Months
Page 5
How do we return to Yehuveh’s ways of recognizing the astronomical transitions which mark each new month? First, we must learn to keep an eye on the moon. Other than the romantic “full moon” fantasies, most of us have ignored the moon most of our lives. Secondly, begin noting the phase changes, the rhythmic patterns of its monthly movement, the time of its rising and setting throughout the month. Thirdly, we must study astronomical sources until we fully understand the moon’s patterns of motion for ourselves.
This is an education in a whole new field of study for almost everyone in the world today. It should have been our heritage, the knowledge every leader and every father should have understood and taught to those under their care, but even they have lost these insights. Like the ancients, we should have had astronomer-priests who would teach us these matters from our childhood, but we haven’t. Lunar astronomical wisdom is part of the lost and rejected knowledge which has also been “violently taken away,” and it is indeed our loss that we haven’t had such instruction. But to our blessing, Yehuveh is restoring these things to us now. Lamentations 2:6.
The time has come for our wandering and captivity to turn and for Yehuveh to restore His kingdom on earth. Once again at a point of deliverance, Yehuveh is asking us to return to all of His ways, including His way of marking each new month by observing the movements of the moon about the earth.
Basic insight! The New Moon or first crescent sighting following the dark phase of the moon is Yehuveh’s marker to end one month and began another. Because there is an average of twenty-nine and a half days in a month and only twenty-eight days in each four-week cycle, the extra day and a half of time each month is used for adjustment. It is necessary to do something appropriate with this time, so Yehuveh uses it to mark the transition in months and to give us additional rest and study time.
Yehuveh’s time is kept by observation, and there are never “half days” to be considered. Rather, the months will have twenty-nine days in some months and thirty days in others, determined by the observation of the moon as it comes out of the no-visible-moon dark phase. Each evening that the moon is not seen during this No Moon time indicated that the following day would also be kept as a rest day, as a monthly Sabbath in association with and in addition to the weekly Sabbaths. When the crescent moon is finally sighted, this clearly marks the end of the No Moon time and indicated that the next morning would be the first of the “six working days” and start a new sevens (weeks) and to a new month. Ezekiel 46:1-3.
The first half of the moon’s cycle, the phases from the dark No Moon to the billiance of the full moon, are visible in the evening sky and make the perfect observational clock. For this reason, from the very beginning of creation, Yehuveh defined “the evening and the morning were the . . . day.” By what you see in the evening, you determine the activities for the following day. Genesis 1:5.
As the moon moves from its dark phase, the first observable marker is a thin crescent of light near the horizon. This crescent-sighting in the evening marks the transition, indicating that the day just completed was the first day of the month and that the next morning is the second day of the month and starts the count of six working days. From this point, the days of the week and of the month are counted. While the four Sabbaths approximately fall on the quarter phases of the moon, the remaining days of the month are strictly counted from the first-crescent-sighting rather than being observed by the moon’s phases.
Yehuveh places simple structure in the month. Following the first-crescent-sighting, six working days and a Sabbath are counted, followed by a second, third, and fourth sequence of six-working-days-and-a-Sabbath. This four-week pattern each month is so simple and unvarying that a single calendar page can be used for every month! In this regular structure Yehuveh has only a purpose to bless us--as surely as the rest on the Sabbath is both needed and commanded, so likewise work on the remaining six days is also needed and commanded. Yehuveh established this structure by two of His twelve commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work,” “the six working days.“ The marking of the weeks in reference to the month are discussed in Sevens (Weeks), and more on the matter of measuring days and years is available in Days and Years. Exodus 20:8, 9; Ezekiel 46:1-3.
Gael Bataman
Originally Written: 28 August 2005
Latest Update: 11 November 2009
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