HOLY TIME Passover Edition Out of Tsiyon the Perfection of Beauty God has Shown Forth. Psalm 50:2 www.tsiyon.org Eliyahu ben David
HOLY TIME Passover Edition Sample By: Eliyahu ben David Copyright 2006 Tsiyon.org Copyright Permission This book may be reproduced and distributed freely only on the condition that it is reproduced in it s entirety without ANY changes. This book MAY NOT be sold. If you have some reasonable use of this book in mind that does not fit these requirements you may contact webmaster@tsiyon.org to request additional copyright permissions to fit your unique case. All such special requests will be considered on their own merits. If you find this book helpful please remember that the worker is worthy of his wages. Let us know if you have been blessed by the book, and please make at least a small contribution to help support the work that has provided this word to you, that you may be blessed further. The latest full copy of this publication and information about other publications can be obtained at the Tsiyon website at www.tsiyon.org or you may email the author at: webmaster@tsiyon.org
***DEDICATION*** Holy Time is set-apart time, sanctified time. Holy Time is the mode of time which the Holy One has created in which He meets and moves through time with His holy people. Holy Time belongs to Him but it is created for us, His holy people, so that we can meet Him and live our lives with Him there. This book is therefore dedicated to the Great Time-Keeper, our Eternal Father, Whom, though dwelling in eternity, condescends to also come and dwell with us in His Holy Time. We thank you, Father, that through your provision of Holy Time we are provided a mode of time by means of which we may sojourn through this world while actually being no part of it. A mode of time created, prepared and sanctified for us, your holy people, to meet and spend every sanctified moment of our lives there - with You!
***ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS*** Of course my first acknowledgment must be to Abba Father and His self-sacrificing Son, for without them this book, or even my next breath, would not be possible. It is also fitting to acknowledge the contribution of all of the sources quoted in this book that have provided a platform from which this information could be brought together and expanded upon in a meaningful presentation. These sources are duly cited throughout the book. Dawn, thank you for your book layout and other skillful and devoted efforts that have been such an important part of getting this book out of my head and into a form useful to others! And thank you for being a pioneer with me in the restoration of a real experience of Holy Time.
Table of Contents: Cover 1 Title Page 2 Dedication 3 Acknowledgements 4 Table of Contents 5 Introduction Holy Time 8 God's Appointments are Set According to Cycles of the Moon! 10 He Gave the Moon for His Appointments 11 A Moral Requirement 12 God's Sign, a Faithful Witness in the Heavens 11 Smarter than God? 13 The Seven-Day Cycle 13 The Lunar Week 15 It's All About Showing Up! 16 Chapter 1 The Old Testament Reckoning of Time 17 God's Reckoning of Time from Creation Forward 17 Civilization Began in the Fertile Crescent 20 The Garden of Eden 20 Was The Tower of Babel Real? 22 Sumeria 23 Sumerian Time-Reckoning 23 Babylonian Time-Reckoning 25 A Different Kind of Week 26 Its All In the Diaries! 27 When is a Calendar Not a Calendar? 28 What is Intercalation? 29 Ancient Hebrew Time-Reckoning 30 Israelite-Canaanite Month Names 30 Torah Numbered Month Names 31 Israelite-Babylonian Month Names 32 Comparative Names of the Lunar Months (Chart) 33 Lunar Time-Reckoning of the Old Testament Conclusion 33
Chapter 2 A New Nation Starts On Yahweh s Time 35 A New Nation Starts On Yahweh's Time 37 The First Month Designated By Israel's Deliverance 38 Passover on the 14th of Abib at Twilight 39 A Mighty Passover Deliverance on Abib 14! 40 A Permanent Annual Ordinance 42 When Are The Holy Assemblies? 43 Lunar Sabbath Days Harmonize with Festival Days 45 8 Days of Passover and Unleavened Bread (Chart) 46 Chapter 3 Israel Gets A Lesson About The Sabbath 47 Israel Sets Out From Rameses 47 The Wilderness of Sin on the Fifteenth Day of the Second Month 48 Yahweh Teaches about the Sabbath 49 God's Provision Arrives that Very Evening! 49 When the Cupboard is Bare - Yahweh is There! 50 Did They Listen? 50 Yahweh Taught the Sabbath Lesson 50 Israel Keeps Its First Lunar Sabbath 51 Smarter Than God 52 Get on the Same Page with God 52 Chapter 4 New Moons, Sabbaths and Sabbath Weeks Fit Together! 54 The New Moon Crescent Begins The Month 54 He Made the Moon for ALL His Appointments 56 Grasping Lunar Weeks 56 How a Shabuwa Differs from a Week 57 Joshua Teaches about Solar and Lunar Days 59 How the Feast of Weeks is Counted 60 The New Moon First Day of the Month Not a Sabbath 60 David, Jonathan, and Saul Observed the New Moon Festival 63 The Connection Between New Moon and Sabbaths 65 One More Proof of 4 Lunar Shabuwa Cycles in the Month 66 Now Let Us Summarize 67 Chapter 5 Roman/Babylonian Cycles Dominate World s Time 69 The Roman Republican Calendar 69 The Julian Calendar 70 Actual Julian Calendars c. First Century 72 A 7 Day Planetary Week Emerged After the New Testament Period 73 Constantine Enforces Roman / Babylonian Time 321 AD 74 Pagan Week Day Names Tell The Story 75 The Pagan Planetary Week Has No Correlation to Biblical Holy Time 75 Out of Sync with the Creator's Time Cycles - In Sync with Babylon 76
