Appendix 1

No one who has not been initiated into the ways of God could possibly arrive at a true computation of time by adding together the years of Scripture. For one thing, he would never know from what point of time in history he could measure back to the Creation. Too many have tried by various methods over the centuries, but it has been like attempting to unlock the door of a safe with numberless keys - none will work, except the one specially cut to fit the lock.

The key which, it was revealed, would actually turn in the lock and open up the storehouse of knowledge to do with time in the Bible was what we call the civil lunar year, or calendar lunar year, of 354 days.

Every lunar year is 354 days long, being composed of twelve 'moons', for a single lunation has been found to be, in Mean Time, 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.8 seconds. As the calendar month must be either 29 or 30 days, the Divine order was found from the Scriptures as follows: the first month of the year was always of 30 days, and the second of 29 days (that is, all 'odd' months contain 30 and all 'even' months 29 days). This order never varies.

Prior to the Exodus, that is, between 4075 BC and 1639 BC, time in the Bible was found to be reckoned in a succession of 354-day years, God having designed that these should 'fit' the age of the moon at given times, such as at the Flood of Noah and at the Exodus, but run their course between the occasions dated in Scripture independently of a true (astronomical) lunar calendar.

Every date in the Bible is, of course, a lunar one, for the Hebrew word for 'month' (chodesh) literally means 'new moon'; and twelve lunations -that is, the astronomical lunar year - amount to 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes and 33.6 seconds, as stated in our Chapter 22.

This odd excess of hours and minutes would apparently make the keeping of a perfect calendar a matter of extreme difficulty; that is, with man, as the Jews discovered when their present calendar came into being during their dispersion. With God, however, everything is simple, provided His people walk in dependence upon Him!

After the Exodus, the Jews found they had to keep a 'luni-solar' calendar. This meant that while each single year was of 354 days, it was necessary to insert 'intercalary' months or lunations between, generally, the third, sixth and eighth years, in order to keep their Passovers and Feasts of Firstfruits in the Spring season. In order to know when to commence their new years after an Intercalation, they simply had to 'see' the new moon. Their first month was called 'Abib', or month of 'green-ears' (Exodus 13: 4-10). They had to wait for their barley harvest.

But in the Bible there is no mention of any 'thirteenth' months, nor is there any provision for them, for God saw only twelve months in the year and ignored all intercalation.

After the Apostolic era and until the end of 'the times of the Gentiles' - while the Jews have been in dispersion - God again secretly reckoned a succession of 354-day years, although Gentile believers have used the Roman solar calendar, and there is evidence in the New Testament that solar anniversaries of the Resurrection and Pentecost were kept in apostolic times.

On certain occasions God has marked the close of the same era, measured first in civil lunar years, and later in true lunar years. An instance of this was seen in the 1,960 civil lunar years which ended on June 12th 1933, with the World Economic Conference. In 1935, however, the close of 1,960 true lunar years was marked by the terrible Quetta earthquake on May 31st. (Quetta was then on British territory - British Baluchistan. It is now in Pakistan).

Similarly, the full total of 6,198 civil lunar years and 21 days from Creation to June 11th-12th 1933, when given their true lunar expression, were found to have ended on September 3rd 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War. This all indicates that God has kept time in the Bible in a measure of secrecy, and not as man has recorded it (except between the Exodus and the Cross, when the Jews kept their calendar in luni-solar time, very much as they do today). No doubt the object of this secrecy was so that 'the Father' should keep 'the times' and 'the seasons ... in His own power' (Acts 1:7) until such time as it suited His purpose to reveal them. After all, has man ever been able to understand 'the deep things of God' unaided with his own mind?

See Chapter 12

The existence of a hidden series of 354-day years was disclosed during research. These began on the day following the first Sabbath of Genesis. They appear only infrequently on the surface of the Bible's chronology - the most notable occasion being the '430 years' to the day of the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12: 40-41). In this series the Passover was the 14th day of the 7th month of the 2,514th year. This was the 7th month which the Lord instructed Moses was to become 'the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you' (Exodus 12: 2). This series was named the 'Years of the Messiah' as they ran their course without a break, and in their recording have thrown light on many Old Testament events and incidents in the Gospels.

Leviticus 25 reveals that the hidden measuring rod of the Almighty is the cycle of 49 years which ushers in the 'fiftieth year', or year of Jubilee. It is hidden in the sense that it ceases to record where the hand of God is stretched out in judgement, as during the seven servitudes recorded in the books of Judges and I Samuel, and during the seventy years of the Babylonian Captivity.

After the Exodus, Israel was instructed to proclaim the year of Jubilee at the end of 48 years and 6 months, that is, on the Day of Atonement in the 7th month of the 49th year. This was at the close of 48 x 12 months and 6 months, or 582 months in all. To these have to be added the necessary 18 intercalary months, which make a total of 600 lunations.

So when 'the fiftieth year' was being 'hallowed' with rejoicing throughout Israel, halfway through their 49th year (which had to be kept on the soli-lunar basis), God had already seen 50 lunar years completed.

Israel, however, could never look upon their 'fiftieth' year as being an addition to time - which they reckoned as a succession of 49-year cycles; each year beginning with the Passover. Their 'year of Jubilee' simply ran from the Autumn of their 49th year through to the beginning of the following Autumn in the middle of the first of their next series of 49 years. God alone was able to reckon each period as being 50 years (see Chart 5).

