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Creation Calendar
| Testimony | Day/Night | Spring Feasts | Sign of Jonah |
| Definitions | Seventh Day Sabbaths | Summer Feast | Native Americans |
| Beginnings | New Moons/Months | Fall Feasts | Links |
| Dates/Dateline | Universal Calendars |
Over two years ago our family made a drastic switch in the calendar that we observe. We went from a Messianic system to one we understand as more in line with the calendar given at creation. Prior to this, we had attempted to celebrate the Biblical festivals on a Gregorian calendar. We had switched from Sunday to Saturday Sabbaths. We used the moon to tell what day of the week the annual festival high days fell. We wondered about the significant of the new moon, but often missed it. We were in weekly fellowship with like-minded believers and were relatively comfortable in our calendar understanding.
Then we went through a transition and stopped our Saturday fellowship meetings. Soon afterwards we were confronted with a whole new calendar system that predates the Julian/Gregorian and Jewish calendars. We eventually accepted a calendar in which each month begins with a new moon holiday that is a third category of day. Weeks in this calendar fall within months; all months have four complete weeks of six working days followed by a Sabbath.
This switch resulting in a change in lifestyle. Saturday and the other days of the Gregorian week now float on our calendar, making work schedules more involved. We found ourselves gravitating to a new set of people for primary fellowship, although one family from our former fellowship group made the switch after we did. Our second son even met a girl whose family observes a similar calendar and is now happily married. At the same time, we stay close to many of those from our previous fellowship and to our oldest son who has not made the switch.
Our switch resulted in reexamining the Biblical festivals, the order and significance of day and night, and the chronology of Messiah's passion. One of the primary objections to my making the switch was whether or not there were two Sabbaths in the passion week. Study of this issue has now given me what I consider a much less "forced" chronology.
I have found that the switch of calendars in history is quite hidden, which I would expect given that those in control generally like the Gregorian calendar. I have not personally delved much into extra Biblical Jewish calendar history, but have purchased Hutton Webster's Rest Days (MacMillan Company, 1916, republished by Omnigraphics, Detroit, 1992) and Eviatar Zerubavel's The Seven Day Circle (The Free Press, MacMillan, New York, 1985). (I found what I consider a perfect example of a 'straw man' argument in Zerubavel's book.) My study of these books and online Jewish encyclopedias convinced me that the continuous seven day cycle does not go back to creation.
This is an exciting time and, I think, a continuation of a reformation of sorts. A switch in calendar is just another way that we fulfill the following exhortation:
Rev 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.