"A people without a heritage are easily persuaded."
Karl Marx
The term at CSU had ended for the 'Holiday Season.' The 'politically correct' words for what used to be the 'Christmas Holiday' irritated Mike to no end. But after Michael had found out some other information on the establishment of December 25th day of Christmas by the Catholics, it bugged him even more!
It turns out that December 25th was a special pagan holiday and the yearsago pope decided that setting December 25th as a 'Christian' holiday, it would be easier to convert pagans to Christianity!
So in a 'Postmodern' America, with 'relativetruth,' using a pagan holiday to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, was NO PROBLEM! But truth was very important to Michael. So after Micheal’s father had found out about the beginnings of Christmas, Michael dug a little more about the birth of his Savior.
When Mike was young, the word he always heard was 'it was not recorded in Scripture, so we cannot know the date of the birth of Jesus Christ.' But later on in years, after meeting a few Messianic Jews, he found that the words he heard as a youngster was in total error!
The words spoken to young Michael were words spoken by a Mainstream Christian person. A Catholic, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Mormon, some that do not see the Old Testament from the same God that wrote the New Testament spoke to Mike. But Michael found out that if you see how the Old and New Testaments should be called the First Testament and the Second Testament because they flow together, you can see how that date of birth is written in Scripture!
The birth of Christ was easily written out by one of Micheal’s
Messianic Jewish friends.
Yeshua's Birth and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot)
1. According to Luke 1:5, Zechariah the husband of Elizabeth, is a priest and he is listed in the order of Abiyah, (Zechariah's wife Elizabeth is a cousin to Mary (Mariam ) the mother of Jesus (Yeshua)).
2. I Chronicles 24:118 In this text King David divides the descendants of Aharon into 24 divisions.
3. I Chronicles 28:1113 This text tells us the assignment of the priests as given to by King David.
4. I Chronicles 9:25 According to this verse the priests coming to Jerusalem to serve were to serve one week.
5. II Chronicles 23:8 These verses tell us that the week of service for the priests would start on the sabbath and end on the Sabbath.
6. Deuteronomy 16:16 There are three feasts (moedim) in which every male is required to appear before the Lord. These three feasts are Unleavened Bread, Pentecost (Shavout), and Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot.)
Summary of what we know
1. Zechariah is a priest in the division of Abiyah.
2. King David divided the priests into 24 divisions.
3. The priests serve as prescribed by King David.
4. The period of service was to be seven days.
5. The start of the service would begin on the Sabbath.
6. Three times a year every male must appear at the Temple.
The Hebrew calendar is a lunarbased month having either 29 or 30 days for a total of 51 weeks in a normal year. A leap month (Adar II) is added every 2nd or 3rd year and it is taken by many that the casting of lots determined the time of ones service. So if we take 24 divisions, plus the three festivals, we have 27 weeks leaving us with another 24 weeks in which case each division would serve a second time. This fact is confirmed by the Mishnah.
We know that the division of Abiyah is the eighth division according to I Chronicles 24. Two of the three pilgrim festivals occur before of during the first eight weeks of the religious year, thus Abiyah would not serve until the 10th week. This is the second Sabbath of the month of Sivan (which would start between the 12th and the 18th day).
According to Luke 1:2324 we know when Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist) was conceived. Verse 23/24 states, "When the time of service was complete, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion." Thus Elizabeth conceives on the third week of Sivan (between the 19th and the 25th). If we assume a standard 40week pregnancy then Yochanan would have been born on or about the 15th of Nisan i.e. the time of Passover. Now that we have the time of Yochanan's birth we can calculate the time of Yeshua's birth.
According to Luke 1:2633 Miriam (Mary) visits he cousin Elizabeth in the sixth month of her pregnancy. According to this text Miriam becomes pregnant with Yeshua six months after her cousin Elizabeth. If Yochanan is conceived on Sivan 25, then Yeshua is conceived on Chislev 25. The 25th of Chislev is the start of the festival of Hanukkah which commemorated the rededication of the Temple following the Maccabean revolt. If we count forth week from Chislev 25 we arrive at Tishri 15 which is the Feast of Tabernacles. Thus if our calculations are correct the forerunner of Messiah was born on Passover, Yeshua was conceived on Hanukkah and Messiah's birth occurred on Sukkot.
