Shabbat Shalom Kol Beit Yisra'el on this the last sabbath of the current year. It has admittedly felt a little strange resting and worshipping on Saturday these last four weeks after having final being convinced by the overwhelming evidence that Roman Saturday is not Yahweh's true Sabbath day - at least not every week of the year. For those adjusting to the true calendar this has, I know, been a relief as we all try to rearrange our lives in true tavnith or pattern. So I thought it appropriate, since the Sabbath will be on Roman Mondays for the next month, that we take a look at this day we call 'Saturday' which has so hooked Jews, Messianics, Seventh-Day Adventists, Seventh-Day Baptists, the Armstrongite Churches of God, and many others...and us, until recently.

I had to chuckle at how easily I was fooled by those exposing the Day of the Sun (Sunday) into switching to another pagan deity. But that's as it may be. Perhaps even more relevant for what I want to share today is, does the Bible actually prophetically tell us that believers would apostacise and worship Saturn, the Day of the Satyr? It does.

"You also carried Sikkuth (the shrine/tabernacle of - OJB) your king (moloch - OJB, KJV) and Chiun (the pedistal - OJB), your idols (tzelamim - OJB), the star of your gods (your star-god - OJB), which you made for yourselves" (Amos 5:26, NKJV).

At this point it is important to remember that from at least around 800 BC, though perhaps earlier, the Day of Saturn - or Saturday - was the first day in the Roman week. Not until much later, when major calendar changes were made, did it become the seventh Roman day of the week. We also need to remember the derivation of the word 'Saturn' which comes from the half man, half goat deities called satyrs:

"But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there" (Isa.13:21, KJV).

"The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr (sa'iyr) shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl (lilith) also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest" (Isa.34:14, KJV).

In other words, Saturday is Satyrday is Satan's Day...if you follow the Roman system. Are we surprised that the "synagogue of Satan" (Rev.2:9; 3:9) has chosen Roman Saturday/Satyrday/Satanday as its 'sabbath'?

This is not, though, the first time that Israel has fallen into the sin of observing Satyrday as a sabbath or worshipping the demon god Saturn. Shortly after their deliverance from Egypt, this is what Yahweh said:

"They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons (sa'iyr; devils - KJV), after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations" (Lev.17:6-7, NKJV).

"They shall no more offer their sacrifices to satyrs, after whom they have played the harlot."

"For the Levites left their common-lands and their possessions and came to Judah and Jerusalem, for Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them from serving as priests to Yahweh. Then he appointed for himself priests for the high places, for the demons (sa'iyr, satyrs) and the calf idols which he had made" (2 Chron.11:14-15, NKJV).

What was it that Jeroboam had done? What is it Yahweh had had removed from Israel in Leviticus 17? Jeroboam gained a reputation for making Israel sin, didn't he? Amos reminded Israel of their Satyrday idolatry and Stephen reminded them again and was killed for his trouble. Isn't it ironic how Seventh-Day Adventists and many Messianics, for example, are so hung up on exposing the false 'Sun-Day' worship when at the same time they are upholding and promoting 'Satyr-Day' worship! This is very ironic! And the only reaon they do this is because they are caught up in the old lie of the Synagogue of Satan that the Roman Seventh Day is Yahweh's Seventh Day, It isn't. Indeed, if only they could see that there are at least two seven day periods in the Scriptures and that none of them contain any sabbaths (e.g. the Battle of Jericho), the lightbulbs would start going on and they would begin to understand that Yahweh's calendar is nothing like the Roman one!

Idolatry has a way of triggering all kinds of reactions in people. I know I used to get highly irrtated when the lunar-solar sabbatarian people began to point out the pagan origins of Saturday. The response was irrational to say the least, but then idolatry tends to make people touchy and reactive. And the reason that happens is that behind all idolatry is a demon. I can't put in any other way, but when you believe in a lie, you give the enemy legal rights and you need deliverance. It's not as daunting as it might at first appear, actually. You don't need an 'exorcism'. All you have to do is renounce the paganism and idolatry associated with 'Saturday sabbath' worship and expell any demonic that might be present as a result of your error in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name (the same goes for 'Sunday sabbath' worship), live the proper way, and it's done. Then the enemy has no further legal claim on you. You're free.

