God has in general terms revealed His plan for mankind through the annual observances that God instituted at the time of Moses. This is something God’s Church has understood for a long time. Now all of the annual observances require the existence of a calendar, so that these observances can be repeated every year in a predictable pattern.

We get our word "calendar" from the Latin language. In ancient Rome the "kalendarium" was "the account book" kept by money lenders. And the word "kalendae" referred to "the first day of every month", which was the day when payments on loans became due. And so "a calendar" is literally "a method for establishing the first day for every month in the year".

Such a method for establishing the first day of every month was significant in Rome, because with the calendar of Julius Caesar the Romans had rejected the method that had been accepted and practiced by societies since antiquity. In that earlier method the first day of every month had always been established by the new moons. Every new moon day had always ipso facto been the first day of a new month.

The reason why the Julian calendar abandoned all ties with the new moons was because the Romans recognized that the lunar cycles they could observe were not really in harmony with the solar cycles. And since it is the solar cycles that determine the annual cycle and when the four seasons start, therefore the Julian calendar attempted to tie itself to the annual solar cycle, rather than being tied to the lunar cycles. (The Gregorian calendar later corrected an error in the Julian calendar.)

Now the vision Daniel saw in Daniel 7 refers to the Roman Empire in Daniel 7:23. Two verses later, in Daniel 7:25, we are told: "And he shall ... think to change times and laws, and they shall be given into his hand until ...". This prophetic statement, made about 500 years before the time of Julius Caesar, refers to Rome imposing its calendar on the world until Jesus Christ returns. And that has indeed happened. The Julian calendar (and its later upgrade, the Gregorian Calendar) is one of the early changes introduced by "the fourth beast". The calendar was "given into his hand", and the Roman calendar is today the dominant calendar in the world.

As already mentioned, the Latin word "calendae" referred to "the first day of every month". Amongst the Israelites in Old Testament times that function was fulfilled by the Hebrew word "chodesh", which refers to the new moon day. And in practical terms "chodesh" is assuredly the Hebrew equivalent of the Latin-derived word "calendar", because for the Israelites "chodesh" was the key to establishing the first day of every month in the year. "Calendar" in English and "chodesh" in Hebrew both refer to "the method" used to establish the first day for every month in the year.

The seeming distinction between "chodesh" and "calendar" is only due to the fact that the Julian calendar rejected all ties to the new moons. But in our modern world the word "calendar" serves the exact same purpose that the word "chodesh" served in Old Testament times, namely to establish the first day for every month in the year. There is nothing special or difficult to understand about the word "calendar" and its Hebrew equivalent "chodesh".

So if you want to look for any "calendar references" in the Old Testament, then, amongst other things, you need to search for the Hebrew word "chodesh". (Hint: consider taking a peek at Isaiah 1:14.) It is not the meaning of the word "chodesh" that identifies it with "calendar" (because the Romans rejected the lunar cycles); it is the function that "chodesh" fulfilled in Israelite society that very firmly ties it to the meaning of the word "calendar" in our modern world, which word has come to us from the Roman world. Every "calendar" fulfills a function, and in Israel the word "chodesh" fulfilled that specific function.

In plain language: when a Roman said "tomorrow is the first day of the new month", the Israelite would have said "tomorrow is the new moon day". Same meaning in different cultures.

The reason "the calendar" for most nations in antiquity had been based on new moons (i.e. on "chodesh") was because new moons, not today but in antiquity, presented a very reliable way for recording the passage of solar years. Anciently there was no discrepancy between a solar year and 12 lunar months. Back in Genesis 1 God established these two cycles in complete harmony, with twelve lunar cycles being exactly equal to one solar cycle. And all lunar cycles were of equal length. That’s how God established it in Genesis 1. And it was all "very good", something that cannot possibly be said for the very flawed cycles that exist today. Today’s cycles are not good at all! They just happen to be all we’ve got.

People who believe that God in Genesis 1 established our current corrupt solar and lunar cycles don’t really believe in an all-powerful God. They believe in a God who couldn’t possibly have established perfect 30-day and 360-day cycles, a God who could do no better than establish 29.5-day and 365.25-day cycles (rounded off). The God they believe in could only wishfully refer to such perfect cycles in the prophecies He inspired to be recorded, but He couldn’t actually establish such perfect cycles. Understand that attributing our current lousy 29.5-day and 365.25-day cycles to something God would call "very good" is an insult to the Great Creator God!

When God in Genesis 1 repaired the damage to the earth caused by Satan’s rebellion, then God also established lunar cycles of exactly 30 days, with a solar cycle of exactly 360 days. This is clear from the account of the flood at the time of Noah. From the 17th Day of the 2nd Month of Noah’s 600th year (Genesis 7:11) until the 17th Day of the 7th Month (Genesis 8:4) were exactly 150 days (Genesis 8:3). The only way 5 lunar months are equal to exactly 150 days is when every lunar month is exactly 30 days long.

This information didn’t come from Noah. It was not written down by Noah. This information about the exact dates and the exact length of time involved was given to Moses by God, when Moses was on the mountain for 40 days. It was God who chose to have these specific dates recorded, and it was God who chose to tell us that it was a period of exactly 150 days.

God didn’t choose to specifically preserve this information so that some smart aleck would try to theorize how with our present very flawed lunar and solar cycles we could somehow have 5 consecutive months of 30 days each. With our present lunar and solar cycles it is impossible for 5 lunar months to be equal to exactly 150 days. Anyone who denies this is being dishonest.

There’s no need for mental acrobatics in vain attempts to reconcile present lunar and solar cycles with the cycles extant at the time of Noah! The cycles back then were different from the cycles we find today. And at the time of Moses the cycles were still the same as they had been at the time of Noah. And therefore at the time of Moses the cycles were also different in length from the cycles that confront us today.

Any calendar model that would have been astronomically accurate at the time of Moses would inevitably be very flawed today! That is because the data that applied to the calendar in the days of Moses is significantly different from the data that applies to our calendar today. The two sets of data are simply not compatible. In other words: if we today tried to have our calendar consist of 12 months with 30 days each, then our calendar would be very flawed indeed.

The exact time when those cycles were changed by God is not known, and it is not important in our context here. It seems likely that the cycles were changed by God at some point before the Babylonian captivity of the Kingdom of Judah. But the exact time is immaterial for the subject of this article.

So anyone who attempts to lead the present Jewish calendar back to the time of Moses, let alone earlier, is lying to you! And all Jewish scholars who study their own calendar know that it is impossible to lead their present calendar back to any B.C. dates. And no Jewish calendar scholar attempts to do so.

You cannot apply accurate current calendar data to any time earlier than around 600 B.C. ... and hope to establish accurate dates for specific days in any specific month. Such calendar calculations into distant antiquity, before 600 B.C., can only present a very general picture. You might get the year correct, and sometimes you might even get the correct month. But there is no way that you would get the actual day of the month correct for any specific event before around 600 B.C. That is because nobody knows the precise time when God altered the monthly and the yearly cycles.

Now while God is always positive, God is not a wishful thinker who lives in a pretend-world. It is no coincidence that in biblical prophecies God refers to a year as having 360 days, consisting of 12 months with 30 days each. God uses these figures in prophetic statements because they express the reality God had established in Genesis 1, not because God supposedly believes in "rounding off" numbers in any calendar references.

So labeling a 360-day year as "a prophetic year" is somewhat deceitful, because 360 days were exactly equal to a real year back in Genesis 1, and all the way down to the time of Moses, and even after the time of King David. A 360-day year was a real solar year at the time of Moses! And people who deny this are being dishonest.

Calling this "a prophetic year" is supposed to imply that there was never a time when 360 days were exactly equal to a real year, thereby also implying that God is supposedly not concerned with facts in the real world.

Now let’s look at the first part of the original first year in Genesis.

Genesis 1 records the first day of human history, which history actually started 5 days before God created human beings. Notice:

What does God mean by "the first day"?

What this means is that this was the 1st Day of the 1st Month of the 1st Year of human history! This was "the very first day" by God’s reckoning! It was God, in the person of Jesus Christ, who called this "the first day".

Whatever "days" had occurred before this "first day" (e.g. during Satan’s tenure before his rebellion) have been blotted out by God, and they are as though they had never occurred. There are no "days" in God’s reckoning before this "first day". If God would accept the existence of any "days" for this planet earth before Genesis 1:3-5, then God could not possibly call this "the first day". Can you understand this?

Genesis 1:5 tells us that God has totally erased from existence any record of "the days" that constituted Satan’s rule over this planet earth before God created Adam and Eve ... apart from some very general comments in Isaiah 14 and in Ezekiel 28, comments that do not contain any references to any specific "days" for this planet.

God starts the time record for this planet earth with Genesis 1:3-5. And any appeals to days or months before Genesis 1:3-5 would be absurd, given that the heavenly bodies had been reduced to a state of chaos before Genesis 1:3-5 (i.e. chaos caused by Satan’s rebellion).

Anyway, let’s ask: what happened on that first day?

Why, that was the day when Jesus Christ came to this planet earth for the first time. And the very first thing that Jesus Christ did was to re-establish the perfect day-night cycle, which had been corrupted by Satan’s rebellion. That restoration involved restoring perfect solar and lunar cycles. The perfect cycles were restored on Day 1. A perfect daily cycle is essential for perfect monthly and yearly cycles.

That first day was a new moon day, which would also have been a solar eclipse for the area of Palestine. A total solar eclipse is not very long. It is always shorter than 10 minutes. (Comment: Today we have between 2 and 5 eclipses per year, though most are only partial eclipses.) But because dense clouds still covered the whole earth back in Genesis 1:5, therefore a theoretical human observer standing on earth (or hovering above the water) at that time would not have seen anything, other than the light we can see on a very cloudy and very heavily overcast day, followed by total 100% darkness for the night. The sun and the moon didn’t actually become visible for some theoretical "human observer" until the fourth day.

