The Calendar: Part 2
Respectfully Questioning the Traditional Methods
John Plunkett
January 18, 2014
In this new series of sermons, I would like to delve, with you, into the important topic of God’s Sacred Calendar.
I am going to entitle today’s sermon “The Calendar – Part 2” because a couple of weeks ago on December 28, 2013, I gave a sermon entitled, “Should Christians keep New Year’s?” in which we went through the mainly-heathen history and falsehoods of the January 1st New Year celebration. Much of the history that I went through in that sermon is very relevant to this series; so, rather than going into all that detail again, I believe that it would make a worthwhile prologue and background message to this series.
I apologize in advance that I will not be quoting very many
scriptures in this sermon today. Today’s sermon is going to be somewhat
"administrative" in nature, as you will see as we go along. It
is meant to set the stage for the rest of the series. In the future
episodes I hope to make up for today’s lack of scriptures.
Why am I preaching about this subject now? Why am I broaching this subject
of the sacred calendar at this time? Why do I think it is needed at
this time? There are a number of reasons.
The first one is that this subject of the New Moons and the Calendar has
relatively quite recently, I would say, become a somewhat thorny subject within
the Church of God.
More than just a few brethren in various Church of God groups
– as well as independent brethren – both in Europe and in North America –
have told me that they have become sincerely concerned about this topic over
recent months and years – concerned to the extent that they fear that they may
not have been keeping God’s Holy Days on the correct days!
And this is not only just in North America and Europe. It may well be a
truly global issue, affecting many – or virtually all – of God’s
people around the world.
A few of our brethren have urged me to cover the Calendar subject in the same level of detail – or an even finer level of detail – that we recently covered our “Sabbath Food” topic. I agreed to those requests and I have been chomping at the bit for the past couple of months to get started on it. Finally, here we are!
Especially now, as we are only about twelve weeks away from Passover and we know that those twelve weeks are going to fly by very quickly, I want to personally do my best to be sure that we are keeping God’s Holy days on the "right" days. If you think about it, if they are not on the right days, then they are not Holy Days at all!
When we started the "Sabbath Food" series, I didn’t know how it would end up, nor how it would practically affect myself and my family. But it did affect us very much as we modified our Sabbath-keeping standards as a result of those studies. Likewise, as we embark on this new study today, I will tell you right at the beginning that I have no preconceived ideas about how it might end up. I cannot foresee what conclusions we might draw from it as we go along and I have no real idea of what changes we will make (in our household, that is) as a result.
If I don’t yet know how it will affect our own household, I certainly cannot know how it will affect yours. But it is not my goal to change your mind, or your belief, or your actions. My goal with this set of Bible studies is to look into God’s Word and to see if my beliefs and my actions have been wrong in this area, and to modify them if necessary. You must make your own decisions for your own households. I can’t do that for you. I don’t have that responsibility or authority. But you do!
Also, I don’t want you to believe and agree with what I say
just because it is me who is saying it. Because I am a nobody. Trish
and I listened to a message last week by a minister by the name of Stephen
Glover; and just to plagiarize his words when he said, "I am just like a
Nazarene; and Nazarenes were despised by the Jews." So like Stephen,
I consider myself to be just a spiritual Nazarene who is striving to participate
in the work of the Lord.
In this series we are going to discuss a variety of different points of view
regarding the calendar. I am asking you, please, to always defer to God’s
Word first. Go by what your Bible says. That is the priority.
My words are not the priority. God’s Word is! If you hear
me saying anything that you feel disagrees with God’s Word, I want you to let
me know.
Also, rather than this just being a one-way sermon/Bible study series from me to
you, I want it to be a two-way study, with your participation. As we go
through it step-by-step, I want you to give me your views on the topic for
further, ongoing discussion; also to share your Bible-based beliefs and opinions
and yes, even your concerns and your fears. I know that by the mere
consideration of the possibility of changing what we do in this regard, there is
likely to be a certain level of trepidation.
In the past I know that some of you have approached ministers
in the church groups you belong to (or in some cases did belong to) and
that, in some cases, they gave you the brush-off. In some cases, instead
of accepting your sincere concerns as something to be dealt with and discussed
seriously, with sensitivity, respect and gentleness, they either poo-poo’d
your concerns, or gave you incomplete, unsatisfying "stock answers."
I believe that in many such cases (and I am not being judgmental here), some of
those ministers were unable to give you any better answers, because they had not
proved their own beliefs for themselves from God’s Word. I can say this
with confidence and I can say this without being judgmental because, just like
so many of them, I have not adequately proved it for myself either! Hence
even more need for this study!
