Sabbath 040236120A

Dear Friends,

When the Lord God instructs His people to gather before Him three times a year at His Feasts, it is to be on the day and at the time He commands. We are not to change or modify His instructions to suit our needs.  When He instructs us to assemble on the 7th day Sabbath, we obviously do not have the biblical authority to change the Sabbath to a Sunday or any other day of the week.

This year the Temple calendar and the rabbinical Hillel calendar are in agreement with each other. The Hillel calendar does not contain its usual postponements this year. Most years the two calendars are out of sync by 1-2 days because of the postponement rules embedded in the Hillel calendar. [Sometimes they are out by a whole month as well as the postponed days due to the Babylonian intercalations ed].

Today’s Sabbath message is being reissued as an update to the Sabbath message posted on 5 April 2008, and is written for those who are new to the faith, and for the benefit of all those who simply have questions about which calendar to use to observe God’s Holy Days; and there are many questions now being investigated throughout the Churches of God.

In the course of establishing its theological position to observe the Biblical Holy Days, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) under the ministry of Herbert Armstrong rightfully acknowledged an historical event that it used to support the observance of Passover. That early historical event is the well-documented Quartodeciman Controversy. For an in-depth analysis of this pivotal controversy refer to the paper The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277).

The introduction to this informative study paper reads: “The Quartodeciman disputes were seen as pivotal to the determination of the Christian Faith. They were the second series of innovations to occur in the Christian Church and perhaps the most fundamental. After Sunday worship had been introduced from Rome in the middle of the second century, and in fact the first recorded incidence of any Sunday worship was as early as 111 CE, the Roman system then set about introducing the pagan Easter system over the Passover. In 664 CE at Whitby in England, they finally succeeded by force of arms in having the British or Celtic Church accept Easter.” Easter was the name of the goddess (also Ishtar) and the Celtic church did not follow the Easter system until 664.

History records that the Quartodeciman Controversy (ca. 154-192), which split the Church, was addressed by the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, and the Lord’s Passover on the 14th of Nisan was consequently replaced by Easter Sunday worship within the developing Greco-Roman Church system. 

The importance of the calculation for Easter observance and its relevance to the Temple calendar in existence at Jerusalem during the Messiah’s ministry is most important to understand as we shall see. Those who use the Hillel calendar to observe God’s Holy Days either miss or do not fully grasp the importance of the resolution by the Nicean Council in determining Easter observance, and how its calculation relates to the Biblical Passover and the Temple calendar. 
  
The Quartodeciman Disputes study paper states the following: “The method of calculating the day of the Sun at the vernal equinox was similar to the calculation of the Wave-Sheaf Offering of Leviticus 23, but it was not quite the same. That is why there is a slight difference between the Passover and the Easter system.”

Continuing:
“The Universal Oxford Dictionary gives the method for determining Easter Sunday or Easter day, which is the true Day of the Sun as Easter.

It is observed on the first Sunday after the calendar full moon, i.e. the 14th day of the calendar moon - which happens on or next after 21 March. Applied colloq. to the week commencing Easter Sunday (1964 print, p. 579).

This is the rule for determining the Easter or Ishtar festival and not the rule for the biblical Passover”.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia records: “According to this rule, Easter Sunday is the first Sunday which occurs after the first full moon (or more accurately after the first fourteenth day of the moon) following the 21st of March. As a result, the earliest possible date of Easter is 22 March, the latest 25 April.”

It summarizes:

• that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday.
• that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon;
• that that moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox;

The Catholic Encyclopaedia further states: “The 14 Nisan practice which was strong among the churches of Asia Minor, becomes less common as the desire for Church unity on the question came to favor the majority Roman practice. By the 3rd century the Church in general, which had become gentile-dominated and wishing to further distinguish itself from Jewish practices, began a tone of rhetoric against 14 Nisan/Passover date (e.g. Anatolius of Laodicea, c. AD 270; 6.148,6.149 "Ante-Nicene Church Fathers"). The tradition that Pascha was to be celebrated "not with the Jews" meant that Pascha was not to be celebrated on 14 Nisan.”  (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05228a.htm).

