Passover: Connecting Christians to Israel Again

Christians celebrate Easter every year to remember Christ’s resurrection from the dead. However, the full story is much more incredible because of its precision in history and it connects Christianity to the Jews. It shows how Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and how God’s hand is clearly in history. However, modern Christians have had the time of history and pagan traditions mixed in to distract from the fullness of God’s glory. I am going to try and rectify this here and share the connections I’ve learned of in my research.

The Exodus From Egypt

The story of Passover began with the people of Israel in the land of Egypt. The story began long before when Joseph, the son of Jacob (named Israel by God), is sold off to Egypt because of his brothers' jealousy. While in Egypt, Joseph rose to become the most powerful man in Egypt after Pharaoh. His obedience in response to a vision of a coming seven-year famine led to his whole family moving to Egypt to weather out the famine.

After generations had past and a new Pharaoh ruled the land, the Israelites became enslaved and persecuted in Egypt. Fearing the loyalties of the Israelites in Egypt, the Pharaoh commanded all newborn Hebrew boys be killed. To save her baby boy, Moses mother set him adrift in the Nile river after which the Pharaoh's daughter found and raised him. After a young Moses killed an Egyptian slave driver and learned of his lineage, he fled to the wilderness where he lived for some time until his encounter with the burning bush and God revealed to him the destiny he had to gather the Israelites from Egypt and take them to the Promised Land.

Through many plagues that befell on Egypt, the Pharaoh would not let the Israelites leave. It was the final plague that finally led the Pharaoh to let Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt, even if only for a moment. This is when the first Passover took place, foreshadowing in many ways the offering of the Lamb of God.

The Crucifixion of the Lamb of God

In the establishment of the first Passover, or Pesach, there were many foreshadows to the ultimate sacrifice of Yeshua on the cross for the remission of sins for all who believe and obey.

One of the first things that stands out is the "lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year." Yeshua lived a perfect life and was without blemish, the only begotten son of God.

This lamb was sacrificed on the 14th of Nissan, the same day that Christ was crucified almost 2,000 years later.

The blood of the sacrificed lamb was spread on the top and sides of the doorposts and any house marked by the blood of the lamb was passed over by the angel of death. Likewise, when we are covered by the blood of the Lamb of God through faith, we will not experience the second death.

For those houses that did not have the blood of the lamb on the doorways, the firstborn of the house was taken just as the firstborn of God was given. Those houses that followed God's instructions and symbolized the offering of Christ on the cross had their firstborn spared, covered by the sacrifice of the firstborn of God to come.

They were told to eat the flesh of the lamb that night just as Yeshua symbolized the eating of His flesh at the last supper with the breaking of bread with the disciples. Furthermore, Yeshua is also known as the bread of life.

There is a clear connection between the Passover remembered by Israel according to God's Word and the crucifixion of Yeshua remembered by the Christian community. However there seems to be a disconnect in recognizing the original Passover's connection to the sacrifice of Yeshua that is likely very much a part of Jewish Messianic believers remembrance of these events. I believe it is always beneficial to recognize the larger picture and see the plan of God in its larger scale, to see how some of the perceived oddities of the Old Testament shed light on the future fulfillments they foreshadowed.

Easter or Ishtar? by Al Perez

The word Easter appears once in the King James version of the Bible. Herod has put Peter in prison, “intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people” (Acts 12:4). Yet in the original Greek text the word is not Easter, but Pesach, that is Passover. So why was the name changed? Please read on, and remember Exodus 34:14; For you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous G-d.

“Asherah” the Greek form of this word from the Septuagint is “Astarte,” who is the Babylonian goddess of the sea, sea being symbolic of people, and consort of the god El. She was the mother of several gods, including Ba’al, the Babylonian god of the sun. These deities were soon adopted by the Canaanites when they named these female deities the Asherah or Asherim. These deities were made of wood carved from a type of evergreen tree, or often they were set up in Canaanite homes as full trees cut down from a forest. The Asherim normally were highly acknowledged during two specific occasions. First and foremost, they were the fertility gods of the spring equinox, when the days and nights were approximately the same in length, signifying the beginning of living things growing for the summer season. A very common practice in the Canaanite religion was performed on the first Sunday of the equinox. The families would face east to await the rising of the sun, which was the chief symbol of the sun god, Ba’al. Later on during the day, the children of the Canaanite parents would often go and hunt for eggs, which were symbolic of sex, fertility and new life. It was believed that these eggs came from rabbits, which in the pagan world were symbolic of lust, sexual prowess and reproduction. The Canaanites, however, were not the only ones who worshiped rabbits as deities. The Egyptians and the Persians (Babylon) also held rabbits in high esteem because they believed that rabbits first came from the divine Phoenix birds, who once ruled the ancient skies until they were attacked by other gods in a power struggle. When they were struck down, they reincarnated into rabbits, but kept the ability to produce eggs like the ancient birds to show their origins.

