A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (l)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

This is the last Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover.

Quotes are from Fred Coulter’s book, and some from his compatriots, all in PINK. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 19

This chapter starts with the preconceived notion that Jesus’ last supper was His last Passover. And Fred Coulter repeated his misconception again and again. Scriptures were cherry picked to support preexisting biases and other Biblical passages were reinterpreted and twisted to support his misconception. 

If His last supper was a Passover, there were no words or a phrase to confirm that, such as “when they finished Passover, they sang a hymn”, “during Passover, He poured wine and break bread,” or “during Jesus last Passover, He took bread.” 

And even when Paul was referring back to that night, he wrote, “the night He was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23), rather than, say, “the last Passover He kept.” Why? Strange, isn’t it?

There is evidence in early historical works that at the time John was writing his Gospel, the 14/15 Passover controversy was already a major problem. That would explain why John describes Jesus’ last Passover and the subsequent events in greater detail than the other Gospel writers.

The Gospel of John makes a clear distinction between the Passover of the Jews and the Passover that Jesus kept. The sequence of events that John records conclusively shows that Jesus did not observe the Passover at the traditional time. (The Christian Passover, pg 232)

It is correct that John’s account apparently differs from the other Gospels, but not for the reasons given above. John had to keep on emphasizing the details of Jewish feasts as different from a Samaritan counterfeit version that had been a threat for hundreds of years.

John mentioned going through Samaria in detail encountering a Samaritan woman (John 4:4-40), eventually giving them the most important message: for “Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). 

For us living far and away in the twenty-first century, the threats from the Samaritans aren’t real, but for John and his countrymen from Galilee they had to live with those threats, and they were real.

John shows that the Passover they were preparing to eat was recognized as the official observance of the Jews: “(Now it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour [6 AM]). And he [Pilate] said to the Jews, ‘Behold your King!’  But they cried aloud, ‘Away, away with Him! Crucify Him!’ ” (John 19:14-15). (Pg 233)

The sixth hour is 6 AM? Here, wringing like a snake, Fred says the sixth hour is “6 AM”, but in another of his own books, it is 8.30 AM (Harmony of the Gospels, 1974, pg 219). It’s like a red-hot murderer caught and being interviewed in a police station testifying with different alibi to suit different circumstances.

If Fred Coulter had not been lying with deceits, he would tell the truth that the “sixth hour” is the same as when Jesus met the Samaritan at the well — NOON! It was hot, and Jesus, being wearied and tired, asked for a drink. It was noon time, as the same time were listed elsewhere:

John 4:6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus by the well; and it was about the sixth hour. — NOON

And that noon, the sixth hour, is the same in the other Gospels.

Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. — NOON TO 3 PM

Mark 15:33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. — NOON TO 3 PM

Luke 23:44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. — NOON TO 3 PM

John 19:14 And it was the Preparation of the Passover and about the sixth hour, and Pilate said unto the Jews, “Behold your king!” — NOON

The truth is that all the Gospel writers were using Hebrew time and all the “sixth hour” means 12 noon, since the hour counting starts at daybreak, at 6 AM. “And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led Him into their council [Sanhedrin], saying, “Art thou the Christ? Tell us.”” Luke 22:66-67 — “it was day” — It was daybreak! Jesus couldn’t be with the Sanhedrin here and inside the praetorium at the same time! The Scripture is screaming here! “John 19:14 couldn’t be 6AM!” — What a hypocrite, Fred didn’t follow his own thirteenth rule on studying the Bible 13) Do not form conclusions based on partial facts or insufficient information, or the opinions and speculations of others. (Pg 15)

Second, the chief priests (including the high priests), the captains of the temple and their servants are all known to be Sadducees. And they didn’t want to go inside the praetorium!

“Then they (the chief priests, etc) led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover,” John 18:28.

This is another proof that the Sadduciac passover haven’t arrived, and they, too, didn’t want to defile themselves by entering a Gentile residence just before their passover where they would have kept it on night of the fourteenth! This is a solid proof that that night could only be on the thirteenth!