Chapter 6 The New Testament Era And The Jewish Calendar 78 The Essene Calendar 78 Lunar Days Longer Than 24 Hours Documented 79 4 Sabbath Cycles 80 The First Century Temple System - Lunar Sabbaths 81 Josephus The First Century Priest Writes About Passover 82 Months Set By Observation of the New Moon Crescent 83 Months Set By Sanctification of the New Moon Crescent 84 Yeshua Usually In Agreement With The Jewish Calendar 84 Yeshua's Final Passover - The Exception that Proves the Rule 85 The Synoptic Gospels and the Passover Supper 85 The Passover of the Jews According to John 86 The Jews Were A Day Late 87 It Is Finished! - The Ultimate Sabbath 88 Day of the Week? 89 The Sabbaton Cycle 89 Putting it Together 91 Jews A Day Late in Month of Yeshua's Passover Sacrifice (Chart) 91 More Evidence of Lunar Sabbath Cycles 93 More New Testament Evidence 94 First Century Believers Kept The Feasts 96 Chapter 7 From Holy Time To Pagan Counterfeit 98 The Characteristics of Yahweh's Authentic Calendar 98 History of the Development of the Calculated Rabbinical Calendar 99 A Letter Of Constantine 102 Hillel II Changed the Calendar 103 Not the Calendar of the Bible 105 Planetary Week Incompatible With Yahweh s Calendar 105 Fixing Rosh HaShannah 106 What is the Problem? 106 Dehiyyah Rules Prove Planetary-Week Sabbath Untenable 107 Why Were the dehiyyah Rules Suddenly Needed? 108 More Problems with the Rabbinical Calculated Calendar 108 A Final Note on the Rabbinical Calendar 109 Where Does That Leave You And I? 109 Compare The Real Deal with the Counterfeit (Chart) 110 Conclusion A New Nation Starts On Yahweh s Time-Again! 111
Introduction - Holy Time This introduction offers an overview of what you will be learning in this book with the proofs to follow in the rest of the book. It also gives you some important background information. Please take time to read this big picture because if you do the rest of the book will likely make a lot more sense to you. Before we begin with our overview you might like to know how I came to this revelation of Holy Time. Here is the short answer. God sometimes uses dreams and visions as one means of directing my life and ministry. Such dreams and visions do not replace the Scriptures, of course. Often, they serve to point me to the area of study in Scripture where my Lord wishes to give me greater revelation. It was through just such means that Yahweh directed my attention to Holy Time. Around the beginning of this millennium Yahweh gave me a recurring dream that haunted my sleep each night for weeks. In this dream I was inside a gigantic mechanism of interconnected and whirring gears and spinning mechanical parts. The scale was so large that I just couldn t get a grasp of what I was seeing around me. After having this same dream a number of times it started to dawn on me that maybe Yah was trying to get my attention about something. The dream was mysterious to me, so I began asking Yahweh what He was showing me in this dream. After having the dream again the answer was made clear: This was the inside of God's Great Timepiece - God's Time Holy Time - itself! The teaching in this book is based on the revelation that followed from that dream. What exactly is Holy Time and why should you care? Maybe you shouldn't care. If you are no part of Yah's holy nation then even after you read this book this teaching of Holy Time may still be a ridiculous mystery to you. Frankly, if that's the case then this book is not written for you. Holy Time is a message written for the holy nation, the scattered remnant of Israel, and their companions. Meaning no disrespect, it is not written primarily with unbelieving gentiles in mind, though it is made available to anyone who chooses to read it. My friend, the times of the gentiles are over (Luke 21:24). Holy Time is here and is marking off the great Plan of Yah to the End of the Age. Holy Time 8 Download at www.tsiyon.org
