The Lunar Sabbath
By Bill Weather - Main Page - prophecybase
A proof from scripture of how today's 7 day weekly cycle was not how the sabbath was kept in the days of Jesus is how the feast days in Leviticus 23 were kept in relation to the sabbath. Everyone agrees that the feast days are measured off of the new moon, not a fixed weekly cycle. That means the feast days can fall on any day of the week.
Now when you consider Exodus chapter 12 , the command to acquire a 1 year old lamb on the 10th of Abib and to prepare the Passover for the 14th of Abib, this all required labor in preparation and buying and selling, which is forbidden on Sabbaths. But here is the trouble. Very often, in fact, it would be every two to four years, the 10th of Abib for buying a lamb or the 14th of Abib Passover preparation day, would supposedly, fall on the fixed weekly Sabbath, which forbids such labor, preparation, buying and selling. Never in the history of ancient Israel into the days of Jesus and even Josephus, was there ever a conflict like this reported or a provision in the law made to work around this conflict. Not even in the vast detail of the Talmud. This alone proves the sabbaths were not kept on a weekly 7 day cycle, but were kept by the new moon, which never conflicted with any of the feast day requirements of the law. If you disagree then you are saying God is confused and has given a conflicting law that has problems, with a command to labor that falls on a weekly sabbath?
To understand the next scriptural proof, you must understand the three classification of days in scripture that make up a month. There were #1 the new moon days, #2 work days, #3 sabbaths.
The new moon days were in a classification all their own, not counted as a sabbath or work day. Now when you consider the battle of Jericho, how God commanded the Israelites to march around Jericho for 7 days, this would violate the sabbath if on today's 7 day fixed weekly cycle. God never commanded Israel to go to battle on the sabbath. To do so he would be asking Israel to break the law he gave them.
The book of Jasher, mentioned in Joshua 10:13 & 2 Samuel 1:18, tell us how they did not violate the sabbath in the 7 days around Jericho...
And it was in the second month, on the first day of the month, that YHWH said to Joshua, Rise up, behold I have given Jericho into thy hand with all the people thereof; and all your fighting men shall go round the city, once each day, thus shall ye do for six days. And on the seventh day they went round the city seven times, and the priests blew upon trumpets. Book of Jasher 88:14, 17
The first day of the moon/month was always the “new moon day”, not counted in a weekly 7 day cycle. This proves that Israel kept sabbaths by the new moon, otherwise, they would have broken the law to march 7 days around Jericho because one of those days would have been the sabbath, if on a fixed 7 day cycle.
The lunar calendar’s 1st day is the new moon day and sometimes, there are 2 new moon days to start the month/moon. Then from there, you count 7 days to the sabbath, so in every moon/month, the sabbath fell on the 8th, the 15th, the 22nd and the 29th day of the moon. Since the feast day sabbaths always fall on the 15th or the 22nd, there is and never was a conflict.
In Allegorical Interpretation, 1 IV (8), it says… “Again, the periodical changes of the moon, takes place according to the number seven, that star having the greatest sympathy with the things on earth. And the changes which the moon works in the air, it perfects chiefly in accordance with its own configurations on each seventh day.
Notice Philo tells of the moon being in a perfect configuration every 7th day. He’s is speaking of the shape of the moon every 7th day. The 1st sabbath of the month is a half moon on the 8th, the full moon at the 15th, half moon at the 22nd, then nearly or invisible moon on the 29th.
Philo continues…
The Decalogue XXX (159), “But to the seventh day of the week he has assigned the greatest festivals, those of the longest duration, at the periods of the equinox both vernal and autumnal in each year; appointing two festivals for these two epochs, each lasting seven days; the one which takes place in the spring being for the perfection of what is being sown, and the one which falls in autumn being a feast of thanksgiving for the bringing home of all the fruits which the trees have produced”
Notice Philo is telling how God set the feast days on the 7th day of the week, which was on the weekly sabbaths, showing the weekly sabbaths were lunar counted, not 7 day cycle counted. Scripture assigned the 15th of the moon as a sabbath on the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of tabernacles. They land on the weekly sabbath and this is why they called such sabbaths “high day” sabbaths. They were a feast day sabbath on top of the weekly sabbath.
This needs no interpretation. Philo clearly calls the end of the 2nd week a full moon, which is the 15th of every month/moon. Is there not a sabbath at the end of the 2nd week? Who’s week? The pagan seven day calendar of today, which didn't even exist in the days of Jesus, or from the new moon calendar in scripture?
12 Encyclopedia Lunar Sabbath Quotes
QUOTE #1
“The New Moon is still, and the Sabbath originally was, dependent upon the lunar cycle.” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 410. No quote can be clearer than this.
QUOTE #2
“… each lunar month was divided into four parts, corresponding to the four phases of the moon. The first week of each month began with the new moon, so that, as the lunar month was one or two days more than four periods of seven days, these additional days were not reckoned at all.” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 10, p. 482. Article "Week."
QUOTE #3
“The Sabbath depending, in Israel’s nomadic period, upon the observation of the phases of the moon, …could not, according to this view, be a fixed day.” www.jewishencyclopedia.com
QUOTE #4
“…the Hebrew Sabbathon … was celebrated at intervals of seven days, corresponding with changes in the moon’s phases...” Encyclopedia Biblica, 1899. p. 4180
QUOTE #5
“In the time of the earliest prophets, the New Moon stood in the same line with another lunar observance, the Sabbath. Ezekiel, who curiously enough frequently dates his prophecies on the New Moon … describes the gate of the inner court of the (new) temple looking eastward as kept shut for the six working days, but opened on the Sabbath and the New Moon.” Scribner's Dictionary of the Bible (1898 edit.), p. 521
QUOTE #6
“The Hebrew month is a lunar month and the quarter of this period—one phase of the moon—appears to have determined the week of seven days.” Encyclopedia Biblica, p. 4780.
