Why look for the new moon (in Jerusalem)?

Rhy Bezuidenhout 2 yrs

The Torah community is very much set on keeping Shabbat and the 7 set feasts / “appointed times” of Father. BUT how often do we look at the new moon as a monthly feast, yes an actual time of feasting where no commerce is to be done.

I do not want to bog you down with too many verses, so here are just a few talking about it:

Numbers 10:10 Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feasts, and on the first days of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a reminder of you before your God. I am the Lord your God.”

Ezekiel 46:1 ‘Thus says the Lord God, “The gate of the inner court facing east shall be shut the six working days; but it shall be opened on the sabbath day and opened on the day of the new moon.

1 Samuel 20:5 So David said to Jonathan, “Behold, tomorrow is the new moon, and I ought to sit down to eat with the king. But let me go, that I may hide myself in the field until the third evening.

2 Kings 4:23 He said, “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath.” And she said, “It will be well.”

Amos 8:5 saying, “When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain, And the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest scales,

Isaiah 1:13-14 “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.

Hosea 2:11 “I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths and all her festal assemblies.

Once you start looking for it then you realize that it is an important feast date.

Now here is the clincher: Father has appointed it to us and it will be resumed (as we don't keep it as appointed at this time) on the New Earth.

Isaiah 66 “And it shall be that from New Moon to New Moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down and worship before Me,” says the Lord.

We ought to keep the new moon feast as instructed by Father.

So when is the feast and how do we determine the time?

Let's imagine we are invited to a birthday party of our best friend on a given day at 11am. He/she lives in a different country and therefore time zone. Do we then look at our watch in our time zone and calculate our trip so that we arrive at 11am our local time at our friend's party? Well, if you do that and dependent on how much of a time difference there is, you might be hours too early or too late for the party. You have to take your friend's time zone into consideration when making your travel plans.

If we then know that the New Jerusalem will be Father's abode and that we will have to shop up there on specific dates, then why look at our local moon to determine which day the new moon feast is to be kept at? Wouldn't it be more accurate to take our lead from the city which bears His name? If we are to go at an appointed day to worship Father then why not look at where He is? The other side of the story is, what would the punishment be for turning up a day late as we didn’t plan correctly? How many times will a person be forgiven for not showing up on time???

Now you may ask, "well, the new earth isn't here yet so why bother?"

My view is that if we say that we want to follow Father's will as best as we can with the knowledge we have, then shouldn't we at least try to keep the feast the way it is meant to be kept even when we live outside of our promised land? It shouldn't be an excuse to say that "we are scattered amongst the nations and can therefore not keep Torah as we should".

If that is an acceptable excuse then for that matter, eating swine is totally permissible as it is widely available and everyone is doing it... That excuse just doesn’t make sense to me.

I do acknowledge that we are not living in the ideal circumstances, but why do we chose not to keep certain laws when it doesn't suit us, but others we deep to the best of our ability and will even judge others when they don’t do it the way we believe it should be done. Shouldn’t we be using the same measuring stick at all times?

I have only over the past month come to understand that the new moon is an actual feast day and have to date (11 Dec 23) not kept is as a feast. I will be doing so going forward and want to invite you to you Camp Emphraim every month when they try to view the new moon from Jerusalem. You can find out more on the Events page.

I want to close with this one verse: Psalm 81:3 Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, at the full moon, on our feast day.

(Which suddenly makes me wonder whether the full moon is the new moon. ?)

I would love to hear your view on this as I might be totally missing the mark.