The truth then, is, since Matthew, Mark and Luke testifies that Christ was on the cross at the sixth hour, Jesus couldn’t be at the praetorium (judgement hall) at the same time. And since the crucifixion was on the fourteenth, the time at the praetorium had to be on a day before, ON THE THIRTEENTH.

Then they led Him away to be crucified, but first to be flogged, including mocking and scourging — the missing hours, or for the next 18 hours — then back at the praetorium. From John 14:16 to17, there is a time gap where there is no record of Him — from about noon on the thirteenth to daybreak on the fourteenth of Nisan. A mystery of mysteries. A secret among secrets.

And that evening, the evening where Jesus and His disciples were taking supper, was indeed just a supper. There is no evidence of a Passover — no lamb, no bitter herbs, no mention of any blood on the doorposts and lintel — it was not even a Samaritan or a Sadducean Passover, where it would be on an early fourteenth of Nisan.

Jesus and His disciples were eating a meal, called a supper by the Gospel writers, is ON THE NIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH!

Luke 22:20 Likewise also He took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you.

John 13:2 And supper being ended, and the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him,

John 13:4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself.

John 21:20 Then Peter, turning about, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at supper, and said, “Lord, who is he that betrayeth Thee?”

That meal, that last meal that Jesus took with His disciples, was called supper consistently. It was just as a supper as in John 12:2 where Martha and Mary made Him a supper in Bethany after raising Lazarus. If that night was a passover why didn’t the Gospel writers say so to differentiate it from other ordinary supper? Nothing was said it was a Passover if it really was one! How strange! Its silence speaks volume!

The truth is, that night — often called the “Last Supper” night —  was on the night of the thirteenth. The following day, still on the thirteenth, Jesus was brought before Pilate, at noon, at sixth hour (John 19:14) and Jesus was led away by the Romans to be tortured by them, and then another 24 hours had passed, where He was crucified on the cross, at noon, and darkness began upon the whole land (Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44) until the ninth hour when He died. 

And Jesus died when the Passover lamb was sacrificed. He was and is our Passover Lamb! He died exactly on the fourteenth, at even (ben ha arbayim; 3 PM) and fulfilled the symbolism of the lambs that were killed at the Temple!

Bacchiocchi fails to consider that during Jesus’ day a majority of the Jews were observing the domestic Passover at the beginning of the 14th, as commanded by God in Exodus 12. (Pg 235)

The Samaritans, donning long white robes, chanting prayers and eating in haste, would keep their passover — with belts on their waists, sandals on their feet, and staffs in their hands — at Mount Gerizim at sunset.

Blood from the lamb would have smeared on their forehead, while those who have camped nearby, would have blood smudged at their tents entrance. On some years on their calendar, it occurs a month after the Jewish celebration.

But there is no record how the Sadduceans, the Boethusians and Herodians, would keep them, except that they would have kept it on an early fourteenth. And they were an aloof aristocracy MINORITY (not a majority) during Christ’s time, and they were confined to Jerusalem and the Temple.

When the Temple was destroyed by fire in AD 70, the Sadduceans and their compatriotes, the Boethusians and Herodians were all consumed and disappeared from history. Jesus acknowledged that the Scribes and Pharisees sat on Moses’ seat (Mathew 23:2) and thus the Seat of Moses was saved, despite their hypocrisy and fragility, along with their oracles (Roman 3:1-4). 

But not the Sadducees! The Sadducees and their compatriotes perished into the AD 70 inferno! And the CoG Communities take pride in following their interpretation of the Passover! Wouldn’t these CoG Communities follow the same fate? If not, why not? Isn’t what happened in AD 70 a microcosm of the Great Tribulation in the Last Days?

A “domestic Passover” would have to be kept in their houses “as commanded by God in Exodus 12.” Fred Coulter emphasised in Chapter 6: “There is no question that the children of Israel were in their houses when they observed the Passover.” There has been no such record of any “domestic” Passover being kept back in Galilee.