That very first day would also have been the autumn equinox day for the Northern Hemisphere. The 1st month of the 1st year started on an equinox day, signaling the start of autumn. It was the beginning of autumn with the fruits hanging on the trees (i.e. a few days later in that first week), ready for picking. God was establishing an annual cycle in which years would start on the 1st day of autumn and end on the last day of summer. We might refer to this cycle as autumn-to-autumn reckoning. And that cycle would certainly qualify for the designation of "the perfect annual cycle".

God does things in an orderly way.

When God calls something "the first day" it means that that was the day when God started the clock running, so to speak. And most importantly, that was the day that will "forever" (i.e. until the time of the new heaven and the new earth) be identified as the day when Jesus Christ first came to this planet earth. Jesus Christ came to this planet earth for the very first time on the 1st day of autumn, Northern Hemisphere. It was also what we today call "a Sunday", the first day in the weekly cycle.

The first coming of Jesus Christ to this planet earth can never be changed away from this "first day" in Genesis 1, in the autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. That significance can never be bestowed on any other day in the annual cycle. If for some reason the starting month of the calendar needs to be changed, then the identity of the day when Jesus Christ first came to this earth will have to be adjusted, to still reflect His coming in the autumn of the year. Remember this when we later discuss the Holy Day of Trumpets.

At this point we might also note one other point.

The 1st Day of autumn (in the original cycle) represents the day when Jesus Christ did come to this planet earth. Trumpets does not necessarily refer to when Jesus Christ will come in the future, but to the day when He did come in the past! Rigidly applying Trumpets to the day when Jesus Christ will come in the future is nothing more than wishful thinking by prophecy buffs, who are desperate for finding specific dates to put into their charts. Those are the people who want to dictate to Jesus Christ the day when He is supposed to return.

Maybe Christ will return on a Day of Trumpets, and maybe He will return on a different day. Nobody knows. But let’s add one other factor into the picture. Originally Christ came on a day that was both a new moon day and the autumn equinox day. Today, with the messed up cycles we have, the autumn equinox day is almost never on a new moon day. So with our messed up cycles today Jesus Christ would have to choose to come again on either a new moon day or on an equinox day ... assuming that God the Father would want Jesus Christ’s next coming to be in some way linked to His original first coming to this earth.

So to which feature would God give priority: the 1st day of a month (i.e. a new moon day) or the autumn equinox day, which started the clock for the whole plan of salvation running? Which of these two possibilities you happen to believe is more important, is totally irrelevant. In this regard neither my opinion nor your opinion is of any importance. The only thing that counts is what God the Father decides to do in this regard. He is the One who will instruct Jesus Christ to return. But I suspect that you have never before even considered that the autumn equinox might also be in the picture, so to speak, when we wonder about the timing of Jesus Christ’s "second" coming (it will really be His third coming).

Let’s recognize that for the start of the original year both features were essential. A year must start on the 1st Day of the 1st Month. But in the original scheme of things a year also must start on the autumn equinox. From Adam down to past the time of King David those two features always occurred on the same day. But today those two features virtually never occur on the same day. Only God the Father decides which of these two features takes priority when they don’t occur on the same day. But there is also a third option, which I will discuss shortly.

So by way of an overview:

Day 1 was: a new moon day, a solar eclipse, 1st autumn equinox, a Sunday, the 1st Day of the 1st Month of the 1st Year by God’s reckoning. Jesus Christ came to this earth for the first time.

Day 6: a Friday, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, created Adam and Eve.

Day 7: a Saturday, the first Sabbath, God ceased creating on that day.

Days 6-9: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday God spent four days with Adam and Eve, teaching and instructing them.

Day 10: the 2nd Tuesday of human history, the morning when God allowed Satan into the Garden in Eden. This day had been specifically selected by God for the purpose of testing the two human beings. Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. They and Satan were driven out of the Garden on that day.

This point, that Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan on the second Tuesday of human history, is something I will explain later in this article.

Have you always thought that Satan tempted them on the Sunday after that first Sabbath, because that fits in so nicely with Sunday-morning church services in the world’s churches? Well, that’s highly unlikely to have been the case. The annual feasts and Holy Days that God established at the time of Moses will tell the story.

You don’t need to agree with my assertions about "Day 10" just yet, since so far I haven’t presented any evidence at all. But consider the information I will present in this article, and then make up your own mind as to whether what I have said is correct or not.

After those ten days human beings multiplied into thousands and in time into hundreds of millions. But in that process, as far as God’s expectations were concerned, something went terribly wrong!

God had obviously started out with a plan regarding what God was hoping to achieve with human beings. That initial plan of God was based on certain assumptions about human beings.

After 1,536 years (that’s 1.5 x 2¹⁰), and exactly 120 years before the flood, and still 20 years before Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth were born, God then said (and later told Moses to record):

So what was God saying? Jesus Christ here said: "I wish that I had not created human beings!"

Next, the Hebrew verb "machah" means: to blot out, to expunge, to obliterate. So in this statement Jesus Christ actually said: "I will expunge, obliterate and blot out man whom I have created".

Had you understood how close Jesus Christ came to blotting out all human beings? Now consider the following:

If Jesus Christ supposedly up-front at the time of creating Adam had already decided "I’m going to have to give My life for the sins of all human beings", then why would Christ 1,536 years later possibly have wished that He had never created human beings? Why, if it was supposedly a foregone conclusion that Christ would suffer for our sins, would Jesus Christ have reacted this way towards mankind’s virtually 100% evil tendencies?

I mean, the actual sacrifice Jesus Christ was going to bring for us human beings was going to be the same, whether only 100 human beings would sin, or whether 100 billion human beings would sin, right? That is, if that sacrifice was a fore-ordained conclusion. The actual number of human beings who would sin (i.e. very many or very few) has no effect on the suffering Jesus Christ would have to endure for human sins. And if Jesus Christ’s supposed pre-ordained destiny was to suffer for our sins, why was Jesus Christ shocked and surprised when ... "every imagination of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5)?

That shock for Jesus Christ was based on the realization that God’s assumed premises about the conduct and behavior of human beings had been wrong. God had simply not anticipated just how perverse and depraved and hostile towards God’s standards human nature would turn out to be in almost 100% of human beings, i.e. in excess of 99.999999% of people. That revelation was a shock to Jesus Christ. After all, what had God done to human beings to deserve this kind of response? Nothing! There was no justification of any kind for man’s universal hostility towards his Creator.

Have you ever in your life said: "I wish I hadn’t done that"? Or perhaps you said to yourself: "Why did I do that?" Okay, so why did you say that? You said that because the way things developed or turned out was something that you had not anticipated, right? And further, it usually meant that you then faced some loss or unexpected expenses or other troubles that made things difficult or uncomfortable for you. And sometimes those unexpected troubles carried enormous consequences, which affected the rest of your life, right? These are the reasons why we say: I wish I hadn’t done that. But by then it is too late, and we can’t undo the things we wish we hadn’t done.

Further, in that type of situation what do you mean when you say: I will expunge and totally blot out what I have done? Do you mean that you’ll destroy what you have done, and then do exactly the same thing again? Or are you going to change something, after you have expunged the thing you had done? If you don’t change anything from what you did before, can you really expect a different result? Not really.

Do you think that God also understands this principle, that if we want to achieve a different result, then we have to make some changes and do some things differently? Or is this principle beyond God’s comprehension? (I speak as a fool, a la 2 Corinthians 11:23.)

My point is this:

Jesus Christ’s regret at having created human beings expressed the realization that in order to carry on with the plan, Jesus Christ Himself would have to bring a sacrifice that He had really not anticipated having to bring. Jesus Christ realized that the cost for achieving the goal He and God the Father had set Themselves was going to involve a sacrifice He had not really anticipated when He first created human beings.

You think this through for yourself, and it makes no difference to me as to what conclusion you reach. But try to picture yourself in the situation of saying "I really wish I hadn’t done that". Jesus Christ’s statement "it repents Me that I have made them" tells us that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ’s life for our sins could not possibly have been a part of God’s original plan at the creation of Adam and Eve.

When Jesus Christ made that statement, He realized that He was going to have to pay a far, far higher price to achieve Their stated goal to create the Family of God, than what He (Christ) had ever anticipated 1,500+ years earlier. He made this statement because it had become obvious to God the Father and to Him that the only way to salvage the human project was for Jesus Christ to lay down His own life as a payment for all human sins. And that realization is what made Jesus Christ wish that He had not created human beings in the first place.

Look, whenever some unexpected result doesn’t cause you any problems or any inconveniences, then you take that unexpected result in your stride. You only say "I wish I hadn’t done that" when things unexpectedly turn out rather badly for you, when you had not foreseen what would happen, and when someone is going to suffer or face a significant loss.

We need to draw the correct conclusions from Jesus Christ’s extremely serious statement "I wish I hadn’t done that".

Consider also that Genesis 6:5-6 was not something that God had said to any human being. Genesis 6:5-6 expresses the thoughts that went through Jesus Christ’s mind at that point in time. And when Christ spoke in verse 7, there was no human being who heard that statement. So why did Jesus Christ bother around 900 years later to tell Moses (who then wrote it down) about certain very specific thoughts that had gone through God’s own mind around 900 years earlier?

God undoubtedly had millions of different thoughts during the approximately 900 years that had passed. Why did God want those very specific thoughts from 900 years earlier recorded? God wanted those specific thoughts recorded because those thoughts reveal some extremely important information, which information all human beings who don’t have God’s spirit would never grasp. God revealed His own thoughts for a very specific reason, to convey information to the people who would have God’s spirit.

