 |
 |
An Examination Of Mr. Armstrong’s 1940 Good News Letter
Is there a calendar in the Bible?
Part 2 Preview: (Back to Part 1) Is there a calendar in the Bible? The historical commentaries in Frank Nelte Nelte’s calendar articles are quite thoro. He has written many articles on the subject, but we disagree on what actually initiates a Day, a Month and a New Year. He uses the humanly devised version of the International Date Line instead of God’s International Date Line to begin the Day; an astronomically calculated “invisible lunar conjunction” instead of actual observation of the crescent moon from Jerusalem to determine when a New Moon (Karaite site) begins; and the equinox instead of the maturity of abib barley, to begin the Year. The parameters for determining a Biblically correct calendar are readily apparent (visible): All you need to understand is 1) When does a day begin; 2) when does a week begin and end with the Sabbath); 3) when does a month begin; and 4) when does the year begin! We have disagreements but Frank provides an incredible amount of factual information.
QUOTE:
“After the triumph of Simon b. Shetah over the Sadducees, when he had finally cleared the Sanhedrin of them, and ONLY THE PHARISEES REMAINED THERE, the development of the Talmud progressed rapidly, for the number of the sages, the adherents, reverers, sanctifiers of the Talmud, increased greatly ...”
On page 9 of his work he continued to state:
“AS THE INTERPRETATION OF EVERY LETTER AND VOWEL POINT OF THE WRITTEN LAW HAD MULTIPLIED, AND LIBERTY HAD BEEN GIVEN TO EVERY LEARNED MAN TO CONSTRUE BIBLICAL TEXTS AT HIS PLEASURE, the differences of opinion multiplied....”
Here we have it FREELY ADMITTED that those non-levitical Jewish leaders set about interpreting ALL of the Hebrew Scriptures “AT THEIR PLEASURE”, with licence to construe any text as they pleased! This CHAOS of opinions is readily evident when one reads the Talmud, and Michael Rodkinson freely acknowledges this.
AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MR. HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG BELIEVED WERE SUCH “STRICT STICKLERS” THAT THEY NEVER WOULD HAVE MADE ANY CHANGES TO THE CALENDAR!
Yet a Jewish scholar himself freely admits that they interpreted all of the Scriptures “at their pleasure”, without any regard as to the real intent of God’s instructions!
What credibility can we extend to religious leaders who felt they had the liberty “to construe biblical texts at their pleasure”? They were clearly hypocrites in the way they dealt with the Scriptures; yet they supposedly dealt with something not even recorded in the Bible (their calendar) with the utmost integrity?
Where do the supporters of the present Jewish calendar find the faith to place such confidence in the integrity of religious leaders to faithfully preserve something that had supposedly been handed down from Old Testament times (the secret rules of the calendar), when it is freely admitted that those same leaders interpreted all of the Scriptures to suit their own ends? These are the very leaders in whose steps Hillel II followed almost 300 years later. It didn’t bother Hillel II one bit that he placed the Last Great Day a full week before the end of summer; he too was, after all, simply “construing biblical texts at his pleasure”.
[Note from Lon: Biblically there are only two seasons—“summer” and “winter”. The four-season concept traces back to the festivals of four pagan gods.]Next, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s claim that the present Jewish calendar has come down intact without change since 100 AD, that this is proved by history, IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE!
Where did he get his facts from? What are his historical sources? Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong makes a point in this letter that “Brother Dodd” wasn’t very clear about his source material for wanting to change the date of the Passover. Yet Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong is equally unclear about where history supposedly proves that the present Jewish calendar has been without change since 100 AD. THE JEWS THEMSELVES don’t claim that their present calendar goes back to 100 AD. The starting date of the present Jewish calendar proves beyond any doubts that the very earliest the present Jewish calendar could have come into existence is about 150 AD ... after the destruction of Jerusalem in the 130’s AD.
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s reasoning about the calendar not having changed during “those 30 years” (between 70 AD and 100 AD) is totally off the point. The real point is that SOMEWHERE between the time of Christ’s ministry around 30 AD and the time of Hillel’s fixed calendar in 359 AD major changes were introduced to the Jewish calendar. It is not the 30 years between 70 AD and 100 AD that are the issue, it is what happened between 70 AD and 358/9 AD that is the real issue.
Consider the parallel between the development of the church and the development of the calendar. This isn’t necessarily proof for anything, but it is interesting:
FOR THE CHURCH:
The author Jesse Lyman Hurlbut in his book “The Story of the Christian Church” calls the period just after the Book of Acts “the Age of Shadows”. He wrote:
“... of all the periods in the church’s history, it is the one about which we know the least.... For fifty years after St. Paul’s life A CURTAIN HANGS OVER THE CHURCH, THROUGH WHICH WE STRIVE VAINLY TO LOOK; and when at last it rises about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church fathers, we find A CHURCH in many aspects VERY DIFFERENT from that in the days of St. Peter and St. Paul.”
FOR THE CALENDAR: (a paraphrase of the above)
During the life of Jesus Christ and of the original apostles we find in use a calendar in which, as Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong himself states, “the new moons were observed by the naked eye”. No postponement rules existed in this calendar based on visual observations. And the Day of Atonement fell on both, Fridays and Sundays. Visual observations ensured that the year never started before the spring equinox, which automatically ensured that the Feast of Tabernacles never started before the autumn equinox. But after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD “a curtain hangs over the calendar, through which we strive vainly to look”. When it at last rises, about 358 AD, with the fixed calendar of Hillel II “we find A CALENDAR in many respects VERY DIFFERENT from that in the days of Peter and Paul”. It had sacrificed its link to reality by resorting to approximations, which in many cases were a day removed from reality; it had acquired ‘postponement rules’ which further removed it from reality, and it now sometimes started the year in the winter and required the Feast of Tabernacles to sometimes start in the summer.
