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"The Month of the Abib"
How to know when to start God's year.
“God’s Calendar” – what calendar ?
Many Christians who know about the 7th day Sabbath and God’s Holy Days listed in Leviticus 23 are afraid of examining this subject, because it seems too complicated and difficult for the layman to understand. It isn’t!
Once you know that the Hebrew calendar used by the Jews today is not the one used by Jesus Christ, the early church or the Jews of those days, and you know that a child can work it out, you have no excuse for keeping the wrong days!
Jesus Christ died on Abib 14, Passover Day on the calendar used at that time. How was that day determined?
1. Towards the end of the 12th month of the year the priests went out to examine the barley growing around Jerusalem. This ancient kind of two row barley is not the highly bred 6 row barley grown in crops in Israel today. Today, it mainly grows as a weed everywhere in Israel, on the walls of Jerusalem and the graveyards of the Mount of Olives, but also amongst other crops in cultivated soil. If the priests found that this 2 row barley would be ready to harvest in 2-3 weeks, i.e. during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they declared that the next month would be the new year (because they had to wave the first sheaf of the harvest during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Leviticus 23:10 “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest”).
2. If the barley would not be “abib” by then, they intercalated i.e. they added a 13th month that year and would start the new year at its end. This first month would be called the month of “the Abib”.
3. So, today we do the same, examining the two row wild barley growing as a weed on fertile ground, mostly in fields bearing other crops e.g. tomatoes, wheat. We ignore barley growing by the metalled roads, in stony places or canyons, which is often advanced but no indication of the barley harvest as it would take place in ancient Israel. Nor do we look at irrigated 6 row barley crops for the same reason. We look to see if the barley harvest could start in the next month. If it can, then that month is the month of the Abib (or Aviv) – the first-ripe barley. If not, then the new year must start one month later – just as at the time of Christ.
4. Either way that first month of the year will start with the sighting of the first visible crescent of the new moon, exactly as at the time of Christ, when the High Priest required two reliable and accurate witnesses of that event. Today, many keen new moon watchers view the sky for this sighting in Israel, because the Jews plan to replace the Hebrew calendar, which is calculated for hundreds of years in advance, with the observed new moon calendar, just as soon as they can agree on a Sanhedrin.
This will bring them into line with Leviticus 23:4 (“These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons”), rather than proclaiming the appointed times by inaccurate calculation plus various postponements, added over the hundreds of years after Christ died by the Jews for their own convenience.
It is just so simple ! Every year experienced Church of God representatives from several groups search Israel for the aviv and publish the results on this and other web sites. Beware of false reports by others who might have ulterior motives to be different from the orthodox Jews, or who don’t understand the development of barley, or confuse it with “tares” that look like barley, or who find ripe barley in small micro climates well ahead of any possible barley harvest, which generally starts in the South of Israel and progresses to the North.
We have amongst our searchers those who have been keeping God’s Holy Days based upon this method for over 20 years, who live in Israel and watch the barley as it develops. No other searchers, even amongst Jews, have so much experience. Our searchers always include one or more ordained COG ministers, as well as COG members, all determined to keep the very Holy Days Jesus Christ kept as our example. 1 Peter 2:21: “ For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.”