Other stories concerning the egg rose later in the Middle Ages by the Anglo-Saxons, where they believed the origin of the Universe had the earth being hatched out of an enormous egg. Decorating eggs came about to honor their pagan gods and were often presented as gifts to other families to bring them fertility and sexual success during the coming year. And secondly, they were highly worshiped and celebrated during the winter solstice. As according to Jer. 10:1-5; Is. 40:19-20; 41:7 and 44:9-20, the pagans would go out into the forest and do one of two things. Either they chopped down a tree and carved a female deity out of it, or they would simply bring the tree into the house and decorate it with gold and silver ornaments symbolizing the sun and the moon while nailing a stand on the bottom so it would not totter or tip over.

Out of this practice came many other variations of these pagan festivals until the Roman Catholic Church adopted the Asherah worship and named it EASTER around 155 A.D. According to the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, Easter was named after a pagan goddess of the Anglo-Saxons named Eostre, the goddess of the dawn. A great controversy arose between the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church in 325 A.D. on whether to celebrate Easter on Sundays or on whatever day the Jewish Passover fell upon. Unfortunately, the Greeks lost a lot of followers and the Catholics contended that keeping Easter on Sundays would stimulate the practices of both the Christian world and the pagan worshipers. Note that the word CATHOLIC means “universal” or “one world” in thought, concept and practice. Hence, since the original practice of Asherah worship we now have in our time the celebration of Easter, a counterfeit holiday to the true Christian festival of the Passover which was instituted in the Bible and completed in the New Testament when Christ died on the cross as our Passover Lamb.

“...For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.”

Elements of the Crucifixion

Darkening of the Sun

The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (264 – 340), in his Chronicle, cited a statement of the 2nd-century chronicler Phlegon of Tralles that during the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (AD 32/33) “a great eclipse of the sun occurred at the sixth hour that excelled every other before it, turning the day into such darkness of night that the stars could be seen in heaven, and the earth moved in Bithynia, toppling many buildings in the city of Nicaea.” [Chronicle, Olympiad 202, trans. Carrier (1999).] In the same passage, Eusebius cited another unnamed Greek source also recording earthquakes in the same locations and an eclipse. Eusebius argued the two records had documented events that were simultaneous with the crucifixion of Jesus. Ambraseys verified the reality of the earthquake that had rocked Nicaea and other cities throughout Bythenia. [Ambraseys, H. (2005). Historical earthquakes in Jerusalem – A methodological discussion. Journal of Seismology, 9, 329-340.]

Blood of Christ and the Ark of the Covenant

There is another element of the crucifixion presented by Ron Wyatt some time ago that, while it cannot be absolutely proven, holds some amazing connections between the Old Testament practices, their fulfillments at the crucifixion and the over-arching design of God. While I cannot absolutely verify these stories, the meaning behind them is very compelling and worth at least hearing about.

Ron Wyatt made many amazing archeological discoveries and thankfully filmed most of them. I've gathered many of these videos here and highly recommend checking them out. Noah's Ark, the Red Sea chariot wheels, Sodom and Gomorrah and his discoveries around Golgotha in Jerusalem. The discovery I would like to present here relates to the crucifixion on Passover, Jewish ceremony and the events surrounding the Babylonian captivity at the turn of the 6th century BC.

Prior to the Babylonian captivity, once a year on Yom Kippur, the high priest would enter the holy of holies in the temple in Jerusalem to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. Leviticus 16:11-17 The design of the temple and the Ark of the Covenant were given to Moses after the Exodus (Exodus 25) and part of the rituals performed by Israel as foreshadows of what was to come to pass. That sacrifice and sprinkling of blood was not to take away sins, but rather a remembrance of the sins by Israel and a foreshadow of the one sacrifice of Christ offered once for all. Hebrews 10:1-13 This annual ritual was repeated year after year by Israel until the judgment of God on Israel in the Babylonian captivity.

The whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant became a mystery at the destruction of the temple on the 9th of Av 518 BC. It is not believed that the Babylonians took it because it is conspicuously missing from the detailed lists of the looted treasures taken back to Babylon. According to some sources, Josiah, one of the final kings to reign in the First Temple period, learned of the impending invasion of the Babylonians and hid the Ark. While the location has remained shrouded in mystery, I believe Ron Wyatt may have discovered its location with some amazing prophetic correlations.

Ron said that in digging around the site of Golgotha, where the road led into the Sheep Gate, he discovered square holes cut into the rock next to a wall of rock out of which notches were cut out. He believed that this was the location where crucifixions took place around the time of Roman rule over Jerusalem as an example for all those entering Jerusalem on those roads of the punishments given for those that disobeyed the laws.

After further excavating, Ron says that he later went in to explore the caves with a worker one day. This worker suddenly came hurriedly out of a tunnel without saying a word and Ron never heard from him again. When Ron went into the place this man came out of, he said that is where he discovered the Ark of the Covenant, some 20 feet below the location he had found the square holes bored into the rock above.

Ron says that he saw the cracks in the rock where the square notch was and also above the location he found the Ark of the Covenant and believes that the mixture of blood and water from Christ at His death on Passover flowed down the cracks where the rocks were rent and sprinkled onto the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, fulfilling the symbolic sprinkling of the sacrifice done by the high priest annually - this time one and for all sins. It was also at this time that the veil of separation in the holy of holies was rent in two showing the sacrifice of Christ for our sins was acceptable and removing the separation of God and man for those who would accept the sacrifice offered for our salvation.

Pre-Passover Parallels

Here are some more interesting parallels that can be seen from the time before the Exodus, back in the time of Abraham.

Divine Calendars Testify of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by John Pratt (excerpt)

Abraham, at age 99 and having only one child Ishmael, who was then 13 years old, must have been content that he had secured the covenant he had sought with the Lord (Abr. 1:2). He probably wasn’t expecting much else to happen. Then the Lord surprised him in his old age with an extremely eventful week.

First, the Lord made a new covenant with Abraham. The Lord changed his name from Abram to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude” because he would be the father of many nations. The Lord also changed his wife Sarai’s name to be Sarah, meaning “Princess” and declared that she would have a son, and that through him many nations and kings would come. The token of this covenant would be circumcision (Gen. 17:1-16). Abraham feared that something might be taken from his beloved son Ishmael, but the Lord assured him that Ishmael would still become a great nation as promised. That has certainly been fulfilled, because to this day the Arab nations are located on and around the Arabian Peninsula, comprising many of the descendants of Ishmael. Then the Lord added what to me as a researcher in calendars is a unique and very strange statement. The Lord then prophesied that Isaac would be born “at this set time in the next year” (Gen. 17:21). We’ll come back to that, but first, let’s see what else happened that week.

4.1 Sodom and Gomorrah

Abraham fulfilled the commandment to circumcise all of his household on the same day it was given (Gen. 17:23). The next important event was the visit of three angels to Abraham on the plains of Mamre, which, according to the Book of Jasher, occurred two days later (Jasher 18:3). They announced the birth of Isaac to Sarah, which came as a complete surprise to her, so Abraham had not yet told her (Gen. 18:9-15).

As the angels departed, the Lord told Abraham that they were on their way to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. When the angels arrived at Sodom, Abraham’s nephew Lot prepared for them a “feast” of “unleavened bread” (Gen. 19:3). Why did the Lord include that detail of what was served for supper? To me it is meant to indicate that it was the night of Passover, which would later be designated in the law of Moses as the time to begin the feast of unleavened bread. Passover is the traditional time to flee into the wilderness, as Lot’s family did. The cities of the plain were destroyed the next day, on Passover (15 Nisan), when burning sulfur rained down from heaven on them (Gen. 19:24).

Traditionally the cities were located near the Dead Sea, and recently strong evidence has been found supporting those locations. Perhaps the most compelling evidence is that sulfur balls have been found intact both in the remaining ash and also where they melted into the rock and were extinguished.[6] The Lord is providing strong evidence that his word is true.

