I first encountered the lunar sabbath idea back in 2009. I studied quite a bit about it, read quite a few of their articles and talked with some of the main advocates of the idea. I would like to share a summary of what I found in my research. This is only meant to be a summary. There are many other, more detailed websites and books on the topic, of which I’ll list a few at the end. I’m just trying to write a short article, not a book! 🙂
It seems like most of the articles and videos about the lunar sabbaths start with the premise that the Gregorian and Julian calendars are pagan and therefore everything about them must be pagan, including the 7 day repeating cycle.
But that’s not usually how satan works. Most of the time he doesn’t make things entirely false. It serves his purpose better to make a mixture. He steals things that belong to God and mixes them with pagan things. A mixture of truth and error serves his purpose better than pure error.
Satan has two goals with this. On the one hand he wants people to accept his mixture of truth and error, and on the other hand, if people discover there is error in it, he wants them to throw out the whole works all together – throw out that which is true along with that which is in error. Both results serve his purpose well. And I see a lot of feast keepers and reformers doing this. I’ve been in feast keeping circles for about 15 years and I’ve seen how, in trying to get rid of everything mixed with paganism, many people throw out things that were true as well. So we have to be very discerning to pick apart that which is false from that which is true before we throw it out.
As I studied the modern calendar I found that some of it is pagan and some of it still reflects the original Biblical calendar.
For example, most of the months have been named after pagan gods, but not all of them. September, October, November, and December are named after numbers. The name September means seven, October means eight, November means nine, and December means ten. If you were to keep counting, then January would be eleven, and February would be twelve. That would make March be the first month of the year (or April if it is a leap year). And in the Biblical calendar March or April is usually the first month of the year! So we see some remains of the Biblical calendar still to be seen in the Gregorian calendar.
Another example is that even though the months in our modern calendar no longer start on the New Moon day, yet they are still about 29 or 30 days long, which again hearkens back to the Biblical calendar where the months are calculated by the moon cycle, and are either 29 or 30 days long. In the modern calendar the daytime and nighttime are still divided into twelve hours just like in the Bible times (see John 11:9).
Another example is that the names of the days of the week have mostly been changed to the names of pagan deities, but in over 100 different languages of the world, the seventh day of the week is still called by some form of the word “Shabbat” (Hebrew for Sabbath). There are about 200 different languages that are spoken by 88% of the world’s population, and statistically, one fourth of the people groups in the world still retain the name Sabbath for the seventh day of the week. In English of course it was changed to Saturday, but many other languages still call it Sabbath. Apparently when the languages were split at the tower of Babel, many languages retained the word Sabbath for the seventh day of the week and carried it all over the world with them.
When I was studying the lunar sabbaths one thing that alarmed me was that the lunar sabbath calendar is almost identical to the calendar used by ancient Babylon. The ancient Babylonian calendar was a lunar calendar that reset the weekly cycle at every new moon in the same way that the lunar sabbatarian calendar does. That sets the warning bells ringing in my head! When something comes from ancient Babylon, I get suspicious. But here again we have to check things out carefully to separate truth from error. So the only way to do that is with the Bible.
As I studied the lunar sabbath idea and compared it to the Bible I really felt like the advocates of it were building on some very slim evidence. I was attracted to the calendar because I like the idea of being able to prove which day is the Sabbath by the moon cycle, and I also liked how orderly and organized it looked on paper. But the more I studied it the more I realized it really wasn’t so orderly as it had first appeared. Basically the lunar sabbatarian calendar resets the weekly cycle at the beginning of each moon cycle, and the problem is that they are trying to divide the moon cycle into seven day weeks, but the moon cycle is 29.5 days long and cannot be evenly divided into seven. And so they have extra days that they have to figure out what to do with. They sometimes end up with 8 or 9 days between sabbaths, instead of 7. So they dismiss this problem by simply not counting those days. But the Bible never talks about days that are not counted as days and having more than seven days between Sabbaths.
Also, as I studied what people had written about the lunar sabbaths I started seeing more and more things where they were twisting facts and information, quoting things that didn’t even support their theory but pretending like it did, and in some cases it almost appeared like they were being dishonest in the way they presented things.
And the lunar sabbatarians who were Adventist were trying to use Adventist history to make it look like the early Adventists were using the lunar calendar for the Sabbaths. But the evidence they presented was very misrepresented. It started to feel like they were more interested in propping up their theory than they were in being intellectually honest about how they represented things.
