Passover On The 14th or 15th? (IIe)
Draft IIe
Chapters 8 – 9
The critique continues:
Coulter accurately translates ba erev as “at sunset,” showing that the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins immediately after the Passover day ends: “And you shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for in this same day [the 15th, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread] I have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall keep this day in your generations as a law forever. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at sunset [ending the Passover day and beginning the 15th], you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at sunset [ending the 21st day]” (Ex. 12:17-18).
In Chapter 8 Fred Coulter’s analysis is all over the place. Can anybody sees the self-contraction above? If unleavened were to be eaten AFTER “the Passover day” which he zealously identifies as the fourteenth, then the day after would be the fifteenth, but the Scriptures say to eat it on ”the fourteenth day.”
If Fred Coulter is honest and he didn’t come to study the Bible with an already makeup mindset, he would admit that when the moment the Passover lamb was killed it is also the same time unleavened bread is to be eaten. In both instances, in Deuteronomy 16:6 and Exodus 12:18 the same expression ba-erev is used. In Deuteronomy 16:6 ba·erev is the commence the Passover on the fourteenth; and in Exodus 12:18 ba·erev is also to commence eating unleavened bread on the fourteenth. Passover and Unleavened Bread were well amalgamated right at the beginning, at the time of the original Exodus. They were well interlaced right from the beginning of the Exodus. This is plainly what the Scriptures say. “Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit” (Hosea 11:12). Only the stiff-necked couldn’t see this. Plain and simple.
And they are throwing diatribes and lying against the Jews. Below is another verse great for reflection:
Isaiah 9:21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh; and they together shall be against Judah. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.
Again, Fred Coulter spent a lot of time whinging consistently, contradicting himself about travelling in the darkness of the night.
He wrote:
Imagine the difficulties the children of Israel would have encountered if they had attempted to travel to Rameses by night with no light to guide them. Some families might have ended up in the wrong city and missed the Exodus! And how could they have kept their sheep and goats from being scattered along the way? It is no easy task to keep stragglers from wandering off during the daylight hours; it would have been an impossible task in the dark hours after midnight.
And a few paragraphs later he whines about travelling in the dark:
When the 14th day ended at sunset, or ba erev, the entire nation was ready to march, and the Exodus began. . . The first column would have begun to march out at about 6 PM, as the sun was setting, and the end of the last column would have left the city at about eleven o’clock on the night of the 15th.
And then further down:
“The Scriptures clearly record that the Exodus began at the going down of the sun, and continued on into the night: “…the LORD your God brought you forth out of Egypt BY NIGHT…. at sunset [ba erev, the beginning of the 15th], at the going down of the sun, at the time that you came out of Egypt” (Deut. 16:1, 6).”
Where are all the members of his team—Carl and Jean Franklin, Philip Neal, Albert and Mela Cataga John, Hiedi and Sasha Vogele—where are they? Or is this a case of the Emperor having no clothes?
That night, of course, was on the fifteenth, under a full moon, and there shouldn’t be any difficulties seeing the Egyptians burying their dead, either later that night, or early morning. Neither would the Egyptians have any difficulties seeing the children of Israel going out with a high hand.
Traditions could be bad, but it could also be good. To say all are bad are just too simplistic.
Paul wrote in Galatians 1:14 “I profited in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”
And in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 “Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle.”
We should learn how to distinguish good traditions from bad ones. We should be learning how to judge, how to be good judges. A good judge has to filter through all sort of “evidence” and “testimonies” to arrive at a correct final decision. This means our rationale, logic, and emotions must be shielded from the illogically absurd, ridiculous, unfounded, and unbalanced thoughts that tried to muddle our filtering process. Which tradition is Biblical, which tradition is shaky and without foundation. Without a sound filtering process we would fail to be good judges.
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In Chapter 9, Fred Coulter asked in a paragraph a series of questions:
Is there any Biblical evidence that God altered the Passover ordinances that He had given to Moses?
Of course, He did. If not, during each Passover thereafter, every Israelites would still be eating with their loins girded, sandals on their feet, staff in their hands; and they were to eat in haste. Then they would also need to pretend fleeing from Pharaoh and his armies in an re-enactment of the Exodus.
Did God Himself end the domestic sacrifice of the Passover lambs?
Of course, He did. Otherwise we wouldn’t read of a 12-year old Messiah going to Jerusalem to keep the Passover with His parents.
After Israel’s first Passover, did He institute a mandatory tabernacle sacrifice of the Passover lambs?
Of course, He did. Otherwise what’s the point of God setting aside a whole tribe of Levi and establishing the Priesthood for a special purpose and then having the ordinances of the sanctuary and Temple instituted. Note on Rashi’s comment on Leviticus 17:4, Rashi: “Who slaughters an ox, a lamb, [or a goat]: Scripture is speaking of [slaughtering] holy sacrifices [not of slaughtering ordinary animals], for Scripture continues, “to offer up as a sacrifice” (next verse). – [Torath Kohanim 17:91]”
Also the Targum 17 comments (first part) below makes this very clear:
XVII. And the Lord spake with Mosheh, saying: Speak with Aharon and with his sons, and with the sons of Israel, and tell them: This is the word which the Lord hath commanded, saying: A man of the house of Israel, young or old, who shall kill as a sacrifice a bullock, or lamb, or goat in the camp, or who killeth it without the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle of ordinance to offer it an oblation before the Lord, before the tabernacle of the Lord, the blood of slaughter shall be reckoned to that man, and it shall be to him as if he had shed innocent blood, and that man shall be destroyed from his people. In order that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they have [heretofore] killed on the face of the field, they may [henceforth] bring them before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of ordinance, unto the priest, and sacrifice their consecrated victims before the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of ordinance, and burn the fat, to be received with acceptance before the Lord. Neither shall they offer any more their sacrifices unto idols which are like unto demons, after which they have wandered. This shall be an everlasting statute to them, unto their generations.