Michael feels calmness. Michael thinks to himself after being irritated my some of man's ideas, how God is in control. The Bible is comforting to Mike.
The term is done, and Pamela made an excellent grade from Mike's class. Michael thinks more of Pamela. 'How can I approach Pamela?' Michael ponders in his mind. But as thoughts flow in Mike's ideas, he scoots the mouse of a Debian powered box at home to check some email. A couple of emails from CSU staff pop up, a few from conservative political groups appear, and in the last of the emails is one from Pamela!
It appears that Pamela wants to try some Debian development in making wvdial a windowed program instead of a script bash file, and she had some questions on the hows of it all. 'Ummm' Mike thinks a while as he clicks the 'reply' button on the Evolution email bar menu.
He ponders on the best words to use. He thinks, 'we still have a few weeks of the Christmas vacation before the next term, so we could meet somewhere off campus, maybe at a Perkins somewhere?' It was still a little early today, maybe we could meet a little before lunch, eat, chat a little on software development, and see how we are directed, Mike ponders.
He puts his thoughts all in words and sends off a message to Pamela. Michael gets up, and goes over the turn on a radio. He had it on a local country station, but he changes it to the AM band just for some politically minded talk radio host. He goes to KOA and gets some of the latest news.
In the more recent news, in Mike's thoughts, it did not make much difference if the person was Democrat or Republican because they ended up doing nearly the same thing! George W. had said a lot about cutting spending and decreasing the deficit, but his expenses beat the past times of having a Democrat as the President!
There wasn't a lot of different news, so Michael sat back down at this desk and looked for a reply from Pamela. "Ahha!" Mike thought. Pamela replied "Sound's nice, where, and when" in her email. Michael gently keyboards in a reply, "How about 11 o'clock at the Perkins off campus on College?" Michael leaned back in his desk chair to spy his old iBook G4 under some books on the table next to his desk.
Michael had purchased this iBook back in the days of Tiger, the Mac OS X. Tiger was okay, but Michael liked to write in OpenOffice and there was always trouble having to go through the Xterminal to write. Michael went to NeoOffice that worked okay after he made the RAM memory bigger, up to 512 Mb. But in any development, funds were needed to get anything to work on that Mac. So Michael went with the latest Debian PowerPC Sid. OpenOffice worked perfectly, and the development compilers came with the distribution.
Perfect!
Mike checked for Pamela's reply, "yes, I can be there!" Michael grabbed the iBook and a coat and heads for the front door. He thinks as he strides to his old GM Cobalt, 'even if I'm an hour early, I can figure out what kind of code we need, and how do I want to appear before Pamela?'
Michael traveled to Perkins, chose a booth in the back corner, popped his iBook up and caught his breath in a few moments. The waitress appeared, Mike ordered a coffee and began to check if his Airport card worked with the local Wifi system. The signal was above 80% and Mike's older version of Mozilla Firefox seemed to be on the Web just fine.
Mike thought of Pamela's idea of coding for wvdial. It's a dialup script, does Pamela still dialup at home? Fort Collins went with a citywide WiFi a few years ago. Why would Pamela want to gui code wvdial? Some people in rural areas, limited on a budget, that could not afford a popular satellite broadband hookup, would only have a dialup as an option.
Michael linked to a Debian mirror page to download the source code for wvdial. Mike thought about two possibilities to get to a gui appearance for wvdial. We could try to 'redo' all the code in a java script or just use a java gui to talk to the code already written. The last idea sounded better, more along a hacker method. Why redo something already done?
Michael looked up from his iBook screen. Pamela was there watching Michael at work with his laptop computer. "Oh, excuse me Pamela, I was beginning work on the wvdial project!" said Michael.
"That's okay, I just arrived. And thank you so much to meet with me on this wvdial development," said Pamela. "I've been thinking of methods to use to get a wvdial gui program, and I will need some instruction to wrap the code up as a 'deb' file too" said Pamela.
"Oh, tying the code up as a 'deb' file is pretty easy now with Debian" said Mike. "Here, have a seat, and the waitress will get you something to drink" Michael said quickly.
Micheal’s thoughts raced as Pamela took her coat off, and sat down in the booth across from him. Pamela was attractive, but as a teacher in class, Michael had to keep any relationship to a teacherstudent relationship. But now was different. He looked at her face, they made mutual eye contact. She had a sparkle in her eye. Michael gasped for a breath, he forgot to breathe.
