Chapter 10: How Sons Keep Passover

 

In Deuteronomy 16, Moses finishes his speech by giving us an outline of the three feast days that God required them to keep. These festivals represent the three main stages of development in our relationship with Christ as we progress from spiritual birth to spiritual maturity.

Passover represents justification by faith in the blood of the lamb. Pentecost represents sanctification, the time when we learn obedience by hearing His voice and being led by the Spirit, so that the law can be written on our hearts. Tabernacles represents the fulness of the Spirit as we come into full maturity, where we are in full agreement with the mind of Christ and the divine plan that He has for the earth.

Where to Keep Passover

Moses begins with the command to observe Passover, saying,

¹ Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. ² And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ was the true “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and who fulfilled the role of the Passover lamb at the appointed time in history. Moses called it a “sacrifice,” and so we understand that to keep Passover, one must consider Christ to be the Sacrifice for sin. There are many who recognize Jesus Christ only as a great teacher or prophet, who came to educate people in the truth. Such people have not kept Passover in the lawful manner, and hence, they are not justified by genuine faith.

Faith is to Believe Truth

Virtually everyone on earth has faith in something. Faith is a universal attribute. But faith must be rooted in truth to be valid. In fact, the Hebrew word for truth is emeth (???) Its root (always a verb in Hebrew) is aman (???).

Emeth is translated “faithful” and “faithfully” in Neh. 7:2. When Hab. 2:4 says, “the just shall live by faith,” the word translated faith is amunah, whose root is aman. Hence, truth and faith are linked by a common Hebrew root.

This tells us that faith must be rooted in truth to give it validity in the sight of God. If we place our faith in the horses of Egypt, for example (as Israel did in Isaiah 31:1), rather than in the power of God to deliver us in battle, then our faith is misplaced, and it is not biblical faith. We may sing or proclaim “I believe” from sunup to sundown, but it is not necessarily faith that God recognizes as valid. Justifying faith is rooted in truth, and hence, true observance of Passover is only possible if it is rooted in the belief that Jesus Christ is our Passover Lamb that was sacrificed for the sin of the world.

Likewise, the word amen is used many times. It means “so be it,” but in the New Testament it is rendered “verily, truly.” Thus, while emeth is truth, amen is truly, for these are just two forms of the same root word. Further, to “amen” God is to agree with Him. True faith is rooted in revelation truth, and it elicits a response from us that declares our agreement with His truth.

In Rev. 3:14 Christ is called “The Amen.” He was the Amen because He did only what He saw His Father do, and He said only what He heard His Father say. Everything He did was an amen and a double witness on earth of that which was being said or done in heaven.

We too are called to be God’s witnesses on earth. When we are justified by faith through the feast of Passover, we begin our journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Pentecost teaches us obedience. But Tabernacles is for those who are in agreement with God. Those who experience Tabernacles are an amen people.

The amen people know the truth of Passover and have also renewed their minds—their thinking—through Pentecost. In other words, they have faith and have proven their faith by being faithful in their works. When they mature enough to move from obedience to agreement, then they are an amen people.

In Deut. 16:2 Moses tells Israel that they must keep Passover “in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name.” He repeats this in regard to Pentecost (vs. 11) and in regard to Tabernacles (vs. 15). This is the only lawful place where one can keep any of these feasts.

Where is this located? In the days of Joshua it was at Shiloh (Joshua 18:1). A few centuries later, because of the sin of Eli and his sons who defiled that place, the ark left Shiloh (Psalm 78:60) and eventually was placed in Jerusalem (Psalm 78:68).

Yet later, Jeremiah 7:12-15 says that Jerusalem too was defiled by lawlessness. So God removed His name from that place in the same manner that He had left Shiloh earlier. The glory of God departed in Ezekiel 11:23 as far as the Mount of Olives, where it remained until Jesus’ ascension from that spot (Acts 1:12), taking the glory of God back to heaven. Ten days later that glory returned to earth on the day of Pentecost. It did not return to the temple in Jerusalem, but to the disciples in the upper room, for God was building a new temple for His habitation.

Where Has God Placed His Name?

These were the people of the New Jerusalem who began to form a new temple made of living stones (1 Peter 2:5). We read in Revelation 2:4 that “His name shall be upon their foreheads.” Therefore, the only lawful place today where one may observe any feast of the Lord is in one’s “forehead,” the place where God has chosen to place His name.

There are many today who go to Jerusalem to keep the feasts, thinking that the name of God is yet written there. But God moved away from Jerusalem in the days of Ezekiel and completed His move when Jesus ascended to heaven. To keep the feasts in Jerusalem is the equivalent to a man in Jeremiah’s day observing the feasts in Shiloh after God had moved to Jerusalem. Such an action would have been a violation of the law.

So also is it today. The only place where Passover can be kept lawfully is in one’s forehead. The blood of the Lamb of God was to be put on the lintel of the house (Ex. 12:7), but we are to apply the blood of Jesus to our foreheads—that is, our minds, which are the lintels of our “house.”