Another pertinent source of information comes through The World Council of Churches’ report from its Middle East Council of Churches Consultation in Aleppo, Syria on March 5 - 10, 1997.  It states: “By the end of the 2nd century some churches celebrated Easter/Pascha on the day of the Jewish passover, regardless of the day of the week, while others celebrated it on the following Sunday. By the 4th century, the former practice had been abandoned practically universally, but differences still remained in the calculation of the date of Easter/Pascha. The ecumenical council held at Nicea in 325 AD determined that Easter/Pascha should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first vernal full moon. Originally passover was celebrated on the first full moon after the March equinox, but in the 3rd century the day of the feast came to be calculated by some Jewish communities without reference to the equinox, thus causing passover to be celebrated twice in some solar years. Nicea tried to avoid this by linking the principles for the dating of Easter/Pascha to the norms for the calculation of passover during Jesus' lifetime.”  (Emphasis added). That formed the basis of the errors of the Hillel calendar and also, as we saw previously, the determination in Britain was not according to the Easter system at Nicea until 664 at the Synod of Whitby. So the Britons were Quartodecimans until 664. The World Council of Churches conceals that fact. It is less than honest.

The report included the following recommendations:
(a) to maintain the Nicene norms (that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first vernal full moon), and
(b) to calculate the astronomical data (the vernal equinox and the full moon) by the most accurate possible scientific means,
(c) using as the basis for reckoning the meridian of Jerusalem, the place of Christ's death and resurrection. 

None of this takes into account the actual Friday which also must occur after the 14th Abib, that is the Friday must be after the full moon, as well as the Sunday in normal practice amongst the Trinitarian system.

Please note above that the Nicean Council’s methodology to establish Easter dates was linked “to the norms for the calculation of Passover during Christ’s lifetime.” The norms for the calculation of Passover were set at the Temple. Christ calls the Temple in Jerusalem his Father’s House (Jn. 2:16). He and his family journeyed year after year to the Temple for Passover (Lk. 2:41-43) where they kept the Passover Feast for the full eight days according to the Law in Deuteronomy 16. Christ kept the Feasts according to the calendar established at the Temple, otherwise he would have been in breach of God’s Laws that he delivered to ancient Israel at his Father’s direction. Christ knew and observed the correct calendar that was utilized by the Jews during the Temple period before its destruction in 70 CE. 

The Temple calendar is with us today for the gates of the grave will not prevail against Christ’s called out ones (Mat. 16:18). He shepherds those given to him by his Father to keep and worship on the correct days that are declared to be holy by God.

During the Temple period of Christ’s ministry, Abib 1 or Nisan 1, which was the beginning of the new year, was determined by the new moon (conjunction) nearest the vernal equinox providing that the Passover sacrifice on the 14th of Abib at the ninth hour (approximately 3 p.m.) in the afternoon of the 14th when the first Passover lamb (representing the Messiah) was killed by the High Priest at the Temple DID NOT precede the vernal equinox. This was to prevent two Passover sacrifices from being observed within the same calendar year (see the study paper God’s Calendar (No. 156)).

The Nicean Council understood the Temple calendar. Its participants drafted a methodology to replicate the Temple calculation but fit it to their Easter observance so that the Passover and Easter would occur close together. History records this to be the case and the World Council of Churches acknowledges this fact in their conference report cited above.

Let us now examine the Hillel calendar.

The Hillel calendar methodology first calculates when Tishri 1 (the seventh month) is to be declared. It determines which day of the week the new moon of Tishri would occur, and if the day is a “forbidden day” by Hillel reasoning, then Tishri 1 would be “postponed” or delayed for a day and possibly by two days depending on the four rules of postponements. Rule 1 in the Hillel calculation does not allow for the new moon of Tishri to occur on a Sunday, Wednesday, or a Friday. If Tishri 1 would fall on any of these days, then the new moon is postponed and advanced one day to a Monday, Thursday, or Saturday (Sabbath) respectively. The postponement rules will be listed later in this message.

After Tishri 1 is declared, the Hillel calculation will then count backwards from its Tishri 1 date 177 days to declare Abib 1. The Hillel calendar calculations with its postponement rules can delay Abib 1 by up to 2 days as previously mentioned. In some years, the Hillel calendar begins Abib 1 a month later than the Temple calendar. 

It is obvious to see why the Nicean Council wanted to replicate the norms for the calculation of Passover during Christ’s lifetime according to the Temple calendar for their Easter observance. After the destruction of the Temple and the Jews having rejected the Messiah, the Jews strayed from the Temple calendar and developed their own calendars within the various Jewish sects. The Hillel calendar became the major one accepted after much consternation within Judaism. [It is based on the Babylonian intercalations and has the feasts in the wrong months in many years ed].