And if they have to move to keep it in Jerusalem in houses, tents, or inns it would be a fake domestic Passover. A true domestic Passover would have to be kept in where there own houses, as Fred Coulter emphasises, as in Egypt. In Exodus 12:13-14 it says, “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live.” And Jesus and His disciples lived in Galilee.

Because Bacchiocchi recognizes no other Passover than the traditional Nisan 15 observance, he concludes that Jesus’ observance of the 14th was “a special paschal meal” kept a day early in anticipation of His crucifixion. Notice: “An Early Passover Meal. A plausible resolution of the discrepancy is to assume that the last Supper was a special paschal meal eaten the evening before the official Passover meal. The anticipation of the paschal meal could have been motivated by the fact that Jesus knew He would suffer death at Passover in fulfillment of the type provided by the slaying of the paschal lamb on Nisan 14. He knew He could not possibly eat of the paschal lamb at the usual time [assuming that Jesus kept the traditional Nisan 15 Passover] and Himself be sacrificed as the true Paschal Lamb when the lambs were slain [referring to the afternoon of Nisan 14]. It was more important that Christ’s death should synchronize with the death of the Passover lambs [at the temple] than that His eating of the Passover meal synchronize with the official time of the Passover meal” (Ibid., p. 56, emphasis added). (Pg 236)

Although Bacchiocchi was right in observing how Christ’s last supper wasn’t a Passover, he wasn’t right to describe it as “an early Passover.” That night, there were no evidence of a Passover — no lamb, no bitter herbs. If lamb have been eaten at that supper, it is inconceivable that the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world didn’t have the lamb mentioned. There were no reminder of John the Baptist’s words, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29,36). 

There were also no mention of bunches of hyssop brushing blood on the doorposts and lintel either, neither did they remained in the house till SUNRISE, OR DAYBREAK, nor did they burnt any of the remains at daybreak, but they hurried off to the Garden of Gethsemane against all the ordinances needed to keep a “domestic Passover” — so it shouldn’t be any surprise that it wasn’t a Passover of whatever kind at all, unless it is a Simon Magus Passover, taking on a false hope with a wafer of bread and a goblet of wine that the Catholics introduced later. 

It is important to note what Fred Coulter wrote earlier in Chapter 6:

The children of Israel kept the Passover in their houses, just as the Bible records for us . . . The inspired record in Exodus 12 makes it clear that the children of Israel were not dwelling in tents at Rameses when they kept the Passover. The Hebrew word bayith, which is translated “house” or “houses” in Exodus 12, does not refer to a tent or a temporary dwelling. (Pg 62)

Amazing stuff! Even if Jesus and His disciples were eating that last supper in a house, it still doesn’t qualify keeping it bayith, “in their houses” as Fred Coulter alleges in Chapter 6, because bayith “does not refer to a tent or a temporary dwelling.” He warned in the introduction,“It is important to read with an open mind, carefully examining each Scripture as it is presented,” and “drawing conclusions only after considering all the facts,” (pg 5). 

And the “facts” Fred presented are all either self-contradictory or against a “domestic Passover.” A better question to ask is why is the end-time Church has the descriptions as being “ten virgins, waiting, waiting and waiting,” and yet described as “blind” “wretched” and “naked”? (Revelation 3:17). And where are his team — Carl and Jean Franklin, Philip Neal, Albert and Mela Cataga John, Hiedi and Sasha Vogele — is this a case of the ten virgins sleeping? — Are they “blind” “wretched” and “naked”?

Now back to Chapter 19:

The word “they” in Mark 14:12 refers to those who were killing the Passover lambs at houses, tents, or inns where the domestic Passover would be kept. Mark’s record of the killing of the lambs at the time that Jesus sent His disciples to prepare the Passover confirms that many Jews in New Testament times were observing the domestic Passover. Clearly, Jesus and His disciples did not observe a “special paschal meal” at a different time from other Jews in Jerusalem. Mark’s testimony exposes this teaching as a false doctrine of men. (Pg 238)

Okay, let’s see what Mark says in Mark 14:12; and it’s getting a bit technical:

Mark 14:12 KJV And the first (G4413 protos) day (G2250 hemera) of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?

