THE PASSOVER AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TODAY

This last week on the 14^th Nissan (April 5^th this year), Jews around the world celebrated the Feast of Passover, which commemorates the amazing release (exodus) of the Jews from Egypt. The story of the Exodus of the children of Israel in the 13^th century BC is one of the most remarkable found in the Jewish Tanakh (Christian Old Testament). At the center of the story is God and his appointed leader Moses.

Some 80 years before the Exodus, Moses was saved as a baby from male infanticide ordered by the ancient ruler of Egypt, the Pharaoh. After being consigned by his mother to a basket (the same word in Hebrew used to describe the ark of Noah) pushed out onto the mighty Nile river, Moses was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as a Prince of Egypt.

The Story of Moses

We know nothing about Moses’ early life but Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses (Hebrew – משֶׁה - Moshe) because she said that “I drew him out of water” (Exodus 11:10). We can guess that he was raised in privilege and comfort but also that he knew of his origins as one of the Hebrews or children of Israel (the new name that God had given the patriarch Jacob) because his sister Miriam was there when he was found and his mother was employed to nurse him.

At the stage when Moses was a baby, the Israelites had become slaves in Egypt, despite their previous privileged position under one of the preceding Pharaohs. The Israelites were originally just the family of Jacob (70 in total) who had come to Egypt because of a severe drought in Canaan about four centuries before. Joseph, the second youngest of Jacob’s 12 sons, had been sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. After many difficulties, Joseph had a remarkable ascent to power (literally from prison to the throne room), after the interpretation of a dream of Pharaoh. He not only decoded a dream (which was about coming famine) but also provided a solution. This resulted in Joseph becoming the second in charge under Pharaoh, who because of Joseph was well-disposed towards his family, who moved from drought-stricken Canaan and were provided choice land in Goshen, located along the eastern part of the Nile delta - (Genesis 47:27).

However, around 400 years after the time of Joseph, the Exodus account tells us:

“Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens.” (Exodus 1:8-11).

This leads us back to Moses, now a prince of Egypt. Moses must have been aware of his family origins because when he was an adult (around 40 years old), the Bible tells us that:

“…..he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:11-12).

Pharaoh found out about Moses murdering an Egyptian and sought to arrest and kill Moses. So he fled his privileged surroundings and ended up in the land of Midian. In current geography, this is a desert area east of the Gulf of Aqaba, in northwest Saudi Arabia- It must have been a challenging desert journey. The likely route from Egypt to Midian is shown on this map – (see Figure 1) .

Figure 1- Likely route traveled when Moses escaped from Egypt to Midian

Moses settled there, married a daughter of a priest of Midian, and became a shepherd. He continued as a shepherd in the desert for 40 years, until he had an amazing encounter with God Himself, who appeared in a burning bush, which burned but was not consumed (Exodus 3). God called to him from the bush and told him to take off his sandals because he was on holy ground. Moses is then given directions to go to free his Hebrew compatriots from Egypt. God tells him:

“And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land.” (Exodus 3:7-8).

This looked like an impossible task for an 80-year-old fugitive, and understandably, he was quite reluctant. However, it is no use arguing with God! God provided Moses with some signs that He was with him and told Moses that he would have support from his brother Aaron.

Moses’ Return to Egypt to Confront Pharaoh

The next nine chapters of Exodus deal with Moses’ return to Egypt and his and Aaron’s interactions with Pharaoh. Moses and Aaron gather the Hebrew elders and tell them of God’s amazing plans for them to be released from Egypt and the Bible tells us:

“So the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped (Exodus 4:31).

However, there were immediate signs that this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park because after Moses and Aaron gave Pharaoh a message from God to “Let my people go..” (Exodus 5:1), Pharaoh made life harder for the Hebrews and gives them twice as much work to do in making bricks. There follow ten plagues brought upon the Egyptians by God, to demonstrate His power over Egypt and their false gods.

