SEASONS - KEEPING THE SEASONS OF SPRING BY CELEBRATING THE PASSOVER WEEK

OBSERVING THE PASSOVER

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

I am a Christian, believing in Jesus Christ as Messiah.  When I observe Passover Week I am NOT trying to act Jewish; I am simply trying to be a more accurate Christian.

I strongly feel that God has used the Jewish people to teach Christians the right ways to live.  Thus, I have developed a very Hebraic heart.

The people of Israel were a physical shadow and type of the Church of Jesus Christ to come.  The Church (those filled with God's Holy Spirit) did not replace Israel; the church grew out of these people called Israel, who were called of God to proclaim His ways throughout the earth.  They were the nation blessed with the physical blood lineage of Messiah.

Because of this, I keep the Spring Holy Days in my home according to the Jewish calendar.  It is, after all; the same calendar that Jesus kept, and it proclaims the same days that the disciples continued to keep, even after the Resurrection of Christ and His Ascension into heaven.    

I have learned, similar to how the Hebrews and the disciples learned; that God gave these dates in the time order of appointed sacred times, and that they have never been changed by God, even after the fulfillment of the Resurrection on the second Holy Day of the Seven Days of Unleavened Bread, during the Passover Week on that day which many of us call the day of Early First Fruits.  

If the order of these Holy Days were changed by God, like many people think, and God's calendar had ended at the cross, so much of God's story which He had told through the Holy Days would remain unfulfilled!  

Yet; sadly; many stop their religious observances after the celebration of Passover and The Resurrection.  Resurrection is only the beginning!

By only keeping and observing a portion of the well laid out plan of God, the continuation of God's plan is skewed to the observant believer.  There are three more holy sacred times that HAVE NOT YET been fulfilled which come AFTER the Passover.  

Teaching people to forget these Holy Days and God's calendar only helps Satan to keep God's people skewed.  It keeps them from seeing all of God's complete prophecies.    

This year (2017) The Passover (which includes The 7 Days of Unleavened Bread and Early First Fruits) will be observed April 10^th at sundown – April 17^th, ending at sunset.  It is a very sacred and holy time that is rich with ancient history and modern transitions.    I feel sorry for anyone who is so caught up in the trappings of the world's teachings that they miss or dismiss the true time of Passover.  

Many people think Passover started with the Exodus from Egypt, but the whole concept actually began way back in the garden with Adam and Eve.  God first showed the concept of Passover to Adam and Eve when He killed an animal and used the skin of the animal to cover their nakedness.  It is thought by the sages that God roasted the meat of the animal killed to cover Adam and Eve’s sin, and they ate a meal together just outside of Paradise.  This was the beginning of God repairing the breach caused by their sin inside the garden.

In this sense, observing Passover is the beginning of repairing the breach between God and mankind.  Note that it was initiated by God, planned and laid out as a way for us to come back to Him.  God has never wanted mankind to be separated from Him.  He has used Passover to teach us this.

We know that Adam and Eve taught a concept of Passover to their children who taught it to their children all the way up through history, right up to the  present generation where we are living now. 

 
Even when the great flood came, Noah kept count of God’s sacred days and he and his family celebrated them together on the ark.  Afterwards Noah’s son Shem became the family high priest for the first new family after the flood.  He taught about God’s sacred holy days in the first school that he founded to teach people about God's way of life. 

Many generations later, in the days of Moses God’s people were taken into slavery and held captive by an Egyptian Pharaoh.  God told Moses to lead the people to freedom.  When Pharaoh refused to let the people go God sent plagues across the land of Egypt.  The last and worst plague was the death of every first born son.  Before this night, which was Passover; God instructed Moses to tell the people to put the blood of a lamb over the door posts of their homes.  On this night, if the Angel of Death saw the blood of the lamb over the door post of the home, he would pass over and the first born of that house would be saved.  This is how God helped His people remember this sacred time even when they had been held for years in captivity and had not been allowed to worship Him or keep His sacred times.  God was reminding them that HE set the dates of our time.  He is the eternal timekeeper.  He stands outside of time; but He has planned for every second of our life as He watches over it.  Some of our seconds, minutes and hours are more blessed and sacred and should always be set aside.  