The early Adventists did use the Biblical calendar, which is based on the moon, to find the date for the Day of Atonement, but that had nothing to do with determining which day of the week the Sabbath was on. They weren’t even keeping the Sabbath until after 1844. But the lunar sabbath material presents it as though early Adventist writings support their lunar sabbath idea. They quote little snippets of early Adventist writings that talk about the lunar calendar and then claim that it is supporting their teachings, when in reality the quotes had nothing to do with the Sabbath. But for a lot of people who don’t check everything out carefully it looks well presented and like it makes sense. Most people don’t research things carefully and check out the sources. It looks good when they first read it and so they accept it.
I saw the lunar sabbath proponents do this a lot with historical sources too. They would quote something from history in support of their theory, but when I would go look up the historical quote in it’s context it had nothing to do with lunar sabbaths. They did have a few quotes from modern Jewish sources that did support the idea that the original Jewish calendar had lunar sabbaths in it, but the sources they quoted were written by Jewish higher critics that don’t even believe in the Bible and these critics didn’t give any history to back up their theory either. They were just speculating based on their theory that the Jewish religion evolved from ancient pagan religions. I think some of them might have referenced the ancient Babylonian calendar as evidence for their theory since it did reset the weekly cycle every new moon (like the lunar sabbatarian calendar does). So the Jewish higher critics were speculating that the Jewish calendar evolved from these ancient pagan calendars such as the Babylonian calendar.
But I can’t accept sources like this, even if they are Jewish scholars, since they base their speculations on the belief that the religion of the Bible evolved out of pagan religions. And I don’t understand why lunar sabbatarians are quoting sources like this as authoritative.
There again it feels like they are more interested in promoting their theory than they are in being intellectually honest in what they present.
Of course the only thing that really matters is what the Bible says. And as I studied the evidence they presented from the Bible for the lunar sabbaths it seemed really slim and broke apart very easily under investigation. They would take one verse and say what they thought it meant without giving much evidence to support their interpretation of that verse. Then they would move on to another verse and make an assumption about that verse. But their interpretation of the second verse wasn’t well supported either. And their assumption of the second verse was usually based on their assumption about the first verse, which was supported by very little evidence. Then they would keep building like this, with one assumption built on another, and another, without good evidence to support the assumptions. The whole thing started to look more and more like a house of straw to me.
Now, I need to clarify something. Like I said before, the true Biblical calendar is very much integrated with the moon cycles, and so it is called a lunar calendar. And I agree with that. Pretty much everybody knows that and agrees with that. But the difference with the lunar sabbatarians is that they are teaching that the weekly cycle should be reset at the beginning of each moon cycle. That is where their view diverges from the regular view of the Biblical calendar. This is something that they’ve added to the lunar calendar of the Bible. So the “lunar calendar” itself is Biblical, but the “lunar sabbath calendar” is not; since it has the added element of resetting the weekly cycle at the beginning of every moon cycle.
But what I saw lunar sabbatarians doing in their literature is that they would talk as if the two calendars were the same. They would take quotes from scholars talking about the lunar calendar of the Bible and they would act as though the quotes were supporting their lunar sabbath calendar, when in reality the quotes had nothing to do with lunar sabbaths. Just because something talks about the lunar calendar of the Bible doesn’t mean that it supports lunar sabbaths. But a lot of readers don’t understand that, and so are easily tricked into thinking that these quotes being used by lunar sabbatarians are evidence for lunar sabbaths. So it’s important to understand the difference so you can determine if the evidence they present is valid or not. When you read quotes they are using you need to look up the original source to find out if it actually had anything to do with lunar sabbaths.
So in brief, the Biblical calendar is based on the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars, which go around in circles like the gears in a clock. This is God’s celestial clock which he instituted at creation:
(Gen 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:
Notice He said “lights” (plural). So this involves all the lights in the heavens, not just the moon. So here is how it works:
One day is equal to one cycle of the sun rising and setting.
One week is equal to seven cycles of the sun rising and setting (the number of completeness).
One month is equal to one cycle of the moon circling the earth.
One year is equal to one cycle of the earth around the sun (which is about 365 days long).
The beginning of each year involves the position of the sun relative to the stars, and in relation to the phase of the moon.
