The Passover of the Lord:
In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord’s Passover (Leviticus 23:3).
The Festival of Unleavened Bread:
And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile (laborious) work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days: in the seventh day is a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein (Leviticus 23:3-8).
The Festival of First Fruits:
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf a he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord. And the meat (grain or meal) offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savor (sweet or pleasing aroma): and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings (Leviticus 23:9-14).
There are four more festivals listed in the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus. They include: The Festival of Pentecost (Leviticus 23:15-22), The Festival of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:23-25), The Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:26-32), and The Festival of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-36).
These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing upon his day: beside the sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all your freewill offerings, which ye give unto the Lord. Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath. And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs (fruit) of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month. Ye shall dwell in booths (tabernacles, shelters made of boughs) seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths: that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord (Leviticus 23:37-44).
We need to remember that the first day of the festival will be a Sabbath day of solemn rest. And the last day or the eighth day of the festival will be a Sabbath day of solemn rest as well. In all of this, we see that God had ordained a particular number of days were a holy convocation shall be held. We have discovered that a holy convocation is defined as a holy meeting or a special religious service for the entire congregation. We also discovered that they are defined as a sacred assembly of people. And we discovered that they are also defined as a special religious service or a sacred church service. We found that these were not just an assembling of the congregation, but it is a special gathering of the congregation for a very special reason. But the most interesting thing that we discovered was the fact that there was to be no work of any kind, including servile work done with the exception of a small amount of work in the preparation of food for everyone. According to scripture, these holy convocations are in addition to your regular weekly days of holy rest.
So, from this we can see that there are more Sabbaths than the regular weekly Sabbath that was recognized starting Friday evening, just after sunset and ending Saturday evening, just before sunset. What does all of this mean for us? How does the discovery of others Sabbaths affect what we have learned so far about the religious holiday that is observed primarily by Christians, which commemorates the day of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary? Does any of this change your views about Good Friday? What about the seventy-two hours?
Now let us see if we can put all of these fantabulous facts together and verify whether we are on the right path or if we are just going nowhere. There is one more piece of this puzzle that we need to talk about before we can begin to assemble all of the pieces to discover the timeline between his crucifixion and his resurrection. This all has to do with the Passover and some of the controversy surrounding the event. There appears to be some issues with when that actually Passover celebration took place.
First, we have discovered from the twelfth chapter of the book of Exodus, what God himself said about the Passover celebration. If you remember, God told Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt that from that point forward, that particular month, whichever month it was, would be the first and most important moth of the year. Later, we find out that this month was called Nisan (Ester 3:7). Now, even though the passage we discovered in the book of Exodus appears to say that the Lord’s Passover was a part of the seven-day festival of unleavened bread, we know that this was not the case. According to the twenty-third chapter of the book of Leviticus, this festival, The Festival of Unleavened Bread, as it were called, was set to begin on the day following the Passover celebration, which meant it could only start on the fifteenth day of the first month and not the fourteenth day. As we read on in that twenty-third chapter, we discovered that the remainder of the passage agreed with the passage of scripture we found in the book of Exodus. This passage went on to say that the first and the seventh day were to be holy convocations, Sabbath days of rest, where no ordinary work was to be done.
We know that much of the information that we now have appears to be somewhat confusing but it is now time to see if we can put everything we have into perspective. We have enough information to start putting the pieces that we have identified together so that we can get a complete timeline between the time Jesus died and the time that he was raised from the dead.
When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid; and went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou (Where are you from)? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power (authority) to crucify thee, and have power (authority) to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power (authority) at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King (John 19:6-14)!
We can see from the above passage that this take place just before the actual crucifixion of Jesus. It appears that all of this took place about the sixth hour on the day before the Passover celebration. We can see clearly that Jesus was with Pilate on that day. Now according to the King James Version, this day was the preparation of the Passover, which tells us that it was not yet time for the Passover celebration to begin. Just so that we can keep our timeline straight and keep our days separated, let us call this day, the Preparation Day, because it was the day of preparation for the Passover celebration.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron (Kidron), where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples. And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither (often met) with his disciples. Judas then, having received a band of men (about 600 soldiers) and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons (John 18:1-3).
We know that Jesus was arrested at night, sometime after he entered into the garden of Gethsemane. This was verified by the fact that the band of men and officers sent by the chief priests and Pharisees came with their lanterns and torches. This means that it was still dark when they came for Jesus and carried him to the high priest.
Enjoy your blessings - KW
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