Preparing for Passover…

With two months to go to passover, this post may seem premature… but if Holy Spirit thinks it’s time to start preparing our hearts, then I guess it means that this year’s passover will bring significant revelation to those hungry for God!

(This may be a long post… but I promise you that reading all of it will be highly rewarding!)

FIRST, A LITTLE BACKGROUND…

On the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish Passover is commemorated on the same dates every year: 14&15 Nisan. (14 Nisan is preparation day,  when the lambs are slaughtered, and 15 Nisan is a holy day, treated like a sabbath.)

Since the Gregorian calendar (‘our’ calendar) and the Hebrew calendar follow different cycles, the Hebrew festivals are celebrated on different Gregorian dates, and on different days of the week, each year.

It is therefore quite rare to find ourselves in the situation where Passover falls on the same day of the week as the year when Jesus was crucified.

Furthermore, the current Hebrew calendar is somewhat flawed compared to the calendar Jesus would have followed:

back then a month started only after observation of the first crescent of the moon. Modern calendars, for the sake of predictability, do not take that into account. Thus, to know in any given year, what the correct Hebrew date will be, we need to check the moon phases and see when the first crescent of the month in question will be visible. This year, for instance, the Hebrew month of Nisan is predicted to start on 23 March, but since the crescent will only be observable in the evening of the 23rd, there is a one day error to take into account.(https://www.moongiant.com/calendar/march/2023/)  The ‘real’ 14 Nisan will therefore not be on Wednesday 5 April as indicated, but on Thursday 6 April

You will soon understand why this is an absolute game changer…

GOING BACK TO PASSOVER 2020

In 2020, we found ourselves celebrating Passover in the same way the Israelites did during the very first Passover in Egypt: locked into our homes!

Moreover, the Hebrew passover date fell on exactly the same week day as it did in the year Jesus was crucified: Nisan 14, on the modern Hebrew calendar, was to fall on April 8th 2022, but because of the moon crescent error, it actually was on April 9th, a Thursday.

It made it possible for us to ‘replicate’ the whole event - not in a religious way, but in a spiritual way - in order to experience the Passover message in a much deeper way.

SO… WHAT ABOUT GOOD FRIDAY??

As with many portions of scripture and biblical events, good Friday was the result of bad interpretation. As a matter of fact, once you start studying Greek and Hebrew, hebraic culture and learn what life was like when Jesus walked the earth, you start to see a great number of mistranslations and misinterpretations, things that were taught to us as ‘gospel truth’, yet are actually quite far from the truth.

For Jesus to have spent 3 days in the tomb and be resurrected on Sunday morning, the day after the sabbath, He had to be crucified on a Thursday. According to hebraic tradition a day starts at sunset, so He had to remain in the grave 3 nights and 3 days and be resurrected on the 3rd day to fulfil the prophecy.

This outline should help you understand:

• If Jesus was crucified on Thursday 14 Nisan, on passover preparation day, he would have died the same time as the lambs that were being slaughtered as a sacrifice for sin

• sunset would have announce the start of 15 Nisan and with it Jesus’s first night and day in the tomb.

• 15 Nisan, a high holy day, equivalent to a sabbath, would not have allowed any travel for the women to go embalm Jesus’s body.

• Again, Friday’s sunset would have announced the start of the new day, Nisan 16th, the 2nd night and day in the tomb.

• 16 Nisan would have been a Saturday, thus a true sabbath, again making it impossible for Jesus’s followers to visit the tomb.

• Saturday’s sunset would have introduced the 3rd night and day in the tomb, and also resurrection day: Sunday 17 Nisan.

Do you see how this fulfills precisely what Jesus prophesied about his own death & resurrection? Our lack of understanding regarding the calendars and culture of that day, has caused us to create assumptions (such as good Friday) that are misleading. Not that God will smite us over it lol, but its for our own sake that we should know the Truth!

PASSOVER OF 2023

This year we find ourselves with a brand new opportunity to experience the Passover the way Jesus did.

Nisan 14, on the modern Hebrew calendar is fixed on April 5th, but adjusting the dates according to the moonphase, it will actually fall on April 6th, a thursday.

Now, the fact that this happened in 2020 and again in 2023, is more exceptional than you may think. The last time this has happened, if my calculations are correct, was in 2006. It is quite a rare occurrence in itself, even more so when it happens twice only a few years apart!

And the fact that this new opportunity presents itself exactly 3 years after the one in 2020, is actually very significant… it speaks of resurrection, Life and HOPE!

2020 was, what I would refer to as, the year I started to understand co-crucifixion with Christ. (Winnie Banov's teaching entitled Coco Bliss Drink revolutionised my Christian walk!)

Since 2020, I found myself stuck on the true meaning of Jesus’s death, the words that He spoke on the cross — tetelestai — and what these things imply to me as a believer...

During these past 3 years, I have meditated on co-crucifixion often and have found myself also being ‘co-crucified’ in many ways. The carnal things that had to go was not the worst; I actually found it exciting to see these things fall away. To me the hardest part was when I found myself in a season of co-burial…

Burial is something you usually do on your own... It so happened that I suddenly lost a few friends... and I had to fight really hard to not give in to depression. But it was only hard until I stopped fighting and realised that I WASNT ALONE - this was, afterall CO-burial!

The solution to every problem is always to trust & surrender, because we are never alone...! I just wish I had realized it sooner!!

I ended up embracing co-burial as a very necessary break from “social over-interaction”. I decided to embark on a semi-permanent retreat, so to speak: away from the crowds and from docial obligations. And I am really liking it!

But even if the co-burial is starting to pay off, I also feel as if this year of 2023 is shifting me towards…CO-RESURRECTION…!

Having been through 3 years of ‘dying’ in many ways, the prospect of resurrection is a great one! And, in truth, there can be no real resurrection without a proper and complete death.

I guess this is why the Lord is prompting us to meditate on Passover two months in advance: He wants our experience of the ‘3rd month’ to be profound and overflowing with resurrection power!

Moreover, this year may just be a jubilee year which brings with it great hope of freedom and release. Why not embrace this hope and turn or attention fully into Him who made redemption possible?

Ps: I would like to encourage you to read again all Biblical references to the passover, from the Exodus, to the establishment of the Passover feast as an annual festival when Israel moved into the promised land, and of course everything regarding the crucifixion of Jesus. Then meditate on it, allowing Holy Spirit to speak to your heart and to reveal His mysteries to you...