The following article titled, “Evidence for the ongoing use of the Jewish calendar in Gentile Christianity”, posted on WikiPedia, relates to the Jewish (Temple) calendar in use by the Apostles. It reads:

“Saint Paul, writing to his Gentile flock in Corinth, notes that "I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost" (1Cor. 16.8) clearly assuming that his Gentile hearers will know what "Pentecost" is. The author of Acts notes that navigation on the Mediterranean had become dangerous because "the fast had already gone by" (Acts 27.9) referring to the Day of Atonement without any explanation. The same author earlier noted that Peter had undergone a sort of death and resurrection in the form of an imprisonment and release (Acts 12.1-17), and noted also that "this was during the days of Unleavened Bread" (Acts 12.3). This shows that Gentile Christians continued to keep track of the Jewish year and could be expected to know when its most important festivals were. Yet Gentiles would have no obvious reason to keep track of the Jewish calendar, unless they had inherited from Jewish Christians not only the calendar, but some reason to maintain it. An annual festival depending on that calendar would (sic) is at least a possible explanation for Paul's ability to refer to a Jewish festival in passing and expect Gentile Christians to know what he meant.”  (Emphasis added)
(http://christianity.wikia.com/wiki/Easter#Evidence_for_the_ongoing_use_of_the_Jewish_calendar_in_Gentile_Christianity)

That Temple calendar has been maintained through the centuries and is with us today. It is not difficult to understand the Temple calendar and it contains no postponements (see the study paper Tishri in Relation to the Equinox (No. 175)).

What are the postponement rules in the Hillel calendar?

Postponement rules are:
Rule 1: When the molad of Tishri or advancement occurs on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday, the declaration of Tishri 1 is advanced one day to a Monday, Thursday or Saturday (Sabbath) respectively.
Rule 2: When the molad of Tishri occurs at noon or later, the declaration of Tishri 1 is advanced to the next day.
Rule 3:  When the molad of Tishri of a common year falls on a Tuesday, at or after 9 hours and 204 parts, the declaration of Tishri 1 is advanced to Wednesday. The application of Rule 1 advances the declaration one more day to Thursday.
Rule 4:  When the molad of Tishri of a common year immediately following an intercalary year occurs on a Monday, at or after 15 hours and 589 parts, the declaration of Tishri 1 is advanced to Tuesday.

What purpose do postponements in the Hillel calendar serve?
Rabbinical rule (postponement rule #1) as previously mentioned eliminates the possibility that Tishri 1 (Feast of Trumpets) would ever occur on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday. The impetus and reasoning for this postponement rule is:

• In order to prevent the occurrence of two consecutive (back-to-back) Sabbaths during the fall [Northern Hemisphere] holy day season, if the molad of Tishri would fall on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday, then Tishri 1 falls one day later, to a Monday, Thursday, or Sabbath, respectively.
• Since the seventh day of the week is a Sabbath, a postponement is reasoned to be necessary when Tishri 1 falls on a Sunday or a Friday in order to avoid two consecutive Sabbaths (a weekly Sabbath and a Fall Holy Day) back-to-back. This eliminates the preparation days for the Fall Holy Days from being weekly Sabbaths, and the preparation day for the weekly Sabbath being one of the Fall Holy Days.
• Tishri 1 may not occur on a Wednesday to block the Day of Atonement (Tishri 10), a high Sabbath, from falling on a Friday. It is reasoned further that a Friday Day of Atonement would cause particular hardship for the people since food preparation could not occur on a weekly Sabbath day even though it followed a required fast day. Likewise, a Friday postponement also prevents the Day of Atonement from falling on a Sunday avoiding two consecutive Sabbaths.
• Additionally, and important to understand, this rule also precludes the first day of Unleavened Bread, the 15th of Abib, from ever falling on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.
• This postponement is for the convenience of the people.

