THE TIMING OF TRIALS
by Richard Burkard (Updated November 2012)
It's never fun to lose your job. I know, because it's happened to me more than once. Part of the challenge comes in explaining what happened to your friends and fellow worshipers at church. In their sincere effort to express understanding and compassion, sometimes Church of God members jump to a traditional conclusion.
"Trials always come right around the Holy Days," someone might say -- especially if the ax falls in March or September.
Depending on the time of year, that statement may be true -- or it may be completely false. I lost one job about five weeks before the Lord's Supper/Passover service. But I lost another job five days after Pentecost. The reason had nothing to do with taking Sunday off for that annual Sabbath, but was due to events which occurred in the workplace days later.
This reality combined with a post by an anti-COG blogger to lead me to a few basic questions, which I should have asked all along. Do trials really come for Church members right before big annual events, such as Holy Days - either personal problems or scary world news events? Since COG's tend to emphasize history and warn people should learn valuable lessons from it, is this explanation for trials grounded in historical fact? Or is it simply a "tradition" based on human experience -- and perhaps even an "old wives' tale?"
Current History
Let's begin with major events of world history which most of us should know. In my lifetime, some key negative events and their relationship to God's calendar spring immediately to mind:
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a record one-day loss of 777 points September 29, 2008 -- on the eve of the Feast of Trumpets, which began that evening at sunset. Some people consider that the day when the "Great Recession" hit home to everyone.
* The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred exactly one week before the Feast of Trumpets.
* The Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed in April 1995, on the fifth day of Unleavened Bread.
* The "Yom Kippur War" between Israel and Arab countries began, well, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) 1973. History records Egyptian and Syrian armies intentionally planned it that way.
So doesn't all this evidence prove those COG members are right? Well, hold on a minute. After the October 1987 U.S. stock market crash, Worldwide Church of God columnist Gene Hogberg pointed to a different trend in The Worldwide News. That drop, as well as the legendary 1929 crash, occurred on the Monday after the Last Great Day.
(I mentioned that fact in a television newsroom where I worked on the morning of an even bigger point drop. October 27, 1997 saw a then-record 554-point loss in the Dow 30 - again on the Monday after the Fall Festival ended. I made sure that "Feast of Tabernacles effect" was included in the newscast I produced that evening.)
Thanks to a wonderful online tool called "Hebcal," you can plug in other key dates from the Gregorian calendar and have them converted to the Jewish, or what Church of God ministers would call the "Biblical," calendar. What about these historical milestones....
* Hurricane "Super-Storm Sandy" ravaged the New Jersey and New York coastlines in late October 2012 - three weeks after the Feast of Tabernacles ended.
* The Indonesian earthquake and tsunami which took hundreds of thousands of lives occurred December 26, 2004 - or the tenth month, 14th day.
* Pearl Harbor Day, which thrust the United States into World War II, was December 7, 1941 - or the ninth month, 17th day.
* The luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on the night of April 14, 1912 - that day being the first month, 27th day (six days after the Days of Unleavened Bread ended).
* Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina to launch the U.S. Civil War April 12, 1861 - or the second month, second day.
Recent Church History
So the record of recent world history shows disasters can occur at any time of year. But what about inside God's Church?
The old Worldwide Church of God mailed members an annual "Biblical calendar," with both Gregorian and Hebrew months. A couple of them even noted key events in WCG and Biblical history. If we compiled that calendar today, a few events could be pegged to Festival seasons:
* The "Milwaukee massacre" which left eight Living Church of God members dead occurred March 12, 2005 - exactly one month before the sacred new year, and six weeks before the annual Lord's Supper service. (For some members, that's close enough to count.)
* WCG Pastor-General Joseph Tkach Sr. died September 23, 1995 - a death announced in congregations two days later, during Feast of Trumpets services.
* The CBS News program 60 Minutes presented an investigation of the WCG and an interview with Stanley Rader April 15, 1979 - on "Easter Sunday," the fourth day of Unleavened Bread.
But wait - don't click away in smug satisfaction yet. That calendar also would have to show these events....
* The death of Herbert Armstrong January 16, 1986 - or the 11th month, sixth day (and that Hebrew year had 13 months).
* The first Joseph Tkach Sr. sermon on covenants declaring, "The Sabbath is voluntary" was given in suburban Atlanta December 17, 1994 - or the tenth month, 14th day.
* United Church of God President Clyde Kilough was sacked by the Council of Elders, touching off events leading to the split creating Church of God Worldwide Association, on April 9, 2010 - four days after the Days of Unleavened Bread ended.
* Then UCG Chairman Melvin Rhodes resigned after confessing to past "un-Christian behavior" around November 1, 2012 - more than three weeks after the Feast of Tabernacles.
"His-Story"
After all this, some of you may be asking a question. "Aren't you a writer who says we should focus on what the Bible says first, not history or tradition?"
That's correct - and in fact, that's what sparked this article in the first place. If serious trials happen to the modern Church of God around the time of annual Sabbaths, shouldn't that trend be true through all time? Shouldn't these "coincidences" have occurred among the tribes of ancient Israel as well?