So this is how God’s celestial clock works. The difference with the lunar sabbatarian calendar is that they believe the seven day cycle should be interrupted and reset at the beginning of every moon cycle. But this makes things complicated. They end up with extra days that they have to figure out what to do with. So they make the claim that these days should not be counted as days. They call them “translation days” or “extra worship days”. But nowhere in the Bible do I find such a thing as days that aren’t counted as part of the weekly cycle. So I have a problem with this.
When I study what the Bible says about calculating the timing of the feasts I find that every one of them is plainly said to be connected to the moon. In Hebrew the word “month” is literally “moon”. So I’ll write the following verses as they would appear in Hebrew:
(Lev 23:5) In the fourteenth day of the first moon at even is the LORD’S passover.
(Lev 23:6) And on the fifteenth day of the same moon is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD …
(Lev 23:24) Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh moon, in the first day of the moon, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. …
(Lev 23:27) Also on the tenth day of this seventh moon there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. …
(Lev 23:34) Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh moon shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD.
There are three places where God gave instruction to the Israelites about how to calculate the timing of the feasts (Lev. 23, Num. 29, and Deut. 16) and in each place God clearly connects each feast to the moon….except the Seventh-day Sabbath. Here is what God said about the Sabbath:
(Lev 23:3) Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.
Where is the word “moon” in the instructions about the Sabbath? It’s not there! There is not a single verse in the entire Bible that gives instruction about calculating the seventh-day Sabbath according to the moon cycle.
I have to ask myself the question, why would God give very specific directions connecting each feast to the moon cycle, and repeat this instruction three times, but not give instruction anywhere in the Bible connecting the Sabbath to the moon cycle? Why didn’t He tell us how to calculate the Sabbath by the moon? Did he expect us to just invent our own method of timing the Sabbath by the moon cycle? The lunar sabbatarians have created their system for resetting the Sabbath count at each moon cycle, but the Bible never specifies that this is the right way to do it. They’ve just invented that system because it seemed logical and Biblical to them to do it that way. And there are different groups of lunar sabbatarians that calculate the sabbath differently. So they’re not even in agreement among themselves. Which one is right?
If the Sabbath is supposed to be connected to the moon cycle, then why did God never tell us that in the Bible, when He was so specific about how all the other holy days were to be connected to the moon cycle? Is it because He never intended the Sabbath to be connected to the moon cycle maybe??
The Sabbath commandment says:
(Exod 20:9) Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
(Exod 20:10) But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
This is fairly simple. You count six days and keep the Sabbath. If you have more than six days between Sabbaths, or if you have less than six days between Sabbaths, then you are not following God’s instructions. Count six days, keep the Sabbath, count another six days, keep the Sabbath, etc. You can’t have more than six days between Sabbaths or less than six days between Sabbaths. This system makes a continuous seven day repeating cycle throughout history. This is a very simple system and it’s how people all through history have understood God’s instruction about the Sabbath, up until the lunar sabbath teaching came out in recent years.
One of the main premises behind the lunar sabbath teaching is the idea that at one time everybody kept lunar sabbaths, and then some evil ruler came along and abolished the lunar sabbaths and forced everybody to start keeping the sabbath on saturday instead. Many of them claim that this happened soon after the time of Christ.
We know that Christ kept the true Sabbath, and we also know that it was the same Sabbath the Jews were keeping. And we know that as the apostle Paul was traveling all over Asia Minor he was keeping the Sabbath on the same day as the Jews who were living in the different cities he visited. So if a change was made to the true Sabbath, then it would have had to come after this time. But is there any evidence that an evil ruler came along and changed the true Sabbath sometime after Jesus’ time and Paul’s time?
We have a lot of records of the last 2,000 years of history, from Christ’s time to our time, and we have records of who the rulers were and what they did. So who was this ruler who supposedly changed the lunar sabbaths, and where are the historical records to show that this was done? We know that in past history, anytime some evil ruler would try to change something in the Jewish or Christian religion they would be strongly opposed by the faithful for a long time. The faithful would struggle to the death to preserve their religion, and the struggle would leave deep marks on the pages of history. Take for example Antiochus IV Epiphanes trying to change the Jewish religion, or the Catholic church trying to change various things in the Christian religion. It’s all left deep and bloody stains on the pages of history. Thousands of years later it is still well known. Even when the Catholic church made attempts to destroy the records of their persecution they weren’t able to destroy them all. We still have many records of what they did. We even have records where their own writers wrote about how they were trying to change different things and wipe out those who resisted them.
