TIME

The Bible as an Accurate Timekeeper

A clock on a mountain background.

The aim of this study is for us to learn where we are in time. Jesus compares the nearing of His coming with the leaves of the trees shooting off, which shows that the summer is near. In the same way, Jesus informed us that there is a period when we can expect His coming. There is a way for us in the end to have an understanding of when the time is short. Thus we can herald the Second Advent and proclaim with force that our Lord and Savior is coming soon.

Before the Second Coming there will be a revival of primitive godliness such as the world has never known. We are going to study different aspects of Bible time, in short articles, so that we can really grasp the idea. Today we are going to learn about one system of keeping time in the Bible and then, in the next study, we will begin to apply this system to the Flood account in the Book of Genesis. We will do this with the Exodus as well.

As we begin to consider time, we shall first look at Genesis chapter 1 which contains the record of the Creation of this world. When God made the sun, moon, and stars, he told us of their purpose:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years…” Gen. 1:14.

Here we see that the heaven (the heavenly bodies above us) is a time-keeper. When we go through the Bible, we see dates (like “in the second month”, or “in the fourth month” of a certain king, and in such and such a day). We are given dates that are literally tied to astronomical phenomena – tied to the movements of bodies in the heavens.

These movements proceed on a few different lines that we need to look at and understand. First, there is a Lunar line, then a Solar line that is used to track time in the Bible, and also a Stellar timeline. The circuit of the heavenly bodies above our world is divided into different aspects, just like the face of a watch. Though they move at different speeds, there are some alignments, and with these alignments, we can see that time can neither be gained nor lost. It can all be tracked. Time can be tracked from the first day of Creation all the way down to our present time. Therefore, Bible history is astronomical. It is tied to the heavens.

Since we understand that history is connected to prophecy (and now we learn that history is connected to the heavens), it would make sense that God’s people before Christ comes will have a message to declare about the heavens. Right before Christ comes, we are called to “look up” for our “redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28) – because there is something that our Lord wants us to see in the skies and understand.

Since Biblical history is astronomical, it is governed by an unchangeable Biblical method of keeping time – the unalterable Lunar time. From the beginning of creation, the ancients tracked their days, weeks, and months by the Lunar cycle of 29 ½ days, marked off in knots of 7 days each. We are going to start looking at how this worked and how a time cycle was formed in this fashion. We have to remember that we cannot extend or shrink the natural working of these cycles. We can’t mess with them – they are in the heavens.

God has ordained that the celestial bodies move at certain rates of speed and their movement has never changed since the beginning of Creation. And this very fact gives us the ability to measure time. We cannot add or take away time any more than we could to a common meter or watch. This is amazing.

Truly, time cannot be added or lost and the Bible is the ultimate time-keeper, it is the ultimate book of true science, because no science is more accurate than the science of time. And the reason why we say this is because the science of time is governed by these astronomical phenomena of the lunar, solar, and stellar bodies that we see in the heavens. For this reason, all dates of the Scriptures fall with precision upon the lines of scientific time, properly understood, like the cogs of a wheel. Once we properly understand them, they will expand our minds as to the magnificence of our Creator and the creation he has made, and especially to the heavens.

As an example, it would be difficult for us to understand what a mechanical watch is unless we employ numerous diagrams. But when we obtain knowledge of how it functions (supposed that it has not been received at an early age), we would smile at the simplicity of its construction and be thankful through all the days of our lives for the useful information we have obtained.

Generally, people don’t know how to read the heavens, even though they are a watch (a timekeeper). But when their simplicity is understood, we will find it easy to learn where we are in time. This is knowledge that we should have learned long ago, but, unfortunately, we haven’t been taught about it.

And when by a few words of explanation the student of the Bible comes to understand the great dial that is formed by the mechanisms of the sky, he will be empowered to discern the common movement of the heavenly bodies as he discerns the hands of a clock. Thus he will feel that he has acquired a vast amount of practical information. In this way, all history that is portrayed in the Bible can be confirmed by astronomical phenomena. No one can argue with that history – whether non-believer or Christian. It is what it is.

