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From Eliyahu
It's very easy to keep track of the passing of months (Originally: "moonths") by the moon. Every moon cycle (moonth) is divided into four quarters of seven days each, with either one or two dark days at the end of the cycle before the next moon cycle begins. Usually the quarters are distinctively marked out in the appearance of the moon itself, so that, simply by looking at it, you can tell where you are in the month. This is how people, from farmers and illiterate laborers to priests and kings, tracked the passage of time for thousands of years. In fact, YHWH created the moon in the way He did to mark out the passage of time in the heavens, exactly as men used it from earliest times. This simple lunar time-keeping system for fixing days and months, based on observation of Yah's creation, is the time-keeping method given to Israel by YHWH, as found in the Torah.
YHWH likes that lunar system because it keeps people connected to His cycles in His Creation, constantly reminding them of Him as the Creator. The Sabbath is an intricate part of that system, marking out the seven day quarters of the month, bringing us into unity with His time-cycles, always pointing us back to our Creator: "for in six days YHWH made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore YHWH blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy." (Exodus 20:11)
At this point you may be thinking; "Wait a minute here! I don't have a clue what the moon is doing ...and why should I care? I have a calendar on my wall to tell me what day it is! All this ancient history about lunar time is vaguely interesting, but irrelevant to me."
What would you say if I told you that your calendar on your wall is part of a satanic plot to separate you from your Creator ..and that is why you should care?! The very fact that you don't know what the moon is doing, and that you are disconnected from Yah's way of marking out the passage of time, should tell you that something important has been robbed from you. I say that because, as you know, YHWH does not change. He is still operating according to the same time system He gave to Israel in the Torah. In fact, He has made specific appointments to meet with His people USING THAT LUNAR TIME-KEEPING SYSTEM.
Besides His appointments, all of the prophetic days in the time-prophecies of Scripture, including those that are to occur in these last days - all of them are set according to Yah's original lunar time-keeping system. Not a single date mentioned in all of Scripture is set according to the modern calendar, hanging on your wall! To be fully up to date with what Yah is doing according to His prophetic schedule of end days events YOU MUST BE ON HIS HOLY TIME, IN SYNC WITH HIM. Yet, satan has managed to virtually erase all memory of Holy Time - even from the minds of most believers.
This change came to us via the Romans via the fixed Julian Calendar with "refinements" later added by Pope Gregory in the calendar used globally today - the Gregorian Calendar. (Do you really think YHWH has abandoned His Holy Time in favor of the calendar of the Romans?)
I know what some of you may be thinking: We still have the Jewish calendar to mark out the days of the Bible. Wrong!
Through the entire Biblical period, including "New Testament" times, the Jewish nation did follow the Biblical system, setting their time-keeping by actual observation of the new moon each month. However, after Jerusalem with the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and the remaining Jews later rebelled against Rome again and then were barred from the area of what had been Jerusalem, and then were further dispersed - after all of that and more they finally gave in to Roman pressure to adopt a calendar that was in tune with the Roman system. Note this:
"It was not until after Christianity had become dominant in the Roman Empire, and the Christian rulers forbade the Jewish religious leadership to proclaim leap years or to communicate with the Jews outside of the empire, that it was determined to abandon the method of official proclamation of months and years and to fix the calendar in permanent form. The patriarch Hillel II, in 359(AD), decided to publish the rules for the calculation of the calendar, so that all Jews everywhere might be able to determine it for themselves and to observe the festivals on the same day." ["Calendar", The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, p.632]
Of course, this fixing of a calculated calendar was an abandonment of the Biblical system of moon observation fixing the start of the months, yielding a difference of up to thirty days or more per year from the Biblical system. Along with a fixed calendar, a fixed Sabbath was also required, to keep Jews everywhere celebrating everything on the same day. The new calculated calendar system fit neatly into the Roman system, and required a "Sabbath" that would likewise fit into the Roman seven day planetary-god week. Thus, Saturday (Saturn's day a/k/a satan's-day) became the "Sabbath" day, which still works very neatly with the Roman system today. Over hundreds of years further refinements were made to that Jewish calendar until it finally took on its present form. After many generations what was once a heretical innovation became regarded as the "sacred" Jewish calendar.