So if the some evil power decided to change something so significant as the lunar sabbaths, would there not be a significant record of it in history? Where is this record? From what I have seen the lunar sabbatarians can’t produce any such record from history. They quote a few things from history supposedly supporting their theory, but when I go look up the quotes from their original source I find it is not good support at all.
There was a time when Constantius (337-361) forbade the Jews from calculating their calendar, but this only had to do with the calculation of years and months, not the cycle of weekly Sabbaths. The Jews continued to keep their weekly Sabbaths in all the places they were scattered just as they had always done.
There is no way any ruler could have forced all the Jews and all the Christians to change their day of worship. Even back in Jesus’ day there were hundreds of thousands of Jews scattered in different nations all over the middle east. We know this from the what was said on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:8-11, and we also have record in the Bible that just about everywhere Paul traveled he found Jews keeping the Sabbath in their synagogues in the different countries. After Christ ascended his followers took the Christian religion and the true Sabbath with them as they traveled all across the world as missionaries (Mark 16:19-20, and Matthew 28:19-20). They took the gospel to the whole world within a single generation (see Rom. 1:8, 10:18, 16:25-26, Col. 1:5-6, 23, AA 593.2) The true Sabbath went to the whole world too as these missionaries spread the Word of God.
According to one report, “Parthia, according to tradition, was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John, who, after he had lived some time there, died at Ephesus. Peter appears to have preached in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia to the Jews of the dispersion. And at last, having come to Rome, he was crucified head-downwards; for he had requested that he might suffer in this way.” (Book 3 of the Church History of Eusebius).
About 40 years after Christ’s ascension the destruction of Jerusalem took place and the Christians and Jews were even more scattered. The Jews dispersed to all parts of the then-known world, carrying their religion with them, which included the Sabbath.
So before and after the time of Christ there were millions of Jews and Christians scattered in different nations all over the eastern hemisphere of the world keeping the Sabbath. And we know from history that there was no king or pope that ever ruled all that area at once. No evil king or emperor would be able to enforce laws on all these scattered bodies of believers who were keeping the Sabbath in all these different nations. So how is it possible for any evil power to have done what the lunar sabbatarians claim? And if such a thing had happened, where is the record in history? Lunar sabbatarians explain the lack of historical records by saying that the record of the change was wiped out without leaving much trace, but how is that possible? That’s not how it happened with any of the other changes that evil men tried to make to the true religion. There were always records left behind of what they did.
Sometimes lunar sabbatarians will cite different historical records in support of their view of history, but when I’ve gone and looked up the historical quotes it usually doesn’t support what they are saying at all. So far I have not seen any solid historical records to indicate that the Sabbath was ever changed like they claim it was.
We know the Catholic church abolished the other feast days of the Bible. There is abundant historical record of that change. And the Catholic writers even boast openly about how they were able to do that. And they also boast about changing the Sabbath to Sunday, and history shows that they killed thousands of Christians who refused to follow their change of the Sabbath. We have history from all over the world of how the Catholic church has persecuted the faithful believers who keep the Seventh-day Sabbath. Why would the Catholic church persecute them for keeping the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week (which is called saturday) if that wasn’t even the right day to be keeping? We have no history that I have ever seen of them persecuting believers for keeping the lunar sabbaths.
We also have abundant records of the Catholic church changing all kinds of other things in the Christian religion. And we have the record of the faithful down through the ages who resisted these changes – even things as seemingly small as whether the bread and wine are the literal body and blood of Christ. People were willing to die rather than give up the truth. And the struggle over these issues left deep and bloody marks on the pages of history.
If something as significant as the Sabbath had truly been changed from a lunar sabbath to the seventh-day sabbath we have now, wouldn’t there be some evidence left behind for such a huge change? There is evidence of the battle over every other change that evil men have tried to do to God’s times and laws. Why is there no trace in history of a battle over the supposed change of the lunar sabbaths?
And what ruler in history could we point to who had the power to make such a massive change and hide every bit of evidence? There never was any ruler who ruled all the countries where the Sabbath keepers were located. Like we talked about earlier, millions of Sabbath-keeping Jews and Christians were scattered in nations all over the middle east and there has never been a ruler who had power over all those separate nations.
