The Feast of Tabernacles

Here we are at the final feast of the year in the Jewish calendar. The last festival that God commanded the Israelites to keep, as they are recorded in Leviticus 23. Six festivals have preceded today and I would encourage you to go back to the previous blogs and read about them. The first four have already been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ or in the coming of the Holy Spirit. The next two, which have been celebrated in the last two weeks, will have their final fulfilment by the end of the Tribulation, but this last one I don’t think is actually going to be finished with for over a thousand years. In Hebrew it is called Succoth, which will either be translated as ‘booth’ or ‘tabernacle’ in your Bible. It literally means ‘a temporary dwelling’- a tent. I am going to refer to it as a tabernacle because that is such a cool word.

For seven days, commencing today, devout Jews are required to go to Jerusalem, book into a camping ground and pitch their tabernacles.

Now, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall keep the festival of the Lord, lasting seven days; a complete rest on the first day, and a complete rest on the eighth day. On the first day you shall take the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a festival to the Lord seven days in the year; you shall keep it in the seventh month as a statute for ever throughout your generations. You shall live in tabernacles for seven days; all that are citizens in Israel shall live in tabernacles, so that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel live in tabernacles when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.  Leviticus 23:39-43

 To understand this you need a bit of Bible knowledge. Let me try to explain. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt for over 400 years. After the events celebrated in the Passover the Egyptian Pharaoh allowed them to leave, so they immediately crossed the Red Sea out of Egypt and into the Sinai Desert. They lived in the desert for 40 years, after which they crossed the Jordan River and entered Canaan (present day Israel) which was the land God had promised their ancestor Abraham that he would give them. While they were wandering around in Sinai they lived in tabernacles. God provided them with manna to eat and water to drink. They were no longer slaves but neither were they settled on their own land. Now, the experience of the Israelites is a metaphor or forerunner for the Christian life. Initially we were enslaved to sin, that‘s the Egypt bit. Crossing the Red Sea is a picture of being born again, saved from sin and into the freedom of a restored relationship with God. Philippians 3 talks of Christians being citizens of heaven and heaven is represented by Canaan, the Promised Land. At death (crossing the Jordan River) we find ourselves in heaven, where we belong, with the Lord. In the meantime; however, during our lives on earth we are still, according to the metaphor, wandering in the desert, no longer enslaved to sin but not yet in the place God promises us.

Getting back to the Feast of Tabernacles then, we need to understand how this fits in. The feast itself had two significant elements.

The first aspect of the Feast of Tabernacles is that the Israelites were commanded to live in tabernacles for the week during which they celebrated the feast, as a reminder to them that God made them wander in the Sinai Desert for 40 years living in tabernacles and that he provided for them at that time. So this feast is a remembrance of God’s faithful provision of all things good as we carry out our pilgrimage through this life, as well as a reminder that something far better awaits us. All well and good, but now it gets interesting. Look at this prophecy from the book of Zechariah.

Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them.  Zechariah 14:16-17

This prophecy is referring to a period of time known as the Millenium, a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth after the defeat of the Antichrist at the end of the Tribulation. Satan is defeated and cast into the Abyss (some temporary prison). Jesus rules the world in order to fulfil all the prophecies about the descendant of King David ruling righteously over the whole earth (Psalm 89, Isaiah 9: 1-7, 11:1-9).  We will get to what happens at the end of the millennium shortly, but for that 1000 years people are, according to the Israel metaphor, still not in the place God promised them and so they are still living in the desert. And as such, they will commemorate the Festival of Tabernacles, remembering that God is providing for them.

The logistics of every person alive going to Jerusalem every year I am not even going to contemplate, suffice to say we are going to need some big camping grounds.

The second significant element of the Feast of Trumpets is that it was the end of the season harvest festival and actually became the most festive of all of the ordained feasts. It was a time of rejoicing in God’s blessing and provision for the nation of Israel now living in the Promised Land. This sense of the celebratory nature of the Feast of Tabernacles comes out in the repeat giving of the institution of the feast recorded in Deuteronomy.

“You shall keep the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.  For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.  Deuteronomy 16:13-15

The idea of harvest also has a darker side to it. The Bible makes several links between harvest and judgement. Jesus told one parable where wheat and weeds grow up together in a field and the farmer leaves both to grow until the wheat is ready to harvest. Then he reaps everything, sorts out the good grain and burns the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). This sense of the Feast of Tabernacles referring to the harvest of souls and the final judgement will be fulfilled at a judgement referred to as the Great White Throne. Everyone who has ever lived will stand before God and be judged according to whether their names are recorded in the Book of Life. The Great White Throne judgement is described in Revelation 20, the third last chapter in the Bible. It happens after the millennium and just prior to God’s people entering heaven – their final, permanent home. Although it is not stated in the Bible, I am sure that this judgement will take place at the final Feast of Tabernacles. Those whose names are written in the Book of Life enter Paradise, while those who don’t suffer the annihilation of their souls in hell. At that time, all seven of the festivals appointed by God over 3000 years ago will have been perfectly and completely fulfilled.

