|
Christianity Explained Information Find Christian Unity in Biblical Explanations of the Doctrines That Count! |
||
|
You
have a choice to make: You can either believe the opinions of
theologians, atheists, or agnostics, or you can determine for yourself
what the Bible says by studying it. For more information, click on any underlined text. |
||
|
Topics What Is Christianity Explained Information?What Is Religion and Where Did It Originate? What Is the Bible, and How Relative Is It to My Life? What Are Messianic Prophecies? Who Was Jesus of Nazareth, Really? Why Are There So Many World Religions? Why Are There So Many Christian Denominations? What Is the Law and How Does It Apply to Me? What's All This About the End of the World and End-time Prophecies? Isn't the Book of Daniel a Closed Book? Revelation: How can anyone understand all that symbolism? Who or What Was Jesus' Mother, Mary? Didn't Darwin Disprove Creation? What's the Truth About Faith and Works? Christian E-mails: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Complete Directory of Articles/Studies
Title Abbreviations for Books of the Bible Genesis
- Ge |
The Seven-day Week: Has the Calendar Been Changed?Origins of time framesOne day is how long it takes the Earth to make one rotation, a month is how long it takes for the moon to cycle through its various phases, and a year is how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. However, there is no natural marker for a week.
Of the days, weeks, months, and
years that make
up our
calendar, the week is the only purely artificial
period. The Biblical story of
creation contained in the Jewish scriptures and Jewish law
that
forbade
working on the
seventh day of the week, God's Sabbath, is the only hint of explanation
for this apparently arbitrary time measurement. By the way, God
called the Sabbath both "My Holy Day" and "The holy day of the Lord"
(Isaiah 58:13), and Jesus claimed to be
Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8) , which would lead to the logical
assumption that the Sabbath the Lord's Day. "The day of the Lord" is
mentioned 30 times in scripture, and in most cases it refers to the Day
God visits his judgment on Israel's enemies. In the New Testament it
directly refers to the Day of Jesus' return, and if you carry that back
into the Old Testament, it makes perfect sense. All of God's enemies
will bemoan and quake in the day that the Almighty visits earth. That
is why it is referred to as "great and terrible", "great and dreadful",
"the day of the Lord's anger", "the day of the Lord's wrath". That was
because the context was "for sinners" or "for the enemies of
God". But the New Testament describes it
as a day of joy for believers. Why?
Because Jesus has demonstrated what will really happen when that day
comes. The Jews looked at it from the hopeless sinner's
perspective--all who deserve to be destroyed will be. The Christians
look at it from the saved sinner's perspective--all who deserve to be
destroyed but who have loved God and his way of doing things and have
placed their trust in the sacrificial mercy of God will be
saved. Although these verses are not
talking about the
seventh-day Sabbath, Isaiah 58:13 and Matthew 12:8 point to a specific
day that the Lord considers his special, set-aside day. But I digress. Back to the facts. Now the times involved with the
earth and sun and moon can be exactly measured with the timing devices
that modern man has constructed. Because these exact measurements are
fractional, like 12.368267 lunations in a year (12 months) and
29.530589 days in a lunar month (30 days), it is impossible to
construct a totally accurate calendar that the average human without
the costly measuring and timing devices can work with
successfully. The Origins of Calendars Various simple calendars, with anywhere from 10 to 12 months per year and anywhere from 29 to 31 days per month have been used by different cultures. The months have different names and some resources give indication of changes to the calendar by various world leaders, including the names of the days and months and how many days there are in particular months to honor whomever they're named after.Again, because average Joes need a simple calendar, even in the modern calendar (the format of which was completed by Augustus Caesar), after a certain period of time, adjustments must be made to reconcile the calendar to the natural signs of passing time so that a leap year is observed every four years, wherein an extra day is added to February. The Calendar Changed, but Not the Week While the number of days in a month or year may have changed, the week, on the other hand, has never changed. It has always been seven days, and the order of the days has been kept meticulously by the Jews due to the Biblical order to keep the seventh day holy.
The calendar changed from Julian to
Gregorian with the disappearance of eleven
days from the calendar, and many think this changed the
week. It did not: In 1752 the calendar year was
determined to be grossly out of sync with the lunar and solar phases,
so Wednesday September second was followed
by Thursday September fourteenth. Of interest to some: Since
darkness came before light at creation, each Jewish day runs from
sundown to sundown. The Bible says, "So the evening and the
morning were the first day," etc. That is, the dark part of the day is
when the day begins, and the light part of the day is the last part of
the day. This makes sense, since early humans did
not have watches. One might sleep through the rising of the sun;
however, watching the sun go down and using the darkness as
the beginning of another day was a logical way to tell time. If you ask
me, it still is, since not all of mankind have watches or clocks even
today. Of course, as in so many other things, the "wisdom of man"
prevails. Mankind changed the observance of
days from sundown to sundown to midnight to midnight AFTER the creation
of time devices that could actually tell when midnight occurred. Anyone
could tell when the sun went down, but only those who studied star
charts--and only on clear nights--could midnight be accurately
determined.
|
Related Links Written in the HeartThe Truth About Mary Magdalene More Valuable Links from ProphecyWatch.biz
Scriptures: More Study: Isaiah 58:13
|
|
Copyright 2005-2007 Lynda Karr
You are welcome to bookmark this page or place a
link to it from your Web site or E-book; however, nothing on this site
may be copied, stored, or reproduced by any means or used in any manner
for any purpose unless you first
contact Lynda Karr
.
|
Privacy | |