I repeat, Satyrday worship is idolatry - you can't sanctify a day to demons! Saturday didn't become the seventh day of the week until 321 AD when Rome adopted the seven-day planetary week. Saturday was the first day of the week for its entire history during the time the first books of the Bible were being written. Then Constantine changed Satyrday to Sunday as the high holy day of his empire not because he was a true Christian but because he was a sun-worshipper! Then Sunday became the First Day of the Week in place of Saturday which until then had been the First too. Only then did Saturday become the seventh Roman day! So how could Roman Saturday possibly have been Yahweh's Seventh Day? Impossible!

The sketch of a first century Roman clay tablet at the top of this devotional shows the days of the Roman Week in their then correct order:

• Saturn Day (1st day, Saturday)
• Sun Day (2nd day, Sunday)
• Moon Day (3rd day, Monday)
• Mars Day (4th day, Tuesday)
• Mercury Day (5th day, Wednesday)
• Jupiter Day (6th day, Thursday)
• Venus Day (7th day, Friday)

"How long will you waver between two opinions? If Yahweh is Elohim (God), follow him; but if Baal is Elohim (God), follow him" (1 Kings 18:21, NIV).

"Elijah went before the people and said, 'How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD (YHWH) is God (Elohim), follow him; but if Baal is God (Elohim), follow him'" (1 Kings 18:21, the actual, unmodified NIV).

"'And it shall be, in that day,' says Yahweh, 'That you will call Me 'My Husband,' and no longer call Me 'Baali' (my Lord - Strongs #1180), for I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their name no more" (Hos.2:16-17, NKJV).

The point is this: the 'Lord/Master' of Saturday and of Sunday is not the same 'Lord/Master' of the True Seventh Day Sabbath. This must be understood. When we call Yahweh the "Lord" or "Master" of Satyr-day or Sun-day we are committing blasphemy. In the days of our ignorance He is gracious about this but once we know the truth we are required to do something about it, for He says we are to no longer call Him "Baali" or "my Lord" because Baal is Satan. What greater blasphemy could there be?!

Quite ingenious, isn't it? By means of this clever strategy Satan gets worship from millions of Messianics. Adventists, Jews and others every week. Admittedly, the Satyrday counterfeit is not so obvious because it has been cleverly concealed. Saturn-worship is one of the oldest forms of satanism and is clearly and historically linked to Satyr, the horned goat. Do you think satan cares how you spell or pronounce his name, or which of his many names you use? So long as you are not worshipping YHWH you are worshipping the adversary.

I am sure this image (see right) is familiar to you. It certainly is to satanists and lovers of the occult. This is the 'Horned God', Pan or Satan, depicted as half man and half goat. Ever heard of Peter Pan? He's just a sanitisied, Hollywood version of the original lusty satyr which C.S.Lewis popularised in his pseudo-Christian, occultic Narnia tales, a being given over to every form of licentiousness and debauchery. According to Greek legend, Kronos, the father of the gods, whose name lieterally means 'Time' (from which we get the English word 'chronology' - the study of time) was called Titan and cast down to hell. Titan (or Teitan) is the Chaldee form of the Hebrew word Sheitan (Satan), which means 'Adversary'. This Sheitan, regarded as the father of all pagan gods, and who assumed the title of Kronos (Saturn), 'the Horned One', was symbolised by the Kerastes, the Horned Serpent. One of his claims, therefore, is to be Lord of Time, Times and Seasons:

"He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the set-apart ones (saints) of the Most High, and shall intend to change times (Aramaic zemam, seasons = Hebrew moedim, appointments, times to congregate fo worship) and law (Aramaic dath = Hebrew Torot)" (Dan.7:25, NKJV).

"For you have said in your heart: 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of Elohim (God); I will also sit on the mount of the congregation (moed, appointment for a season, festival) on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High'" (Isa.14:13-14, NKJV).

So ask yourself this question: if Satan claims to be Lord of the Calendar with its appointments and seasons, and given that he always tampers with, alters and changes everything Yahweh sets up, do you think it is likely that he has left Yahweh's calendar intact today? And if not, is it not likely that the calendars used by both secular and religious authorities have been tampered with? Almost certainly. And indeed we know, by comparing the Biblical calendar with the ones in use in the world, that this is absolutely so. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to restore Yahweh's Calendar and so give the Creator the glory which is His alone.

