Chapter 3. How Does God Keep Time?
Gal.4:4, “When the fullness of the time (meaning the exact time) had come, God (the Father) sent forth his Son (Jesus), made of a woman (Mary), made (born) under the law:” We only know that the time of the Lord’s birth came in April between the 15th and 30th, 4 B.C.
God’s timepiece: the heavens and the earth.
How does God keep time? It’s by the solar systems He’s created. Science knows of at least 500 solar systems that now exist. So, what exactly is a solar system? It’s a gravitationally bound system consisting of the Sun and the many planets and other objects that orbit around it.
In our own solar system, the largest eight are called planets, the others consist of smaller objects such as, small Solar System bodies, and dwarf planets. Indirectly, there’s the moon that rotates around the earth.
Concerning our earth and man’s time on earth:
Let’s begin with the earth itself, and the rotation of the earth on its own axis, a rotation that takes approximately 24 hours to complete. We also have the rotation of the sun, moon and stars, each working in union one with another.
Gen.1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Gen.1:14, “God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them (the lights) be for signs (time), and for seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall) and for days (24 hours) and years.”
So were told, on the 4th day, the stars, sun, moon and earth are set perfectly in the heavens, and by their movement through space, the Creator can record time for us. And through his written word these events, past, or future can be known, and understood.
We understand now that the earth rotates about an imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles of the planet. This line is called the axis of rotation. The earth’s rotation about this axis is once each day, that being approximately 24 hours. That rotation period, meaning the time elapsed for one rotation with respect to the stars is called a sidereal day. A sidereal day is 24 sidereal hours, or specifically, 23 hours and 56 minutes on a standard clock.
Time, according to our clocks is based on the earth’s rotation with respect to the sun from solar noon to solar noon. This is a solar day, and it’s divided into 24 hours. Because Earth travels about 1 / 365th of the way around the sun during that one day, there exists a small difference between solar time and sidereal time.
The little ball below representing the earth. It will make a complete 360 degrees rotation, a full circle around the big ball representing the sun every 365.24 days. This is equivalent to one year.
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sun earth
So, the earth takes about 1/365th of a day and about 4 minutes more to get into the same position with respect to the sun. We use sun-based time because it is more important to us whether the Sun is up, than whether a given star is up.
We also need to talk about leap years.
Nearly every four years is a leap year which has 366 days, as opposed to a common year, which has 365 days in the Gregorian Calendar, but, the actual time is 365.24 days. Because of this, we have to add one day every four years to our February in order to compensate. Leap years have 366 days. Our next leap year will fall on 2/29/ 2020.
To conclude, we add leap years to keep our modern-day calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun.
So, before calendars, before sun-dials, before any instruments were invented, God counted a year according to the time it took His earth to make a full 360 Degree circle around the sun. In this does He report to us that one year has passed. So, if scriptures reveal to us that it took 120 years to build the ark, we know exactly how many cycles the earth made around our sun. So now we can understand how the LORD has determined time, and written it in his precious book, the Bible so we can understand it.
Also let me mention, the equinox: An equinox is the moment in which the plane of the Earth’s equator passes through the center of the Sun’s disk which occurs twice each year, that being, around March 20th and September 23. As a result, the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated, because, the Sun is exactly overhead at a point on the equatorial line.
Phillip LaSpino www.seekfirstwiddom.com