It should be noted and worth repeating that the reason the Hillel calendar has this postponement rule is for the sake of convenience, and for no other purpose. Postponements are not supported by Scripture nor were they a part of the Temple calendar during Christ’s ministry, or at any other time during the Temple period. Some will absurdly claim that postponements are used for the purpose to keep the calendar astronomically aligned which is false and shallow reasoning.
The Mishnah, compiled approximately 200 C.E., presents evidence against this later Hillel postponement rule and records that back-to-back Sabbaths were historically occurring before the invention of the Hillel calendar. The Hillel calendar is a Judaic calendar of rabbinical derivation, which commenced from 344 CE with the Babylonian rabbis, and was adopted by rabbinical Judaism under Hillel II. It was not finalized until modified and completed by Maimonides [also called Rambam] as late as the 11th century.
Below is the recorded evidence from the Mishnah showing that back-to-back Sabbaths were common and occurred during the Temple period:

• (Besah 2:1) On a festival which coincided with the eve of the Sabbath [Friday] a person should not do cooking to begin with on the festival day. [Friday] But he prepares food for the festival day, and if he leaves something over, he has it left over for use on the Sabbath. And he prepares a cooked dish on the eve of the festival day [Thursday] and relies on it (to prepare food on Friday) for the Sabbath as well.
• (Besah 2-2) If a festival day coincided with the day after the Sabbath [Sunday] the house of Shammai say, “They immerse everything before the Sabbath”. And the house of Hillel say, “Utensils are to be immersed before the Sabbath. But man may immerse on the Sabbath itself.”
• (Sukkah 5:7) Three times a year all the priestly watches shared equally in the offerings of the feasts and in the division of the Show Bread. At Pentecost they would say to him, “Here you have unleavened bread, here is leavened bread for you”. The priestly watch whose time of service is scheduled for that week is the one which offers the daily whole offerings, the offerings brought by reason of vows and freewill offerings, and the other public offerings. And it offers everything. On a festival day which comes next to a Sabbath, whether before or after it, all of the priestly watches were equal in the division of the Show Bread.

This text shows Atonement also fell on a Friday when the Mishnah was compiled:

• (Shabbat 15:3) They fold up clothing even four or five times. And they spread beds on the night of the Sabbath for use on the Sabbath, but not on the Sabbath for use after the Sabbath. D. R. Ishmael says, “They fold clothes and lay out beds on the Day of Atonement for the Sabbath”.

Below is a chart for the years 2004 through 2025 showing Easter dates and comparing the dates of Abib 14 by years between the Temple calendar and the 358 CE Hillel calendar. 

Note that in the years 2005, 2008, 2016, and 2024 the Easter dates established through the Nicean Council are more accurate by comparison in their dates for Easter compared to the Temple calendar than the Hillel calendar is for Abib 14. The Hillel calendar is late by a month in these years because of the system of intercalation used by Judaism which originated in Babylon ca. 380 BCE. The Babylonian intercalation method was never used in the Temple calendar system. It is a Babylonian invention that was transferred to Judaism by two Babylonian rabbis in 344 CE.

In the years 2004, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025 the Hillel calendar is off by 1 to 2 days due to its invented postponement rules.

This means no Holy Day is kept on the right day at all in any of those years where it is a month late. In nearly every year, when you see those calculations above where they are a day or more late under the Hillel system then those people are not keeping those Holy Days on the right days. They are not keeping God’s Feasts correctly.                                                                              

The first writer went on to say that he had an Elder in one of the WCG off-shoots who was a former professor at Ambassador College tell him that we must always count backwards from Tishri to determine the Holy Days. His response to him was, “God shows us how to count by the example of the creation week.  God did not create the seventh day first and then create His way backwards to the first day. No, He created day one and then progressed to day seven.” God expects us to follow His instruction in the same manner as stated in Exodus 12:2: “You are to begin your calendar with this month; it will be the first month of the year for you” (Complete Jewish Bible - CJB). 

The Temple calendar first determines the beginning of Abib 1, and then moves forward in progression to determine month two by the new moon conjunction, etc. It never counts backwards to determine a Holy Day as the Hillel calendar will do.
Now let’s examine another aspect of how postponements will affect Passover beginning with the 14th of Abib, the First Month. The rules have a cascading effect on Passover as it prevents the first day of Unleavened Bread, the 15th of Abib, from ever falling on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

The chart below details all of the possibilities for the timing of Passover (beginning with the 14th of Abib through the 21st of Abib) that could occur, and how the week will flow in relation to which day of the week that the 14th of Abib/Nisan occurs.

