| October 13, 2013 I woke up after having two vivid dreams. I’ll post the dreams elsewhere, but after prayer and interpretation I understood the Lord to tell me to teach. After a process of figuring out who, what, when and where to teach, I began classes to a handful of volunteers who graciously sat through nineteen classes over five months time, from March 2014-August 2014. | ||
| These classes centered around a timeline of sorts I had made a few years earlier when teaching high school youth, and that has evolved over the years to include more detail. A video producer taped the sessions and is in the midst of editing them for publishing, probably via YouTube. This website was given to me to try to get some of the thoughts and teachings online in written form. | ||
| We’ll post the timeline in a pdf format when we get it done. Right now it’s on a four by twelve foot banner and handwritten. I’ll get the hand-out notes posted as I figure the technology out. |
Hello Michelle,
I just read your post “Why I don’t believe in a future seven year tribulation.” You are correct; there is no future (or past) seven-year tribulation. In fact, from our point in time, the tribulation spoken about in this portion of Scripture is now history, long past.
From my point of view, there are a number of errors you make in your article. For now, I will comment on just one point you make, and when this flaw is corrected, some of your other ideas of counting years will have to be rethought and changed, which will alter or revise your beliefs concerning timelines on Daniel’s Seventy Weeks.
You state:
“This also means the terms for days and years must be converted to a lunar calendar. If it happened in the Old Testament when the Israelites kept a lunar calendar, then the timetable has to be converted to a lunar calendar, as this is the language of the Jews in the day of this prophecy.”
“To get the years and math correct, we have to convert to the lunar calendar, which means a lunar year is .9857 of a solar year. ( the lunar year is 360 days, solar the year is 365.24 days, with a difference of .9857)”
NO! The days must not be converted to a lunar calendar of 360 days! The Jewish calendar must have been in harmony with the seasons. When all things are considered, in actuality the length of a Jewish or Hebrew calendar was the same length (averaged out to about 365 days a year), the same amount of days as the Gregorian calendar used today! The seasons and feasts which must be keep at the proper time, tell us this. Really? How is that so?
The Hebrew lunar calendar contained 12 months of 30 days each. The lunar cycle in actuality is about 29 ½ days, which results in a year of only 354 ½ days. And if you use months of 30 days each, the yearly number of days would be 360. But no matter the system of counting, to keep the lunar calendar coordinated with the seasons of the year requires adding a 13th month to the calendar about every third year, or seven times out of every nineteen years. This additional month was added to the end of the year following the last month Adar, and was simply called Second Adar (Ve-adar).
The Gregorian calendar is today’s internationally accepted civil calendar and is also known as the Western or Christian calendar. It is a solar calendar based on a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths, of either 30 or 31 days. During the common years February only has 28 days. But nearly every four years a leap year occurs, when one extra day is added to February, making it 29 days in length, and the calendar year 366 days long.
I can find no reference to intercalary days or months in the Scripture. However, the commencement of the month was generally decided by observation of the new moon. Thus, as a matter, of course, an additional month must have been inserted about every third year. Or within a few years the onset of each month and the seasons would be hopelessly out of sync.
In short, there are not two difference calendars (to choose from to count the years) with years of different length, a Gregorian calendar with 365 days and a lunar with only 360 days, for both allow for adjustments every so often to keep in sync with the seasons, and thus are really the same length.
In short, there is no difference between the length of a Jewish or Hebrew year and the Gregorian calendar. Thus there is only one, not two unites of time to count down the years.
Hi Michael, thanks for your time. Math is really not my strong suit, so I have to work hard at understanding the conversion of the calendars, and doubly hard at explaining what I’ve learned, but I am in disagreement with you. I’m sorry if I’m unable to explain it adequately, but there are others who have. For an excellent resource, go to: http://www.360calendar.com
Especially helpful on that website is the page titled “Leap-Month Cycles of the 360-days Lunar-Solar Calendar”. It is the concept of prophetic years being 360 days, which has been confirmed various places in Scripture — of which the author of that website explains quite adequately with plenty of Scripture. A “smoking gun” for this principle is found in Genesis 7:11 and 7:24 which outlines five months as 150 days of 30-day months. My modest and probably poor explanation is this: the only way to convert this Biblical definition of “calendar time” into our modern vernacular for an accurate translation is to convert a 360-day prophetic lunar calendar to the 365-day solar calendar we’re more familiar with, which is the equation I provided (dividing 360 by 365.24 to get the multiplier of .9857). We really do have to learn to read the Scriptures in the language they were spoken in. The truth is, if this equation was not correct or accurate, the dates would not amount to anything. Nothing prophetic or significant would have occurred on these dates and they most certainly wouldn’t have been repeated in other prophecies as being fulfilled on the same dates. It’s mathematically impossible. The fulfillment of the prophecies on these dates actually CONFIRMS the interpretation.
I can only assume this won’t make sense, especially if one is of the opinion this is contrived bending of numbers and Scriptures. I probably would have thought that myself until I sat under some excellent and astute teachers with far greater wisdom and knowledge than I, and then was able to apply the concepts myself and actually see with my own eyes that they work in perfect harmony with scripture.
What I don’t want to do on this blogsite (or really anywhere), is argue. I’m happy to discuss concepts, principles, beliefs, Scriptures, etc., but I don’t want to get into an argument. If we must disagree, let’s just disagree. I hope you can respect I’ve spent considerable time in prayer, research, study and seeking God just as you have, and if we arrive at different conclusions, we’re clearly not at the same place in our learning. I don’t think that makes you in sin any more than it makes me. If your concern is that I’m teaching great error to the people of God, please recognize that I have purposefully NOT taught my understanding for fear of being in error and leading others in error, but the Lord Himself made plain to me that I AM to teach it. Please pray for me. I take James 3:1 with utmost sobriety.
Lastly, this concept of time conversion from the Old Testament’s calendar into a New Testament timetable is absolutely profound and confirmed through scripture itself, multiple times. When I expound on a part of prophecy as I did with this article concerning the fallacy of a seven-year tribulation based on Daniel’s 70th week, I have to pinpoint a specific Scripture and timetable, and to those unfamiliar with this it may seem like cherry-picking. I assure you it is not; it was just me highlighting one prophecy. For the sake of brevity, I kept my explanations concise and did not deviate from the task at hand. I can equally apply the same principles for numerous other prophecies and show how they are completed to the day. (And that’s what I’m working on in book form, and what I taught for five months.)
Additionally, according to the angel Michael in Daniel 12:9, the words of the prophecy were closed up and sealed until the “time of the end”. This clearly states revelation of the prophecy is not granted until the “time of the end” — and according to the prophecy itself, the time of the end began in 1948. (Which again, I can prove.) Obviously this means we couldn’t possibly even understand the interpretation of the prophecy until after that time (which means we CAN understand it NOW). The absolutely astounding and amazing part of this is that all of these prophecies kept coming to the same key dates in history: 33AD, 688AD, 732AD, 1776, 1948, and 1967. The mathematical odds of thirteen prophecies about six or seven hundred years apart written by different people at different times and with different language pinpointing the same dates is astronomical. It is statistically impossible UNLESS it is God Himself that did it. And it is. This is why I’m excited, and this is why I teach it.
God bless you 🙂