So let’s see
what’s in God’s “Day-Timer.”
Leviticus 23
(KJV)
23 And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning
the feasts of the Lord,
which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.
3 Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of
rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of
the Lord in all your dwellings.
4 These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their
seasons.
5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord's passover.
6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of
unleavened bread unto the Lord:
seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.
7 In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no
servile work therein.
8 But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye
shall do no servile work therein.
9 And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
10 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be
come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof,
then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:
11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the
priest shall wave it.
12 And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb
without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord.
13 And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine
flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be
of wine, the fourth part of an hin.
14 And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears,
until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall
be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath,
from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths
shall be complete:
16 Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number
fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord.
17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two
tenth deals; they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they
are the firstfruits unto the Lord.
18 And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of
the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt
offering unto the Lord,
with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by
fire, of sweet savour unto the Lord.
19 Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, and
two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings.
20 And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits
for a wave offering before the Lord,
with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest.
21 And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an holy
convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a
statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.
22 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make
clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt
thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor,
and to the stranger: I am the Lord your
God.
23 And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
24 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month,
in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing
of trumpets, an holy convocation.
25 Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an
offering made by fire unto the Lord.
26 And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
27 Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a day
of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict
your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
28 And ye shall do no work in that same day: for it is a day of
atonement, to make an atonement for you before the Lord your God.
29 For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same
day, he shall be cut off from among his people.
30 And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day,
the same soul will I destroy from among his people.
31 Ye shall do no manner of work: it shall be a statute for ever
throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
32 It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your
souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye
celebrate your sabbath.
33 And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
34 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of
this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto
the Lord.
35 On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no
servile work therein.
36 Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye
shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work
therein.
37 These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an
offering made by fire unto the Lord,
a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings,
everything upon his day:
38 Beside the sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all
your freewill offerings, which ye give unto the Lord.
39 Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have
gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the
eighth day shall be a sabbath.
40 And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees,
branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the
brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.
41 And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in
your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
42 Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born
shall dwell in booths:
43 That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel
to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am
the Lord your God.
44 And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of
the Lord.
Feast of the LORD breakdown in
Leviticus 23
·
V. 1-3 SABBATH (WEEKLY)
·
V. 4-14 PESACH (PASSOVER, FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD, FIRST
FRUITS) SPRING: NISSAN/MARCH-APRIL: EXD. 21:1-51; MATT. 26:17-30; MARK
14:12-26; LUKE 22:1-38; JOHN 13:1-20
·
V. 15-22 COUNTING OF THE OMER, SHAVU'OT (PENTECOST) SPRING:
SIVAN/MAY-JUNE: EXD. 19; ACTS 2:1-47
·
V. 23-25 YOM TERUAH/ROSH HASHANNAH (FEAST OF TRUMPETS): FALL/AUTUMN:
TISHRI/SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: NUM. 29:1-6, I THESS. 4:16
·
TEN DAYS
OF AWE
·
V. 26-32 YOM KIPPUR (DAY OF ATONEMENTS): FALL/AUTUMN:
TISHRI/SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: LEV. 16:1-34; HEB. 9:11-10:22; 13:11-12
·
V. 33-44 SUKKOT (FEAST OF TABERNACLES): FALL/AUTUMN:
TISHRI/SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: JOHN 7:2-9:5
Other Biblical Holidays
·
CHANUKAH (FEAST
OF DEDICATION) WINTER: KISLEV/NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: 1-4 MACCABEES; JOHN 10
·
PURIM (FEAST
OF LOTS - FEAST OF ESTHER): LATE WINTER-EARLY SPRING: ADAR/FEBRUARY-MARCH: BOOK
OF ESTHER
Holidays as History
The Jewish people
are some of the most unique people on earth. Much of what we do runs contrary
to the majority of other cultures. We seem backward to the outside world.
One of the things
that separate us from the rest of the world is our Holidays. Unlike other
cultures our holidays are founded on Agriculture and Seasons, Historical
events, facts and Divine Commands of God; not legends and fairy tales or pagan
lore. Sure some stories are seasoned with legend but for the purpose of a moral
lesson, we do not base our Holy Days on these legends.
Maurice Samuel
once said, “For others, a knowledge of the history of their people is a civic
duty, while for the Jews it is a sacred duty.
As Jews we believe
that history is His-Story, we believe that all of it is scared.