Furthermore, we also need to correctly understand Jesus Christ’s statement "I will expunge, obliterate and blot out man whom I have created". This statement clearly implies that "I can’t ever work with these people". It implies "I see no hope for rehabilitating these people". To "obliterate people" isn’t really compatible with "bringing them up in the second resurrection". To "obliterate" (or "destroy") people carries a certain finality with it.

As an aside we might also note one other point. The animals and the birds hadn’t sinned. They hadn’t done anything wrong. So why did God also destroy all of them? The fact that God destroyed all animal life at that time (except for those in the ark) tells us that God had created all animals purely for man’s benefit. So when God was going to destroy all human beings, then animals no longer served a real purpose. The original sole purpose for all animal life was to enhance the existence of human beings.

Now when God Himself deliberately drowns people, then that is not to later bring them up in a resurrection to another physical life, and to then say: I really scared you when I drowned you, didn’t I? No, the flood represented an expression of finality, of blotting out everything that went before (i.e. blotting out everyone except for three individuals who had submitted their lives to God out of a billion or very likely even more human beings), and of starting again from scratch with a new way of dealing with human beings.

[Comment: Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth were only born 20 or more years after God had decided to destroy all human beings with a worldwide flood. God did not choose any of Noah’s many children that were born before God decided to bring on the flood, because those children would have counted as a part of the pre-flood world. These three sons all chose one wife each, with those three wives in all likelihood being the same ages or younger than their husbands. So those three wives were also only born around 20 or more years after God had decided on the flood. Now while Noah himself was a product of the pre-flood world, in which he had lived for 600 years, six of the other seven people on the ark would very likely have been counted by God as a part of the post-flood world. (It is not clear to me where Noah’s wife, about whom we are not told anything, fits into the picture.) This means that God’s post-flood way of dealing with human beings would apply to those six other people. But Noah himself will certainly be in the first resurrection.]

Let’s open our eyes and stop reading these verses with our own preconceived ideas. Jesus Christ’s statement here, followed by drowning them all in a worldwide flood, shows that Jesus Christ was clearly trying to get rid of all those people. He didn’t want any of them. And so He drowned them all.

Recall that this was the same way that Jesus Christ had dealt with Satan’s rebellion. When Satan had rebelled against God, then God destroyed everything that Satan had done, by covering the entire earth with a flood. That is why Genesis 1:2 tells us that "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters", because the whole earth was covered with water at that point.

That original flooding of the whole earth represented the end-result of God dealing with Satan’s rebellion. That flooding represented that Satan’s rebellion had been completely put down, and everything that Satan had done on this earth was completely blotted out. That flooding represented a finality of dealing with Satan’s rebellion. After that flood it was as though Satan had never ruled over this earth, like Satan’s rule had never happened.

That original flood was the precedent for the flood in the days of Noah.

So when God once again flooded the earth, God was showing that God was dealing with human rebellion the exact same way that God had dealt with the rebellion of spirit beings (i.e. with Satan and his demons). So the flood at the time of Noah was designed to blot out everything that went before, in the same way that the previous flood had blotted out everything that had happened during Satan’s rule before the creation of man.

With the flood at the time of Noah God was using a form of penalty that God had already used once before. The intent was to achieve the same result that had been achieved with the earlier flood.

God wanted nothing and nobody (except for three individuals) from that pre-Noah’s-flood world preserved. There is no second resurrection for pre-flood people.

Now from that experience of drowning all human beings Jesus Christ learned something. And so after the flood Jesus Christ said to Himself (i.e. in His heart), paraphrased: I now know that human beings are evil from early childhood onwards, but I am not going to bring another worldwide flood on human beings (see Genesis 8:21). In effect Jesus Christ said: I will find different ways to deal with human perversity, because a worldwide flood is just too drastic a measure for dealing with physical, mortal human beings.

But Genesis 8:21 also tells us something else.

God the Father and Jesus Christ had decided on a new way of dealing with human beings after the flood, so that They could achieve a different result from what had been achieved before the flood. And the statement in Genesis 8:21 is a reflection of the confidence that this new way of dealing with human beings would eliminate the necessity for ever again having to "expunge and obliterate" all but eight human beings. It expresses the confidence that this new way of dealing with human beings would reap a far, far greater harvest than the three individuals (i.e. Abel and Enoch and Noah) which the entire pre-flood period had produced.

It expresses a confidence that with the changes God was implementing, now "the human project" was going to move in the right direction, and therefore never again would God need to destroy over 99.999999% of all human beings. (See my recent article "The Offering of Abel" for more information regarding this percentage of humanity.)

Having blotted out all but eight human beings in the flood, after the flood God then implemented a new plan for dealing with human beings. This new plan was based on the new premise, then not assumed but a firmly established fact, that "every imagination of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart was only evil continually".

Let’s note that human nature after the flood was just as evil and hostile towards God’s ways, as had been the case before the flood. Human nature had not changed in any way! But now God was prepared to deal with this hostility of the natural human spirit. Now God was dealing with human beings in a way that was prepared for this almost universal rejection of God’s ways.

The new plan was implemented by God the day Noah came out of the ark. But this new plan was not revealed until the time of Moses. And the way God revealed this plan in the days of Moses was through all the annual observances that God instituted at that time.

Now I understand that some people like to find the feasts and/or Holy Days in the discussion of the world before the flood. But the facts are: before the flood God did not institute any observances, neither weekly nor annual. For example, God did not instruct Adam and Eve to keep the Sabbath.

Can we find some days that we can tie to the annual Holy Days? Oh sure. But does that mean that therefore God had "instituted" those particular days for human beings to observe back then? There is no evidence of any kind that God expected human beings before the flood to observe any days in the year, neither the weekly Sabbath, nor the annual Holy Days. And that situation is a reflection of the plan God was following with human beings before the flood.

In the opening statement of this article I said that God has in general terms revealed His plan for mankind through the annual observances that God instituted at the time of Moses. It is the annual Holy Day calendar that reveals to us both, the plan God followed before the flood, and the plan God implemented after the flood, and which plan God is still pursuing today.

In plain language:

I refer to the annual cycle God established in the days of Adam as "the Original Year #1". And I refer to the annual cycle God established at the time of the exodus from Egypt as "the Revised Year #1". All the religious observances mentioned in Leviticus 23 were attached to "the Revised Year #1", and none of them were attached to "the Original Year #1", nor could they have been.

The "Original Year #1" reveals how God dealt with human beings before the flood. And the "Revised Year #1" reveals how God has dealt with human beings since the flood. These two annual cycles hold the answers to the title of this article: God’s Original Plan & How It Was Modified.

Let’s start by looking at the first change God made after the flood, though God only revealed this change at the time of Moses.

It is clear that in Genesis 1 "the first day" was in the autumn. It is clear that before the flood God had set up the year to run from autumn to autumn. And Moses and all the Israelites were used to this autumn-to-autumn annual cycle, because that was also the cycle which was still used in Egypt at that time.

Then immediately before the Passover in Egypt God instructed Moses to change the start of the year. This was not a calendar change! (Recall that "calendar" means "determining the first day of every month".) This was only a numbering change! It was a change regarding which month would be called "the first month of the year". But the actual functioning of the calendar, how the first day of every month will be established (i.e. by the new moon), remained exactly the same as before Exodus 12. The impact of this change we’ll consider shortly.

We might note that the Jewish religion has never fully accepted this change! Oh yes, they have their justifications. And yes, they will call Nisan the first month. But they still insist on referring to "Tishri 1" as "New Year", in spite of what God said in Exodus 12:2, namely that Nisan 1 was to be "New Year".

Let’s look at the change that God revealed to Moses.

This should equally correctly be translated as:

Do you think that Moses said: yes, Lord, we know that this is the first new moon of the year, as it has always been? That is what you might expect Moses to have said if this was nothing more than a reference to something the Israelites already knew and practiced, i.e. if it didn’t involve changing anything. But Moses didn’t say that, did he?

No, God was changing when the years would start! And God was changing nothing else about the calendar. And this was a shift by exactly six months. God was talking about the month that had started on the spring equinox that year. Up to that very moment in human history that had always been the start of the seventh month. And God in effect instructed Moses: I want you from now on to view this month as the first month of the year.

We might refer to this new cycle as spring-to-spring reckoning.

In Exodus 12 when God told Moses from then onwards to call the 7th Month "the 1st Month", then God in effect wanted Israel to view the previous dropped 6 months as if they had never occurred, and to go back to the 1st month of that very same year, like doing those 6 months over again.

That is what God did in Exodus 12.

The obvious question here is: why did God change the start of the year away from the start of the year He Himself had instituted back in Genesis? The original start of the year on the autumn equinox had been perfect. So why change that start to the spring equinox 6 months earlier? Why did God change something that He Himself had earlier called "very good"?

The reason God changed the start of the year was that God wanted to convey a very specific message! Here is that message:

The change in which month is to signal the start of a new year is supposed to tell us that God had changed the way He would deal with human beings from then onwards (i.e. from after the flood). We might say that God had "revised" the yearly cycle to tell us that He had "revised" the plan of salvation for mankind.

Now the details of that "revision" are revealed through the annual Feasts and Holy Days, none of which existed before the flood. Let’s understand that the main purpose for all of the annual observances is to convey information and understanding! If the annual Feasts and Holy Days were not to convey some very specific information to us, then they wouldn’t really serve any purpose. Observing any days without gaining any information from such observances is for adults a rather dopey activity, as witnessed by the days that are observed by people throughout the world.