According to Arthur Hislop, the name 'Saturn' in Chaldee is pronounced satur; but as every Chaldean scholar knows, consists of only four letters: S-T-U-R or r w t s which correspond to the numbers 60 + 400 + 6 + 200 = 666. Should we be surprised?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, the largest Saturday-keeping denomination on the earth, admits:

"The Sabbath question is to be the issue in the great final conflict in which all the world will act a part. Men have honoured Satan's principles above the principles that rule in the heavens. They have accepted the spurious sabbath, which Satan has exalted as the sign of his authority. But God has set His seal upin His royal requirement. Each sabbath institution bears the name of its author, an ineffable mark that shows the authority of each. It is our work to lead the people to understand this... God has called us to uplift the standard of His downtrodden Sabbath. How important, then, that our example in Sabbath-keeping should be right" (Testimonies to the Church, Vol.6, pp.352-353).

Like I said at the beginning of this address, that fact that we are celebrating the Sabbath today is not because we are observing Satyrday - it just happens that Roman Satyrday coincides with Yahweh's Seventh Day this particular month. We are observing the same Calendar that Yahweh set up at the beginning - we can look outside, see a full moon, half moon, or no moon at all (new moon) and confidently be able to say: "Today is Yahweh's Sabbath!" It is written for us in the heavens. So simple that even a child can figure it out. And it doesn't matter whether a comet hits the moon or the earth, or Planet X or something like it makes a close sweep past us and wobbles the moon's orbit a little, we can still know when the true Sabbath is by looking at the moon's phases. But the rest of the world and its religions - Christian, Messianic, Jewish or anyone else - what do they do? They look at the seven-day weekly calendar established by the Romans in 321 AD and measure from that. That is their toqef or authority for measuring weekly time and it is Satan's.

I don't have time today to go into any detail as to how the Jews switched from the Solar-Lunar Creation Calendar to the Roman one, suffice to say that they did after they were thrown out of the Holy Land by the Romans. In the Diaspora the Jews came to be strongly influenced by a combination of Zoroastrianism and Romanism. That is a huge story in and of itself. But you only have to compare the Biblical method of time-keeping with the mixed up one used in Judaism to see that they are not following Yahweh's appointed times correctly. Compare our Lunar-Solar calendar for this year with a Jewish or Messianic Jewish calendar and you will see that not only do they observe the wrong sabbath ~80% of the time but that their annual festivals are out of synchronisation too. Even their new moons are usually a day out because they measure using the Babylonian system like the Muslims.

The Jews themselves admit these things:

"With the devlopment of the importance of the Sabbath as a day of consecration and the emphasis laid upon the significant number seven, the week became more and more divorced from its lunar connection" (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol.10, 1943, Week, p.482).

"The establishment of a periodic week ending in a Sabbath observed every seventh day was doubtless responsible for the gradual obsolescence of the new moon festival as a period of general abstinence since with continuous weeks the new-moon day and the Sabbath Day would from time-to-time coincide" (Rest Days, p.255).

"The calendar was originally fixed by observation, and ultimately by calculation. Up to the fall of the Temple (A.D. 70), witnesses who saw the new moon came forward and were strictly examined and if their evidence was accepted the month was fixed by the priests. Eventually the authority passed to the Sanhedrin and ultimately to the patriarch. When necessary, a second “Adar” was inserted in order that the reaping of the corn should come at Passover. Gradually observation gave place to calculation. The right to determine the calendar was reserved to the patriarchate; the Jews of Mesopotamia tried in vain to establish their own calendar but the prerogative of Palestine was zealously defended....

"So long as Palestine remained a religious centre, it was naturally to the homeland that the Diaspora looked for its calendar. Uniformity was essential, for if different parts had celebrated feasts on different days confusion would have ensued. It was not until the 4th century A.D. that Babylon fixed the calendar... the Talmud speaks of various New Year’s Days. It may be regarded as certain that in Palestine the New Year [Rosh Hoshana] began in Nissan (cf. Exod. xii. 2) and in Babylon in Tishri (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol.4, Calendar).

"In the period after 70 C.E., The Rabbis abrogated this authortiy to themselves. In the story that appears in the Talmudim, Rabbi Hananiah, an emigré Judean scholar, tried to assert the supremacy of Babylonian Jewry by asserting its right (that is, his own right while in Babylonia) to intercalate the calendar. His attempt was unsuccessful because it was several centuries too early. This authority remained for some time with the rabbis in the land of Israel.

