Bible Numbers:
Solar and Lunar Calendars
(lesson 2b--supplement #1)
What About the Solar and Lunar Calendars,
---the Other Two Ways for Measuring the Length of a Year?
The lunar calendar was commonly used in ancient times. However, the ancients had to add an extra (intercalary) month every once and a while to adjust to the position of the sun since the lunar calendar lagged behind approximately 11 days per solar year, (365 - 354 = 11 days). The Jewish calendar today is a luni-solar one based on 28-year-solar and 19-year-lunar cycles. This complex calendar system adds a second 12th month every two or three years (called "Second Adar"); thus there are 13 months in a modern Jewish calendar year every second or third year, (i.e., 384 days).
The Islamic religious calendar does not adjust to the sun at all. It has a fixed 12-month lunar-year. Hence, it lags behind our solar year about 11 days in a year with the effect that every few decades it lags behind an entire year!
All Three Calendars Work Together as One!
God has merged the three major calendar systems into one complex clock, with the 360-prophetic year as the average year of the lunar and the solar.
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365.24 (solar) + 354.37 (lunar) = 719.61 ÷ 2 = 359.8 days. |
Nevertheless, the solar has the driving lead, since all other calendars in one way or another find their bearing and orientation by it.
All three calendars---(the solar, prophetic, and lunar)---inter-work with astounding precision. Moreover, the 360 year and the lunar year operate with and without the intercalary months added. Likewise, the leap days of the 365-solar are optionally counted. Hence there are four radically different calendars; the major adjusted ones being led by the solar, and the minor unadjusted solar, lunar, and prophetic.
Confusing?
This may seem confusing, but it is not.
Here is an imaginary example of all this. Notice the relationship between the three adjusted calendars to one another, and notice these three, in turn, in relationship to the 1260,000 days, or 3,500 years of the unadjusted-prophetic.
For illustrative purposes ONLY |
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Suppose that God marks out the date of the coming rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem (prophesied of in the Bible, Dan. 9:27) by tying-in this great event with several related events in past history. Let us say that Nisan 1, AD 2006 is the date God chooses for this rebuilding. He chooses this date...
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Nisan 1, AD 2006, of the Three Adjusted Calendars
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Make-Believe Scenario
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Make-Believe Scenario This has been a imaginary scenario for the purpose of explaining the reason why there are several calendar systems. However, it is logically possible based upon my own personal observation of other events in the news over the past ten years, such events as Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Nevertheless, I am in no way predicting the future. I wrote this off the top of my head. Hundreds of similar scenario's could have been devised. The purpose of the bible numbers is not to predict the future but to know that GOD IS IN CONTROL. Conclusion Thus, the three adjusted calendars work together to mark exact days within a particular year, with their unadjusted counterparts also at work, but as it were, in the background behind the scenes. When considered independently of one another, these three adjusted calendars increase the ambiguity threefold for when a particular anniversary event might be marked. However, when considered together they actually narrow down the possibilities, (as I have shown in the above scenario); they in fact establish the matter by "two or three witnesses." Furthermore, God also uses a great host of other methods to narrow down the possibilities, say for instance if the temple took 1150, or 1260 days to complete. See "The Writing on the Wall".) |
The purpose of the book "The Writing on the Wall" is to demonstrate the complexity of 'God's clock', without getting bogged down in the minor details. For this reason, "The Writing on the Wall" clings mostly to the simple solar (and adjusted calendars); it is territory with which we are all familiar, (or can be familiarized with), and so can more easily be grasped.
To supplement two: The Prophetic Calendar: How the leap months are regulated in the prophetic calendar