You are already quite familiar with all the Feasts and Holy Days laid out in Leviticus 23 for the Revised Yearly Cycles. Those details consist of:

1) Passover in the 1st month = in the early spring,

2) Feast of Unleavened Bread in the 1st month = in the early spring,

3) Feast of Pentecost in the 3rd month = in the late spring,

4) Trumpets in the 7th month = in the early autumn,

5) Atonement in the 7th month = in the early autumn,

6) Feast of Tabernacles in the 7th month = in the early autumn,

7) Last Great Day in the 7th month = in the early autumn.

Now recall that when God started with "Day 1" in Genesis, that was the autumn equinox. So in the "Original Year #1" the seasons ran as follows:

1st & 2nd & 3rd Months = Autumn, starting at the autumn equinox;

4th & 5th & 6th Months = Winter, starting at the winter solstice;

7th & 8th & 9th Months = Spring, starting at the spring equinox;

10th & 11th & 12th Months = Summer, starting at the summer solstice.

And in the "Revised Year" sequence which God established in Exodus 12 the seasons ran as follows, as long as the original solar and lunar cycles were still in existence after the time of Moses:

1st & 2nd & 3rd Months = Spring, starting at the spring equinox;

4th & 5th & 6th Months = Summer, starting at the summer solstice;

7th & 8th & 9th Months = Autumn, starting at the autumn equinox;

10th & 11th & 12th Months = Winter, starting at the winter solstice.

This new equally perfect sequence was destroyed when the solar and lunar cycles were corrupted at some point before the Babylonian captivity.

Today the 1st month only very rarely starts on the spring equinox; for almost all years the year only starts after the spring equinox, since it may never start before the spring equinox (i.e. it may never start in the winter).

Today spring always starts on the 20th or 21st of March in the Roman calendar. So when today the 1st new moon after the spring equinox starts a new year (i.e. a new moon between March 21st and April 19th), then the first few days of spring before that new moon are still a part of the last month of the previous year. The original alignment between the seasons and the months has been destroyed, and it will not be restored until just before Jesus Christ returns.

Let’s briefly consider a prophecy that applies to this specific point.

Notice what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24:29.

This is recorded by Mark as follows:

And Luke recorded this as follows:

I have discussed these verses in my 23-page 2002 article "The Heavenly Signs And Christ’s Second Coming". See that article for a thorough explanation.

The above verses tie in with Revelation chapter 6 regarding the 6th seal. Let’s look at some key statements in that chapter.

First of all, this verse contains a mistranslation. The word "earthquake" is a translation of the Greek word "seismos". But "seismos" does not mean "earthquake"! "Seismos" simply means "a great shaking", but without identifying exactly what it is that is being "shaken". The shaking ... 1) could be severe weather (i.e. a storm) that is shaken, or 2) it could be the earth (i.e. an earthquake) that is shaken, or 3) it could be the heavens (i.e. the powers of the heavens) that are shaken.

Without additional contextual clarifications the word "seismos" by itself does not identify to which of these three possibilities it should be applied. The point is that all the translators applied "seismos" in Revelation 6:12 to the earth, which is the wrong option.

Revelation 6:12 is speaking about "the powers of the heavens being shaken"! "The powers of the heavens" is a reference to the heavenly bodies on which God bestowed the power to rule! See Genesis 1:16. The sun rules the day, and the moon rules the night. They have power. When their circuits change, then the length of a month and the length of a year also change.

It is the power of the sun and the power of the moon that will be "shaken", as well as the stars. And when those powers are shaken, a consequence is that "the sun becomes black" and "the moon becomes as blood". But there is no earthquake in Revelation 6:12.

Now the moon controls the length of a month. And the sun controls the length of a year. These two things (the length of a month and the length of a year) represent "the powers" that are vested in the heavens.

Notice the next verse.

The fig tree analogy here refers to the heavens. It is the heavens that are shaken, and as a result of that shaking the stars are "falling" in every direction. "Falling" is a consequence of "being shaken".

Now the stars don’t fall "on" the earth; the stars fall "towards" the earth! The picture here is of someone standing at night out in an open field, far away from all city lights. And as the person looks up at the sky, so he sees the stars and/or planets above him whizzing off in every direction. And "every direction" happens to be the 360-degree horizon all around him. So when those stars or planets disappear below the horizon, then from the observer’s perspective they have fallen "unto the earth". But none of those heavenly bodies actually smash into this planet earth.

The focus of these verses is on what happens up in the sky, in the heavens.

Consider one other point. In the build-up to this event God covers the entire earth in darkness. The sun isn’t giving its light to the earth, and neither is the moon reflecting any light to this earth. So at that point it will be a moonless "night" for every place on earth at the same time.

The purpose for the total darkness all around the world is to make sure that every human being on earth will have the opportunity to see the powers of the heavens being shaken. This phenomenon of all the heavenly bodies (stars and planets) rushing off towards the horizon in every direction will be seen simultaneously in every part of the world. So everywhere on earth it will seem like "the stars are falling from heaven".

God wants every human being alive at that point to have the opportunity to watch the power of God rearranging this entire universe, in preparation for Jesus Christ to start His millennial rule.

This 6th seal is a discussion of a total rearrangement of the stars and the planets. The constellations making up the so-called "signs of the zodiac" will no longer exist in their present configuration! When Jesus Christ rules then there will be no pagan "signs of the zodiac" in the night sky! So these heavenly signs in Revelation 6:12-14 will produce a major rearrangement of the night sky.

And the perfect seasonal cycle of 90 days for every season will also be re-established, with every season starting either on an equinox or on a solstice. The cycles that God had established in Genesis 1 will then be restored.

Then the equinox will again always be on a new moon day, as it was for the time from Adam to past the time of King David. And since that will occur very shortly before Jesus Christ’s coming, therefore Jesus Christ could theoretically return on a day that will then be a new moon day and at the same time also an equinox day. This then presents "option three" for Christ’s return that I referred to earlier.

Consider also that the heavenly signs of Revelation 6 are in fact proof that the present cycles are a mess, as far as God is concerned. If they were not a mess, then God wouldn’t change them. But because they are a mess, therefore God will restore the original cycles before Jesus Christ actually begins His 1,000-year rule. There is no place for our present very corrupt cycles in the age when Jesus Christ rules.

The mind-boggling phenomenon of people in every area of the world being able to simultaneously watch what will very likely be millions of heavenly bodies dashing across the night sky in every direction, before disappearing below the horizon, while at the same time others are appearing from below the horizon, is the most powerful witness imaginable that Jesus Christ rejects the present monthly and annual cycles! When those "heavenly signs" are finished, there is no way that our present solar and lunar cycles will survive unscathed! It is inevitable that with this massive rearrangement of our universe our solar and lunar cycles will end up being different from what they are now.

It will be a staggering rearrangement of this entire universe! It will be a time when God "makes bare His holy arm in the eyes of all nations" (see Isaiah 52:10). It will be a demonstration of the raw, unlimited power of the Creator God. And it will put the fear of God into every single human being, including all of us in the place of safety! It will be a terrifying display of power. The millions, if not billions, of meteorites that will also be involved are going to be too insignificant to even count in that context.

The point here should be that any human beings who, after seeing this display of God’s power, decide to still fight against the returning Jesus Christ will have no excuse whatsoever, and they will not come up in the second resurrection. They have no excuse!

For more details regarding the heavenly signs see the above-mentioned article.

To continue:

You could draw a little chart to illustrate the original seasons (i.e. the seasons before about 600 B.C.),and I will be referring to that chart several times. On a sheet of paper in landscape layout draw three horizontal parallel lines from left to right, spaced perhaps two to three inches apart. Call your chart "The Change In The Start Of The Year".

Label the top line "Original Seasonal Cycles" and divide that top line into 7 equal blocks, and over the 8 division lines write the titles "Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice". You could also indicate that all 7 equal blocks are 90 days each in length.

Label the middle line "Original Year #1 Before The Flood", and start this horizontal line in bold print vertically under the 1st "Autumn equinox" title. End this bold print line vertically under the next "Autumn Equinox" title. So this middle line is only a short line, covering 4 sectors of the top line.

Label the bottom line "Revised Year #1 After The Flood", and start this horizontal line in bold print vertically under the 1st "Spring Equinox" title. That should be to the left of the start of the middle line. End this bold print bottom line vertically under the next "Spring Equinox" title. That should be to the left of the end of the middle line. The middle and bottom bold lines should now be of equal length, but only have an overlap of 2 seasonal segments.

What you now have is as follows: The top line is simply your seasonal reference line for the original seasons that God established. The middle line starts at the midpoint of the bottom line. And the bottom line starts 6 months before the middle line.

Now draw short vertical lines on the bottom line to represent the placement of: Passover, U.B., Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles & L.G.D. in the yearly cycle. And that is all there is to your chart.

Now looking at your bottom line check where all these Feasts and Holy Days would be placed on the middle line, i.e. on the "Original Year #1" layout line. What do you find? Keep in mind that all these days must stay in their correct seasons, the seasons to which God assigned these Feasts and Holy Days in Exodus 12 and in Leviticus 23.

What you should be able to see and to grasp is that you can’t possibly fit the Passover, Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost into the "Original Year #1" format!

These days all have to precede Trumpets! None of them can possibly follow Trumpets in the annual cycle. Can you understand this? When the yearly cycle starts with the autumn equinox (i.e. the middle line), then that enables you to at least theoretically place Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and the L.G.D. into that yearly cycle. But it is impossible to place the Passover, Days of U.B. and Pentecost into a yearly cycle that starts with the autumn equinox. It can’t be done!

Can you see that?

So when God changed the start of the year from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox, God was signaling the establishment of a new plan for working with mankind, which would include components that had simply not been possible to include in the original plan. In order to include these new components in the plan, 6 months had to be inserted in front of the start of the original year.

