or more special than the fifty-two other Sabbaths that Yah so graciously provided for our rest.

So if Yah did not separate the feasts and festivals as ‘different’ from the other Sabbaths, which we have clearly seen that He hasn’t, than what do we do about this scripture?  Where Yah is telling us what we can and cannot do on the Feast of Unleavened Bread’s Shabbats.

Exo 12:16  On the first and seventh days, you are to have an assembly set aside for God. On these days no work is to be done, except what each must do to prepare his food; you may do only that.

Hum,  so He tells us that we are allowed to prepare food on the first and the last days of Matzah, and He never once differentiated between weekly Sabbath’s and the other Sabbath’s.  So that leads me to conclude that we are allowed to prepare our food on the Sabbath, and that that is THE only work, if you will, that is allowed on the Sabbath.  Now let’s take a moment and talk about the nature of our God, He is very specific in all that He says and does.  He gives us detailed instructions on how to deal in our marriages, what to do when on your monthly period, how to cleanse yourself after touching a dead body; for crying out loud, He even walks us through what to do if you borrow an animal from your neighbor and it dies on your watch, what to do if is dies while it’s owner is with you, and the difference between what to do if it’s an accident or not.  Now, knowing this about Yah, how could you even for one minute think that He would leave something that would cause this much contention and strife up to us simpletons to figure out for ourselves?

There is one set of scripture that all who are against cooking on Shabbat go with, it is about gathering Manna on the Sabbath:

Exo 16:23  And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.

So, if you look only at that verse than you could conclude that we are to bake it all up on the 6^th day and eat leftovers as we know them today on Shabbat.  But if we take the whole command in context, which in these times people do not like to do, as it’s really hard to weave your manmade  doctrine from whole paragraphs, instead of numbered sound bites, than we start to see the original intent behind that verse:

Exo 16:19  And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning.

Exo 16:20  Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them.

Exo 16:21  And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.

Exo 16:22  And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.

Shows how hard it was for us to trust Him even when we have daily proof of His existence.  He told us to gather up what we needed for one day, and yet we still wanted to get more, to so it our way!

Exo 16:23  And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.

Exo 16:24  And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein.

Exo 16:25  And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a Sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field.

Exo 16:26  Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none.

Exo 16:27  And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

Exo 16:28  And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

Here again a prime example of our unwillingness to do His will, but what struck me is how He did not tell us we could not prepare it, or cook it on Sabbath, but that we were not allowed to GATHER it on the Sabbath.  Because let’s be honest stooping and gathering is work, not to mention that Yah Himself, takes a day of rest on the seventh day as well.  So He rests from creating the Manna, and we rest from collecting it.  But nowhere does he say that we are not allowed to prepare it, and if we were not allowed to prepare it on the weekly Sabbath, than why are we allowed to prepare and cook on the other Sabbaths?

Exo 16:29  See, for that the LORD hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

So we are told to gather our food on the 6^th day, and not to leave our place on the 7^th, so I personally choose not to go the Walmart on the seventh day, I am careful to gather my food and make sure that I have all that I need for the Shabbat, on the 6^th day. 

Exo 16:30  So the people rested on the seventh day.

So in conclusion, Yah commanded us not to gather food on the Sabbath, he gave us permission to cook and prepare on the Sabbath, when telling us how to deal with the extra Sabbath’s for feasts and festivals.  Important to note that He never made a differentiation between the weekly Sabbath and the other Sabbath’s, Yah is very precise and tells us what He loves and what He hates, and if we were not allowed to prepare food on the Sabbath I truly believe that He would have given us a direct command saying that, maybe something like this:  DO NOT PREPARE OR COOK YOUR FOOD ON THE SABBATH!

We try to get as much prepared on the 6^th day as we can, but we do not feel that we are breaking Torah in any way by toasting a bagel or reheating a casserole prepared the day before on the Sabbath.  We as believers need to be very careful not be false prophets and teachers, in regards to what we interpret Torah say, heed the words of Moses in Deuteronomy, and let us not forget what the Messiah Himself had to say on the subject: 

Mat 5:19  “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

I know that I do not want to be “least” in the kingdom, do you?

Let every man interpret Torah for himself, and let him deal with the consequences, unless you see a blatant disregard for the word, keep your opinions to yourself, I truly believe that you will fare better come judgment day, following those words of advice.