The Mystery of Ephraim

A Critique of John Ritenbaugh’s Passover (Ic)
Passover On The 14th or 15th?

Pastor — John W. Ritenbaugh

Church of the Great God
10409 Barberville Rd.
Fort Mill, SC 29707-9132

Passover (Part 5)

When Did the Exodus Begin?
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sermon; #016; 79 minutes
Given 24-Apr-92

Draft Ic

This is a Critique of John Ritenbaugh’s Passover (Part 5), a transcript posted on the Church of the Great God’s website. Besides the main issue of whether the Passover is on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan, of equal importance is whether Passover was restricted to a day or was it amalgamated with the Days of Unleavened Bread since early times.

The Scriptures must be our primary focus and guide. God’s concept may not match man’s concept. And sometimes the Scriptures say things very different from what we think!

Quoted are John Ritenbaugh’s sermon posted with a transcript. The excerpts from the transcript are in block form, in PINK, and indented so as to differentiate it from other quotes or comments. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide, and sometimes the Scriptures, which include the Septuagint and the Targum, say things very different from what we think!

And so with that in mind, we’ll start:

We had worked our way partly through element #6, and so I want to review a portion of that element so we can have a running start on what is going to follow.

Genesis 1:3-5 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

Verse 5 is the one that I want to concentrate on here, just very briefly. “God called the light Day.” This is the Hebrew word yom. (You are familiar with it, probably, from reading in the newspaper about Yom Kippur. Yom, meaning day. The Day of Atonement.) Then “the darkness He called Night.” This is lailah. And “the evening and the morning.” Evening there is ba erev, and morning is boqer. What we are seeing here is that the Day (yom) consists of two parts: one is dark, and one is light. The dark is called lailah; and the light is called boqer.

I go to this verse because I want you to see, very clearly, that “darkness” and “light” are not the same thing. Lailah and boqer are NOT the same thing! They are shown here in opposition to one another (in contrast to one another). Yom consists of night and day (lailah and boqer). That is established in the fifth verse of the Book. That is very clear.

Folks, notice the subtle sleight-of-hand in John Ritenbaugh’s definition from Genesis 1:5! Notice “The dark is called lailah; but the light is called boqer”! There is a subtle shift from yom to boqer.

God called the light Day, NOT BOQER, and the darkness He called Night. As I said before, this is MAGIC, an inspiration from Simon Magus. A subtle and the whole meaning change altogether. John Ritenbaugh wrote earlier in the same chapter, intending for someone else, but actually about himself:

“But I want to draw your attention to the fact that Satan uses Scriptures too. Matthew 4 and Luke 4 are very good evidences of that. So is Genesis 3, “Oh? Did God say…?” Satan said. That is the Word of God. And he [Satan] used it—to his own end!”
These people are using Scripture, but they are NOT using it honestly. We will just have to assume that they are deceived in what they are doing, and leave it at that.

John Ritenbaugh also invoked Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve met Satan where the devil subtledly shift God’s words around, “Thou shalt not surely die.” But here, from “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night” to “The dark is called lailah; and the light is called boqer.”

And John Ritenbaugh continues to write about himself:

When “black” is not “black” and “white” is not “white” (and when things get to the place where we are vague about which direction to go), it is much easier to go in the direction that is wrong. Because of human nature, because of all that we have learned in the past, because of ingrained habits that are there—it is much easier to drift into what is wrong than to stick with what is right, whenever one is not quite sure what is right. And so we see a spin-off from these things beginning to take place in the Church of God. Immorality is on the rise, and things are happening that should not be happening.

So this conclusion for Part 5 rhymes with the one in Part 4:

John Ritenbaugh has laid a trap and he has caught himself inside, as he described a bit later: “(in I Corinthians 1) that God says that He entraps the intelligent in the foolishness of their own wisdom.” In fact . . . they are masquerading as “ministers of righteousness.”

Truly Satan the devil, that arch-enemy of all mankind, has “deceived ALL NATIONS” (Revelation 12:9).

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A Critique of John Ritenbaugh’s Passover (Part 6)

Passover and the Tabernacle
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sermon; #017; 57 minutes
Given 25-Apr-92

This is a continuing Critique of John Ritenbaugh’s Passover (Part 6), a transcript posted on the Church of the Great God’s website.

It is essential that from this first Passover arises the pattern for all Passovers to follow (until it was changed in symbols by our Lord and Savior). But everybody within the sound of my voice knows that, somewhere along the line, it got changed. Now, did God institute the change? Or did man institute the change, and God watched what was going on and recorded that it had occurred? Is it possible that, if that is what occurred, God somehow caused it to be recorded in His Book that it got changed?

