God’s Calendar

and the

Sign of Jonah

 

 

 

How Jesus Truly Spent 3 Days And 3 Nights In The Grave

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce Armstrong and Bruce Harris

Central Highlands

Congregation of God

 

 

 

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and the night; and let them be for signs, and for appointed times, and for days and years.  And let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”  And it was so.

And God made two great lights and the stars: the greater light for ruling the day, and the lesser light for ruling the night.

Genesis 1:14-16

 

 

 

 

 

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees responded, and they said to Him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”

So He answered, saying to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Mankind be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

Matthew 12:38 to 40

 

 

 

Published by

CENTRAL HIGHLANDS CHRISTIAN PUBLICATIONS

PO Box 236, Creswick, Vic  3363  Australia

Email info@chcpublications.net

Web Page https://chcpublications.net

 

Seventh Edition

Copyright © 1993, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2014, 2020, 2022, 2024

Revised 17 March

 

 

Permission is given to copy and distribute this document provided it is not altered and is copied completely.  Copies must be given away. We ask only that you notify us if you are making numerous copies.

 

 

Scripture quotations are taken from the Central Highlands Congregation of God version.

 

 

Distributed by:

 

 

 

 

Contents

The Sign of Jonah and Our Saviour

Does the Bible Establish its Own Calendar System?

The Biblical Basis of God’s Calendar

The Day

The New Moon

‘New Year’s Day’—When is Abib 1?

The Order and Meaning of God’s Annual Holy Days

The Last Supper

Passover

Unleavened Bread

Wave Offering

The Feast of Weeks

Day of Shouting

Day of Atonement

Feast of Booths

The Last Great Day

Determining the Calendar Dates for Various Years

Calculation of the New Moon

Calculation of Abib 1

Development of the Rabbinical Calendar

Accuracy of the Rabbinical Calendar

Table 1: Comparison of Dates for Abib 1

Table 2: Comparison of Dates for Ethanim 1

Origin of the Rabbinical Calendar

THE SIGN OF JONAH

Two Sabbaths?

Table 3: Dates of the Passover Sacrifice (Preparation Day)

Tiberius Caesar’s Fifteenth Year

The Seventy Weeks

The Destruction of Jerusalem

The Three-Strand Cord

The Mark of Jehovah God

Jehovah and His Son

The “Difficult Scriptures”

The Road to Emmaus

The First Day of the Week

Parts of Three Days and Three Nights

Rehoboam

Jonah

Esther’s Fast

The Egyptian Servant

Heart of the Earth

Conclusion

Table 4: Comparison of Impalement-Resurrection Scenarios

Dates of God’s Holy Days to 2040

Table 5: Calculated Dates for Jehovah God’s Spring Holy Days

Table 6: Calculated Dates for Jehovah God’s Autumn Holy Days

Table 7: Christian Meaning of the Biblical Holy Days

Appendix: The Church of God in the Wilderness

 

 

 

The Sign of Jonah and Our Saviour

Jesus made the claim in Matthew 12:38 to 40 that the ultimate Sign that he was both the Son of God and our Saviour was that He would be dead for three days and three nights in the heart of the earth before He was resurrected.1  Did He really keep this sign, or was He a fraud as the two nights and one day of the typical Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition are actually saying?
This article will show that Jesus did actually fulfil the three days and three nights of the Sign of Jonah precisely.  We will explain how all of this worked, but proving it will involve learning how Jehovah2 God’s Biblical calendar system operates, as it is this calendar that Jehovah used to determine when the correct day for the Passover sacrifice (of Jesus as our Passover Lamb) had arrived, and when He needed to be resurrected.  We will also need to study some history to see what it says about which year Jesus died and see how Jewish customs interacted with the Sign of Jonah.  And overarching all of this, we will need to study the Scriptures carefully to see how it all fits together.  We will also have a look at how the truth about the timing of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection was deliberately hidden and replaced with hollow counterfeits.  And as Jesus’ name is really Joshua in Hebrew and Jeshua in the Aramaic New Covenant, as our article God’s Name explains, we will use Jeshua from here on, as it was used throughout the New Covenant.

We will start by exploring Jehovah’s calendar, as it forms the essential matrix that all the other components fit into.

 

Does the Bible Establish its Own Calendar System?

God gave His people a series of unique Holy days, which include the weekly Sabbath (Genesis 2:2-3 & Exodus 20:8-11) and the annual Great Sabbaths such as Passover/Unleavened Bread, Feast of the First-Fruits (Pentecost), Day of Shouting, Day of Atonement, the Feast of Booths (also called Tabernacles) and the Last Great Day (Leviticus 23).

The dates of the annual Sabbaths are determined by God’s unique lunar-agricultural calendar.  The calendar is simple and distinct, requiring only direct observation of the crescent of the visible new moon after sunset to determine the start of each month and the ripening of the spring barley crop near Jerusalem to determine which visible new moon starts each new year.  We will show that the Bible sets out the basic rules of this calendar, and thus it is God who determines the dates of His annual Holy Days.  Our Christian Holy Days article reveals that these Holy Days outline God’s entire plan of Salvation and have deep significance for Christians.  This plan begins with the death and resurrection of God’s Son (Passover & Wave Offering), leading to Redemption, Obedience, Water Immersion (Week of Unleavened Bread), Immersion in the Holy Spirit, the Messiah’s Return and our Transformation (Pentecost), Rebellion (Day of Shouting), Reconciliation (Atonement), the Millennium of Peace (Feast of Booths), the Last Rebellion, the White Throne Judgement and New Jerusalem in the Eternal Kingdom (the Last Great Day).

Questions about the exact timing of Jeshua the Anointed’s3 death and resurrection led to our initial interest in God’s calendar.  Our particular concern was whether Jeshua kept the ‘Sign of Jonah’ as He said He would in Matthew:4

 

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees responded, and they said to Him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”

So He [Jeshua] answered, saying to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Mankind be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.”    Matthew 12:38-40

 

Jeshua said these three days and nights in the grave before his resurrection would be his greatest sign which proves He is the Messiah.5  This article will explain why this length of time was so important.
One of the critical times involved in His crucifixion (the words used in both the Greek and Aramaic New Covenant manuscripts actually translate as impalement, and the ‘cross’ is actually a pole or stake, so these are the words we will use from here on, rather than the pagan crucifix) was the date when the Passover sacrifices were killed, as that was the day on which He was impaled.6  Research confirmed that the ‘Good Friday’ dates for those years were useless for determining the actual time of the crucifixion.  The Roman Catholic method of calculating Easter (comprising ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Easter Sunday’) was not widely accepted until it was enforced during the fourth century CE, and was designed to not coincide with the real date of the Passover, which can fall on different days of the week from one year to another.  These changes should not be surprising when we consider the prophecy given to Daniel concerning the papacy in Daniel 7:25:  “He will speak words against the Most High, will wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and intend to change the appointed times and law.”

Our research also found that the predecessor to the calculated calendar currently used by Judaism was only used in Jeshua’s time to support new moon observations.  That is, it was used to estimate new moon visibility on evenings when cloud cover prevented direct observation and to assist observers in locating the new moon on more favourable evenings.  We were convinced that if God’s calendar system could be determined from Biblical sources, we could be certain that the Messiah, as God’s Son, would have used only His Father’s Biblical calendar to determine the date for Passover.  Applying the Biblical calendar to these events would then resolve any disputes about their timing.

 

The Biblical Basis of God’s Calendar

Some of the scriptures that determine the Biblical basis of the calendar are:

 

And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and the night; and let them be for signs, and for appointed times, and for days, and years:  And let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light for ruling the day, and the lesser light for ruling the night: he also made the stars.    Genesis 1:14-16

 

God tells us that He has made the lights in the heavens.  The King James translation says they are to determine the “signs and seasons”. However, the sun and the moon do not inherently determine our seasons.  Our seasons are caused by the inclination of earth’s axis relative to its orbit. The Hebrew word the KJV translates as ‘seasons’ - מוֹעֲדִ moade- literally means “appointed times”, as in the above translation.  But what are these Appointed Times?

 

‘These are the feasts of Jehovah, holy convocations which you will proclaim at their appointed times.’    Leviticus 23:4

 

The same Hebrew word -moade- is used here, among many other places, to refer to the timing of God’s Annual Sabbaths.  This entire chapter of Leviticus details when these appointed times occur.

 

He appointed the moon for appointed times; the sun knows its going down.    Psalm 104:19

 

This passage confirms that the moon is used to determine God’s “Appointed Times”.

 

“This new moon is your beginning of new moons; it is the first new moon of the year to you.”    Exodus 12:2

 

God says the month (literally new moon, from חֹדֶשׁ chodesh as translated above) of the Passover is the first month of the year.  The “shall be” added in some translations does not exist in the Hebrew text, so this passage is merely restating the status quo, not changing the start of the year.

Exodus 13:4 calls this month ‘Abib’, in Hebrew Abiyb (אָבִיב), which means “ripening ears”, referring to the ripening grain heads of the winter barley crop.  Easton’s Bible Dictionary gives this definition of Abib: “an ear of corn, the month of newly-ripened grain (Exodus 13:4; 23:15); the first of the Jewish ecclesiastical year,”  The barley becomes ripe from late March to late April in Israel.7
Leviticus 23:10-14 shows that the month of Abib always coincides with the beginning of the year’s harvest in Israel.  Indeed, verse 14 says they are not allowed to begin eating the new season’s harvest until the wave sheaf has been offered on the day after the Sabbath (Sunday) during the Week of Unleavened Bread (usually called the Wave Sheaf Offering).  Please notice this carefully: It is not simply a case of finding enough ripe barley for the wave sheaf.  There must be fields of barley ripe enough to harvest, so the people can begin to harvest and eat the new season’s barley from that time forward.8

Early autumn rains will germinate the barley early, while the warming of the weather in spring is of course what matures and ripens the grain, and is caused by the inclination of the earth as it revolves around the sun each year.  And though the increasing day lengths in spring are important, it is the ripeness of the barley that is critical to deciding which new moon crescent will begin God’s New Year.  The roles of the ‘greater light’ and the ‘lesser light’ in determining God’s Appointed Times given in God’s Word have now been established.  These events will be examined in more detail below.

 

The Day

The Biblical day is a solar day which runs from dusk to dusk (Leviticus 23:32).  For an agrarian society it is natural to end the day at dusk, coinciding with the end of the daylight hours.  Dusk is a logical and easily determined endpoint.  This method of defining a day goes right back to the first day of Creation.  God began creating in darkness, made light later in the day and completed that day at dusk (Genesis 1:1-5).

 

The New Moon

Determining the timing of each of God’s months requires the observation of a simple astronomical event which clearly marks the beginning of the month.  (Please note that none of the astronomical events mentioned in this article have anything to do with astrology or worship of the heavens.  These are both things that God specifically forbidsSee Deu 4:19 and Isa 47:13.  The occurrences we are using are purely beautiful markers that God has given us so we can use His calendar.)

The event that marks the start of each month is the observation of the crescent of the new moon when it first becomes visible to the unaided eye after sunset.  Its visibility involves both the sun and moon, as it is the sun’s light that we see being reflected off the surface of the moon.  The term “new moon” used in scripture does not refer to the sun-moon-earth conjunction which astronomers call the new moon today.  The conjunction can only be ‘seen’ when the moon passes directly between the earth and the sun, causing a solar eclipse.  Such an event is far too rare and localised to be suitable for determining a monthly calendar.9  The Bible actually refers to the first visible crescent, which is usually not seen until one to three days after the conjunction.  This is verified in Deuteronomy 16:1, where the Israelites are commanded to “Observe the new moon (chodesh) of Abib, and keep the Passover to Jehovah your God.”  As the role of the visible New Moon is critical to God’s calendar, we have added this quote from Brian Hoeck (https://www.truthontheweb.org) which clarifies the situation:

 

“God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to separate the day from the night, that they may be for signs—for appointed times, for days and years, and let them be for lights upon the earth! It was so.” (Genesis 1:14-15).

The above Scripture plainly declares that “light” in the expanse10 of the heavens would be a sign to demark God’s Appointed Times. One of these Appointed Times occurs upon the 1st day of the 7th month (Leviticus 23:23-25), which is a New Moon day.
Since Torah11 tells us that it is “Lights” in the heavens that mark the Appointed Times, we can conclude that the conjunction (i.e. dark moon) is NOT the Scriptural New Moon.  According to Torah then, there must be the sign of the two lights (the sun beginning to shine upon and reflect off the moon, as Philo recorded) to be a New Moon. This testifies to the first visible crescent.
Likewise, the Israelites (who spoke, read, and fluently understood Hebrew) would know what a new moon is (as we can through lexicons and other linguistic helps) just  from the Hebrew word “Hodesh” which is used in Torah and the rest of Tenak12 to designate the New Moon. Let us look at this word:

“2320 חֹדֶשׁ chodesh {kho’-desh} from 2318; the new moon; by implication a month. Chodesh means ‘new moon; month.’ (1) The word refers to the day on which the crescent reappears.”  (The New Strong’s Expanded Dictionary of Words in the Hebrew Bible, p.81)

“2320 the new moon, the day of the new moon, the calends of a lunar month which was a festival of the ancient Hebrews.” (Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, p.263)

Here is its root (Hadesh): “2318 חַדֵּשׁ TO BE NEW, to be new, recent . . . to produce something new . . .also to polish a sword. Etymologists have well observed that its primary sense is that of cutting or polishing . . . and the signification of newness appears to proceed from that of a sharp polished splendid sword.” (Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, p.263)  The very word itself points to the scimitar-like appearance of the crescent sliver of the moon (i.e., sharp polished splendid sword). A dark conjunction is not “sharp,” nor “polished,” nor like a “splendid sword,” but these very well define the crescent moon.

 

The new crescent is only seen for a short time after sunset, as the sky darkens into night and the moon also sets in the west.  Seeing the new moon13 marks the new day just beginning as the first day of the new month.  This phenomena reinforces the Biblical method of counting days from dusk to dusk (Leviticus 23:32).  Starting the day at any other time would result in confusion about whether a particular day was the last day of the old month or the first day of the new month.  The incident with David, when he was absent from King Saul’s court for the two days of the new moon festivities, shows that there were times when it was not certain which evening the new moon crescent would be seen, resulting in planning for both evenings to ensure they were ready once it was seen (1 Samuel 20:24-27).14

As the average lunar cycle is about four weeks plus one and a half days long, the Annual Holy Days, such as Passover, fall on different days of the week from year to year as will be explained later.

Because sighting the new moon was vital to the entire calendar, God commanded that the first day of each month was to be marked by special offerings and the blowing of ceremonial trumpets. (See Numbers 10:10 and I Chronicles 23:31.)  Moses Maimonides, in his classic work Sanctification of the New Moon explains that sighting the new moon was an important ceremony in Jewish religious life.  The first chapter of his work, written about 1175 CE, clearly acknowledges that observation of the crescent new moon was initially the decisive element in determining the start of the month.  As time passed, calculations helped determine which evenings the new moon should be visible to assist observation.  As the power of the Jewish religious court grew, calculations were used to support or dispute the observations.  Eventually the court grew so self-indulgent that it actually ignored the observations totally and used its own calculated calendar to determine the timing of God’s Calendar, and thus set their own Holy Days.  As will be explained below, this final stage probably occurred several centuries after Jeshua of Nazareth was impaled.

