The legalistic malarkey that some in Armstrongism go to in order to please their god gets worse every day.
Prophet, revelator and the All Knowing One, regarding scripture, James Malm, has a silly little screed up today about 28 day months and the sighting of the new moons. Apparently if a cloud is in your way the moon is actually not visible - even though it is above the cloud layer. What if a person is flying in a plane and sees the exact same moon over the same location. Who is right?
The above picture is one that Malm used on his blog and was taken by an Armstrongite who sits outside for hours on end looking for new moons and also traipses through fields of barley and wheat looking for matured kernels.
Why was last month only 28 days?
The cycle of the moon is approximately 29 1/2 days, and because no day begins in its middle and we use full days beginning at sunset, this means that no month can exceed 30 days in length, This also means that the cycle of the moon will not be less than 29 days.
Therefore we look for the first visible light of the new moon at the end of the 28th day, and if it is seen at the end of the 29th day, a new biblical month begins; however if the light of the moon is not seen, then the end of the 30th day begins the new month regardless of whether any light was seen, simply because the moon’s cycle is less than 30 days.
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Recently this year, there was a 30 day month, followed by what was expected to be an easily visible new moon on the 29th day, which was to be followed by another 29 day month.
However, while astronomically the moon would have been visible, making a 29 day month; it was obscured by heavy cloud cover and a dust storm. Therefore the new moon was delayed one day to fulfill 30 days and then became the new moon by default through circumstance, even though it was astronomically a 29 day month.
13 comments:
This was explained in the Pink Floyd song Obscured by clouds.
LOLLL, this guy is fuuuuuuny. Yes, I saw that same moon that really didn't count therefore wasn't there.
And for the blind, then, there are no months.
He publishes his screeds through his computer, but it never occurs to him that there are programs for precisely calculating the new moons???
Gee, Mr. Science!
BB
Oh, and by the way, thank you Mr. Malm! By extending the principles you have taught us, I have come to realize that if I use a condom (analogous to your "clouds"), I have not sinned.
BB
Butt, what if someone moons from a airplane???
Calendar issues are legion and are like trying to calculate "pi" to its resolution.
Where are you suppose to spot the new moon?... In Jerusalem, your own house, your own city? It can be a difference of as much as a day on the round earth.
What if the guys in the space station reported it?
If you live in Australia, then how do you calculate the barley? The growing season is opposite of the Northern Hemisphere. Do you use Jerusalem again? What about the times when there was not modern communication?
The answer lies in the fact that the Holy Days are "convocations", in other words "get togethers", i.e. social events for likeminded believers. Whatever way your faith community decides to "declare it" should be the way you keep it. The exact timing is not necessary, and an "exact" method does not exist from the pages of the Bible anyway, and many exceptions and problems exist in ALL calendars.
Interesting to note that in the Bible, one of the Kings of Israel EXTENDED the FOT several days and God was good with it! ...
"So all the work that King Solomon had done for the house of the Lord was finished...Therefore all the men of Israel assembled with King Solomon at the Feast in the Month of Ethanim [Tishri], which is the seventh Month...At that time Solomon held a Feast and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of Egypt, before the Lord our God, seven Days and seven more Days - fourteen Days." (1King 7:51, 8:2,65)
If you miss the Passover, there was a proviso to just do it again the next month. God was good with that too.
Those who are going down the endless black hole of calendar arguments are legalists and bean counters. Obeying God is important, but calendar issues are in the category of "straining the gnat, but swallowing the camel".
Convocations are about enjoying each other, enjoying God, and creating relationship. The timing is irrelevant , we are instructed "in their season". As close as can be figured is good enough.
Guys like Malm would use an egg timer during sex!
Determining when a new month starts, at least to Malm and his followers, seems to bare upon one’s salvation. If so, wouldn’t the determination and observance of the real Sabbath Day be even more important? That all depends on this question:
Where is the Sabbath-determining International Dateline? In the Pacific, or the Atlantic?
If the Sabbath was established at Creation, to be observed in the Garden of Eden, weren’t all of Adam’s offspring required to follow it, without error? Since none of the offspring could arbitrarily skip a Sabbath, or jump ahead a day or two to a new one, the 7-day Sabbath sequence had to follow Adam’s descendants (or later, those who were saved on Noah’s Ark). They all had to observe the Sabbaths where ever they trekked and settled, without interruption.
Those that went to the west of the Holy Land had the Sabbath start later, as the sun sets later in the west. Those that settled to the east had the Sabbaths start earlier, as the sets earlier the farther east one traverses.
Ok, then, when did the ancient Sabbath begin in the Western Hemisphere, in, say, North America? There is no doubt humans settled the Western Hemisphere long before Europeans, so does it not stand to scrutinizing reason that Native Americans had to observe the Sabbath BEFORE anyone in the Holy Land? The weekly Sabbaths had been with them since they trekked, over centuries, from that place of human origin.
Consequently, it’s rather obvious that from God’s standpoint, the International Dateline should be somewhere in the Atlantic. The Sabbath starts in the eastern-most reaches of North America, not in the Pacific.
If the Sabbath is sacred from the beginning, and unchangeable, and determined when the sun sets on the sixth day (counted continuously from Creation), and the first humans lived in the Garden of Eden, or modern humans descended from those who walked off the Ark, the Sabbath dateline must be in the Atlantic, given the thousands of years of people living in the Western Hemisphere, getting there from Eastern Hemisphere of origin.
Columbus and the Vikings found North and South America already fully occupied. Was Columbus some sort of Holy Man, bringing the right day of Sabbath observance for the first time to North America? Or, should he and Armstrong and everyone else understand that a strict sequential observance (should that be one’s preference) recognize the day-earlier Sabbath in force for Native Americans?