I have read enough quotes from enough books (some of which I may get to by the end of this sermon), and I am going to show you that the people out in the world recognize that the Passover got changed. It is not hidden from them that the Passover as it is now being kept by the Jews is not the same as the Passover in Exodus 12, 13, and 14. (We will include Unleavened Bread in this too.) They see it.

Who changed it? Did God change it? How did it get changed? The proponents of a fifteenth Passover will go so far as to say that the original Passover was the only domestic Passover ever celebrated by Israel and that, every time after that, the lamb was sacrificed at the tabernacle (or the temple). And its blood, instead of being sprinkled on the doorposts, was instead sprinkled on the base of the brazen altar. Is that true?

When God gave instructions for the altar and the tabernacle, He also gave detailed instructions for the kind of altar that should be built in the courtyard (Exodus 27:1–8).

Exodus 27:1 “And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare, and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof. His horns shall be of the same, and thou shalt overlay it with brass.
3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels and his basins and his fleshhooks and his firepans. All the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.
4 And thou shalt make for it a grate, a network of brass; and upon the network shalt thou make four brazen rings at the four corners thereof.
5 And thou shalt put it under the rim of the altar beneath, that the network may be even to the middle of the altar.
6 And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with brass.
7 And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar to bear it.
8 Hollow with boards shalt thou make it. As it was shown thee on the mount, so shall they make it.

On this altar, the Israelites made sacrifices that God accepted as an atonement for their sin. It was to have four horn-like projections, one at each corner. It had to be large enough to hold sacrifices of bulls, sheep, and goats. But later, for the temple that Solomon built, the altar and much of the other vessels were no longer made of shittim wood and brass but substantially of pure gold (1 Kings 7:48-51):

1 Kings 7:48 And Solomon made all the vessels that pertained unto the house of the Lord: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, upon which the showbread was;
49 and the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side and five on the left before the oracle, with the flowers and the lamps and the tongs of gold;
50 and the bowls, and the snuffers, and the basins, and the spoons, and the censers of pure gold; and the hinges of gold, both for the doors of the inner house, the Most Holy Place, and for the doors of the house, to wit, of the temple (1 Kings 7:48-50).

But John Ritenbaugh deemed that the blood from the Passover need not be splinked on this altar. Is this true? Had the Jews been doing this wrong during the time from early times until the time of Christ in Jerusalem?

Yet, John Ritenbaugh admitted that “Both of them (Hezekiah and Josiah) were strong kings, good kings. They did what was right in the eyes of God.” And if so, they were doing these ordinances according to the laws of God. Double Talk! Plain and simple.

A Passover is a sacrifice. Its blood is to be brought to the tabernacle before the Lord. Both Hezekiah and Josiah are good kings, giving the right instructions to the priests and the Levites. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar, at the door of the tabernacle.

II Chronicles 30:16 And they (the priests and the Levites) stood in their place according to their order, according to the law of Moses the man of God. The priests sprinkled the blood which they received from the hand of the Levites.

II Chronicles 35:10 So the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their place and the Levites in their courses, according to the king’s commandment.11 And they killed the Passover lamb, and the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands, and the Levites flayed them.

Both King Hezekiah and King Josiah obeyed the commandments and did what was right in the eyes of God. The Scriptures say so.

John Ritenbaugh asks:

“[D]o we find a clear command by God that He Himself changed from the domestically killed [lambs] to the temple killed [lambs], and outlawed Passover observance at home? Did He give the instructions to the priests anywhere in His Book?”

The answer is no and yes. “No” in the sense that many issues in the Bible are not clearly stated. What exactly is circumcision? How to slaughter an animal so that it is kosher? How to determine a new moon, the sighting of the crescent or the conjuncture? I can assure you ten blind men will produce ten blind answers.

These ten are blind because they couldn’t or won’t see the light. One real and solid advantage on the Jews was that they were made the direct recipient of the divine oracles as per Roman 3:1-4. The infidelity and obstinacy of some could not invalidate the oracles committed to them. This privilege is not annulled by some of the unbelievers. In fact, the Jews were given the Oracles DESPITE their hypocrisies and frailties. Their claim to these Oracles rests not upon the precarious fidelity of men, but upon the infallible promise of God to the House of Judah.

So the answer to John Ritenbaugh’s question is a resounding yes. If not in the written Law, then it has to be in the Oral Law, otherwise both King Hezekiah and King Josiah would be bad kings!

((( CRITIQUE OF RITENBAUGH PASSOVER )))

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~ by Joel Huan on December 1, 2019.

Posted in Passover