New moons are such an important part of God’s calendar that the Hebrew word for the visible new moon,  חֹדֶשׁ chôdesh, is used 224 times in the Bible.  In the King James Version it has been translated as month(s) 204 times.  A literal translation of the Hebrew results in phrases such as “the seventh new moon” and “the seventeenth day of the new moon” which occur frequently in the Old Testament.  The phrases show that chôdesh can refer to the interval between two new moons as well as to the observance of the new moon crescent itself.15

Ezekiel 45:17 and Ezekiel 46:1 to 3 show that the new moon will continue to be important even during Jeshua’s Thousand Year Reign.

 

‘New Year’s Day’When is Abib 1?

The annual part of God’s calendar, ie- determining which day marks the beginning of the New Year, is very different to the Gregorian calendar.  The Gregorian New Year day is determined almost solely by the solar cycle.  The number of days in the months have been chosen to make the length of a year almost exactly one solar year.

The Biblical calendar only uses complete lunar months that begin and end when the new moon is seen.  As the average length of a lunar cycle is about 29.53 days16 and a solar (tropical) year is 365.24 days, we find that a solar year actually consists of 12.37 lunar months.  The yearly difference between these two cycles is reconciled by a method similar to that used in the current Gregorian calendar which requires an extra day to be added to February (almost) every fourth year to prevent the gradual drift of the months into other seasons.  This solved the drift problem which plagued the earlier Julian calendar.  Similarly, the Biblical lunar-agricultural calendar adds an extra month about every third year to keep its calendar synchronised with the seasons.17
However, the problem of deciding which year to add the extra month still remains.  Using the ripeness of the winter barley crops as the indicator of which new moon will also be New Year’s Day -ie the first day of the first month (Abib) locks the calendar into the solar cycle.  This annual cycle is reflected in the weather which Jehovah uses to control the ripening of the crops, allowing Him to select which month He wants to be Abib.18
The barley harvest takes over a month to complete in Israel, with barley ripening from late March close to Jericho to May in the mountainous areas near Jerusalem.  Seasonal variations can hasten or delay the harvest by two weeks or more.  For a new moon to be declared Abib requires evidence that some fields of the grain will be ripe enough to begin harvesting for the Wave Offering, which occurs on the Sunday during the Week of Unleavened Bread.19  As barley grains hold firmly to the stems, if the crop is too immature one new moon, it will still be available for harvest on the Wave Offering after the next new moon.
Deuteronomy 16:9 combined with Leviticus 23:15 confirms that the spring grain harvest begins on the same day as the Wave Offering.  This indicates that in Biblical times the barley used in the Wave Offering must be cut within travelling distance from where the Wave Offering ceremony was held.20  Scripture specifies that the Wave Offering must be offered by a priest in “the land which I (God) have given you” (Leviticus 23:10).  As God says the rest of the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread were to be held where “God placed His Name”at the Jerusalem templeit seems reasonable that the Wave Offering was held there too (Deuteronomy 16:2).  These considerations indicate that the New Year would usually be declared from mid-March to late April.

The new moon observations and annual searches for “Abib” that are conducted by Christians (https://abibofgod.com) and Karaite Jews near Jerusalem confirm (or occasionally correct) the dates given by our calculations.  The Karaites (Heb. Bnei Mikrameaning “Followers of the Scriptures”) are a Jewish sect which reject many of the Rabbinical traditions of Judaism.  Please note that the Karaites are, like us, very keen to follow the Biblical calendar, but they are not Christians at this time.

 

The Order and Meaning of God’s Annual Holy Days

The way that God’s Holy Days mesh with His observational calendar are summarised in Leviticus chapter 23.  They are briefly examined here to illustrate how these Holy Days are central to the Impalement and Resurrection of Jeshua, our transformation and the establishing of God’s Everlasting Kingdom.  They are all explained in more detail in our Holy Day Service Transcripts.

 

The Last Supper

Curiously, the first ceremony on this list was by far the last to be instituted.  It is just under two thousand years old, and was instituted by Jeshua, our Messiah, during the evening beginning the Passover day on which He was sacrificed.  Read Matthew 26:1 to 27:31, Mark 14:1 to 15:20, Luke 22:1 to 23:25 and John 13:1 to 19:16 and you will know much of what happened that evening and into the next morning.  You will also know that Jeshua instituted the Footwashing Ceremony that evening, in which we all wash another person’s feet, and also gave us the Eucharist (Thanksgiving), spiritually consisting of Jeshua’s body and blood.

 

Passover

The first annual observance mentioned in Leviticus is Jehovah’s Passover, which is “on the fourteenth day of the first month, between the evenings” (Lev 23:5).  It is not a Great Sabbath as the other annual Holy Days are, meaning work can be done during it.  It is also uniquely described as happening ‘between the evenings’, which by Jewish tradition is regarded as the time between mid-afternoon and dusk, and it was during this time on this day that they sacrificed their Passover lambs as God commanded them to do (Exodus 12).  This was the day that Jeshua, the Lamb of God (John 1:29, Revelation 5:6-13) was impaled and the time that He died was the moment that the sacrificing of the lambs began (Luke 23:54).  God also calls this the Day of Preparation, as the lambs were slaughtered and food made in preparation for the First Day of Unleavened Bread, as recorded in John 19:14 & 31, Matthew 27:62 and Mark 15:42.  And as we will see later, in the year of Christ’s impalement the Passover did not fall on a Friday.  The meaning of Passover and the other Holy Days are discussed in more depth in our Holy Day Service series and the  God's Holy Days for Christians document, which also shows from Scripture that God’s Holy Days were actually instituted before the Earth was created and are still in force today.

 

Unleavened Bread

The Feast of Unleavened Bread is a week-long feast which begins at dusk after the Passover (Lev 23:6 to 8 & Exodus 12:14 to 20).  Sometimes the entire feast, including the preparation day, is referred to as the Passover.  The night beginning this first day of Unleavened bread is to be a night of solemn observation.  It is a memorial of the night that all of the first-born of the Egyptians died when the angel (God’s representative) of death passed over and even more, it reminds us that we are spared from eternal death by partaking of the body and blood of the Lamb of God (Exodus 12:42, John 1:29 & 1 Cor 11:24).  And note this carefully: if any Israelites had refused to kill their lamb and paint its blood on their doorway, their firstborn would have died, just like the Egyptians.  If we also refuse to keep God’s Holy Days, why should we expect Him to give us everlasting life?

The First Day of Unleavened Bread was important to the Israelites for at least 430 years before the Exodus Passover.  This was the day on which God and two angels dined with Abraham and God promised to establish His covenant with Isaac, who was born to Sarah on this date exactly one year later (Gen 17:21 & Exodus 12:40-41).

The Last Day of Unleavened Bread corresponds with the Soph (Red) Sea crossing, in type showing us how if we keep walking with Jeshua, one day we will be completely freed from sin, just as the Israelites were at last freed from their Egyptian slave-masters.  The first and last day of this feast are holy convocations on which no work is to be done aside from simple food preparation, ensuring everyone can devote their time to worship and learning.  Thus the fifteenth and twenty-first days are the great days of the first month of God’s calendar.  Extra significance is added to this feast by considering the fact that the new season’s crop could not be harvested or eaten until after the Wave Offering during the Feast.  This reflects on how we as Christians should also partake of the body and blood of Jeshua and walk in newness of life on a spiritual level.

 

Wave Offering

The Wave Offering falls on the day after the weekly Sabbath (ie Sunday) during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:9 to 14).  During the year that Joshua began to occupy the Promised Land, the Wave Offering fell on the day after Passover, thus allowing them to begin eating the new season’s crops the day after Passover (Jehoshua 5:10 to 12).  As the Wave Offering falls on the Sunday during Unleavened Bread, it varies from the 15th to the 21st of the first month as the day of the week of Abib 1 varies.

The day of the Wave Offering is not a holy day in itself so normal work, such as harvesting the barley and cooking can proceed after the Wave Sheaf has been offered.  If the Wave Offering coincides with one of the annual great days of Unleavened Bread only sufficient work is allowed to provide food (eg new season’s barley) for the day.  It was at the time of the Wave Sheaf Offering that the resurrected Jeshua (the beginning of God’s Harvest) ascended to his Father (John 20:17).

 

The Feast of Weeks

Leviticus 23:15 to 22 outlines this feast, also known as the Feast of Harvest (Exodus 23:16) or First-fruits (Num 28:26) or Pentecost (Greek for ‘count 50’ Acts 2:1).  It occurs on the fiftieth day from the day of the Wave Offering.  This is the Sunday seven weeks and a day after the Sabbath near the start of Passover/Unleavened Bread.  Leviticus 23:21 confirms that the Feast of Weeks is to be kept on the “selfsame” day, which is Sunday, the 50th day.

It is linked to the first month of the year by this counting method and is therefore part of the beginning of God’s Plan of Salvation as noted in the God’s Holy Days for Christians booklet.

It was on this holy day that the Holy Spirit was first placed into Jeshua’s disciples and is still kept by the true Christian church (Acts chapter 2).  It is also likely the day that Jehovah God spoke His Ten Commandments to Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20).  It may also be the day that Jeshua returns to claim control of earth and resurrects his followers (1 Cor 15:48-57, 1 Thes 4:13-17).  His Return will be towards the end of the Great Tribulation (Mat 24:1-44).

 

Day of Shouting

This Great Day is the first day of the seventh month (Ethanim, also called Tishri) according to God’s calendar (Leviticus 23:23 to 25).  It marks the beginning of the next phase of God’s Plan of Salvation: Messiah and his faithful followers are confronted by Satan and his servants.  It is the day of war involving Jerusalem and Megiddo.  It begins with shouts of alarm, then shouts of war, and finally shouts of rejoicing as Satan’s armies are vanquished (Zec 13:1 to 14:15).  This clears the way for Jeshua to establish His righteous Kingdom (Rev 17:12-14 & 19:11-21).  All of the remaining Holy Days fall in this month, indicating that they are all related, and that they complete God’s Plan of Salvation.

 

Day of Atonement

This holy day (annual Sabbath) is kept on the 10th day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:26 to 32).  The war against Satan is over and Satan is cast into the Abyss, where is will be imprisoned for the entire Thousand Years of Peace (Revelation 20:1-3).  Atonement shows how Satan’s (Azazel’s) sins are finally placed back onto his own head Lev 16:7-34).  It is also a special time that the sinners who have survived the Great Tribulation can seek atonement and God’s mercy and become part of Jeshua’s Millennial Kingdom on earth (Zec 12:9 to 13:2 & Mat 25:31-46).

 

Feast of Booths

This Feast runs from the 15th to the 21st day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:33 to 44).  Booths is a celebration of God’s kingdom ruling on earth under Jeshua the Messiah’s leadership for one thousand years of peace and plenty (Revelation 20:4 to 6).  The week celebrates the growth of that Kingdom and God’s People (Ezekiel 36:22 to 37:28, Isaiah 66:13-24 & Zechariah 14:8-21).  The first day (the 15th) is a Great Sabbath.  This Feast also celebrates the harvest in Israel, and by extension God’s harvest of his sons and daughters.  It may also be when all who died as young children are resurrected and allowed to live out their lives.

 

The Last Great Day

The “eighth day” of the Feast of Booths is the final annual Holy Day, falling on the 22nd day of the seventh month.  It encompasses Satan’s final rebellion, the White Throne judgement by God in which all the remaining unrepentant sinners, including those resurrected, are destroyed and Satan is cast into the Lake of Fire (Leviticus 23:36, Revelation 20:7 to 15, 1 Corinthians 15:22 to 26).  Then begins the fullness of Jehovah God’s eternal Kingdom for all His children, when the heavens and earth are renewed and Jehovah and Jeshua bring their New Jerusalem down to Earth (Revelation 21:1 to 22:21).

 

These are the Holy Days of God’s Biblical calendar.  As we will see, simple, direct observations can confirm all their dates for those living in Israel.  Jerusalem has been chosen as the focal point where observations of the new moon should be made, as it is where God chose to have His Palace/Tabernacle built and it will become the spiritual capital of the entire world (1 Kings 8:1 to 12; Zechariah 14:16 and Revelation 21:1 to 11).

 

 

Determining the Calendar Dates for Various Years

However, how can one determine the dates of God’s calendar when your location or especially when the year you wish to inquire about makes direct observation impossible?  This is a serious problem when trying to apply God’s calendar system to events that happened almost two thousand years ago.  How can we calculate the visibility of the new moon and the maturity of the barley crops in ancient Israel?

 

Calculation of the New Moon

When we first attempted to discover the actual time of Jeshua’s impalement, we began by using the average length of the lunar cycle to determine the time of the sun-moon conjunction.  We then estimated the probability of seeing the new moon by considering the time of day the conjunction occurred.  We later discovered that this is basically the method used to determine the traditional Jewish calendar.

However, we soon discovered that the actual time of the earth-moon-sun conjunction could vary considerably from our calculated average time.  And even when the conjunction was calculated accurately, there was still considerable uncertainty as to which evening the new moon crescent would be seen.  Indeed, the United States Naval Observatory has found that even under excellent conditions, and with experienced observers, there is a lag of at least 15.5 hours after the conjunction before the crescent can seen with the naked eye (https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/crescent).21

We slowly discovered that the visibility of the new moon was mainly determined by the difference between the sun and moon’s setting times, the distance apart they were in the sky, the height of the moon above the horizon at civil dusk and how much of the moon was illuminated.  To find these things required accurate calculations of the positions of the sun and the moon as viewed from a specific location on earth.

Calculating the position of the sun and thus its setting time is fairly simple, as it is a massive body with a very predictable motion.  However, accurately calculating the position of the Moon is not an easy matter.  Such a calculation was only crudely possible at the time the Rabbinical Jews developed the final version of their calculated calendar.  Many factors affecting the position of the moon have only been understood during the last two hundred years.  To determine even the most important orbital and gravitational influences on the moon’s position requires calculations hundreds of lines long.  One mistake can make the entire calculation meaningless.

Thankfully modern computers can be programmed to make the necessary calculations within a second.22  We developed a program which makes these calculations for us.  The main calculations are based on Astronomical Formulae for Calculators written by the Belgian astronomer, Jean Meeus.  Once the position and setting time of the sun is known for a particular evening and location, the position of the moon and its illuminated fraction is calculated for that time and the moon’s setting time is also calculated.  The position of the sun at moonset is then calculated as the lower it is below the horizon, the darker the sky will be.  These calculations are then used to decide if the moon will be seen that evening.  If the new moon will not be seen that night, everything is recalculated again for the next evening(s).  Thus the visibility of the new moon can usually be predicted correctly.  However, the visibility of some new moons are borderline, and God controls their visibility by giving us ideal or poor atmospheric viewing conditions.  These considerations apply to all of the new moons throughout the year.  This now leaves the determination of which new moon becomes Abib 1 (New Year’s Day) to set the sequence of months, and therefore Holy Days, for the year.

 

Calculation of Abib 1

Is there a mathematical alternative to the ‘ripening barley’ method available to determine the beginning of the new year?

Yes and no.  The calculated solution involves the sun, one of the two heavenly bodies that God gave us to determine His appointed times.  Specifically we use the solar year much as we commonly use it in the Gregorian Calendar.  What must be done here is to learn from observation the range of dates during which Abib 1 can fall that covers the earliest and latest possibilities for Abib barley and incorporate that into the calculations.  Simply using the first visible new moon after the vernal equinox23 (usually March 20) will correspond with the ripening barley method in an average to late year, but it will be too late in early years which have a warm, dry winter and/or spring.

