I have been working on a study about the Set Apart times of YHWH - most know them as His Feast Days. In the course of this study, Exodus 12 keeps popping up in my brain. It is when Yahweh tells Moses this is the beginning of the year for you, the first month. Then in Exodus 19 we note His month begins with the new moon... Now, I trust Elohim to know what He's talking about and it is very evident that His calendar is not the one we've been using all these years.
If we believe YHWH indicates each month begins with the New Moon then we need to come out of the ever popular Gregorian Calendar system. This won't be easy but as as we move along His Path of Righteousness, we exhibit another sign of becoming Set Apart because He is Set Apart.
I've avoided the topic of calendars and time keeping even though I have been aware of the discrepancies and changes made. Andrew Gabriel Roth has a book that goes deep into Yah's method of time keeping titled Wheel of Stars which left me feeling even more confused, but I continue to refer to his wealth of information hoping to gain understanding. Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on.
Here's some basic info on the history of calendars, none of which follow Yah's description:
The Egyptian calendar year comprised of 12
months, and each month had exactly 30 days. The months were further
divided into three weeks, with each week lasting 10 days. The Babylonian calendar was made up of 12 lunar months, and each month
would begin when a new crescent moon appeared. The Greeks used a
calendar that was similar to the Babylonian calendar, but they also
had other calendars, such as the democratic state calendar with 10
arbitrary months and an agricultural calendar. The first Roman calendar
was created by Romulus, and it had 10 months in a year, with each month
lasting 30 or 31 days. The Romans had a number of calendars, and the
most notable one was the Julian calendar introduced in 45 BC by Julius Caesar. In the year 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that there should be a
change in the Julian calendar. Many European
countries did not adopt the Gregorian calendar when it was introduced,
mainly because of the Protestant Reformation that was taking place at
that time. Nevertheless, by the 20th century, the calendar became the standard calendar in Europe. Today, it is the most widely used calendar in the world.
What has really been on my mind is this:
YHWH says the month begins with the sighting of the new moon, yet we are using the Gregorian (modern day) calendar to tell us when the month begins. If you were to look on a calendar today, you would see one of the days marked as the "new moon". Scientists today regard the new moon as "conjunction", which is the moment the moon is in between the sun and the earth. In reality, conjunction is a dark moon, unseen. A day or two later the new moon crescent appears. If we use that 'conjunction' symbol as a starting point and add a day or two to actually see the new moon as the beginning of the month and then count off seven day (sunset to sunset) cycles, we discover that the weekly sabbath does not always fall on what we call Sat.day, the day of rest, or Sun.day for that matter.
We know that the lights in the expanse of the sky not only separated day from night but serve as signs for the set times - the days and the years - and when YHWH was finished with His Works He rested on the 7th day (and this is what He expects of us, to rest on each 7th day...) He counted 7 days from the beginning of Creation - what beginning do we count from?
Exodus 12 Yah tells Moshe that the month they are to be set free from Pharaoh is the first month of the year... and on the 15th day is when they were set free.
Exodus 16: the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sin on the 15th day of the 2nd month after they left Egypt (when did the new count of days begin?)
Now this is where I connect the moon with the month => Exodus 19: On the 3rd new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt... 19:16 On the 3rd day as morning dawned.
This reads, to me, a count of days from the new moon, the 3rd new moon since Yah told Moshe when the first month was. Three Moons = 3 months. (He says the third new moon and then counts the 3rd day from that new moon....) If I have this right then there are many of us keeping the sabbath on the wrong day. If we've got the beginning of the month wrong, then we have the sabbath day wrong.
This what YHWH said through Isaiah:
7:11 What need have I of all your sacrifices... I have no delight that you come to appear before Me - trample My courts no more. Bringing your offerings is futile, incense is offensive to Me. New moon and sabbath you proclaim solemnities and assemble with wickedness I cannot tolerate. Your new moons (months) and your fixed seasons (man's traditions and substitutes for Yah's moedim) fill Me with loathing - they have become a burden to Me, no longer a joy. When you lift up your hands in false praise and worship I will turn My Eyes away from you.
When we came to the part of His Path where we discovered our Hebrew Heritage and realized that Torah is for everyone - His Creation - we didn't stop there... we kept reading His Words, learning and obeying His Instructions, which is what keeps us moving along His Path as the Ruach haKodesh continues to reveal Truth. We gave up man's traditions and replaced them with Yah's intended times. Our Walk is a learning process. Even the twelve apostles went through a learning curve which resulted in them being made ready to receive the Spirit of Elohim.