So I pulled out a concordance and did a full-Bible study of a word many people probably would never think to review: "month." Plenty of milestones are cited in Scripture all the way down to the day of the year when they happened. That's how we know when to keep the annual Feast days, after all -- the dates are mentioned specifically in areas such as Leviticus 23.
How many trials did the people of God face at "Holy Day time" long ago? The Biblical answer may surprise you -- very few.
Of course, believers probably can name two momentous events right away: the "old and new" Passover. Yet wasn't the Passover of Exodus a victory, instead of a trial? At least for the Israelites, it was. It wound up being a night of plunder -- although we can imagine they heard some of the "loud wailing in Egypt" that fateful night, when the unprotected firstborn were struck down (Exodus 12:29-36).
The New Testament indicates Jesus took one last Passover meal with His disciples before He died. Matthew 26:17-18 says this happened "on the first day of Unleavened Bread." (That potentially provocative wording is not our issue in this article.) That night and day marked the ultimate trial for our Lord, and there was a spillover effect on the disciples as well. Yet victory emerged from that as well, for all involved in the "Jesus culture" except Judas Iscariot.
Aside from those two events, we found only one trial for God's people occurring around an annual festival. "Then on the thirteenth day of the first month the royal secretaries were summoned. They wrote out in the script of each province and in the language of each people all Haman's orders.... written in the name of King Xerxes himself and sealed with his own ring" (Esther 3:12).
Verse 13 shows orders were sent to "destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews" (as if one of those wouldn't be sufficient?!) in 11 months' time. We don't know for sure when the orders were read by the Jews - but the writing began only one to two days before they began the annual Passover celebration.
The Biblical Record
Other major disasters in the Biblical record took place away from the "Holy Day seasons." Here's what I found:
* The flood which covered all humankind except for Noah and his family began "on the seventeenth day of the second month" (Genesis 7:11). This would put it about halfway between Unleavened Bread and Pentecost. But some could argue those festivals weren't being kept at that time, anyway -- certainly not by everyone who drowned.
* Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and his army "on the tenth day of the tenth month.... marched against Jerusalem...." (II Kings 25:1/Jeremiah 52:4)
According to the New Bible Commentary: Revised, "The date is given according to the Babylonian calendar. The siege began toward the end of December; hence the year had begun in March" (1970 edition, p. 367). If this aligns with the Hebrew calendar, this assault began more than two months after the Feast of Tabernacles.
* After a lengthy siege, "on the ninth day of the fourth month.... the city wall was broken through" (Jeremiah 39:2, 52:6-7). It would have been a few weeks after Pentecost.
* Then a Babylonian official "on the seventh day of the fifth month.... set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem" (II Kings 25:8-9). In that fifth month, "the people of Jerusalem went into exile" (Jeremiah 1:3).
A fascinating side note here: Jeremiah 52:12 says this case of arson actually occurred "on the tenth day of the fifth month." Other texts of the time apparently say "'ninth day', which agrees with the Jewish tradition that on the ninth of Ab the Temple was destroyed, as was the Temple by Titus in AD 70" (N.B.C., pg. 368).
Russell Dilday's The Preacher's Commentary (found through BlueLetterBible.org) attempts to reconcile these apparently conflicting dates. "The Talmud declares that when the Babylonians entered the temple, they held a two-day feast there to desecrate it; then, on the third day, they set fire to the building. The Talmud adds that the fire burned throughout that day and the next."
For our purposes, the bottom line is this: Whichever date is correct, the destruction of the temple happened about seven weeks before the Feast of Trumpets.
Thinking Differently
So we've seen both in our times and "Bible times," the record of trials is not as some might think. Disasters and difficulties occur at any time on the Biblical calendar, not simply before and during Festival seasons.
(Yet I've heard at least one COG pastor spin this in the other direction. He's claimed disasters occur right after a Festival because "Satan is angry" with how well things went. Be careful with that sort of thinking - does that mean the devil is behind the results of annual COG conferences in the Spring?)
To think trials come only at Festival time strikes me as a COG "urban legend" - one rooted more in personal experience, feeling and reasoning than historical fact. Yet God reminds us in Isaiah 55:8-9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.... As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Perhaps the best way to respond to this kind of reasoning is not only with the negative historical record, but the positive as well. The Bible also shows good things have happened around Holy Day seasons:
* The flood waters Noah escaped abated, and "by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry" (Gen. 8:14) - within a week or two of Pentecost.
* Exiled king Jehoiachin of Judah was granted release from prison "on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month" (II Kings 25:27) - within three weeks of Passover.
* Temple rebuilding was completed "on the third day of the month Adar" (Ezra 6:15) - the first month of the year, less than two weeks before Unleavened Bread.
* Another reconstruction process ended with "the wall.... completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul...." (Nehemiah 6:15) That's the sixth month of the Hebrew calendar, so the work ended one week before Trumpets.
Sometimes it's not easy for Church of God members to look on the bright side. They're inundated with preaching and "prophetic news" about how terrible this world is, and how much worse it will become before Jesus returns. But when trials come - whenever they come -- we should keep the faith-filled words of James 1:2-4 in mind:
"Consider it pure joy, my friends, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
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© 2012, Richard Burkard, All Rights Reserved.