In springs with unusually early harvests, new moons seen as early as the 8th of March can become Abib 1, as happened in 2019.  Most years, the barley will not be ready for the Wave Offering that early, so the next new moon will become the first month of the new year.  This situation means that the Wave Offering can occur from the 24th of March to the 12th of May, which coordinates well with the spring harvesting of the traditional winter barley crops.  Most years the New Moon is seen from mid March to early April and there is no doubt as to which New Moon is Abib 1.  Our calculated calendar shows two sequences for years where it is possible to have an early or a late harvest in Israel, adjusting the calendar by the omission or addition of a thirteenth month preceding Abib.  But the calculation itself cannot tell us which of the two dates is correct.  Detailed weather information can indicate which of the two dates is more likely as spring progresses, but local examination of the ripeness of the barley is the only certain method.

Thus the Biblical lunar-agricultural calendar can be determined by astronomical calculations for most years, but some years God can alter the dates with crystal clear skies or haze, clouds and unusual weather.  As all the Biblical Annual Holy Days are dated from the new moons of the first and seventh months (Abib and Ethanim), this calendar yields the dates of all the Holy Days.

The program has enabled us to accurately calculate the positions (and thus the setting times, visibility, etc) of the sun and moon on the evenings that would have determined the start of Abib 1 in the year of Jeshua’s impalement.  We thank God for providing His unique calendar system which can be used to precisely determine the time of the Impalement, and many other Biblical events, even thousands of years later.

The calculations of astronomical positions, etc are based on conventional astronomical formulae.  However, we had to devise our own formula to estimate the visibility of the new moon crescent.  Over time, the visibility formula has been improved to make our calculations as consistent with actual observations as possible.  We have been testing the predictions of these programs against actual observations of the new moon for many years now and have found them to be reliable.24  The program cannot predict transient weather conditions such as sparklingly clear skies, atmospheric moisture content, dust and cloud cover and warm or cool winter/spring seasons.  But the effects of these things have been allowed for, as ultimately God controls His Calendar and alters these factors to ensure His Holy Days occur when He wants them to.  Predicted New Moon observations near the seen/not seen boundaries also have probably seen/probably not seen classifications.  Likewise, there are early/late harvest categories to acknowledge the variability caused by longer-term weather effects.

Our formula calculates the Visibility Number (VN) as the difference between the sun and moon setting times plus the percentage of the moon illuminated times 27, plus the altitude of the moon at sunset times 5.5, minus the altitude of the sun at moonset times 5, all divided by 1.7.  If the VN is above 100, the new moon is likely to be seen.  This formula thus balances the four main factors influencing the visibility of the new moon.  The software can be downloaded from our website at https://chcpublications.net/  It includes a verification section that allows you to set up the calculations for your own location so you can check the accuracy of the calendar’s predictions and see some beautiful new moons.

 

Development of the Rabbinical Calendar

As we discussed earlier, calculations are only essential for people living away from Jerusalem or for learning the time of past or future new moons.   For those living in Jerusalem, determining which month is Abib can be decided by looking at the maturity of the local barley crop.  If the barley will be ripe enough to harvest for the Wave Offering, looking for the new moon after sunset for two or occasionally three days after the next sun-moon conjunction will reveal the 1st of Abib.  They do not need either a computer program or a priesthood to tell them when Abib 1 begins, though the calculations can help them find the New Moon crescent in the sky.

A calculated calendar only became necessary after the Jews were removed from Jerusalem and dispersed throughout the Roman Empire.  Other reasons for the Jewish religious leaders to institute a calculated calendar were power and convenience.  Establishing themselves as the calendar authorities gave them power over the people, and supposedly even God, as they appointed themselves as the arbiters of the timing of the Holy Days.  Convenience stemmed from the fact that using a predetermined calculated calendar would allow precise future event planning as it dictated when the various new moons and their Holy Day festivities would occur.

Most authorities believe the present version of the conventional Jewish calculated calendar (also known as the rabbinical or Judaic calendar) came into being sometime between 359 CE (AD) and 800 CE.  Even Maimonides, a twelfth century Jew who compiled the Code of the (Judaic) Law, in his section on the Sanctification of the New Moon,25 admitted that originally all the calendar dates were determined by observation.  Despite this, he devotes the rest of that section to proclaiming the supposed superiority of their inaccurate calculations over direct observation as commanded by God.

There is not a single word in the entire Bible about how to set up or use a calculated calendar.  Adherents of the rabbinical calendar sometimes claim that Romans 3:2 gives this calendar its authenticity as the verse says that the “oracles of God” were entrusted to the Jews.  The word oracles is translated from the Greek word logion.  It literally means utterance in English, and is derived from logos, which means Word.  It is obvious that the utterances of God are preserved for us in the Bible.  It is also obvious that as the Bible speaks only of an observational calendar, therefore the oracles, or utterances, of God only endorse the use of an observational calendar.  To claim that any calculated calendar, including both ours and the rabbinical calendar, has been authorised by God is blasphemy.

Some Jewish sects reject the ‘traditional’ rabbinical calendar even today.  They hold to observation as the only scripturally correct method of determining the new moons and Holy Days.  They feel that the rabbinical calendar is an insult to God.  They have sound reasons for this concern.  This quotation from the Shabbat 10b (part of the Mishna, written during the first two centuries CE) shows the arrogance that some Rabbis assumed in setting their calendar:

 

“Rabbi Pinhas and Rabbi Hilkiah said in the name of Rabbi Simon: Each year, all of the ministering angels appear before the Holy One, praised be He, and ask, “Lord of the Universe! When does Rosh Hashanah occur this year?” And He answers them, “Why do you ask me? Let us inquire of the earthly court.”. . .

“Rabbi Hoshayah taught: When the earthly court decrees “Today is Rosh Hashanah,” the Holy One, praised be He, tells the ministering angels, “Set up the court room, and let the attorneys for defence and prosecution take their places, for My children have stated ‘Today is Rosh Hashanah.’” But if the earthly court should reconsider and decide that the following day should be declared the first of the year, the Holy One, praised be He, tells the ministering angels “Set up the court room and let the attorneys for prosecution and defence take their places on the morrow, for My children have reconsidered and decided that tomorrow is to be declared the first of the year.”

 

Jehovah God decrees His Holy Days, NOT fallible man!  And note that when this rubbish was written, well after the Anointed was impaled, the rabbinical Jews were still not fully committed to a fixed calculated calendar as there would have been no possibility of ‘reconsidering’ when Rosh Hashanah fell.  Rosh Hashanah is the Day of Shouting which occurs on the 1st of Ethanim (Tishri), the first day of the seventh month.  Rosh Hashanah means ‘head of the year’, signifying that by this time the Jewish idea of a ‘civil year’ beginning on the 1st of Ethanim was well established.

 

Accuracy of the Rabbinical Calendar

Tables 1 and 2 compare the rabbinical dates with our accurate astronomical calculations based on Biblical principles and actual observations.  The results show that for one of the twenty years examined the rabbinical calculation starts the year one month too early.  We do not have barley data to confirm the 1999 Abib.

If you compare this table with astronomical “new moon” calculations, please remember that what is now called the astronomical new moon is actually only the earth-moon-sun conjunction.  Though we begin by calculating the conjunction, it is  which evening the new moon crescent will first be visible to an observer with good eyesight in Jerusalem that is critical.  Thus, if the new moon is visible on the evening of 29 March, 1998, the first day of the first month (1 Abib) is given as 30 March because the day extends from dusk on the twenty-ninth to dusk on the thirtieth, thus including all the daylight hours of 30 March.

The 2008 data is a clear example of the inaccuracy of the rabbinical calculations.  Tables 1 & 2 show us that the rabbinical calculations predict that the new moon will be seen on the evenings of the 5th of April and the 29th of September.  However, accurate astronomical calculations reveal that the moon will set 36 minutes before the sun on the 5th of April and 11 minutes before the sun on the 29th of September.  The new moon cannot be seen until it is lagging well behind the sun in setting time, making observation of the new moon on both these dates totally impossible.  In both cases, the new moon was not seen until two evenings later.

 

Table 1:  Comparison of Dates for Abib 1

Given by the Biblical and traditional ‘rabbinical’ calculations and Observed Abib 1.  The dates in brackets are the less probable days when the new moon crescent visibility is borderline and two months are listed for years with two options for Abib. The Observed Abib 1 date is the day following the evening when the first new moon crescent is seen after Aviv barley has been confirmed.  Observations were compiled from the Israeli New Moon Society, Brian Convery et al (https://abibofgod.com/) and Nehemia Gordon (Karaite).  * indicates the new moon was not seen when expected due to a cloudy/hazy day and the means no observation reports.

 

Year CE

Observed Abib 1

Biblical Cals

Diff

Obs-BibCal

Rabbinic Calcs

Diff

Obs-Rab

1994

1995

14/4*

2/4

14/3, 13/4

2/4

+1

0

13/3

1/4

+32

+1

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

21/3

30/3

18/4

6/4

21/3

9/4

30/3

19/3 (20/3), 18/4

6/4 (7/4)

0

0

0

0

21/3

8/4

28/3

18/3

6/4

0

+2

+31

0

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

27/3

16/3

4/4

23/3

11/4

27/3

16/3, 15/4

4/4

23/3

11/4 (10/4)

0

0

0

0

0

25/3

14/3

3/4

23/3

10/4

+2

+2

+1

0

+1

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

31/3

21/3

8/4

28/3

18/3

31/3

21/3, 19/4

8/4

28/3

18/3, 16/4

0

0

0

0

0

30/3

20/3

6/4

26/3

16/3

+1

+1

+2

+2

+2

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

5/4

24/3

14/3

1/4

22/3

5/4

24/3

13/3 (14/3)

1/4 (2/4)

22/3

0

0

+1 (0)

0

0

5/4

24/3

12/3

1/4

21/3

0

0

+2

0

+1

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

11/3

30/3

19/3

9/3

26/3

11/3, 9/4

30/3

19/3, 18/4

9/3, 7/4

26/3

0

0

0

0

0

9/4

28/3

17/3

6/4

26/3

-27

+2

+1

-28

0

2021

2022

2023

2024

15/3

4/4*

24/3*

12/3

15/3, 14/4

3/4

23/3

12/3, 10/4

0

+1

+1

0

14/3

2/4

23/3

9/4

+1

+2

+1

-28

 

Comparing these Abib results, and ignoring 1997 for which we don’t have observation results, show that the traditional rabbinical calendar correctly calculates only seven of the thirty 1st of Abib dates (only 23.3% right).  Five of the years were out by an entire month (Two were a month early and three were a month late).  Our Biblical calculated calendar fares much better: 26 of the thirty Abib 1 dates were proven correct, and of the four wrong, threevisible crescents’ and one ‘probably visible’ crescent were not seen due to overcast or hazy conditions (at least 86.7% right).

 

Table 2:  Comparison of Dates for Ethanim 1

Given by the Biblical and traditional ‘rabbinical’ calculations and Observed New Moon.  The dates in brackets are the less probable days when the new moon crescent visibility is borderline and two months are listed for years with two options for Abib.  As for the Abib 1 table, the Ethanim 1 date is the day following the evening when the first new moon crescent is seen, while * indicates the new moon was not seen when expected due to a cloudy/hazy horizon and the means no observation reports, while ^ means that a ‘Probably Not Visible’ new moon was in fact seen due to excellent conditions.

 

Year CE

Observed New Moon

Biblical Calculations

Diff

Obs

BibCal

Rabbinic Calculations

Diff

Obs

Rab

1994

1995

27/9

8/9, 7/10

27/9

0

6/9

25/9

+2

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

16/9*

4/10

23/9

11/10

29/9^

15/9

4/10

23/9

12/9, 11/10

30/9 (29/9)

+1

0

0

0

-1 (0)

14/9

2/10

21/9

11/9

30/9

+12

+2

+2

+30

-1

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

19/9

9/9

28/9

16/9^

6/10

19/9

9/9, 8/10

28/9

17/9 (16/9)

6/10

0

0

0

-1 (0)

0

18/9

7/9

27/9

16/9

4/10

+1

+2

+1

0

+2

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

25/9

14/9

2/10

21/9

11/9

25/9

14/9, 14/10

2/10

21/9

11/9, 10/10

0

0

0

0

0

23/9

13/9

30/9

19/9

9/9

+2

+1

+2

+2

+2

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

30/9

18/9

8/9

27/9

16/9

30/9

18/9

8/9

27/9 (26/9)

16/9 (15/9)

0

0

0

0

0

29/9

17/9

5/9

25/9

14/9

+1

+1

+3

+2

+2

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

3/9

22/9

11/9

1/9

19/9

3/9 (2/9) 3/10

22/9

11/9 (12/9) 11/10

1/9

19/9

0

0

0

0

0

3/10

21/9

10/9

30/9

19/9

-30

+1

+1

-29

0

2021

2022

2023

2024

9/9

28/9

17/9

9/9

28/9

17/9

5/9, 5/10

0

0

0

7/9

26/9

16/9

3/10

+2

+2

+1

 

Comparing these Ethanim results, and ignoring 1994 and 2024 for which we don’t have observation results, show that the traditional rabbinical calendar calculates only two of the twenty-nine 1st of Ethanim (Day of Shouting) dates correctly (only 6.9% right).  Three of the years were out by an entire month (One was a month early and two were a month late).  Once again, our Biblical calculated calendar fares much better: 26 of the 29 Ethanim 1 dates were proven correct (90% right).  Of the three that were wrong, onevisible’ crescent was not seen was due to overcast conditions, while two less likely possibilities were seen due to excellent conditions.

The data indicates that the Rabbinical calendar does manage to select its Abib month fairly well, but it lacks the flexibility needed to allow for early and late springs.  And it starts most of its months one day or even two days too early, showing that its ability to calculate the visible new moon is very poor.  This means that Rabbinical Jews only rarely observe God’s Holy Days on the correct dates.

 

The inaccuracies of the rabbinical calendar are partly due to the rudimentary knowledge of the moon’s motion when their calendar was being developed.  Sadly, now that much better calculations (and better yetdirect observation) are available, Judaism has rejected accuracy in favour of tradition.

Apart from the crudity of the rabbinical calculations, another error in their calendar arises from the fact that they only calculate the conjunction time for the seventh month.  The date for Abib 1, the real start to the Biblical year, is not directly calculated and is only determined by subtracting 177 days from Ethanim (Tishri) 1.  Oddly enough, this makes Abib 1 right more often than Ethanim 1, due to the fact that the actual difference averages about 177.18 days, so it provides an extra 4.3 hours to see the crescent.

The Jews themselves also recognize the deficiencies of the rabbinical calendar as shown in this quote from Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972; p.47):

 

“the present [calendar] system was expected to be replaced again by a system based on true values more akin to the earlier Jewish calendar in which new moon and intercalations were proclaimed on the basis of both observation and calculation.”

 

Origin of the Rabbinical Calendar

Curiously, some Christian organisations accept the rabbinical calendar as being authoritative.  One example is United Church of God, who claims that the rabbinical calendar calculation was the main method of determining the date of the Annual Holy Days during Jeshua’s ministry and continues to use Worldwide Church of God’s faulty calendar (See Footnote 38, page 41 on the dodgy WCG calendar).  There is some evidence that basic calculations were occasionally used then, but were only used to assist with and collaborate direct observation.

The existence and official use of the current rabbinical calculated calendar at the time of Jeshua of Nazareth is denied by every authority on the calendar that we have read.  The most optimistic historians place the beginning of the current Jewish calculated calendar at 359 CE.  They claim that Hillel II introduced the calendar at that time.

However, Samuel Poznanski (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1908 Ed., Vol 3, pp 118-120) says this about their claim:

 

“the tradition, which stands quite alone, is confronted with grave objections. Of these the following two are of special weight: (1) The supposed calendar is never referred to in the Talmud, which received its final redaction at the end of the fifth century. Nothing whatever is said there about the length of the month, or the nineteen-year cycle, or anything else of the kind. (2) . . . Moreover, from the earliest post-Talmudic age we have dates which cannot be reconciled with the regular calendar in use today.”