• # The Lord’s Supper is observed the evening before, at dark, at the beginning of the 14th of Abib.
• * Within the rabbinical postponement Hillel calendar system, the holyday of the 15th of Abib is not allowed to occur on a Monday, a Wednesday, or a Friday.
• ** Sunday-Wave Sheaf Offering.

When extrapolating postponement rules, we see its total impact within the Hillel calendar system. It becomes clear that:

1. the 14th of Abib, when Christ died, can never be observed when the 14th falls on the 1st Day (Sunday), 3rd Day (Tuesday), and 5th Day (Thursday) of the week, and

2. the 15th of Abib, first day of Unleavened Bread, can never be observed on the 2nd Day (Monday), 4th Day (Wednesday), and 6th Day (Friday) of the Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread week, and

3. the Wave Sheaf Offering can never be observed when the 14th of Abib falls on the 1st Day, 3rd Day, and 5th Day of the week, thus eliminating the Wave Sheaf from ever occurring on the 3rd, 5th, 7th day of the Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread.

So how does it have a negative effect on the picture of God’s plan of salvation? The Apostle Peter states in 2Peter 3:8:
“But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (RSV)
The seven-day week is symbolic of the seven thousand year period allotted by God for the salvation of His creation through the sacrifice and blood of His son, Yahoshua, or Yoshua the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Following the principle stated by the Apostle Peter that a day represents 1,000 years, then the first, third, and fifth Days/Millenniums of the Passover week are not represented in the Hillel calendar system. This postponement rule becomes a deception that does not allow for the observance of the Messiah’s sacrifice that covers the entire 7,000-year period, and the acceptance of Messiah’s sacrifice by our heavenly Father symbolized by the Wave Sheaf Offering for the same represented Days/Millenniums.
To illustrate postponement errors further, below in chart form are the years and dates of the 15th of Abib and the day of the week on which the 15th occurs. The chart will show the difference between God’s Temple calendar and the Hillel calendar. This chart will show that the 15th of Abib in God’s Temple calendar will fall on any and all days of the week throughout the years listed below, whereas the Hillel calendar forbids the 15th of Abib to fall on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and it will be seen in that sequence right through to 2025. Why 2025? We go to 2025 because 2025 is the treble sacrifice before the Jubilee and we are taking that through to the 120th Jubilee which will be declared in 2026/27 and the Messiah will be here by that date.

*Please note in the above chart that the 15th of Abib does not occur on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday in the Hillel calendar.

If the Hillel calendar is God’s sacred calendar as some claim by citing Romans 3:1-2 as their reference, then why do they not keep Passover and Pentecost according to it? Those who make the claim also insist that the Jews during Christ’s ministry on earth observed Passover on the wrong day. The Messiah and his family kept the Holy Days including Passover according to the days at the Temple and its calendar (Luke 2:41-43). 

Either the Hillel calendar is God’s calendar, or it is not. You cannot have it both ways. If it is not valid for the spring Holy Days including Pentecost, what makes it a valid calendar for Trumpets, Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles?  

The plain truth of the matter is that the Hillel calendar with its postponements is not biblical and postponements are a creation of the rabbis for convenience. Even the Jews of today admit that the Hillel calendar needs to be replaced. For a historical background on postponements, see the paper, The Calendar and the Moon – Postponements or Festivals? (No. 195), Also look at Distortion of God's Calendar in Judah (No. 195B).

No man has the authority to postpone a holy day, not even the Pharisees or rabbis whose authority was taken from them symbolised when the high priest tore his garments at the questioning of Christ at his trial (Mark 14:63; cf. Lk. 10:1,17). Also when the 70 were ordained and sent out and they found that even the demons were subject to them and that the sons of the High Priest, Sceva, as we later find out, had their authority taken from them, symbolised by the demons turning on them. The Hillel calendar never was God’s Sacred Calendar. Using it to determine when to keep God’s Holy Days is a tremendous mistake with enormous spiritual consequences. If we do not keep the Day of Atonement on the correct day we are cut off from our people. In other words we are taken out of the Church of God. We cannot maintain the First Resurrection keeping the Hillel Calendar and we must understand that.

Follow in the footsteps of the Messiah (1Pet. 2:21) and not man’s footsteps.

This work was written by,

Tom Schardt, Coordinator of Southern California with additional comments by Wade Cox, Coordinator General.