And what do we find today? All the individual communities of Jews and Christians (those who observed the Seventh-day Sabbath) all over the world are all still keeping the same Sabbath on the seventh-day of the week even today. They are all still in sync with each other even though they were separated from each other for hundreds of years. They were all using the same continuous cycle of seven day weeks, not a lunar sabbath calendar where the weekly cycle is reset at every new moon. In English we call this seventh day of the week “saturday”, but many other languages still call it by some form of the word “Sabbath”.
Jews are known for several things. First of all they are known for tenaciously preserving their traditions over thousands of years, even when scattered in far separated nations, and even under threat of persecution. The Jewish traditions practiced today are identical, in many cases, to what they practiced in Jesus’ day.
Secondly the Jews seem to enjoy debating religious topics among themselves. When I read the Talmud, my summary would be that it is a collection of debates between Jewish sages over just about everything in life. Not much has changed since Jesus day. “Disputes between opposing sects were loud and long, and it was not unusual to hear on the streets the voice of angry controversy from learned doctors of the law.” MH 32.1
You can pick just about any topic and look up records of the Jewish sage’s arguments over it during the last several thousand years. But one thing I have never found any record of them arguing over is which day is the true Sabbath. All the Jewish sects scattered all over the world seem to agree on which day the Sabbath is. Their communities were separated from each other for thousands of years, but they’ve all been keeping the Sabbath according to a repeating seven day count for thousands of years. They all agree that the Sabbath is on the seventh-day of the week, which we call saturday, but which many other languages call “Sabbath”.
The isolated groups of Christians who kept the true Sabbath all over the world have also been keeping it on the same day of the week as well. There were groups of Christians in far distant countries that never came under the Catholic persecution, but they were keeping the seventh-day Sabbath and there is no evidence I have ever seen anybody come up with that they were keeping a lunar sabbath.
In addition, we know of various examples where angels were sent to tribes deep in the jungle, that had never yet been reached by missionaries, to instruct them in how to clean up their lives and live right. They also taught them how to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. When the Adventist missionaries arrived they found that the people were already keeping the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. The angels did not tell the natives to keep a lunar sabbath. Instead they taught them to count Sabbaths in repeating cycles of seven days by making notches on a stick or knots in a string. A couple examples of stories like this are Chief Auka of the Davis Indians in Guyana and the Eskimo leader named Maniilaq in Alaska.
(http://www.medicalaviation.org/venezuela/auka.htm)
(http://guide.discoveronline.org/native/Native%20Lesson%2020.pdf)
There are several other problems with the lunar sabbath idea. First of all, it contradicts God’s instruction about how to count the days to Pentecost, as seen in the following verse:
(Lev 23:15) And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:
(Lev 23:16) Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
So from the day of the wave sheaf God told them they should count off seven sets of seven and then the day after the seventh sabbath would be the day of Pentecost. Seven weeks, plus one day, equals 50 days. But this doesn’t work right on a lunar sabbatarian calendar. They many times have more than seven days between sabbaths; therefore they would have more than 50 days in the count to Pentecost.
There is another problem with the lunar sabbaths. They claim that the 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th day of each month is a Sabbath. But if we find in the Bible that the people of Israel were not keeping one of those days as a Sabbath, then it shows that those were not considered sabbaths in Bible times. And we do indeed have several examples of that:
(Exod 16:1) And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
(Num 33:3) And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians.
Here we have examples of the Israelites traveling and setting up camp on the fifteenth day of the month. If you’ve ever gone camping or backpacking, you know that hiking cross country and setting up camp are a lot of work, especially for several million people with herds of livestock. God’s instruction for the Sabbath was, “Abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” (Exod 16:29) Traveling and setting up camp on the Sabbath would have been breaking the Sabbath. Therefore the 15th day of the month could not have been a Sabbath.
To get around this problem lunar sabbatarians claim that the Sabbath is only 12 hours long, not 24 hours. They claim the word “day” (Hebrew “yom”) refers only to the 12 hours of daylight. They conclude that the Sabbath is only twelve hours long. So they claim that the Israelites did their camping and traveling during the dark hours of the 15th day of the month and therefore were not breaking the Sabbath. But even if that were true we would still have a problem. The Bible says the Israelites did these things on the 15th “yom” (day) of the month. If the word “yom” only refers to the 12 hours of daylight, then the Israelites were setting up camp and traveling during the hours of daylight. So the argument that a day is only 12 hours long doesn’t solve anything. If the 15th day of the month had been a Sabbath, then the Israelites would have been breaking that Sabbath. But the fact that they were traveling and setting up camp on that day, under the direct guidance of the pillar of cloud, wherein was Christ’s presence, shows that they were not keeping lunar sabbaths.