To me there seems to be a parallel here.
Let’s go back to Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s letter.
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong writes:
This conclusion exposes Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s strong bias in favour of the Jewish calendar. It simply doesn’t make sense for Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong to in one place:
APPEAL TO THE WORLD ALMANAC AND THEN SAY: “God had the new moon observed by the naked eye and BY THIS METHOD the first day of THE FIRST MONTH BEGINS THE FOLLOWING SUNSET”!
And then in the next breath to say:
“UNLESS GOD HAS PRESERVED HIS SACRED CALENDAR THRU THE JEW, WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIGURE PASSOVER....”!
QUESTION: WHY do we need “the Jew” to tell us exactly which day should be the first day of the first month?
After all, at the end of his letter Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong CORRECTLY figured “the first day of the first month of the year” simply by looking up, IN THE WORLD ALMANAC, the time for the new moon as applied to Jerusalem. WHY couldn’t he do the same thing for the SEVENTH month— look it up in the World Almanac and begin the seventh month with the sunset following that new moon? WHY could Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong do it for the FIRST month but not for the SEVENTH month? WHY could he do it for the year 1940 but not for any subsequent years? WHY?
ANOTHER QUESTION:
What if, upon checking with the World Almanac, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong had found that the present Jewish calendar is two days out of step with the facts revealed by the Almanac? Would he have EXPOSED this discrepancy or would he have just SILENTLY IGNORED it? What would he have done if, upon checking the World Almanac, he had found the Jewish calendar to be in disagreement with the facts? What would YOU do today, if you were in the same position?
Is it okay to use an Almanac to support the Jewish calendar, but unacceptable to use the same Almanac to show up the flaws in the Jewish calendar, flaws which are due to the calendar’s adherence to Jewish “traditions”?
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s “UNLESS God has ...” argument is clearly without foundation. He himself and the men after him (i.e. Kenneth Herrmann and Dr. Hoeh) have listed sufficient points about a calendar from the Bible to be able to correctly determine ALL of the Holy Days for any given year. That is proved by Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s appeal to the “World Almanac” to establish the first day of the year for 1940.
IF Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s argument, that without the Jewish calendar we simply don’t know how to figure Passover or any other Holy Day, was really correct, THEN he simply could not have appealed to the “World Almanac” to determine the first day of the year. The very fact that he COULD go to an almanac to determine the first day of the year PROVES that he was really NOT “dependent” on the Jewish calendar for this information.
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong continues in his article to show that different reference works, including Josephus, The Jewish Encylopedia, Hastings Bible Dictionary and The Encyclopaedia Britannica, present conflicting information about when the year should start. His conclusion therefore is that we can’t trust any of them. He has presented these quotes for the express purpose of justifying rejecting ALL of these sources.
My comments to this are as follows:
1) About 13 years later Kenneth Herrmann clearly spelled out in his article that the year SHOULD start in the spring. So there wasn’t any confusion in Kenneth Herrmann’s mind about when the year really should start.
2) With all other research into OTHER SUBJECTS the Church has always approached “conflicting historical data” with the view to establishing WHICH ONE IS CORRECT! The Church in those situations never approaches such conflicting information with the goal to justify rejecting it ALL as wrong. A prime example is Dr. Hoeh’s “Compendium of World History”, where Dr. Hoeh has done a great deal of detective work to see how and why conflicting historical data can be reconciled.
3) Therefore, instead of REJECTING ALL the reports he had access to, why did Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong not attempt to establish which one of those reports (Josephus or Britannica or Hastings or the Jewish Encyclopedia) was right, by comparing them to what he could see in the Bible about when the year should start? He really had NOT made “an exhaustive study” of the calendar question at all!
4) Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong states that he himself found “in Britannica” that the year “ALWAYS began with the first new moon AFTER March 21st”! Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong had in fact found THE CORRECT ANSWER HIMSELF! This is precisely correct, that the year should start with the new moon on or after the spring equinox!
5) After giving this correct answer, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong says that “profane history only contradicts itself” and that “there is no Bible authority for any of it”. So why didn’t he just COMPARE it to the biblical records? That would have shown him, as Kenneth Herrmann acknowledged in his article 13 years later, that the year SHOULD start in the spring.
6) For the record: there is no BIBLE authority for the Jewish calendar either! And while the Jewish calendar doesn’t necessarily “only contradict ITSELF”, it does quite clearly “contradict BIBLICAL requirements for the calendar”. WHY did Mr. Armstrong not examine this more closely? And where does that leave the Jewish calendar?
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong then continues to say:
“The Catholics are the ones who have thought to CHANGE the Times. They say the paschal new moon this year is the one BEFORE March 21st, and figure Easter accordingly. The Jews say it is the one AFTER March 21st.”
Here Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong uses “before and after” March 21st (spring equinox) as a criterion. The Catholics were clearly wrong and the Jews were clearly right in this instance. But what about those years where the Jews ALSO say the new moon BEFORE March 21st is the one to start the year with? What if THE JEWS want to start the year in the winter?
