The first day of every lunar month is New Moon day. New Moon day begins at dawn on the day after conjunction. (For more information on this most important topic, please refer to
"New Moon Day: The Dawn After Conjunction".)
New Moon day is in a special class of worship days. Numbers 28 lists the specific sacrifices required for work days, seventh-day Sabbaths, New Moon days and the annual feasts. Work days had the least number of required sacrifices, and annual feasts the most. New Moons had more sacrifices than for the weekly Sabbaths.
New Moon was a time of consecration. It was a time for rejoicing over the blessings of the previous month and dedicating oneself to the Creator for the upcoming month. While the seventh-day Sabbath prohibited any cooking (meal preparation was to be done the day before) New Moon days were a time of thanksgiving when families would get together for a fellowship meal. (See 1 Samuel 20:5-7, 18, 24-30.) Anciently, people who fasted for an extended period, never fasted on New Moons.
The biggest difference between the modern calendar and the ancient Biblical calendar is that the modern solar calendar has a continuous weekly cycle which is not linked to the lunar cycle. On the original luni-solar calendar, the weekly cycle restarted each month. Since New Moon was a worship day, the second of the month was the first day of the six-day work week. Thus, the seventh-day Sabbath always fell on the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th days of the lunar month.
Every time the Bible gives a date for the seventh-day Sabbath, it is always one of these four dates. Other passages of scripture supply contextual details which, by extension, also provide the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th as dates for the weekly Sabbath. For example, contextual evidence in Exodus 16 states that the manna first fell on the 16th day of the second month, which was the first day of the week. On the sixth day the manna fell (the 21st of the second month) the Israelites were told to gather twice as much manna because the next day, the 22nd, was the seventh-day Sabbath. Consequently, the other Sabbaths that month fell on the 8th, the 15th and the 29th. Because the first of every month is always New Moon day, a weekly Sabbath falling on any of the four listed dates, confirms a lunar calendar format.
Scripture reveals that in the earth made new, all of the saved will gather together to worship the Creator each New Moon.
- "For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me," says Yahuwah, "So shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me," says Yahuwah. (Isaiah 66:22-23, NKJV)
