Armstrongism and the New Year

Happy New Year, everyone! Even to you current Armstrongists.

Yes, you too. Because, whether you like the New Year's Day celebration or not, you operate under the Gregorian Calendar and January 1 is the start of a new year for you every bit as much as it is for everyone else who uses the Gregorian Calendar.

Do you deny it?

YOU DO TOO

What month is it? January. What day is it? Thursday, January 1st. What year is it? 2015. When will you go to church next? Saturday, January 3rd. When is the Passover in 2015? April 3rd. Is it not? Is that not what the Holy Day Calendar says? Let us see for ourselves.
Here is a link to the Holy Day Calendar on the UCG website: http://www.ucg.org/holy-day-calendar
See that? Ordered by Gregorian year, month, and day. Let's do that again. Let's see the old Worldwide Church of God's "God's Sacred Calendar '86-'87" publication. Why, just look at the name. The pagan designation "'86-'87" is right there in the very name of the sacred calendar! And, once again, we see it is ordered entirely around the Gregorian Calendar.

So, not only do you know the Gregorian Calendar, you use it. Not only do you use it in your personal and business life, but you use it to order your religious life as well. You use and respect and honor the Gregorian Calendar in every possible aspect, every bit as much as anyone else does who uses it, only you rail about how pagan it is and refuse to celebrate the New Year's Day.

Now, who can tell me what the name is of the eleventh Hebrew month (don't cheat and look it up)? What about the fourth month? Who can tell me what year it is according to the "sacred calendar"?
Chances are you don't even know the names of the Hebrew months, let alone in proper order. If you did, there wouldn't be any false claims about March/April being the time of weeping for Tammuz.

If the Hebrew Calendar is so very sacred, and the Gregorian Calendar so very pagan, why the continuous intermixing of the two? I thought you were supposed to "come out from among them, and be ye separate ... and touch not the unclean thing" (II COR. 6: 17). It looks bad when you're steeped in what you condemn (ROM. 2: 17-29). If the COGs are going to lambaste every calendar but the Hebrew as "pagan" and the Hebrew calendar as "God's" or "sacred" or "true", then why not dispense with the hypocrisy and cease using the Gregorian Calendar in its entirety? You meant what you said about it being pagan, didn't you? You have a proper calendar from God at your disposal, don't you? Yet, you order your life around the pagan calendar and pay lip service to the "true" calendar a few times each year - at the New Year and holy days.

But, to be completely fair, I am merely making a "you do it too" argument and is a To Quoque argument really any better of a defense? I propose we move away from it, then. Let us instead take a closer look at the details and see if the "Hebrew Calendar" is really God's calendar, or just a convenient excuse to malign the New Year.

THINKING REALISTICALLY

The United Church of God paints the time-honored tradition for us yet again in their article "Dropping the Ball on New Year Celebrations." In it, they say this,

"God's New Year begins in the spring. From ancient times, God's calendar has been in use and the beginning of the year has continuously been at the same time."
-Gayle Hoefker, "Dropping the Ball on New Year Celebrations.", United Church of God, ucg.org, 12-29-2014

I want to point out that the article is dated using the Gregorian Calendar. The true viewpoint of the COGs towards the pagan calendar is revealed - it's only pagan seven or eight times a year. "Think vertically" is a cute catch phrase and all, but we suggest thinking realistically. Maybe even honestly.

First, this claim isn't exactly true that the beginning of the year has continuously been at the same time. It's the Jews' calendar. Ask them when the new year is. They will tell you Rosh Hashana - the Feast of Trumpets. The name Rosh Hashana literally means new year. 

"The name "Rosh Hashanah" means, literally, "head of the year" or "first of the year." Rosh Hashanah is commonly known as the Jewish New Year."

- "Rosh Hashanah", Judaism 101, https://www.jewfaq.org/rosh_hashanah

You will no doubt argue that Moses set one date and the Jews another. I will grant you this. However, my point is not to argue against Nissan 1 but to demonstrate things are a bit more nuanced than the UCG makes it seem. It varied somewhat.

I could also do a little childish equivocate here. If the Jews have run a foul of the Feast of Trumpets, then it's soiled and you have to avoid it. What? It's the same thing people say about Christmas.