A Tale of Two Goats

Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. You’ve heard of the term ‘scapegoat’ no doubt. Well today is scapegoat day. Here’s how it worked. Once a year, on this day, the Jewish High Priest took two goats and drew lots for what happened to them. The unlucky one got its head cut off and the High Priest took its blood into the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the temple which is associated with God’s divine presence. He was only permitted to enter the Holy of Holies once a year and on this day he took that goat’s blood and sprinkled it on the Ark of the Covenant. This was the sin offering for the nation of Israel.

Then he took the other goat, laid his hands on it and confessed all the sins of the nation of Israel (I imagine that took a while). That goat was then led out into the desert and let go. It escaped, and from that practice we get the term ‘scapegoat’, because the escaping goat is blamed for the sin it didn’t commit. You can read the instructions for commemorating Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16.

The Day of Atonement has always seemed a bit odd to me. Not only because of the unusual proceedings that I just described, but also because it has almost unmentioned in the New Testament There are numerous references to Jesus being the Lamb of God and there are several allusions to the Passover, but goats barely get a mention. Apart from Hebrews 10:4 telling us that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, and references in Hebrews 9 and 10 to Jesus entering into the real Holy of Holies (God’s throneroom) once for all time, this festival is almost ignored in the New Testament. Further to that, it seems at face value to be a bit of a double up. Passover and Yom Kippur are both celebrating the same thing – the lifeblood of an animal given in exchange for the lifeblood of the worshipper. It’s a bit like having two Easters. But a deeper look into the real meaning of the Day of Atonement highlights significant differences and once again I was fascinated at the perfect integration of every aspect of the festival with its fulfilment in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Firstly then, there is an important difference between the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the sacrifice of the sin offering of a goat. The Passover lamb was an individual, personal sacrifice. Every family had to offer a lamb to God on behalf of that family and only that family. But the Day of Atonement is a national sacrifice. One goat is killed for the sin of the entire nation of Israel. The Day of Atonement, to this day, remains solely a Jewish national festival, it was not incorporated into the life of the church and that is why it is barely mentioned in the New Testament. And this is where the events are so wonderfully fulfilled in the restoration of Israel.

A bit of background for those not so hot on their Bible history.

Israel is God’s chosen nation. He established an eternal covenant with them whereby they were to remain faithful to him, and he would bless them abundantly. Then, the other nations of the world would see that blessing and be drawn to worship God as well. In so doing, they would also receive divine blessing. But Israel wasn’t faithful to the covenant and rejected God’s Son when he came to show them the way back to God. Therefore, the other nations never got to see, desire or experience God’s blessing. As a result of Israel’s failure, in the New Testament period God bypassed them and took the message of salvation directly to the other nations. Thus the church becomes the spiritual nation of Israel and the means whereby unbelievers hear of God’s grace. Christians are those in covenant relationship with God, by faith not by birth, who remain true to him (more or less).

But God made an eternal covenant with Israel, and God doesn’t break covenants, so he will eventually restore Israel back to himself. And that event, when it happens, will be the fulfilment of – the Day of Atonement.

Can you begin to see how the events concerning the goats fit in? Firstly, the goat that died on the Day of Atonement is the Jewish nation’s sin offering. So who would that foreshadow? Jesus of course. When he died on the cross he took the sin of the whole world, including that of Israel (they have not yet repented of their sin, but they will one day). That sacrifice has already happened, that part of the Day of Atonement was fulfilled 2000 years ago. But after (that’s important) that sin-offering goat was sacrificed, the High Priest confessed the sin of Israel over the other goat. So, who is that goat a forerunner of? Once again, Jesus. When, sometime in the future, Israel recognises that they got it completely wrong and crucified their Messiah, they will confess their sin to Jesus and he will take their sin, just like the scapegoat. But the scapegoat didn’t die. Jesus is both the sin offering and the scapegoat. Both goats were innocent, one died, just as Jesus died, and one lived, just as Jesus is alive. In the celebration of the Day of Atonement both goats were dealt with on the same day. In its fulfilment there are a couple of thousand years in between. But the events are perfectly mirrored. Isn’t that brilliant?