Likewise, to keep the next feast (Pentecost) one must receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, for in Acts 2 the Holy Spirit came on the foreheads of the disciples in the upper room. In that day, Pentecost was not fulfilled in the temple, though the high priest was offering two loaves of bread as the law had prescribed (Lev. 23:17). Instead, Pentecost was fulfilled in the foreheads of the disciples at this new location.

Finally, the feast of Tabernacles must also be kept in this new location. Dwelling in booths or tents may be a good teaching tool or an object lesson, but the feast itself can only be observed in one’s forehead—the place where He has chosen to place His name. If one goes to any location, including Jerusalem, believing that this is the lawful place that God requires to keep a feast properly, his faith is in vain, for it is not based upon truth. Moses says clearly in verse 5,

⁵ You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you.

Those who violate this law are in need of instruction in truth as a sure foundation for their faith, so that they may become an amen people who are in agreement with God.

Removing Leaven from the House

Moses continues with his instructions regarding Passover in Deut. 16:3, 4,

³ You shall not eat leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), in order that you may remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. ⁴ For seven days no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.

The people were supposed to remove all leaven from their houses on the preparation day for Passover (Abib 14). The first day of Passover began at evening and extended for seven days. For this reason the wave-sheaf offering of barley would always occur within the week of Unleavened Bread. The sheaf was to be waved on the first Sunday after Passover (Lev. 23:15), and this was fulfilled in Christ’s resurrection and presentation to the Father as the living Son of God.

Leaven signifies corruption, or sin. The Hebrew word is sehore, “fermentation.” For this reason, all leaven was banned from any sacrifice (Lev. 2:11). In fact, the only time leaven was put into a sacrifice was the Pentecostal offering (Lev. 23:17), which was to denote the fact that Pentecostals were imperfect and still corruptible.

Nonetheless, at Passover, leaven was banned in order to establish first that Jesus Christ, the Passover Lamb, was unblemished and without sin. Those having genuine faith, rooted in truth, are imputed righteous, as Paul explains in Romans 4. By faith they are allowed to be considered sinless, for God calls what is not as though it were (Romans 4:17).

Because Passover could fall on any day of the week, the time of Unleavened Bread had to extend a full week in order that the wave-sheaf offering would always fall within this time frame. This law is found in Lev. 23:11, saying, “on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.”

When to Wave the Sheaf

The law in Lev. 23:11 reads,

¹¹ And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had different interpretations of this verse. The Pharisees said that this “Sabbath” in question was the day of Passover itself, because every feast day was considered to be a Sabbath, regardless of the day of the week on which it fell. In their view, the sheaf was always to be waved on Abib 16, a fixed day of the month.

The Sadducees insisted that this “Sabbath” referred to the seventh day of the week, making the wave-sheaf offering occur always on the next day, or what came to be known as Sunday. It might be waved as early as Abib 16, but also as late as Abib 22.

In the New Testament the Sadducees were in control of the temple (Acts 4:1), and thus the feasts were observed in the way that they prescribed. Christ’s resurrection, however, did not resolve this controversy, because in that year (33 A.D.) the preparation day for Passover fell on a Friday, Passover was on Saturday, and the sheaf was thus waved on Sunday, the day after Passover. Therefore, in that year both factions were satisfied without controversy.

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch and a long-time disciple of John himself, tells us clearly in his letter to the Trallians,

“On the day of the preparation, then, at the third hour, He received the sentence from Pilate, the father permitting that to happen; at the sixth hour He was crucified; at the ninth hour He gave up the ghost; and before sunset He was buried. During the Sabbath, He continued under the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid him. At the dawning of the Lord’s Day He arose from the dead. . . The day of the preparation, then, comprised the passion; the Sabbath embraces the burial; the Lord’s Day contains the resurrection.”

Ignatius was reputed to be the child that Jesus encountered in Matt. 18:2 as the example of becoming like little children. He was born about 30 A.D. and was a life-long believer and follower of John. Though Ignatius was old when he wrote his letter (above), it is unlikely that he would have testified incorrectly in this matter.

Passover Began the Evening of Abib 14

Moses continues in Deut. 16:5 and 6,

⁵ You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you; ⁶ but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name, you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening at sunset, at the time that you came out of Egypt.

These details were important, because the law reveals the divine plan—in this case, prophesying how the Messiah would be sacrificed for the sin of the world. First, He was not merely killed for teaching truth to those who rejected it, but He was a sacrifice for sin. Second, Jerusalem at the time was the place where God had chosen to put His name, and so the Messiah had to be sacrificed at Jerusalem. More specifically, the glory of God had left the temple mount to rest on the top of the Mount of Olives. Ezekiel 11:23 says,

²³ And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood over the mountain which is east of the city.

Hence, this was where Jesus was crucified, following the pattern set forth by King David, who also made sacrifice on that location (2 Sam. 15:30) when his throne was usurped by Absalom and when he was betrayed by his friend, Ahithophel (2 Sam. 15:12). The same mount was also the place where He ascended to heaven (Acts 1:12).