G4413 protos could be translated as ‘a time before’ as in John 1:15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before ^G4413 me.

John 1:30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before ^G4413 me.

G2250 hemera could be translated as ‘a period of time or days’ as in Matthew 2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days ^G2250 of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem.

Matthew 3:1 In those days ^G2250 came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,

Matthew 11:12 And from the days ^G2250 of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

Matthew 23:30 And say, If we had been in the days ^G2250 of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Matthew 24:19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! ^G2250

Matthew 24:22  And except those days ^G2250 should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days ^G2250 shall be shortened.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days ^G2250 shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

Matthew 24:37 But as the days ^G2250 of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. During those 120 years Noah preached a warning message (1 Peter 3:20).

Matthew 24:38 For as in the days ^G2250 that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day ^G2250 that Noah entered into the ark,

Mark 2:20 But the days ^G2250 will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. ^G2250

Mark 8:1 In those days ^G2250 the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them,

Hence “the first (G4413 protos) day” could be translated as “a period of time” – could be many days. So Mark 14:12 could or should be translated as: “Now before the Days of Unleavened Bread arrived, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, ‘Where do You want us to go and prepare that You may eat the Passover’?”

Matthew 26:17 Now the first day (G4413 protos) of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?

Matthew 26:17 could be translated as: “Now before the Days of Unleavened Bread have arrived, the disciples came to Jesus, asking, Where shall we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?”

Same thing with Luke 22:7 Then came (G2064 erchomai) the day (G2250 hemera) of Unleavened Bread when the Passover lambs had to be sacrificed. ⁸ Jesus said to Peter and John, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us to eat.”

G2064 erchomai could be translated “to come” or “to go” as in Matthew 2:2, 8. In Matthew 14:29 And he said, Come. ^G2064 And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go ^G2064 to Jesus.

Luke 22:7 could be translated as “As the Days of Unleavened Bread were approaching when the Passover lambs had to be sacrificed, ⁸ Jesus said to Peter and John, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us to eat.””

Now back to Fred”s The Christian Passover:

— It is possible that Peter and John killed the lamb themselves. However, since the guest chamber was furnished and ready, it is more likely that the master of the house had already killed the lamb by the time Peter and John arrived. 

— It is probable that the lamb for Jesus’ last Passover was a very small lamb,

— If the lamb was very small, the Passover meal could have been ready as early as 7:30 PM.

— The subsequent events of that night indicate that the Passover meal began early and probably ended by 9 or 9:30 PM. (Pg 240-241)

Typical of Fred Coulter’s analysis. A possibility becomes a probability and then it becomes a fact. And so in his Harmony of the Gospels, his passover started at 7.30 PM and everything ended by 9.30 PM when Jesus and His disciples sped off to the Garden of Gethsemane well before daybreak. They were to keep all the ordinances of a “domestic Passover,” shouldn’t they? 

“And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning [sunrise]” (Ex. 12:21-22),” Fred wrote in Chapter 6, (pg 58)

And reaffirmed again in Chapter 7:

“…And none of you shall go out of the door of his house UNTIL SUNRISE….And the children of Israel went away and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, SO THEY DID” (Ex. 12:22, 28). (Pg 64)

The killing and roasting took only one and a half hours, Fred says. Anticipated to feed 13 adults, he wrote that they only planned to have a tiny 8-day old lamb, weights only 10-12 pounds [about 5 kilos]. Have any of you roasted a leg of lambs, say just under half the weight above? I would love to hear from your experiences. More so if you have even killed a lamb, drained off the blood, skinned, cleaned and have it roasted, expected to feed thirteen adults after nightfall. If not, try it, it is an opportunity to prove the truth!