4.2 Three Important Days in one Week

The fact that these three events all occurred so near to each other gives us big calendrical clues which we can use to determine the exact dates of all three events. Those events were 1) the Covenant of Circumcision, 2) the visit of the angels, and 3) the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. So far, we postulate that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed on Passover (15 Nisan) in Abraham’s 99th year. That would have been Thu 2 Apr 1953 BC. Then we have from Jasher that the angels visit occurred two days after the covenant, and that was only a few days at most before the destruction.

There are two days on the Hebrew calendar which are best for making covenants with God. The foremost such day is the Day of Atonement, 10 Tishri in the fall, which is the most sacred day of the year. The second choice is the counterpart of that day in the spring, 10 Nisan, which I have named “Consecration” because it had no other formal name. It was the day on which the Passover lamb was chosen (Ex. 12:3) for the Passover feast five days later. [It was also the day of the Triumphal Entry, ending the first 69 weeks of Daniel and presenting Yeshua as the Messiah!] It was also the day on which the Israelites who crossed the river Jordan were circumcised, being the day they entered the promised land (Joshua 4:6, 5:2). Thus, it appears to have been the ideal day for the law of circumcision to have been given because the Israelites would have been following that same pattern. If so, then the new covenant with Abraham was made on Sat 28 Mar 1953 BC (10 Nisan), which seems appropriate because it was the Sabbath and also a holy day on the Enoch Fixed calendar (summer solstice).

Jesus and Isaac From Salvation History

The New Testament sees Jesus as the Lamb of a new Passover. But more than that, the New Testament presents His sacrifice on the cross as the final and perfect sacrifice that all the sacrifices of the Bible point to and look forward to. As we noted in our last lesson, in the story of the “binding” of Isaac, the New Testament writers saw a foreshadowing God’s offering of his only beloved Son on the Cross (see Genesis 22:12-15; John 3:16). And it’s not hard to find parallels in the two events:

A father sacrifices his only beloved son. After Ishmael was banished to the wilderness (see Genesis 21:9-14), Isaac was Abraham’s only hope of posterity - “your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love” (see Genesis 22:2).

The Gospel of John uses the same language to describe the offering of Jesus. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (see John 3:16).

The Book of Hebrews says that Abraham was ready “to offer his only son” and that he had faith that God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19).

The And it is interesting, isn’t it, that Isaac is “on the third day,” Isaac was resuced from death (see Genesis 22:4).

The victim carries the wood for his own sacrifice. In addition to the parallel of a father offering his only son in the hope of resurrection, there are other parallels to point out.

Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders (Genesis 22:6).

Jesus also is depicted as “carrying the cross himself” (see John 19:17), although, weakened by brutal beatings, he was unable to bear the weight of it the whole way (see Mark 15:21).

The victim goes willingly to his own sacrifice. Although in artwork, Isaac is often portrayed as a young boy, Jewish and Christian commentators pointed out that Isaac could not have been an unwilling victim.

He was a strong young man who could carry enough wood for a large sacrifice, and Abraham was well over a hundred years old. If Isaac had resisted at all, Abraham would not have been able to overcome him.

Like Christ, they believed, Isaac made himself an offering to God, as Jesus freely laid down his own life (see John 10:18) in obedience to His Father’s will (Mark 14:36).

The sacrifice is in the mountains of Moriah. God told Abraham to “go to the land of Moriah” and sacrifice Isaac “on a height that I will point out to you” (Genesis 22:2).

Ancient tradition held that Solomon built the Temple on the spot where Abraham sacrificed Isaac (see 2 Chronicles 3:1).

The place where Abraham was willing to offer his own son became the place where God’s people made all their offerings.

Golgatha, outside of Jerusalem, is also associated with the mount of Moriah. And there God himself offered His own Son.

God himself provides the victim for the sacrifice. When Isaac asked his father, “where is the sheep for the holocaust?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust” (Genesis 22:7-8).

He turned out to be right: when God’s angel had stopped him from sacrificing Isaac, Abraham found a ram ready to be sacrificed instead (see Genesis 22:10-13).

For the final sacrifice, God provided as the new Lamb - His only Son. As Paul said: He “did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all” (see Romans 8:32).