Post by Allyn on Feb 23, 2010 17:05:32 GMT -5
"Unto Us A Child Is Born"
In my study years ago on the seven feasts of Israel a most intriguing and almost startling application of the system came my way during the research. Perhaps this whimsical little look will serve as an example of how God's formulas pervade this earthly, human life.
I was looking at the cycles of the Jewish calendar and how it is based upon the 28 day cycle of the moon. The moon cycle is a far better and consistant cycle over that of the sun, its phases are dependable and within shorter periods. The events of the New Testament and its events which were future to the pre AD70 period Jew - indeed, all of God's plan from chaos to eternity - are ingeniously revealed through the nature of timing of these seven annual feasts. These cycles reminded me of the natural, God placed cycles within the physical being of a women. This reminder caused me to study the possible harmony of the women's cycle and her pregnency up to and including the birth of her child.
This pleasant assignment I had given to myself led me to the many fascinating birth stories in the Bible, including, of course, the wondrous birth of our Lord. I wanted to find some theological principle, perhaps some hidden truth in the Scriptures, about how each of us are born. I wanted to know if the Scriptures held some secret as to how God makes us.
My research involved the actual questioning of a few doctors and obstetricians who had, themselves, delivered perhaps thousands of babies and were closely connected with prenatal care.
At this point I give you the results of my study and the conclusions I have come to as to how a baby develops within the mother.
The average pregnancy is 280 days and is counted from the first day of the last menstrual cycle before conception. An "Ideal Jewish year" is 280 days. It starts exactly at the spring equinox, with the first day of Nisan, the new moon of the first month, occurring on the first day of spring, March 21st. Interestingly, I found that a pregnancy of 280 days, begun on March 21, would end on a very interesting date, December 25. We don't know if Christmas Day was actually the date of the birth of Jesus, but we do know that December 25 is the accurate date of Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication. which our Lord did commemorate:
(John 10:22)
22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter.
That discovery led me to think that there must be something very biblical indeed about the pregnancy term, and I asked the professionals for more details
For the sake of space and easier reading I will from this point on condense my original article putting doctor statements first and then the biblical comparrison as to the feasts.
How A Baby is Made and How it Develops -
Doctor: On the fourteenth day of the first month, the egg appears.
Bible: Lev. 23:5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover.
Notes: God's original instruction for the observance of Passover. The Jews use an egg on the Passover table as symbolic of the new life they were granted by the sacrifice of the lamb in Egypt. The egg, of course, appears in the Easter celebration as well, symbolic of the same thing, although not from biblical sources. The egg is an appropropriate man-made symbol of a new life, and I was fascinated that the fourteenth day of pregnancy does the same thing as the fourteenth day of God's festival year: It brings the chance of a new life.
Doctor: Fertilization must occur within twenty-four hours or the egg will pass on.
Bible: The next feast, Unleavened Bread, must occur the very next night, the fifteenth day of the first month, according to Lev. 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.
Notes: Not only did the two momentous prenatal events occur on the right days, but they were also the appropriate events. The egg, of course , for passover, and the idea of fertilization - the planting of the seed - for Unleavened Bread, the burial of our Lord. His crucifixion on Passover gave each of us the chance for life everlasting. His burial in the earth, prepared for each of us, the glorious resurrection to come.
I realized that this third feast is not on a definite time cycle. It simply occurs on the Sunday during the week of Unleavened Bread. It could be the day after, or it could be almost a week away. The question is, then, what happened next in the birth process.
Doctor: That's a little bit indeterminate. The fertilized egg travels down the tube at its own speed towards the uterus. It may take anywhere from two to six days before it implants.
Bible: This is very suggestive of the Feast of First Fruits, the spring planting.
Notes: The correct medical term is implantation and it marks the moment when the fertilized egg arrives safely in the uterus and begins it miraculous growth to a human being. So far we see that God designed the conception of each of us in accordance with those first three feasts, so appropriately fulfilled by Christ. Would the system continue?
The next one was the tough one. It seemed that things were happening fast on the pregnancy schedule, but the seven feasts' schedule now called for that long wait until Pentecost. What would be the next development with our implanted egg?
