Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and may the grace of our Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) be with you all as we continue our study of the Creation Calendar and further proof of its truthfulness.

I want to begin today by expressing my indebtedness today to Moshe Eliyahu and to his careful research work on the luni-solar calendar. There aren't many of us adhering to this emet (truth) precisely because it is controversial and because it demands significant lifestyle changes.

There are many who know that this is Yahweh's Divine Calendar and that this is the only way to observe the True Sabbath (this being one of the signs of Messianic Israel and faithfulness to the New Covenant) but who refuse to obey it because of the consequences to jobs and their relationships with others who do not. Yah'shua (Jesus) never said it would be easy following Him but He did say that it would be worth it.

I recently compiled a short article Ten Calendar Errors of Christians and Messianics, also inspired by Moshe Eliyahu, because of the decision of one of the larger Messianic Israelite ministries who had hitherto brilliantly expounded on the luni-solar sabbath but which has done a complete U-turn and decided to embrace another wholely pagan solar calendar based on the pseudepgraphical books of Enoch and Jubillees.

They call this variant of the so-called 'Enochian Calendar' a 'patriarchal calendar', one I had previously investigated and rejected many years ago because it flagrantly contradicts the Torah. It contradicts the Torah on many points but on one in particular it is fundamentally in disagreement.

This concerns the number of months in the biblical year which has changed since patriarchal times - not at the hands of men but because of changes in nature herself. Whereas in the ante-Diluvian (pre-Flood) days there were exactly 30 days in a month and 360 days in a year divided into 12 months, this has all changed. And when Yahweh gave Israel the Torah again through Moses, this change was written into the Torah so that man might live the Calendar correctly. Whatever calendar may have been in operation during the Patriarchal Era it cannot operate in ours until Yahweh changes the movements of the heavenly bodies back again to where they were before the Deluge.

How do we know there were originally exactly 30 days in a month? In Genesis we learn that the waters began to flood the earth on the 2nd month, 17th day (Gen.7:11). The waters began began to recede after 150 days in the 7th month, 17th day (Gen.8:3-4) after 5 months. 150 days divided by 5 months = 30 days each and every month. Therefore in Noah's day all of the months were each 30 days long.

In Genesis 1:14 Yahweh set two witness in the heavens - the sun and moon - by which we may accurately calculate the days and moedim (appointments) in His solar lunar calendar. In yesteryear there were, as I said, 360 days in a year and 30 days in a month. Since the big changes (which I will explain in more detail in a minute) there are now 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes each month, or about 29½ days. This means that there are now either 29 or 30 days in a month.

In yesteryear there were 360 days in a solar year. Today, as a result of the big changes, there are 365¼ days in a solar year (one complete orbit around the sun), or to be exact, 365 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 48 seconds. However, Yahweh's calendar is not solar (based on solar orbit times) but luni-solar and in this Heaven-designed system there are 354 luni-solar days in a year. Because this number is less than the solar 360 day count, a 13th month has to be added approximately every 3 years in order to keep the moedim (appointments) of Yahweh (festivals, sabbaths, new moons) aligned with the seasons.

The so-called 'Enochian Calendar' insists that there are always 12 months in a year (never an extra 13th) whereas the Torah teaches that roughly every three years there are sometimes 13 months in a year too. If you can demonstrate that there is at least one example of a year with 13 months from the Torah then you can immediately discount any 'Enochian Calendar' as having any relevence to our time. This is not to say an endless 12 month year calendar system won't come into existence again in the future - what it is absolutely saying is that talmidim (disciples) have no authority to change what Yahweh has established for our time. We can talk about a different calendar system again when in the future there are exactly 360 days in a solar year. Until that happens, we are firmly bound by the luni-solar system.

How do we explain the change from a 30 day to a 29½ day period? There are various theories advanced to account for this. Moshe Eliyahu believes this was a supernatural act of Yahweh in the days of Hezekiah when at the king's request for a sign Yahweh advanced the shadow of a sundial by 10°. It's an interesting theory that deserves careful examination but I believe there is a better explaination proposed by scientist Dr. Walt Brown [2].

Brown's theory is that during the Flood, about half the water in today's ocean was released from storage about 10 miles down in the Earth's crust. As the water came out, the granite on top sank to replace it. When the Flood was over, the water and the granite had changed places, with the water now on top. This moved the Earth's angular center of mass down about 3 miles. With a constant angular momentum, this forced the Earth's angular velocity to speed up by 5.25 rotations per solar year. It is the same effect as when a twirling figure skater pulls her arms in closer to the body and her spin accelerates. Ken Griffith has done the math on this, and claims it works. However, something must have altered the orbit of the moon at this time to put it in a lower/faster orbit. If you do the day count of Noah's Flood, the moon comes out 10 days 'fast' at the end of the narrative. This puzzling anomaly probably has something to do with it but it is not completely understood yet.