If you are a part of the scattered nation of Israel, whether that fact is presently known or unknown to yourself, then this book is an essential revelation meant for you in this very hour. In that case this book has found its way to you by divine providence and your heart and life has already been prepared by the Most High to receive it. For you this will be a life-changing message that will raise your spiritual life to a new and higher level than you can presently imagine. Why? Because this message will raise you to a higher level of fellowship with both the Father and the Son and will bind you into unity with the rest of Yah's holy nation in a real and tangible way. Getting on Holy Time is just that powerful. So what is the difference between Holy Time and gentile time (also known as Roman time, the world's time, Babylon's time etc.)? Well, for starters, gentile time is not holy. It's just time. The gentile thinks that time belongs to the individual and should be exploited for personal gain like everything else within reach. He thinks of it as my time as my life. He does whatever he wants with his time, which is to say he uses most if not all of his time to please himself until finally his time is up and he is no more. Gentile time is a treadmill that goes nowhere. It has no real over-arching purpose. Some think of it as progress - but progress toward what? There is no known answer to that question except this answer: gentile time WILL be swallowed up by Holy Time and will pass out of existence forevermore. Gentile time is futility. So what is Holy Time? It is time as created by and belonging to the Holy God. Holy Time belongs to Him - not you. Did you think your time to be your own? It's not - not if you are His. At most you are a mere steward of His time given into your care for the outworking of His purposes for the manifestation of His glory in your life. He created Holy Time as part of the framework of reality in which He works out His will AND lives in fellowship with His holy people - and they move and have their being in/with Him. Nothing and no one that is unholy can live in Holy Time with Him. He is holy (Hebrew: qadash), meaning clean, sanctified and set apart from all that is not holy. The holy people must meet the Creator in Holy Time because He cannot and will not leave Holy Time to meet anyone in unholy time. He says to His nation; You must be holy because I am holy. Being holy involves, among other things, meeting and dwelling in His Holy Time with Him for the outworking of the divine will. Holy Time 9 Download at www.tsiyon.org
Very few people want to live in Holy Time. They want holy days (holidays) that they consider special sometimes. However, actually dwelling in Holy Time as one's normal state of being would require one to live a holy life - and who really wants to do that? I mean, then your life is not your own anymore, is it? Exactly the point. This is why there is only a remnant of Israel and not all Israel that attains to the status of Yah's special possession in the midst of this world (Mal 3:16-18). Only a remnant aspire to true holiness as part of Yah's holy nation. The remnant aspires to holiness in every area because they know that holiness is not only the Father's will - it is also a requirement for inclusion in His holy nation. That's why this message is for the remnant of Israel. It is food for them that they need right now and will put to use for His glory. By these comments I do not want to give you the wrong impression. I do not mean to say there are no special days in Holy Time. You see, while all of God's time is holy there are also degrees of holiness. A study of the Temple shows this. We know the courtyard of the Temple is holy, while the holy compartment of the Temple is more holy still. Finally, we have the Most Holy compartment of the Temple which represents the highest degree of holiness with God in heaven itself. Holy Time is likewise compartmentalized into progressive levels of holiness. Indeed, every day is to be a Sabbath in which we rest from our own works and do His works instead. This does not replace the seventh day Sabbath, which we are also enjoined to keep holy or set apart at a higher level of holiness. There are other appointed days in Holy Time in which we are to meet with God and one another in a special way, with some of these held at a higher level of holiness than others. Most of this book has to do with the appointed days according to Yah's given system of Holy Time. Before we get into discussing those, please understand that it is not only the appointed days that qualify as Holy Time. On the contrary, all the time He has given AS MEASURED AND APPORTIONED OUT to His holy people according to His way of time-keeping is Holy Time in which we are called to dwell with Him. God's Appointments are Set According to Cycles of the Moon! Let's get right to the heart of the central fact of how Yah measures out Holy Time. God's system of keeping time with man from creation forward is based on the cycles of the moon rather Holy Time 10 Download at www.tsiyon.org