Pharaoh is nothing if not stubborn and so the plagues are more and more serious until God says that with the final plague, the Hebrews will be released and be sent on their way with gifts of enormous wealth from the Egyptians. The Exodus account tells us:

“And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.” (Exodus 11:3)

The Passover

The final plague was the terrible judgment of death of all the firstborn in Egypt – both humans and animals. God spoke to Moses about this final plague and gave instructions as to how to avoid the coming divine judgment on the land. God said:

“‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance (Exodus 12:12-14).

Young lambs were to be killed and the blood spread on the doorposts and lintel (beam), using a branch of hyssop (Exodus 12:21-22). The lambs were to be roasted and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread because the children of Israel were to leave in haste. None of the Hebrews was to leave their houses until the morning.  God gave very specific instructions and said:

“For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you. And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever” (Exodus 12:23-24).

Everything happened as God said and the Hebrews were told to be packed and ready to leave Egypt. After the terrible judgment, “there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead” (Exodus 12:30). Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron after this calamitous event and told them:

“’Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the LORD as you have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.’”  (Exodus 12:31-32).

By this stage, Jacob’s original family of 70 had grown to 600,000 men and so therefore probably two to three million people were to depart from Egypt in the great exodus. It was an enormous undertaking but showed clearly who was the boss – God!

The judgment on the firstborn came about because of Pharaoh’s “hardness of heart” (Exodus 7:13). Importantly, this momentous event, the Passover, was to be commemorated annually on the fourteenth of the month of Nissan, forever!

God is a God of the long game, and Psalm 90:4 (NLT) tells us that for God “a thousand years are as a passing day”. Around 500 years before the exodus from Egypt, God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Hebrew patriarchs, that He would prosper them and that their descendants would be as numerous as stars in the sky (Genesis 26:4). At Passover, the millions of the children of Israel were freed in the great exodus from Egypt and though they don’t know it at the time, were going on a 40-year camping trip through the desert of Sinai.

Why is the Passover So Important?

It is important to grasp the vast sweep of history here and God’s divine intervention because His own people the Jews, the children of Israel, cried out to Him in their affliction in Egypt. He did not wave a magic wand for them to leave the land but His purposes were achieved through a series of stunning miracles, with a final horrific judgment on the Egyptians.

Probably because memories are short, God instituted an annual memorial of this momentous “Passover” on the 14^th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, which occurs in March or April on the Gregorian calendar. The Jewish calendar is a lunar one and God also declared that Nissan was to be the first month of the year for the Jews. The 14^th of Nissan is the time when there is a full moon. This annual commemoration is called a feast (Hebrew מוֹעֵד mô‘ēḏ:) of the Lord. The Hebrew word means “an appointed time”, highly significant in God’s calendar.

Since their escape from Egypt, the children of Israel have had many ups and downs. Their zenith was during the time of King Solomon when the kingdom was one of the greatest on earth. Since then, because of rebellion against God and His loving (but severe) judgment to bring them back to Him, there have been terrible times of suffering and scattering throughout the earth. Today, in what looked impossible even 80 years ago, Israel is re-established in the land but undergoing severe testing and challenges. Many of His chosen people have forgotten their God but He has not forgotten them. He made an everlasting covenant with the patriarch Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:7).

The Passover has been celebrated by Jews for 3,500 years and God commanded that it be done “forever”! A special meal took place this week in Jewish households around the world, to remember God’s intervention and the Exodus from Egypt.

God does not forget His people. In the midst of all the chaos in the world, it is sometimes difficult to remember that God is at work and He is sovereignly bringing about His purposes. For the children of Israel in Egypt in 1,500 BC, there must have been a sense that God had forgotten them. This 400-year period from the arrival of the children of Israel in Egypt to their Exodus, is equivalent in modern history to the time from when Charles I was king of England (1625-1649) [which didn’t end well], until today when Charles III is about to be crowned king. A lot has happened in this period! One hopes that the ending of the latter Charles won’t be quite so abrupt as his ancient ancestor!

I use this example to demonstrate how significant the Passover is. Four hundred years had passed by in those days of the Hebrews in Egypt, but God was waiting and responded to His people’s prayers.