The student who learns how to read the heavens will then regret that he did not know so much practical information earlier in his life and that his former education has been biased and incomplete. And this is a fact – our education is incomplete if we don’t understand how to track time in the Biblical way – by the celestial phenomena that God has placed in the heavens. At this point, history becomes science – when we understand how the Bible keeps time. The most accurate watch in the world – because it keeps accurate history – is the Bible.

The first thing that we are going to examine in our studies is the Lunar cycle which is marked off by knots of seven days in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. In Exodus 20 we read:

“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day…”

When the literal week was instituted in Creation, with six days of creative works and the seventh day of rest, the seven-day cycle was set in motion and it can be traced from then on. To question that is a terrible and dangerous thing to do because such a course constitutes a revolt against the God of heaven.

The Solar Cycle

There can be no Solar Cycle without weeks of seven days. Thus unbroken weeks have come to us from the year 0 of Creation. They are formed by the dates found in history which can be enumerated and constructed into the seven days of each of the 12 months of the year.

Thus the Sabbath that is now observed is the seventh day from Creation till this time. It has not been lost and we are going to prove that emphatically. Thus the weeks are really clocks. Once the time markers in the Bibles are set (because they confirm the astronomical phenomena of the lunar, solar, and stellar bodies), we can never lose time. We have fixed our position in time.

A cycle is a wheel. That’s why we speak of a bicycle – a vehicle of two wheels. Applied to time, a cycle is a full revolution when the point of commencement comes around again. It is formed by a precise number of years that brings the same day of the week to the same day of the month.

In the Genesis account about the Creation of the world, we are told what constitutes a day. We read:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” “And the evening and the morning were the second day.” “And the evening and the morning were the third day.” Gen. 1.

The same is said of all the days in the first week of time. A day – an evening and a morning – constitutes a 24-hour period. After God created everything that is in the earth, including man, in six days, he rested on the seventh day. This forms the Creation week.

From then, we can begin to count forward. The first Sabbath would have fallen on the 7th day of the first month of time. The next one would be on the 14th day; the third one – on the 21st day, and the last Sabbath of that first month would fall on the 28th day, in the fourth week of the first month of Creation. And this cycle of sevens never changes. We just count it forward over the years.

The Solar and Lunar periods are two astronomical lines of time.

Something we must understand about the solar line of time as it was observed by the ancients is that they never tried to keep time according to a solar cycle. Such a measurement of time was instituted by the Romans. The Roman Empire in its pagan religion wanted to put the sun at the center and try to adapt the days, weeks, and months according to a solar cycle. This actually brings confusion because with the Julian calendar, every fourth year was a leap year and it gained time that needed to be corrected. This is why there was a change to the Gregorian calendar. The problem in all of this is that if someone tries to date events by the Solar Cycle, there is no fixed date for the beginning of the year. The length of the Solar year is 365.2422 days. It’s just a period of time that can start from any day and any month we choose. In contrast to that, the Lunar year is astronomical, because there are certain phases of the moon. There is the new moon (when the moon is dark) and then there is the full moon, halfway through the month, and then we get to the new moon again. Thus it becomes very easy to track time in the heavens just by going out and seeing what phase the moon is in – we acquire a good idea of where we are in the month. Because the Lunar Cycle is responsible for keeping track of the days, weeks and months. If we adhere to this cycle, we don’t lose any time.

If we compare a Solar year with a Lunar year, the Solar year consists of about 365 days, while a Lunar year consists of 354 days (because a Lunar month is 29 ½ days long). The ancients borrowed that half day and made the first month a 30-day month, and the second month a 29-day month, and thus the length of months alternated.

Thus we receive the Antediluvian Solar Cycle showing the dates of all the Sabbath days in a 7-year sequence.