Nevermind, Fred Coulter provided his own analysis. Surely he had in mind a household during the time of the Exodus of around ten: women and children among them; here he analysed he needed close to 6 hours to roast a lamb, so back to Chapter 6:

To roast a whole lamb or kid weighing 20-30 pounds [9-14 kilos] until the meat was thoroughly done would take approximately 4-5 hours. The total time needed to have the meal ready is estimated to be from 4 and 1/2 hours at the earliest, to 5 and 3/4 hours at the latest, which includes 30-45 minutes to prepare the lamb and 4-5 hours to roast it. (Pg 67)

At the end of the Chapter 6 he concluded from an earlier question: Element # 4) How long did it take to kill, roast and eat the lambs, and to burn the bones and remains?

The Answer for Element # 4: To kill, roast and eat the lambs, and to burn the bones and remains, took from approximately 6 PM on the night of the fourteenth until 2-3 hours before sunrise, a total of 8-10 hours. (Pg 69)

See, Fred Coulter keeps on wiggling like a snake to suit different circumstances. Or is this a doublespeak? “Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words.” But in this case his distortion is everywhere. Can we trust his “analysis”?

He wrote in Chapter 1: “Unfortunately, the landscape of religious history is filled with the bodies of people who have taught false doctrines, and the bodies of people who have embraced such teachings.” (Pg 14) So true with Fred’s remarkable insight, especially when he’s describing himself!

Luke records Jesus’ words at the beginning of the Passover meal: “Now when the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. And He said to them, ‘With earnest desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you that I will not eat of it again until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God’ ” (Luke 22:14-16). (Pg 241)

Did Jesus eat the Passover? If so, why didn’t they said they were partaking in the Passover during the meal? If not, what was He talking about when he said “this Passover”? 

Let’s study this; there could only be two possibilities: 

1) He meant the upcoming Passover that very season, which was approaching, as this statement was made “before the feast of the Passover” (John 13:1).

2) He meant that very meal that evening which they were partaking of – even though it was served with leavened bread (artos G740), makes no mention of the lamb, or bitter herbs, which were required for a Passover meal. 

What did Jesus mean when He said, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer?” Note that earlier it was the disciples, not Christ, who mentioned eating the Passover, and that Christ referred later only His desire to eat it: “Where is the guest chamber where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples?” But did Christ eat the Passover? This difference is critical. The word for “desire” is an unusual word, epithumia in the Greek, and means “a longing, especially for something forbidden” (Strong’s G1937) — a strong desire for something denied. Other examples are:

Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after ^G1937 her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matthew 13:17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired ^G1937 to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

Luke 17:22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire ^G1937 to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.

Acts 20:33 I have coveted ^G1937 no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel.

1 Corinthians 10:6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. ^G1937

James 4:2 Ye lust, ^G1937 and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

Revelation 9:6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire ^G1937 to die, but death shall flee from them.

Mark 4:19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts ^G1939 of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

The word for “desire” in Luke 22:15 is a “desire, craving, longing — specifically for what is forbidden,” says the Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Critical-Experimental Commentary.  This is the “strongest expression of intense desire,” whether good or bad. The New Testament Greek Lexicon says epithumia is, “desire, craving, longing, desiring for something forbidden.” 

In other words, Jesus desired to eat the true Biblical Passover with His disciples that year, but He knew that such a thing would be impossible — it was forbidden; it was denied — that for Him to fulfill God’s plan that He must fulfilled that Special Sacrificial Paschal, that “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” 

Jesus knew He was to fulfil John 1:²⁹ The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. So Christ knew He would be denied, forbidden and impossible for Him to eat that forthcoming Passover with His disciples.

With all these in mind, perhaps Luke 22:15 could be translated as: “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; but I’m saying to you now, I am forbidden and denied this privilege, and I will no longer eat with you until we’re all in the kingdom of God.” 

