Deuteronomy 16:1-8
To me, Pesach or Passover is about the essential message of our salvation, and the importance of every aspect of it over the eight days it is celebrated. It begins with Messiah’s death, His resurrection, and points to His second coming and the new heavens and the new earth on the eighth day, celebrated at Sukkot. Therefore none of the Feasts can be ignored or one given importance over the others. They all are necessary to tell the whole story of the Good News of the Kingdom of Elohim.
Christianity has destroyed this message and shortened the whole process to one word, the Gospel and celebrates it with a false pagan celebration unto the goddess of fertility Astarte. They called it Easter after her. They attached the death and resurrection of the one they renamed Jesus to legitimise this worldly and paganistic ritual. Rome made it easy to get the pagans into their medieval Church and protestentism keeps doing the same for nearly 2000 years.
Jude 1:1-5
Jude describes himself as one who is a slave to Yeshua the Messiah, as we are all meant to be. Who is he writing to? “To those who are called.” These are also the loved, and the guarded or kept safe, by or in Yeshua. He then goes on to warn about those false teachers and believers who don’t fit in to the above description as “called”, and for us to contend for the faith as it was originally delivered to the kedoshim, that is the set apart (holy) ones.
The emphasis I want to make here is how Jude was very eager to write to the called or chosen “about our common salvation”. But the truth is that in Christianity our salvation is anything but common. Common means shared by all. Christianities doctrines on salvation, how you obtain it, where it is taking you, how you live it out, how you find forgiveness, how you are baptised into it and many such things are a world apart. The Good News has got lost in the translation and the practice.
If everyone followed the Scriptures, (which we are not to change one iota) exactly as given, and then as taught by Yeshua and the apostles, we would all be keeping Pesach or Passover in exactly the same way and emphasis.
Then we wouldn’t be accused by the apostles of following “another Good News” (the gospel), or having “to contend for the faith” or being deceived by the false apostles and teachers of today. As Paul says in 1 Cor. 5:6-8. “Your boasting is no good. Don’t you know that a little hametz (yeast) leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old hametz, so you maybe a new batch, just as you are unleavened – for Messiah our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the Feast…”
We are to celebrate the Feasts of Y’Hovah, which define our common salvation, not Easter or Christmas or any other non Scriptural method of worship and faith. These have nothing to do with our salvation. There is only one faith we are all meant to come into. The unity of the Ruach (Spirit) and the unity of the faith, is our common goal. See Ephesus 4:1-16.
PESACH – THE FEAST OF THE CHOSEN
1 Peter 1:1-16
Peter, an apostle, a Messianic Minister of Yeshua. He was despised by the Rabbis, the Priests, the Temple leadership, Judaism, the Pharisees and Sadducees. He writes to all the Messianic believers, followers of Yeshua as their Messiah and coming King. They are the scattered, the sojourners into Turkey and Eastern Europe primarily as we know it today. They are the persecuted of the Jews and Rome, they have to flee for their lives.
What does Paul call them?
These are “chosen of the Father.” They are the set apart ones. Amongst all those who claim to be followers of Yeshua as their Saviour, there is the “chosen according to the foreknowledge of Elohim the Father, set apart by the Ruach for obedience and for sprinkling with the blood of Yeshua the Messiah” v1-2. See Math. 22:11-14
Are you one of the Chosen, or are you one of those to whom Yeshua says, “Depart from me, you are lawless, I never knew you”? Keep the Commandments, keep the Feasts, keep the Law or you are disobedient and not part of the Kingdom, no matter what you believe about Yeshua (Jesus) and the gospel. (Mathew 5:17-20; 7:13-23)
The Chosen will always keep this Feast and the Sabbaths. It is only the Chosen who care. No one else cares about the Feasts or understands them. They are to busy celebrating the Easter goddess Astarte, (whose name they changed to Jesus), eating easter eggs that come from rabbits and hot cross buns. Who cares what their Bibles say! Their celebration dates and days are wrong, and are calculated on the sun and not the moon as required by Elohim. They keep the Sunday as resurrection day. Why? Because they are worshipers of the sun god without realising it. The Torah (Law) of Elohim forbids it, but who's listening? The words, “Depart from Me” will someday soon ring loud and clear. See Jeremiah 7:8-11.
What does Peter says in verses 8-12? This is about the salvation of your souls as spoken of by the prophets of old. They searched for it and wanted it there and then. But our salvation is yet to come, at the same time as theirs, at the revelation or coming of Yeshua as Messiah, or King of Father's Kingdom here on earth. V13-14, Heb. 5:7-9; 9:28. This is the Good News. Who will reign with Him for that thousand years over all the earth? The Chosen! The true and faithful from Adam to the coming of our Second Adam. Will you be in the number called the chosen, the remnant, the few who walk the narrow path, the unpopular path, the path of death to self, as Yeshua did for us?
Pesach is the first message of hope and salvation at His first coming and resurrection. Shavuot or Pentecost is the second message, as the Ruach is poured out to write the Torah on our hearts and minds so as to walk in obedience. Sukkot or Tabernacles is the third message and celebration of His second coming and the receiving of our promised salvation and inheritance. This is the Good News of the Kingdom. Y’Hovah chooses those who choose His path of salvation through Yeshua and obedience to His commands. Love not the world, the things of the world or the ways of the world. Everything that is contrary to His word is not based on true love but is idolatry. The traditions of men are not the traditions of God. Mark 7:5-13. Colossians 2:6-8
Eat the unleavened bread of obedience and repentance this Pesach.