Second, we know from history that the beginning of the month of Abib/Nisan was determined visually by a representative of the Sanhedrin sighting the New Moon from the hills outside of Jerusalem. Yes, the sacred calendar is entirely dependent upon New Moons. (I do suggest you read our post "New Moons - What Josephus Says They Were Really Doing".) The representative would report to the Sanhedrin what was seen, and the Sanhedrin would make an official proclamation. If the New Moon could not be visually determined, the start of the year could be delayed by a day. Over the centuries Israel devised a system of calculations, so they knew roughly when the start of the year would be. But history leads us to understand that they would still visually determine the first day of the year regardless. The Diaspora would then be alerted to the time via signal fires. That is, until the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem after the destruction of the temple in 70AD. Things became quite a bit more complicated after that. Thus, the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time." It varied somewhat.

Third, the UCG knows what they claimed is wrong. They take this from Herman Hoeh, in his booklet "The Crucifixion Was Not On Friday".

"The Jews have accurately preserved it [the calendar] to this very day, just as they have accurately preserved for us the Old Testament."

"This Hebrew Calendar has continued to be used by God’s true Church ever since apostolic times and it is still being faithfully followed today."

-Herman Hoeh, "The Crucifixion Was Not On Friday", 1968, pp. 33-34

Hoeh was wrong. We know from history that the modern Hebrew calendar is not that original Hebrew calendar, but a reconfiguration of the Hebrew Calendar devised by Rabbi Hillel II in the 350's AD. Hillel altered the calendar by necessity. Since the Temple was destroyed and the Sanhedrin banished from Jerusalem, the calendar system they had used was now nearly impossible to maintain. The mechanisms of how to calculate it were kept a secret and few knew how to work it. The calendar crept back to where the first day of Abib/Nisan happened before the spring equinox. Passover itself could happen before the equinox. One of Hillel's main goals was to prevent this. Additional changes have been made since. The COGs make a grand to-do denouncing the Gentile Christians of abandoning the "sacred calendar" when they set the Pascha timing in 325 AD. But they purposefully ignore that the Jews themselves revamped the calendar system a few years later. The modern Hebrew calendar is not the ancient calendar. Once again, the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time." It varied somewhat.

Hoeh knew this back in the 1960s. He just chose to bury it. The modern UCG is even more guilty. Much of I just said was laid out in a Good News Magazine article from April 1981, p. 28. The members and leaders of the UCG read the Good News Magazine. They knew what it said. They should have told the truth. They didn't.

Fourth, a complex system of intercalations - adjustments like leap months and added days at the end of certain years - are mandatory to keep a lunar calendar in line with the solar year (to keep Passover immediately after the spring equinox, for example). The Bible never sets up these intercalations. Therefore, they were devised later. Herbert Armstrong set a great deal of importance on these intercalations. Anyone familiar with Armstrong's writings knows about the "19-year time cycles." They were supposedly a vital key to understanding prophecy. These intercalations are mandatory to keep the system working, yet the Bible is silent about them. If you don't do intercalations, then your months move around the year. The Muslims do not do intercalations on their lunar-based religious calendar, therefore you see Ramadan occurring at any time in the year. How many years did it take for the Hebrews to perfect their intercalations? No one knows. Did the Babylonians help them with this? Notice that the Hebrew months are never named by God. The months of the Hebrew Calendar are all named with pagan names, mainly from Babylon. Therefore we can know for a fact that the Babylonian calendar had an influence on the Hebrew calendar. We cannot know how deep this influence goes, but we can see that the two calendars are not that different. One of them, or both, had to have changed for this to be so. For a third time we see, the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time." It varied somewhat.

Fifth, we know there are miracles mentioned in the Bible that deal with alterations in the visible motion of the Sun in its course. For example, Joshua's "long day" in Joshua chapter 10. Not only that, but it has been a widely accepted thing in the COGs for decades that the length of the year prior to Noah's Flood was 5 days shorter than it is now. In other words, many in the COGs believe that the year used to be 360 days long, not 365.242. So, in a proper year, each month should be 30 days long. Is this really true? Who can know! Many ancient cultures were based on 30-day months and 360-day years (eg. ancient Egypt). It is true that the lunar and solar calendars would match up better in a 360-day solar year. At any rate, the calendar between Creation and Moses could not escape any of these changes unscathed. Therefore the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time." It must have varied somewhat.