For example, in 1937 (3 years before this letter in 1940) the Jewish calendar started the year with March 13th (well before March 21st!), kept the Passover on March 26th, and the wavesheaf would have been required on March 28th. Why was this acceptable in 1937 when it was not acceptable in 1940? Is there a line of division somewhere between a Passover on March 23rd (the evening of March 22nd) which is NOT acceptable, but a Passover on March 26th (the evening of March 25th) which IS acceptable? WHY would there be a line between March 23rd and 26th? On what grounds could such a line be drawn?
Next Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong said:
“After thorough study of the Bible, of the Hebrew calendar, of history, and every angle—after going into the matter with all the Eugene brethren, and other brethren who have made a special study of this question, we have unanimously agreed that the Hebrew calendar has been preserved correct by the Jews.”
There is a difference between saying:
“After thorough study ... WE HAVE UNANIMOUSLY AGREED THAT the Hebrew calendar has been preserved correct by the Jews”....
And saying:
“After thorough study ... WE HAVE CONCLUSIVELY PROVED THAT the Hebrew calendar has been preserved correct by the Jews”.
To “unanimously agree about something” is simply not the same as PROOF! Something isn’t right simply because people “agree” that it is right. In this letter Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong has not presented any PROOF that the Hebrew calendar “has been preserved correct by the Jews”.
CORRECT PROOF of faithful preservation would require the following steps:
1) SHOW exactly what God originally “gave”.
2) EXAMINE all requirements for a calendar that are mentioned in the Bible.
3) EVALUATE the present Jewish calendar against all these biblical requirements.
4) DEMONSTRATE that all these biblical requirements are indeed met.
5) SHOW that what the Jews have today is indeed A PRESERVATION of something that already existed a long time ago.
The last paragraph of this article (before the calendar dates for 1940) shows quite clearly that Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong didn’t really understand the working of the present Jewish calendar at all. His attempt to use the new moon times published in the World Almanac in order to prove the start of the Jewish year correct is very naive! It is pure coincidence when the start of the 1st month and the 7th month in the Jewish calendar coincides with “first visibility” of the new crescent. An almanac with REAL new moon dates and times is actually the last thing anyone defending the present Jewish calendar would want to appeal to for support!
YET HIS UNDERLYING REASONING IN THIS REGARD WAS VERY SOUND!
We really SHOULD be able to expect a correct calendar to start the 1st month with the sunset after the invisible conjunction. That actually makes sense! And Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong thought that THIS is what the present Jewish calendar actually achieves. He didn’t know that there is a difference between “the molad” and the real new moons, as recorded in almanacs. That is why he didn’t hesitate to seek confirmation from data in an almanac. In this regard I myself also for many years believed exactly the same thing as Mr. Armstrong here believed. But my assumptions were wrong!
Note also the concluding sentence of the letter:
“Pentecost this year is JUNE 17th, sunset, until sunset June 18th, instead of June 12th as erroneously figured on our calendar printed three years ago.”
THIS is the year when Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong switched from keeping Pentecost on Sivan 6th to always keeping it on a Monday. This is when he implemented HIS WRONG WAY of counting Pentecost, to always arrive at a Monday. This is when he didn’t understand Leviticus 23:16, that “the morrow after the seventh Sabbath” must ALWAYS be a Sunday! It took another 34 years before he finally understood Leviticus 23:15-16 correctly. [This is meant as a factual observation.]
In 1940, June 12th was Sivan 6th, a Wednesday. The day June 18th was a TUESDAY! It is assumed that this is a typing mistake, that Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong really meant “MONDAY, June 17th” as the Day of Pentecost, and not “June 18th”.
I don’t mean to be critical of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong here, but there is A LESSON in this for all of us; and for the sake of that lesson I will expand on this a little bit.
From the time he first started to keep God’s Holy Days in the late 1920’s until he implemented the correct way of counting Pentecost in 1974, NEARLY 50 YEARS PASSED! WHY did it take Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong nearly 50 years to figure out the right way of counting for Pentecost? Yet the Scripture (Leviticus 23:15-16) is simple enough for most teenagers to figure out correctly for themselves. So what was the problem?
THE PROBLEM WAS: he approached the calendar question with FALSE ASSUMPTIONS! And those false assumptions simply BLINDED HIS MIND TO THE TRUTH!
Now the same thing happened to Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong many times with other things as well, even as it has happened many times to all of us. That’s just the way we are, and the way our minds work. We are no different from Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.
Regarding Pentecost:
1) FIRST Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong took for granted that the Jews had all of the correct days for all of the Holy Days. Because God had used the Jews to preserve His “sacred” calendar, THEREFORE the Jews obviously had to know how God wants us to “count” for Pentecost. This assumption PREVENTED Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong from reading the Scripture for what it actually said! And this assumption lasted for over a decade, until this letter in 1940.
Comment: Here is a quote from something Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in 1934, which shows his full acceptance of the Jewish calendar. In “The BULLETIN of the CHURCHES of GOD in Oregon, Vol. I. No. 12, dated April, 1934” the immediate sub-heading below the date reads:
“The BULLETIN is issued, the Lord willing, the first of each month. Address news or letters for the Bulletin to Herbert W. Armstrong, editor, Crow Stage, Eugene, Oregon.”