QUOTE #7
“…The [early] Hebrews employed lunar seven-day weeks…which ended with special observances on the seventh day but none the less were tied to the moon’s course.” Hutton Webster, in his book, Rest Days, page 254.
QUOTE #8
In the article Shawui Calendar: Ancient Shawui Observance, we find confirmation of a radical change in YHWH’s calendar. “The [lunar]...calendar was used by all the original disciples of Yeshua... This original Nazarene lunar-solar calendar was supplanted by a Roman ‘planetary week’ and calendar in 135 C.E. -- when the ‘Bishops of the Circumcision’ (i.e. legitimate Nazarene successors to Yeshua) were displaced from Jerusalem. This began a three hundred year controversy concerning the true calendar and correct Sabbath.”
QUOTE #9
“This intimate connection between the week and the month was soon dissolved. It is certain that the week soon followed a development of its own, and it became the custom -- without paying any regard to the days of the month (i.e. the lunar month) -- ...so that the New Moon no longer coincided with the first day [of the month ].” Encyclopedia Biblica, (1899 edit.), p. 5290.
QUOTE #10
“… the custom of celebrating the Sabbath every 7th day, irrespective of the relationship of the day to the moon’s phases, led to a complete separation from the ancient view of the Sabbath...” Encyclopedia Biblica, (1899 edit.), p. 4179.
QUOTE #11
“The calendar was originally fixed by observation, and ultimately by calculation. Up to the fall of the Temple (A.D. 70), witnesses who saw the new moon came forward and were strictly examined and if their evidence was accepted the month was fixed by the priests. Eventually the authority passed to the Sanhedrin and ultimately to the Patriarchate. … Gradually observation gave place to calculation. The right to determine the calendar was reserved to the Patriarchate; the Jews of Mesopotamia [Babylonian Jews] tried in vain to establish their own calendar but the prerogative of Palestine was zealously defended. So long as Palestine remained a religious centre, it was naturally to the homeland that the Diaspora looked for its calendar. Uniformity was essential, for if different parts had celebrated feasts on different days confusion would have ensued. It was not until the 4th century A.D. that Babylon fixed the calendar…” Encyclopedia Britannica: Vol. 4, article “Calendar”.
QUOTE #12
“These imported [from Babylon] superstitions eventually led Jewish rabbis to call Saturn Shabbti, ‘the star of the Sabbath,’ [and]...it was not until the first century of our era, when the planetary week had become an established institution, that the Jewish Sabbath seems always to have corresponded to Saturn’s Day [Satyrday].” Hutton Webster in his book, Rest Days, p. 244.
I made this blog to prove the letter of the law Sabbath keepers have been wrong all their lives by keeping the wrong day as sabbath, while they accuse Christians of keeping Sunday as the sabbath in their hypocrisy. Most churches today do not teach to keep a Sunday Sabbath. They merely gather on Sundays because its been handed down to them to do so. Christian circles today do not emphasize the law, but emphasize something greater than the law, the words of Jesus who said he would fulfill the law. He is coming to fulfill the sabbath at his millennial reign, which is the true 7th day sabbath, from the 6000th year to the 7000th year, for a day is as a 1000 years. Six days given to man, the 7th will be blessed and that Sabbath is his millennial reign, not a mere day of the week. What does a mere day of the week called sabbath change anyway? We still have the restlessness of war and labor. until the true Sabbath comes.
See 6000thyear.com for more on when that is.
Seventh Day Adventists and other Saturday sabbath keeping groups continue to think the sabbath is a binding new covenant contract, all the while their groups have no miracle healings, and gifts of the spirit at work among them even close to the amount of non sabbath keeping Christian groups have it, but do not preach the sabbath and the old testament law. God is backing up the simple gospel of faith and repentance more than any of those sabbath keeping groups by mountains. See messiahbalm.com for the absolute truth on that.
Spirit of the law people, you need to repent and stop thinking so highly of your false doctrines. You’ve become modern day Pharisees and are adding to the gospel, requiring gentiles to keep a covenant that God made with Israel, not gentiles. What did Peter say to the gentile jailer? Did he tell him to keep the law, obey the sabbath? No, he said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, knowing that when one truly believes, they’re very thoughts are convicted and brought into alignment with God’s over time. This is the work of the Holy Spirit of righteousness within. The law can never do that and never did do that for the ancient Pharisees. You’re left to dead works of religion. This is why God is not backing your groups with signs and wonders that you claim are demonic. Continue to blaspheme. See where that gets you and your converts that you encompass sea and land to find one, and when you do, he becomes like the letter of the law you preach and not like Jesus within by the Spirit working within. Your outward observances can never transform the heart like he can.
In Christ, Weather.
P.S. I love keeping Passover and the feast days. We could learn a lot from them as well as prophecy tied to them, but I cannot find a group who would keep them in the spirit of grace and not by letter of the law. The feasts are the “feasts of the Lord” and they have prophetic significance. I’m of the mind that if as the church we are going to keep special holy days, might as well keep the scriptural ones instead of the pagan ones. Why pagan? Yet, there is no justification found in keeping feast days. I just find myself attracted to them because they have great biblical meaning and the pagan ones are of corrupt origin and I care not to celebrate such vanity. I don’t find them to be of any value other than a vain tradition. None the less, Romans 14 says one man esteems one day more than another. I just can never again see Xmas, the ancient B day of the sun god in the same light again. I leave it at that, till Jesus comes and re-sets up the lunar calendar again, as Isayah 66:23 says. Until then God bless the Holy Spirit’s work in all those who K.I.S.S.
In Christ, Weather, 6000thyear.com