“In point of fact, everything goes to indicate that the calendar, like all other productions of the kind, passed through a developing series of forms, and that it assumed its final shape in the schools of the official representatives of Judaism (called Geonim) in Babylonia. To the period of the Geonim, say the 7th and 8th cents., likewise belong two tractates relevant to the subject. One of these is entitled Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, and contains almost all the elements of the modern calendar (caps. 6-8), but it shows so many instances of self-contradiction that we must assume the presence of various interpolations . . .”

“In the 7th and 8th centuries, again, Judaism in the East was disturbed by the rise of various sects, many of which refused to recognize the existing calendar. One of its outstanding assailants was Anān b. David, the founder of Karaism (2nd half of 8th cent.), who abandoned the method of computation, as being repugnant to Scripture, and reinstated that of lunar observation . . .”

“The importance attached to the recognition or repudiation of the then existing calendar may be gauged by the fact that the official circles of Judaism were free to intermarry with the Isawites, who actually recognized Jeshua and Muhammad as prophets, but not with the Karaites, the ground of distinction being simply that the former received the calendar while the latter did not.”

“. . . the Karaites . . . reverted in all respects to the ancient practice of determining the time of new moon by observation, and intercalating a 13th month when required by the state of the crops, ie, the ripening ears (ʼAbīb).”

“. . . Nor do the modern Karaites recognize the so-called dehiyoth, ‘displacements’.”

 

Some of the ‘displacements’ were designed to adjust for the delay between the conjunction (called the Molad in Hebrew) and the evening when the new moon might become visible, and thus their intent was reasonable.  But other dehiyoth involve dubious things like delaying the date of the first of Ethanim if it is going to fall on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday.26  These ‘displacements’ are designed to prevent the Annual Holy Days from occurring on Sunday or Friday, so there cannot be two Sabbaths one after the other.  They also moved the Passover to the 15th of Abib and fixed Shavuot (Pentecost) to Sivan 6.  It seems likely that these displacements and postponements were the final goads which led the Karaites to reject this unbiblical calendar.

Maimonides claims that these displacements are designed to average out the inbuilt errors in the rabbinical calculated calendar.  The truth is that the real reason for this practice is that the Jews decided it was too difficult to have two Sabbaths in a row.  As the Karaites point out, there is absolutely no Biblical support for these ‘displacements’.  The Karaite practice of observing the Wave Sheaf Offering and Feast of Weeks on Sundays is accepted by the United Church of God (UCG).  This practice results in having two Sabbaths in a row (the seventh-day Sabbath followed by Pentecost) and contradicts the Rabbinical calendar.  Obviously it is possible to have two Sabbaths in a row.  It also opens up this question for UCGIf the Karaites are right about this aspect of the Holy Days, could they also be right in insisting on direct observation of the new moon and ripening barley as the only scripturally approved method of determining the timing of God’s Holy Days?

However, when direct observation is not possible, surely the most accurate calculations available should be used.  Our calculated calendar simulates actual observation of the new moon in Jerusalem as exactly as we can.  When any observational data conflicts with the formula we use to predict visibility, the process is re-examined to increase its accuracy.  As only God has the authority to set the dates for His Holy Days, and He reveals these appointed times using His greater and lesser lights (Gen 1:14-18), any calendar system which does not match with the observations of the new moon crescent is useless.  On this requirement the rabbinical calendar fails miserably.

The calculations shown in Table 3 reveal the day of the week and the date of the Passover in the year of Jeshua’s impalement.  However, the usefulness of the calculated Biblical calendar is not limited to only this critical issue.  It is a powerful key that can unlock the exact time of many biblical events.  It can also help us determine the true time of God’s Holy Days today, so we can keep Jehovah’s Holy Days, not man’s.

 

 

 

THE SIGN OF JONAH

Our original interest in the timing of God’s Holy Days arose from our attempt to find out if Jeshua actually spent three days and three nights in the tomb as He said He would:

 

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees responded, and they said to Him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”

So He [Jeshua] answered, saying to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Mankind be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.    Matthew 12:38 to 40

 

As the Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition only allows a maximum of two nights and one day in the tomb, it actually denies that Jeshua kept the “Sign of Jonah”, and thus teaches that He is a liar and cannot take away our sins.  Did He keep this “Sign”, or is Jeshua the Messiah a fraud as these disguised opponents of Biblical Christianity are really implying?  And if Jeshua did keep this Sign, is this yet another of the times that the ‘Little Horn’ spoken of in Daniel 7:8 has tried to change?

 

But first: why was the Sign of Jonah three days and three nights?  Why not two days or four days or even five days?

The three days and three nights were required because that was the minimum time that must pass before one was accepted as truly dead in Hebrew culture, as shown in this quote from Jewish Law, the Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day by Richard Carrier:

 

The idea that the soul rests three days in the grave before departing is also casually assumed in the Midrash Rabbah on Ruth [III:3 (43-44)] and Ecclesiastes [I:34 (41-42)]. Confirming this belief is a passage in the Semahot, which says:

   One may go out to the cemetery for three days to inspect the dead for a sign of life, without fear that this smacks of heathen practice. For it happened that a man was inspected after three days, and he went on to live twenty-five years; still another went on to have five children and died later. (8.1)

Thus, it was considered possible for a soul to reunite with its body within three days, but no more, for sometime on the third day the soul realized the body was rotting, and then departed.[23] Thus, a resurrection on the third day reverses the expectations of the Jews.

 

Though the last sentence should read “after the third day”, the point is clear: Jeshua needed to be dead for at least three full days (72 hours minimum) before His resurrection would be accepted as a miracle.

Jeshua also used this principle when He resurrected his friend Lazarus, related in John 11:1 to 45.  Jeshua deliberately delayed going to help Lazarus until he knew that he would have been dead for over three days by the time he got there.  Unlike the earlier resurrections He had performed, when He raised Lazarus back to life no one could dispute that a mighty miracle had happened.  And it was precisely because of this resurrection that the chief priests and Pharisees, usually enemies, got together and agreed to murder Jeshua (John 11:46-53).

 

Two Sabbaths?

After unsuccessfully trying to reconcile the Impalement/Resurrection accounts in the Bible with the three days and three nights of the Sign of Jonah, we finally came across a booklet which claimed that the Messiah’s impalement was really on a Wednesday, with two Sabbaths occurring during the time He was dead.27  Their argument was built on Matthew 28:1, which literally reads: Now after the Sabbaths, as the first day of the Weeks began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb28... and also on their knowledge of God’s Holy Days and how they apply to the Impalement and Resurrection of Christ.  They claimed that in the year of the impalement, the Preparation Day on which Jeshua died occurred on Wednesday.  The next day was the first day of the Week of Unleavened Bread, which was (and still is) a special annual Great Sabbath Day.  The Bible clearly shows that the Preparation Day was indeed the day before the First day of Unleavened bread in John 19:14. (Also referred to in John 19:31 and 2 Chronicles 35:2-6, where verses 4 and 6 plus Exodus 12:6-9 detail some of the preparations that were required on this dayand also Leviticus 23:4 to 8.  God’s annual Holy Days are Great Sabbaths, regardless of which day of the week they occur on, as shown in Leviticus 23:24, 32 & 39 and John 7:37.  The First Day of Unleavened Bread is also confirmed as a Great Sabbath by combining John 19:14, Mark 15:42 and Matthew 28:1.)  It was the coming of this Great Day or solemn Annual Sabbath that drove the Jewish leaders to request the breaking of the ‘convicts’ legs so they would die before the Week of Unleavened Bread formally began.
The Biblical account clearly shows that Jeshua was impaled on a post and died mid-afternoon on the Passover Preparation Day.  There are glimpses left throughout the centuries from that time all the way to today which show that some of God’s people always knew the Passover was on the 14th of the first month in the year and that Jeshua died on the Wednesday, such as the Nazarenes, Victorinus, Bishop of Petau, the Celtic Churches, the Arian Germanic tribes, the Waldenses (see the Appendix) and the Armenii (Armenians).  The Coptic Church still observes a Wednesday fast which commemorates the day that Jeshua was condemned to die.29
But history was mostly written by our persecutors, who massacred us whenever we became influential enough to be perceived as a threat and their reports deliberately distorted our beliefs.30

Jeshua’s body was finally placed in a new tomb carved into the rock (the heart of the earth) just before the First Great Day began at dusk.  But this was not a simple thing.  Roman practice was to leave those being impaled on the stake for several days as an ongoing reminder that it was not wise to offend them.  But Jehovah had given the Jews a contrary law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23: they must remove any such body and bury it before the end of the day so their land was not defiled.

In this case it was even more of an issue as the next day was an annual Holy Day, the First Great Day of Unleavened Bread.  But it was also Jewish practice that if someone was killed for blasphemy, as Jeshua had been falsely condemned for, he had to be buried in a separate graveyard to add to his disgrace (as recorded in the Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.5 e-f).  But when Jehovah sent the wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathea, to ask Pilate for Jeshua’s body so he could bury him with honour in a newly made tomb, there were no objections.  The darkening of the sky, the massive earthquake and the tearing of the veil of the tabernacle in two when Jeshua died had terrified even the Pharisees (Mat 27:41-52).  Nicodemus collected myrrh, aloes and linen and they rushed to prepare Jeshua’s body for burial, placing him into Joseph’s tomb as the Great Sabbath was about to begin (John 19:28-42).31  So the three days and nights in the heart of the earth began as dusk was approaching at the end of the day of Preparation.  That night and the next day (ie Wednesday night through until dusk on Thursday evening the first Great Sabbath of the Week of Unleavened Bread) were the first night and first day of the Anointed’s interment.  Normal work was not permitted on that day, a commandment which Jeshua taught and His followers observed.

The following night and day were the second day of the Week of Unleavened Bread.  Normal work was permitted on that day.  The article suggested, as the Bible confirms, that this was the day on which the Anointed’s followers went out and bought the oils, spices and linen required to anoint Jeshua’s corpse properly, as Mark 16:1 says they purchased these items after the Sabbath.  They then had to prepare and blend the oils and spices before they could anoint Him.  By the time they had it all ready to use, the weekly Sabbath was about to begin, so the actual anointing had to be postponed again (As Luke 23:56 says, they prepared their ointments and then rested on the Sabbath).  The second night and second day (Thursday night until dusk on Friday) had now passed.  Also, the disciples knew that the guards protecting the tomb would prevent them from unsealing the tomb and packing their ointments around Jeshua until the three days had passed as Matthew 27:62 to 66 reveals, so there was no point in going to the tomb until the three days had expired.

As the new ‘day’ beginning at dusk was the normal weekly Sabbath, the Anointed’s followers once again waited while the third night and the third day passed (Friday night and Saturday).  Interestingly, the Sabbath is the day of rest, and Jeshua rested on this Sabbath in the sleep of death.

Clearly, two Sabbathsone an annual Great Sabbath and the other a weekly Sabbathseparated by a day must have passed while Jeshua was in the grave.

The three days and three nights in the tomb were fulfilled as dusk approached near the end of this weekly Sabbath.  Did Jeshua rise then, or did He wait and rise at dawn the next morning as is commonly taught?  Indeed, John tells us that:

 

Now on the first day of the Weeks Mary Magdalene came to the burial house in the early morning while it was dark, and she saw the stone removed from the tomb.

Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jeshua loved, and she told them, “They have taken our Lord from the burial house, and I do not know where they put Him.”    John 20:1 and 2

 

Jeshua was already out of the tomb before it was opened when the women arrived before sunrise to anoint Him the next day, as the angel who moved the stone told them in Mat 28:1 to 8.32  They had been hoping that with the three days now fulfilled, and Jeshua therefore confirmed as dead by their customs, the guards would allow them into the tomb.33  But instead they have a great surprise!  They arrive and are about to ask the guards for their help when an angel with a sense of the dramatic not only moves the stone for them, but also produces an earthquake.  They are all stunned.  They finally remember that Jeshua said He would rise from the dead: hope revives while they wait for Him to crawl out of the tomb, covered in his grave cloths, like Lazarus had done.  But nothing happens.  They turn to the angel, who tells them that Jeshua is not there.  They go in and see that the tomb is empty.  Jeshua’s body is gone!
Indeed, Jeshua had risen from the dead as dusk was beginning on the previous evening and had left the tomb, exactly fulfilling the Sign of Jonah.  His resurrection at the end of the Sabbath is confirmed by Luke 24:46 which says that Jeshua will rise in three days and Matthew 20:19 which says He will rise on the third day.34  In Luke 24:46, Jeshua specifies that this is the time He will be in the house of the dead, meaning in the tomb.  However, in Matthew 27:63 we are told that Jeshua also said He will rise after three days.35  But in Matthew 27:63, Jeshua is counting the entire time He would actually be dead, which was about 75 hours (more than the required three days- therefore it is after three days!).  Because this verse does not specify only the time in the tomb as the Sign of Jonah does, it includes the time from his death at around 3 PM until he was placed in the tomb.  Jeshua fulfilled all of these scriptures by rising and leaving the tomb just as the Sabbath was ending, exactly three days after His body was left there.
Minutes later the Jews cut the first sheaf of barley for the Wave Sheaf Offering just after the Sabbath ended. The sheaf is the First Fruit which represents the resurrected Anointed One, the beginning of Jehovah’s Harvest from Earth.  It also is fitting that Jeshua was raised on the Sabbath, for He often healed on the Sabbath and taught that the Sabbath was an ideal time for freeing the captives (Luke 4:16-18).36  Death could hold him no longer!  In his new Spirit-based body, Jeshua was able to pass effortlessly through his grave cloths and the stone sealing the tomb.  Jeshua may have spent the night in prayer somewhere beautiful like the garden of Gethsemane, praising Jehovah for his new life and transformation.  The resurrected saints probably gathered with Jeshua to celebrate that night (Matthew 27:50-53).37  The next morning Jeshua spoke to Mary38 and then went to present Himself before God the Father in Heaven as the true fulfilment of the Feast of the Firstfruit (Wave Sheaf Offering), at precisely the same time as the High Priest was offering the premier barley sheaf.  It was only after this had been done that His disciples were allowed to touch Him (See Lev 23:9-12, John 20:17, Matt 28:9).

 

However, how could we be absolutely certain which year was the Impalement year and confirm that the Passover preparation day really did fall on a Wednesday that year?

The Biblical calendar program we outlined above was initially developed specifically to determine the date of Passover Preparation for a series of years during which the Impalement of the Anointed might have taken place.  In Table 3 we also present the lunar eclipses near these dates, which help confirm that the preparation days are correct as they should occur on or just before the full moon eclipse.  The dates according to the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and rabbinical calendars are also included for comparison.39  Note that of the seven listed, the standard rabbinical calculation is only correct for the 32 and 33 CE Passovers.

The Table shows Julian dates for the WCG calculations, and proleptic Gregorian dates for the others.  Julian dates are 2 days earlier than Gregorian dates during the first century CE.  The day of the week remains the same as both systems refer to the same day.  The papal Gregorian calendar was designed to match with the Julian calendar during the third century CE, which marked the first official enforcement of the Roman Catholic methods of determining Easter and the Sabbath (Dan 7:25).