“Our people have
survived some atrocious incidents ever committed against humanity. We have been
exiled, expelled, excluded. We have been victims of mass murder. One might
think that we would want to forget our history. Who wants to remember one
tragic event after another? But the Jewish response has been the exact
opposite… By embracing what happened in our past, we believe can affect the
future…. Our past is a crucial part of our inner lives, as individuals and as a
people. Do not forget the past. It is an important lens through which to
understand the present.” -- Rabbi Lori
Forman, “Sacred Intentions”
As a well-known
saying goes, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”
We do not
commemorate man spun lore, events that supposedly came to pass by the hand of
Babylonian, Assyrian, Nordic god’s or any other gods for that matter. We do not
tell our children lies that will cause them to be disillusioned or mistrust
adults when they get older, nor to perpetuate such lies to the next generation
regarding a god like fat man that takes account of one’s moral activities year
by years and reward the child according to his or her collective good or bad
behavior. We do not reenact pagan sexual intercourse of the pagan earth gods
using symbolic phallic symbols in spring, we do not tell lies to our people
regarding giant humanoid rabbits who lay multi-colored eggs in hiding all
around, nor about little men in green suits who promise gold if captured. We do
not scare our children by telling them of witches and demons nor given them
instruction on how to pacify or ward off their supposed presence during the
fall of the year. We do not fill our children with lies, made up heroes, false
hope and superstitions. No, we celebrate real heroes, real people, and real
events good and bad by the Hand of, or permitted to happen by a very real God.
Every week from
Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown we commemorate Creation and how
God rested when HE completed it.
At Passover we
celebrate our Freedom from slavery and our Exodus out of Egypt Land
of Promise
On Shavu’ot we
celebrate the Harvest, God’s bountiful provisions; we also commemorate the
giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai and the Giving of the Ruach Ha Kodesh, the
Holy Spirit.
Yom Teruah, we
blow the Shofar and remember Creation, Abraham, Isaac and the sacrificial Ram
that took Isaacs place.
Yom Kippur we
empty ourselves, confess our sin and surrender afresh for another year.
At Sukkot we
remember how our ancestors dwelt in tents in the wilderness, we remember the
temporal nature of this world and the eternality of the next. We also recognize
the birth of our Messiah at this time.
Purim we celebrate
Esther’s bravery and her salvation our or people from genocide.
During Chanukah we
celebrate the Maccabees recapture and cleansing of the Temple Temple
And throughout the
year there are other minor celebrations and fasts to mark events in Jewish
history, not fairy tales.
One day all the
Nations will see the futility and lies of their pagan gods and their holy days
and see the reality of the God if Israel.
Jer. 16:19-21 O
LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the
Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely
our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.
Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods? Therefore,
behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know mine
hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is The LORD.
On the
secular Gregorian calendar we have such holiday observances as:
·
New Year’s Day
·
Groundhog’s Day
·
Valentine’s Day
·
April Fool’s Day
·
Saint Patrick’s Day
·
Easter
·
May Day
·
Thanksgiving
·
Halloween
·
Christmas
·
Among many others…
Many of
these holidays we have been told have Christian origins and meaning, but as we
shall see, in reality, have origins in Babylon and have evolved through Roman
and Nordic/Saxon culture and eras until they have been modernized, watered down
and secularized until they have become the observances we are familiar with
today, yet they still have the same underlying meaning, intention and rituals
as when they were first instituted in ancient times. So the names of the gods
may have changed but their function and the stories and rituals they represent
have basically remained the same.
We will
see that both God’s calendar and satan’s calendar are agricultural and
religious in nature, but vastly different in its observances and whom it
honors.
Yule is
the Winter Solstice. Midsummer also called Litha, is the Summer Solstice. Mabon
is the Autumn Equinox and Ostara is the Spring Equinox.
You Can’t Redeem That Which is Pagan
Job 14:4 Who can
bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
To use an old
analogy; if you take a pile of crap, spray it with perfume, gift wrap it, put
it in a pretty box with an iridescent curly bow, it’s still just a pile of
crap. This is no different with the western Christian holidays such as
Christmas and Easter, or Catholics pantheon of saints, or their altars and many
of their ritual objects. They are nothing but old pagan Babylonian and Roman
things with a quick paint job and a name change.
Below is a section
of the 613 commandments regarding anyone attempting to make something pagan,
“holy (set-apart)” unto the God of Israel.
You shall not build a "Matzevah" - a "pillar"
Deuteronomy 16:22 "Do not erect a pillar"
A "Matzevah" is a structure usually built for idol-worship. We are not allowed to construct a "Matzevah" even if we intend to serve HaShem (The LORD) with it.
(These were ancient phallic symbols)
Negative Commandment 12
You shall not have kneeling stones
Leviticus 26:1 "Nor shall you install a kneeling stone in your land, to bow down upon it"
Idol-worshipers often placed a special decorated stone before their idol and then use it to kneel upon while they prayed to their idols.
