Should Pentecost be counted at 7 sabbaths plus 50 days?
Dec 12, 2017 0:44:54 GMT -6
barbiosheepgirl, cwood85, and 2 more like this
Post by witness1 on Dec 12, 2017 0:44:54 GMT -6
Hi friends. I would like to start a separate thread discussing the legitimacy of counting Pentecost contrary to the traditional count of 50 days. I have been studying this consistently over the last several weeks and have a great deal of (what I perceive to be) insight on the matter. I have been waiting to present my findings until I wrote it all up nicely and had really thought it through, but I am feeling that now may be the time.
Why do I think this matters? Because at best this has been concealed from us, and at worst we have been deceived. As I have looked into this, I see overwhelming evidence that we should have been counting it differently all this time. And if that is the case, it has to matter. Whether it is for the 12/31 proposition at hand or something else entirely, any time there is something in scripture that has been completely, entirely misinterpreted needs to come to the light.
Since I don't have every piece of "evidence" in publishable format, I will plan to follow the format of @silentknight 's Restoration Thread, posting a little at a time.
Unfortunately I need to give a little background before I get to the heart of the matter, and unfortunately it will be long. This regards a very powerful dream I had on 10/22 and a crazy wrong theory I had that the church would collectively be called to be the 2 witnesses. I thought that the Sunday of the Jupiter/Venus conjunction would be a second sort of Pentecost where we would be anointed with a double portion of the Spirit and called to this task. Some of you may remember me throwing that idea out there... I have not looked back to see whom responded, but you were all very kind. Thank you.
So... I had this theory and won't go into what scripture Satan twisted to get me to that point, but I was begging God for confirmation that this was indeed what He would call us to. I begged Him to give me a dream to either confirm or deny this theory. And that very night, I had the most powerful dream I've ever had. I have had 3 other powerful dreams like this, one of them being a rapture dream and one of them being God telling me what to name my son who would die shortly after his birth at 37 weeks. "His name is John". (John means God is Gracious! A truth I still cling to.) But this dream in reference was by far the most intense.
In the dream, a voice said, "Keep your eye on the gold 2 that is about to fall from the sky." (It was the same voice that told me to name my son John.) After that, a bunch of gold confetti fell out of the sky along with a piece of cardboard cut in the shape of a number 2. It was painted with gold spray paint and had a bunch of ugly plastic rhinestones glued all over it. It looked like a child's art project. Not at all as beautiful as the gold foil confetti. All of the confetti fell on a round table, but the 2 fell by itself in the corner with one tiny piece of confetti that I understood to be the messenger about the 2. As the 2 fell into the corner, the voice said, "Unless a seed dies, it cannot bear fruit." The song "Even So Come" was playing in the background.
Y'all. I was SURE this meant that we were to be the witnesses. The number 2. We would die but bear fruit. The last trump in Revelation (I wish I would have known at the time about God's trumpet vs the angel's trumpet!). The last trump happens right after God tells the witnesses to "Come up here!". We would be the "daily sacrifice" that the abomination removed. It all fit in my head. Satan spun up a heck of a lie and I fell for it. But, at the same time that I was so sure, I WASN'T sure. I didn't have peace. I was sick to my stomach and didn't eat or sleep for days. "Surely this can't be from the Lord. This isn't what things from the Lord feel like." But the dream seemed so clear, and it was given after I asked God for confirmation. So... what to do? Answer: sign up for the discussion forum (with the name Witness1 to show God that I would obey if He made me
) and throw out my idea. It was quickly shut down (thank you!), and the Jupiter/Venus conjunction came and went without the Spirit pouring out in double measure. Whew. I'm off the hook about being the witnesses. (Side note... I'm feeling called to pray for those witnesses because wow they have a hard job!) So what the heck did that dream mean?
Well, dennislwatson comes along with a crazy theory that this verse in Leviticus should be read differently that we usually read it. I promptly wrote a long rebuke about not straying from a proper interpretation of scripture, which I later deleted after seeing a tiny shred of evidence from the Bullinger Lexicon that it MIGHT be ok to interpret it that way. And then the Lord began speaking. "You're the little piece of confetti by the 2. You need to be the messenger." So... I've looked at this. I have tried to be a mediator of sorts when the discussion turned sour. I've studied scripture. And you know what I found? A LOT of evidence that we have been wrong about the day of Pentecost.
(@silentknight I just read back through our old conversation and found this gem: "But the point is, that many of the groups I have been involved in, sooner or later, get around to changing the dates of the feasts based on their special interpretation of some scripture, life event, or cloud / tree combination they saw one night." I feel like that's how my story starts out too... hopefully the evidence will be there to back this up.)