The key event in both the Original Year #1 and the Revised Year #1 is the date for when Jesus Christ first came to this earth. So when in the Revised Year #1 God inserted 6 months in front of the original 1st day, then the coming of Jesus Christ was still tied to the original autumn equinox. But in the new way of counting months in the year, the coming of Jesus Christ was now on the 1st Day of the 7th Month.

Let’s now look at all the annual Feasts and Holy Days that were attached to the Revised Year #1. We’ll start by first looking at the Original Year #1 to establish the contrast.

THE ORIGINAL YEAR #1 (the middle line in the chart)

In the original yearly cycle there were only two noteworthy events. On the 1st day of autumn Jesus Christ came to this earth. And on the 10th day of autumn Satan tempted Adam and Eve, and then all three of them were expelled from the garden. Both these events were in the 1st month at that time.

But in that original yearly cycle there was no Feast of Tabernacles and no Last Great Day. How do I know that? I know this because FoT and the LGD are both absolutely dependent on Pentecost! Jesus Christ is only willing to deal with the vast multitudes that will make up the millennium plus the second resurrection group if He has the 144,000 firstfruits assisting Him, as His "wife".

If there are no 144,000 firstfruits to assist Jesus Christ as kings and priests, then Jesus Christ is not prepared to deal with people in the millennium. He has already tried to deal with humanity on His own, and that didn’t work because of man’s inherent evil tendencies.

The original yearly cycle shows that Jesus Christ originally worked with all human beings on His own. That was the original plan! That’s the plan that didn’t work because of the unanticipated total depravity of the human mind, whose every thought was only evil continually. That’s the plan that was terminated by the flood.

Furthermore, after Adam had sinned Satan was not locked away, as will be the case before Jesus Christ’s millennial rule starts. Instead, Satan was allowed to remain on earth, to lead humanity into rebellion against God. So Atonement was not a part of the original plan either. Under that original plan (i.e. before Adam sinned) Satan would certainly somehow have been dealt with in a permanent way by God, but how that would have been done did not feature in the plan God chose to reveal. God didn’t reveal that part of the original plan because man sinned, and therefore Satan was not "dealt with" at that time.

The difference between Satan being on earth before the flood, and Satan being on earth ever since the flood is that today Jesus Christ is not here on earth. And once Christ comes back to this earth, then Satan is removed pretty well immediately, which is the symbolism of Atonement following Trumpets.

But before the flood Jesus Christ was here on earth, and Satan was allowed to remain free here on earth at the same time. Satan’s presence before the flood in the presence of Jesus Christ means that for the period before the flood Atonement was not yet a part of that plan. Atonement implies that Satan will not be present when Jesus Christ in person deals with human beings!

Can you see why without Pentecost there can be no Tabernacles and no Last Great Day? In a yearly cycle that starts with the autumn equinox there is simply no way to fit Pentecost or Tabernacles into that format: not Pentecost because nothing can precede the first day of the year, and not Tabernacles because you can’t have Tabernacles (and also the Last Great Day) without first having Pentecost.

So the original yearly cycle God established in Genesis didn’t include the concept of "Feasts and Holy Days". It was a simple plan, based on the assumption that a reasonable number of the human beings God was going to create with totally free minds, would be thankful and respectful to their Creator, and very eager to obey Him, eager to comply with all of their Creator’s wishes. It didn’t even have to be a very high percentage for God to be willing to work with that plan. This is proved by God letting things carry on for 1,536 years before reaching a decision. But God’s assumption turned out to be wrong.

The longer God watched these human beings before the flood, the more fully God understood the perverse nature of virtually 100% of human beings. God’s mind is pure, and understanding a perverse nature is not intuitive for God, as it is intuitive for us human beings to understand a perverse nature. And the greater understanding God came to regarding human nature enabled God to formulate a revised plan, which took man’s perverse nature fully into account.

So: when God created Adam and Eve, there was no provision for the Passover or U.B. or Pentecost or Atonement or Tabernacles or the L.G.D. That original plan started with Trumpets (i.e. Christ’s first coming to this earth) and it would have run for 7,000 years. (Perhaps it could even have run longer to ensure that God’s target for the desired size for the Family of God would be achieved. After all, that’s also what has happened with the plan in force today, that things will run longer than exactly 7,000 years, because they have already run longer than 6,000 years, and Jesus Christ must still rule for 1,000 years, to then be followed by 100 more years for those in the second resurrection.) Because that plan was very forcefully terminated at the flood, therefore God has not revealed too many other details about it.

Now let’s look at the plan that went into effect after the flood.

THE REVISED YEAR #1 (the bottom line in the chart)

After observing and dealing with human beings for over 1,600 years (i.e. right up to the flood), God was in a position to build a revised plan on the true and correct premise. The plan implemented after the flood is based totally on the premise that "every imagination of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart is only evil continually".

It was this premise that caused God to accept that it would be a huge mistake for Jesus Christ alone to attempt once again to work with all human beings in this present age! It was this premise that caused God to implement a system of specifically "calling" selected human beings in this present age for the opportunity for salvation, while leaving the rest of humanity blinded. It was this premise that caused God to insert "the second resurrection" into the plan. And it was this premise that required Jesus Christ to give His life as payment for the sins of all those human beings who would come to a godly repentance at some point in their lives.

But Genesis 6:5-7 makes quite clear that at Adam’s creation God had not yet understood this correct premise. That is why once Jesus Christ understood this correct premise, it ended up being a shock for Jesus Christ to see how perverse the human beings He had created turned out to be.

So here is what God the Father and Jesus Christ decided to do. The details for implementation I am presenting I believe are correct, but the discussion between Them is obviously only my speculation.

120 years before the flood God the Father and Jesus Christ basically said:

So here is how We will deal with these three specific needs:

(Comment: The Passover is not really "a sacrifice". The Passover is really "the payment of a debt which has been incurred by all sinners". The Book of Leviticus makes quite clear that the Passover was never a part of Israel’s sacrificial system by completely excluding the Passover from the discussion of all the sacrifices.)

Now with those three specific needs met, God the Father and Jesus Christ could then fill into the calendar the remaining items. These remaining items are:

1) Jesus Christ had come to this earth on the autumn equinox. This coming is represented by the Holy Day of Trumpets. The intent had been for Jesus Christ to work on His own with all human beings, who were willing to listen to Christ. This coming by Jesus Christ needed to be "postponed" by 6,000 years, in order to let other specific events take place first, before Jesus Christ would once again come to this earth, but this time in power and in glory, and with 144,000 "assistants", for the purpose of again working with human beings. But this "postponed coming" needed to still remain on the autumn equinox day; it could not shift away from its seasonal position in the yearly cycle.

So the way to achieve this was to now call that day of Christ’s 1st coming "the 1st Day of the 7th Month". It was still on the autumn equinox (i.e. until the cycles were corrupted at some point before the Babylonian captivity). But now calling it the start of the 7th month allowed God to insert 6 full months, representing 6,000 years, before Jesus Christ would do that "first coming" all over again.

By inserting 6 months (i.e. 6,000 years) ahead of the day that represents Jesus Christ’s original 1st coming to this earth, God was acknowledging that the previous approach had simply not taken man’s perverse heart, which is "only evil continually", into account, that God had simply not anticipated the magnitude of the universally hostile human minds, i.e. hostile towards God.

So in the Original Year #1 the 1st Day of the 1st Month was literally when Jesus Christ had first come to earth. With the change in the start of the year for the Revised Year #1, that same day had become the 1st day of the 7th Month.

I might add that there was nothing "festive" about Jesus Christ’s first coming to this earth, when His task was to repair the damage to this earth that Satan’s rebellion had caused. To repair damage caused by a rebellion is not a festive occasion. And so that day is assuredly not "a feast"! That Day in the Revised Year #1 is called "the Holy Day of Trumpets". But there is no "feasting" involved in that coming, because Christ is coming the next time "to make war". "Making war" is also not compatible with "feasting". So the Holy Day of Trumpets should never be called "the Feast of Trumpets". And it is never called "a feast day" in the Bible, except in mistranslations (e.g. Psalm 81:3).

On the bottom line of your chart you can see that Trumpets is the midpoint in the Revised Year #1. It is the event around which everything else pivots.

2) Why did God place the Holy Day of Atonement on the 10th day? Since the Holy Day of Trumpets identifies the literal day on which Jesus Christ first came to this earth, I believe that God selected the 10th day for Atonement to tell us that that was the literal day when Satan tempted Adam and Eve.

If God had allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve on the first Sunday morning, then I believe that God would have placed Atonement on the 8th day. How do I know that? I know that because the only thing that the date for Atonement is linked to is the Holy Day of Trumpets. There is no other link for Atonement that would point to the 10th day as a date for Atonement.

Keep in mind that the event pictured by Atonement happened before 6 months were inserted into the calendar in front of the Holy Day of Trumpets. The events later applied to the new 1st month (i.e. to Nisan) had nothing to do with the dating for Trumpets and Atonement. The Passover and Days of U.B. were later added to the calendar because of what had happened on the 1st and on the 10th days back in Genesis, and not the other way around.

Now Satan tempted Adam and Eve into eating something that was forbidden. So why does God instruct us to fast on Atonement? We are to fast on that day, to vividly remind us that we must not allow Satan to tempt us into sinning. Adam and Eve ate on that day, and we are not to eat on that day. The instruction to fast on Atonement is God’s response to man’s very first sin involving eating something that man should not have eaten. That’s the reason why God instructs us to fast.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, then God would have imposed on Satan his ultimate penalty at the end of that first 10th day of the 1st month (later = 10th day of the 7th month), the day when the Azazel goat is "driven away". Satan would have been permanently banished on that original 10th day.

But Adam and Eve sinned.

