BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY – HOW THE ANCIENTS MARKED TIME AND A PROPHETIC GENERATION

As we have studied the calendar and how the sun, moon, and stars are, and have been used, to determine the seasons by ancient civilizations, our understanding of seasons, signs, days, and years has been greatly enhanced. We begin to understand things in the Biblical account that heretofore have been unclear to our understanding. In these calculations the Biblical scholars use meaningful Biblical numbers.

Using Biblical numbers can reveal prophetic understanding of events which happened in the Bible, how ancient civilizations developed their calendars, and Yahweh’s timing in current events. Here are some interesting observations which may help us understand the times in which we live (1 Chronicles 12.32).

An example of this is in Genesis 7.11-12 and 8.3-4:                                                 

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of the heavens were opened.  And there was rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

And the waters turned back and forth upon the earth, and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

Noah entered the ark on the 17^th day of the second month and the ark rested in the seventh month on the 17^th day. This indicated a 360 day calendar which is different than the calendar used after Yahweh established the Passover in Exodus 12.1-2 as the beginning of the year.

The calendar Yahweh institutes in Ex 12.1-2 will now conform to the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon. In this calendar months can be either 29 or 30 days. Obviously Noah was following a calendar in which all months were 30 days long.

Those who study Biblical Astronomy in depth like Andrew Gabriel Roth have a deep understanding of how ancient civilizations observed days and months. Many ancient civilizations, according to scholars like Roth, observed a 30 say month and after 6 years would add an additional month of 30 days to balance out the seasons.

Since the moon cycles around the earth in 29.522 days over a six year period this means that after 6 years 30 days need to be accounted for in order for the seasons to not drift.

360 X 6 = 2,160 days + 30 = 2,190 days. Then 2190 days divided by 6 = 365 days/year.

To adjust for the missing .022 days each month the formula is: 2190 days X 6 = 13,140 days in 36 years. An individual generation in the Bible is 40 years. Instead of waiting another 6 years for the adjustment we wait four years and complete the “generation of time”.

360 days X 4 = 1470 days (between years 37 through 40).

13,140 + 1470 = 14,610 days in 40 years. Finally 14,610 divided by 40 = 365.25 days/year. Beyond this the numbers become more complicated to get the exact number of days in a year. It takes a 100,000 year cycle to perfectly balance!

Now we can begin to understand that no man knows the day or hour of the Masters’ return!

A generation is 40, 70, and 100 in the Bible

A generation in the Bible is normally 40 years. However, a generation is 100 years is understood by virtue of the fact that Abraham had his promised child when he was exactly 100 years old (Gen. 21:5); it is evident, therefore, that the age of a man when his first child is born is the raw definition of a generation.

To summarize: A generation in the bible is primarily the age of a man when his first male child is born; but secondarily, the age of a man at his death. The bible then rounds the exact span of years in a "generation" to be 40 and 100 years as the primary usage, but on occasion, "70 years". And 70 is the average of 40 and 100, which allow the three timeframes to work in numeric harmony to produce the numeric symmetry found throughout the bible. The usage of the 100-year generation predominates in the bible prior to the time of Moses when men lived longer, but 40 years after Moses. Meaning of a 'Generation' in the Bible (bible-codes.org)

I look at the 100 year number as a combination of two Jubilee years which are 50 years. Very few will live to be 100 years old. An individual, however, could live through two Jubilee years during which he would be able to see his children and grandchildren grow to adulthood. Many world events have occurred in 50 year periods of time.

Israeli Independence: The United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state in 1947, but the Arabs rejected it. In May 1948, Israel was officially declared an independent state with David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, as the prime minister.

In World War 1 British General Allenby captured the city of Jerusalem in December 1917. Fifty years later in 1967 during the 6 Day War the Israeli’s took control of the city of Jerusalem for the first time in 2000 years. On December 6, 2017 President Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and stated that the American embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

These three events occurred in 50 year intervals. The same Biblical number of a Jubilee year. It is possible an individual could live for a 100 years from 1917 to 2017 and have seen all these events happen. This is why I believe a “prophetic Biblical generation” is 100 years.

An individual generation of 40 years would be the amount of time a person would be expected to have completed their family with children. Those children would then have completed their family after 40 years. The original parents would then have lived to see their grandchildren grow into adults with the 100 year time frame.

Here is a Biblical reference which witnesses to the 100 year prophetic generation: Then he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years…Gen 15.13

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

The fourth generation.—Heb., dôr. (See Note on Genesis 6:9.) As the four generations are identical with the four centuries of Genesis 15:13, we have here an undesigned testimony to the long duration of human life. So Abram was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Isaac was 60 at the birth of his children, and Jacob 64 years of age at his marriage. But the word dôr had probably come down from a remote antiquity, and, like the Latin word seculum, signified a century.

Calendar Mathematics from: Wheel of Stars by Andrew Gabriel Roth