My Calendar Journey

Calendar Confusion

There are so many calendars out there, it is enough to make your head spin, isn’t it? I started studying the Biblical calendar around 2011, and boy what a journey this has been.

A Little Personal History

I came out of a Christian upbringing where I didn’t pay much attention to the calendar in the Bible. I didn’t really see a need to. I went to church on Sunday and celebrated Easter in the spring and Christmas in the winter. Everybody I knew either went to church or didn’t. If they went to church, it was on Sunday. The dates for Easter and Christmas were universal. The idea of the day starting and ending at midnight was no big deal for me either. That’s just the way I was taught, and I never saw that as a conflict in my Christian walk.

Then around 2009/2010, I started noticing the 4th commandment more, that it said the 7th day was the Sabbath. I had been going to church my whole life on Sunday, what most folks I knew considered to be “the Lord’s Day”. I don’t think I ever considered it the “Sabbath” day, per se, but it was simply a day set aside for worship and no work. But this Sabbath day subject started gnawing at me.

Without getting into great detail, it was the subject of the Sabbath day that got me started in studying the calendar in Scripture.

My Journey, Step by Step

When my husband and I first decided to start setting aside the 7th day in order to keep the 4th commandment, we “naturally” started at sundown on Friday night. I couldn’t tell you for sure as to why we chose then to start it, except that I had this notion in my head that a Biblical day was reckoned from evening to evening. I never studied it before. I don’t recall any sermons given on the subject. I did have some Jewish friends growing up, so maybe I picked up on it from them. Or maybe I just heard about it through TV or something. Right or wrong, that’s how we began to change our calendar-keeping ways.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize how unnatural this reckoning was. I mean, at the time we were starting a homestead with some goats and chickens, and having to get all of our work done before the sun went down on Friday wasn’t exactly easy. In the summer it wasn’t so bad because the days were longer…I could clean up from dinner, have the house all tidied up while my husband finished his animal chores. But when fall came along and the sun began setting earlier and earlier, he didn’t want to come in for dinner until his chores were done and that left me working after dark…it proved to be an issue. That’s when I started thinking, something is wrong with this picture.

Then the following summer a friend of mine posted a blog asking the question, “When does the day begin: sunset or sunrise?” Needless to say, his post caused quite a stir, because he was contending for a sunrise start. But when I read some of the points he was making from the Bible, his argument resonated with me. So, I decided to dig out the answer for myself.

Well, just as my journey of discovery regarding the Sabbath day came at a cost (that is, we were ultimately asked by the leadership to leave the church we had been faithful members of for years, and most of my relationships with friends and loved ones were severed), this journey of discovery regarding the “day” cost me dearly as well. But I didn’t let that deter me from my studies.

As I became increasingly convinced that a day began in the morning and ended in the evening, and then came night, it really baffled me towards the end of that study how stinking simple that was. Because honestly, isn’t that the natural flow of things in most of our lives? We get up in the morning and work all day. Then we start to wind down in the evening and ultimately go to bed at night. And then the cycle repeats the next day. We get up in the morning, work all day, wind down in the evening and then go to bed at night.  Day, night, day, night, etc. Simple. Natural.

What’s ironic about this is if you talk about this with someone who goes to church on Sunday and celebrates Easter and Christmas, year after year…this is no great revelation. But if you raise this subject amongst those who revere their sundowns on Friday night, you’ll often see sparks fly. Is it because they have an aversion to the idea of their Mondays beginning in the morning or their Thursdays starting at sunup? No, of course not. The problem rests with their Sabbaths starting at sundown!

Well, after a while I moved on from “the day” to study more about “the month”. As if the subject of the day wasn’t controversial enough. Ha! I set out to learn what Scripture had to say about the start of each month. Was it a sighted sliver of the moon or the dark conjunction? After several months I began to even consider the full moon as a contender for the “new moon”. What I found is that there seemed to be equally obscure amounts of evidence for each phase. I decided that was not a subject I was willing to die on…I mean, I couldn’t unequivocally prove one phase over another.

So, then I moved onto studying more about the Sabbath. I knew the Bible said it was “the 7th day”, but my question was “the 7th day from what?” I understood most folks believed it was an unbroken cycle from when the manna was given in Exodus 16, and that the Jews somehow managed to keep track of that day through the millennia without skipping a beat. But I had my doubts. So, I began to question if the Bible gave us any clues. I had two hypotheses that I was willing to test: the 7th day from the start of the month, and the 7th day from the start of the year. I decided to consider from the start of the month first.

Okay, I don’t know if you are noticing a trend here, but this path that I found myself on was getting narrower and narrower. I was now at the point of seriously considering the most heretical calendar doctrine to date: the Lunar Sabbath! Talk about walking a lonely road. Ha! Whatever friends I had left now really thought I was a whack job (except for a few, who are still my friends to this day, praise Yah!).

Well, my husband and I walked out a Lunar Sabbath for about 5-6 weeks totally taking hits left and right on the chin. We were begging people to prove this Lunar Sabbath concept was wrong using the Bible, but all we ever got was mocked, belittled, and told we were flat out wrong. Nobody could prove us wrong…but they sure didn’t like it. (Now, we were not telling other people that this was “right”, we were just testing it out for ourselves. But we were vocal about it, asking people to tell us why it was wrong, so we could seek it out in the Bible.)