"Oh, thank you for coming. Pamela, why do you want to do gui code for wvdial? Fort Collins has citywide WiFi. Why to you want to do a dialup?" questioned Michael.
"Well, Mr. Stay," said Pamela. "No, call me Michael, we are not in the classroom," said Michael. "Okay, Michael, I have some friends that have no chance of broadband for their home computers, so I want to make the conversion to Debian easier for them" Pamela mentioned as she brought her HewlettPackard laptop out of her study bag.
Michael watches Pamela unfold her laptop. As it was asleep, she touches the pad and a Gnome screen appears. "Pamela, besides wvdial, maybe a gui and more text response would be good for the Debian 'pppconfig', 'pon' and 'poff'" Michael says as he peers at her screen to see what appears.
"I haven't used 'pppconfig' very much at all. I like the text responses from wvdial. But the text in a gui window would be much more pleasant" said Pamela as she glances from her laptop screen so meet Michael's eyes looking into her eyes. She gazes a moment to see what seems curiosity in Michael's eyes.
Michael questions Pamela, "we did not dwell much on student faith in class, but from your conversations in class, I suspect that you are a homeschooled Christian?" "Of course" answers Pamela as she continues to gaze into Michael's eyes.
"I ended my last six years at home. At the end of fifth grade, I was wanderingtheweb, and I ran across the AnswersinGenesis web page. I looked through their material and I found out about the Humanist Manifesto and how American public schools are teaching a religion! I was under the impression that of course, it was all 'scientific fact,' was it not?" sternly said Michael.
"My parents got word of the Humanism being taught, and so I never
went to public school" said Pamela as she looks into Michael's face.
"It seemed that way in class Pamela, but I did not want to go public with my curiosity" said Michael. "And I also suspect that you are in a mainstream Christian church also" Michael calmly asked.
"Yes, we are associated with the Baptists" said Pamela.
"Okay" said Michael, as he quietly calculates where he should go in this discussion. "I also assume that you are told that Jesus was resurrected on an early Sunday morning?" said Michael.
"Yes" said Pamela, and her eyes take on a new look of a question. "If I present scriptural evidence in a different way, could you believe in a new idea for you?" said Michael. "Yes, I think so" Pamela replied.
"All right Pamela" said Michael as he prepares his scriptural points to make. "In Matthew Chapter 12 verse 40, Jesus said he would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, did he not?" "Yes" said Pamela.
"Then, how does Good Friday to Easter Sunday fulfill that scripture?"
"Hmmmm, I never tried to do that. All the other Gospels just say 'three days,' I never tried to squeeze another night into a Good Friday to Easter Sunday time" said Pamela.
"Just hang on a moment, and I will add some other scriptures to the resurrection, okay?" said Michael. "Now, go to Daniel chapter 9 verse 27 where it says that 'in the midst of the week' there will be an end to the sacrifices in the temple. And wait as I get my King James Bible up to go wordbyword on that one" Michael mentions as he gets his Bible verse on his screen.
"Here, I have been using a New King James Version, it's all in Daniel's 70 week vision and many interpretations take a day equals a year, but this one may have a dual interpretation. In verse 27, it says 'But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.' In a seven day week, what is the middle of the week?" said Michael.
"Wednesday" said Pamela.
In anticipation, Michael replies "Correct, the crucifixion before sunset, to Thursday afternoon is one day, one night."
"Okay" said Pamela.
Following the series, Michael replies "Friday afternoon is two days, two nights, and Saturday is three days and three nights. But lets look at times when the ladies go to care for the body."
"But what about the weekly Sabbath? It was Good Friday, the crucifixion happened just before the Sabbath!" exclaims Pamela.
"Go to John chapter 19 and verse 31. The Sabbath just before the crucifixion was a High Day, a High Sabbath. Check the First Testament, Leviticus 23:5 on the fourteenth day of the First Month at twilight, it is the Lord's Passover. So during a year, some weeks have TWO Sabbaths!" said Michael. "And see, in the Good Friday, Easter Sunday story, when did the ladies prepare their ointments?"
"Oh, I always thought they just worked fast Saturday night" Pamela pleads.
"Another way to look at it, is after the Passover Sabbath, which was Thursday or the fifth day of the week, on the sixth day of the week, or Friday to us, the ladies prepare their ointments for Jesus' body. And here is where we need to look closely at the times of the ladies visiting the sepulcher." said Michael.