The lambs had to be killed in the afternoon, so Jesus too had to be killed between noon and sundown. Deut. 16:6 says the lambs were to be killed “in the evening at sunset,” which is explained in Exodus 12:6 as “between evenings” (literal text). In other words, the lambs were to be killed while the sun was going down. The sun began to set at noon, so the lambs were to be killed during the afternoon.

When Jesus Died

Ignatius of Antioch tells us that Jesus was put on the cross at noon, that is, the sixth hour of the day, and that He died at the ninth hour, or about 3:00 p.m. As a disciple and friend of John, He followed the account in John 19:14-16,

¹⁴ Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he [Pilate] said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!” ¹⁵ They therefore cried out, “Away with Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” ¹⁶ So he then delivered Him to them to be crucified.

This appears to be contradicted by Mark’s account in 15:25,

²⁵ And it was the third hour when they crucified Him.

In other words, if Christ was put on the cross at the third hour (9:00 a.m.), how could Pilate deliver Jesus to the people for crucifixion three hours later? Some argue in favor of Mark, others in favor of John’s account. Bullinger agrees with Mark, saying that John’s “sixth hour” was of the night—that is, at midnight—when the sentence was given. He says that it then took about nine hours for them to actually crucify Him at the third hour on the following morning.

The other explanation says that Mark’s “third hour,” or 9:00 a.m., was when Pilate sentenced Jesus, and that Jesus was put on the cross three hours later at noon. Mark 15:15 says that in the interim, Jesus was beaten and mocked by the soldiers, so it may well have been three hours before Jesus was actually nailed to the cross.

If we believe that Jesus’ crucifixion fulfilled the law of Passover, then it seems more likely that Jesus would not be put on the cross until noon and that he died in the middle of the afternoon, “between evenings.”

Mark gave Peter’s viewpoint. Peter was more concerned with Jesus’ trial, ending with his being sentenced to death, because Peter denied Him three times in the courtyard. However, John was concerned about the time He was put on the cross, for he was present when Jesus was crucified. So he said it took place at noon in order to fulfill the law, which forbade killing the Passover lambs before noon.

All are agreed that Jesus died at mid-afternoon.

Matt. 27:46 tells us that he died at the ninth hour, or about 3:00 p.m. Jesus died literally and exactly “between evenings,” that is, between noon and sunset. In chapter 1 of my book, The Laws of the Second Coming, I showed also that darkness covered Jerusalem during the three hours that He hung on the cross. The purpose of this was not merely to portray creation in mourning, but to prevent the people from killing their Passover lambs until the Messiah died.

The law forbade them from killing the lambs before noon or after sunset. Hence, when nightfall appeared to arrive early, the people could not kill the Passover lambs until the sun returned at mid-afternoon. That is when they killed the lambs, and so the death of those lambs coincided with the timing of Christ’s death.

The year of the Messiah’s death was also significant, for I showed in Secrets of Time that Christ was crucified on the 1480^th Passover since Moses. The Greek word, Christos, as used in Matt. 1:16, carries a numeric value of 1480. This suggests that the true Messiah would fulfill the Passover as the Lamb of God in Jerusalem on the 1480^th Passover of Israel’s history since their first celebration in the land of Egypt, and that He would die in the middle of the afternoon.

Eating the Lamb

Moses continues in Deut. 16:7 and 8,

⁷ And you shall cook it and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. And in the morning you are to return to your tents. ⁸ Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God; you shall do no work on it.

To eat is to appropriate and assimilate. The Passover was to be eaten only in the place where God had chosen to place His name. We are all to eat of the true Passover, for Jesus said in John 6:53-56,

⁵³ Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. ⁵⁴ He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁵⁵ For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

This was difficult for the people to comprehend prior to the revelation that He was the Passover Lamb. Yet even as the people were to eat the Passover in the place where God had placed His name, so also were the people to eat of the true Passover Lamb by hearing His words and taking them to heart.

The only lawful place to eat of the Passover Lamb since Pentecost is in our minds (foreheads), the place where His name has now been written (Rev. 22:4). Those who continue to eat animals on Passover, whether in Jerusalem or at Jewish Seder celebrations, are still looking for another Messiah and have yet to eat the true Lamb of God by whom they may receive His life.

As a final note, we must recognize from Exodus 12:19 that non-Israelites were also to participate in the Passover celebration. This is important, because in the rest of Deuteronomy 16, Moses tells us that the non-Israelites were allowed to participate in Pentecost and Tabernacles as well. (See verses 11 and 14.)

This law opens the path of justification, sanctification, and glorification to all men. This full salvation is not limited to Israelites alone, though it was first given as a revelation to Israel. This shows that non-Israelites may be justified by faith through Passover, filled with the Spirit through Pentecost, and may also receive an inheritance as co-heirs with Christ as overcomers through the feast of Tabernacles.