Bottom line: Even Jewish scholars know the Jewish calendar is not the same as the time-keeping of the Bible, so that this information is replete throughout their scholarly sources. This is not a problem for them, since they believe their leaders had the authority to adopt a new system. Therefore, they have readily admitted their calendar has changed, and that even their Sabbath has been changed from a lunar-based date to a continuous rotating cycle.
Strangely, this leaves Christian and Messianic Saturday Sabbatarians in a pickle; telling us that the Saturday "Sabbath" has been kept in an unbroken cycle going all the way back to Creation, while Jewish scholars themselves admit that they have changed the Sabbath from its lunar-based origin - meaning it doesn't go all the way back to Creation! Of course, many Saturday Sabbatarians don't even know about this history, and if they did they would investigate the facts. Others though, do know, but can't or won't make the paradigm shift required by the facts. Why are those Saturn's-day Sabbatarians so tenaciously sticking to an unbiblical and untenable position? We can probably sum up the reasons in three words:
Tradition - The Saturday Sabbath is traditional and change is awkward, at best.
Inconvenience - The Saturday Sabbath fits so neatly with the world's calendar and the true Sabbath of YHWH doesn't (like pretty much everything else of YHWH).
Financial Loss - Saturday Sabbath ministries will lose a lot of revenue if they abandon Saturday Sabbath for the true Torah Sabbath! For this reason more than any other many of these Saturn's-day Sabbatarian ministries savagely attack the truth we are sharing on this, including savage personal attacks as well. What they never do is come to grips with the facts!
So where does all of this leave you? Right here:
The world does not follow the time-keeping system of YHWH.
The Jewish calendar (incl. the "Sabbath") is an innovation adapted to the world.
Saturn's-day Sabbatarian ministries have a vested interest in their untenable position.
YET - All of the Appointments of YHWH are according to His Torah lunar system!
Clearly, you need to discover His Holy Time for yourself to get in sync with Him.
Here at Tsiyon we get a LOT of flack over this. Frankly, our ministry would grow a great deal more if we would "go along to get along" and abandon our teaching and practice of Holy Time. We have chosen the harder road on this for one reason: because our obligation is to YHWH to teach and practice His truth, whether it is popular or not. Who do you think is more likely to tell you the truth, someone with a vested interest in the traditional position, or someone willing to turn away a larger following for conscience sake? No, that alone does not prove my case, but surely it is enough to warrant a serious hearing of the facts. We can provide that to you by means of my book Holy Time, and via my latest Midrash on Leviticus 23. Tune in, won't you?
Blessings and Shalom,
Eliyahu Ben David
PS - Lost truth rediscovered is often thought to be an innovative fantasy by the willfully uninformed. Detractors often say this about the lunar-based Sabbath. This only betrays their ignorance of the facts, since the original lunar-based Sabbath of the Israelites has been known to scholars for many years. Below we've included a few of the many quotes from reputable sources illustrating this fact of history.
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Tsiyon News
Website Updates - We recently made major upgrades at Tsiyon.net for our Tsiyon Members. These upgrades include more than style changes, with major upgrades in functionality for mobile devices. We also are trying a new chat program, so let us know how you like it. Other changes are now unseen, but will come into play a little later. Our goal with the Member site is to have a robust platform from which we can conduct real time live interactive video meetings with our Tsiyon Members, that will work with as many different device types as possible. In other words, we want folks with mobiles and tablets to have live access to the meetings, along with those who use laptops and desktop computers. At the same time that we are working out the technical side on the internet, we are also installing the wiring, cameras, sound system and control room equipment in our Tsiyon building for broadcasting - and of course, once all of that is installed and working we will be faced with a daunting learning curve to harness the power of all of that technology in an effective way. Please continue to pray for the project.