When Adam and Eve sinned, then Satan was granted "a temporary stay of execution", so to speak, for the explicit purpose of testing human beings for at least the next 6,000 years, plus a brief episode at the end of the 7th 1000-year period. Satan tempting us human beings is intended to expose the weaknesses in the human spirit, weaknesses that God cannot afford to allow to exist in any human beings to whom God will give eternal life.

So those weaknesses have to be exposed and then dealt with, to see which people will overcome those weaknesses and expel those weaknesses from their lives, and which people will not manage to overcome those weaknesses, and therefore they will retain attitudes that are totally incompatible with life in the presence of God.

So Satan and his demons were allowed to stay around after Adam and Eve had sinned. But when Jesus Christ returns and starts His millennial rule, then Satan will not be allowed to stay around. He will be banished for 1,000 years, and then briefly released on all human beings alive at the end of the millennium, again for the purpose of bringing all wrong attitudes out into the open. And after that Satan will be permanently banished.

That covers the Day of Atonement.

3) The only items still left to fill into the annual Holy Day calendar are two 7-day Feasts: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Tabernacles. And these two Feasts are clearly linked to one another. That link is clear because they fall on the exact same days of the months, exactly 6 months apart.

Feast of Unleavened Bread = 15th - 21st days of the 1st month.

Feast of Tabernacles = 15th - 21st days of the 7th month.

Let’s again keep in mind that the 7th month came first! So the events that Tabernacles points to came first; and the events represented by the Feast of U.B. were added as a response to what had happened in the 7th month, when that 7th month had still been called the 1st month.

Also keep in mind that these two Feasts are the only events in the annual calendar that involve more than one day. All other observances are restricted to one day. But these two Feasts are both 7 days long.

So why are these two Feasts each 7 days long?

The events represented by the Feast of Tabernacles came first. So here is the answer:

The Feast of Tabernacles is 7 days long because it was God’s original intention that Jesus Christ would rule over this planet earth for 7,000 years. All the conditions that are described throughout the Bible for the millennium are the conditions that God had intended for the entire 7,000-year period! Christ wanted to implement "millennial conditions" for the whole 7,000 years. And Christ had intended to stay on earth for the entire 7,000 years.

That was still the plan even after Adam and Eve had sinned. When Adam sinned, then that did not trigger any immediate change in plans for God. God was going to continue with His intentions to rule for 7,000 years. It was only after 1,536 years that God abandoned those original intentions.

The original plan did not assume that all human beings would submit to God and develop godly character, like Abel and Enoch and Noah ended up doing. If there had been even a 1% positive response to God from amongst human beings before the flood, I believe God would have accepted that, and continued to work with human beings for the whole intended 7,000 years, instead of ever bringing on a worldwide flood.

If for every 100 human beings 99 had rejected voluntarily submitting themselves to the God who walked amongst them, and only 1 person had decided to "walk with God", then that would have presented a similar picture to what occurred during Jesus Christ’s ministry approximately 4,000 years later.

To understand what conditions on earth looked like after Adam had sinned, and when Cain and Abel then grew into adulthood and mankind multiplied on earth, we need to look at what happened during Jesus Christ’s ministry! When Jesus Christ started His ministry, He did the same thing He had done for over 1,500 years after Adam had sinned, and up to the flood. During His ministry (i.e. New Testament times) Jesus Christ walked up and down amongst "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). And initially a large number of people followed Him. But once the teachings became stronger and more direct, then "many of His disciples walked no more with Him" (see John 6:66).

That approach of walking amongst human beings is what Jesus Christ had intended to use after creating Adam and Eve! He was there for people to "walk with Him", but at that time over 99.999999% of human beings rejected that opportunity. Later, during His ministry, Jesus Christ had refined this approach, by only working with those who had been called by God the Father, and about that specific group of called people Jesus Christ at the end of His ministry then said "those that You gave Me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition" (see John 17:12 and also John 18:9). So during His ministry Jesus Christ already achieved a vastly better response than in the days before the flood.

But getting back to humanity in the days of Adam:

A 1% response from amongst the first one billion people would have meant a "harvest" for the Family of God of ten million. And the total human population for the whole 7,000 years was likely to be well in excess of one hundred billion people. Thus a 1% positive response would have amounted to more than one billion members for the Family of God. I believe that God would have accepted this 1% response scenario, and never brought on a flood.

But a less than 0.000001% positive response was utterly unacceptable to God. And therefore God brought on the flood to start all over with a revised plan.

Now we come to the 6,000 years that were inserted before Trumpets, before the day when Jesus Christ first came to this earth. Those 6,000 years were not just pulled out of nowhere. No, those 6,000 years were taken away from the original 7,000 years Christ had planned to rule over this earth. So Jesus Christ’s rule over the whole earth was reduced from what originally had been intended to be 7,000 years to only 1,000 years, and the 6,000 years taken away from Jesus Christ’s rule were then inserted in front of the 1st Day of the original 1st Month.

That is why in the Revised Plan of God Jesus Christ’s rule will be only 1,000 years long, and not 7,000 years long as originally intended. This change was made in order to accommodate the "three specific needs" we looked at earlier. This is one more way the original plan was modified.

[Comment: While Jesus Christ had been on earth for 1,656 years before the flood, He had not really "ruled" during that period of time, because humanity had never accepted His right to rule. During that period Jesus Christ had at no point made any effort to force people to accept His rule. Rather, Jesus Christ had worked from the premise that human beings, at least a reasonable number of them, would voluntarily accept their Creator as their Ruler. That assumed premise was shattered by how evil human beings turned out to be.

One lesson for God from that period of time was that unrepentant humanity will never accept God ruling over them, unless they are forced to accept God’s rule! And so one more change that God introduced into the plan is that when Jesus Christ starts His revised 1,000-year rule, then He will force all people to obey Him. As Jesus Christ said in Isaiah 45:23, "... unto Me every knee shall bow". Or, as Paul quoted this verse to the Romans, "every knee shall bow unto Me, and every tongue shall confess to God" (see Romans 14:11). It is because of humanity’s inherent hostility towards God’s ways that during the millennium the 144,000 will "rule with a rod of iron" (see Revelation 2:26-27), i.e. they will rule very strictly, and respond very severely to any and every form of rebellion.]

For His reduced 1,000-year rule Jesus Christ will be assisted by 144,000 "firstfruits". And in addition Satan will be removed before Jesus Christ commences His 1,000-year rule. So 7,000 years of working with human beings on His own were replaced with 1,000 years of working with human beings with 144,000 assistants, and with Satan removed for those 1,000 years. This change will produce immensely better results than the previous approach.

4) Now let’s look at the 7-Day Feast of Unleavened Bread. How does that fit into the plan?

In the Revised Year #1 (i.e. the bottom line on the chart) the Feast of Unleavened Bread has the position that the Feast of Tabernacles would have had in the Original Year #1, had the Feast of Tabernacles been a part of the original plan. In other words, the Feast of U.B. is from the 15th - 21st days in the 1st month; and F.o.T. is from the 15th - 21st days in what used to be the 1st month, but what is now since Exodus 12 the 7th month.

It is well understood amongst God’s people that the Feast of U.B. represents those who "partake of the Passover" putting sins out of our lives, as visually acted out in putting leaven out of our homes for that specific period of time.

And actively putting sins out of our lives (i.e. putting leaven out of our homes) implies that we are repentant. It is only "repentant people" who put sins out of their lives. Unrepentant people don’t really put sins out of their lives, even if some of them may mechanically observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

So note!

Where originally (i.e. in the Original Year #1, the middle line on the chart) all human beings had ready access to walk with Jesus Christ (think of the clearly unrepentant Cain actually coming before Jesus Christ with an offering, which Christ then did not accept), in the revised plan (i.e. in the Revised Year #1, the bottom line on the chart) access to Jesus Christ is only for those who have first repented; access is only for those who have first kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread (putting out sins) has in this age become a pre-condition for anyone to get to the Feast of Tabernacles.

Consider this parallel:

Originally Adam and Eve could have walked up to the tree of life and eaten the fruit thereof. That is why, after Adam had sinned, Jesus Christ said: "... and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, therefore the Eternal God sent him forth from the garden of Eden" (see Genesis 3:22-23). The original access to the tree of life was without conditions. Originally Adam could have gotten "into the millennium", so to speak (for him it would have been 7,000 years and not just "a millennium"), without any pre-conditions.

In the revised plan that access to "the fruit of the tree of life" (i.e. access to the holy spirit) is only open to those who first repent, i.e. those who first keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That access "for all" has been postponed for 6,000 years, and will only become available once again when Jesus Christ starts His millennial rule.

In the millennium access to salvation will not depend on anyone having to be specifically "called" by God. In the millennium every single human being will have the opportunity to "walk with God" ... like in the days after Adam had sinned and right up to the flood. But all people themselves will have to actively decide to do so, to walk with Jesus Christ. They will not be specifically "called".

Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread in a way also points to Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden in Eden, because with their expulsion the need for the Feast of U.B. arose. This point is illustrated by the Feast of U.B. starting the day after the Passover, to show that this Feast is for those people to whom the Passover (i.e. forgiveness of past sins) applies.

Originally God (i.e. Jesus Christ before the flood) was willing to work with people without requiring people to first make a commitment to God. Before the flood God was in effect willing to work with unrepentant people. That was a major reason why that original plan did not produce results (except for Abel and Enoch and Noah). The lesson was that it never achieves anything for God to work with unrepentant people, people who have not made any prior commitment to God.

Let me repeat that.

In the revised plan, human beings have to first come to repentance (i.e. first go through the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread). People first actually have to make a commitment to God, before God will then work with them (i.e. then they get to the Feast of Tabernacles). And when God works with repentant people, people who have made a commitment to God up-front, then the results God is working for will be achieved ... with the 144,000 "firstfruits" working one-on-one for extended periods of time (perhaps three-and-one-half years for each small group of people?) with the people who have made such a commitment.