We are forbidden to have such a stone, even if we intend to worship HaShem (The LORD) on it.
(Any one for substantiation crackers and Jesus juice?)
Negative Commandment 13
You shall not plant an "Asherah" - "a beautiful tree"
Deuteronomy 16:21 "Do not plant for yourself an Asherah of any tree near the altar of the Lord thy God"
The "Asherah" is a tree that is planted near the house of idol- worship in order to make the area more beautiful. (Asherah was another name for Ishtar)
We are forbidden to plant trees near the altar of the Temple - the Beit HaMikdash.
The Torah wants our service of HaShem (The LORD) to be holy and special.
It should, in no way, resemble any form of idol-worship.
Because of this, there were no trees planted on the Temple site.
(Again, usually representory of a phallus)
As with the "Matzevah" (Negative Mitzvah 11) and the "kneeling stone" (Negative Mitzvah 12), so, too, the "Asherah" is not to be used, even if our intention is for the service of HaShem (The LORD).
These are not allowed because they are connected with idol worship.
Positive Commandment 185
Destroying Idol-Worship
Deuteronomy 12:2 "And destroy all those places"
HaShem (The LORD) does not want the Jewish people to worship idols.
He wants us to remove them from our presence and totally destroy them.
We are commanded to destroy all those places where idols are worshiped: Eretz Yisrael is a holy land. Therefore, special efforts must be made to clear it of idol worship entirely
(If we are Torah Observant believers our homes are like a little slice of Israel. Anyone for a Ojai board, and those idols disguised as souvenirs you got from Africa or Hawaii burning party?)
Negative Commandment 25
You shall not profit from idol worship
Deuteronomy 7:26 "Do not bring any offensive idol into your house"
We are not allowed to derive benefit from any type of idol- worship.
We must stay far removed from its practice, its places of worship and everything connected to it.
(If you’re coming out of paganism, don’t donate or sell your old X-mas, Easter or Halloween costumes and decorations; just burn or chuck’em in the trash.)
Negative Commandment 22
You shall not benefit from the decorations of idols
Deuteronomy 7:25 "Do not desire the silver or the gold that is on them"
We are not allowed to make use of, or benefit from, valuables that once decorated statues or idols.
Negative Commandment 30
You shall not imitate the customs or practices of other nations
Leviticus 20:23 "You shall not walk in the practices of the nation"
In this Negative Mitzvah (Commandment), the Torah cautions us not to adopt or imitate non-Jewish customs and traditions.
By fulfilling this Negative Mitzvah (Commandment) we are able to constantly stress the unique qualities of the Jewish people and the rich beauty of our traditions.
(For example: Don’t participate in Easter egg hunts,
or Trick-or-treating. We are God’s people, we have plenty of Holidays 10x’s
better than the pagan worlds and they are real and not fairy tales) – From
Chabad.org (all parenthesis mine)
Exd. 19:5-6 Now
therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall
be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.
These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
Deut. 7:6
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen
thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the
face of the earth.
Deut. 14:2
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen
thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon
the earth.
Deut. 26:18-19 And
the LORD hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath
promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; And
to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name,
and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy God, as
he hath spoken.
Deut. 28:9
The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn
unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in
his ways.
Titus 2:14-15 Who
gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto
himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and
exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.
1Peter 2:9,
10 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a
peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called
you out of darkness into his marvelous light: Which in time past
[were] not a people, but [are] now the people of God: which had not obtained
mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
It is abundantly clear
that we are a holy, set-apart, unique people, and original that should not and
cannot be imitated. So to speak, we are the ones who set the trends, not the
ones who follow them.
Be proud; stand
tall because God has called you to be different. Sure your get looks and stares
and even ridicule, but these are complements in disguise!
Rom 12:2
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect,
will of God.
Matt. 5:11-12 Blessed
are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner
of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be
exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the
prophets which were before you.
John 15:20
Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his
lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have
kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
Rom. 12:14
Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
Again:
Rom. 12:2
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect,
will of God.
We cannot redeem
that which is pagan… But why would we want to anyway!?
Now
before your head starts spinning and wonder, “How can I live by another
calendar that’s so foreign and opposite to me?” We live in exile and in a
secular society. We have to operate our daily lives by the 24 hour, 7 day a
week Gregorian solar calendar. But Judaism and Messianic Judaism has calendars
that marry the two, and so you can live by the calendar we all know, but within
those days are marked the Hebrew day, date and holiday observance. You can easily
get one of these calendars at: www.messianicjewish.net