Many years after the wilderness experience of the Israelites, during the days of Solomon’s temple, the people brought their lambs to the temple to be slaughtered by the priest.  Each sacrificial lamb wore a sign around its neck with the family name painted on it.  The blood of the lamb was poured out at the altar and the meat was taken home and roasted on a pomegranate pole until it was done, and the whole family would gather in the home and have a sacred meal to remember how God had atoned for their sins by the blood of their lamb. 

They would also remember how God had delivered their ancestors from the bondage of slavery and led them through the wilderness to the promise land.  All of the lamb was eaten in this meal.  If any was left over it was burned in the fire.  

The stories of these things were told each year to the next generation so they would always remember the sacred stories of God.  

Are you passing these stories on to your next generation?  

It is so easy for children to see these stories when you observe the Passover Seder inside your home.  

Then came the days when Herod was king.  Jesus Christ was born to a young virgin named Mary.  Jesus grew up keeping God’s sacred, appointed times.  He was the first man to ever live without sin.  He was the Son of God who came from God to earth in the form of man.  He endured every temptation known to mankind without sinning.  He was a great teacher and He taught about The Kingdom of God.  He had many followers and they were called disciples.  

Jesus and His disciples understood sacred, appointed times and they observed The Passover for seven days. 

On the night before Jesus was crucified the disciples ate the Passover meal with Jesus.  On that night Jesus asked them to always remember him with this meal.  Shortly after that He was crucified.  He hung on a cruel cross, suffered and bled and died for my sins and your sins and the sins of those disciples that ate at the table with Him.  

He was the Holy Lamb of God.    

On this very same day called Passover Jesus Christ became the lamb for the door post of our hearts. 

He atoned for our sins by giving His life in exchange for the debt of our sin.  

He redeemed us from the bondage of the slavery to sin.  

Christians must remember this at Passover .  He commanded us to always remember this.

 At the time the disciples participated in the Passover with Christ before His crucifixion, they were on their way to being REAL Christians, the very blessed People of a Resurrected Messiah.  They had done all that was humanly possible, and Jesus was about to do the rest.  There were appointed, sacred times for fulfilling all of this.  God had set them in motion from the foundation of the world.  Jesus understood this.  He waited on God's timing and then accepted His mission to save the world just as they had mapped it out together right from the very beginning.    

Today we have come to know that Jesus Christ is the Holy Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  He was and is our Passover.   He fulfilled everything  that had been learned in the keeping of Passover for all the years before and after His death, burial and resurrection.  He asked us to always remember.

The people who love God today still keep the Passover, and they have not forgotten the words of Jesus when he said “Remember Me.” 

They know that Jesus became our Passover lamb, and that His blood was perfect blood which atoned for all the sins of mankind forever. 

God’s people still keep God’s sacred, appointed time called Passover.  We remember each Sabbath and we remember each Passover.   In all the years that have passed, God's people have never forgotten.

So now we all know of these things which came about over time through the different generations of people serving God that further fulfilled the meaning of Passover.   These little stories were added to the whole story, and passed on from each generation of people as pieces of Passover developed and unfolded and happened in their own time.  

From the beginning of time God wrote, knew, and understood the whole story; but we have had to live through the story in order to understand it all.  

We will always remember to tell the story to our children;  to pass it on to the next generation.  

Our children must understand all these things that God used to teach us that Jesus Christ would become The Lamb of God offered up for the sins of the whole world.  Each year as we remember this, we tell our children of the greatest love story that ever happened, all the while hoping that they too will learn and grow and love and know the goodness of The Lord and pass the beautiful story on to their children one day. 

At Passover we glorify the Lamb who is worthy to open the scroll; the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world; who hung on a cross to pay for the sins of all mankind.  

He is worthy of all glory and honor and praise.  

 We must always remember how much God loved us as He decided to send Him to us.  

We must always remember how much Christ loved us; enough to die in our place.  

We must always REMEMBER.

Passover is all about remembering the most important things of God.  These are the things which we should never forget.     

The Passover season lasts for eight days. 

The Seder meal is eaten inside the homes of God’s people on the first day just after sunset.  

The meal is usually served on white linen tablecloths by candlelight and special blessings and prayers are recited to help us remember and to allow us as a family to offer up our thanks to a God with a heart bigger than the sky.