The first thing to discuss is the simple count of Exodus. We began discussing this before. Passover is the 14th day of the first month. First fruits is 3 days later.
Exo 19:1 In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.
SK provided some insight as to how we should count this:
"The Hebrew counting system was inclusive. So, " In the third month of the going out of the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt, in this day they have come into the wilderness of Sinai," would start with the month they left:
month 1 - about 13 days remaining
month 2 - 30 days
month 3 - 17 more days."
If we go off of this count, which sounds great to me, we get to 60 days. But we all know the law wasn't given on the first day. They came to the wilderness of Sinai on this day. This was not the day of Pentecost. When did Pentecost occur? I would say A LONG time later. I won't post every verse here, because you can read the story for yourself. We're looking at Exodus 19-32. Here's the gist of it:
There are 3 days and a LOUD TRUMPET on the 3rd day. Moses goes up and down the mountain twice. He gets the law. He tells it to the people. They promise to be obedient and they all make sacrifices. This time, Moses wrote this law in his own hand (Ex 24:4). Moses threw blood on the people as a sign of the covenant. Was this Pentecost? When the law was written in Moses' hand? Or was Pentecost when the stone tablets were written... the day Moses discovered the golden calf and the Levites killed 3000? Because when did that happen? FORTY SEVEN days LATER! Exodus 24:16-18: "On the seventh day he called to Moses... and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights."
So... we have 60 days from the day of the Exodus (First Fruits), 3 days until the law is written in Moses' hand, and then 47 days until it is written in God's hand and the 3000 are slain, correlating with the 3000 saved at the Acts Pentecost. So... 110 days. Way more than 50.
Here are the holes I need help with:
SK just threw out some numbers off the cuff (correct me if I'm wrong) to give an example of how Hebrew months are counted. We don't know for sure there were exactly 60 days until they got to the mountain. Moving forward, we would need to count the minimum number of days possible to meet the requirement of arriving at Sinai on the third new moon. I would say it's 43/44 days in the event that the new moon was the day they left Egypt. (I wonder if it's in scripture anywhere?) We can discuss.
What day was the actual Pentecost?
So much more to come including so much understanding from my dream (and how the verse therein relates to Pentecost) and other verses from both the Old and New Testaments. Whether this info pertains to the 12/31 date or not, we need to look at the very real possibility that, to count Pentecost, we need to count 7 sabbaths and then number 50 days.
EDITED: I originally added wrong! I got all giddy with excitement when my foggy brain added the numbers up initially and got to 100. And I went with it without checking. That was clearly wrong and I wanted to correct it for those reading the first time.
Why do I think this matters? Because at best this has been concealed from us, and at worst we have been deceived. As I have looked into this, I see overwhelming evidence that we should have been counting it differently all this time. And if that is the case, it has to matter. Whether it is for the 12/31 proposition at hand or something else entirely, any time there is something in scripture that has been completely, entirely misinterpreted needs to come to the light.
Since I don't have every piece of "evidence" in publishable format, I will plan to follow the format of @silentknight 's Restoration Thread, posting a little at a time.
Unfortunately I need to give a little background before I get to the heart of the matter, and unfortunately it will be long. This regards a very powerful dream I had on 10/22 and a crazy wrong theory I had that the church would collectively be called to be the 2 witnesses. I thought that the Sunday of the Jupiter/Venus conjunction would be a second sort of Pentecost where we would be anointed with a double portion of the Spirit and called to this task. Some of you may remember me throwing that idea out there... I have not looked back to see whom responded, but you were all very kind. Thank you.
So... I had this theory and won't go into what scripture Satan twisted to get me to that point, but I was begging God for confirmation that this was indeed what He would call us to. I begged Him to give me a dream to either confirm or deny this theory. And that very night, I had the most powerful dream I've ever had. I have had 3 other powerful dreams like this, one of them being a rapture dream and one of them being God telling me what to name my son who would die shortly after his birth at 37 weeks. "His name is John". (John means God is Gracious! A truth I still cling to.) But this dream in reference was by far the most intense.
In the dream, a voice said, "Keep your eye on the gold 2 that is about to fall from the sky." (It was the same voice that told me to name my son John.) After that, a bunch of gold confetti fell out of the sky along with a piece of cardboard cut in the shape of a number 2. It was painted with gold spray paint and had a bunch of ugly plastic rhinestones glued all over it. It looked like a child's art project. Not at all as beautiful as the gold foil confetti. All of the confetti fell on a round table, but the 2 fell by itself in the corner with one tiny piece of confetti that I understood to be the messenger about the 2. As the 2 fell into the corner, the voice said, "Unless a seed dies, it cannot bear fruit." The song "Even So Come" was playing in the background.