"All this began to change in the third century C.E. Ultimately the rabbis of Babylonia themselves cited, in retrospect, the return of one of their own, Rav (Abba), to Babylonia in 219 C.E., as the beginning of a new era in the relative status of the two great Jewish communities: 'We have made ourselves [or, consider ourselves] in Babylonia like Eretz Israel -- from when Rav went down to Babylonia.' While this may seem to telescope a long drawn out process into one identifiable event, the fact is that the date designated in that statement indeed points accurately to the early third century, when Babylonia’s star began to rise" (Herschel Shanks, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, pp.197,262.

"As we enter the third century, we find that the Jews of Babylonia have at their head an exilarch (resh galuta, “head of the Diaspora”) with [false] claims to Davidic lineage...But the exilarchate did not rule the Babylonian Jewish communities single-handedly. Alongside the exilarch a new framework of leadership – the Rabbis of Babylon -- emerged.

"If the rabbis of Babylonia were prudent in their relationship with the exilarch, they were even more cautious in defining and publicly stating their attitude toward the government. As we have already noted, it is in Babylonia [not Palestine] that we encounter the well-formulated principle that “the law of the government is law.” (Ibid., pp.263-264).

In 1948, when the call was made for all Jews to return to Israel, who do you think responded? The term Jew was applied to the Khazars, and accepted as fact by every nation on earth. That these men were not Israelites did not matter, they were the Jews, so they, Esau’s descendants, saw the golden opportunity to gain back their birthright thought long stolen by Jacob/Israel. And ignorant men permit them to get away with it to this day. (See my series of sermons, Jacob's Trouble).

Whoever is in charge is in charge of the calendar. The calendar you use tells you when to work and when to worship. When you worship tells heaven and the onlooking universe who you worship. So getting the day right is that serious. During the dark ages, the Papacy was in charge. The Khazars had no problem going along with the powers that be, thinking only of making money and mixing with the local population. The Khazars adopted and retained their understanding of the 7th day Sabbath, but this was the Catholic version of the seventh day accepting the 'Sabbath' long after the Catholic Church had changed the calendar of the Roman Empire. In 321 AD, Satyrday was made the seventh day of the week by Constantine, prior to that, it had been the first day of the pagan week. And all of the Roman Empire eventually accepted this calendar, including the Khazars some 4 centuries later.

Here are the other options: All the Jews had available to them was the corrupted Hillel II version of the Hebrew calendar at best. Worse still, they had the calendar of the Babylonian rabbis and their half-pagan religion, Judaism. At worst, they adopted the fully pagan planetary week enforced by the Catholic Church. All points to the same thing. The Jews have never had the true Sabbath, so looking to them is an exercise in futility.

Jewish author, Eviator Zerubavel, in his book The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week, observes:

"The Jewish and astrological weeks evolved quite independently of one another. However, given the coincidence of their identical length, it was only a matter of time before some permanent correspondence between particular Jewish days and particular planetary days would be made. A permanent correspondence between the Sabbath and “the day of Saturn” was thus established...[some time] later than the first century of the present era, Jews even came to name the planet Saturn Shabtai, after the original Hebrew name of the Sabbath, Shabbath" (New York: The Free Press, 1985: p.17).

Well, obviously that doesn't and can't work because you were looking at the wrong heavenly body - the sun instead of the moon. There is a reason that Yahwweh inspired the Psalmist to write these words:

"He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knows its going down" (Ps.104:19, NKJV).

"Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little" (Isa.28:9-10, NKJV).

"Then Elohim (God) said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons (moedim), and for days and years'" (Gen.1:14, NKJV).

"And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'The feasts of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts (moedim). Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of Yahweh in all your dwellings" (Lev.23:1-3, NKJV).

I leave obsevers of the Saturday 'Sabbath' (of which I was one until three weeks ago) to prove that Satyrday is the Sabbath Day. It can't be done. And quoting historical records showing that Jews or other people observed a Saturday 'Sabbath' does not prove that they were obeying Yahweh - it just proves they were observing a Saturday 'Sabbath'. So I leave you with these two simple questions that will completely resolve this issue:

• 1. Where does it say in Scripture that Saturday (Satyrday) is the Sabbath?
• 2. Where does it say in Scripture that the Sabbath is every seventh day in succession?

Please join in with the deep shalom that we have in this emet (truth). The adventure awaits...

*We do not agree with all the teachings of these authors in regard to circumcision or the latter's anti-Paulism.

Acknowledgements

[1] Troy Miller, The Truth About How Satyrday Became the Seventh-Day Sabbath
[2] Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons