Samoa Sabbath Dateline Dilemma:

When is the Sabbath?

December 2011 marked a change in Samoa’s relation to the International Dateline. This caused the date to change from Thursday, the 29^th of December to Saturday, the 31^st of December. There was no Friday in between. This caused great confusion upon those wishing to keep a seventh-day Sabbath, which was traditionally observed from Friday Night to Saturday night. (The news story can be found on many sites by searching online for "sda samoa sabbath dateline").

The Samoa Dateline Dilemma shows that one cannot use the International Date Line in determining the Sabbath. In fact, the Biblical Sabbath does not use the modern Gregorian Calendar: The calendar used by Moses was based upon the phases of the Moon, not a continuous weekly cycle.

The Biblical calendar starts every month on New Moon Day, and the Sabbaths are always in the same place: The 8^th, 15^th, 22^nd, and 29^th of the month. This is why the feast days in Leviticus 23 have a Sabbath on the 15^th of the month, and why the words "New Moon" and "Sabbath" often occur together in Scripture.

The Moon is the clock which orbits the round Earth and provides the reference for Biblical time. If this reference is ignored, then an arbitrary man-made marker (such as the International Date Line) has to be substituted.

The Sabbath is introduced in the Biblical book of Genesis. Note that does not say "count every seven days", but rather:

Genesis 1.14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for SEASONS, and for days, and years.

The word for SEASONS is Strongs #4150, "religious festivals". Notice that Genesis 1:14 says that the "religious festivals" are designated by the "lights in ... heaven". Psalm 104:19 identifies the light as The Moon.

The Sabbaths and Feast Days are linked by the Fourth Commandment as recorded in two different Bible books.

• The Fourth Commandment in Exodus 20 clearly references the seventh day Sabbath based on Creation.
• The Fourth Commandment in Deuteronomy 5 clearly references the seventh day Sabbath based on the deliverance from Egypt, which occurred on the evening of the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread.

Note that the Sabbath commandment in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 does not mention Creation, but rather the Exodus from Egypt, which happened on the 15^th, at night. To repeat, the seventh-day Sabbaths are always in the same place: The 8^th, 15^th, 22^nd, and 29^th of the month, and they use the same calendar as the Feast Days - the Lunar Calendar.

The reason most Jews today keep Saturday is the same exact reason that most Christians keep Sunday - because of Constantine's calendar change, and the persecutions by which he enforced these changes. Prior to this, in 46-45 BC, Julius Caesar (the Julian Calendar) had separated the months and weeks from the Moon and made a continuous eight day cycle, but he did not enforce it on other nations living within the Empire.

In AD 321, Constantine created a compromise calendar. He blended the Hebrew idea of a seven day week with the Julian concept of a continuous weekly cycle, and added the veneration of the "sun god" from Mithrasim to create the Roman calendar used today. He enforced his calendar upon the entire Roman Empire with military power.

Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 replaced Passover with Easter. This was not just a matter of replacing one day with another. It's a completely different system of calendation, since Passover is not computed using a Julian calendar.

Because of these changes which were being enforced by persecutions across the Roman Empire, the Jewish Sanhedrin met for the last time around AD 350, and modified the calendar to the form used by most Jews today, in which the Sabbath is on Saturday, but the other Feast Days use a form of the Lunar calendar.

Constantine's calendar was modified slightly by Pope Gregory into the calendar used today. However, the true Calendar ordained at Creation, according to Genesis 1:14, Psalms 81:3, is the Moon. Therefore, neither Saturday nor Sunday is the Biblical Sabbath, and the International Date Line is not involved at all.

This situation in Samoa is a tiny foreshadowing of what is coming. If the proposed New World Calendar http://www.theworldcalendar.org is adopted in the end of 2012, and the 364-day perpetual year is implemented, then the extra "blank" day (called "World Day Holiday") will disrupt any continuous seven-day cycle. At that point, the whole world will face a situation where the day that "should have been" Saturday or Sunday will fall on a different day.

Then, whether one is keeping the original Biblical Lunar Calendar, or the modern Gregorian Calendar, everyone will have a decision to make, since the New World Calendar is compatible with neither. Since the Calendar regulates the work schedule, and runs the economy, what will you choose to do about the Sabbath?

See more:    http://world-calendar.info/neither/