But wait there’s more. There is another element in the life of the nation of Israel that was instituted by God that has a bearing on this day. The jubilee year happened once every 50 years and was a year when all slaves were set free and all land that had been sold was returned to its original owners. It was God’s way of doing social security. Each family had their own land, and if through mishap or mismanagement it had to be sold, then when the Jubilee came around it was restored to the original owners. You can read all about it in Leviticus 25.

Jesus claimed to fulfil part of the Jubilee when he read the first seven lines of Isaiah 61:1-3 below, as recorded in Luke 4:16-21. The whole prophecy goes like this.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,    

because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,    

to bind up the broken-hearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,    

and release to the prisoners;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,    

and the day of vengeance of our God;    

to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—    

to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning,    

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

The events described here concern the proclamation of the beginning of the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ – The Jubilee Year. In its entirety, it is the day of liberty for those captive to sin and the day of God’s vengeance against those who reject him, as Jesus puts down all opposition to his rightful rule (Luke records that Jesus didn’t read the vengeance bit because he wasn’t fulfilling that part when he came the first time). The whole prophecy is going to be fulfilled on the day of Christ’s return. Now, three guesses as to which day the Jubilee year starts on. Yep, the Day of Atonement – today. This is, at face value, an odd day to start. The first day of the calendar year was 10 days previous on the Feast of Trumpets. The end of the harvest year is five days later on the Feast of Tabernacles. The Day of Atonement is a highly religious day. So why would this be the day to commence a calendar/harvest year? Because, Jesus will return on the day that Israel realises that he is the Messiah and confesses their sin, thus fulfilling the Day of Atonement. He will save them from destruction by the armies of the Antichrist and destroy all opposition to his rule. He will then begin his perfect reign over the whole earth from Jerusalem, commencing the Year of Jubilee. All of this happens on this day – some year from now.

Anybody seriously think that a bunch of random Jews thought all that up about 3000 years ago and then it all just happens to be coming true?

The Feast of Trumpets

If the rapture is going to take place this year, it is going to occur at 3:48am on the 14^th September New Zealand time, that’s 1:48 AEST and 4:48pm on the 13^th GMT. Personally, I don’t think that the rapture will happen this year, but if it does, that’s when it will be – guaranteed. Got your attention? I hope so because this is fascinating. No special visions or words from the Lord, no numerology or esoteric theories. Just simple understanding of the Bible and the Jewish calendar.

Today is 13 September, and according to the Jewish calendar, in 2015 this is the day on which the Festival of Trumpets is celebrated, the institution of which can be read in Leviticus 23:23-25.

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ²⁴Speak to the people of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of complete rest, a holy convocation commemorated with trumpet blasts. ²⁵You shall not work at your occupations; and you shall present the Lord’s offering by fire.

This festival is unique. All of the other six, as we have seen already in my previous blogs in this series, or will see in the next two weeks, either commemorate some significant event in Israel’s history or in its agricultural calendar. Quick revision: Passover – commemorates the Angel of Death killing the eldest son of all of the Egyptians but sparing the Israelites, Unleavened bread – commemorates the Israelites leaving Egypt in a hurry without time to allow bread to rise, First Fruits – celebrates the beginning of the grain harvest, Pentecost – commemorates Moses receiving the 10 commandments, The Day of Atonement – the holiest day of the Jewish year when sacrifice is made for Israel’s sin, The Feast of Tabernacles – the major harvest festival at the end of the agricultural season. Among all of these the Festival of Trumpets stands out for its simplicity and lack of identifiable significance. God simply says that on this day in September blow a trumpet and stop working. No explanation of why, no referral back to any event in Israel’s history, just blow a trumpet and cease your labours.

Now, as I have already demonstrated in the previous blogs, each of these festivals has its ultimate and final fulfilment in Christ and each one was, or will be, fulfilled on the exact day that it is commemorated. More revision: Passover – Jesus is the Passover lamb and he died at the time that the Passover lamb is killed, Unleavened bread – Jesus is the bread of life and he is sinless (yeast is a metaphor for sin). Thus he is the unleavened bread who offered his life for our sin on the day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, First fruits – Jesus is the first man to be raised from the dead never to die again and he rose on the day of the celebration of First Fruits, a guarantee of our future resurrection. Pentecost – the new law, which is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, replaces the Mosaic law. The Holy Spirit came on Pentecost. For the final two festivals you will have to wait – but only for a couple of weeks. However, the pattern is clear. Each festival is fulfilled on the day that it was originally set to be celebrated by God himself. We can be certain that the Festival of Trumpets will follow the same pattern. So, what is the fulfilment of this festival?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 and 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

13¹⁵For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.^{* 16}For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever.