Another problem we have with the lunar sabbaths is that in their calendar the feast day sabbaths always fall on a weekly Sabbath. But in the Bible the feast day sabbaths had fewer restrictions than the Seventh-day Sabbath had. The Israelites were not supposed to do any “servile work” on the feast sabbaths (Lev. 23:7, 8, 21, 25, 35, 36), but they were allowed to do things like cooking (Ex. 12:16). On the Seventh-day Sabbath however they were forbidden to do any work at all (Ex. 20:8-11), and they were not allowed to cook any food (Ex. 16:23).
So in the lunar sabbath calendar, the feast sabbaths will always fall on a weekly sabbath. If this was the case, then it would be allowing the Israelites to violate the laws of the weekly Sabbath every time a feast season came around. The fact that God allowed them to do things on the feast day sabbaths that He did not allow them to do on the Seventh-day Sabbath must mean that the two usually did not coincide. In cases where they did coincide they called it a “high Sabbath” and the requirements of the Seventh-day Sabbath (no work at all, and no cooking) would supersede the allowances for the feast sabbaths.
So the fact that the feast sabbaths had less requirements shows me that they did not fall on the same day as the Seventh-day Sabbath most of the time. This shows that the lunar sabbath calendar is wrong.
There is one final piece of evidence that holds weight in my mind that lunar sabbaths are not biblical. This may hold weight with others who believe that God has sent us inspired messages at the end of time through the pen of Ellen White.
If a Bible prophet wrote that a certain day in past history was a Seventh-day Sabbath, that should settle the matter right? Well, I believe that Ellen White was just as much inspired of God as any of the Bible prophets and I have found a number of places in her writings where she gave a certain date and said it was the Sabbath. And we can use astronomy records to check whether those dates harmonize with the lunar sabbath calendar. And we find that they do not! So I take the words of the Lord’s messenger as facts.
Ellen White also testifies that the Sabbath starts at sunset, whereas lunar sabbatarians claim it starts at sunrise. So there again we have direct testimony from a prophet that the lunar sabbath calendar is wrong.
Lunar sabbatarians will probably come up with all kinds of creative excuses for ignoring the words of the Lord’s messenger, but their reasoning does not hold any weight in my mind. The people of Jeremiah’s day didn’t want to believe his messages came from God either. They wanted to pick and choose what they thought was from God and what they thought came from Jeremiah himself. You can look at any prophet of the Bible and find that this is almost always the case. People do the same with Ellen White’s writings. But I can’t go along with that! If the Lord’s messenger said it, then I believe it.
There are many other reasons the lunar sabbath calendar can’t be the original calendar of the Bible. But what I’ve listed above are the points that stood out the most to me as I was researching. Like I said, I was open to the lunar sabbaths being true if there was sufficient Biblical evidence. But after searching it out I did not find sufficient Biblical evidence, or evidence from history.
Here’s the most critical point: The lunar sabbaths violate the Sabbath commandment that there should be no more and no less than six days in between each Sabbath day. My conclusion is that the lunar sabbath calendar is just bringing back in the ancient Babylonian calendar. It’s another way that satan has invented to get people to break the true Sabbath.
The lunar “sabbaths” could fall on any day of the week – Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or any other day. So whether you worship on Sunday or whether you worship on a lunar sabbath on Monday, Tuesday, or some other day of the week, either way, you’ve broken the true Sabbath and are a transgressor of the law of God. Satan can accomplish the same goal either way.
I’m not trying to tell anybody else what to believe here, but I’m just presenting my research and the conclusions I came to after studying the topic carefully and talking with a number of lunar sabbatarians personally.
There are others who have written more extensively about the topic. Below are a few links (inclusion of these links does not mean I agree with everything these pages or websites teach, but they have some good information on this topic):
http://119ministries.com/teachings/video-teachings/detail/time-the-lunar-sabbath-uncovered/
https://www.sabbathtruth.com/faq/advanced-topics/what-about-the-lunar-sabbath