The very first item in that “BULLETIN” was titled “LORD’S SUPPER HELD” and the brief statement below this reads:“The most solemn and sacred event of the year was observed in taking the Lord’s Supper on Thursday night, March 29th, calculated as the 14th Nisen, Hebrew calendar.”
A similar statement was published in the “BULLETIN” of March 1935 under the title: “THE LORD’S SUPPER AND DAYS OF UNLEAVENED BREAD ARE HERE!”
This quote illustrates that as early as April 1934 Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong was fully accepting of the Jewish calendar. He didn’t make any further detailed studies of the calendar until this issue arose that precipitated the “1940 GOOD NEWS letter”.]
2) Only then did he see that we actually have to do some “COUNTING”, implying that Pentecost would fall on different days of the third month, but always on the same day of the week.
3) But in coming to this new understanding, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong unfortunately only switched from one wrong assumption to another.
4) He simply ASSUMED that his personal understanding of the word “FROM” in Leviticus 23:15 was correct and was the only possible way to understand what God means by "count unto you FROM....”
5) This assumption FORCED Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong to interpret the Hebrew word for “SABBATH” to mean “WEEK” in the context of counting for Pentecost, even though the word “Sabbath” NEVER means “week” anywhere else in the Bible. There is a different Hebrew word that means “week”.
6) This assumption again PREVENTED Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong from reading the Scripture at face value on its own merits. It forced him to assume that the word “Sabbath” actually has two different meanings RIGHT WITHIN THE SAME VERSE! Right in Leviticus 23:15 he had to assume that, while the first use of “Sabbath” refers to THE WEEKLY SABBATH, the second use of “Sabbath” SIMPLY HAD TO MEAN “WEEKS”! To uphold his own biased opinion, he was forced to attach a WRONG MEANING to the word “Sabbath”. And for the next 34 years EVERYTHING depended upon maintaining this wrong meaning for the word “Sabbath”.
Comment: The Hebrew noun “shabbath” is formed from the Hebrew verb “shabath”, which means “to rest”. Thus the noun “shabbath” means “a rest day”. It is totally illogical to attempt to attach the meaning “a week” to the Hebrew word that means “a rest day” ... since God CLEARLY commanded us: “six days shall you LABOUR AND DO ALL YOUR WORK”. However, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s difficulty was also compounded by the fact that many translations, other than the King James Version, further confused the matter by incorrectly translating the Hebrew noun “shabbath” as “weeks”, on the wrong assumption (on their part!) that the Jewish understanding of these instructions is correct. Nevertheless, his own wrong interpretation of how God wants us to count forced Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong to also hold onto a wrong interpretation of the word “Sabbath” for another 34 years.
7) Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s “exhaustive study” and his “thorough study of the Bible ... and every angle” also did not include looking into what THE HEBREW WORD translated as “from” in Leviticus 23:15 means. In his thorough study of the Bible Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong was obviously limited by his inability to read Hebrew (this is not a criticism, I myself don’t read Hebrew either!); thus he was limited to what he could find out from reference works like “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”, etc.. And in Strong’s Concordance the Hebrew word for “from” is simply not found. While the “Appendix to the Main Concordance” does list every occurrence of the word “from” and thus shows that this word appears two times in Leviticus 23:15, it gives the Greek preposition “apo” for New Testament occurrences of “from”, but it does NOT give any Hebrew word for Old Testament occurrences of “from”. Thus Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong had no readily available way to check out what this Hebrew word translated as “from” in Leviticus 23:15 really means. And in the absence of any further guidelines he simply applied his own understanding of “from” to the counting process for Pentecost.
There is another thing we can notice from Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s handling of this change with counting Pentecost.
Until then the Church had been observing Pentecost on Sivan 6th, as do the Jews. In the process of this “exhaustive study” someone must have pointed out to Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong that the determination of Pentecost really SHOULD involve some “counting”. Had Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong of his own initiative, without any prompting, examined the question of how to count for Pentecost, it is likely that he would have offered some explanation for WHY he was changing the observance of Pentecost from Sivan 6th to a fixed day of the week (a Monday). The fact that he appended this information to the end of his whole article, devoting only one brief sentence to it, and without any explanation of any kind, seems to imply that someone else brought this matter to his attention. The fact that he then still got the date wrong (sunset June 17th till sunset June 18th was a Tuesday!) seems to further indicate that he himself was not the main one who had studied into Pentecost. What is clear from other writings is that Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong himself was the one who came up with what the word “FROM” means; and this is something he vigorously defended for many years to come. He was still defending his way of understanding “from” even after the change to Sunday (for Pentecost) was made in 1974.
And while Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong made the change with Pentecost early in 1940, it was not till more than 3 years later, in June 1943, that he felt the need to “explain” the counting process for Pentecost to the Church.
Below I have reproduced the entire text (about 7 pages), without any alterations or changes from me, of “The GOOD NEWS Letter” dated June 8th, 1943. The whole letter is devoted to explaining Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s wrong way of counting Pentecost. The title he gave this letter is “HOW TO FIGURE PENTECOST”.
Here is the complete letter.
“The GOOD NEWSLETTER”
“A personal letter to all the brethren of The Churches of God, from your pastor, co-laborer, and fellow-servant in Christ, Herbert W. Armstrong, Box 111, Eugene.