As we continue reading the account, it is clear that the context supports this translation, and is consistent with the Greek. We are told that Jesus rose from supper (verse 4). After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus sat down again (Greek “reclined”) to eat (verse 12). Jesus said, “The one who is eating bread with Me…” (verse 18), shows that the meal was in progress. Jesus dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, who ate it (verse 26). (Pg 243)

Obviously Jesus and His disciples didn’t keep a “domestic Passover” back in their houses in Galilee. Neither did He keep a Passover of any kind in Jerusalem! Here they didn’t eat “with loins girded, shoes on their feet, and staves in their hands,” they didn’t take a bunch of hyssop, dipped it in the blood and strike the lintel and the two side posts, and to eat “in haste,” ready to flee.

And then they left for the Garden of Gethsemane on Mount Olives though they were supposed to remain in their house that entire night! Instead they sang a hymn where the Israelties didn’t sing any song in the original Passover in Egypt. 

Jesus and His disciples left for the Garden of Gethsemane and according to Fred’s timeline it was around 9 – 9:30 PM. Further, they left without burning any food remains or the bones, infringing one of the Passover ordinances according to Exodus 12:10 and Numbers 9:12.

“And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning, and that which remaineth of it [food remains] until the morning (boqer) ye shall burn with fire.” Exodus 12:10 

“They shall leave none of it [food remains] unto the morning (boqer), nor break any bone of it. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they shall keep it.” Numbers 9:12.

This is what Fred Coulter acknowledged this Passover ordinance in his earlier chapters:

“And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning [sunrise]” (Ex. 12:21-22),” (pg 58).

And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until sunrise [Hebrew boqer]’ ” (Ex. 12:21-22). (Pg 71)

 “…And none of you shall go out of the door of his house UNTIL SUNRISE….And the children of Israel went away and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, SO THEY DID”  (Ex. 12:22, 28). 

“If any of the children of Israel had left their houses before morning, it would be recorded in the Scriptures that some of the people had disobeyed the command of God and had left their houses too soon, and therefore they had died in the plague of the firstborn.” (Pg 72)

That would make Jesus and His disciples break the Passover ordinance since they were only allowed to burn the bones and other food remains and left their house only AFTER SUNRISE!  What HERESY!

Fred Coulter’s definition of boqer even makes Jesus a sinner! Oh a white sepulchre of over 50 years!

And he has many sleepy followers and compatriots from members of the CoG Communities: If that night was a Passover night, Jesus and His disciple would have infringed one of the ordinances of the feast, and all our hopes and dreams would have been flushed down the toilet!

And now from John Ritenbaugh’s Toilet:

Everybody agrees—even people who support a 15th Passover—that Jesus kept the Passover at the beginning of the 14th—one whole day before the great body of Jews was keeping it, as it is recorded in the Scriptures. We have to keep it with the new symbols that He instituted at that time. We should not follow the traditions of the Jews regardless of their apparent good intent, nor of the apparent goodness accomplished at the time they observed it under Hezekiah and Josiah. (Passover transcript, Part Nine)

~~~

So, allowing them half-an-hour to eat, they would then be finishing the Passover meal just about the time that the Death Angel was coming through. And then would come the burning of the remainder of it. Remember that God said He wanted not any of it to remain until morning.

6. What does “night” (that is, the Hebrew word, lailah) mean? What does “the morning” (Hebrew, boqer) mean? 

And Ritenbaugh answers his own question:

Exodus 10:13 So Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind on the land all that day and all that night. When it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.

In this verse, “day” is yom; “night” is lailah; and “morning” is boqer. So this one verse here shows a complete day and a complete night—with its next morning. With this usage, it clearly shows there is a difference between “night” and “morning”—shown right in the scriptures! Lailah and boqer are NOT the same thing. The locusts arrived at boqer (after lailah). (Passover transcript, Part Four)

~~~

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. 