Doctor: We have a slowly developing embryo here for a long time. It goes through stages, but there's really no dramatic change until it becomes an actual fetus. That's the next big event. The chart of fetal development shows the small but noticeable changes that go on over a period of fifty days. Up until the fiftieth day you wouldn't know if you're going to have a duck or a cocker spaniel. But on the fiftieth day of the embryo, it becomes a human fetus
Bible: "A new creature". On that day of Pentecost, those as yet unregenerate Israelites at the Temple became truly "new cratures". They became spiritual. They received life eternal. They were not the same now as they were before. They would now go on to another life outside the confines of the fleshly bodies they were in, in the manner that that fetus would go on to another life outside the body of its mother.
Notes: The doctors made the point that every scheduled event in the birth of the baby varied somewhat with the particular case, just as the length of the entire pregnancy would vary from mother to mother. The medical chart had measured its fifty days from fertilization rather than from implantation. After the seventh week, following conception, this embryo - this little human life form - would become that one creature created in God's own image.
I asked the doctors what the next event would be. I was not disappointed.
Doctor: For a period of time there are no big events. Once the fetus started on its growth into a human being ready to be born, the progress in a general way was one with nothing momentous happening. The baby had developed early and now was only gaining size and strength. Only small perfections occurred during the next stage.
Note: One of these perfections coincided exactly with the next feast.
Doctor: the perfection to arrive at the beginning of the seventh month of pregnancy was the babies hearing. "The Definitive Williams Obstetrics" stated that the baby's hearing was now fully developed. At the first day of the seventh month, the baby could discriminate a sound for what it really was.
Note: For example, a trumpet was a trumpet. Just in time for the Lord to descend from heaven with a shout and with the sound of the trump of God, that baby could perceive the sounds.
Bible: Lev. 25:8-10
8 ‘And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.
Doctor: The final important changes the baby goes through are in the blood. It was necessary for the fetal blood, which carried the mother's oxygen through the baby's system, to change in such a way that a baby could carry the oxygen that it, itself, would obtain upon birth. Technically, the hemoglobin of the blood would have to change from that of the fetus to that of a self-respirating and circulating human being. The fetus does not breathe, but rather depends on the oxygen obtained through the mothers blood circulation. Naturally, this system must be changed before birth, and that change occurred in the second week of the seventh month, and to be precise, on the tenth day.
Bible: "The blood acceptable" rings through my mind. "I have given you the blood for the remission of sin" Lev. 17:11), was God's statement. Indeed, each person of Israel had to present blood to the Lord through the high priest of Israel on the Day of Atonement. If that blood was acceptable, then there would be life.
Notes: But, of course, the fetus is not ready to be born. There remained still another feast. It fell on the fifteenth day of the seventh month.
Doctor: The fifteenth day of the seventh month is recognized as the dating of the beginning of the safe delivery period. This is the period when the lungs are developed and as long as they get their little lungs going, they can be born at that early time. Anytime before that the baby has little chance for survival. By the fifteenth day of the seventh month, a normal baby has two healthy lungs, and if born at that point, can take in its own air and live on it.
Bible: The Feast of Tabernacles is protrayed in this. Tabernacle is the house of the spirit, and it can be said that the spirit is the air in the Bible. Didn't God blow breath into Adam to make him live? Didn't Christ breathe the Holy Spirit upon His disciples? And even more so, in Ezekiel's dry bones vision, Ezekiel saw God make dead bones, sinews, and muscles come together into human beings, and then commanded the prophet, "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." (Ezekiel 37:9)
Notes: Tabernacles is the end of the road - the end of the feasts, the end of God's plan, the beginning of the kingdom. The baby would live if born at Tabernacles. The believer will live once he enters the kingdom.
The Eternal Light
The full end of the 280 day cycle of the baby and the 280 day cycle of an "Ideal Jewish year" coincide. The nature of Chanukah has to do with the eternal light in the Temple. God had made a great miracle on the occasion when Antiochus entered the Temple and sacrificed a sow on the altar, The Macabees threw him out but found only one container of consecrated oil - a day's supply - with which to maintain the eternal light. A miracle through pray allowed the one day's suply to last 8 days and it is celebrated each year at the lighting of the eight candles on the feast of Chanukah.
Chanukah lies on the right distance beyond Tabenacles to account for the actual birth of the baby. The 280 days expressed exactly ten of those mysterious twenty-eight day cycles of the moon, a system more in keeping with the way God would plan things than our Western nine-month pregnancy estimate. For the most part, this added festival clearly left a great symbol to the whole system. Beyond Tabernacles - beyond Kingdom - we have eternity with God. This then is the fulfillment of the eternal light.