“Number 2 June 8th, 1943
“HOW TO FIGURE PENTECOST”
“GREETINGS, Brethren! Next Monday, June 14th, is a very sacred annual SABBATH-day! It is the annual day of PENTECOST, or Festival of First Fruits. On that day we are commanded to cease our work, just as on the weekly Sabbath, and to assemble in holy convocation.
“The Original PENTECOST”
“Notice Acts 1:1: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” They were ASSEMBLED! Why? And they were all with ONE ACCORD about it, not divided as to which day.
“The word “Pentecost” is a GREEK word. It was not used in Old Testament times. It signifies “Fifty,” because this day was determined by COUNTING fifty days FROM the morrow after the weekly abbath which falls during the days of unleavened bread. Literally, the Greek word “pentecost” means “fifty-count.” Count fifty. Count fifty FROM a certain day. The day we count from is the morrow AFTER the Sabbath. The Sabbath we now call “Saturday.” The morrow after Saturday is Sunday. Count one day FROM Sunday. Any little child would readily know it is Monday. Sunday is not one day FROM Sunday. Sunday is Sunday, and one day FROM Sunday is Monday. Seven days from Sunday is the following Sunday. Seven WEEKS from Sunday is the seventh Sunday. And the morrow after that seventh week is Monday. 49 days FROM Sunday is the seventh Sunday, and 50 days after, or counted FROM any Sunday always falls on a MONDAY. That is simple second-grade arithmetic. Yes, thank God, these things are not difficult; they are plain and simple; and they are revealed to BABES who are surrendered of heart and mind and willing to learn God’s way, and hidden from the wise and the prudent.
“Feast of FIRST FRUITS”, and “FEAST OF WEEKS”, because it is COUNTED by numbering seven WEEKS from the morrow after the Sabbath, and then adding one day to make fifty. Hence, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word “Pentecost” is not used. “Pentecost” is a Greek word, used only after the Jews of Palestine came to speak the common language of the time, Greek. Originally, in the Hebrew, this festival was called primarily by two names, “Feast of FIRST FRUITS”, and “FEAST OF WEEKS”, because it is COUNTED by numbering seven WEEKS from the morrow after the Sabbath, and then adding one day to make fifty. Hence, in the Hebrew, the festival was named “Feast of WEEKS,” signifying seven WEEKS were counted from a Sunday, to the morrow after that seventh week, or to a Monday; while in the New Testament it was named Pentecost, meaning “count FIFTY” days from a Sunday, (morrow after the Sabbath), to a MONDAY. Thus the method of counting is embodied into the very NAME of the festival, both in Hebrew and Greek—both in Old Testament and New. And if it is counted any other way, we nullify the very NAME of the festival. It is IMPORTANT that we figure the RIGHT DAY!
“Suppose the disciples and the “Jews, devout men out of every nation”, had figured only 49 days, by counting the first Sunday as one day FROM Sunday—or had figured to the morrow after seven SATURDAYS instead of seven WEEKS numbered from a Sunday, as we are SO PLAINLY directed? They would have assembled, NOT on the day of Pentecost at all, but on a PAGAN SUNDAY, and they would have waited all day IN VAIN—and WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT. Then they would have gone away, thinking the day had passed, and on the following day, which was the TRUE “Feast of WEEKS,” the Holy Spirit would have come, but they would not have been there to receive God’s most precious Gift! Yes, it is IMPORTANT we figure the right day.
“The MEANING of “Pentecost”
“Notice, first, “Pentecost” is not “an upper room” as some seem to believe. It is not an experience. The Scripture does not say “When the EXPERIENCE of Pentecost came,” it says “when the DAY OF PENTECOST was fully come.” Pentecost is a DAY. The day before, or the day after, is not Pentecost—is not the FIFTIETH day—is not the festival of WEEKS.
“Pentecost” is one of the annual Sabbaths, or Holydays OF THE LORD (not of Moses), which the Eternal God set apart for His people FOREVER. If those who were converted into the New Testament CHURCH had not been ASSEMBLED, observing that day, some 50 days after Christ had nailed all things done away to His Cross, they would not have received the Holy Spirit—the New Testament Church would not have started!
“Notice Exodus 23:14-16: “Three times thou shalt keep a east unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread ... and the feast of harvest, the FIRSTFRUITS of thy labors, which thou has sown in the field; and the feast of INGATHERING, which is in the end of the year.”
“God gave to His CHURCH, at the time when the Church was first called, while His people were still in Egypt, seven annual holydays to picture to the Church GOD’S PLAN OF REDEMPTION, which the Church was to proclaim. The Church, both of Old and New Testaments, was to be used as God’s instrumentality in carrying out His PLAN. The holydays were given to keep the Church in the true knowledge and understanding of the Plan the Church was to be used in carrying out.
“As the redemptive Plan BEGINS with the crucified Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, so the annual festive season began with the Passover, picturing the Crucifixion. Once we repent of sin, and turn to Jesus Christ as sin-bearer and personal Saviour, with FAITH in His shed blood for the remission of sins, we are JUSTIFIED. But justification has only to do with a guilty PAST. We must then QUIT sinning—put sin COMPLETELY out of our ives. And this is pictured to us by the SEVEN DAYS OF UNLEAVENED BREAD which follow the Passover. On the 14th day of the first month, God’s sacred calendar (month called Abib, or Nisen), is the Passover. And in the 15th day of this same month is the FESTIVAL, for seven days. The first and last of these seven days are HOLY days—annual Sabbaths. The days of unleavened bread remind us annually we are to put sin COMPLETELY out of our lives, by keeping God’s Commandments.