The rapture is the fulfilment of the Feast of Trumpets and will therefore occur on the day that the Feast of Trumpets is celebrated. The trumpet was blown at the commencement of the day. The Jewish day begins at sundown which, in Israel this year, occurs at 6:48 on the 13^th September. That’s 3:48am on the 14th here in NZ.

On a future Feast of Trumpets there is going to be a trumpet blast (the last one) and all Christians, both those who are alive at the time and those who have already died, are going to be ‘caught up’ (raptured) into the clouds to meet the Lord. And guess what we are going to stop doing? Working. We will just be going about our business and apparently arbitrarily, there will be a trumpet blast and a cessation of labour, just like the festival as it was originally instituted. Pretty exciting, don’t you think?

The first four festivals were all consummated in 33AD, the last two will get their turn some time after the Rapture. In the Jewish calendar the Feast of Trumpets is the next festival to be fulfilled. We can be very confident that around the second half of September/early October there is going to be a trumpet blast and a significant journey awaiting us. I say around those dates because the date is set in the Hebrew calendar which is based on cycles of the moon. Therefore, it varies a bit from year to year in our calendar. And there’s the catch. We don’t know what year. It will be on the Feast of Trumpets, but which one – we don’t know.

There has been a lot of articles published and prophecies and sermons given that something very significant is going to happen regarding the end times at some stage this year. I don’t believe that the rapture will occur this year, although I would have to say that this is the first year that I would consider it a possibility. I do believe that it is not far off.

Paul finishes the last quoted verse from 1 Thessalonians 4 with this:

^‘18Therefore encourage one another with these words.’

It’s only encouraging if you’re ready for it.

Pentecost

Today, 23 May, is the day on which the Jews celebrate the fourth of their annual feasts – Shavuot, or as we in the West have named it, Pentecost. Pentecost is celebrated 50 days after the Passover feast.

The date of the Pentecost festival coincides with the date that Moses was given the Ten Commandments engraved by the hand of God on stone tablets – 50 days after the Israelites left Egypt and this is a significant aspect of the commemoration on this day. However, Passover gained another celebratory aspect once the Israelites had entered the land God had promised them (present day Israel) when it also became the major annual harvest festival.

And from the day after the sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation-offering, you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the LORD. You shall bring from your settlements two loaves of bread as an elevation-offering, each made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of choice flour, baked with leaven, as first fruits to the LORD. Leviticus 23:15-17

Note that this ‘first fruits’ is different from the previous festival. That one was focussed on bringing the first of the crop to God as an offering. This one has more of a ‘bring part of the main crop to God first, before you eat the rest of it’ sense to it.

Pentecost is the last Jewish festival that has been fulfilled in the first coming of Jesus Christ, but the fulfilment occurred a few weeks after he ascended into heaven. We can read what happened in Acts 2.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they [the disciples] were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each…

[Peter told them that Jesus, whom they had crucified, was the Messiah]

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ 38Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

So then, in what sense were the events of Pentecost AD 33 a fulfilment of the original festival? Firstly, the aspect about Moses and the Ten Commandments.

The Laws of Moses, as we read them in the books of Exodus to Deuteronomy, were the rules that the Israelites had to live by in order to remain in covenant relationship with God. God set the rules, gave them to Moses and Moses gave them to the people. But God knew that the people were weak and could not keep that law. Thus he also promised that one day he would replace the law written on stone tablets with a law written on his follower’s hearts. A law that came with the power to keep it.

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:31-34

With the coming of the Holy Spirit at that Pentecost, God made a new covenant, not just with the Jews, but with all people. The Holy Spirit within us, writing the law on our hearts, convincing us of what is right and wrong, and empowering us to do the right. This is the new covenant, and God gave this one 50 days after providing a way out of slavery to sin, with the death of the Passover lamb, just as he did to the Israelites 2000 years before.

The second aspect; that of the harvest festival was also fulfilled that day, with the 3000 people who repented. We live in the age of grace, the period of time where all people are called to repent and are freely offered forgiveness through the death of Christ. Many millions of people over the past two millennia have accepted that offer of salvation. This age of grace began on that Pentecost day and the first converts to Christianity were the first fruits of that harvest.

Four festivals down, and all of them perfectly fulfilled in the coming of Christ. Three remain and we don’t get to the next one until September. But it’s a doozy. The festival of trumpets. Without giving away too many clues let’s just say that it has a unique origin. It commemorates no significant event in Israel’s history. God just said that on this day all of Israel was to blow a trumpet and stop work. And the fulfilment of that would be – the last trumpet. Now where have I heard that before?