Let us be fair; there are some ministers who have taken the time and
effort to delve into the topic in more detail than the average; but even those
who have gone into it in detail, after having done so, many or most of them
appear to have led their members to stay with the old “traditional”
Worldwide Church of God/Jewish way of looking at the subject, purportedly for
the for the sake of unity of belief among the brethren attending with “their”
groups and apparently not wishing to rock the boat.
Is this what we should do? Is this what I should do? Two well-known scriptures come immediately to mind:
I Thessalonians 5:21:
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
My second scripture was, I believe, written by Luke the Physician and inspired by God the Father and Jesus Christ:
Acts 17:
10: And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming there went into the synagogue of the Jews.
11: These {Bereans} were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Those Bereans proved all things!
Again, there are some ministers and some members of God’s
Church who might criticize or even ridicule you and I for embarking on such a
deep level of searching, receiving and proving, as we have been admonished to
do. However, through these words of Luke, God makes it clear that He looks
upon those who do take the time and effort for such deep searching,
receiving and proving as “more noble” than those who do not.
I don’t want us to be comparing ourselves amongst ourselves (II Corinthians
10:12); but again, have you done a Berean kind of searching, receiving
and proving regarding God’s Sacred Calendar? And have I? I admit,
to my shame, that in all my time in God’s church, I have not!
I would like to just go back and look at some of our own church history, which
I'm sure corresponds with that of many of you, regarding the Sacred
Calendar. I am not talking about going way back to the history of the
church in apostolic times; I am talking about our own.
Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, when Trish and I first came into contact with
God’s church through the Worldwide Church of God, we learned from Herbert W.
Armstrong, from Garner Ted Armstrong and from many other ministers and long-time
members that God’s people should be keeping His true Holy Days and not the
pagan holidays of Satan and his world.
Probably, like many other new brethren – possibly including
many of you – we accepted without question "their
views" (i.e. those of the Armstrongs and the other ministers) on many, or
even most of the doctrines – including relating to what they called “God’s
Sacred Calendar” and also their timing of the Holy Days.
I put "their views" in quotes because the WCG ministry freely admitted
right from the beginning, that they had plagiarized their timing – at least
in part – from that of the modern mainstream Jews and their calendar.
Trish and I accepted that timing – that Jewish/WCG stance – without really
proving it. Without really even questioning it!
What was our excuse? Although we may have occasionally wondered about how
those timings on the little cards that they gave us each year were worked out,
we assumed and unquestioningly trusted Herbert W. Armstrong, the higher
Worldwide Church of God ministry, the Ambassador College professors and faculty,
the Jewish scholars and the other so-called “experts” with all of their
combined wisdom, experience, expertise and scholarship, that they knew and
understood these things so much better than the average “lay member.”
(I don’t like to use that term; but that was the term that was in use back
then). And especially "newbies" like us.
Yes, like many or even most of you, when we first came in contact with God’s
church, as “babes in Christ,” we thought that, by rejecting the Roman
calendar and by adopting the WCG/Jewish version of what they called “the
Sacred Calendar,” we believed that other people – people much more
knowledgeable and expert on these things than our young selves – had done all
the necessary spadework for us; and that all we had to do was to follow their
lead.
That was forty-odd years ago now! In the late-1990’s, Trish and I first
became aware of some questions and doubts with regards to the Sacred Calendar
and the proper timing of the Holy Days, when we had a visitor, Frank Nelte, an
independent Church of God minister originally from South Africa, who rejected
(still does!) the traditional WCG/Jewish Calendar and their Holy Day
timings.
Although a few of our Victoria members spent some time looking into what Frank
said and wrote back then in the 1990s, most of our group did not study it as we
perhaps should have. Most of us basically rejected and even ignored Frank’s
“different calendar” timing as being what was commonly at that time referred
to as “dissident opinion.”
The common mind-set of our group back then seemed to be this one:
At that time we had parted company with two Church of God
groups: Worldwide Church of God in 1995 and United Church of God in
1997.
As many of you know by painful experience of your own, moving from one Church of
God group to another can be very disruptive and upsetting. At that time,
we felt like we didn’t need yet another move, and that it was more important
that we needed to settle down with the one group that we were in at that time
(Church of the Great God).
As a result of that mindset, what happened? A certain level of spiritual
and mental laziness set in. A certain level of what I call
"sedentary wishful thinking" set in. Our little Victoria church
group appeared to harbour these excuses. This is how we collectively
thought at that time:
Even though we later found out that these so-called "experts" had plagiarized their beliefs from the mainstream Jews, over our years in the church, as we look back to those days, to a certain extent we found that we had been somewhat programmed to think and to respond in that way. Actually, not to “think” too much; but just to accept what the powers-that-be within the church spoon-fed us!
I am not knocking Herbert W. Armstrong. I sincerely believe that God did use him to give us so much at that time. Without what he did for us, I for one would probably be nowhere. I would probably still be in the Church of England. But Herbert Armstrong frequently said in his broadcasts: “Don’t believe me! Blow the dust off your own Bible! Read it and prove it there for yourself!”