“But the Plan cannot stop there. We are justified—reconciled to God—by the DEATH of His Son, but we are SAVED, not by His death, but by His LIFE (Rom. 5:10). If Christ remained dead, we could never be saved. For “if Christ be not risen, ... your faith is also vain ... And IF Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are PERISHED.” (I Cor. 15:14-18).
“And so, during these seven days of unleavened bread, the Eternal commanded: “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: and he hall wave the sheaf before the Eternal, to be accepted for you: on the MORROW AFTER THE SABBATH the priest shall wave it.” (Lev. 23: 0-11).
“God used the material food harvest to picture the harvest of SOULS. This was the season of the early GRAIN harvest. This first sheaf of grain pictured the RISEN CHRIST. It had to be accepted BY THE ETERNAL for them—as Christ had to be accepted of God FOR US. It was ON he morrow after the Sabbath—the weekly Sabbath during the days of unleavened bread—that the risen Christ had to be presented to God, to be accepted of Him, for us. It was on this sunday morning—the day after the weekly Sabbath—that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. When she recognized Him, she would run forward and embraced Him for joy. But Jesus restrained her. “Touch me not,” He said, “for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and your Father.’” And the angel instructed Mary, “Go your way, tell His disciples and Peter He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you.” (John 20:17; and Mark 16:7). The same evening Jesus met with them, and then they could touch Him. He was the antetypical Wave Sheaf, and on that Sunday, the morrow after the Sabbath, He was accepted FOR THEM of God. Thus the wave-sheaf pictured the RESURRECTED Christ.
“Now notice verse 14, Lev. 23: “And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day.” The wave-sheaf was the first sheaf of grain cut. None could be harvested or used UNTIL that first wave-sheaf had been accepted of the Eternal. Likewise he first harvest of souls could not even begin until Christ, first of the first-fruits, had been resurrected and accepted of God. Until then the Holy Spirit could not come—he New Testament spirit-filled Church could not START. (See John 7:37-39; and 16:7).
Counting Pentecost
“Continue now Leviticus 23: “And ye shall COUNT....” (verse 15). The date of the next annual holy day is determined by COUNTING. We ought to be able to COUNT straight. The directions are plain and simple: “ye shall COUNT unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering....”
“For almost 1900 years, according to historic records, there has been dispute as to which day to count FROM. Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote about 70 A.D., shows that in hisday most of the Jews counted FROM the annual Sabbath—the FIRST holyday, Abib 15th. Some counted from the last annual Sabbath, Abib 21. The Jews today count FROM the day they call Passover, which is not Passover at all but Abib 15, the first annual holyday. They do not count from the morrow AFTER that day, but from Abib 16. The Sadducees and another Jewish sect, the Samaritans, counted from the day after the weekly Sabbath occurring during the days of unleavened bread. The Samaritans are the ONLY sect that have continued to observe all these festivals down to the present day exactly as in the days of Moses. They still sacrifice and roast the paschal lamb. They have kept up all these rites continuously without a break. They are the ONLY people who have continued these rites exactly as God originally gave them to the Israelites under the Levitical priesthood of the Old Covenant. hey have NEVER MADE ANY CHANGE in their doctrines or manner of observing the holy days. They use the same calendar—the original sacred calendar—that is today called “the Jewish calendar.” They kill the Passover lamb between sunset and dark, the night of the 14th Abib. They roast and eat it that same night. They observe the FEAST the following night, same as all Jews, beginning of the 15th. THEY HAVE CONTINUED TO FIGURE PENTECOST FROM THE SUNDAY FOLLOWING THE WEEKLY SABBATH OCCURRING DURING THE DAYS OF UNLEAVENED BREAD—just as God originally gave it to the people thru Moses!
“Jesus, the great Antetypical Lamb, and after His resurrection, the Antetypical Wave-sheaf, was presented before and accepted of God on the morrow after the WEEKLY Sabbath during the days of unleavened bread, A.D. 31. That is the day we now call Sunday. He was in His grave on the morrow after the annual Sabbath, Abib 16th. So the fulfillment of the type ought to setus straight beyond doubt as to which day to count FROM. We count FROM the day following the weekly Sabbath—always FROM a Sunday.
Making it PLAIN!
“Let us get that point fixed plainly in mind. we count in order to determine which day is Pentecost. Can we COUNT? We count FROM a Sunday, always. The particular Sunday which follows the weekly Sabbath during the days of unleavened bread.
“This particular year Passover was the eve of April 19th—that is, after sunset Sunday April 18th. The days of unleavened bread were April 20th to 26th inclusive (each day beginning the previous sunset). The weekly Sabbath DURING these days was April 24th. The morrow AFTER the Sabbath was Sunday April 25th—the day on which the wave-sheaf would have been waved.
“Now we have the day to count FROM—Sunday April 25th. No one should get mixed up in counting 50 days FROM a definite day.
“And ye shall count unto you FROM the morrow after the Sabbath ... seven sabbaths (weeks) shall be complete, even to the morrow after the seventh sabbath (week) shall ye number FIFTY DAYS.” (Lev. 23:15).