than the solar calendar widely used today. In fact, the Hebrew term for month, chodesh, means new moon, referring to the new moon that begins each month (lunar cycle). Thus, whenever we see the word month in the OT it actually means moon i.e. a full cycle of the phases of the moon starting with the actual sighting of the new moon crescent. This is why Hebrew days are counted from evening to evening, because their reckoning is dependant upon the physical sighting of the new moon. The day starting with the sighting of the new moon is an appointed day. The new moon is significant because it is the beginning day, the first day of the lunar month, from which all other appointed days are counted. The new moon must be sanctified as holy by Israel because all of Holy Time is counted from the new moon each month. In sanctifying the new moon each new month all of Holy Time is thereby sanctified as belonging to Yahweh from month to month. The new moon of the 7th month (Tishri) held extra significance in Bible times. Known as Trumpets it was an appointed day in Israel on which a special meeting of the people was held, trumpets were blown and offerings were made - and it was a Sabbath with no labor allowed (Lev 23:24,25). Its importance seemed to be to get God's people ready for the great significance of the 7th month in which the high holy day of the year, the Day of Atonement, is appointed. He Gave the Moon for His Appointments Does this all sound irrelevant to you? It's not. It is important to realize that the Biblical lunar system of reckoning time was not just a cultural convention of the Hebrews, but is the actual calendar of Yahweh that He has given His people by which He makes appointments with them. Being sanctified by the Creator to His people, it is Holy Time. He appointed the moon for seasons (Psalm 104:19). The Hebrew word here translated as seasons actually has much more fullness of meaning. It is Strong's 4150, mow'ed. It means an appointment i.e., a fixed time..a festival..an assembly..by extension, a meeting place. Get the picture? The Scripture is saying that the moon is God's appointment book by which He sets His appointments with His people! He has made appointments with His people - all set according to the phases of the moon. Make no mistake about it, whether you show up on those days or not, He's going to be there waiting for you! Holy Time 11 Download at www.tsiyon.org
A Moral Requirement I would add that this is why the Sabbath is included in the Ten Commandments with the other moral requirements of God. At the beginning of the world our Creator made a perpetual appointment with us to keep each month's Sabbaths holy so as to acknowledge His Creative Godship (Gen 2:2,3). The 4th Commandment states: Remember to keep holy the sabbath day. Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of YHWH, your God. No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your beast, or by the alien who lives with you. In six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why YHWH has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:8-11 The 4th Commandment assumes that God owns your time and has the right to tell you what to do with it. Do you agree - or do you think your time belongs to you? Your answer determines whether you live on God's Time, Holy Time, or on your own time. Make no mistake: All the laws of the Ten Commandments are moral laws of God. If He says the 7th day is holy who are we to say it is not! The Sabbath is a moral law included in the Ten Commandments because it is immoral to ignore an appointment with God that he has set! To ignore an appointment with God is to ignore one's Creator, and that is surely morally wrong. God's Sign, a Faithful Witness in the Heavens The faithful men of old understood all this. They knew that Yah established the moon to be His faithful witness in the heavens, a visible sign by which His appointed times are definitely set for anyone who cares to observe them (Ps. 89:37). The visible phases of the moon are like Yahweh's actual mechanical clock in the sky by which He sets all of His appointments with man. This, in fact, is what I was seeing in the recurring dream from Yahweh. The beauty of God's lunar system of appointing time is that you don't need a man-made calendar to observe Yah's set appointments. No experts are needed. All you need to do is look up at the calendar He put in the sky for all to see! Surely, it is not God's fault that modern man is so far removed from His Creator and nature that most of us today are unable to do what illiterate Holy Time 12 Download at www.tsiyon.org