In my study years ago on the seven feasts of Israel a most intriguing and almost startling application of the system came my way during the research. Perhaps this whimsical little look will serve as an example of how God's formulas pervade this earthly, human life.
I was looking at the cycles of the Jewish calendar and how it is based upon the 28 day cycle of the moon. The moon cycle is a far better and consistant cycle over that of the sun, its phases are dependable and within shorter periods. The events of the New Testament and its events which were future to the pre AD70 period Jew - indeed, all of God's plan from chaos to eternity - are ingeniously revealed through the nature of timing of these seven annual feasts. These cycles reminded me of the natural, God placed cycles within the physical being of a women. This reminder caused me to study the possible harmony of the women's cycle and her pregnency up to and including the birth of her child.
This pleasant assignment I had given to myself led me to the many fascinating birth stories in the Bible, including, of course, the wondrous birth of our Lord. I wanted to find some theological principle, perhaps some hidden truth in the Scriptures, about how each of us are born. I wanted to know if the Scriptures held some secret as to how God makes us.
My research involved the actual questioning of a few doctors and obstetricians who had, themselves, delivered perhaps thousands of babies and were closely connected with prenatal care.
At this point I give you the results of my study and the conclusions I have come to as to how a baby develops within the mother.
The average pregnancy is 280 days and is counted from the first day of the last menstrual cycle before conception. An "Ideal Jewish year" is 280 days. It starts exactly at the spring equinox, with the first day of Nisan, the new moon of the first month, occurring on the first day of spring, March 21st. Interestingly, I found that a pregnancy of 280 days, begun on March 21, would end on a very interesting date, December 25. We don't know if Christmas Day was actually the date of the birth of Jesus, but we do know that December 25 is the accurate date of Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication. which our Lord did commemorate:
(John 10:22)
22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter.
That discovery led me to think that there must be something very biblical indeed about the pregnancy term, and I asked the professionals for more details
For the sake of space and easier reading I will from this point on condense my original article putting doctor statements first and then the biblical comparrison as to the feasts.
How A Baby is Made and How it Develops -
Doctor: On the fourteenth day of the first month, the egg appears.
Bible: Lev. 23:5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover.
Notes: God's original instruction for the observance of Passover. The Jews use an egg on the Passover table as symbolic of the new life they were granted by the sacrifice of the lamb in Egypt. The egg, of course, appears in the Easter celebration as well, symbolic of the same thing, although not from biblical sources. The egg is an appropropriate man-made symbol of a new life, and I was fascinated that the fourteenth day of pregnancy does the same thing as the fourteenth day of God's festival year: It brings the chance of a new life.
Doctor: Fertilization must occur within twenty-four hours or the egg will pass on.
Bible: The next feast, Unleavened Bread, must occur the very next night, the fifteenth day of the first month, according to Lev. 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.
Notes: Not only did the two momentous prenatal events occur on the right days, but they were also the appropriate events. The egg, of course , for passover, and the idea of fertilization - the planting of the seed - for Unleavened Bread, the burial of our Lord. His crucifixion on Passover gave each of us the chance for life everlasting. His burial in the earth, prepared for each of us, the glorious resurrection to come.
I realized that this third feast is not on a definite time cycle. It simply occurs on the Sunday during the week of Unleavened Bread. It could be the day after, or it could be almost a week away. The question is, then, what happened next in the birth process.
Doctor: That's a little bit indeterminate. The fertilized egg travels down the tube at its own speed towards the uterus. It may take anywhere from two to six days before it implants.
Bible: This is very suggestive of the Feast of First Fruits, the spring planting.
Notes: The correct medical term is implantation and it marks the moment when the fertilized egg arrives safely in the uterus and begins it miraculous growth to a human being. So far we see that God designed the conception of each of us in accordance with those first three feasts, so appropriately fulfilled by Christ. Would the system continue?
The next one was the tough one. It seemed that things were happening fast on the pregnancy schedule, but the seven feasts' schedule now called for that long wait until Pentecost. What would be the next development with our implanted egg?