First Fruits

The 14th/15th of the month of Nisan is the day on which the Jews celebrate the Passover (remember a Jewish day starts at sunset). On the following day they commence celebrating the Festival of Unleavened Bread and on the first, first day of the week (Sunday) after the Passover they celebrate the Festival of First Fruits. You can read all this in Leviticus 23. In AD 33, as we have already seen, the 14th Nisan was a Friday night/Saturday day, which was also a normal Sabbath. Saturday night/Sunday was the commencement of the feast of Unleavened Bread, but, because that year it was also the first Sunday after the Passover, it was also the day on which the Festival of First Fruits would have been celebrated. And when did Mary and the other women go to the tomb of Jesus to find it empty? Dawn of the first day of the week – early Sunday morning. What is the significance of this, apart from the fact that I should have posted this blog yesterday?

Pretty simple really. At this time of year the first of the crops is harvested and God commanded the Israelites to bring the first sheaf to be reaped to the priest to be presented as an offering. This is the first of the harvest festivals. 50 days later at Pentecost was the main end-of-summer harvest festival but the first fruits was a promise that the more bountiful harvest was coming.

Straight away we can see how this festival is fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. After three days in the tomb he rose again, the first human to experience the resurrection, the first mortal body to put on immortality, the first person to defeat death. In his resurrection, we who believe in him have the hope and promise that, just as the first sheaf of barley harvested brought a promise of a greater harvest to come, we also will experience resurrection from the dead and eternal life.

Paul makes this plain and simple in 1 Corinthians 15:20-23

‘But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.’

Three festivals down, four to go. The next one, Pentecost, is in seven weeks so I am going to do a Basil Brush on you at this point. Two features of these festivals have really stood out to me as I have researched them over the past few days. Firstly, that God knew what was going to happen. When he first established the stars in the sky he knew the date on which his son would die and set that night to have a blood moon. The second element that really stands out is the symmetry and completeness of the imagery. The sacrificed lamb, the eldest son dying because he wasn’t covered by the blood of the lamb, the need to leave Egypt in haste and have no time to bake bread, the first fruits offered on the first day of a new week. Every element in the original historical events were mirrored in the celebration of the festivals and fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. And people still think that Christianity is a human invention and the Bible is full of contradictions. It is the absolute absence of contradictions and loose ends that to me proves it is divinely orchestrated.

Get back to you in 49 days.

Unleavened Bread

The day after the Passover was, according to the Jewish calendar, 15 Nisan. It was the day on which God commanded the Israelites to commence the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Now, for those of you lacking in the culinary disciplines, leaven is a synonym for yeast. For seven days the Israelites had to eat bread made without yeast. Firstly, let’s look at the origin of the feast, then the commemoration of it and finish with how it has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

As you would have seen from the previous blog concerning the Passover, these festivals originated in the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. After the death of all of the eldest sons of the Egyptians, Pharaoh allowed the Hebrews to leave, and they left immediately. The whole lot of them (probably two hundred thousand, not two million) packed up and left the same day. In their haste they did not have time to pop down to the supermarket and pick up a few things. They didn’t have time to make bread properly by allowing the yeast to rise, beating it flat and rising again. They ate those flat unleavened pita bread things.

As an annual reminder to the Israelites of how God had rescued them out of Egypt, for seven days, commencing the day after the Passover, they had to eat unleavened bread.

Now in the Bible, Egypt is a picture of our lives before we were saved. The Hebrews were enslaved to the Egyptians, we were enslaved to sin. Yeast is also a metaphor for sin. Yeast and mold are actually types of fungi, they are agents of decay even though they are used in a positive manner in making bread, cheese, wine and all that other good stuff.

You can see this yeast/sin imagery most clearly in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8.

‘Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal [passover] lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’

Let’s look at how Jesus fulfils the Feast of Unleavened Bread such that it need never be celebrated again.

Firstly, Jesus is the Bread of Life.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:51

Secondly, note that in the fulfilment of the Passover, we recognised that Jesus is the embodiment of the sacrificed lamb. He died just as the lamb died. But, when he died, he died sinless. He did not have the agents of decay, the yeast if you like, did not cause his body to decay. Jesus can be seen in the sacrificed lamb, but also in the unleavened bread. Jesus is free from the yeast of sin and death and in him we also can overcome evil.

There you have it. Tomorrow – The festival of First Fruits

The Passover

Leviticus – Rules and regulations for the nation of Israel. Let’s just say it’s a good book to practise speed reading in. We may have read it, but have we really?