 

Table 3:  Dates of the Passover Sacrifice (Preparation Day)

During the Time of Jeshua the Messiah’s Impalement

Year

(Common Era)

Biblical Calculation

Lunar Eclipse

Jerusalem

WCG’s

“Rabbinical” Calculation

Standard

Rabbinical Calculation

28

Tuesday, 28 March (E)

Wed, 26 April (L)

Monday,

26 April (J)

Monday,

27 March

29

Monday, 16 April

(Poss. Sunday)

Sabbath (Sat),

16 April (J)

Sabbath (Sat),

14 April

30

Friday, 5 April

(Thursday virtually impossible)

Wednesday,

5 April (J)

Wednesday,

3 April

31

Tuesday, 25 March (E)

Wednesday, 23 April (L)

Wed, 23 April PS

Wednesday,

25 April (J)

Monday,

24 March

32

Monday, 12 April

(Poss. Sunday)

Mon, 12 Apr TN

Monday,

14 April (J)

Monday,

12 April

33

Friday, 1 April (E)

Sabbath, 30 April (L)

Fri, 1 Apr PN

Friday,

3 April (J)

Friday,

1 April

34

Wed, 22 March (E)

Thursday, 20 April (L)

Tues, 21 Mar PeN

Wednesday,

21 April (J)

Monday,

20 March

Abbreviations: BiblCal: E=Early, L=Late, Eclipse: =no eclipse, PS=Partial-Seen, TN=Total-Not seen, PN=Partial-Not seen, PeN=Penumbral-Not noticeable, WCG: J=Julian Date system.

 

The Lunar Eclipse data is from NASA (eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCLE/5MCLE-Figs-05.pdf), with the dates converted from Julian to Gregorian.  The 31 CE partial eclipse begins about an hour after sunset and lasts until after midnight in Jerusalem, making it highly visible.  It is a powerful confirmation that this Wednesday is the correct day and provides an extra sign in the heavens that the person who was just murdered and entombed was God’s Son.40
This eclipse was happening while the Jews were remembering their salvation from the Death Angel through the death and blood of their sacrificial lambs.  The First-born Son of God had just died to save not only their first-born, but all of them.  This lunar eclipse also emphasises that the darkness during the day while Jeshua was dying was NOT a solar eclipse as this lunar eclipse proves that the moon was behind the earth relative to the sun, and not between the sun and earth.  The darkness was a supernatural act of Jehovah.  The 32 CE eclipse was not visible in Jerusalem, while the 33 and 34 CE eclipses begin in the afternoon (several hours before moonrise in Jerusalem) and continue into the evening, so only the virtually unnoticeable late stages of the eclipses might have been seen.41

 

All that remained was to confirm the actual year of the Impalement. Once again the Bible contains the information required to determine the year, in this case through two different but interlocking methods.

 

Tiberius Caesar’s Fifteenth Year

One method provides the year by a reference to John the Baptist in Luke 3:1 to 3, which tells us that in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, God called John out of the wilderness and instructed him to ‘preach a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.’

The fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar is the key to establishing this date.  Tiberius became Emperor on 17 August, 14 CE, on the death of Augustus Caesar.  The Jews at that time used a system of counting regnal years that began and ended on Day of Shouting.  This was their ‘civil’ calendar; its origins are probably linked to the fact that the Year of Jubilee began during the seventh month, though it began on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 25:8-17).  However, Abib 1 was still recognised as the beginning of their religious calendar.  Using this reckoning, the first “year” of Tiberius’ reign ran from 17 August, 14 CE until 13 October, 14 CE, the date of the Day of Shouting that year.  The second year of his reign ran from 13 October, 14 CE until 3 October, 15 CE, which was the Day of Shouting on those years.

This series continued until we reach the fifteenth year of his reign, which by Jewish reckoning ran from 19 September, 27 CE until 7 October, 28 CE. Note that John began preaching during Tiberius’ fifteenth year, not after his fifteenth year.

John probably began preaching on or just after the Day of Shouting, an ideal time for his message as the days between the Day of Shouting and Day of Atonement are a traditional time of reflection and repentance among the Jews.  If Jeshua was baptised by John within 52 days after this Day of Shouting, He still had enough days left to fulfil His three and a half year ministry before He was impaled, as the three and a half years are sometimes represented as 1260 days in prophecy.  (This time period fulfils the time that Daniel says must pass (the middle of the week of years) before the Messiah was cut off (see Daniel 9:26 & 27 below)).

This places the time of Jeshua’s anointing (and thirtieth birthdayLuke 3:23) in the autumn of 27 CE and His impalement at the Passover of 31 CE.  However, there was a slight possibility that Jeshua was not baptised by John until a year later, as the Bible does not specify how long John had been preaching when Jeshua was baptised.

 

The Seventy Weeks

This prophecy is the second method of determining year of Jeshua’s impalement. The three and a half years of Jeshua’s ministry, the Wednesday impalement and the rise of the papacy (the only Desolator who began just after Christ’s resurrection and will continue until the end of this age) were all prophesied hundreds of years earlier:

 

“Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal (confirm) vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies.

“Therefore know and understand, that from the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to Messiah the Prince, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.  The streets will be built again, and the defences, even in times of affliction.

“And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah will be cut off, but not for Himself.  And the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed by the people of a prince to come.  And its end will come with an overflow, and until the end will be war, for desolations are determined.

“And He will confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He will make the sacrifice and offering to cease.42  And on the wing of abominations will be a desolator,43 even until the end.  And that which is decreed will be poured out on the desolator.”    Daniel 9:24-27

 

The seventy weeks began with the decree of the Persian King Artaxerxes I recorded for us in Ezra 7:7 to 26.  It is well established that Artaxerxes’ ascension year was 464/463 BCE and his seventh year of reign was thus 458/457 BCE, depending on whether one uses the Persian or the Jewish civil calendar that begins on Tishri 1 (autumn).  Using the latter, the 69 weeks, which was actually 69 by 7 years (using a prophetic system where each week represents seven years) or 483 years, and allowing for there being no Year Zero in the Julian calendar, we arrive at the autumn of 27 CE.  This was the beginning of the 70th week during which the Messiah was to confirm the covenant.  But He was to be cut off in the middle of week, thus bringing an end to sacrifices.44  The middle of that “week” of years was the spring of 31 CE.45  And the middle of the literal week, by God’s reckoning, was the fourth day, the day we call Wednesday.  If one wanted to use the less Biblical Persian calendar system, they would instead arrive at an impalement date of 30 CE.

 

The Destruction of Jerusalem

Perhaps surprisingly, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army under Titus is also linked to Jeshua’s impalement and death.  Just as Jeshua was cut off during the 70th ‘week’ of the prophecy given to Daniel, Jerusalem, with most of its occupants, was cut off in the fortieth year after Jeshua’s death.  Forty is often used in the Bible as a time of testing and trial, such as Israel condemned to 40 years wandering in the wilderness and Jeshua spending 40 days in the desert.  This was done in an incredibly accurate manner.  Jeshua was murdered in Jerusalem on the Passover in 31 CE.  The Jewish people said that Jeshua’s blood was to be on them and their children (Mat 27:25).  Jehovah God, in His mercy, gave them forty years to repent.  Many did, and became Christians.  But the rest only grew in their evil, eventually stoning Stephen to death and persecuting the other Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 6:7 to 8:4).  Jeshua, before He died, gave them this warning:

 

“But when you see that Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, then know that its destruction is near.  Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are within it flee, and do not let those who are in the villages enter her.  For these are the days of vengeance, that everything which is written may be fulfilled.    Luke 21:20-22

 

As Titus’ armies were surrounding Jerusalem, the Christians fled at the same time as the anti-Christian Jewish pilgrims were entering Jerusalem to observe their Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread.  That year the Passover fell on 14th of April.46  On that very day, which marked the exact beginning of the 40th year since Jeshua’s impalement, Titus sealed off Jerusalem and began his siege against it.  On August 30, the Temple was set on fire and completely burnt out.  On September 8, the Romans killed the last Jewish insurrectionists in Jerusalem.  In all, more than one million people died in the siege.  The Jewish people, including their children, paid dearly for their eagerness to kill God’s Son.

 

The Three-Strand Cord

So let us combine these three witnesses to the year of Jeshua’s impalement: The Tiberius calculation gives us 31 CE with a possibility of 32 CE.  The seventy week calculation gives us 31 CE with a possibility of 30 CE.  The 40th year destruction of Jerusalem gives us 31 CE.  The most probable year in all three systems is 31 CE, and the only year possible when the three are combined is 31 CE.  This means that the chronological information given in the Bible and history confirms a Wednesday Impalement in 31 CE.  This also means that it actually denies the possibility of a Friday impalement in the year 30 CE.  Nor is the 33 CE Friday date given by the rabbinical calculation a possibility.

 

The Mark of Jehovah God

The Friday impalement-Sunday resurrection doctrine is a fraud instituted and maintained by a corrupt, paganised church.  It actually denies that Jeshua fulfilled the Sign of Jonah.  To restate this: the Friday crucifixion teaches that Jeshua is a failure and is disqualified as anyone’s Saviour.  So where did this demonic doctrine come from?

The change from a Wednesday to a Friday impalement and from a Sabbath to Sunday resurrection did not “just happen”.  It was a carefully planned and ruthlessly executed attempt to discredit Jeshua and replace Jehovah’s sacred Sabbaths (both annual and weekly) and laws with Babylonian counterfeits (Dan 7:25).  The Great Apostasy began even before the apostle John’s death (Acts 20:28-31, 1 John 2:18-23, Jude 1:3-13, 3rd John 1:9-10).  By 110 CE the pagan infiltrator of the Roman Church, “bishop” Sixtus was forcing these fakes upon the Roman Christians to corrupt Biblical Christianity.47  About 195 CE, pope Victor I attempted to excommunicate the many remaining Quartodeciman congregations when they, represented by Polycrates, refused to abandon the true Passover.48  He failed, but his successors continued the fight.

It took three centuries and the might of the Roman empire to drive the surviving observers of God’s Passover and Sabbaths underground or into the wilderness.  In Constantine and pope Sylvester I we have the first incarnation of the Beast and his False Prophet working together.  Are we overstating this?  Do you know what the Mark of God and the Mark of the Beast are?  First, let Jehovah tell you what His Mark is:

 

“It will be a sign to you on your hand and a reminder between your eyes, that Jehovah’s instruction may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand Jehovah brought you out of Egypt.  You will therefore keep this statute in its season from year to year.    Exodus 13:9-10

 

Please read the context, including Exodus 13:16.  Jehovah says twice that His Mark is our understanding (between our eyes) and our observing (on our hand) His Appointed Times and Instructions, in this case especially the Passover feasts (and also see Deut 6:1-8 and Eze 9:6).  In doing so we acknowledge Him as our God and Jeshua as our Saviour.  The Mark of the Beast is similar, but counterfeit: by believing and observing Easter, Christmas, Sunday and Rome’s many other “holy” days and instructions/traditions, you acknowledge the pope as your god.49

 

Jehovah and His Son

Jeshua means “Jehovah Saves”.  But if so, why didn’t Jehovah die on the post for us Himself?  For one simple reason: Jehovah is the self-existent, eternal Creator.  No one created Him.  He has always existed, is self-sustaining and will continue to exist forever (Isaiah 46:9-10).  He cannot die, for if Jehovah died, everything would cease to exist, as He has both created and sustains everything (Isaiah 42:5).

But He has a beautiful plan which began with the creation of His Son, a true son who was ‘born’ directly from Jehovah, similar to how Eve (Chavvah) was ‘born’ directly from Adam.  Jeshua is made from the same ‘God-spirit’ as His Father.  Jeshua helped his Father create the universe.  The difference between them is this: Jeshua was a finite being, because he had a beginning. He owed his existence to his Father, His life was sustained by His Father and he could die without taking down the universe with him (Dan 7:9-14).

But like his Father, Jeshua is also unique.  He is the “only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).  No one else will ever be born directly from the Father.  In this way Jeshua is also an “Alap and Tau, the First and the Last” like His Father (Rev 22:13).  Jeshua had to grow in wisdom, learning from His Father.  His greatest trial was submitting to death by Impalement.  In this act, Jehovah offered up His Firstborn, fulfilling what He had prophesied through Abraham and Isaac and at the Passover in Egypt.  And one of Jeshua’s rewards for doing so was that He was given life within Himself.  Now Jeshua is self-sustaining, just like His Father (John 5:17 to 34).  Again, Jeshua is unique in this.  Can you see why He is called the “express image of the Father”, making Jeshua also God, but not the Only True God (Col 1:13-19, 1 John 5:20, John 20:28)?  Here are a few of the dozens of supporting Scriptures:

 

Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah! Deuteronomy 6:4

 

. . . yet for us ours is one God, the Father, for everything is from Him, and we are in Him; and one Lord JahJeshua the Messiahfor all is through Him, and we are also in His hand.    1 Corinthians 8:5 & 6

 

Let this mind be in you which was also in Messiah Jeshua, who, while He was in God’s form, did not consider the extortion that He was the equal of God, but He stripped Himself and He took the form of a servant, and was in the form of a child of man and was in nature as a man.

And He humbled Himself and He was obedient unto death, even the death of the stake.    Philippians 2:5-8

 

Jeshua . . . said: “My Father, the hour has come.  Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, because You have given absolutely everything to Him.  He will give everlasting life to them.

“And these things are everlasting life: that they will know You, because You alone are the God of Truth, and He whom You have sent; Jeshua the Messiah.”    John 17:1-3

 

Jeshua agreed to his Father’s plan before anything else was created.  He would one day have to die to redeem the yet-future fallen creation.  Then he helped his Father Jehovah create everything else (John 1:1-18).  The entire Sign of Jonah, indeed the entire plan of salvation, is built upon the death and resurrection of our creatorGod’s true Son.

Like His Father, Jeshua is a triune being: he is one person composed of a body, soul and spirit.50  We also have this image, though our current bodies are made from earth (1 Thes 5:23).  In contrast, the Holy Spirit is divine, has a personality, but has no body and is under the authority of both Jehovah God and Lord Jeshua (John 15:26).
Once again, the papacy has a counterfeit: they use renamed pagan trinities, shown below (also see Rev 16:13).51

 

 
 

Chaldean and Hindu Trinities from The Two Babylons by Hislop.  Typical pagan trinities comprised the Father, Mother and Son.  The Mother was often represented by a dove, as Romanism sometimes represents Mary.

 

In this they again deny both the Father and the Son (even while still using versions of their names), and once more we have a bizarre perversion of the truth promoted by the “church” of Rome and for a time enforcedbrutallyby Constantine.  And so we see another of the deep corruptions of the Great Apostasy.

All of this brings us to another aspect of the Sign of Jonah: The people of Nineveh repented of their lawlessness when Jonah preached Jehovah’s message to them and decided to walk in Jehovah’s way (Jonah chapter 3).  You too must decide: Who will you believe and obey?  Jehovah God’s Word or Satan’s servantsthe Popes and the various pseudo-churches that are their unfaithful ‘children’ (Revelation 17:1-18)?

 

As this document demonstrates, Jeshua the Messiah did in fact fulfil the Sign of Jonah, the primary proof of His identity as the Son of God and our Saviour.  The key to this knowledge has been God’s Biblical Calendar.

 

But for completeness, let us examine some Scriptures that are claimed to negate the Wednesday Impalement, and then examine Table 4, pages 61 to 63 which summarises all of these arguments.

 

 

The “Difficult Scriptures”

The Road to Emmaus

Some people suggest that the disciples’ comment on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13 to 35) that “this day brings us to the third day from which these things came to pass” (Luke 24:21 from the Greek) does not fit with a Wednesday impalement as late Sunday afternoon would be the fourth day since the impalement.  However, the disciples did not say that “this day brings us to the third day from the impalement”, but rather “from these things”.  The Aramaic makes it clear: “...behold, three days have passed since all these things happened.”52  The last things to happen concerning the impalement actually occurred on the following day when the chief priests went back to Pilate and asked for the tomb to be sealed and guards to be placed outside the tomb.  Pilate complied with their requests.  These things all occurred on the Thursday:three days later was Sunday, fitting in with the disciples’ statement.
And how does their comment fit with a Friday impalement?  Sunday is only two days since the impalementthere is no fit possible.  This ‘difficult passage’ actually supports a Wednesday impalement and denies a Friday crucifixion.53

 

The First Day of the Week

Mark 16:9, in the NKJV reads: “Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.”