“Those who have Miscounted Pentecost have done so thru one or more of three errors. Error number one is assuming that the word “Sabbaths” means always and only SATURDAYS—that is, seventh day of the week. Anyone who understands Hebrew knows the Hebrew word Sabbath, or "shabbaths" as it is in this text, has also the meaning of any PERIOD of seven days, or WEEKS. The Hebrew word “Sabbath” means “rest,” “cessation,” “holy day”—as, for instance, all seven annual holydays are SABBATHS, and they are not SATURDAYS; it means also “seven” or period of seven days, or week, and it means also THE seventh DAY of each week.
“For instance, the expression first day of the WEEK occurs in eight places in the New Testament. tho written in the Greek language, God inspired the writing THRU Hebrews, and in every one of these eight places the GREEK word for “week” was not used—because he Jews always used the word “SABBATH” to express “WEEK.” In every one of those eight places the expression is “shabbathon,” literally “sabbaths,” or “first into the sabbaths.”
“From the Dictionary of the Bible by Hastings, you’ll find the root (of the Heb. “sabbath“”) means to desist, cease,—the doubled “b” having an intensive force and implying complete cessation, hence, seven. To say that the word “sabbath” must mean the equivalent of what is today called “Saturday” ALONE, without any other meaning, is simply to express rank ignorance. The ROOT of the word signifies COMPLETE cessation, and since SEVEN is God’s number denoting completeness, the number seven is connected with the Hebrew “shabbaths.” It means a period of SEVEN days—ANY period of seven days, or, as we say in English “WEEKS,” as well as the seventh day of each week. It is so used elsewhere in the Bible.
“The Moffatt translation settles it. Listen: ‘From the day after the sabbath, the day you bring the sheaf of the waved offering, you shall count SEVEN FULL WEEKS.’ Not seven SATURDAYS—seven full WEEKS. They are counted FROM a Sunday. Now if you count your FIRST week to the following SATURDAY, you do not count a FULL week, but only six days, and the instruction is plain—seven FULL weeks FROM a Sunday, and seven FULL weeks from a Sunday brings you to a Sunday seven weeks later. Then we count to the morrow AFTER that seventh full WEEK, or a MONDAY, making FIFTY DAYS rom the Sunday where we begin counting.
“Now suppose this meant seven SATURDAYS, and to the morrow after the seventh Saturday. This would be ONLY 49 DAYS from the day we count from. It would not be COMPLETE, and the text explicitly commands us to count seven weeks COMPLETE, to a total of FIFTY DAYS from a Sunday. Notice, ‘FROM the morrow after the Sabbath’ ... ‘shall ye number FIFTY DAYS.’ Those who count seven SATURDAYS instead of seven FULL WEEKS as the Bible says, are not counting FIFTY DAYS (Pentecost) but ONLY FORTY-NINE DAYS. And the 49th day is NOT Pentecost, and those who observe it do NOT observe Pentecost, no matter how well-meaning their intentions, for PENTECOST means FIFTY-count; that is, COUNT FIFTY, not count 49! Now let us PROVE that this word "shabbath" as it is in the original Hebrew means WEEKS here, and not “SATURDAYS.” The same identical Hebrew word is used in Lev. 25:8,: ‘And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years: and the space of seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.’ There it is FIGURED OUT. It does not mean SATURDAYS—it means PERIOD OF SEVEN—seven TIMES SEVEN. and it figures to FORTY NINE. Now counting from Sunday April 25th, seven sabbaths complete are FORTY NINE DAYS, and we count ‘even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath ... FIFTY DAYS,’ and this is a MONDAY. If you count it seven SATURDAYS you do not have 49 days, but 48. Seven Saturdays after Sunday April 25th brings you to Saturday June 12, exactly 48 days. The text quoted above FIGURES it for us, and this expression figures out to FORTY NINE, not 48. Then we add one day to make it FIFTY.
“You’ll find the same identical word used in the same identical meaning in Lev. 25:8, 26:34, 43 and II Chron. 36:21. In all these places it means PERIOD OF SEVEN, or multiply by seven, not seven SATURDAYS.
“We are also instructed how to count Pentecost in Deut. 16:9. ‘Seven WEEKS (not Saturdays) shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the FEAST OF WEEKS unto the Lord thy God.’ Now here a DIFFERENT Hebrew word is used—‘shabuah’, meaning ‘sevened’, i.e., a WEEK. It is another derivation from the Hebrew ‘Shabbath’. Here, even in the King James translation, we are told to count SEVEN WEEKS, not seven Saturdays, FROM the day the first sheaf was cut and waved—from a Sunday.
“Again from the Bible Dictionary:
“PENTECOST: The term, adopted from the Greek, means ‘fiftieth,’ and was applied by Greek- speaking Jews to the second of the three chief Hebrew feasts, because it fell on the fiftieth day AFTER the offering of the barley-sheaf during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.”
“Again, ‘The Feast of WEEKS came on the 50th day after the barley sheaf was waved’ ... i.e., the day AFTER the completion of seven WEEKS. Hence we read, (Jer. 5:24) of the ‘appointed weeks of harvest’.
“There has been in the past a dispute as to WHICH Sabbath, weekly or annual, the wave-sheaf day followed to count FROM, but never as to HOW TO COUNT THE FIFTY DAYS.
“Suppose you had borrowed some money. We are all in agreement as to which day we count FROM—we count fifty days FROM Sunday April 25th. The problem, then, is how to COUNT fifty days. Suppose that on April 25th you had borrowed $1,000 at the bank. You don’t want to pay it back a day too soon. You would pay it back ON the day that is PENTECOST, if you borrowed it for FIFTY DAYS.