Boqer is in many ways similar to ben ha arbayim, only it is on the other end of the night period. Boqer begins at the first crack of dawn, when light begins to appear in the eastern sky. (Passover transcript, Part Five)

Those nine steps (that John Ritenbaugh wrote), just to reiterate, were:

1. To select the lamb on the tenth day of the first month.
2. To kill the lamb “between the evenings” on the fourteenth.
3. To strike the doorposts and the lintel with the blood.
4. To roast the whole lamb with bitter herbs.
5. To eat the lamb that night.
6. To not boil the lamb, or eat it raw.
7. To burn any remains by morning.
8. No alien (no stranger, no foreigner) was to eat it unless he was circumcised.
9. They were not to leave their house until the morning.

Remember that I gave you the time element here in Numbers 9. It was one year later—after the Israelites left Egypt. It was the first month of the second year. Nothing has changed in regard to the keeping of the Passover! God makes it very clear: “According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it.”

If you have a Bible with a center reference (or footnotes, or something), you will also see that the word “rites” is actually the word translated in other Bibles as “statutes”—meaning that these things now have the force of law. So, “according to all of its laws.“ Thus, these other things (like striking the doorposts and lintel, and not going out of the house), they have the force of law! (Passover transcript, Part Three)

Jesus and His disciple didn’t wait until the “the first crack of dawn” before rushing out to the Garden of Gethsemane, nor did they burn any of their food remains at daybreak. Another Reminder of this ordinance! “And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning (boqer), and that which remaineth of it [food remains] until the morning ye shall burn with fire,” Exodus 12:10. “They shall leave none of it [food remains] unto the morning (boqer), nor break any bone of it. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they shall keep it,” Numbers 9:12.

Now from Frank Nelte’s Toilet:

Anyone who, in the face of these clear Scriptures [Matt 26:17-19; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:8,11,13,15], claims that Jesus Christ did not observe a real Passover is calling Jesus Christ a liar! And calling Jesus Christ a liar most certainly qualifies for Romans 8:7. People who claim that Jesus Christ did not observe a Passover before He was killed are denigrating Jesus Christ’s last observance to some inconsequential status! They are insulting Jesus Christ! Claims that Jesus Christ observed some kind of “Lord’s Supper” are garbage and highly offensive to Jesus Christ!