This appears to support a Sunday resurrection.  But there are two problems with the above translation, which result in this verse when corrected: “But after He rose, early on the first day of the week He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.”

The problems are these: The Greek word for rose is in the second aorist form, which is normally translated in the past tense.  The commas are not in the original Greek and have been placed in most translations to make it appear that Jeshua rose from the dead on Sunday morning, rather than showing that Sunday morning was the time when He appeared to Mary.  The Aramaic confirms this, showing that the sun rose then, not Jeshua.

 

Parts of Three Days and Three Nights

Can the Sign of Jonah Mean Parts of Three Days?

We have heard people claim that scripture shows that part of a day can be counted as a full day.  If so, parts of three days could be counted as if they were three full days.

But is this what the Bible teaches? Let us see how God defines a day:

 

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning: Day One.    Genesis 1:5

 

And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying: “Also the tenth day of this seventh new moon will be the Day of Atonement.  It will be to you a sabbath of sabbath observance, and you will afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the new moon at evening, from evening to evening, you will celebrate your sabbath.”    Leviticus 23:26-27, 32

 

What do we have in Genesis 1:5?  This is when Jehovah God invents days and defines them: one night period plus one daylight period equals one day.  He has never given it another definition.  But let us not stop there: also read Genesis 1:8now we have second night and second day and God calls this two days.  And again in Genesis 1:13a third night and a third day and God says this is three days.  This is Jehovah God’s definition of what three nights and three days means.  Do not be deceived by unscriptural definitions from the Talmud or scholars claiming that part days are equal to whole days.  Jeshua used His Father’s formula when giving us the prophecy of the Sign of Jonah: three nights and three days.  What can it mean but 72 hours, just as the first three days of creation were 72 hours long?54  And just to show that God does not change, He uses the same idea of a day in the Leviticus passage above: evening to eveninga day is 24 hours long.

But let us indulge those that have their own definitions of a day for a while and see if they can prove their definition from the Bible.  But why do they even want other definitions? -to make their strange Crucifixion-Resurrection scenarios work.  The Friday crucifixionists claim that any part of a day is equal to an entire day.  The typical Friday scenario is this: Jeshua died on Friday afternoon, so that makes the entire day of Friday the first day and even Thursday night becomes the first night.  Friday night is the second night, and Saturday daytime is the second day. Then Saturday night is the third night and Sunday is the third day.  At least they are sort-of using Biblical days which go from dusk to dusk.  So their claim is that at most 38 hours, if we include the time from when Jeshua died until he was placed in the tomb, is really 72 hours.

Wow!  I cannot see my boss agreeing to this definition on payday, and I don’t believe any of these people would agree to it either if they were my boss.

If Jeshua had only said that He would rise the third day and there was clear Bible evidence that this dubious part-day equals full-day counting method was valid, then perhaps this scheme might work.  However, Jeshua also said that He would be “in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.”  How can anyone really count a day (daytime Sunday) and a night (Thursday) when they are also admitting that Jeshua was not in the tomb for any part of either of those times?  It is absurd.  God is precise, this is anything but!

A Thursday impalement can be fitted into this format, and uses a slightly more plausible redefinition: any part of a half-day counts as a full half-day.  For example, a few minutes in the tomb at the end of Thursday counts as the entire day-time part of Thursday.  Likewise, they leave Jeshua dead in the tomb most of Saturday night but count it as a full night.  Voila, three days and three nights!  But what has really happened?  The Thursday impalement only allows for two nights, two days, part of another night and at most one-fourth of another day if we ignore the requirement for Jeshua’s body to be in the tomb.  The total time is a maximum of 62 hours, ten hours short of the Sign of Jonah and clearly falling short of the “after three days” of Matthew 27:63.  Nor does it meet the Hebrew requirement of a minimum of 72 hours to prove he was truly dead, and therefore had to be miraculously resurrected.  Only the Wednesday Impalement-Sabbath Resurrection meets all of these criteria.

The Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Impalement scenarios are compared in Table 4, pages 61 to 63.

But to complete the analysis we will also look at the scriptures which Thursday and Friday crucifixionists claim prove their part-day equals full-day counting methods.

 

Rehoboam

The claim is frequently made that Second Chronicles 10:3-12, where Rehoboam says in verse 5 for the people to come back to him “after three days” (in the KJV and NKJV) and yet in vs 12 they come back on the third day, proves that a part day is equal to a full day.  The claim is entirely based on a mistranslation of vs 5.  If you compare this phrase with its equivalent in Jehoshua (Joshua) 3:2, you will find that “after” in Jehoshua comes from קְצֵה -qatseh (Strongs 7097).  This word does not exist in 2 Chr 10:5.  All Rehoboam really said was “Come back to me in three days”, just as they did.  The ESV, HCSB and YLT translations all have it translated correctly.  This passage does not support either the Thursday or Friday Impalement scenarios.  Is it wise to corrupt Jeshua’s Great Sign for nothing more than an obvious mistranslation?

 

Jonah

The claim is made that the account of Jonah does not require three full days and three full nights.  Is this so?  The scriptures say:

 

Now Jehovah had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah.  And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.    Jonah 1:17

 

This is exactly what Jeshua said.  Although the account does not say that Jonah spent precisely 72 hours in the belly of the fish, there is nothing anywhere in the book of Jonah to indicate that the period of time Jonah spent in the belly of the fish was not 72 hours, just as Jeshua was the same length of time in the heart of the earth.

While we are talking about Jonah, it is good to notice the symbolism of Jonah being “in the belly of the great fish”: he was entombed, meaning he was totally surrounded by the belly of the fish, just as Jeshua was totally surrounded by the earth (literally rock) while he was enclosed in the tomb.  Belly in Matthew 12:40 is translated from the Greek κοιλια, (koilia) with the meaning of “hollow”, again matching well with a tomb carved as a hollow in the earth.

 

Esther’s Fast

It is claimed that Esther’s Fast, in Esther 4:15 to 5:1, proves that part days are counted as full days.  Indeed, three days of fasting, night and day, were called for.  And Esther did go before the king on the third day.  But does this prove part days are counted as full days?  Let us look closely at the account.

Esther calls the fast and then says that “My maids and I will fast likewise, and so I will go to the king,”.  She does not say that ‘I will go to the king after the fast’, but rather “so I will go to the king”.  She is saying she will go to the king while everyone is still fasting.  Verse 5:1 tells us that she went to the king on the last day of their fast.  Though this verse does not specify the exact time she went to the king, I suspect that it would have been just before the fast was to end.  In this way she would be approaching the king at the time her people’s prayers were reaching a crescendo before God.  Certainly if it was me in her place, that is the time I would choose.

This idea is supported by the fact that the fast was specified as lasting for three days, night and day.  This suggests that the fast began at dusk that day, allowing time for Mordecai to inform all the Jews in Sushan of the fast and setting definite beginning and end points.  The fast then went for the next three nights and their following days.  Her approach to the king near the end of the third day would then occur as the fast approached 72 hours.

So we see that the time of Esther’s approach to the king does not prove that their fast was not a full three days and three nights long.

 

The Egyptian Servant

In 1 Samuel 30:11-13 the servant tells David’s men that he had not eaten for three days and three nights.  Then he tells David that he had been abandoned “for I have been sick three days”.  This is simply the same formula Jehovah used during creation week (three days and three nights means three full days) and does not even suggest, let alone prove, that part of a day equals a full day.

 

Heart of the Earth

Another desperate attempt to justify the Friday impalement is to claim that ‘the heart of the earth’ actually refers to Jeshua being under Satan’s power.  (Luke 4:5 to 6 show that Satan is presently ruler of this earth, though even so he can only do what Jehovah allows.)  This time period supposedly begins when Satan has Jeshua arrested in Gethsemane.  Even if we were to accept that Jeshua was still under Satan’s power while He was dead (which we do not acceptsee Ecclesiastes 9:5 & 12:7), this idea only converts Friday into a full day from a part day and adds Thursday as a new part night.  It still only amounts to three nights and two daylight periods.  It does not fulfil Jeshua’s three days and three nights.  Nor are there any scriptures that support the concept that Satan is somehow the “heart of the earth”.  The closest to this idea we can find is that Satan will be imprisoned in the earth in the Abyss for a thousand years (Rev 20:1 to 3).  But that has not happened yet, and he will be powerless then anyway.

 

 

Conclusion

As summarised in Table 4, only the Wednesday Impalement and Sabbath Resurrection are consistent with all of the relevant Scriptures, have a viable Preparation/Passover Sacrifice Day in the year 31 AD, which history and the Bible identify as the year of the Impalement, satisfy Hebrew criteria for a miraculous resurrection and have been faithfully observed and taught down through the centuries by the children of God.

 

 

Table 4: Comparison of Impalement-Resurrection Scenarios

Wednesday Impalement (Crucifixion) - Sabbath Resurrection

Day: Roman

Wednesday Daylight

Wed/Thurs Night

Thursday

Daylight

Thurs/Fri  Night

Friday Daylight

Fri/Sat  Night

Saturday Daylight

Sat/Sun Night

Sunday

Daylight

RESULT

and

CONCLUSION

Day: Biblical

Day 4 Day

Day 5 Night

Day 5 Day

Day 6 Night

Day 6 Day

Sabbath Night

Sabbath Day

Day 1 Night

Day 1 Day

Wednesday Impalement- Sabbath Resurrection

 

 

Sign of Jonah

3 days & 3 nights

Preparation: Jeshua dies at 3PM, sealed in tomb as dusk begins, so this day Jeshua is not sealed in the heart of the earth.

Unleavened Bread: Great Sabbath

 

 

First night in the heart of the earth.

Unleavened Bread:

Great

Sabbath

 

 

First day

in the heart of the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second night in the heart of the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second day

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath

 

 

 

Third night in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath and is resurrected as  Sabbath ends.

 

Third day

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua is already out of the tomb, having spent exactly three nights and days in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua is already resurrected  when His disciples arrive before dawn.  He is seen later this day.

Jeshua perfectly fulfils the Sign of Jonah, spending exactly 3 nights and 3 days in the Heart of the Earth (Mt 12:40).  Lord Jeshua is our Saviour.

Hours Dead

3

12

12

12

12

12

11.99

 

 

74.99 Hours

Rose After Three Days.

Hours in Tomb

0.01

12

12

12

12

12

11.99

 

 

72 hours

3 nights/3 days fulfilled.

Rose on third day.

 

This Table shows how Jeshua fulfilled all of the time-related constraints involved in His Impalement and Resurrection.  They are threefold: Jeshua must rise from the dead on the third day/in three days (Matthew 20:17-19, Mark 10:34, Luke 24:46); He must spend three full days and nights in the tomb (the Heart of the Earth─Matthew 12:38-40) and He must rise after three days (Matthew 27:63).

If Jeshua was impaled, killed and placed in the tomb at the end of Wednesday afternoon and was resurrected at the end of the Sabbath day, He has thus been raised from the dead on the third day, which was the Sabbath.  Likewise, as the Sign of Jonah specifies the time in the tomb, the above scenario precisely fulfils the Three Days and Three Nights.  And as the passage in Matthew 27:63 only refers to the time that Jeshua will be dead, that runs from 3 PM Wednesday to near 6 PM on the Sabbath.  This is more than 72 hours, so He also rose after three days.

All three constraints have been fulfilled, confirming Jeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah and Son of God.

 

 

Thursday Impalement (Crucifixion) - Sunday Resurrection

Day: Roman

Wednesday Daylight

Wed/Thurs Night

Thursday

Daylight

Thurs/Fri Night

Friday

Daylight

Fri/Sat  Night

Saturday

Daylight

Sat/Sun Night

Sunday

Daylight

RESULT

and

CONCLUSION

Day: Bible

Day 4 Day

Day 5 Night

Day 5 Day

Day 6 Night

Day 6 Day

Sabbath Night

Sabbath Day

Day 1 Night

Day 1 Day

Thursday Impalement- Sunday Resurrection

 

 

 

 

Sign of Jonah

3 days & 3 nights

 

 

Jeshua dies at 3PM, sealed in tomb as dusk begins, so this day Jeshua is barely in the heart of the earth.

Unleavened Bread High Sabbath:

 

 

 

 

First night

in the heart of the earth.

Unleavened Bread High Sabbath:

 

 

 

 

First day

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath

 

 

 

 

Second night

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath

 

 

 

 

 

Second day

in the heart of the earth.

Night not completed as Jeshua is resurrected before dawn.

 

 

Third night

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua is already resurrected when disciples arrive before dawn, so this day Jeshua is not in the heart of the earth.  Jeshua is seen later this day.

Jeshua fails to fulfil the Sign of Jonah, spending  less than 3 nights and only two days in the heart of the earth.  Jeshua is an impostor or Thursday impalement is wrong.

Hours Dead

 

 

3

12

12

12

12

11

 

62 hours:

After three days NOT fulfilled.

Hours in Tomb

 

 

0.01

12

12

12

12

11

 

59.01 Hours

3 nights/3days

NOT fulfilled.

On third day NOT fulfilled.

 

With the same threefold constraints as in the Wednesday-Sabbath Table, it can be seen that even if part-days are accepted as if they were whole days, Jeshua was still raised before the third day began.  He could not fulfil the full three days and nights required for the Sign of Jonah, as He would only spend about 59 hours in the tomb, not the entire 72 hours.  Likewise He could not fulfil the requirement to be raised after three days, as at most He was only dead for 62 hours.  The Thursday Impalement scenario fails all three of the criteria the Scriptures place on these events.

 

This confirms that Jeshua (Jesus) was NOT impaled on a Thursday.

 

 

Friday Impalement (Crucifixion) - Sunday Resurrection

Day: Roman

Wednesday Daylight

Wed/Thurs Night

Thursday

Daylight

Thurs/Fri Night

Friday

Daylight

Fri/Sat  Night

Saturday

Daylight

Sat/Sun Night

Sunday

Daylight

RESULT

and

CONCLUSION

Day: Bible

Day 4 Day

Day 5 Night

Day 5 Day

Day 6 Night

Day 6 Day

Sabbath Night

Sabbath Day

Day 1 Night

Day 1 Day

Friday Impalement-

Sunday Resurrection

 

 

 

Sign of Jonah

3 days & 3 nights

 

 

 

 

Jeshua dies at 3PM, sealed in tomb as dusk begins, so this day Jeshua is barely in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath

 

 

 

 

First night

in the heart of the earth.

Jeshua rests on the Sabbath

 

 

 

 

 

First day

in the heart of the earth.

Night not completed as Jeshua is resurrected before dawn.

 

 

Second night

in the heart of the earth,

Jeshua is already resurrected when disciples arrive before dawn, so this day Jeshua is not in the heart of the earth.  Jeshua is seen later this day.

Jeshua fails to fulfil the Sign of Jonah, spending only most of 2 nights and one day in the heart of the earth.  Jeshua is an impostor or Friday Impalement is wrong.

Hours Dead

 

 

 

 

3

12

12

11

 

38 Hours:

After 3 days NOT fulfilled.

Hours in Tomb

 

 

 

 

0.01

12

12

11

 

35.01 Hours:

3 nights/3 days NOT fulfilled

On third day NOT fulfilled.