Y'all. I was SURE this meant that we were to be the witnesses. The number 2. We would die but bear fruit. The last trump in Revelation (I wish I would have known at the time about God's trumpet vs the angel's trumpet!). The last trump happens right after God tells the witnesses to "Come up here!". We would be the "daily sacrifice" that the abomination removed. It all fit in my head. Satan spun up a heck of a lie and I fell for it. But, at the same time that I was so sure, I WASN'T sure. I didn't have peace. I was sick to my stomach and didn't eat or sleep for days. "Surely this can't be from the Lord. This isn't what things from the Lord feel like." But the dream seemed so clear, and it was given after I asked God for confirmation. So... what to do? Answer: sign up for the discussion forum (with the name Witness1 to show God that I would obey if He made me
) and throw out my idea. It was quickly shut down (thank you!), and the Jupiter/Venus conjunction came and went without the Spirit pouring out in double measure. Whew. I'm off the hook about being the witnesses. (Side note... I'm feeling called to pray for those witnesses because wow they have a hard job!) So what the heck did that dream mean?Well, dennislwatson comes along with a crazy theory that this verse in Leviticus should be read differently that we usually read it. I promptly wrote a long rebuke about not straying from a proper interpretation of scripture, which I later deleted after seeing a tiny shred of evidence from the Bullinger Lexicon that it MIGHT be ok to interpret it that way. And then the Lord began speaking. "You're the little piece of confetti by the 2. You need to be the messenger." So... I've looked at this. I have tried to be a mediator of sorts when the discussion turned sour. I've studied scripture. And you know what I found? A LOT of evidence that we have been wrong about the day of Pentecost.
(@silentknight I just read back through our old conversation and found this gem: "But the point is, that many of the groups I have been involved in, sooner or later, get around to changing the dates of the feasts based on their special interpretation of some scripture, life event, or cloud / tree combination they saw one night." I feel like that's how my story starts out too... hopefully the evidence will be there to back this up.)
The first thing to discuss is the simple count of Exodus. We began discussing this before. Passover is the 14th day of the first month. First fruits is 3 days later.
Exo 19:1 In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.
SK provided some insight as to how we should count this:
"The Hebrew counting system was inclusive. So, " In the third month of the going out of the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt, in this day they have come into the wilderness of Sinai," would start with the month they left:
month 1 - about 13 days remaining
month 2 - 30 days
month 3 - 17 more days."
If we go off of this count, which sounds great to me, we get to 60 days. But we all know the law wasn't given on the first day. They came to the wilderness of Sinai on this day. This was not the day of Pentecost. When did Pentecost occur? I would say A LONG time later. I won't post every verse here, because you can read the story for yourself. We're looking at Exodus 19-32. Here's the gist of it:
There are 3 days and a LOUD TRUMPET on the 3rd day. Moses goes up and down the mountain twice. He gets the law. He tells it to the people. They promise to be obedient and they all make sacrifices. This time, Moses wrote this law in his own hand (Ex 24:4). Moses threw blood on the people as a sign of the covenant. Was this Pentecost? When the law was written in Moses' hand? Or was Pentecost when the stone tablets were written... the day Moses discovered the golden calf and the Levites killed 3000? Because when did that happen? FORTY SEVEN days LATER! Exodus 24:16-18: "On the seventh day he called to Moses... and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights."
So... we have 60 days from the day of the Exodus (First Fruits), 3 days until the law is written in Moses' hand, and then 47 days until it is written in God's hand and the 3000 are slain, correlating with the 3000 saved at the Acts Pentecost. So... 110 days. Way more than 50.
Here are the holes I need help with:
SK just threw out some numbers off the cuff (correct me if I'm wrong) to give an example of how Hebrew months are counted. We don't know for sure there were exactly 60 days until they got to the mountain. Moving forward, we would need to count the minimum number of days possible to meet the requirement of arriving at Sinai on the third new moon. I would say it's 43/44 days in the event that the new moon was the day they left Egypt. (I wonder if it's in scripture anywhere?) We can discuss.
What day was the actual Pentecost?
So much more to come including so much understanding from my dream (and how the verse therein relates to Pentecost) and other verses from both the Old and New Testaments. Whether this info pertains to the 12/31 date or not, we need to look at the very real possibility that, to count Pentecost, we need to count 7 sabbaths and then number 50 days.
EDITED: I originally added wrong! I got all giddy with excitement when my foggy brain added the numbers up initially and got to 100. And I went with it without checking. That was clearly wrong and I wanted to correct it for those reading the first time.
. This would likely demonstrate that they arrived earlier on the third month. As @sesquipadalion showed us last time, some versions say the first day of the month. So we have some play in the dates. Same with the month 1 dates. 
)