Pentecost 6 and 7/3/38/120

Dear Friends,

This is now the Feast of Weeks and the 49th and 50th days of the Omer count. This is the Third Year of the Sabbath cycle and it was on a Third year that Christ was killed and left orders for the church to wait at Jerusalem for arrival of Pentecost.  Had they not been there for the Omer Count waiting as ordered they would not have received The Holy Spirit (No. 117) and nor would they have been Born Again (No. 172).

It is correct that the church even though it was the Third year were all out of their gates of one accord to receive the Holy Spirit.

It is true that the sages and Jewish practice allowed for the Third years to be kept for only the 36 hours outside of the gates for the sacrifices over the 14 Abib and the Night of 15 Abib and they could return to their accommodation at the end on the Morning of the First Holy Day.  It was standard teaching that in the third year that the Second tithe was converted to the Third Tithe and then much later in the Twelfth century Maimonides taught that the 6th year also was a Third tithe year which is not correct.

The background that we should all realise is that the 36 hours was for the Passover sacrifice and the sacrifice was limited to between 10 and 20 persons per lamb.  Then the congregation was allowed to regroup over the Feast of Unleavened Bread but Ibn Ezra was emphatic that it was to be in temporary accommodation and no one was allowed to return to their accommodation until after 21 Abib.

That was the reason why the text in Deuteronomy 16:5-8 required it out of the gates over the 36 hours because only the twenty were allowed to be together for the sacrifice from 3 PM on 14 Abib and the Night of the Passover Meal on 15 Abib (see the Soncino Commentary fn. to the text and esp. A Ibn Ezra).

See also the texts and notes re the following.

Re: Deut 14:28
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year,.... This, according to A. ben Ezra, was a third tithe, and did not excuse the second tithe; so says:"I gave the third tithe to the repair of the temple,'' (Tobit 1:7) as in one copy, but, according to another, to the stranger, fatherless, and widow, which better agrees with what follows; but the Jewish writers generally understand this as the same with the second tithe, which on the two first years from the sabbatical year was carried to Jerusalem, or money in lieu of it, with which provisions were bought and eaten there, but on the third year were eaten in their own cities with the poor, and in the stead of the other; so says Maimonides (x), on the third and sixth years from the sabbatical year, after they have separated the first tithe they separate from what remains another tithe, and give it to the poor, and it is called the poor's tithe, and not on those two years is the second tithe, but the poor's tithe, as it is said, "at the end of three years", &c. and still more expressly elsewhere (y); after they have separated the first tithe every year, they separate the second tithe, Deuteronomy 14:22 and on the third and sixth years they separate the poor's tithe instead of the second; and this was done, not at the latter end of the third year, but, as A. ben Ezra interprets it, at the beginning; for the word used signifies an extremity, and the beginning of the year is one extremity of it as well as the latter end of it: and lay it up within thy gates; not to be hoarded up, or to be sold at a proper time, but to be disposed and made use of as follows.
(x) Hilchot Mattanot. Anayim, c. 6. sect. 4. (y) In Maaser Sheni, c. 1. sect. 1.

This matter of the Sixth year is a non biblical fiction that was used to create a dual third year tithe and it was used by the Churches of God to extract more than the simple third year Second tithe as the tithe given. The fact is that savings were made from the Second tithes over the entire Sabbath cycle so that those savings paid for the Third year feasts. 

Geneva Study Bible
“At the end of three years thou shalt {h} bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates:
(h) Besides the yearly tithes that were given to the Levites, these were laid up in store for the poor.”

It is quite wrong to suggest that there was a Third year tithe in addition to the Second year tithe, even though the wording of the texts states so in the first quote and seems to infer it in the second.

The Third Year tithe was drawn from the Second in the Third Year. They were one and the same thing.  Whilst the Scriptures are in fact silent on the matter re allowing the keeping the Third year in your gates, the Jewish Traditions are used to assert that it can be kept within our gates as we see from the comment above.  However, the text in Deuteronomy is used to infer this but it does say that each of the feasts are to be kept outside of our gates and does not specifically allow such practice and the legislation appears to prevent such practice. Ibn Ezra actually specifically forbids the return to your gates and makes no exception for the third year (fn. to V 7). CCG allowed some leniency for those who came into CCG from the Offshoots in the Third year in 2001 but we did not keep the feasts at home as a practice. There is no mention of not keeping the feasts outside of our gates from Pentecost or Tabernacles. It specifically says the feasts are to be kept outside of our gates. All of those people who wanted to play with the Passover did not keep the feasts correctly and did not survive the Sabbath cycle. None are still in CCG.

There is no such ambiguity for Pentecost or Tabernacles as might be inferred in regard to Passover for the 36 hours and in any case the limitation on the twenty person to a lamb was overtaken when Christ fulfilled the sacrifices.  The church then kept all the Feast of Unleavened Bread together and only the baptised members attended the Lord’s Supper but all attend and eat in common for the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Each of the brethren is to save for their Second Tithes on a seven year cycle and are to be properly prepared.

We will now rectify such error in the church.  To this day the offshoots still do not keep the Passover correctly since 1965/1966.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General