 

With the same threefold constraints as in the Wednesday-Sabbath Table, it is obvious that Jeshua was raised before the second day dawned, let alone on the third day.  This constraint was not met.  Moreover, He could not fulfil the full three days and three nights required for the Sign of Jonah, as He would only spend about 35 hours in the tomb, less than half of the entire 72 hours.  Likewise He could not fulfil the requirement to be raised after three days, as at most He was only dead for 38 hours.  The “Good Friday Impalement/CrucifixionEaster Sunday Resurrection” scenario fails all three of the criteria the Scriptures place on these events.

 

This confirms that Jeshua (Jesus) was NOT impaled on a Friday.

https://chcpublications.net    Permission is granted to reproduce these tables.

 

Dates of God’s Holy Days to 2040

The following Tables 5 & 6 (pages 65 to 68) give the calculated dates for God’s Holy Days from 2019 to 2040 CE.  These calculations are secondary to actual observation of the New Moon and Abib barley near Jerusalem for each year.

The Holy Days begin at dusk on the previous evening and finish at dusk on the given dates in the Tables for Israel and countries to their west as far as the International Date Line (IDL).  The Holy Days begin at dusk in Israel and move westward around the entire world with the dusk until it reaches Israel again, so NO countries begin their Holy Days before Israel.  Man’s incorrect placing of the IDL means that the Annual Holy Days and seventh-day Sabbath are observed most of a day later than Israel for countries west of the IDL and east of Israel when using conventional IDL-based time zones and dates.

Jeshua’s new Covenant replaced the animal sacrifices with the sacrifice of Himself, and replaced the Levitical priesthood with the new priesthood consisting of all His followers, with Jeshua as our High Priest.  The sacrifices were taken away, but the sacred times remained.  The Levites offered sacrifices every day (Numbers 28:3-8), with special sacrifices on the weekly Sabbath (Numbers 28:9-10) and on the annual Sabbaths (Leviticus 23).  These were all replaced by Jeshua’s one sacrifice (Hebrews 4:1 to 10:39).

In a similar manner, the ministry of death for sin that was part of the Instructions for those governing Israel has been replaced by the ministry of Mercy: calling sinners to repentance, forgiveness and a new life of righteousness as servants, friends, siblingsand eventually spousesof the Messiah (John 13:16, John 15:15, Mat 25:44, Rom 8:15-19, 2 Cor 11:2 & Rev 19:1-9).

 

 

Table 5: Calculated Dates for Jehovah God’s Spring Holy Days

Year

Abib 1

Passover

Unleavened

Bread

Wave

Offering

Pentecost

2019(E)

2019(L)

2020

2021(E)

9 Mar

7 Apr

26 Mar

15 Mar

22 Mar

20 Apr

8 Apr

28 Mar

23 to 29 Mar

21 to 27 Apr

9 to 15 Apr

29 Mar to 4 Apr

24 Mar

21 Apr

12 Apr

4 Apr

12 May

9 June

31 May

23 May

2021(L)

2022

2023

2024(E)

14 Apr

3 Apr

23 Mar

12 Mar

27 Apr

16 Apr

5 Apr

25 Mar

28 Apr to 4 May

17 to 23 Apr

6 to 12 Apr

26 Mar to 1 Apr

2 May

17 Apr

9 Apr

31 Mar

20 June

5 June

28 May

19 May

2024(L)

2025

2026

2027(E)

10 Apr

31 Mar

21 Mar

10 Mar

23 Apr

13 Apr

3 Apr

23 Mar

24 to 30 Apr

14 to 20 Apr

4 to 10 Apr

24 to 30 Mar

28 Apr

20 Apr

5 Apr

28 Mar

16 June

8 June

24 May

16 May

2027(L)

2028

2029(E)

2029(L)

9 Apr

28 Mar

17 Mar

16 Apr

22 Apr

10 Apr

30 Mar

29 Apr

23 to 29 Apr

11 to 17 Apr

31 Mar to 6 Apr

30 Apr to 6 May

25 Apr

16 Apr

1 Apr

6 May

13 June

4 June

20 May

24 June

2030

2031

2032(E)

2032(L)

5 Apr

25 Mar

13 Mar

12 Apr

18 Apr

7 Apr

26 Mar

25 Apr

19 to 25 Apr

8 to 14 Apr

27 Mar to 2 Apr

26 Apr to 2 May

21 Apr

13 Apr

28 Mar

2 May

9 June

1 June

16 May

20 June

2033

2034

2035(E)

2035(L)

1 Apr

22 Mar

12 Mar

10 Apr

14 Apr

4 Apr

24 Mar

23 Apr

15 to 21 Apr

5 to 11 Apr

26 Mar to 1 Apr

24 to 30 Apr

17 Apr

9 Apr

1 Apr

29 Apr

5 June

28 May

20 May

17 June

2036

2037(E)

2037(L)

2038(E)

30 Mar

19 Mar

18 (17) Apr

8 Mar

12 Apr

1 Apr

1 May (30 Apr)

21 Mar

13 to 19 Apr

2 to 8 Apr

2 (1) to 8 (7) May

22 to 28 Mar

13 Apr

5 Apr

3 May

28 Mar

1 June

24 May

21 June

16 May

2038(L)

2039

2040(E)

2040(L)

7 (6) Apr

27 (26) Mar

15 Mar

13 Apr

20 (19) Apr

9 (8) Apr

28 Mar

26 Apr

21 (20) to 27 (26) Apr

10 (9) to 16 (15) Apr

29 Mar to 4 Apr

27 Apr to 3 May

25 Apr

10 Apr

1 Apr

29 Apr

13 June

29 May

20 May

17 June

 

Abib 1 is not a designated Holy Day, but it is “New Year’s Day” in God’s Calendar and determines the dates of the Spring Holy Days.  Abib 1 should be confirmed by observation of the crescent New Moon and the maturity of the barley the previous evening in Jerusalem.  The dates in brackets are the less probable days when the new moon crescent visibility is borderline and two months are listed for years with early (E) or late (L) barley options for Abib.  The first day and last day of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost are Annual Sabbaths.

 

People living east of Israel and west of the incorrectly positioned International Date Line should observe the following day for each of the above dates, including the weekly seventh-day Sabbath (See The International Date Line and God’s Sabbaths at https://chcpublications.net/IDL-Sabbath.html)

 

Table 6: Calculated Dates for Jehovah God’s Autumn Holy Days

Year

Shouting

(Ethanim 1)

Day of Atonement

Feast of Booths

Last Great Day

2019(E)

2019(L)

2020

2021(E)

1 Sep

30 Sep (1 Oct)

19 Sep

9 Sep

10 Sep

9 (10) Oct

28 Sep

18 Sep

15 to 21 Sep

14 (15) to 20 (21) Oct

3 to 9 Oct

23 to 29 Sep

22 Sep

21 (22) Oct

10 Oct

30 Sep

2021(L)

2022

2023

2024(E)

8 Oct

28 Sep

17 Sep

5 Sep

17 Oct

7 Oct

26 Sep

14 Sep

22 to 28 Oct

12 to 18 Oct

1 to 7 Oct

19 to 25 Sep

29 Oct

19 Oct

8 Oct

26 Sep

2024(L)

2025

2026

2027(E)

5 Oct

24 Sep

13 (14) Sep

3 Sep

14 Oct

3 Oct

22 (23) Sep

12 Sep

19 to 25 Oct

8 to 14 Oct

27 (28) Sep to 3 (4) Oct

17 to 23 Sep

26 Oct

15 Oct

4 (5) Oct

24 Sep

2027(L)

2028

2029(E)

2029(L)

2 (3) Oct

21 Sep

11 Sep

10 Oct

11 (12) Oct

30 Sep

20 Sep

19 Oct

16 (17) to 22 (23) Oct

5 to 11 Oct

25 Sep to 1 Oct

24 to 30 Oct

23 (24) Oct

12 Oct

2 Oct

31 Oct

2030

2031

2032(E)

2032(L)

30 Sep

19 Sep

7 Sep

7 Oct

9 Oct

28 Sep

16 Sep

16 Oct

14 to 20 Oct

3 to 9 Oct

21 to 27 Sep

21 to 27 Oct

21 Oct

10 Oct

28 Sep

28 Oct

2033

2034

2035(E)

2035(L)

26 Sep

15 Sep

4 Sep

3 (4) Oct

5 Oct

24 Sep

13 Sep

12 (13) Oct

10 to 16 Oct

29 Sep to 5 Oct

18 to 24 Sep

17 (18) to 23 (24) Oct

17 Oct

6 Oct

25 Sep

24 (25) Oct

2036

2037(E)

2037(L)

2038(E)

22 Sep

11 (12) Sep

11 Oct

1 Sep

1 Oct

20 (21) Sep

20 Oct

10 Sep

6 to 12 Oct

25 (26) Sep to 1 (2) Oct

25 to 31 Oct

15 to 21 Sep

13 Oct

2 (3) Oct

1 Nov

22 Sep

2038(L)

2039

2040(E)

2040(L)

30 Sep (1 Oct)

20 Sep

8 (9) Sep

8 Oct

9 (10) Oct

29 Sep

17 (18) Sep

17 Oct

14 (15) to 20 (21) Oct

4 to 10 Oct

22 (23) to 28 (29) Sep

22 to 28 Oct

21 (22) Oct

11 Oct

29 (30) Sep

29 Oct

 

Shouting, Atonement, the first day of Booths and the Last Great Day are all Annual Sabbaths.  Ethanim 1 should be confirmed by observation of the crescent New Moon the previous evening in Jerusalem.  The dates in brackets are the less probable days when the new moon crescent visibility is borderline and two months are listed for years with early (E) or late (L) barley options for the Wave Offering during Abib.

People living east of Israel and west of the incorrectly positioned International Date Line should observe the following day for each of the above dates, including the weekly Sabbath.  This delay allows the New Moon to be observed in Israel before the New Moon is ‘declared’ in these regions.

Copyright 2024     Central Highlands Christian Publications

Permission is granted to reproduce these tables.

 

 

Another article, Christian Holy Days, unlocks the Christian meaning of the Biblical Holy Days, which reveal God’s Plan of Salvation.  Table 7 summarises their meaning.

Table 7: Christian Meaning of the Biblical Holy Days

Biblical Holy Day

Christian Meaning

Last Supper

Jeshua Institutes the Eucharist    Mat 26:26-28

Passover

Death of the Anointed for our sins    John 1:29

Week of Unleavened Bread

New life of overcoming sin, granted through the Anointed’s sacrifice    Romans 6:1 to 23

Wave Offering or First-Fruit (during Week of Unleavened Bread)

Jeshua’s resurrection, symbol of our future resurrection to eternal life

1 Corinthians 15:20 to 23

First-Fruits (Pentecost)

Christ’s followers receive the Holy Spirit

Acts 2:1 to 39

Near the end of the Great Tribulation, Jeshua the Anointed Returns as the King of Earth    Revelation 11:15 to 18; 1 Thes 4:15 to 17

Day of Shouting

Satan launches his war against Christ from Megiddo and is defeated

Eze 38:1 to 39:7, Rev 16:12 to 21 & 19:1 to 21

Day of Atonement

Satan is imprisoned for 1000 years for his part in humanity’s sin, all living humans stand before the Anointed for judgement

Revelation 19:1 to 20:3; Matthew 25:31 to 46

Feast of Booths

Jeshua establishes His Kingdom on Earth, rebuilds earth with the help of His followers.  This is a glorious Thousand Year Kingdom.    Revelation 20:4 to 6; Ezekiel 47:1 to 12

Last Great Day

Satan released, humanity tested for last time and the unfaithful destroyed.  Eternal kingdom of peace established and the saints dwell in God’s New Jerusalem forever.

Revelation 20:5 to 22:20

 

 

Appendix: The Church of God in the Wilderness

The Waldenses are a particularly important link in the history of the Church of God as they can be traced all the way back to 120 CE when they were driven out of the Roman churches as the Babylonian pagans took control and began forcing those who remained to observe Easter instead of the true Passover, as shown earlier.55  They also replaced the seventh-day Sabbath with a first-day counterfeit.  Many of them fled to the mountain valleys in northern Italy, where they were eventually called Waldenses.  Their numbers grew every time the Roman Empire, eventually replaced by the Roman Catholic ‘church’, struck out against Bible-believing Christians.  They were joined by fellow Christians fleeing persecution from many regions, including the Middle East and eastern Europe.  They spread into many mountain valleys throughout Europe.
Once the Roman Emperor was taken out of the way (2 Thes 2:1-17) and the Roman Catholic popes became both the pagan “Pontifex Maximus”56 and a secular ruler, the origin of the persecution shifted directly to the papacy.  Over the following 1260 years, numerous crusades were instigated by them against these Bible-believing Christians living in the wilderness (Rev 12:6).  Often they had to escape from one region to another to avoid torture, rape, mutilation, forced ‘conversions’ and ultimately death at the hands of the papacy’s fiends.

Various names were given to them as they spread or relocated, including Albigenses and Vaudois.  In the 1320s Walter Lollard, one of their preachers, travelled to England and established their faith there, which spread throughout Britain and Germany.  It seems probable that their teachings inspired John Wycliffe to translate the Bible into English.  Eventually some of their teachings were accepted by the Reformers who came out of the Roman Catholic church, sometimes resulting in a more tolerant society for them.

When North America opened up to European settlement, many fled there with the more sympathetic Protestants as it promised to be a land where they could worship Jehovah without persecution.  This, and much more, is explored in Dugger and Dodd’s A History of the True Church.

 

Their distinctive beliefs were based on this: that the Bible was their only source for all that they believed.  As a result, they worshipped Jehovah as the one true God and Jeshua (Jesus) as His only true son and their Lord.  They believed that salvation was only through faith in the shed blood of Jeshua to wash away their sins, that only full immersion baptism of believers was to be practised and that Jeshua’s gift of the Holy Spirit enabled us to observe God’s Law, which was a requirement for true Christians.  Therefore, they observed the seventh-day Sabbath, kept Passover on the 14th of the first Biblical month and believed that one day Jeshua would return, destroy the fake ‘church’ and establish the eternal Kingdom of God.57  They also believed that these teachings had been handed down to them from the Apostles themselves.
These beliefs forced them to utterly reject the authority of the popes and their priests and monks, as well as the many Roman Catholic traditions and superstitions which contradicted these Biblical beliefs.  It was their refusal to submit to the abominations of the Papacy and their love of Jehovah and His Truth that drove Satan’s hordes into barbaric fury against them.58

 

 

Some Other Resources Available from https://chcpublications.net/

Publications

The Holy Bible CHCoG Translation - This translation from the original Hebrew and Aramaic is accurate and readable, giving you a clear understanding of how the New and Old Covenants are interlocked and God’s message to you.

Everlasting Life is God’s Gift - Does the Bible teach that you have everlasting life?  If not, how can you receive God’s gift of immortality?

Annual Holy Day Service Transcripts Take a deeper look at the significance of Jehovah God’s Holy Days, which reveal His beautiful Plan of Salvation.

Jeshua the Messiah: Is He the Son of God or Part of a Trinity? - Explores the relationships between God the Father, our Lord Jeshua, the Holy Spirit and us.

Books of Moses - Fact or Fiction Series - Are the miracles recorded in Genesis and Exodus our true history?  Do the facts support Special Creation or the Big Bang & Evolution scenarios?  What about the Flood, Babel and the Exodus?

What is God’s Name? - How can we know what God’s Name is and how to Pronounce it?  Does the Bible teach us to use God’s Name?

