Christian Astrology

A few weeks ago, I went to a meeting where an international speaker was bring a prophetic message for our city. He based his message on the fact that this year is 5775 in the Hebrew calendar. He said that 5 is the number of grace and 77 is the number for the churchy, so the church will have grace before it and grace behind it during this year. It will be a terrible year for the world, but a grace year for the church.

Few Christians would realise it, but this is Christian astrology.

1. Long-term calendars are always unreliable. The Gregorian calendar that we use purports to measure the years since the birth of Jesus, but it is wrong. For a long time, the need for leap years was not understood, so they got out of sync. Pope Gregory put in a few extra years to correct the problem, but not enough, so the calendar is still nearly years out, as judging by other historical events, Jesus was born well before 0 AD. That means that we might be in the year 2038 AD or something like that.

   Calendars are a modern invention. The people of ancient times did not have calendars around. Jesus could not look at a calendar to see what year it was when he was beginning his ministry. This means that calendars have to be made up by tracking back through the past using historical information to find the start point.

   The Hebrew calendar was not established by God. It was put together in the 12 century by Jews who had rejected Jesus. Since it was not inspired by the Spirit, it will have many errors. It is a lunar calendar, so they leap years are even harder to get right. Whereas the Gregorian calendar tracks back to Jesus birth, the Hebrew calendar tracks back to the beginning of the world. That is much harder to do, because the historical information is much more sparse.

If only one mistake has been made, the Hebrew calendar will be out by a year,. This means that we do not know that we are really in the year 5775. It is almost certain that we are not. If we are not in the year 5775, the prophecy based on it is invalid.

2. More seriously, this use of the Hebrew Calendar implies that God is controlled by numbers. If God wanted to send judgment on the Church in the year 5775, he could not do it, because it would be inconsistent with the number of the year. God is not God, if he is controlled by numbers. God is free to do what he chooses when he chooses. The only thing that binds him is his character, and his own word. He is not limited by the movements of planets, or numbers on a calendar.

3. The meaning of numbers is not clear. 5 could mean grace, but it could also mean other things. The speaker that I heard said that 77 indicates the church. He said the proof is the fact that word “church” is used 77 times in the New Testament. Unfortunately, that fact is not a fact. The word “ekklesia” is used 110 times in the New Testament. It sometimes refers to a political meeting, but not 33 times.

4. When people start searching for interesting dates, they tend to find what they want, but finding what you want is not prophecy. 1914 was a terrible year in human history, as it began a period of war and economic depression that lasted for thirties years. But it has an uninteresting number. You would expect 5666 to be a really evil year, but it occurred 10 years before World War 1 during a dull time in history. I am sure someone can find something, if they try hard, but that is the point.

God has given us his Holy Spirit. He knew the heart of God and can speak to us Prophecy is words spoken by God. We need more prophecy speaks the truth under the anointing of the Spirit. Christian astrology is a very poor substitute.

The speaker I heard added another twist. He said that 2015 is the number for a word in Strong’s concordance that means “turning”, so the year 2015 will be a year when the situation on earth turns around. This claim has all the problems listed above. We are not in the 2015th year since the birth of Jesus.

The numbers in Strong’s concordance are were assigned after Hebrew words were put into alphabetic order. There is nothing spiritual about them. Strong used them to make it easier for people to reference words. Using the strong numbers for spiritual guidance is bizarre practice.