I have been reading chapter 23. It’s all about the seven festivals in the Jewish calendar that God commanded the nation of Israel to keep.
The Passover
The Festival of Unleavened Bread
The Festival of First Fruits
Pentecost
The Festival of Trumpets
The Day of Atonement
The Festival of Booths

So here’s the thing. While they are still being kept by Jews right up until today (today, April 4 is Passover) they all have an ultimate fulfilment. The first four have been completed and the consummation of the final three is still in front of us – though not as far in front as it once was. On the day that each one falls between now and September I want to describe the history and the fulfilment of each. They occur in essentially two groups. The week ahead of us covers the Passover, Unleavened Bread and First Fruits with Pentecost 50 days later. The festivals of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and Booths all occur in September. So then, a layman’s understanding of the Passover.

The Passover was instituted when the 12 tribes of the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt and God was inflicted various plagues on Egypt because Pharaoh refused to allow them to leave. The events of the final plague were these: Approximately 1450BC at about 3pm on 14 Nisan (Nisan is a month in the Hebrew calendar) every Hebrew family had to kill a lamb and paint its blood on the door posts and lintel of their house. After night fell they cooked and ate the lamb. At midnight of that night, which was now 15 Nisan because in the Jewish calendar a day starts at sunset, an angel of death flew over Egypt and killed the eldest son in every house on which there was no blood on the door. In every household of the Egyptians, from the lowliest slave to the royal palace, the eldest son died.

This tragedy was sufficient to persuade Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave, and so they did, later that day. God initiated the Passover festival as an annual reminder that he had saved them out of Egypt – that a lamb was sacrificed and the eldest sons of the Egyptians died.

On Friday 14 Nisan 33AD, at about 3pm, Jesus died on the cross, the blood of the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world, spread across the cross beam and the upright of the cross, should have spared the eldest Son of God, but it didn’t. How do we know this is when it happened? The Bible describes a number of events.

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘This man is calling for Elijah.’ At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.’ Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. Matthew 27:45-51

Phlegon Trallianus, a Roman historian wrote the following account of that day.

“In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, [AD 32–33] a failure of the Sun took place greater than any previously known, and night came on at the sixth hour of the day [noon], so that stars actually appeared in the sky; and a great earthquake took place in Bithynia and overthrew the greater part of Niceaea,”— TRALLIANUS, OLYMPIADES

Using modern software we are now able to track the course of the stars at any time in history from any place on earth. We now know that when the full moon rose, a few hours after Jesus’ death, it was blood red – a lunar eclipse. The apostle Peter referred to these events at Pentecost 50 days later when he quoted the Old Testament prophet Joel to describe what the Jews had done to the Messiah.

‘The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lord’s great and terrible day.’ Acts 2:20

As an aside – don’t get too carried away with the blood moon this Monday. The events surrounding the Passover have been completed for 1982 years.

There it is, the Passover, instituted, remembered annually and ultimately fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the Way the World Ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot was referring to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the English houses of Parliament. Maybe that did end with a whimper, but, it wasn’t the end of the world.

The end of the world, when it comes, will end with much more of a bang and last week was the first time that I have seen in print the foreshadowing of how it will come. A simple letter to the editor in The Australian that ended with the statement, ‘We must not forget that one of the holy books for Muslim fundamentalists is the Old Testament which contains more violence than anything advocated by the Koran.’

Of course this incorrect on so many levels, only Genesis – Deuteronomy and The Psalms are considered to be divinely inspired by Muslims, 5 books out of 39 and they are also believed to be so altered and revised by Jews and Christians that the original text is all but lost. Secondly, the word ‘love’ is used 458 times in the Old Testament, but ‘hate’ and ‘war’ are only used 145 times in total. So the Old Testament has three times more to say about love than it does about violence. These ‘inconvenient’ facts; however, will be overlooked.

Clearly the biggest story in world events at the moment is the ISIL terrorists and their barbaric treatment of those who don’t conform to their ideology. This is not ostensibly a Muslim threat against Western infidels, and politicians around the world are doing their utmost to ensure that we understand this. For a start, ISIL are murdering other Muslims, Shia rather than Sunni, but still Muslim. Secondly, the US has gone to great lengths to involve Arab countries in the coalition of nations striking ISIL targets. These Arab nations include Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni Muslim nation, home to Mecca – the birthplace of Muhammad and the holiest city in Islam. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia is bombing Sunni Muslim ISIL. So, if the current threat to civilised society is not Islam against the infidel West, and it is not Sunni versus Shia, then what is it about? The letter in The Australian made it clear. This is an issue of religious fundamentalism against tolerant open society. Religious fundamentalism is going to be portrayed as the greatest threat facing the world today. And that’s where we come in.