farmers over the millennia have done so easily from month to month. Smarter than God? Viewed from this perspective it is frightening how far removed we have become from God's natural order. Why did this happen? It happened because humans thought they were smarter than God Himself. They observed that lunar years of 12 months each are about 11 days shorter than the solar year. This means that if some adjustment is not made the lunar months slip out of sync with the seasons. This provided a great opportunity for the experts to fix God's mistake. Only thing is, the fix isn't really needed. The ancient Hebrews dealt with this difference between the cycles of the sun and the moon in a very practical way. Whenever the lunar months were starting to get noticeably out of whack with the seasons they just inserted an extra lunar month at the end of the lunar year to correct the problem. (Actually, they didn't even figure this out because Yahweh worked it into the Holy Time system He gave them.) Sounds pretty imprecise to modern man, doesn't it? Well, it's not. This obvious intuitive fix does the job. Seven of these simple adjustments are required over a period of 19 years to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the seasons of the solar year - again, no experts needed - God just made it that way from the beginning. Somehow, experts always take over whether they are needed or not. After all, you can't be having a calendar that any fool can just look into the heavens to observe, can you? Besides, if you have a calendar that is not in sync with anything easily observable in the heavens then the common man will be dependant on the experts to tell him what day of the month it is. This control of the world s time has given those in control a lot of power. I bet you never thought of the calendar as a political tool, have you? Well, it is. If you want proof just try to extract yourself from the world's calendar. When you try that you will learn just how firm a grasp the world's order of time has on your life. Take the red pill, Neo. The Seven-Day Cycle It gets worse. You know the seven days of the week that dominate the cycles of your life? You know? That seven day cycle that is Holy Time 13 Download at www.tsiyon.org
just accepted by everyone as extending in uninterrupted sequence back to the beginning of time? Where did that come from? What heavenly body determines those days? What in nature is that unending 7 day cycle tied to or regulated by? The answer is - the sequence of the days of the week, as we know the week today, is totally an invention of man and has nothing to do with Yah's calendar! What a joke that many argue over whether the Sabbath is on Saturday or Sunday! The enemy has had a big laugh getting people all worked up over this argument based on a premise that is entirely bogus to begin with! Neither the day of the false god Saturn nor the day of the false god Sol has anything whatsoever to do with the true Sabbath! What I'm saying is not just a matter of semantics. What I'm telling you is that at some point in the ancient past some pagan expert decided that 7 days named after 7 false gods would cycle on endlessly through time, giving each of the false gods equal time to rule the affairs of men. Though involving religion, this smells like a political move. According to the scholarship of Eviatar Zerubavel, Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, in his book, The Seven-Day Cycle, the modern week as we know it does not extend back to the beginning of time. It was an invention of men that was first disseminated from Alexandria Egypt in the 2nd Century BC. In the fourth century Rome institutionalized the concept, and it has continued to dominate much of the human race ever since. The point is, this concept of unending 7 day cycles did not originate with God. It is not Holy Time. It is totally a pagan idea. [See also Keeping Yahweh's Appointments by Jonathan David Brown, which has been appreciatively utilized as an important resource by this author in the development of this book.] So why do the Rabbinical Jews keep Saturday Sabbath today? In the fourth century the Rabbis adjusted their calendar to accommodate Roman convention - but that has not been so from the beginning. The Rabbinical Calendar as we know it today is not one and the same with the Hebrew Calendar given by Yahweh and referred to in Scripture. In fact, the present Rabbinical Calendar continues to be frequently altered and adjusted by the Rabbis so as not to conflict with the days of the pagan week cycle. The idea that the Rabbis could actually loose track of Holy Time Holy Time 14 Download at www.tsiyon.org