The Significance of Passover Today

Today, things are a mess. We are in the middle of culture wars, government and medical tyranny, a terrible war in the Ukraine, financial crises, and a redefinition of gender. It is a time that was described by the Old Testament prophet Isaiah as one where people “… call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! “ (Isaiah 5:20). We have come into a period of lawlessness. It is easy to lose hope, if we don’t have a real sense of the sweep of history and a realization that our current troubles are but a moment, in God’s bigger plans for the restoration of the earth.

Passover is a much more significant festival than we realize. It is a sign of God’s mô‘ēḏ  or“appointed time”; a sign that God is at work on the earth and in His time, He will act. It also is a sign that He hears His people who cry out to Him and will act at the “appointed time”. Unfortunately, the early church which by the fourth century had become antisemitic decided to permanently separate the celebration of Easter (Christ’s death and resurrection) from Passover. You can read more about this here.

This shocking decision of the early church fathers, permanently separated one of God’s “appointed times” from the church’s view, with Passover and the Easter period never coinciding.

Jesus came into Jerusalem at the time of Passover, because He knew that it was the “appointed time” for Him. At Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist had declared “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus Himself, at the “appointed time” became the Passover lamb, His blood shed for us and our sins. There are further “appointed times” of “feasts of the Lord” that you can read in Leviticus 23.

God’s calendar is different to our calendar and our crises. He is the God where 1,000 years is as a day. There is an “appointed time” when Jesus will return to the earth to destroy evil and restore justice. We need to carefully watch the signs of the times that Jesus talked about just before he was arrested (see Matthew 24) and also understand God’s “appointed times”, seven key “feasts” or  “convocations”, described in Leviticus 23.

The Feast of Passover, celebrated now by the children of Israel for 3,500 years is a sign of God’s commitment to His people the Jews, through whom “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). We also can think of it as a type of down payment for future promises that He has made. There is a coming  “appointed time”, of which we can be sure, when Jesus will return. We do not know the day and the hour but increasingly, it is looking like the time and the season is near. In the meantime, we would do well to take note of what God said to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah when things were tough:

“Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’
Concerning all that this people call a conspiracy,
Nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.
The LORD of hosts, Him you shall hallow;
Let Him be your fear,
And let Him be your dread.
He will be as a sanctuary…” (Isaiah 8:12-14).

The remarkable story of the Passover gives us a hope and certainty beyond the troubles of our day. We can put our trust in God and like the children of Israel, call out to Him to bring about His long-term plan for the deliverance of the earth.

STORIES THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION THIS WEEK

Israel, China, the Middle East, Iran and the U.S.

Dr Lance Wallnau, the prophetic pastor who predicted President Trump’s election as a modern day Cyrus, has an interesting daily podcast and his latest 25 min message titled: “Prophetic Covergence’s Urgent Message from Jerusalem”, is worthwhile listening to.

 

Here is part of what Lance said this week:

“This is the epicentre of the declining great gentile nation…coming to an end here with the US, but the re-emergence of the center of the world, which is the Middle East and Israel…..President Assad of Syria just made an unprecedented trip to Saudi Arabia…China has brokered a deal with Iran and Saudi Arabia….these nations can turn their back on Israel…. If Saudi Arabia and Iran can get along, Israel is not that important any more…they can turn their back on the US. (Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia) are willing to do business with China based on China petrodollars and the yuan rather than the dollar. As the US dollar collapses as the global reserve currency….. Watching then, China and Russia meeting together to form a new economic coalition. Brazil is going communist….President Xi is rising up..the US is going down.”

This is a taste of Lance’s analysis as he speaks to Barry Segal in Jerusalem about the issue of judicial reform in Israel which has thrown the country into chaos. At the same time, Iran is just weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Keep a close idea on what is happening in the Middle East over the next months.

The Trump Indictment

I have read countless commentaries and listened to many analyses of President Trump’s arrest on charges brought in New York this week. The District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, still hasn’t fully clarified what is the foundation of the charges. It does seem that he has some cards up his sleeve with Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, “singing like a canary”, as the old gangsters used to say.

