The scriptures are full of dates, places and events. Many of these are have significant symbolic meaning to Latter-day Saints. In fact there is a certain consistency within our scriptures about the importance of dates, days, times and seasons, as well as anniversary celebrations of many types.
SCRIPTURE: “And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.” –Moses 6:63
I have had a fascination with calendars of various kinds throughout my life. So, I have pondered why the Lord so often makes mention of certain dates and anniversaries, and why all the feasts and festivals? …it all comes down to remembering! The act of remembering is sacred.
It has become obvious to me over the years that the Lord expects us to learn from these events. He is the master teacher and the scriptures are our classroom. He is constantly watching over us. I am grateful for all of these things that are written for my learning. I can read them on a physical level and then ponder them on a spiritual level, and perhaps even receive insight into how they might be meaningful in my own life. In other words, liken them unto myself. My expression of this in prayer to my Heavenly Father pays Him the reverence I owe deity. My debt of gratitude is the essence of my act of remembering.
THOUGHTS: Each Sunday (after Christ’s resurrection the members of the church kept the observance of Lord’s day as a weekly commemoration of His resurrection) we promise to remember the Savior and His great atoning sacrifice as we partake of the sacrament.
The Lord placed us on this earth created with the sun and moon to give us day and night, weeks and months, years and seasons. This was recorded in scriptures for us, clarifying the importance of each period of creation that was called a day. Days are important.
Were dates important to the Savior? Yes. Although we celebrate His birthday with the rest of the world, we know from revealed modern revelation that he was born on April 6th. We remember this season each year with General Conference held the first week of April.
Malachi prophesied that Elijah would return (Malachi 4:5.) He did return to restore the Priesthood keys after the Savior, Moses, and Elias appeared in the Kirtland temple on April 3, 1836. I remember an amazing article appearing in the June edition of the 1985 Ensign by John Pratt that proposes that this date corresponded with the resurrection of the Savior on April 3, 33 on our calendar.
Pratt’s second articleappearing in July of that year shows how the day that the restoration of Priesthood keys in 1836 was chosen by the Lord for its symbolic importance and “that even the timing of the Lord’s death and resurrection was foreshadowed in the Passover ceremony.”
These articles can easily be looked up on lds.org in the Ensign magazines library. The topics addressed are complex and the articles are lengthy but some of you may find them fascinating.
The knowledge of an exact date for Jesus’ birth and resurrection is not necessary for our salvation, nor is the knowledge of an exact date for his second coming. The point I’d like to make here is that dates are important to the Lord.
One of John Pratt’s articles was quoted by Ronald P. Millett in an article for Meridan Magazine (now found at http://www.ldsmag.com) entitled “Does the Year 2012 Have any Prophetic Significance?” It was available online in 2009 but is no longer in their archives that I could discover. Millet talks about how several major ancient calendar’s (when brought up to date using scientific astronomic recalculations) can be seen to correlate with certain holy days or sacred events. There are apparently nine such calendars including the Mayan, Gregorian, Hebrew, etc.
Millett notes: “The religious chronology summary document on johnpratt.com is, I believe, perhaps the richest treasure on John Pratt’s site summarizing his research over the years. Working together for the past fifteen years, and having seen as John worked on these calendars and how impossible these correlations would be if these calendars were uninspired, I stand as a second witness with John that the Lord truly must have revealed these sacred calendars to his prophets through the ages and that He himself appears to use them in scheduling important sacred events.”
Millet goes on the say that although certain dates or configurations of astronomical phenomena appearing on a repeated basis are not good for predicting an event, “It is only reported … so that in case something of religious significance does occur, it will be a witness that God had planned it millenia ahead of time.” And he likes Pratt’s approach of “using these anniversary dates to celebrate the importance of this event in the past, rather than presuming to predict anything that might occur in the future.”
SCRIPTURE: “ I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.
“Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;
“I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.
“Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.” –Isaiah 48:3-6
In 1Nephi 20: 6 this last verse reads easier: “Thou hast seen and heard all this; and will ye not declare them? And that I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.” In verse 7, “They are created now, and not from the beginning, even before the day when thou heardest them not they were declared unto thee, lest thou shouldst say—Behold I knew them."
I think God wants us to know that it is He who has planned this all for us. So why did I entitle this post “Remembering the Fall of Jericho?” In this article by Millet the last paragraph reads: “In this same article, (“Joshua’s Seventieth Jubilee,” Meridian Magazine, May 18, 2006 by John P. Pratt) two modern dates are noted in the footnotes that would make good anniversary dates for the fall of Jericho.
“If the Fall of Jericho symbolizes a great future earthquake and if that earthquake follows the pattern of EF holy days, then the indicated day might be Sat. 31 Dec 2011, (TODAY) which is the day 14 Autumn (Tabernacles) in the year 17 MID AUTUMN (“Deluge Day,” being both the day and year of the Great Flood) on the Enoch Fixed calendar. That combination only occurs once in 364 years, and it occurred on the day Noah entered the ark (see Ark Day in “Tsunami”, section 2.4, Table 1). Moreover, that coming day is also 13 Serpent (Sacred Round), the same as the Fall of Jericho. The next day Sun 1 Jan 2012 (TOMORROW) is 1 Skull, and that same article also indicated that deadly earthquakes are associated with the day Skull (Sacred Round). I am not making an earthquake prediction here because that is only one of a multitude of sacred dates on which a future great earthquake could occur. But it would not be surprising to me that after such an earthquake happens, it might turn out that it was somehow prefigured by the Fall of Jericho.”
So today, I am rereading Joshua chapters 1 through 6, looking up Jericho in the Bible Dictionary and pondering such things as, Why would the Lord want ALL of the tribes of Israel to participate in the defeat of Jericho when several already had their lands of inheritance on the other side of the Jordan River? Why would all of the men of war from each of the twelve tribes circle the walled city and seven priests bearing before the ark of the covenant seven trumpets of rams’ horns:? Why did they do this once a day for six days and then on the seventh day, circle the city seven times, make a loud blast and then all the people would shout with a great shout? The people obeyed and the walls came tumbling down.
“So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” –Joshua 6:20-21
In remembrance, although I do not completely understand the historical necessity of destroying everyone and everything to prepare a clean place for the Lord’s people, I have thought about my own emergency preparedness in case of disaster/earthquake. I have remembered those who perished in the Indonesian Tsunami and the more recent Japanese earthquake. There have been many opportunities for service in these natural disasters. All I can say is that I hope it isn’t the BIG one in California, because I love the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Years Day and count California as my home state.
I would like to think that the Fall of Jericho might symbolize the falling of all the walls and barriers in the countries of the world where we are not able yet to preach the gospel. Perhaps the “great wall” of China will fall, or North Korea, or other countries, like in the Middle East. To the intellectual mind, these seem impossible, but to the Lord, nothing is impossible.
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