Yah's Times and Seasons - The New Biblical Month of Elul

Shalom, friends. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. My name is Chadwick Harvey, and you have reached Faithful Performance. We really appreciate you joining us. We want to go through round two tonight on the New Moon Festival. We apologize to those who were with us last night about the internet problems, but we believe we have those corrected. Thank you so much for your patience and grace. Tonight we are going to go through the new biblical month of Elul — the sixth month on the biblical calendar. It is a very important month on God's calendar.

We have been on this trajectory since Nissan, and we are going to revisit some of what we covered last night due to the technical difficulties. It will be somewhat redundant, but we have new people joining us based on some of the emails I have received, so we want to be very thorough. For those who may not be familiar, we have been on this trajectory for the last five months, beginning from the biblical new year of Nissan 1 — think of it as approximately April 1st on the Gregorian calendar. That is where we have Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits: the feast days of the Lord fulfilled at the spring feasts. The Passover was the crucifixion, Unleavened Bread was when He lay in the tomb, and the Feast of First Fruits was the resurrection of the Messiah.

Right in the first month of the biblical calendar we have these beautiful feast days of our Messiah Yeshua. From Nissan 18, we then count fifty days until Sivan 6, the third month. It is a fifty-day divine appointment from the Feast of First Fruits to the Feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost. He wants us to count seven weeks, and on the fiftieth day it is the Feast of Shavuot. It is critically important to be tracking with the Lord so that we understand the timing He is on.

In just those first three months we have the Lord's spring feast days: Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Shavuot. The entire fifty-day span from Nissan 18 through the second month of Iyar is a divine appointment — the counting of the Omer — leading to the Feast of Shavuot in the month of Sivan, which is the month of revelation. Look at the revelation, the intimacy, and the understanding we receive by being with Him on these divine appointments. These are the ones He created for both Jew and Christian to observe — for all who love Yahweh and who love Yeshua. The Ruach, the Holy Spirit, will lead us to these feast days and to the calendar so that we can be in alignment with the Father and the Son and not be caught as a thief in the night.

Think about the Exodus from Egypt and the journey they had — it is the same journey to Shavuot when the Torah was given. The beauty of it is this: on Sivan 6, the Feast of Shavuot, the Torah was released and given at Mount Sinai. Then fifteen hundred years later, Yeshua poured out His Holy Spirit on mankind in Acts 2. Both the Holy Spirit and the Torah were given on the same day, fifteen hundred years apart. That is part of the fulfillment Yeshua accomplished as the Jewish Messiah. This is precisely why, as Christians, we need to be engaged in this process. If we are not on the calendar, not observing the feast days, and not understanding the covenants within God's plan of salvation, we remain largely unaware of God's timing and seasons. As Paul warns us in 1 Thessalonians 5, you had better know the times and the seasons or you could be in danger of being caught as a thief in the night. We must read the Apostle Paul as the Messianic Jew he was — a Messianic rabbi — and interpret him through the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Gospels, or we will take him completely out of context.

Once we move through those first three months — with all the revelation, purification, and intimacy found on the calendar through the divine appointments and the fifty-day Omer count — we enter the month of Tammuz. Forty days from Sivan 6, the Feast of Shavuot, brings us to Tammuz 17. That is the day they built the golden calf and worshiped it. After Shavuot, Moses went back up the mountain for forty days to receive the remainder of the Torah from the Lord — the tabernacle instructions and all that we read in Exodus. During that time, the people grew impatient with Aaron, with Moses, and with Yah. They took matters into their own hands and built the golden calf. Moses came down on Tammuz 17 at the Lord's direction, found the people, broke the calf, crushed it, and made them drink it. Three thousand people died that day on Tammuz 17 — not on Shavuot. God was not going to strike anyone down on Shavuot. It was Tammuz 17, the day of their disobedience after already receiving the Torah.

If we do not understand these things, we do not understand the trajectory — and if we do not understand the trajectory, we will not understand what happens at the end of the age, because it is going to follow the same pattern. Tammuz 17 became a fast day. It is the fast of the fourth month mentioned in Zechariah 8, and that fast day will turn into a feast day in the millennial kingdom.

Tammuz 17 also began the Three Weeks of Sorrow, which run from that date to the Ninth of Av — the ninth day of the fifth month. The Ninth of Av is the most cursed day in biblical and Jewish history. Both Temples were destroyed on that day, and all the major exiles of the Jewish people occurred on it — from France, from England, from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition — all on the Ninth of Av. It is remarkable how that one day comes back to haunt the Jewish people repeatedly, and I believe it will come into play again during the seven-year tribulation period.

The fast days mentioned in Zechariah 8 — the fast of the fourth month (Tammuz 17), the fast of the fifth (the Ninth of Av), the fast of the seventh (Tishri 3), and the fast of the tenth (Tevet 10) — will all turn into feast days in the millennial kingdom. If you want to be a part of those millennial feast days, understand the fast days now. Understand why the Jewish people experienced such destruction — because of disobedience, because of not following the ways of God. The destruction of AD 70 also involved the rejection of Messiah and of the Torah. The calendar helps us understand all of this because its anointings are drawn directly from the Scriptures. The Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms dictate the anointing of each month. Tammuz is a month of judgment because of what happened in history, and that judgment set the Three Weeks of Sorrow in motion through the Ninth of Av.

The Ninth of Av also connects to the second year of the Exodus, when the people were poised to enter the Promised Land. Moses sent twelve spies, one from each tribe. Ten of them brought back a bad report; only Joshua and Caleb brought back a good report. Because of that faithfulness, Joshua, Caleb, and their descendants entered the Promised Land. The rest of that generation died in the wilderness. The new generation then inherited the land as part of the Abrahamic covenant. We must understand the trajectory of the Lord — it is supremely important.

After the Three Weeks of Sorrow conclude on the Ninth of Av, the fifteenth of Av arrives — a day of love, the Valentine's Day of the biblical calendar. It is a beautiful day. And then we arrive at this month right here: the month of Elul.

Consider the full trajectory of the Lord, from the new moon of Nissan opening the biblical calendar — and it is worth noting that we had a solar eclipse on Nissan 1 this past year, and the previous year as well: two in a row — all the way through to the month of Elul. Tonight we have a great deal of information to cover: the anointings of the month, the Hebrew letter, the constellation, the tribe, and then the blood moons and solar eclipses we are currently seeing. There will be another one on September 7th, which corresponds to Av 15. It is supremely important to understand all of these things so that we can grasp the trajectory of what the Lord is showing us at this hour and in this season.