Well, after about 5-6 weeks, we experienced the biggest aha! moment of our calendar journey thus far. We abruptly came to the realization that the moon was not for months at all! Talk about an absolutely humiliating revelation. It was like the whole bottom of the earth fell out from under me. I quickly realized how little I really knew. It was very sobering. It was stunning and it brought certain things to a huge halt. And I have to say, I found myself in the best position I have ever been in on this walk. Not only did I come to realize how much I did not know, but I was experiencing the most incredible peace at that time in my life. It’s surreal just thinking about it now. But I felt like I had been brought me to that place to be shown how utterly dependent I am on my Maker.

I’m probably not even doing justice with this description of how it all went down or how I felt through all this but suffice it to say I am a better person for the journey thus far. I am more patient and humbler than I have ever been, and I am completely reliant on my Heavenly Father and totally at peace with not having it all figured out. I’m so content, even if He were to never show me another thing. I feel like I have passed a test of some kind. A test to see if I was willing to shed what He told me was wrong, to see if I would accept the fact that I know nothing (compared to all there is to know) and He knows everything. A test to see if I could still walk on, trusting Him alone after having the rug ripped out from me yet again. And yes, I was willing to shed the error and I have. Yes, I have accepted the fact that I don’t have it all figured out and I completely rest in my trust in Him. And I’m happy.

Now, this is not to say, I gave up on the calendar at that point or that I hadn’t learned anything more since then, quite the contrary. I have since learned the calendar presented in the Bible is so stinking simple it boggles the mind. You probably wouldn’t believe me if I scribbled it out for you. Part of me thinks why bother sharing this, because so many folks have already dismissed it without ever really considering it. It’s sad to see. So many prefer to keep their religious observance of what Scripture clearly indicates is wrong because they are unwilling to make the leap. It’s heartbreaking, really. But I understand, folks have not been on the same journey as me. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen.

But the truth is, I wanted to share what I have learned concerning the calendar. I didn’t care what people thought of me, how off my rocker they may deem me to be. I’ve seen the light, so to speak. The calendar is no longer confusion for me. It makes sense, complete sense, in fact. The only problem is one has to be willing to ditch everything they have ever learned about a “Biblical Calendar” in order to seriously consider the calendar given in the Bible. What the Bible actually says flies in the face of most of the calendars out there. In fact, while I have seen two in particular that are close to what I think lines up with the Bible, I have yet to see anyone else put forth what I have been shown.

Honestly, that kind of made me feel weird. I mean, why was I seeing this? How come no one else has come up with this yet and plastered it all over the internet? This is not to say I didn’t believe anyone else was seeing it. I was just curious as to why it’s not out in the public like all the others? I kept asking myself, Am I the one that is supposed to be putting it out there?

I have always freely shared what I have come to find with whomever will listen, but the fact of the matter is I haven’t ever had a very large sphere of influence. I live in a rural area, where we pretty much stay to ourselves (running our own business from home). My social outlet was Facebook for many years with a total of 341 “friends”, most of which I’m sure just tolerated me. I’ve blogged on a forum that saw very little traffic (I think), although, there are several folks I know of who are on the same page as me. (We’ve traveled a lot of this journey together online.) I have a blog of my own, but it doesn’t get much traffic at all, and I haven’t really put a whole lot of material on it in several years. So, I kept wondering was I supposed to be doing something more with this information?

A Step of Faith

Well, I decided to take a step of faith. I’d already put myself out there on Facebook and there seemed to be a hunger for understanding more. I saw folks willing to learn more, but trying to communicate on Facebook was a real challenge…so many competing voices makes it difficult to be heard through the noise. So, I chose to reactivate Messyanic.com around 2004 with the hope that it proved to be a blessing to those who were seeking.

What I Don’t Want

I don’t want a following…I don’t want people looking to me to teach them. I don’t mind laying out what I’ve learned, but I don’t want folks to grow dependent on me. I want them to be dependent on our Heavenly Father, but I’m willing to be supportive to those on their own Calendar journey. I recognize that I am not without error; I expect to be held accountable…I want to be held accountable.

I don’t want whatever is shared by me concerning the calendar to be branded as “my calendar”. It’s not mine. The Scripture I read are the same Scriptures made available to all. My simple desire is to point people to the Father and to what the Bible says, to share what I have come to learn and help those to know where to look in Scripture for these things.

So, there you have it. I understand the calendar can be very confusing when there are so many voices out there telling us so many different things. But I’m here to tell you, it’s not those voices we should be listening to. 😉 We need to seek our Heavenly Father, and I firmly believe, His Spirit will guide us all into Truth.

What Now?

If you’re just starting out on your own Calendar journey or if you’ve been on it for quite a while and want to compare notes, I recommend starting with the Day.

It is the most fundamental block of time that I know of concerning the calendar, and I believe the Bible is very clear on that subject.

Please read what I have come to learn regarding When a Day Begins and Ends.