The Ten CommandmentsWhat are God’s Ten Commandments? How do they guide us in our relationships with God, our family and our neighbours?  Shows how obedience to Jehovah’s Instructions would result in true civilization.

Seventy Years in the Church of RomeCharles Chiniquy, an ex-Catholic Priest, reveals many of the corruptions and perversions of Catholicism.

The Sabbath in Scripture - Has God’s Seventh-day Sabbath been ‘done away with’?  What does the Sabbath mean, and does God want us to keep it?

Sex, God and Families - Pamphlet exposing the dangers of sexual immorality and outlining the benefits of following God’s sexual principles.

Eastern Meditation and Jeshua the Messiah - Recounts the experiences of a CHCoG member who became a Christian while practising Eastern Meditation.

Spirit, Soul and Body - Take a deeper look at the Bible’s teachings about the composition of human beings and the roles of our soul and spirit.

The Catholic Chronicles - Keith Green covers: Eating the Flesh of Deity, What is Transubstantiation? The Sacrifice of the Mass? Salvation According to Rome?

Unclean Animals and Food - What does the Bible teach about clean and unclean animals?  Does the New Covenant allow us to eat unclean meat?

Radiocarbon Dating - Shows how changes in radioactive carbon levels can drastically alter radiocarbon dates.  Not heavily technical.

Software

Calculated Biblical Calendar - Calculates dates of Annual Holy Days, Crucifixion, Flood, Creation: allows you to test the new moon visibility locally.

Radiocarbon Dating - Calculates the effects that changes in the geomagnetic field, radiocarbon/carbon ratios, etc have on radioactive carbon dating.

Free Library

We have a large range of Christian and Creationist literature, CDs and DVDs that are available for borrowing within Australia.  Please contact us for our list.

 

 

Endnotes

 

1 To fulfil the Sign of Jonah, Jesus had to fulfil ALL the parts of this Sign.  “Merely” dying and being resurrected was not enough; He had to fulfil the entire three days and three nights in the grave as well.  And beyond that, His resurrection was unlike any other recorded in Scripture: He was the first to be raised in an eternal spirit-based body (The First-Fruit).  All others, such as Lazarus, were resurrected back into their earthly bodies, which continued to age and die.

2 Jehovah is the One True God’s name, as shown in our What is God's Name? article.  Most English translations follow the anti-Biblical traditions of the Rabbinic Jews and substitute the title LORD or descriptor GOD for Jehovah’s actual name.

3 Commonly translated as Jesus Christ: Jesus is Greek for Jeshua’s actual Hebrew/Aramaic name יֵשֻׁוּע , which means “Jehovah Saves”.  Jeshua, as He was God’s Son, was filled with the Holy Spirit all of His life, but His public Anointing is recorded in Luke 3:21-22 and John 1:29 to 34.  Messiah משׁׅיחׇא and Christ are respectively Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek for Anointed.

4 See also Mat 16:4 and Luke 11:29

5 Messiah is Hebrew for the Anointed.

6 See Luke 22:1 to 13, which shows Jeshua instituting the Last Supper on the evening beginning the preparation for Passover.  Some claim that this meal was the Passover lamb, but that idea is based on mistranslations.  Here is Luke 22:7-9 correctly translated from the Greek:  Then came the days of the unleavened bread when the Passover must be sacrificed.  And He sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare for the Passover for us, that we may eat.” So they said to Him, “Where do You want us to prepare?”  The meal they ate that night was in the room they had made ready for them to eat the Passover in the following night.  Only Jeshua knew that He would be dead the next night, and thus unable to eat the Passover with them.  John 18:39 confirms that Jeshua was impaled (crucified) on the Passover.  John 19:31 tells us the legs of the criminals were broken to hasten their death, so they would not be suffering on their crosses on the Great (Solemn) Sabbath, which was when the Passover lambs were eaten and commemorates the night the Death Angel passed over in Egypt (Exodus chapters 7 to 15).

7 Contrary to some sources, Abib does NOT mean ‘green ears.’  Barley can show immature green ears for  more than a month, and is too vague to be used to determine when the barley will be ready to harvest.

8 This is shown in Jehoshua (Joshua) 5:10-11, where they were only allowed to eat the new grain from the day after the Passover, indicating the Wave Offering was first offered on the morning of the day after the Passover that year.

9 Despite this, and the utter lack of scriptural and historical support for a calculated calendar based on the conjunction to start each month and on the vernal equinox to start the new year, such a calendar has been promoted.  You can learn about this conjunction calendar, and why it is useless, in https://chcpublications.net/Calendar_Challenge_Challenged.html

10 Expanse was “dome” in the translation that Brian used.  Expanse is a more accurate translation.

11 Torah תּוֹרָה  is Hebrew for Instructions.  Torah is commonly translated as Law, which is only one aspect of God’s Instructions.

12 Tenak is a Hebrew word which refers to the Hebrew (Old Covenant) Scriptures.

13 That the new moon means the visible crescent was muddied by astronomers who, relatively recently and inaccurately, decided to call the earth-moon-sun conjunction the new moon.  This invisible dark conjunction is never called the new moon in the Bible.

14 Which also shows that they were not using a calculated calendar, as that would result in one clear preknown date.

15 The Biblical Hebrew also has specific words for the moon (יָּרֵחַ yareachused 26 times) and month (יֶרַח yerachused 13 times).  These words confirm that God has deliberately chosen to use chodesh (new moon) extensively to remind us that the new moon determines his month.  As one example, 1 Kings 6:38 uses both words to refer to a month: “And in the eleventh year, in the month (yerach) of Bul, which is the eighth new moon (chodesh), the house was finished.”

16 Lunar cycles can vary by as much as plus or minus seven hours.

17 The Islamic calendar is a strictly lunar calendar with each year only 12 lunar months long.  As a result, their calendar year begins about 11 days earlier every year.

18 Other signs also confirm Abib, such as the arrival of migratory birds and the budding of grape vines and fig trees.

19 The heads must be filled with firm kernels that can be roasted (parched) and eaten on the day of the Wave Offering (Lev 23:14).  Soft kernels filled with milky material can not be milled nor roasted properly, as the contents will shrivel up.

20 Jewish tradition was that the “premier sheaf” that was to be waved could be cut as soon as the Sabbath ended, so they would have the night to transport it to the high priest.

21 Despite this delay, the Rabbinical calendar assumes the crescent will become visible barely six hours after the conjunction.  As we will show later, the Rabbinical calendar is wrong far more often than right.

22 Our original program was written in BASIC on a Commodore 64 computer in 1985-86, used all of its available RAM and took almost a minute to run.

23 Using new moons after the equilux (the day which comes closest to exactly 12 hours of sunshine), which is usually about March 17 in Jerusalem is a bit better, but it is also too late for many of the earlier springs.

24 A similar calendar is also used by the Church of God of Colorado Springs (USA), which we later discovered had independently developed their Bible-based calculated calendar before us.

25 Pg 3-4, of the Yale Judaica Series, 1956

26 See Arthur Spier’s The Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar (1981) and Solomon Gandz’s The Problem of the Molad (1951) for confirmation on this.

27 The booklet, The Crucifixion was not on Friday was a rewrite of a Radio Church of God (later called the Worldwide Church of God (WCG)) article in the Mar-Apr 1942 Plain Truth magazine, available at http://www.herbert-armstrong.org.  A.H. Lewis was teaching this in 1865 (Biblical Teachings Concerning the Sabbath and the Sunday, 2nd Ed, pg 57).

28 In both the Greek and Aramaic manuscripts.

29 The Coptics, and others including the early Methodist Church (beginning in the 1760s), claim they fast on Wednesday because that was the day when the Sanhedrin decided to kill the Lord.  But John 11:43-12:1 shows that this decision was made weeks before Jeshua was killed and the day of the week was not given.  The truth is that the fast commemorates the Wednesday on which the Sanhedrin actually had Jeshua condemned and killed.

30 The Didascalia Apostolorum, written around 200 CE, records how Jeshua held his Last Supper on Tuesday night and was arrested later that night.  It also shows that the Great Apostasy was already well advanced, as they then try to twist this into a Friday crucifixion (See Pg 94 of Gibson’s 1903 translation).  Justin Martyr (First Apology, Chapter LXVII) claimed a Friday crucifixion, revealing how vigorously this perversion was being distributed.  Numerous sources showing knowledge of Jeshua’s Passover (and the seventh-day Sabbath) among God’s People are given at http://www.giveshare.org/HolyDay/wednesdaycrucifxion.html and in A History of the True Church by Dugger and Dodd, available at https://chcpublications.net/History_True_Church.html

31 It is likely that this was part of the same process used by Joseph to anoint his father in Egypt after he died.  Contrary to most translations, Jacob and later Joseph were anointed, not embalmed (Genesis 50:2-3, 26).  Unlike the Egyptians who tried to preserve the bodies of their dead, the Israelites instead allowed their flesh to decay and then collected their bones and kept them in a box called an ossuary.  It seems that the wealthy families used the spice ointments to both accelerate the decomposition of the skin and flesh and to reduce the smell of the decay, giving them clean bones to put into the ossuary.  Genesis 50 indicates that this process only took forty days, rather than the year that was required for poorer people who could not afford the spices.  The new tomb and the spices were part of how Jeshua was buried “with the rich” as prophesied in Isaiah 53:9 (also 2 Chron 16:14).

32 The fact that they arrived at the tomb while it was still dark suggests that the anointing they were planning to do to Jeshua’s body was a slow process that was going to require a very long day of work.  Another ancient Israelite tradition says that the compounded ointments were not applied until the body had been dead for the full three days and three nights just in case the person was not truly dead, so Nicodemus’ aloes and myrrh were probably a pre-treatment to delay the body’s deterioration until the actual anointing was done after the three days.  Jeshua refers to this process as ‘myrrhising’ the body in Mark 14:8 in the Greek.  But none of this was necessary, as Jehovah had promised His son Jeshua that He would not allow His body to deteriorate while He was dead (Ps 16:10, Acts 2:22-31).

33 From the ‘legal’ point of view, Jeshua had died at 3 PM Wednesday and the tomb was sealed and not opened until about 5AM on Sunday, the day of the Wave Sheaf Offering, so he had, according to the priesthood’s reckoning, been confirmed dead for 86 hours, way beyond the required 72 hours.

34 Also in Hos 6:1-3 and Psm 16:10.  In celebration of Jeshua’s resurrection late on this Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the early Christians called this the Great Sabbath and rejoiced on it each year.  In the Coptic, Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches, this day is still celebrated and is known as Joyous Saturday, though they have forgotten why it is a Joyous day.

35 In the Aramaic Peshitta.  The Greek translations have on the third day.

36 Please grasp this: Jeshua did NOT rise from the dead on Sunday.  He was already raised on the Sabbath.  Sunday worship does not honour the Messiah’s resurrection nor Jehovah as our Creator.

37 Note that the resurrected saints did not receive their final spirit-based bodies at this time.  Like Lazarus, but unlike Jeshua, they needed to have their tombs opened so they could get out of them.  It is also probable that they were not actually resurrected until Jeshua was, otherwise they would have starved in their tombs waiting for this evening to arrive.

38 Possibly Mary could not recognize Jeshua because his beard had been cut off and his face had been badly beaten by the guards and soldiers (Isaiah 50:5-7; 52:9-53:12, Mat 26:67, Mat 27:30, John 20:27) or more likely because He was now so healthy He looked nothing like the battered body they buried.

39 The WCG, using the scriptures and historical records, recognised that Jeshua was crucified on a Wednesday in 31 CE.  But the rabbinical calculated calendar (RCC) claimed the Passover was on Friday that year.  Instead of admitting that the entire RCC was wrong, they decided the RCC method of intercalating (adding a 13 month) was wrong and invented their own method for dates prior to 142 CE that gave them a Wednesday crucifixion.  As noted above, some Churches of God still use their mangled RCC.  Others, like Christian Biblical Church of God, instead use the typical RCC and play with history to move the crucifixion year to 30 CE (and then falsely claim observation supports a Wednesday Passover that year too).

40 The 23rd of April is within the ‘normal’ range of dates for the Preparation, but is towards the later end of that range.  The fact that the weather was still very cold at night, as shown by the men huddling around a fire in the High Priest’s courtyard in John 18:18, confirms that it was not a year with an extremely warm spring which would have been required to ripen the barley  a month earlier.

41 Using biblical days, the 31 CE eclipse occurs at the beginning of the First Day of Unleavened Bread, while the 33 and 34 CE eclipses span both the end of the Preparation Day and the beginning of the First Day of Unleavened Bread.  These are typical times for the full moons to occur during the first month.

42 This is referring to the sacrificial Death of Jeshua, our Messiah, who died precisely after three and a half weeks (years) into the 70th week (year) of this prophecy (31 CE), on a Wednesday (on the Passover preparation day that year) in the middle of the week.

43 The desolator is the papacy, as it is the only abomination which has continually attacked Jehovah’s children from just after the death of the apostles until today, and will continue to do so until the return of the Anointed.  Mat 24:15

44 Compare this with Hebrews 4:8 to 10:39, esp 10:12Jeshua brought an end to the sacrifices and Levitical priesthood.  He did not end the Holy Days themselves, which are part of God’s Instructions and remind us of all that our FatherJehovah Godhas done and will do for us.  Our article Free to Obey God explains this clearly.

45 The end of the 70th week was in the autumn of 34 CE.  This was when Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:1 to 8:5).  Until then, Jeshua Messiah was still only working with the Israelites.  After that, salvation was opened up to all nations (Acts 10).

46 Date on the Roman Julian Calendar.  It was the 12th of April on the Proleptic Gregorian Calendar.  The Passover dates were determined with our Biblical Calculated Calendar, and not with today’s Rabbinical calendar.

47 Irenaeus identifies Sixtus as the first bishop to reject the Biblical Passover (quoted in Eusebius, Church History, Bk 5, Chap 24, Sect 14).  The abominations had begun and have been maintained and even expanded by all of the popes who followed Sixtus.

48 Eusebius, Church History, Book 5, Chapter 24

49 When the Great Tribulation begins, those who refuse to observe the pope’s Easter and ‘holy days’ will be excluded from the monetary system (second beast of Rev 13:1-18).  Those who refuse to bow to the world dictator and his false prophet (the pope) will be executed (Rev 20:4).

50 Please read our Jeshua, Son of God and Spirit, Soul and Body articles for many more details.

51 See The Two Babylons by Hislopon our website.  Also note that the apparently trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7-8 that appears in the KJV is a fraud that was added to these verses about 1300 CE.

52 As translated from the Aramaic by Paul Younan.  The Greek translations make it appear that this is the third day, while the Peshitta shows that this conversation occurs after the third day.

53 To be fair to those believing in a Thursday crucifixion, they claim that this account supports their case.  However, this passage cannot repair the numerous other fatal flaws in a Thursday crucifixion.

54 Jeshua also confirms that the daylight part of a day is 12 hours long in John 11:9, so by extension an entire day is 24 hours.

55 This is confirmed by Allix, who reports this as the belief of the Waldenses themselves, on pg 197 of his Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont, 1721 Ed.

56 The Pontifex Maximus (Greatest Master) was the head of the pagan Roman religion who claimed the right to set the times of the religious calendar.  In 375 CE Roman Emperor Gratian refused to accept this role as he had embraced Christianity.  Within 70 years, pope Leo Iwho had no such scrupleseagerly took this pagan role as his own.

57 These still-future events are foreshadowed in God’s Autumn Holy Days (Col 2:17), and there is evidence that some, perhaps many, of these Waldenses observed these Biblical Feasts too.

58 History of the Ancient Christians Inhabiting the Valleys of the Alps, J.P. Perrin, 1847 Ed.