Observe the people who today try to set their
feast days by the moon and you will observe that one
group will have their feast on certain dates that differ
from another group who keep the same feast. They
can’t agree on the exact dates. Someone is confused
and the average person that reads of the lunar calculation
of those who promote the lunar calendar (and calculations
from it) becomes very confused. Remember,
God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians
14:33). Concerning the lunar calendar, the Encyclopedia
Britannica, Eleventh Edition, says,
“It is therefore
so obviously ill-adapted to the computation of time,
that, excepting the modern Jews and Mohammedans,
almost all nations who have regulated their months by
the moon have employed some method of intercalculation by means of which the beginning of the year is retained at nearly the same fixed place in the
season.” Because it is ill-adapted for
computation of time, God’s people did not calculate
time by it, including the time or the dates of the feasts.
That is not to say the moon isn’t useful in other ways –
farmer’s planting by the sign of the moon, ranchers
branding and castrating cattle by the sign of the moon,
or the navy using the moon (which affects tides) in
their dry docking of ships; but, the moon is not for calculating times of the feasts.
The word “moon” in the King James Bible in the Pentateuch is only found four times: Genesis 37:9,
Deuteronomy 4:19, Deuteronomy 17:3, and Deuteronomy 33:14. None of these passages have to do with calculating times. The Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, which contain the law) did not teach and does not teach God’s people to use the moon to calculate time. The sun was a light put in the heavens for signs, seasons, days, and years. There will be some,
especially of the Judaizing, deceiving snakes in our
midst who try to confuse you; they will take exception
to this statement and immediately direct you to Genesis
1:14-16. So, let’s first look at that passage. When we
do, we will find that the translators have confused us a
bit:
14And God said, let there be lights in the firmament
of the heaven to divide the day from the night;
and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for
days, and years; 15and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule
the night; He made the stars also. 17And God set them
in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. – Genesis 1:14-18 KJV.
The Judaizers have confused people into believing
this passage is speaking of the sun and the
moon and the translators have not helped in the matter.
So let’s first look to see what the passage is talking
about. It is talking about
“lights in the firmament of the
heaven;” lights to give light upon the earth (Verse 15),
but is the moon included in these lights? Technically,
the moon does not give light. It only reflects light. The
lights the Bible is talking about are divided into two
categories and each are identified; the greater light to
rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. The
two lights are the sun and the stars – the moon is not
mentioned here at all.
There are two witnesses to the truth of this statement. The first witness is seen in the more correct
translation of Verse 16:
“And God made two great lights; the greater
light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the
night: he made the stars also.” – Genesis 1:16 KJV.
Notice that the words
“he made” are in italics,
which means those words were not in the original text
but were added by the translators. There is another
word that does not appear in the Bible text, though it is
not in italics (and I do not know why it is not) and that
word is
“also”. This fact can be established by going
to Strong’s Concordance and looking up the word.
When this is done one finds there is no number next to
the word. The index of Strong’s Concordance that instructs
one on how to use the book states that if there is
no number there then that means the word did not appear
in the original text. (My question is, if it was not
in there then why was it not italicized as was
“he
made”)?
Since the words
“he made” and
“also” are not
in the text let’s read the verse without them.
“And God
made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars.” Notice
“the stars” follows the colon
).
One dictionary’s definition of a colon is that
the colon
) is used to separate clauses when the second expands the first. So the words
“the stars” expand the meaning of
“greater and lesser lights.” Another dictionary states that the phrase following the colon is tied by the colon to the subject prior to the colon. This means the lesser and greater lights are simply the stars, not the moon. Remember, the sun is the closest star to the earth and the stars are suns of other solar systems. The second witness to the truth of the statement that the two lights of Genesis 1:16 is the sun and the stars and not the moon is found in the statement that the greater light was to
“rule the day” and the lesser to
“rule the night” and that they were to
“divide the light from the darkness”. This is true of the sun and stars, but not of the moon. Remember, the sun is the closest star to the earth and the stars are suns of other solar systems.
The second witness to the truth of the statement
that the two lights of Genesis 1:16 is the sun and the
stars and not the moon is found in the statement that the
greater light was to
“rule the day” and the lesser to
“rule the night” and that they were to
“divide the light
from the darkness”. This is true of the sun and stars,
but not of the moon. There are days when the moon
can be seen in the night portion of a day and other days
when it can be seen in the light portion of a day. In
other words, there are days when the sun and the moon
can be seen at the same time in the daytime sky, but
one can never see the stars in the sky with the sun.
The example I saw given on a dated video presentation showed how the Farmer’s Almanac gives the time of sun rises and sun sets and the time of moon rises and moon sets. The example was that on 7/10/91, the moon rose at 5:02 a.m. and set at 8:11 p.m. On 7/11/91, it rose at 6:14 and set at 9:03. On 7/12/91, it rose at 7:30 and set at 9:47. This means that at midnight on July 10, 1991, there was no moon in the sky and on July 11, 1991, the moon actually rose twentytwo minutes before the sun. That day, both the sun and the moon traveled across the sky together. This is not an unusual event. No, the moon does not rule night or day and does not divide the light from the darkness. The moon is not and was not part of the lights established for signs, seasons, days, or years and thus should never be used to establish days and dates.