How many times did you hear him say that? But, once we came into the church, any questioning of the high-ups’ interpretation of the scriptures was severely frowned upon with suspicion, and was looked upon as dissident – even rebellious – behaviour!
The unspoken implication that was given was: "We have done the necessary research; so, what we tell you, these are your beliefs now! These are your doctrines!" Sadly, that reminds me of the words of the misguided Aaron with his golden calf, when he said: "These be thy gods, O Israel! (Exodus 32:4-8).
That expectation for unquestioning acceptance is, at best, tantamount to respect-of-persons and at its worst, is pseudo-idolatry – in other words, the worship – not just of mere human beings – but the worship of the opinions of mere human beings. Such an expectation and demand for unquestioning acceptance flies in the face of God’s preference for a "Berean" attitude in which we are to prove all things for ourselves.
The important thing that I wanted to get across here is that Trish and I had not ever proved it one way or the other?
"Did you?"
Maybe some brethren did. Maybe some brethren did ask pointed and valid questions to their local ministers and/or to the church high-ups – questions that have only just during the past year or so come to us to ask. Maybe many or most of those questioners were discouraged – or even silenced – by the powers-that-be in their church groups – from voicing or following through with their sincere concerns.
Again, I admit that it wasn’t until just a few months ago that Trish and I felt compelled – through God’s Spirit, I believe, in combination with the voiced concerns of some of our brethren – to embark on our searching, receiving and proving of the truth of this matter.
So now, from this standpoint, after all those decades in God’s church, we can look back, realize and admit that, in so many doctrinal areas (including this one), we have not been sufficiently Berean-like.
Although in all good conscience, we sincerely believed that we
had been receiving God’s Word with all readiness of mind from those we
believed to be God’s true ministers throughout the years, and although we
sincerely thought that we had been searching the scriptures daily, we
have to admit that we did not adequately prove all of the details of some of the
those doctrines as they had been presented to us.
A few months ago, one of our local church members gave me a true pearl of
wisdom. Sitting in our living room one Sabbath, he told me that, because
of his advancing age and his declining health, it had recently become more and
more important to him that he “get serious,” to find out what God wants of
him, and that he make any necessary corrections now… rather than having to
meet his Maker with some lame excuses about why he hadn’t gotten serious
earlier about some of the things that he had been harbouring doubts about.
My own recent gall-bladder attack and surgery shocked me into the realization
that I’m no longer a spring chicken; that I am, in fact, at the very earliest,
in the autumn of my life, and that I, too, need to be getting serious about some
of these insufficiently studied doctrines and details.
I feel that it is important that we all feel this way, no matter how youthful we
may be – or feel! Life is short, and it flies by so quickly!
It is not my purpose in this series to cause division, to stir up trouble or
foolish contentions, as the apostle Paul warned both Timothy and Titus. It
is not my purpose to bring unnecessary doubt or worry to you, nor to get you to
disagree with – or to part company with – your present church group or
congregation. But I do sincerely believe that this is a topic whose time
has come. Even if only for myself, it is time for me to put it on
the table for honest and open discussion and study. We have nothing to
fear from the truth of God – even if our findings turn out not to agree with
our long-held beliefs and opinions.
A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and put together an initial set of questions
on this topic that I feel need answering from God’s Word. I will go
through this list for you later in this message. I do not claim that
my list is complete. I am just as human, imperfect and limited as anybody
else; so I want to ask you to suggest to me any other relevant questions that
you feel that we should add to the list for discussion in future sermons.
Please ensure that your suggested questions are strictly relevant to the Sacred
Calendar issue, because we have time constraints between now and the spring Holy
Days, and we really do need to keep it to the point.
Other than Frank Nelte (who I mentioned earlier), I understand that there are a
number of ministers and other non-ministerial individuals out there who have
rejected the traditional Jewish/WCG version of the sacred calendar and have
pre-empted me by many years in asking and publishing many of these same
questions that we are going to be asking. I find it quite amazing that,
although all of these ministers, teachers, scholars and brethren have come to
the same set of doubts and questions and (it should go without saying) have all
gone down on their knees in sincere and fervent prayer to God the Father,
pleading with Him to give them the right answers; but that they tend to disagree
with one another’s findings on some important issues, that they have not come
up with the same answers as one another, and that in some of their answers, some
of them appear to diverge widely from the others! I am not sure what to
make of this. It is almost like they are saying, "Their
calculations are wrong. Mine are the only right ones!"
This concerns me very much. I certainly do need help on that.
In this regard, I will now quote from an article by John Ritenbaugh of the
Church of the Great God. The article is called “The Cancerous Calendar
Controversy”: