Month 5:26, Week 4:4 (Revee/Shavu'ot), Year:Day 5936:144 AM
Gregorian Calendar: Monday 13 August 2012
The Quartodecimans
Would You Have Been One?
If you observe the biblical Creation Calendar and observe Pesach (Passover) on the fourteenth day of Aviv or the first month in that calendar, then you, like me, are a Quartodeciman.
Under the Roman Catholic Pope Victor (see picture above) Pesach (Passover) was 'officially' changed to 'Easter' and those believers who continued to observe Pesach (Passover) were called 'Quartodecimans', a Latin word meaning 'fourteenth-day man' because of the instruction given in the Pentateuch:
"This month (Aviv) shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you...Now you shall keep [the Passover lamb] until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight" (Ex.12:2,6, NKJV).
Two days after Pesach (Passover), at Yom haBikkurim (Day of Firstfruits) or the Third Day of the spring festivals, the early believers celebrated the resurrection of Messiah:
"The eastern churches celebrated the resurrection of Christ annually two days after the Passover feast. They commemorated the resurrection on whatever day of the [Roman] week the sixteenth day of the [Hebrew] month fell. This was in harmony with the way the Bible regulated the Old Testament Passover feast" (B.G.Wilkinson, PhD., Truth Triumphant, pp.123-125).
In the centuries before Messiah, the pagans had a counterfeit holiday each year celebrating the spring equinox of the sun. It was called Eostre from the Scandinavian word for the goddess of spring, from which we get our English word 'Easter'. According to Dr.Wilkinson, Easter was a counterfeit of Pesach (Passover). This is not at all unlikely and hardly surprising, as those of you who have invested any substantial amount of time studying the history of Yahweh's festivals and the modern ones that permeate the churches and most messianic assemblies will know, as Satan has gone out of his way to counterfeit everything that Yahweh has established.
Obviously I am not going to go around in public or in assembly and introduce myself as a 'Quartodeciman' as almost no one will have a clue what I am talking about and probably think I am just out for a bit of notoriety or attention but it's worth remembering that there were believers who were called this and who suffered persecution at the hands of Catholics for sticking as closely to the true calendar as they knew how. These included, according to the venerable Bede and Polycrates, such luminaries as Philip and his two daughters, John the apostle, Polycarp of Smyrna (a bishop and martyr), Eumenaea, Sagaris, Papirus, Melito and countless others [1].
Though increasing numbers of Protestants are slowly coming to divine calendar emet (truth), a great many still react to these revelations with the same kind of hostility as Victor and subsquent pontiffs have. This may, as a topic, appear a bit 'out of season', being as we are rapidly approaching the autumn festivals, but I do so because of the necessity to guard sacred time both for righteousness' sake as well as to enable true talmidim (dsiciples) to be ready to hear Yahweh at his moedim (appointments) as the current crisis deepens. The sixth month begins in five days' time and I am anxious for all of Yahweh's people to be alert and responsive to the will of Elohim (God).
May Yahweh bless you all.
Endnotes
[1] Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People - though Bede incorrectly called the resurrection 'Easter', that being the vernacular of his day, he knew well that the resurrection was no celebrated by the first believers according to Catholic (and today Protestant) tradition; Polycrates, Letter to Victor, Bishop of Rome, quoted in Eusebius, Eccelsiastical History, Vol.24, pp-2-8.
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