may sound like heresy to some. However, it shouldn't. If apostate leaders of Israel lost the Tabernacle, two Temples, all the holy Temple furnishings and countless national treasures, including the Ark of the Covenant, and then even missed their Messiah, it is no stretch of the imagination to suggest they also lost track of Holy Time. This is not meant as disrespect but is a plainly stated account of the facts of the history of our wayward nation. The Lunar Week God couldn't care less about the days of the pagan week cycle. He designated a calendar based on the phases of the moon, remember! When the Bible talks about a given day, be it the seventh, the tenth, the fifteenth or whatever day, it is generally talking about the DAY OF THE MONTH as counted from the new moon. There are Bible weeks of course. The English word week is translated from the Hebrew shabuwa (Strong's 7620) literally meaning sevened. Do you notice that the word shabuwa is a lot like shabbath (Strong's 7676) translated Sabbath? The concept of the Biblical week is a lunar month divided by its Sabbaths. The first day of the lunar month is the first day, the second day of the lunar month is the second day, etc. with the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of EACH month being designated as Sabbaths. This seven day cycle applied in this way makes sense astronomically, since the Sabbaths closely align with the quarters of the moon. This is decidedly different than our modern week that closely aligns with nothing but a paper we hang up on our wall! There is no perpetual cycle of weeks envisioned in Yah's lunar calendar which we are to be enslaved to after the pagan pattern. On God's lunar calendar the first day of the month is day 1 with the rest of the days counted from there. So what about the day after the 28th, since lunar months are generally 29 to 30 solar days long? No problem. These days are added to the 28th day Sabbath as an extended Sabbath at the end of the lunar month (called the Sabbath of the New Moon since this extended Sabbath brings in the New Moon). How thoughtful of the Creator to add a little extra time at the end of the month for us to rest up and strengthen ourselves in Him before another cycle commences! Truly, the Sabbath was made for man, as the Lord of the Sabbath has told us. What kindness of God, at the end of Holy Time 15 Download at www.tsiyon.org
each lunar month, to set his people free from slavish bondage to an uninterrupted weekly cycle! It's All About Showing Up! I don't know about you, but I want to be set free from slavish devotion to the world's domination of time to get in sync with Holy Time. I have found that returning to Yah's Holy Time brings my life more into the natural flow of His order that He intended from the beginning. I can't speak for others, but I want you to know that as for me and my household - we are now on Holy Time - no matter how difficult it may prove for us to fully make the transition from the world's time. That doesn't mean we are going to totally stop using man's clocks and calendars for appointments with people who are on them. What it means is, when it comes to God's appointments, we are going to show up on the appointed times that He has set according to HIS calendar! It means that not only the appointed days, but all of the time He has blessed us with belongs to Him and we can live with Him in fellowship in His Holy Time as we live each moment for His glory. In fact, at this point I can tell you that as I have shown up for the appointments Yah has shown up for them too! My family and I have met Him on His Appointments in Holy Time and we have been blessed by entering into His heart on those days in ways we could not have understood before. We are liberated from the world s pagan hamster-wheel time. We now have begun to walk with God in Holy Time! Does this all sound kind of weird to you? Then prayerfully read the rest of this book which proves everything asserted in this brief overview. You will see that the world s time is wrong and you have been unknowingly wrong with it. Not totally wrong of course, just a bit out of whack. That can be corrected. Remnant nation of Israel, as one man synchronize your watches to get prepared for the amazing end time events just ahead. Get your God Clock set to the right time. Not Eastern Time, Not Central Time, not Mountain Time, Not Pacific Time - Get your God Clock set to Holy Time! Holy Time 16 Download at www.tsiyon.org
HOLY TIME Passover Edition By Eliyahu ben David Listen online to: On the Road to Tsiyon With Eliyahu ben David at www.tsiyon.org Thank you for reading this sample of Holy Time - Passover Edition. Would you like to read the rest? Download your copy of the full version at www.tsiyon.org This sample version is intended to introduce you and others to the full version of this book which is offered at www.tsiyon.org. This sample version you have been reading may be reproduced and distributed freely only on the condition that it is reproduced in it s entirety without ANY changes. This sample version may not be sold. It may be freely emailed to friends, offered for free on your website, be included free with other offers, be included on a disk with other material or may otherwise be distributed free of charge as you see fit. No spamming please!