And thou shalt tell them: A man, whether young or old, of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among you, who shall sacrifice a burnt offering, or consecrated oblation, and bring it not to the door of the tabernacle of ordinance, to be made an oblation before the Lord, that man shall be destroyed from his people.
A Passover is a sacrifice. Its blood is to be brought to the tabernacle before the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar, at the door of the tabernacle.
Note also that the text says about those not obeying, “that man shall be destroyed from his people.”
Did God require that the blood of the Passover lambs be sprinkled on the altar?
Of course, He did. Otherwise righteous King Hezekiah and King Josiah would have commanded during their Passover celebrations they should instead be taking the blood and striking it at both sides of the doorposts and lintels of their houses.
Fred Coulter further alleges:
In accordance with God’s command, the morning offering was originally offered at sunrise, when the morning begins, and the evening offering was originally offered between sunset and dark. Every day of the year, there was an offering at the beginning of daylight and at the beginning of darkness. Later records of the temple service show that a change was instituted in the time of the evening offering. Instead of an offering immediately after sunset, as God had commanded, the offering was moved to the late afternoon.
Conveniently, Fred Coulter offered no record or evidence of when the change took place. If he did, he would be a Biblical genius, worthy of a Nobel Prize, if not he must be trying out a new magic or just displaying a figment of his own imagination.
Throughout Fred’s writings, he wrote a lot about observing a “domestic Passover” but he never define it. Okay maybe the case in Egypt should serve as the best example, since he advocates the Passover ordinances were never changed. Should this be the case Israelites would be observing Passover in their houses, just as they did in the land of Goshen. Should that be the case, Galileans needed not come to Jerusalem and yet Jesus and his disciples went to Jerusalem in numerous times to observe Passover. Were they gallivanting in Jerusalem? Were they disobedient? They were supposed to keep their Passover in their houses, back in Galilee, shouldn’t they? This is a serious charge, a travesty and bothering blasphemy!
God’s commandment is clear in Deuteronomy 16:16 Three times a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and in the Feast of Weeks, and in the Feast of Tabernacles. And “Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Deuteronomy 16:5). A “domestic Passover” wasn’t sanctified by God. It wasn’t allowed.
That place chosen by God is Jerusalem as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there.”
There is not a single word in Numbers 28 concerning a Passover sacrifice at the tabernacle. The Hebrew word for “sacrifice” is not used in Numbers 28:16, which is the only verse that speaks of the Passover.
And further down in Chapter 9, Fred Coulter wrote a headline:
All Sacrifices except the Passover
Were to be Brought to the Tabernacle
I read his argument in the whole chapter but couldn’t find any statement in Leviticus 17 that alluded to his allegation. In fact Leviticus 17 is more inclined to refer to any and all sacrifice and especially the blood that needed to be brought to the tabernacle. In verse 8, it says, “And thou shalt say unto them: ‘Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among you, who offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice (h2077 zebach)
It is the same word zebach in Hebrew as in the original Exodus 12:27 That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice H2077 of the LORD’S passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.
In the Hebrew the word Pesach is implicitly a sacrifice. The Hebrew Pesach is also inherently a sacrifice. These implicit and inherent characteristics aren’t clear in English, but in Hebrew they are obvious. Hence the phase to “kill the Pesach” or “eat the Peach” make sense in Hebrew. You couldn’t kill a day, the fourteenth, neither can you eat a day, if Pesach doesn’t have these implicit and inherent characteristics of a sacrifice.
The two characteristics—implicit and inherent—in Hebrew but not in English, compelled some translators to insert the word “sacrifice” in Numbers 28:16 so as to make its meaning clearer in English: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, there shall be a Passover sacrifice to the Lord,” Numbers 28:16. It is a Sacrifice to the Lord. Clear and simple.
In the Good News Translation of Leviticus 17:8, it says “who offer a burnt offering or any other sacrifice.” Other translations may not insert the phrase “any other,” but by inserting it, the GNT has made it clearer—that any sacrifice includes the Pesach, the LORD’S passover. The critical performance of any sacrifice is that “the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle.” The priests had sprinkled the blood upon the alter since memorial time, evidently from the time of Moses, down to Ezra, and then during the time of Christ. If Moses had any doubt, he had all the time to ask God who dwelt between the cherubim in the Temple for any further details.
And if Ron Wyatt’s story is true, that at the moment when Jesus Christ died at 3 PM that fourteenth afternoon, an earthquake occurred, cracking the rocks underneath. His blood then dripped through the rocks onto the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant under Golgotha, otherwise also referred to in Scripture as the “place of the skull.”
At the same movement, while the Jews were killing their lambs for the Passover, and the priests splinking the blood on the altar, Christ’s blood dripped into the Mercy Seat for the sin of the whole world! The biblical narratives indicate that the crucifixion took place outside the city walls—“outside the camp,” and His blood was miraculously brought “into the camp,” revealing why the blood could be killed outside the camp but only its blood brought into the camp for the priest to sprinkle on the altar. If Ron’s attestation is true, the story of Christ’s death and sacrifice would reveal how the Lamb was ordained in details with so much forethoughts right from the foundation of the world. Well planned and well thought-out by our Great God. Are you amazed? I’m stunned. It is the mystery of mysteries.
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The Mystery of Ephraim 