Doctor: We have a slowly developing embryo here for a long time. It goes through stages, but there's really no dramatic change until it becomes an actual fetus. That's the next big event. The chart of fetal development shows the small but noticeable changes that go on over a period of fifty days. Up until the fiftieth day you wouldn't know if you're going to have a duck or a cocker spaniel. But on the fiftieth day of the embryo, it becomes a human fetus
Bible: "A new creature". On that day of Pentecost, those as yet unregenerate Israelites at the Temple became truly "new cratures". They became spiritual. They received life eternal. They were not the same now as they were before. They would now go on to another life outside the confines of the fleshly bodies they were in, in the manner that that fetus would go on to another life outside the body of its mother.
Notes: The doctors made the point that every scheduled event in the birth of the baby varied somewhat with the particular case, just as the length of the entire pregnancy would vary from mother to mother. The medical chart had measured its fifty days from fertilization rather than from implantation. After the seventh week, following conception, this embryo - this little human life form - would become that one creature created in God's own image.
I asked the doctors what the next event would be. I was not disappointed.
Doctor: For a period of time there are no big events. Once the fetus started on its growth into a human being ready to be born, the progress in a general way was one with nothing momentous happening. The baby had developed early and now was only gaining size and strength. Only small perfections occurred during the next stage.
Note: One of these perfections coincided exactly with the next feast.
Doctor: the perfection to arrive at the beginning of the seventh month of pregnancy was the babies hearing. "The Definitive Williams Obstetrics" stated that the baby's hearing was now fully developed. At the first day of the seventh month, the baby could discriminate a sound for what it really was.
Note: For example, a trumpet was a trumpet. Just in time for the Lord to descend from heaven with a shout and with the sound of the trump of God, that baby could perceive the sounds.
Bible: Lev. 25:8-10
8 ‘And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.
Doctor: The final important changes the baby goes through are in the blood. It was necessary for the fetal blood, which carried the mother's oxygen through the baby's system, to change in such a way that a baby could carry the oxygen that it, itself, would obtain upon birth. Technically, the hemoglobin of the blood would have to change from that of the fetus to that of a self-respirating and circulating human being. The fetus does not breathe, but rather depends on the oxygen obtained through the mothers blood circulation. Naturally, this system must be changed before birth, and that change occurred in the second week of the seventh month, and to be precise, on the tenth day.
Bible: "The blood acceptable" rings through my mind. "I have given you the blood for the remission of sin" Lev. 17:11), was God's statement. Indeed, each person of Israel had to present blood to the Lord through the high priest of Israel on the Day of Atonement. If that blood was acceptable, then there would be life.
Notes: But, of course, the fetus is not ready to be born. There remained still another feast. It fell on the fifteenth day of the seventh month.
Doctor: The fifteenth day of the seventh month is recognized as the dating of the beginning of the safe delivery period. This is the period when the lungs are developed and as long as they get their little lungs going, they can be born at that early time. Anytime before that the baby has little chance for survival. By the fifteenth day of the seventh month, a normal baby has two healthy lungs, and if born at that point, can take in its own air and live on it.
Bible: The Feast of Tabernacles is protrayed in this. Tabernacle is the house of the spirit, and it can be said that the spirit is the air in the Bible. Didn't God blow breath into Adam to make him live? Didn't Christ breathe the Holy Spirit upon His disciples? And even more so, in Ezekiel's dry bones vision, Ezekiel saw God make dead bones, sinews, and muscles come together into human beings, and then commanded the prophet, "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." (Ezekiel 37:9)
Notes: Tabernacles is the end of the road - the end of the feasts, the end of God's plan, the beginning of the kingdom. The baby would live if born at Tabernacles. The believer will live once he enters the kingdom.
The Eternal Light
The full end of the 280 day cycle of the baby and the 280 day cycle of an "Ideal Jewish year" coincide. The nature of Chanukah has to do with the eternal light in the Temple. God had made a great miracle on the occasion when Antiochus entered the Temple and sacrificed a sow on the altar, The Macabees threw him out but found only one container of consecrated oil - a day's supply - with which to maintain the eternal light. A miracle through pray allowed the one day's suply to last 8 days and it is celebrated each year at the lighting of the eight candles on the feast of Chanukah.
Chanukah lies on the right distance beyond Tabenacles to account for the actual birth of the baby. The 280 days expressed exactly ten of those mysterious twenty-eight day cycles of the moon, a system more in keeping with the way God would plan things than our Western nine-month pregnancy estimate. For the most part, this added festival clearly left a great symbol to the whole system. Beyond Tabernacles - beyond Kingdom - we have eternity with God. This then is the fulfillment of the eternal light.