Fact is, the Armstrongists in the Western Hemisphere celebrate the weekly Sabbaths a day late. They follow Columbus (a Catholic), or the Vikings (Pagans), utterly disregarding when Native Americans and all of their ancestors would have been keeping it — had they known.
For legalists like Malm, every minuuuute, tiny, (you would think) insignificant detail is fraught with danger and the potential to piss god off.
Malm's god is an EXTREMELY precise god. He has given instructions, and if you don't read those instructions LITERALLY, down to the LETTER, yes, every jot and tittle, (nothing is figurative, except when it is, like building a booth for FOT—renting a hotel room is the same thing, you know—and nevermind about the "citron" fruit and the "bows of goodly branches" you're supposed to "wave"—that crap is just for the Jews...), now where was I—oh yes!—EVERYTHING IS LITERAL and must be interpreted with the UTMOST PRECISION or else god will be PISSED!!!
Anyway, this god that James Malm imagines, is not only an EXTREMELY precise god, he's also a WEATHER god (from the days when EL was the Canaanite storm god) who Malm says "controls the weather." On top of that, he's also a "trickster" god, who likes to mess with you, and one of the ways he likes to mess with you is by using the weather to screw with your calendar observations!
But because Malm's god is such a stickler for detail, there is a certain "pattern" of days that he has ordained as "holy" days, which fall on specific days of specific months, and on which you're supposed to have one of these "convocations" and do no servile work, nor allow anyone else around to do any servile work if you can force them not to (god is watching and if you fail to force others around you not to work that you could have forced them not to do, he'll be pissed just as if you did it, so when you're paying to rent a hotel room on a "holy day" during the FOT, be sure to put the placard out that says NO MAID SERVICE before you go down and dine out for breakfast or else god will NEVER EFFING FORGIVE YOU, like ever), now where was I—oh yes!—there is a particular "pattern" of days that are "holy" ones which fall on specific days of specific months, AND, if you don't "observe" the first day of the month, thus allowing the trickster weather god to screw with your calendar, (like what happens if you calculate conjunctions instead) THEN you will FAIL to "discover" the "holy" ordained "pattern" of "holy" days, and will keep these "holy" days on THE WRONG DAYS, thus making the UNFORGIVABLE mistake of keeping a day that is not "holy" as though it were (must be idolatry, I'm sure) and PROFANING a day that is "holy" because your lazy, evil, non-literal "interpretation" of Malm's god's "holy" instructions WERE IGNORED!
Which only goes prove to Malm's god what a faithless, lazy, disobedient, deadbeat, good-for-nothing, piece of $#*% you are for not being careful enough to be perfect. And James Malm's god has sent James Malm (surprise!) to tell you this, 354 days a year (a 12-month lunar year is 11 days short), so that your joy may be complete in the knowledge that there is no conceivable way the average person could ever be good enough not to go straight to the lake of fire without passing GO or collecting $200.
Anyone up to go cherrypicking? I know an orchard where they're always ripe.
As for the New Moon -- it was not mentioned until Kings, and at that, it was a Governmental Banquet. Keeping it (except for the Seventh Month) was never mentioned in the Books of the Law anywhere as a commanded observance.
Note that perhaps the Sabbath can be traced back to Creation, but the Feasts were not and not even given with the Ten Commandments.
Here's a test for you: If you really believe that the Old Covenant is still in effect, then as a farmer keep the Land Sabbath. When you get to the Sixth year, did you really get double so you can take the Seventh year off? It hasn't worked in the WCG so far.
What gives?
Is God even necessarily pleased with Feast observance?
If He were, why did He say He hated their Feasts? And more to the point, don't you think the calendar would be really clear so we all could be on the same page with it.
Maybe God doesn't really want us to keep the Feasts -- and especially the Feast of Tabernacles with all those British Israelism rubbish Doomsday sermons that make the ministers clearly false prophets.
Yes, with the non-functional land sabbath, either that was a year set for all of Israel that has since been lost, or it was fulfilled with the rest of the O.C. and not in effect today. In WCG, I believe farmers kept it as a kind of anniversary from their baptism, which seems either self-centered, or Armstrongism-centered, as opposed to being part of a covenant between God, and various tribes of a nation. It might be interesting to know today's Jewish perspective of the land sabbath, although I have yet to meet a Jewish farmer.
HWA also did not teach the jubilee year. Jubilee would seem to diminish some of the adverse natural effects inherent in the long wave economic cycles which are part of all free market economies. But, again, it would only work if practiced nationally, and not as an anniversary of baptism.
BB
Black Ops Mikey said...
"Is God even necessarily pleased with Feast observance? If He were, why did He say He hated their Feasts?"
God never said that He hated His own feasts, which he commanded for all Israel to observe in Leviticus 23:1-44. The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'These are my appointed feasts, the appointed feasts of the LORD, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies'” (Leviticus 23:1-2, NIV). In fact, in New Testament times, Jesus, and His parents, and His disciples, observed these feasts.
Rather, God hated the sin of Jeroboam, who instituted a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month--a month of his own choosing--for the northern kingdom of Israel to observe by worshipping golden calves at Dan and Bethel rather than going to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah to observe God's feasts such as the Feast of Tabernacles on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. See I Kings 12:26-33.
"This is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: 'Seek me and live; do not seek Bethel...'" (Amos 5:4-5, NIV).
"I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies" (Amos 5:21, NIV).
Now Mikey, did you never properly understand the Bible, or is your "black ops" specialty the spreading of disinformation?
It would be interesting to know whether 'Anon at 9:48 PM' keeps the Feast of Booths as it was commanded to be kept in the Bible, or whether he keeps it as the bastard made up version that was commanded to be kept by Herbie.
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