There is an interesting effect from the fact that the moon's energy was reduced by the flood, and the Earth's angular velocity slightly increased. The Earth is currently transferring tidal energy to the Moon in the form of angular momentum, so that the moon gets about 20 mm farther from the Earth every month. This means the Earth's rotation is slowing down, bleeding energy to the Moon's orbit. The moon as it gets further from Earth will take longer to orbit. We do not know what the ratio is, but it could be calculated. That is to say, the earth is bleeding energy to the moon so that the 360/30 ratio may eventually be restored in the passage of time without any direct supernatural intervention. You could say that the earth-moon relationship is slowly but surely returning to equilibrium following the 'trauma' of the Flood.

The fact that the periodicity is in constant change (albeit moving in the right direction of restoration) is another reason we need a soli-lunar calendar. That's partly why Yahweh created it.

Historically we know that the Babylonians used the Embolismic Period [1] where they used intercalary months from 2233 BC down to the beginning of the Era of Nabonassar in 747 BC. The Hebrews were using a similar system of inserting intercalary months, but they did so by not starting the month of Aviv (Nissan) until the first new moon when the barley was in the ear. This effectively meant that Aviv (Nissan) was usually the first new moon after the Spring equinox.

Later the Jews switched to a calculated intercalary month on a regular schedule so they could coordinate feast days for Jews around the world without relying on a central priesthood to determine the new moon by personal observation. Out of this evolved the current Jewish Calendar which is part Roman and part Biblical. The result is that all the months and moedim are off by 1-3 days, and sometimes (in the case of Shavu'ot) by many weeks, with the sabbath day being in error 70-80% of the time.

So to recap - the month got shorter at the time of the Flood as a result of the Moon hitting 'drag' caused by the débris of the cataclysm. In the Flood passage (Gen.7), Noah was counting 30 days months without being able to see the moon. But when he got off the Ark the moon appears to have been ten days fast. This may be gathered (though it cannot absolutely be proved) from comparing Noah's day count with his month count.

The main argument against Moshe Eliyahu's Hezekiah Theory is that the author claims the motion of the sun changed. The sun doesn't have motion (apart from its motion through space around the galactic centre), the earth does, and the moon does. Something clearly happened with the shadow going backwards 10 degrees. The question is what?

Instead of the earth reversing its rotation, it could have done an axis roll. If you strike a gyroscope that is free floating it will sometimes restabilise by doing a 180° or 360° roll. That is possibly what could have happened on Joshua's long day, or if Yahweh suspended the laws of physics for a few hours. As of yet we don't know exactly what happened there.

Another way to prove or disprove Moshe Eliyahu's theory is to see if there were any observed eclipses recorded prior to Hezekiah's time based on the 29½ day month. That research work remains to be done.

An alternative and more likely reason why many nations changed their calendar in the 8th century around 747 BC was that the orginal 'embolismic period' calcualated at Babel had intercalary months that should have led to the spring equinox coinciding with the new moon of Aviv in exactly 1440 years after Babel was founded in 2233 BC. But the method of intercalation they were using had the same rate of inserting days as the Julian calendar. This meant their calendar was gaining time. They ended up having to add about 67 more years to the 1440 before the New Moon was back on the Equinox. This happened in the year 747 BC which is why Nabonassar reset the calendar for Babylon, and that is the year that Ptolemy's Royal Canon begins as well.

In looking to Scripture for evidence of a 13th month, we turn to the book of Ezekiel. In the account of the prophet, he shares some important dates that will help us in our search.

The book begins with Ezekiel writing:

"In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of Elohim (God). On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of Yahweh came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of Yahweh was upon him there" (Ezekiel 1:1-2, NKJV)

Ezekiel continues from there, writing about the intense visions he saw of Elohim (God) on that day (the 5th day of the 4th month of the 5th year of Exile) commissioning him to testify to the hardened and rebellious nation of Israel through the rest of Ezekiel 1 to Ezekiel 3:15. He ends his account of that day, saying:

"The Ruach (Spirit) lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness in the heat of my ruach (spirit), the hand of Yahweh being strong upon me. And I came to the exiles at Tel-aviv, who were dwelling by the Chebar canal, and I sat where they were dwelling. And I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days" (Ezekiel 3:14-15, NKJV).