“Your pastor, Herbert W. Armstrong
THE END OF MR. HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG’S “GOOD NEWS LETTER”!
Here are some comments on the above letter.
1) In 1974 Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong finally accepted that his way of counting was wrong, that the Hebrew word translated as “from” really means “beginning with”; it refers to INCLUSIVE counting. Since 1974 the Church has understood that Pentecost does indeed fall on a Sunday!
2) This means that ALL of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s arguments about trying to prove that the Hebrew word “shabbath” somehow meant “week” were WRONG! Now, with Pentecost falling on a Sunday, it should be EASY to understand that in Leviticus 23:15-16 the word “shabbath” does indeed refer to the weekly Sabbath, which we know as “Saturday”.
3) However, notice HOW CONVINCING all of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s arguments about “shabbath” somehow supposedly also meaning “a period of seven days” can sound, IF WE ACCEPT HIS INCORRECT PREMISE THAT THE WORD “FROM” IMPLIES EXCLUSIVE COUNTING!
The point is: Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong accepted a wrong premise and on that wrong premise he built a host of arguments which can appear to be quite sound and convincing! They were “convincing enough” to hold out for another 31 years before the flaws were finally exposed.
4) So the point in this Pentecost counting exercise is this: It would have been a total waste of time to focus on each one of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s wrong arguments put forward in support of the Jewish calendar. He would simply have come up with MORE NEW arguments to support his way of counting.
THE ONLY WAY to sort out the problem with Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s wrong way of counting was to EXAMINE HIS MAIN PREMISE, THE FOUNDATION ON WHICH HE HAD BUILT HIS WHOLE EXPLANATION! (That’s a point I learned from Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong himself, the way he dealt with the subject of evolution!)
And Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s whole explanation hinges on, and depends on, HIS WAY OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORD “FROM” IN Leviticus 23:15! Everything else was only peripheral. When it became clear that in the Hebrew text the word used refers to “counting BEGINNING WITH”, then ALL of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s arguments in support of a Monday counting were shown to be invalid and inappropriate, irrespective of how many translations render “shabbath” as “weeks” in the passage concerned! The trunk of the tree was really: How did GOD want us to count? What was GOD telling us with the word translated into English as “from”?
Now I believe that there is a lesson for us in this regarding the issue over the Jewish calendar, which we face today. That lesson includes understanding:
1) You can have very many “convincing arguments” for either side of the question. Those “convincing arguments” don’t necessarily lead to the right answer; witness Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s convincing arguments that remained convincing for another 30 years, and even “convinced” such men as Dr. Hoeh and Kenneth Herrmann for a number of years.
2) The real key is TO CORRECTLY IDENTIFY THE PREMISE ON WHICH EVERYTHING IS BUILT, AND BESIDES WHICH ALL OTHER ARGUMENTS ARE ONLY “PERIPHERAL”!
3) With our “calendar question” the foundational premise on which EVERYTHING ELSE hinges, the real trunk of the tree, is: THE CLAIM THAT THE ORACLES OF GOD IN Romans 3:2 SIMPLY MUST INCLUDE ‘THE SACRED CALENDAR’! Every other argument presented in support of the Jewish calendar is immaterial and of no consequence and of no real value! And, like some of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong’s arguments in support of a Monday Pentecost, they may even sound very convincing on their own, but they nevertheless are built on that assumed premise that “the oracles of God” must refer to “the calendar”!
4) And so the real problem with the Jewish calendar is that THIS FOUNDATIONAL PREMISE IS NEVER PROVED! IT IS ALWAYS ONLY ASSERTED! SOME OTHER PERIPHERAL POINTS MAY BE PRESENTED AS “PROOF”, BUT THE FOUNDATIONAL PREMISE OF Romans 3:2 APPLYING TO THE CALENDAR IS NEVER PROVED! WHY IS IT THAT THIS MOST BASIC FOUNDATION IN THE WHOLE QUESTION SHOULD BE ACCEPTED WITHOUT ANY REAL PROOF?
Why should we accept this basic and foundational premise with a blind faith, a faith that refuses to even look at all the evidence that contradicts what this blind faith desperately wants to believe?
Even after changing the observance of Pentecost in 1974 from a Monday to a Sunday Mr. Armstrong NEVER really accepted that HIS WAY of understanding the word “from” was wrong! He continued to justify that HIS UNDERSTANDING of “from” was correct, but that THE TRANSLATORS HAD MADE A MISTAKE when they rendered the Hebrew word into English as “from”; he insisted that they should have rendered it as “BEGINNING WITH”.
The point is: He couldn’t really accept that HIS WAY OF COUNTING had been the real problem for 34 years.
Similarly: those who defend the Jewish calendar don’t really accept that THEIR WAY OF INTERPRETING THE TERM “THE ORACLES OF GOD” IS THE REAL STUMBLING BLOCK TO EVEN HONESTLY ACKNOWLEDGING ALL THE VERY REAL PROBLEMS WITH THE PRESENT JEWISH CALENDAR!
Well, now you have Mr. Armstrong’s original writings, from 1940 and 1943, about the calendar and about Pentecost.
For several years I have posted a selection of Frank’s many articles, (naturally, the ones I really liked) which were only available to those on his own email list. Others posted some of his other articles. Now, since I believe early 2005, he has his own web site. I always post links.
For more about when to celebrate Pentecost check here.