Pamela gets her King James Version Bible up on her screen and says
"Now in John chapter 20, verse one, Mary is going to the sepulcher early Sunday morning, right?"
"Nope, when does a Jewish day start?" asks Michael.
"Sunset" says Pamela. "Right, look at the wording in verse one" said Michael as he looks at his HP screen. "The older King James Version is good, in that they call it 'the dawn,' which means 'the beginning of' of the First day of the week. New King James says: 'Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark.' To early settlers in America, the dawn of the day was morning. But when you are a Jew, the dawn of the day, is just after sunset! Saturday night!" exclaims Michael.
"So you think the resurrection happened on Saturday afternoon" replied Pamela.
"Yes, Pamela. And so the first day of the week, mainstream Christian churches don't have any claim to fame and an excuse to make Sunday a special day. And bytheway, Catholics or rather, the Vatican, began their antisemitism by not worshiping on the same day as the Jews" presented Michael.
"I see..... so for a Christian, the correct day of worship is the seventh day of the week, starting at sunset on Friday" proclaimed Pamela. To be sure he has eye contact, Michael pauses for a moment, looks calmly into Pamela's eyes, and states "correct."
"I knew someone who was a SeventhDay Adventist, and I heard a little about Ellen G. White, their prophetess, but are there any other Christians who keep the Sabbath?" inquires Pamela.
"You bet there are. Maybe not as large as the Adventists, there are many groups that have no idea of other groups in America or around the world. So there is a group, that is a nondenominational, called the Bible Sabbath Association, that keeps track of Sabbath keeping groups in America. There are a lot of little groups that may meet in someone's home or lease some space from a Sunday church. Also, in recent years, there are more and more Messianic Jews!" exclaims Michael.
"More on that one too" said Michael. "Not everyone believes the idea is scriptural, but I have heard from many of my Sabbath keeping friends, of something called the 'Great Exodus' where America suffers a population decrease when a large percentage of American Jews, go to Israel!" continues Michael. “The Jewish population in New York is almost equal to the Jewish number out of the State of Israel. That is why Muslim radicals call America, Zionist!”
"Hmmm, my father, Jeremy Ziegler, wrote a paper called 'The State Religion, and a Way Out' and in it, he has a part where he called 'The Time of the Gentiles is Done' based on Luke 21:24 where Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem and how the Jews are scattered around the world, until...." Pamela looks to her laptop screen to reference the verse, "the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" said Pamela.
"And in a time when the American public gets confused on when life starts, and when it ends, and relationships in between birth and death, my father says the time of America being a world leader in great things, is done" Pamela states as she puts her hands together with her fingers extended, and her hands then quickly part in a downward motion and then flow apart to her body width with her palms facing downward.
Michael looks at her motion and comments, "Very good, a point for all to understand. Do you use signlanguage often?"
"In some situations, it comes naturally. Our family had a friend who was deaf. He was around at lunch time often, and so the 'all done' sign is very familiar for me." said Pamela.
"Very good. Every once in a while, I see a deaf couple in a department store, and their conversation is so quick. I know some signlanguage, but they talk in paragraphs at a time. It seems nearly supersonic! And I have found out that the deaf population in America is like a 'subculture' of America. It's like they were living in a different world to most of America's population" said Michael.
"Yes, to the general population, if it's not on the 6 o'clock news, it's not important" said Pamela. "Uhhuh, if the person is not a superstar musician or a proathlete, they are not important. My Savior, Jesus Christ, used to be on most people's hero list, but no longer" said Michael.
Michael and Pamela sipped some coffee as they continued to talk about subjects ranging from religion, families, kids, parents, schools, the environment, politics, farms, cities, mountains, friends from Jamaica, Jews and Messianic Jews around the world. These two people spent more time talking than some people spend while dating for two months!
As the waiter started the vacuum cleaner around the corner from Pamela and Michael, the two looked at each other with a grin. "I think we are a little late, we are being vacuumed out of Perkins!" exclaimed Michael.
"Right, it's a quarter after midnight now" said Pamela.
"But Pamela, we do need to spend some time on a gui with wvdial, correct?" asked Michael. "Oh course Michael, name a time and place, and I'll be there" said Pamela.
The two gathered their coats, and laptops and chatted as they made their way outside to their cars.