Sixth, we know from history that there were multiple calendars in Israel by Jesus' day. The Temple had one calendar, the Gallileans another, and the Essenes another (not to mention the Julian calendar or any other regional calendars in use at that time). The Essenes used a calendar so regular and so fixed that declared it God's calendar. They were offended by the corrections required by the calendar used at the temple. They did not accept something so imperfect could come from God. Then, there was another calendar used in Galilee. Not only were the Temple and Galilean calendars off by a day from one another, the Galilean calendar started days in the morning. All were "Hebrew calendars." Which is the one true Hebrew calendar? Yet again, the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time." It varied somewhat.

Seventh, (because everybody knows a good list should have seven points) in the article, Genesis 1: 14-18 is referenced, where it is stated that the heavens are to help us tell time. Then the article skips nearly 3,000 years to Exodus 12: 2 where God tells Moses when the first month of the year should be. What we are expected to believe from this disjointed proof-texting is that God operates under one and only one sacred calendar, and the Hebrew Calendar is the unbroken continuation of a divine system of time-keeping God had set in place at creation, making Abib/Nisan the one true start of that divine year.

Except there is nothing in the entire Bible making any claim remotely like this. This is just declared to be so with nothing backing it. You cannot prove nor disprove it. There is no time marker in Genesis 1 or Exodus 12 to let us know exactly when that first day was. The COGs assume that the Jews never lost track of that exact day, which is demonstrably false on its face. There is no reason to assume that the Jews, even by Jesus' day, had kept a tight lock on the precise mechanism of when to determine the New Year (we hardly consider the barley crop a "precise mechanism"). There are very good reasons to believe that the New Year's Day was not "continuously at the same time."

At any rate, the base assumptions made by the COGs about the Hebrew Calendar are highly unreliable. There are two main assumptions being made here:
1) That the start of the year which God gave to Moses is exactly the same as Creation Day 1,
and
2) That the Jews have continually protected the correct start of the year from Moses until now.

These assumptions are both exceedingly weak. Holding the Jews up as a calendar authority while simultaneously saying how desperately wrong they are on calendar issues (eg. Rosh Hashanah as New Year, timing of Passover) is opportunistic, to put it mildly. So they are both sacredly correct and sinfully wrong in their chronological reliability?? Spring may very well be the right time for the start of Abib/Nisan. The barley crop does ripen in spring after all. Problem is, demanding that the start of Abib/Nisan was "continuously at the same time" is simply not backed up by much other than wishful thinking, but what's worse is basing the condemnation of the rest of the world on these assumptions is dangerous!
Note: We aren't in any way knocking on the Jews here.

Continue in the assumption if you will, but even so you will only continue in principle, seeing as in practice you respect the Gregorian calendar in nearly every aspect of your life. This effectively renders the entire complaint against celebrating the New Year a great noise. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

SUPPLEMENTAL INCIDENTALS

Since even the COGs, regardless of how much they prefer to continue in their assumption, cannot deny these points are the historical reality of the situation, they are forced to ignoring the historical reality, bickering with each other over certain hyper-legalistic minutiae (like when to time Pentecost in a year where Passover is on the weekly Sabbath), and fundamentally relying on certain "guilt by association" accusations. To show just how very much nothing there really is, let's look at a few of these accusations from the UCG article quoted above. For example:

"Many New Year’s parties include the drinking of alcohol to excess."
[ibid]

True! It is well known for that. Is drinking to excess mandatory at New Year's? No. So don't do it. There is no need to get inebriated in order to wish "Happy New Year" to friends and family. But! No one ever drinks to excess during the Feast of Tabernacles?? It didn't get the nickname "The Feast of Booze" for nothing, you know! Drinking is a time-honored tradition at the Feast. If you're going to use drunkenness as a serious excuse, then you should be honest about it and apply the standard across the board by skipping the FOT from now on.

Or look at this anachronistic claim:

"...Noisemaking and fireworks on New Year’s Eve are common. It is believed that this originated in ancient times when noise and fire were used to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck"
[ibid]

It is not believed. Hard to take anyone seriously when they state things like this.

So fireworks originate in ancient times? Even though our first record of gunpowder in Europe was in the 1300's AD? What ancient times could the article possibly be talking about? Where does this guy get his information? Don't tell me. I know. Alexander Hislop. Lights were used anciently, therefore these lights couldn't possibly be anything besides? Are we to believe that all lights and sounds are the modern descendant of those ancient superstitions? Seriously? Are we to avoid anything with noise and lights and pagan symbols? Better not attend another wedding for the rest of your life! Not a single one. Best to avoid Independence Day as well. To be safe, don't watch television or drive either. For Heaven's sake, never ever ride in an ambulance if noise and lights are pagan.