Fundamentalism, at its core, is the belief that if I am right, and you believe something different, then you must be wrong. Fundamentalists believe that they have an exclusive on the truth. Even as I write these words they clash in my head as they conjure up images of ignorant red necks and blinkered seven day creationists. Fundamentalism is an anathema to our pluralistic worldview where tolerance is the greatest of virtues and truth is relative. But, Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” That is a very fundamentalist religious statement.

We have seen in Australia this week, and I am sure that it will be taking place in other countries around the world as well – tightened security laws that restrict freedoms and allow the State’s security organisations increased surveillance rights. And who are they trying to catch? They can’t be seen to be targeting Muslims, so the bad guys are going to be portrayed by their ethos rather than their Islamic faith. They are religious fundamentalists. And in that net that sweeps up everything that poses a challenge to pluralistic society are going to get caught all monotheist religious fundamentalists – Muslim, Christian and Orthodox Jew. The fact that Islam initially developed in a quasi-Christian cult and that Christianity has its roots in Judaism isn’t going to help any.

There may be just the first whimperings now, but watch.

My Two Cents Worth

A few years ago I was in a school inside Maela Refugee Camp close to the Thai/Burma border. While I was there, I couldn’t help but notice this one little boy. He was about eight years old, I’m not sure what his name was, so let’s call him Taw Nee. He hung around our team for the few days that we were there and grabbed my hand to walk me back to the car when we were leaving. He seemed to have no other family and so I asked what his story was. I was told that he had watched both of his parents being shot by the Burmese military and had fled into the jungle. Somehow, he made his way to Thailand and now lived in an orphanage in the refugee camp. He had no family, no possessions, no means of earning any money. There were Thai soldiers manning checkpoints at either end of the road past the camp and no refugee is ever allowed to leave. Is Taw Nee deserving of our compassion? I doubt anyone would say no. Is he going to receive it? Not in a million years. He is uneducated, unskilled and has seemingly nothing to offer potential recipient countries. He has no realistic means of making it to Indonesia and paying a people smuggler to even give him a chance of resettlement. Unless he has returned to Burma, he is still in the refugee camp.

Something else you won’t get in a million years is a fair, humane, workable solution to the asylum seeker crisis from refugee advocates and critics of present Government policy. Has anyone heard Sarah Hanson-Young propose a solution other than granting citizenship to every refugee who comes to our shores – which is neither fair nor workable. Twice last year I wrote to Phillip Adams; columnist for The Australian and one of Australia’s great ‘know-it-alls’, after he castigated the Coalition Government for its ‘brutal bigotry’ in dealing with asylum seekers, pleading with him to tell us his solution. He didn’t oblige.

I am going to try to work it out. This solution must avoid all those actions for which respective Governments have been so severely excoriated. Firstly, it must avoid refusing anyone who wants to come to share our boundless plains, because to do otherwise is bigotry. Secondly, it must avoid allowing people to come to Australia by boat at the mercy of people smugglers – no argument there. People smuggling, which the United Nations has described as the most lucrative criminal activity in the world, along with its attendant inhumane treatment of the human cargo, cannot be condoned and the 1100 people who have drowned at sea is an absolute tragedy.

The only way to avoid this bigotry and criminal activity then, will be for us to fly the asylum seekers from their pitiful refugee camps straight to Australia. Now, there are about 45 million displaced people in the world and we can’t refuse anyone – that would be inhumane. These are genuine refugees, like Taw Nee. How many do you think would come? 40 million?

But that’s just the start. What about the thousands of Iranian asylum seekers who, under the previous government, were flying to Jakarta and flooding into Australia lock, stock and teddy bear. They also want to come and we can’t be seen to be bigoted, so we have to treat them the same. Our A380s (we may need a few more) will have to fly to Tehran and ask ‘Who wants to come to Australia?’

Then let’s not forget the 157 asylum seekers who just made it Australia and the heartless Scott Morrison just sent to Manus Island. We have not been told what nationality these people are, but they are Tamils from India. They may be Sri Lankan refugees, but what if just one of them is actually an Indian citizen? He wants to come to Australia – we can’t say no. He came by boat – we can’t allow that. So our poor Qantas pilots now have to fly to Tamil Nadu state in India and ask, “Who wants to come to Australia?” There are over 60 million Tamils in India. They are not persecuted. They are not mistreated. But I am sure many of them would love to come to the Lucky Country.