Ezekiel was obedient to Yahweh, and as we fast-forward his story, we find him in Ezekiel 8:1 sitting before the elders of Judah after his 430 days had been completed:

"In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of Yahweh-Elohim fell upon me there" (Ezekiel 8:1, NKJV).

Let's use the Gregorian Calendar as our example for our 'solar only' calendar calculations, which contains months of 30 and 31 days and only has 365 days in a year:

12th of April (4th Month) of the 5th year - through - 12th of April (4th Month) of the 6th year = 365 Days = 1 Full Solar year

April 13th - April 30th (counting the rest of that month) = 18 days

May (5th month) 1st - 31st = 31 days

June (6th month) 1st - 5th = 5 days

Total days: 365 + 18 + 31 + 5 = 419 Days.

We have a problem! We need to be able to account for at least 430 days that Ezekiel laid on his sides in obedience to Yahweh, but with a solar-only calendar we fall 11 days short of that minimum required time. If we take into account where Ezekiel also needed time to prepare the bread he was to eat for the 430 days (as Yahweh commanded in Ezekiel 4:9-16) which would also have required a few days, we find things looking even worse for solar-only calendars. Indeed, no solar-only 365 day calendar would be able to account for that full period of time.

What about the Luni-Solar Calendar? Would it be able to account for 430 days?

The Luni-Solar calendar goes through what is referred to in astronomy as the Metonic Cycle, a 19 year cycle where certain years have 12 lunar months and certain years 13 lunar months.

For our calculations, we will work from the assumption that the 5th year of Exile was one of the luni-solar years that had 13 months:

12th Day of 4th Month of the 5th year (including the 13th month) - through - 12th day of the 4th month of the 6th year = 384 days (354 days + 13th month = 384 day Year).

13th day of 4th month - 29th Day of the 4th month (counting the rest of that month)= 17 Days

1st day of 5th month - 30th day of 5th Month = 30 Days

1st day of 6th month - 5th day of 6th month = 5 Days

Total days: 384 + 17 + 30 + 5 = 436 Days

We find that a 13 month luni-solar year is not only able to account for the 430 days that Ezekiel laid on his side in obedience to Yahweh, but also a few extra days that would have given Ezekiel time to prepare the bread Yahweh commanded he was to eat. Ezekiel's account is therefore concrete evidence not only that Israel was using a luni-solar calendar but also that 13-month years were also a part of Israel's calendation!

Therefore no Enochian or any other kind of solar calendar was in use in Ezekiel's day. And if 13-month years were present during this period then they have been present ever since and must remain present until 30-day months and 360-day years are once again restored and we can again live by the original patriarchal calendar. Finally, they must also have been present at some time soon after the flood and therefore before Ezekiel's time too.

The only post-Diluvian calendar that is therefore authorised by Yahweh is the Luni-Solar or Creation Calendar and we must strongly urge believers to put aside all the disjunctive solar calendars in use today, whether Gregorian or 'Enochian' or they will not know when to assemble at the appointed times.

Considering the dangerous and apostate age we are living in, Ezekiel's warning becomes all the more revelent:

"Moreover I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies them. Yet the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they did not walk in My statutes; they despised My judgments, which, if a man does, he shall live by them; and they greatly defiled My Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out My fury on them in the wilderness, to consume them" (Ezekiel 20:11-13, NKJV).

Endnotes

[1] The time of the apparent revolution of the sun trough the ecliptic, the period occupied by the earth in making its revolution around the sun (called the astronomical year), and also, a period more or less nearly agreeing with this, adopted by various nations as a measure of time, and called the Civil Year.
[2] I highly recommend his encyclopaedic book, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (Center for Scientific Creation, Phoenix, AZ: 2008 - 8th edition). It is a well-organised treasure of scientific information and perfect for teaching from. The book is available online free at his website too.

Acknowledgements

[1] Moshe Eliyahu, Is There a Thirteenth Month Shown in the Scriptures?
[2] Ken Griffith, Personal Correspondences, January 2013
[3] Milton Carnes, The 13th Month In Scripture
[4] Larry & June Acheson, The Thirteenth Month
[5] Author unknown, Ezekiel saw more than just a wheel in the sky: He also saw and understood the Creator’s Calendar. A “thirteenth month” is located in Scripture

Comments from Readers

[1] "I found your article.. some really good stuff in here!" (ZF, USA, 27 March 2013)