The Biblical Calendar and the Prophetic Timeline
By Karen Engle, Editor-in-Chief of ICEJ USA
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth”; and it was so. (Genesis 1:14–15)
As December approaches, many people eagerly await the start of the new year, and with it, they reflect on their hopes and dreams for the future. However, many Bible readers are unaware that the calendar most of the world follows today is not the biblical calendar that God established in Genesis and Exodus—and the new year does not begin in January. In fact, God has a calendar, and the Bible tells us all about it. His system of days, months, years, and seasons is different from the one we follow today—and there is much we can learn from it about God and how He has worked over time.
In ancient biblical times, people didn’t have digital clocks to keep track of time in hours, minutes, and seconds. And they certainly didn’t have calendars on their phones or hung on their walls to alert them to the number of days in a particular month or the date of a particular holiday. But they did have a system given to them by God.
The Biblical Calendar: Day, Week, Month, and Year
The principles of God’s calendar date back to Genesis 1, which reveals that on the fourth day of creation, God established the sun, moon, and stars:
Then God said: “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. (vv. 14–15)
Notice that God created “lights in the expanse of the heavens” for light, but also for His calendar system of signs and seasons, for days and years—in short, for the measurement of time. The lunar cycle defined the months, while the solar cycle determined the year.
The Biblical Month
The sun divided day from night, establishing a biblical day. But the moon provided the division of the month—one new moon to the next equaled one lunar, biblical month. As the moon waned, ending one month, the children of Israel awaited the new moon—and once it appeared, a new month began. We see this in Isaiah 66:22–23, where the prophet foretells that this is how God will count the months in His future kingdom:
“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I will make shall remain before me,” says the Lord, “so shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before me,” says the Lord. Interestingly, Exodus 12:2 shows that God numbered the months based on when Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt, the first Passover: “This month shall be to you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.” This was the Hebrew month of Abib—roughly our March/April. Nahum Sarna writes in the JPS Torah commentary that God did this as a stark visual—Israel would begin a new order of life dominated by the awareness of God’s active presence in history: “The entire religious calendar of Israel would henceforth reflect this reality by numbering the months of the year from the month of Exodus.”
At the same time, God formally established the Sabbath, linking God’s rest to the six days of creation (Exodus 20:8–11). God would organize His calendar according to His great works on behalf of the nation He had set apart to bring glory to His name: Israel.
Like the days of the Bible, God identified his months using ordinal numbers: “the first month,” “the second month,” and so on. Later, the children of Israel were given Hebrew names. However, while in Babylonian captivity, the Jews borrowed the names of the months from the Babylonian calendar. The first month, Abib, for example, became Nisan.
The Biblical Year
The first month of the year was determined by observing the ripeness of the early grain—barley—at a state of ripeness called abib (hence the Hebrew name for the first month). At the end of the year, farmers would check the ripeness of the barley, and if it was too immature, they would add a month to the calendar. God’s calendar is therefore solar-lunar. The lunar reckoning uniquely linked His calendar to the rainy seasons in Israel, which makes sense given that God’s feasts, listed in Leviticus 23, focused on Israel’s agriculture and the ripening of certain crops.
Starting the first month of the biblical year at the right time was of the utmost importance and influenced when Israel would celebrate each feast. For example, the Feast of Firstfruits required the priests to gather the first ripe fruits of the barley harvest in the later spring to offer before the Lord. If God’s people had not set the first month of the year according to His instructions—according to the ripening of the barley harvest—the first fruits of the barley harvest might not be ready for harvesting at harvest time.
The Biblical Calendar and Bible Interpretation
Knowing God’s calendar is certainly not a matter of salvation. However, it is what I call an “aid to Bible interpretation.” Understanding God’s method of measuring time can help us to understand not only what day or month He told the Israelites to celebrate a particular holiday or when an event occurred, but it also illuminates the greatness of His Word. When we understand days, months, and years according to God’s calendar system, we begin to see the exactness of the days and times that He has caused—and still causes—things to happen. And that is important when it comes to Bible prophecy.
Let’s go back to that first Passover. Recall that the month in which the children of Israel came out of Egypt was the first month of the year, and on the tenth day of the first month, they were to take a lamb without blemish into their house “until the fourteenth day of the same month,” when they were to slaughter the lamb at twilight (Exodus 12:1–6). This may seem like trivial information—until we consider that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was proclaimed King of Israel, it was Passover time.
John 12:1 says that six days before the Passover, which would be Nisan 9, Jesus was in Bethany with Martha and Mary. "The next day" (v. 12) the spotless Lamb of God, chosen before the foundation of the world to take away our sins, entered Jerusalem on the tenth of Nisan, the first month. Five days later, before sunset on the fourteenth, the Lamb of God was slain. God revealed in Exodus the day and month when Jesus would be crucified through the shadow of the first Passover.
There are many other examples of specific dates in Scripture, and understanding God’s calendar helps us understand those dates. Consider just one more, Ezekiel 24:1–2:
In the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me (Ezekiel), saying, “Son of man, write down the name of the day, this very day—the king of Babylon began his siege of Jerusalem on this very day.”
Understanding God's calendar helps us know that the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began in the winter on the tenth day of the tenth month of Tebeth.
How We Switched From the Biblical Calendar...
Julius Caesar reformed the existing Roman calendar in 46 BC, calling it the Julian calendar. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD and the Jews were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, the Roman Empire took control of Judah, and the Julian calendar became the standard. It remained in use until it was reformed again in 1582 under Gregory XIII, further reflecting the solar cycle. This Gregorian calendar is the calendar now used in most of the world. Over time, the church moved away from the biblical, solar-lunar calendar centered on God’s annual cycle of festivals, toward a strictly solar calendar centered around Roman, pagan holidays.
After all, Satan does not want God's people to follow the biblical calendar because, like many other types and shadows in the Old Testament, it points to the Israelite Messiah and confirms the accuracy of God's word. Satan's purpose has always been to lie and deceive. Even Daniel said, "He will think to change the times (seasons) and the laws" (Daniel 7:25).
Why Understanding God’s Biblical Calendar Is Important Today
What should Christians do? Should we move away from the current Gregorian calendar and switch to the biblical calendar? Practically, that would not make sense; much of the world follows this calendar, and we must be able to function accordingly. However, understanding God’s calendar sheds light not only on the Scriptures and the timing of events in both the Old and New Testaments, but it also helps us to understand more deeply what God is doing in our time.
But perhaps the most important reason to understand God’s biblical calendar today is its connection to His feast days. Since all of God’s feast days point to our Messiah, knowing God’s calendar will only enhance our understanding of those particular feast days, giving us a greater understanding of who He is and how perfect His Word is. God’s feast days are a shadow of His plan of redemption throughout all time, and knowing God’s calendar provides incredible “clues” found in His feast days not only to the first coming of Jesus, but also to His second coming.
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