Can you see the link between the Feast of U.B. and FoT?

And that completes the annual Feasts and Holy Days which God has instituted. The only thing that remains is the Passover. How did God determine where to position the Passover in the revised annual cycle?

It should be clear that in the Original Year #1, which started on the autumn equinox, there was simply no provision for the Passover. There is no possibility for the 14th day of Nisan to have fitted into the original plan, because before the flood the 14th of Nisan (i.e. in the spring) would have been the 14th day of the 7th month. But the Passover cannot possibly be placed after Trumpets in the annual cycle. That just doesn’t work.

Making provision for the Passover was one of the explicit purposes why God changed the start of the year after the flood, even though God only made that change known to man at the time of the exodus.

So why did God choose the 14th day for the Passover? And why did God instruct that the Passover lamb was to be selected on the 10th day, four days in advance of when it would actually be killed?

The wage for sin is death (Romans 6:23). "Wages" are what we are paid for what we have done. We have all sinned, and so we have all earned the death penalty. The Passover was instituted by God to represent that for all truly repentant people Jesus Christ was willing to pay that penalty on our behalf, so that we might have access to eternal life. Thus the Passover represents Jesus Christ making that payment for our sins.

But here is a principle we should understand:

Penalty payments are only instituted after a transgression has been committed. Penalty payments are never instituted before any transgressions have ever taken place! To make provision in advance, before any transgression has ever been committed, is an indulgence! And God does not provide us with any indulgences.

[Comment: Once certain transgressions have taken place, yes, then penalties for future transgressions of that type can certainly be established. But no penalties are instituted for something that has never been done by anyone in human history.]

In this regard let’s also consider one other point:

To up-front make provision for a penalty payment (i.e. to already decide on Jesus Christ having to give His life for human sins even before the two human beings have been created) basically says that what God is going to create is bound to fail! And because it is bound to fail, therefore we have to plan to have a payment for failure available, so that when what God has created does fail, then that payment can immediately be applied to what has failed.

To decide on the death of Jesus Christ as payment for human sins even before Adam had been created implies that God lacked confidence in what He was about to create, and so God up-front had to make an absolutely staggering provision for failure (i.e. the death of the Creator Himself) in order to perhaps achieve the stated goal of creating the Family of God. I say "perhaps achieve" because if God anticipated failure for His first method for creating the Family of God, why would God have thought that a different approach would achieve better results? And if God anticipated failure, why would God have gone ahead with that first method anyway? And why wait for 1,536 years before expressing regret for having gone ahead with creating human beings?

My point here is simply this:

There is no way that God anticipated a failure rate in excess of 99.999999%. God was prepared for failures, yes, and they would in due time all have just been destroyed and become as though they had never existed. But God absolutely had not anticipated a failure rate in excess of 99,999,999 for every one hundred million human beings. That degree of hostility towards God is something that God had not even remotely considered. And that is why it was a shock for Jesus Christ when that was how it turned out.

So:

There is no way that, before Adam & Eve sinned, God had already planned a payment for whatever sins they might commit, that payment having to be the death of Jesus Christ, the One who personally had created Adam and Eve. And furthermore, there is no way that God would even have considered providing a payment for human sins if at least 10% (and I suspect even as low as 1%!) of all human beings had turned out like Abel and Enoch and Noah!

The other 90% (or even 99%) would just have been destroyed at some point, and the 10% (or even only 1%) who turned out just like Abel and Enoch and Noah would have become a part of the Family of God. Why would God possibly from the very start have planned some kind of self-sacrifice for human beings who hated God’s way of life? God hadn’t planned any kind of sacrifice for the angels who sinned. So why plan such a sacrifice for human beings?

Why do I believe this? Because 10%, and for that matter even 1%, would very effectively have achieved the goal that God the Father and Jesus Christ had set for Themselves when They decided to create the Family of God through human beings. They would have accepted one billion or five billion or ten billion members into Their Family, without having to resort to such a drastic measure as the Creator God Himself having to give His very life as payment for human failure (i.e. for human sins).

We need to grasp that the plan God set in motion with the creation of Adam and Eve was prepared for failures, even for a very great failure rate. While God would like (!) to have all human beings respond positively and in time become a part of the Family of God (see 2 Peter 3:9), God is realistic enough to know in advance that that was just not going to happen. And when Adam and Eve sinned, and Cain then became a murderer, God made some adjustments (e.g. restricting the human life-span to less than 1,000 years, restricting access to the holy spirit, etc.), but His original plan carried on ... because God had been prepared for human beings sinning. And the plan just carried on ... until the flood.

To make this clear:

It is not that God had prepared two plans when He created Adam and Eve, as in: if they don’t sin, then We go with "Plan A"; and if they do sin, then We go with "Plan B". That is not what happened!

What really happened was:

The one and only plan We (i.e. God the Father and Jesus Christ) have is "Plan A". There is no "Plan B" because God does not make provision for His plans to fail! So whether or not Adam and Eve sin, We will proceed with "Plan A". The difference between them sinning or not sinning is that if they sin, then We will make certain modifications to "Plan A" in regard to how long We will let them live, and what conditions they will have to meet in order to have access to the holy spirit. But the essential elements of "Plan A" will remain unchanged! More human beings sinning will only mean a smaller-than-hoped-for harvest for the Family of God. But that is something We are prepared for.

It was only after 1,536 years that God the Father and Jesus Christ accepted that "Plan A" was an almost total failure ... because God had not anticipated that every imagination of the human heart was only evil continually. It was only then that God the Father and Jesus Christ formulated "Plan B", the plan that is still in force today.

Now let’s look at why God selected the 14th day for the Passover?

The answer to this question lies with the original plan. In the original plan Jesus Christ came to this earth on the 1st day (i.e. on the autumn equinox, Trumpets in the revised plan). God then allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve on the 10th day (i.e. Atonement in the revised plan), and they sinned. Even though they had sinned, the original plan was still adhered to by God; i.e. Jesus Christ would work with human beings for 7,000 years (i.e. Feast of Tabernacles in the revised plan). This plan was abandoned by God after 1,536 years (though it took another 120 years till God would bring on the flood).

The revised plan (i.e. "Plan B") made provision for preparing 144,000 helpers to assist Jesus Christ (i.e. Pentecost in the revised plan). Those helpers are essential for success during the Millennium (i.e. Feast of Tabernacles in the revised plan). But in addition to having those 144,000 helpers during the Millennium, to ensure success the revised plan had to attach two more events to the millennium.

One event has to immediately precede the millennium (i.e. precede Tabernacles) and the other event has to immediately follow the millennium (i.e. immediately follow Tabernacles).

Before the flood unrepentant people actually had access to Jesus Christ, as seen by the totally carnal Cain appearing before Christ with an offering. This (i.e. unrepentant people having access to Jesus Christ) was a weakness which had to be changed, to vastly increase the odds for success. So during the millennium only repentant people will have access to walking with God. Repentant people are the only ones who have their sins forgiven, they are the only ones to whom "the sacrifice" of Jesus Christ will apply. They are the only ones to whom the Passover will apply.

The millennium is represented by the 15th - 21st days of the 7th month. And so the Passover needs to be before the Feast of Tabernacles. That would theoretically make the Passover the 14th day of the 7th month. But that’s not possible, because the Passover must also be before Trumpets. Therefore the Passover also has to be placed 6 months earlier. That then puts the Passover on the 14th day of the 1st month.

Consider this:

The purpose for keeping the Passover is not to get people into the Days of Unleavened Bread! The purpose for the Passover is to get people into a working relationship with God! Tabernacles represents people having access to a working relationship with God. With Tabernacles being 7 days long, this Feast still refers to the original 7,000 years that Jesus Christ had intended to work with human beings, and not just to the 1,000 years that are now allocated for that purpose.

In the revised plan God requires people to repent before God will enter into a working relationship with them. So instead of placing the Passover immediately before Tabernacles, God has instead placed it immediately before Unleavened Bread.

Tabernacles is the key for the placement of both the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. If God had placed Tabernacles on different dates (e.g. the 18th - 24th days of the 7th month), then God would have placed the Passover and U.B. on different dates as well (i.e. with the above hypothetical dates God would have placed the Passover on the 17th day of the 1st month, and U.B. on 18th - 24th days of the 1st month).

The above hypothetical dates are obviously false and meaningless. I only wish to emphasize that the placement of events in the first half of the year is totally and completely God’s response to what actually took place in the 2nd half of the year, when that second half had still been the first half (i.e. before the flood).

The things that were inserted into the annual cycle ahead of Trumpets (i.e. the Passover, Feast of U.B. and Pentecost) do not dictate anything for the events that follow in the 7th month (i.e. Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and L.G.D.). God’s plan started with Trumpets, the day when Jesus Christ came to this earth for the very first time. And events inserted into the yearly cycle before Trumpets are a later response by God to what had happened after Christ’s original first coming. Their placement ahead of Trumpets in the yearly cycle is dictated by what happened before the flood!

Let me emphasize again one of the major changes that God introduced into the revised plan. This is extremely important to grasp. And it is something that God had not implemented in the plan that was used before the flood.

With the revised plan that was implemented after the flood:

God is not going to walk with unrepentant people! And neither will the resurrected sons of God during the millennium (i.e. the 144,000) walk with unrepentant people. That is because two cannot walk together if they are not agreed (see Amos 3:3). And unrepentant people are by definition "not in agreement with God".

So repentance (i.e. the Passover) is a vital pre-condition for access to God. And repentance, in turn, must be followed immediately by "putting out sins" (i.e. keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread).