If we flew our planes around the clock, I think we could alleviate a vast majority of the suffering by the middle of next year. Australia’s population would probably be in the order of 120 million. We may have a few social problems and be a bit short of infrastructure, but at least we wouldn’t be bigots. There may be a slight tax increase as a result. Current successful asylum seekers, when they are granted residency, are provided with a house to live in, rental assistance, a free house lot of furniture and Centrelink support. You would be hard pressed to find an Aussie who has fallen on hard times who gets the same level of benefit – and I have no issue with it personally. But if you believed what many refugee advocates are telling us you would think they were being forced to live under bridges. “Merciless, unconscionable barbarity” was how the Abbot Government’s actions were described in the last blog I read on the subject. What else should we be providing them with? Gym membership, free Foxtel?

I know that I am being a bit facetious but are you beginning to see why Sarah Hanson-Young isn’t offering a solution to the problem? I have no doubt she is motivated by genuine concern for the plight of the millions of displaced people around the globe. However, as soon as we say ‘no’ to one person, apparently we become xenophobic bigots. But as soon as we say ‘yes’ to any who want to come, then fly them here to avoid the dangerous sea crossing, we will be swamped by millions of immigrants.

So what is the solution? As I see it, we need to deal with the causes of illegal immigration, not the effects. The causes are many and for some of them the international will to do anything about it is probably lacking. The tragedy currently unfolding in Iraq is a case in point. The fanatically evil ISIS jihadists telling Christians to convert or die and women and young girls that they must undergo genital mutilation are not open to any form of reason. Only force will stop their pogrom. But is there the international will to employ that force? I doubt it. Other causes; however, are less severe and international pressure through sanctions and boycotts does have an effect. Burma is a case in point. Decades of isolation and political pressure have finally caused the military junta to adopt democracy and stop the persecution of the Hill Tribes along its Thai border. It took 60 years and would have happened decades ago but for the fact that China continued to back them militarily and economically. But peace has finally come and the refugees are returning home – which highlights another problem to do with allowing asylum seekers to emigrate, but I’ll get to that shortly.

Other causes are very simple and the solution equally clear cut. Take the Eritrean refugees flooding across the Mediterranean into Italy. Is Eritrea at war? No. Are they a persecuted minority? No. Do they have an independent judiciary and media? Probably as good as any other African country. So why are they leaving? Because, rather than trying to improve their own country, they would rather hot foot it to Europe and enjoy the benefits of their First World democracies. They are pure and simple economic migrants trying to circumvent the system and they should be driven straight from the harbour to the airport and sent back to where they came from. The same can be said for the Tamils and Iranians that formed half of all those attempting to illegally enter Australia by boat. Their countries may not be havens of democracy, but neither are the vast majority of them facing life threatening challenges. They want a better life – make it at home and leave our annual refugee intake spaces for those who genuinely need them.

Which leads me to my final point. On another occasion, I visited the same Karen refugee camp in Thailand. There were 44 teachers in the school that I worked in. Most were qualified teachers who had been trained in Burma. When I returned a year later, 42 of those teachers were gone, replaced mainly by the Year 12 graduates from the previous year. They had no teacher training and no education higher than the classes they were teaching. Where were the teachers from the previous year you may well ask? I did, and I was told that because they were educated and employable they had been granted residency in America, Canada, Australia or Norway. Now that Burma has ceased persecuting the Hill Tribe people and they are leaving the refugee camps to return to Burma, the Karen people are trying to establish an infrastructure in Karen State in Burma – build schools, hospitals, establish systems of government that they have never had before. And where are the half a million of their brightest and best educated people to enable them to do this? In America, or Canada, or Australia. The fact is that the approach that the refugee advocates, lawyers and the like espouse doesn’t just not solve the problem, it actually makes solving the problem more difficult.

So what is my point? I spent two and half years doing aid work in Ethiopia, I have been five times to teach English in refugee camps on the Thai/Burma border, and for the last 4 years have set as my goal to raise at least $15,000 annually to support education in those camps. For a while I even used to spend my Saturday mornings at a drop in centre for Ethiopian refugees helping them with conversational English. I strongly resent being labelled a merciless, brutal, inhumane bigot by people who have got no workable solution to the refugee crisis. Australia needs to do much more to help the truly desperate displaced people in the world. Those 157 Tamils are not among them.

Anyway, that’s my two cents worth.

Singapore

 

 

     old is venerable

                                                          new is in-temporal

 

     brown is red

                                                          green is luminous

 

      fast is reckless

                                                          slow barely keeps pace with

                                                          the passage of time

  

     hot is Hell’s dehumidifier

                                                          cold is read about in books

  

     streets are clean

                                                          tables are dirty

 

     life is a commodity

                                                          everything is a commodity

 

     Garden Hotel, Singapore November 1992