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Historical Quotes: Israel Practiced a Lunar-Based Sabbath
Well respected Jewish, Christian and Secular reference works have accurately reported the original Hebrew lunar-based week and Sabbath for many years. Here are just a few of the many quotes available confirming this reality.
"At first the New Moon festival was not counted among the seven days of the week; after 28 days had elapsed, one or two days were intercalated as New Moon days, whereupon a new cycle of four weeks began, so that the Sabbath was a movable festival.. Later the week and the Sabbath became fixed; and this gradually resulted in taking away from the New Moon festival its popular importance.." [The Jewish Encyclopedia, Pastoral Feast]
"..the week of seven days was connected with the lunar month, of which it is, approximately, a fourth ..[for] the Hebrews the first day of the first week of the month was always reckoned as coincident with the first day of the month .. At the end of four weeks an interval of one or two days might intervene before the new week could begin.." [The Jewish Encyclopedia, Week]
"The Sabbath depending, in Israel's nomadic period, upon the observation of the phases of the moon, it could not, accordingly be a fixed day. [The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume 10, p. 590]
"Most theologians and some scholars assume that mainstream Jewish society, at the time of Jesus ..was practicing a fixed seven-day week which was the same as the modern fixed seven-day week. This is extremely doubtful. The change, from a lunar to a fixed week, was brought about by the power and influence of Rome. As long as the Nazarenes held power in Jerusalem, all Roman practices and customs, including that of the consecutive week, were held at bay." [Shawui Sabbath: Ancient Sabbath Observance]
"The Assuan Papyri yield ample proof of the fact that at the time after the exile, no such fixed [weekly] cycle was in use among the Jews, and this would appear to be true also of the Talmudic period.." [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,1908, Vol.3, Jewish Calendar, p.117]
" ..shabbat [Sabbath] originally arose from the lunar cycle, containing four weeks ending in Sabbath, plus one or two additional unreckoned days per month." [The Universal Jewish Encycloepdia: An Authorative and Popular Presentation of Jews and Judiaism Since the Earliest Times. Volume 10 Cohen, Simon, 1943 p 482-483, Week]
"The changes in the calendric position of the weekly religious rest day have been few from pre-historic times to the present day. The Sabbath which came down to the Jews from pre-historic times was the seventh day of the lunar week. The lunar week and the lunar month gave the simplest form of time division to early man ..Moon and month meant the same thing. The division of the month into four weeks of seven days left the so-called epagomenal days which had to be neglected ..the weekly division begun again at the time of the next new moon. ..The lunar week was simple and serviceable ..We no longer say three barley corns round and dry make one inch, but that was a measure which served our ancestors very acceptably for all practical purposes. When the continuous seven-day week was generally accepted, then it was linked with the past, as we now date events before Christ by a scale unknown to the people and historians of those times. ..The lunar Sabbath was succeeded by the seven-day weekly Sabbath without confusion, and the mention of the Sabbath in Exodus 31:13 and elsewhere, may be taken to refer to the lunar day." [Sunday the World's Rest Day, Theodore Gilman, p. 479, Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, 1916]
"In the years following Clement of Alexandria's time, an ominous change started to take place that was to radically change the Christian concept of the Sabbath. ..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 (lunar) month ..so that the New Moon no longer coincided with the first day of the month. ..The introduction ..of 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." [Encyclopaedia Biblica, 1903 p. 5290, 4179]
"..the Jewish festivals being regulated solely by the moon, may fall on any day of the [modern] week." [Oxford English Dictionary, 1971 Edition, Vol. 2, Pentecost]
"The [original] connection of the Sabbath with lunar phases, however, was [eventually] discarded by the Israelites.." [The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia, p. 135-136]
"The 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." [Rest Days, Hutton Webster, p. 254-255]
"The weeks do not continue in a regular cycle regardless of the moon. Each month has four weeks, the beginning with the New Moon. I have no doubt that this was the old Hebrew system." [Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars, p. 89]