Antediluvian Solar Cycle showing the dates of all the Sabbath days since Creation

This table shows us the time in year 0 – the first year that marks the Creation of this world. This year can also be termed 0 AM – the beginning.

We see the first four Sabbaths here – on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of the first month. What we see here (though it is called a Solar Cycle) is a lunar year of 354 days. It is keeping track of our days, weeks, and months, and after seven years of going like this, the dates return to the same position they were in when the first year started, and the first Sabbath of the first month falls again on the 7th day of that month. And this seven-year cycle would just repeat over and over, keeping track of the weeks.

Again, this is called The Antediluvian Solar Cycle. And though it is called “Solar” we need to keep in mind that it consists of seven lunar years of 354 days each.

The Bible keeps track of time by the solar year – that one which consists of 354.2422 days. So when the Bible mentions years, they are solar. The Lunar system is just a way to never lose track of time.

Summary of the Seven-year Solar Cycle

As we look at this diagram, we see that the Seven-year Solar Cycle is made up of 7 lunar years. It keeps track of the Sabbaths and every year there is a difference of 11 days between the Lunar year and the Solar year. These “lost” days are adding up, and in the end, they need to be kept into account because if they are not registered, very soon the seasons will be upside down. So the ancients had to make an allowance for this.

At the end of every seventh year, the cycle was repeated. But how did they bring the Lunar Year which is 11 days shorter than the Solar Year into alignment with the cycle, so that they would both start again at the same time?

At the end of the seventh lunar year, the ancients added 77 days, called “intercalary days”. Since every Lunar year was 11 days shorter than the Solar year, the addition of 77 days compensated for the difference in their length. Thus the cycle was completed, and there was never even one Sabbath lost (because if we divide 77 days into 7, we see that these intercalculary days constituted 11 full weeks, with their respective Sabbaths). And then the seven-year cycle started all over again.

The Antediluvian Solar Cycle was repeated again and again for more than 1,600 years in the Bible, and it is a principle that cannot be changed any more than we can change a common watch. Thus we see the stamp of God all over the Bible when we start to understand time.

Just like on a regular watch we have an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand, and they are not all moving at the same speed, but two times a day (at noon and at midnight), these hands all make an alignment, so in the heavens, there are similar alignments in time. And we can prove that time is science when we understand how to trace Biblical time.

In summary, the first seven days of Creation form the first week. Then we trace them through the Lunar year, and then through seven lunar years, where the last Sabbath falls on the 29th day of the 12th month – the last day of the year. In the next year (the first year of the new cycle), the first week repeats again, with the Sabbath being on the 7th day of the month, and the next ones on the 14th, the 21st, and the 28th day. And because 11 days are lost every year – the difference between a Lunar year of 354 days and a Solar year of 365 days, to bring them back in line, there is a need to add 77 days (or 11 weeks). And we again see God’s stamp – the number 7 all over the place: 7 days of Creation, 7 years in a cycle, and 77 intercalary days to bring the years into alignment.

And we will start using this system to trace Bible dates. Using this way of reckoning time, we can confirm the Flood, the Exodus, and the journey of Abraham, as well as many other interesting dates in the Scriptures.

Indeed, if men refused to observe weeks and this line of time was forgotten, the days of the weeks could be recovered by observing when eclipses of the sun and moon occur. These great bodies of the sky keep the seven-day week with scientific accuracy, proving the Creation account of Genesis, as the seven-day weeks proceed through the ages. Thus the days of our world are written on the wall of the heavens, from the very beginning, from year 0. There began the first line of time.

Praise the Lord for this knowledge! Biblical time proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God is real. God numbered the heavens. He created them for a purpose. “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9

He made all these things.

We have only a limited amount of time to warn the world of the end of their probation, just as Noah did. Yet the wise will discern the time because they have been commanded to do so.

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” Dan. 12:3.

Will the wise ones who declare the time shine as the brightness of the stars in the Firmament forever? And will they turn many to righteousness? Yes, they will. And we who are given this knowledge are to declare the time.

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