Or, here is one of my personal favorites:

"Many celebrate by making New Year's resolutions. This practice dates back to ancient Babylon when people made good behavior promises to the gods. Of those that make resolutions, less than half keep them six months later. Wouldn’t it be better to live by good godly principles every day of your life?"
[ibid]

This sounds very reasonable on the surface. Sure, people do make resolutions and regularly fail to keep them. Guilty! It would be better to live a godly life indeed. It's a terrible thing to assume that a godly life isn't being led just because a person wants to improve themselves, but we'll pass that by. Is that really a reason to dump New Year's Day? People don't keep their resolutions, so don't ever celebrate New Year's Day? This is a mighty stretch indeed.

When I think of what "living a godly life" means to an Armstrongist (law-keeping), I can't help but notice the similarity between a New Year's resolution and what Armatrongists do regularly with the Old Covenant law. Tell me, do you believe you should keep the law? Yes. Do you actually keep it, perfectly? No. Over and over again we have demonstrated that it is not the keeping of the law that the COGs require but the attempt at keeping the law. Tell me the truth, when you feel right guilty because you've failed to keep the law yet again, don't you make a resolution in your prayerful negotiations with God to do better next time? Of course you do. Do you succeed? Be honest! So in all actuality you have made a resolution, a good behavior promise to God, which you don't keep. Are we to conclude that you are a pagan and should never go to church again?
How the standards do shift.

CONCLUSION

The COGs believe that when God gave the calendar system to Moses what God was doing was re-establishing a sacred system set up at creation. This isn't a conclusion taken from the Bible. It's a conclusion put into the Bible. It's pure eisegesis. Even as they do this, they also teach that the year has been critically altered by miraculous events over time. If there were any solid Biblical support for these claims, then the case they made wouldn't be primarily assumption and fault-finding.

At the very least, the Armstrongists certainly wouldn't have wasted decades beating each other up over New Moons, 14th/15th Passover, Sunday/Monday Pentecost, and who has the most accurate, most holy, most one true of the calendar interpretations. The intricacies and inaccuracies of the Hebrew lunar calendar engender strife among those who demand its observance. Either one glosses over the issues and presses ahead, or they spiral into ever-deeper levels of legalism causing division and leaving destruction in their wake. Nothing causes division like a calendar controversy. Legalism tends towards a church of one. Look at the FRUITS!

The COGs believe that God told the Jews that the start of the year is in the Spring. The Bible doesn't say anything about a precise day, though. God simply said that what we now call Abib/Nisan (both pagan names) was the first of the months. An observation of the New Moon is clearly required to make this determination - yet most of the COGs, maintaining their tradition of cherry-picking from the law, are adamantly against New Moons. Still, this lunar observation isn't at a fixed day of the solar year. And where in the law does God demonstrate how and where to observe the New Moon? It's missing. The entire process is arbitrary.

So the COGs turn to rely on the modern Jews as the authority on when these things should be, even as they rail on about how wrong the Jews are on these same issues. Except, we know that the lunar calendar wanders through the year, and that the Jews didn't always have a good lock on it as they had multiple calendars, and that calendar calculations developed over time, and that we have no idea how their lunar year wandered for the first few centuries until the intercalations were set, and that the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars were intermixed somehow, and that the modern Hebrew calendar is not the ancient Hebrew calendar.

Let us come to the heart of the matter. What law is there that says that there should be one and only one calendar? There is no such law. Israel, who ought to know best, supposedly set up a second calendar in the time of King David. What law says that one must not celebrate the New Year? There is no such law. "Where there is no law there is no sin," right? And what's more, the COGs have yet to prove why the Gentiles are in any way bound to the terms and machinations of an abrogated covenant designed specifically for the Israelites in the land of Palestine until the coming of the Messiah. What case do you have against the Gregorian calendar and celebrating the New Year then? Circumstantial, misinformed, and weak at best, and I'm being generous. Herbert Armstrong said it was wrong, and the COGs, although many claim HWA is not important to their faith, continue to teach his traditions to our day. It's a tradition, not a law. Will you condemn so many for a tradition, especially when you use the same calendar in every other respect? I have a resolution for you which you can easily keep - dump the hypocrisy.

I say again, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU! May it be blessed and filled with grace and love. May this be the year that you finally step into the New Covenant in the finished work of Jesus Christ!

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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