It has been interesting to hear recordings of various New York Democrats declaring some years before that they would “get Trump”. I have heard Professor Alan Dershowitz, the renowned former Harvard law professor, interviewed in relation to his new book of the same title. His opinion is that the charges are without foundation and should be thrown out by the judge but won’t do so. Dershowitz spoke of the social pressure to conform to the prevailing narrative in New York, which is that Trump is a threat to humanity! The whole situation reminds us of the famous quote attributed to Stalin’s notorious Deputy Premier of the USSR, Lavertiy Beria, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”.

It is hard to negotiate your way through the legal minefield which has a range of subtleties: the statute of limitations, election law, state law, the challenge of proving intent, unpicking a web of witness lies and of course, the notorious “Stormy Daniels” for added colour. Nonetheless, the case does seem to be a turning point in US history as whatever else has happened, the politicization of the US legal process is now fully evident. New York is a Democrat-controlled city and it seems that a fair trial for any Republican is impossible in this or any number of other Democrat cities in the US. The US Justice Department, under the direction of the radical left-wing lawyer Merrick Garland, has demonstrated its partisanship and one wonders if an independent justice system ever can be regained in the US. In the meantime, Joe Biden, under the cover of the Trump indictment, sent a further several billion dollars off to Ukraine. This is a money-laundering operation at a scale unknown in history.

Jenna Ellis, one of President Trump’s former legal advisors, outlined some of the legal issues of the Trump indictment, with Mike Davis, a lawyer and founder of the Article II Project, this week. If you want to understand more of the nuances of the case, it is worthwhile listening to the podcast here

The first court hearing in the case against President Trump does not take place until the end of this year. It is hard to predict all the ramifications of this case and others that are being brought in various states to “get Trump”. It is now only 18 months until the Presidential elections and it is increasingly evident that there will be further polarization in US politics, which has shifted drastically to the left. Freedom itself is at stake and increasingly it is clear that the forces for globalization are uniting to bring about their long-desired “New World Order”. The US, since its founding in 1776, has survived many crises and one hopes that the foundations of freedom, so firmly laid in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, may yet rally a sleeping population.

The Financial Crisis

My wife and I watched the wonderful film “The Big Short” - last night and it is well worth viewing if you haven’t seen it. The film is about the events leading up to the extraordinary financial crash of 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis and the subsequent international financial devastation. It is evident from the film that after the global financial crisis, the financial system was simply patched over and the trillions of dollars lost, booked to taxpayers. Life then continued without serious consequences for the large financial institutions that caused the crisis. Now we are facing another financial crisis as billions of dollars are being withdrawn from banks around the world and once again governments are using taxpayers money to prop up the banks.

Alex Newman, of The New American, has been warning about the coming decline of the US dollar for at least the last ten years and it is worthwhile listening to a 20 min video that he posted this week.

This is how the issue is described on the New American website:

“Governments around the world are making rapid and significant moves to abandon the US dollar in international trade, part of the broader deep state agenda to displace the United States as the global hegemonic power and undermine the dollars status at the global reserve currency, warns the New American’s Alex Newman in this episode of Behind the Deep State. Russia, China, African Nations, Key Latin American governments and even traditional US allies such as France are involved in the process. As deep state globalists seek to bring about multipolar world order the consequences for America are hard to overstate. Eventually, the deep state plans to bring about a global digital currency as part of the elimination of freedom worldwide.”

We are in for a wild financial ride but further printing of money will not solve the global financial crisis. Undoubtedly, we are being set up for the imposition of programmable central bank digital currencies. Hang on to your cash while you can!

Some Conclusions

We are living at a challenging time in history and it is easy to lose hope when you see the level of evil that is rising all around us. The remarkable event of Passover is a reminder that our eyes need to look out beyond the far distant horizon. God is at work in the world and His purposes are sure. As we celebrate this Easter period, the amazing resurrection of Jesus from a tomb in Jesusalem 2,000 years ago, is a certain foundation for the hope that we have when we put our trust in Him.