We shall have more to say about the miraculous design of the Jubilee when we see why, to God, a year in the Chronology of Redemption is always 354 days, no more and no less.

With God everything has been wrought according to a pattern, and so we naturally look for the basic pattern upon which time is framed.

Clearly the Exodus Passover saw the beginning of the national history of Israel, and we have traced the 1,500 years of Redemption through to the Crucifixion in AD 33, after which the further 2,000 Redemption years lead up to 'the consummation of the age' in our own day. So we can measure a simple design of 3,500 years.

But prior to the Exodus we find Moses keeping sheep in 'the backside of the desert'(Exodus 3:1), and doing so over the space of 40 years (see Acts 7: 23, 30). So the pattern is a complete 3,540 years, beginning with those lost 40 years of Moses' life spent keeping sheep. God takes a tenth of the period, with the 40 years analogous to the 4 days the Passover lambs were kept waiting for death before they were sacrificed at the Exodus. We know that God also saw those 4 days - each 'day ... as a thousand years'(2Peter 3:8) - as the time reaching back from the Crucifixion to the Fall of Adam when 'sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men' (Romans 5:12).

It has been necessary to establish that the pattern of the Bible year is 354 days before we come to examine time in Leviticus 25 - where God clearly has in view the whole 6,000 years and the Millennium (total 7,000 years) in every 7 years that passes.

Let us now measure the days leading up to the opening of 'the Day of Atonement' at the close of the ninth day of the seventh month in the 49th year, seeing that 'the trumpet of Jubilee' is 'to sound on the tenth of the seventh month' (Leviticus 25:9).

The 48 years (of 354 days each) contain 16,992 days

and the six months and nine days 186 days

16,992 days + 186 days = 17,178 days

Now it is at this point that God requires 'the fiftieth year' to be proclaimed (as a year of Jubilee), when to man only a bare forty-eight and a half years have reached their close. What is the explanation, and why has the hour been reached when the Most High God can rightly celebrate the opening of a 'fiftieth year'?

We believe the explanation is simple, once we accustom our minds to think as God thinks, and to see each 7-year period as 7 x 350 days. But, as these are each a miniature of the 7,000 years, He must also see a break of one 4 days in the pattern, to express the blotting out of the 4,000 years from Adam to the Cross. So each 7-year period in this secret reckoning is 7 x 350 days (or 2,450 days) with a gap of 4 days, making 2,454 days in actual time. These 7 x 2,454 days will be found to be 17,178 days - the exact equivalent of the forty-eight 354-day years, six months and nine days, as shown above!

Praise God! 'His way is perfect' (Psalm 18:30), and in these days we need to know His ways when, in increasing measure, His judgments are already in the earth.

From the very evening of the great hidden Day of Atonement (April 27th) in AD 33 can be measured exactly 40 times 17,178 days or, as shown above, 40 Jubilee periods containing God's secret reckoning of 49 years of 350 days. This total of 687,120 days is the shortest expression of the fourfold period of 'seventy times seven' (or 1,960) Years Of Forgiveness which we have shown from the Scriptures in God's 'way' of controlling history in relation to a sinful world. This measurement ends with the evening of August 3rd 1914, and from that moment peace departed from the earth as the First World War commenced.

It must also be remembered that all time from Creation to the end of the 6,000 years of man , on June 12th 1933 (when shown in years of 354 days) totals 6,198 years and 21 days, as already mentioned. But, when every 354-day year has been extended to its true lunar measurement of 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes and 33.6 seconds, the whole period reaches to the opening of the Second World War on September 3rd 1939.

People who have never studied the calendar and time-measurement into the past often make statements about the length of the year - both solar and lunar - having varied over the ages. Invariably these people also think of time in terms of millions rather than thousands of years!

However, in Psalm 89:37, God said that 'the moon' was 'established for ever' as 'a faithful witness in heaven' and that we have amply proved from the Scriptures to the glory and praise of God. When we come to the solar year, we have the strongest evidence that this has remained constant over the last 6,000 years - apart from what is called 'the precession of the equinoxes', an acceleration which has changed the length of the year from around 365 day, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds at the time of the Creation, to its present length of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. We have found the mean length of 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes is sufficient for all practical purposes.

We must, however, explain a discrepancy in our present Gregorian Calendar, which any calendar expert will be able to confirm.

We found that, in measuring 1,900 years back from AD 1933 to AD 33, the succession of weekdays showed that our calendar was out by two days. We soon discovered that Pope Gregory in 1582, when adjusting the inexact Julian calendar (based on exactly 365 and a quarter days) only dropped ten days instead of twelve. When Great Britain adopted this 'New Style' calendar in 1752, we accordingly only dropped eleven days from the month of September when, actually, thirteen would have been the correct figure. The Nautical Almanac Office has confirmed that, in comparison with the beginning of the Christian era, our calendar is in error by two days, as the vernal equinox in Caesar's time was March 23rd, while now it is March 21st.

The Divine object in allowing that error clearly seems to have been so that our present calendar would show time as though the two days of the death of Christ had been ignored, because God Himself had not reckoned them in the calendar of His Son.