Today, following the Hebrew calendar and using it to decipher God’s will is all the rage. Apparently, God works on the clock and whatever He is doing in the present “season” is dictated by the calendar. And many “prophets” now divine the future from Hebrew month names, year numbers, and increasingly, even from the Gregorian calendar.
But is any of this scriptural? Certainly, Yahweh instituted the
Hebrew calendar with its annual feast days but nowhere in the Old or the New Testament
do we find any instructions for using it to peer into the future, nor examples
of men of God doing so.
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| [Photo by Madhu Madhavan on Unsplash] |
I mean, in what passage does Moses or Elijah or Paul or Jesus himself declare what God is about to do based on the Hebrew month name or year number? As for the Gregorian calendar, what does that have to do with Jesus, God, or the Christian faith?
In
fact, attempting to decipher the future from year numbers is a form of
divination, an occult practice. Isaiah chided the Babylonians for doing that
very thing – “Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly
prognosticators stand up and save you from the things that will come
upon you.” And in the Hebrew text, “monthly prognosticator” refers to
those who divine knowledge from the months on the lunar calendar. And it is no
coincidence that Isaiah lumped them together with “astrologers” and “stargazers.”
When
writing to the Galatians, Paul expressed his displeasure that some members of
the congregation were resorting to calendrical observations. “You observe days and
months and seasons and years.” Almost daily do we not hear “prophetic”
pronouncements about what “season” we are in or are about to enter? And
beyond doubt, the issue at Galatia revolved around the Hebrew calendar.
Paul did not dispute that God had instituted the
calendar with its Sabbaths and annual feast days. However, he called such
things “rudimentary,” the “weak and beggarly rudiments.” And to resort
to them is to return to bondage.
“Rudimentary”
translates the Greek noun stoicheion, which can refer to things that are
basic and elementary,
such as the letters that make up the alphabet. Peter used
the same word when he predicted that on the Day of the Lord the “elements
will be melted with fervent heat.”
But according to Paul, calendrical observations are now passé, things that
were necessary when we were under the custodianship of
the Law, but practices that were left
behind with the arrival of Jesus. “When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son… that he might redeem them that were under the law.”
And in him, the era of fulfillment began, therefore, it is now time to put
away what has become obsolete. To return to “bondage” under the law, including
its calendar regulations, is regression. It is not advancement, revelation, and
certainly not a method for forecasting the future or peering into some “spiritual
realm.”
Paul made similar points in Colossians. “Beware
lest anyone
make you into a spoil through his philosophy and vain
deceit after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments
of the world, and not after Christ.” And what did he mean by the “rudiments of
the world”? Just a few verses later he provides us with clear examples:
- “Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day, things that are shadows of the coming things, but the body is of Christ. Let no man rob you of your prize… If you died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as though living in the world do you subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not nor taste nor touch.”
Not only does Paul call dietary regulations and
calendrical observations “rudimentary,” he classifies them as “shadows”
of the substance that is now in Christ. So, why grasp at shadows when we belong
to the one who casts them?
But even if we believe the Hebrew calendar is
still in effect, once again, in Scripture, where do we find any word about using
it to divine God’s will or even one example of a man of God doing so?
As for using year numbers from the Gregorian
calendar to decipher the “times and seasons” as many “prophets” now do, that has
absolutely no basis in Scripture whatsoever. It IS a form of divination,
though admittedly, a very silly one. Nevertheless, if you fool around with
demonic things that are forbidden in the Bible, sooner or later, you will get
burned.