YHWH will restore all things when His time comes. In the meantime let us not stagnate on a comfortable part of that path making the excuse that it's O.K. since "we are all on different parts of the path". We are called to be His Set Apart People. Come out of the world system now. There is only One Path that leads to His Kingdom.
Isaiah 66:23 And new moon after new moon, and sabbath after sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship Me.
In my research on this topic I have come across the following website. As always, I find others who have looked into these things long before I became aware of them! I agree with most of what this person has uncovered and helps express my own thoughts:
Here is a quote from Nehemiah's Wall referring to the naming of months:
Today, few people remember the biblical name of Yom Teruah and instead it is widely known as "Rosh Hashanah" which literally means “head of the year” and hence also “New Years”. The transformation of Yom Teruah (Day of Shouting) into Rosh Hashanah (New Years) is the result of pagan Babylonian influence upon the Jewish nation. The first stage in the transformation was the adoption of the Babylonian month names. In the Torah, the months are numbered as First Month, Second Month, Third Month, etc (Leviticus 23; Numbers 28). During their sojourn in Babylonia our ancestors began to use the pagan Babylonian month names, a fact readily admitted in the Talmud:
“The names of the months came up with them from Babylonia.” (Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1:2 56d)
The pagan nature of the Babylonian month names is epitomized by the fourth month known as Tammuz. In the Babylonian religion, Tammuz was the god of grain whose annual death and resurrection brought fertility to the world. In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet described a journey to Jerusalem in which he saw the Jewish women sitting in the Temple “weeping over Tammuz” (Ezekiel 8:14). The reason they were weeping over Tammuz is that, according to Babylonian mythology, Tammuz had been slain but had not yet been resurrected. In ancient Babylonia, the time for weeping over Tammuz was the early summer, when the rains cease throughout the Middle East and green vegetation is burnt by the unrelenting sun. To this day the Fourth Month in the rabbinical calendar is known as the month of Tammuz and it is still a time for weeping and mourning.
Some of the Babylonian month names found their way into the later books of the Tanakh, but they always appear alongside the Torah month names. For example, Esther 3:7 says:
This verse starts off by giving the Torah name for the month (“First Month”) and then translates this month into its pagan equivalent (“which is the month of Nissan”). By the time of Esther, all the Jews lived within the boundaries of the Persian Empire and the Persians had adopted the Babylonian calendar for the civil administration of their realm. At first, the Jews used these Babylonian month names alongside the Torah month names, but over time the Torah month names fell into disuse.
As the Jewish People became more comfortable with the Babylonian month names, they became more susceptible to other Babylonian influences. This is similar to the way that American Jews observe Hanukkah as a Jewish version of Christmas. This influence began with the seemingly harmless custom of giving gifts on Hanukkah. Until the Jews arrived in America this custom was unknown and it is still a rarity in Israel where Hanukkah does not need to compete with Christmas for the hearts and minds of the Jewish youth. Once Hanukkah took on this relatively trivial aspect of Christmas, it became ripe for more significant influences. Today, many American Jews have established the custom of setting up a “Hanukkah bush” as a Jewish alternative to the Christmas tree. These Jews did not want to adopt Christmas outright so they “Judaized” the Christmas tree and incorporated into Hanukkah. This example shows how easy it is to be influenced by the practices of a foreign religion, especially when there is some similarity to begin with. The fact that Hanukkah often falls out around the same time as Christmas made it natural for American Jews to incorporate elements of Christmas into their observance of Hanukkah.
The ancient Rabbis were influenced by the pagan Babylonian religion. Although many Jews returned to Judea when the Exile officially ended in 516 BC, the forebears of the Rabbis remained behind in Babylonia where rabbinical Judaism gradually took shape. Many of the earliest known Rabbis such as Hillel I were born and educated in Babylonia. Indeed, Babylonia remained the heartland of Rabbinical Judaism until the 11th Century CE. The Babylonian Talmud abounds with the influences of Babylonian paganism. Indeed, pagan deities even appear in the Talmud recycled as "Jewish" angels and demons. (End Quote)
Even today's Gregorian Calendar uses names of pagan gods to denote the months of the year. In Scripture YHWH doesn't even want to hear these names come out of our mouths. Satan is pretty subtle.