One key for understanding the timing for the Passover and U.B. is this:

1) The 14th day (in the 1st month) for the Passover is a consequence of God selecting the 15th day (in the 7th month) for the start of Tabernacles. The dating of Passover is based on the dating God established for Tabernacles.

2) In the revised cycle inserting 6 months before Christ’s 1st coming in Genesis 1 shows that the original plan was revised to make provision for added events to be included before Christ comes again. This insertion of 6 months before the original start of the year was to make possible the insertion of events that had simply not been possible to include in the original annual cycle. And this insertion of new events into the annual cycle was totally a consequence of what had happened in the 1600+ years before the flood. If things had gone differently before the flood, then the annual cycle would not have been changed, and the new events would never have been added into the yearly calendar.

3) The Feast of U.B. then had to immediately follow the Passover, to show that those who repent must immediately start to put sins out of their lives. After repenting and accepting the suffering and death of Jesus Christ as payment for our past sins, there can be no delay in cleaning up our lives.

To put this another way:

The Passover (14th day 1st month) is placed immediately before the 15th day 1st month (start of the Feast of UB). But the only reason the Feast of UB starts on the 15th day 1st month is because God placed the start of FoT on the 15th day 7th month. The Feast of UB is totally dependent on FoT, and Passover is dependent of the Feast of UB., which means that Passover in turn is also dependent on FoT.

Everything in the revised plan that happens before Tabernacles is only a means for getting to Tabernacles, getting to the thing that Jesus Christ Himself had originally intended to do on His own. It is Tabernacles that represents the Family of God being built. And the Passover is firmly linked to that process.

Now let’s consider why the Passover lamb was to be selected on the 10th day (see Exodus 12:3).

So why did God instruct that the Passover lamb was to already be set apart on the 10th day? Why was the Passover lamb selected 4 days before it is killed and eaten?

And why did God drop this feature from the Passover since establishing the New Testament Passover? After all, the way Jesus Christ has instructed us to keep the Passover today does not in any way include the 10th day, does it? We don’t set anything apart on the 10th day, do we? For us today God has not given any instructions for the 10th day. In our Passover today the 10th day is in fact totally ignored, right?

For that matter, when the disciples went to prepare the Passover for Jesus Christ (see Matthew 26:17-17; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-13) had the disciples themselves actually set a lamb apart four days earlier? Or had "the goodman of the house" set apart that lamb four days earlier? How would that work?

Would someone who rented out rooms for Passover observances have "selected a number of lambs" four days earlier ... in anticipation of customers arriving and asking him to cater for their Passover observances? What if he had set apart some lambs four days earlier ... and then they are not needed, because a less than anticipated number of Passover customers requested his services? Would those lambs then be unselected and restored to some flock? How was that going to work?

Furthermore, going back into the Old Testament: when kings Hezekiah and Josiah kept the Passover for a very large number of people in each case (see 2 Chronicles 30:1-26 and 2 Chronicles 35:1-19), did they actually select the Passover lambs 4 days before they kept the Passover? And when they kept the Passover in the 2nd month, did they select the Passover animals four days before killing them in the 2nd month?

Is there in fact any indication or evidence that after the original Passover in Egypt the Israelites ever again selected the Passover lambs four days before killing them? Or was this instruction for the 10th day dropped after it had been observed for the very first Passover? Today it has very obviously been dropped from the New Testament observance of the Passover.

These are just some things to think about.

Now the 10th day is also clearly associated with Satan. There is the obvious connection between the 10th day of the 1st month (Passover lamb selected) and the 10th day of the 7th month (Atonement, Satan sent away). The 6 months between these two events refer to a 6,000-year period.

Now once again, the events on the 10th day of the 7th month happened first, when Satan tempted Adam and Eve to sin in Genesis 3. And the specific event attached to the 10th day of the 1st month (selection of the Passover lamb) is a response to what had happened in Genesis 3.

Leviticus 16 is a discussion of the 10th day of the 7th month (see Leviticus 16:29-30). This is the chapter that discusses how Satan (represented by the Azazel goat) will be dealt with by God. Let’s notice one specific activity from that context.

Here God instructed the High Priest to place absolutely all sins and transgressions and iniquities on the head of Satan. What applied to Israel at that time, applies to all people today. This verse refers to absolutely every sin from every category committed by any human being at any time being placed without conditions and without restrictions on Satan’s head.

Satan carries on his head the responsibility for every single sin that has ever been committed by anyone since the time of Adam. Satan carries the responsibility for every human sin that has been forgiven by God, as well as the responsibility for every human sin that has not been forgiven by God.

Every sin involves at least two guilty parties ... Satan plus one or more human beings. Satan’s guilt always remains, whether or not the human beings involved have their sins forgiven by God. And that responsibility for human sins started when Satan persuaded Adam and Eve to sin on the original 10th day back in Genesis.

That responsibility for all human sins is indicated by the 10th day of the 7th month in our present annual cycle, the Day of Atonement.

While the Passover was not a part of God’s original plan at the time of Adam’s creation, it was what Satan had done in the Garden in Eden on the first 10th day, that necessitated the later inclusion of the Passover in the revised plan after the flood.

Before the flood Jesus Christ had not yet been selected to give His life for our sins. But if Satan had not succeeded in getting Adam and Eve to sin, then "Plan A" would have continued for 7,000 years, and the Passover would never have been inserted into God’s plan. If Satan’s influence on human beings had not been so powerful during the 1,600+ years before the flood (persuading in excess of 99.999999% of human beings to reject God’s ways), then there would never have been a change in plan, there would never have been a worldwide flood, and there would never have been the Passover.

So while the Passover was only introduced into God’s plan for people who lived after the flood, the need for the Passover was really established when Satan deceived Adam and Eve into sinning on the 10th day of what was back then the 1st month (and what is now the 7th month). From that day onwards things only got worse, with the first human being ever to be born becoming a murderer. Human beings then literally destroyed the earth and also filled it with violence (see Genesis 6:11-12). They ruined what God had created.

[Comment: The Hebrew word translated as "corrupt" in the expression "the earth was corrupt" literally means "destroy, ruin, pervert".]

This is where 1 Peter 3:19-20 ties into the picture.

During the time when Noah was building the ark Jesus Christ confronted Satan and the demons and read them the riot act, spelling out their responsibility for the coming flood, and no doubt also spelling out their ultimate penalty. Perhaps Christ also referred to "the Passover" that He would include in the revised plan after the flood, a feature that would drastically reduce Satan’s "success rate" in leading human beings into eventual annihilation. In effect Jesus Christ might have said something like: Satan, now We are fully prepared to deal with your perverse influence on human beings.

The selection of the Passover lamb on the 10th day is tied to the time when the need for the Passover was first created. The need for the Passover really came into existence when Adam and Eve sinned ... on the 10th day of the 1st month at that time (which is today the 7th month). 1,536 years of experience with human beings showed God that on that original 10th day God had not really been prepared to effectively deal with that need ... because God had simply not anticipated the utter depravity of the human mind, which is only evil continually.

Understand that when we are prepared to deal with every need that could ever possibly arise, then we will never have to change any of our plans ... because we are prepared for everything. The only reason we ever have to change some of our plans is because a need has arisen for which we are not prepared. Recognition of a new need comes first, and responding to that need comes second.

So after those 1,536 years God accepted that "the minor changes" God had implemented on the original 10th day, after Adam and Eve had sinned, were not enough to deal with the problems that had started on that 10th day. And then God decided on "the major changes" which He implemented after the flood.

We might note another point.

With 6 months being inserted in front of Jesus Christ’s original first coming to this earth, the need for the Passover (i.e. the selection of the Passover lamb) was established by the first human sins; and so that need is also inserted 6 months in front of the first human sins ever committed. And from the 10th day of the 7th month (in the revised annual cycle) this "need for the Passover" is moved forward to the 10th day of the 1st month.

The "selection date" expresses "the recognition" of a need. The day when Adam and Eve sinned (i.e. the 10th day) was "the day of recognition". So in that way the 10th day became the "selection date".

In the original yearly cycle, which started in the autumn, it was impossible to include the Passover. Therefore the selection of the Passover lamb also cannot refer to the time when the real Passover Lamb (i.e. Jesus Christ) actually was selected. And therefore the selection date for the Passover lamb can only refer to when the real Passover Lamb (i.e. Jesus Christ) should have been selected!

You follow?

In the original cycle, which began with the autumn equinox, Nisan would have been the 7th month. So in that cycle Passover would have been the 14th day of the 7th month, and the Passover animal selection date would have been the 10th day of the 7th month. But if the Passover cannot be in the 7th month, then the selection of the Passover animal also cannot be in the 7th month. That is simply not a possibility.

So:

God decided to revise the plan 1,536 years after creating Adam. And in establishing the Passover in the revised plan, representing the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, God decided to also highlight the date when "the need for the Passover" came into existence. That need arose when Adam and Eve sinned on that 10th day, though in the original plan there was no provision for meeting that need. That provision was only made in the plan that went into force after the flood.

Satan is responsible for that need coming into existence. And the 10th day (i.e. Atonement) points very specifically to Satan.

And that basically covers the revised plan of God.

Yes obviously, I have speculated a great deal in this article. And yes, some unanswered questions remain. I don’t profess to have an answer for every possible question.

Now you decide for yourself what makes sense to you, and what doesn’t. But keep in mind that God has used all the annual observances He instituted at the time of Moses to represent various steps in God’s revised plan of salvation for mankind. And especially keep in mind that the events which are now in the second half of the year (i.e. events placed in the month of Tishri) really came first in the original annual cycle that God had established before the flood.

And the three events placed in the first half of the year (i.e. Passover, Feast of U.B. and Pentecost) all represent God’s response to what had happened before the flood.

Frank W Nelte