Don’t let anybody tell you that there wasn’t enough time for Jesus Christ to eat a real Passover. Jesus Christ and His apostles had plenty of time to eat the Passover meal between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., though it seems very likely that they concluded eating their meal well before 11:00 p.m. (JESUS CHRIST’S LAST PASSOVER, March 2014)

~~~

That is not how God works!

Everything associated with the Passover (i.e. the killing, roasting, eating and disposal of any leftovers) has to take place on the same day, based on the way God counts days (i.e. from sunset to sunset). If any part of the slaughtered Passover animal was still left on the next morning, but still on the same 24-hour day, then it was to be “burned with fire” that day (see Exodus 12:10).God’s intention with this instruction in Exodus 12:10 is very obviously that the entire Passover proceedings are to be carried out and completed on one specific day, the 14th day.

Consider Exodus 12:22 again.

And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning (Hebrew word is “boqer”). (Exodus 12:22)

What is the Bible definition of “boqer”? It is “when the sun rises“. How plain is that? The claim that “boqer” starts at midnight is a perversion of the truth. King David provided the obvious meaning for “boqer”. The added expression “a boqer without clouds” shows that the obvious meaning refers to a beautiful clear sky at sunrise.

Anyone who claims “boqer” starts at midnight is not being truthful. This means that belief in a late-14th Passover requires one to believe a lie. (THE PASSOVER WAS AT THE START OF THE 14TH OF NISAN, April 2019)

That’s right, according to Fred Coulter, John Ritenbaugh and Frank Nelte, if the children of Israel were to leave their houses before the morning, they would be breaking one of the most important ordinances! And this is far more than telling a lie!

From UCG’s Toilet:

The available historical information simply confirms what we read in Scripture. Christ observed His final Passover on this earth with the apostles during the evening portion of the 14th. At this Passover He instituted the symbols of the new covenant and He washed His disciples’ feet. This is the example followed by the New Testament Church and the same example that we follow today. We can confidently observe the New Testament Passover on the night portion of the 14th knowing that we have the support of Scripture and history.

3. Can the Hebrew term for morning refer to the few hours after midnight, thereby allowing the Israelites to leave their homes before daybreak? There is no example of the Hebrew term boqer (morning) ever meaning anything but “daybreak,” “dawn” or “towards dawn . . .  The term boqer is used for the light portion of the day in Genesis 1 and is never used in the place of night. In Exodus 12, the firstborn were killed at midnight (middle of the night and not the dividing line between night and morning). The Israelites were told not to leave their homes until morning, not after midnight, or after the firstborn have died. God was very clear in the command that they were not to go out until morning—daybreak.” (Passover of Exodus 12, Study Paper November 1999, by UCG, pg 41-42).

According to the teachings of UCG and other CoG Communities, if Jesus and His disciples were to leave their houses before the morning, they would be breaking one of the most important ordinances! Can you believe such blatant heresy in His church today?

By blowing up their own righteousness, Fred Coulter and fellow compatriots from other CoG Communities have belittled the righteous like Hezekiah,Josiah and Ezra. Now they have even implied our Saviour is a sinner. 

God strictly forbade any Israelite to leave his house until sunrise. The Schocken Bible conveys the precise meaning of the Hebrew word boqer, showing the exact time at which the children of Israel were permitted to leave: “Now you—you are not to go out, any man from the entrance to his house, UNTIL DAYBREAK” (Ex. 12:22, SB). (The Christian Passover, pg 71) 

But Jesus and His disciples left around 9 to 9:30 PM without burning any food remains and bones. It’s a BLASPHEMY of blasphemies. O generation of vipers! Like in the Garden of Eden, it kills the redemptive process. It has the smell of a rat, killing the work the Son of God is doing: “thou shalt not surely die.”

And a reminder:

The word of the LORD came unto Hosea to the children of whoredoms, to the house of Israel:

“Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceits” (Hosea 11:12). The house of Judah operates with hypocrisy but the house of Ephraim operates with SATANIC lies and deceits! Only the wretched naked and blind couldn’t see this.

Amazing Oh House of Wholedoms!

Just referring back to his Introduction and Chapter One, this is how Fred Coulter put a mirror in front of himself, and wrote about what he saw: 

As the return of Jesus Christ draws near, Satan the devil is employing all the powers and forces of evil to complete his deception of the entire world (Rev. 12:9). One of his greatest deceptions is the perversion and paganization of the Christian Passover. He has so subtly masterminded his false doctrines and practices that they are nearly universally accepted and believed. People through the centuries have become so used to hearing, believing and practicing satanic lies that they cannot believe the truth. To those who have been blinded by Satan’s deceptions, the true observance of the Christian Passover seems fanatical and cultish. As Dressdon James once wrote, “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker [or writer] a raving lunatic.” (The Christian Passover, pg xiii)

“False doctrines and misinterpretations are continually being spread because ministers and teachers use the Word of God deceitfully. How diabolical it is to take the Word of God, which is the truth, and misapply it to create a lie! Such deceptive use of God’s Word has existed from the time of the apostles.”

“Anyone who twists and distorts the Scriptures is “using the law unlawfully,” as Paul said, and will end up believing false, satanic doctrines, which subvert the souls of men. Unfortunately, the landscape of religious history is filled with the bodies of people who have taught false doctrines, and the bodies of people who have embraced such teachings.” (The Christian Passover, pg 13-14)

And just in case we have forgotten Haman in the Persian Court, here is what Fred Coulter reminded us of himself when he wrote in Chapter 6:

WHAT FOLLY! What foolishness to accept a traditional belief that directly conflicts with the truth of God’s Word, and to use interpretations of Scripture that promote the false ideas of men! No wonder God says that He entraps the intelligent in the foolishness of their own human wisdom. (Pg 61)

~~~ CRITIQUES OF FRED COULTER’S THE CHRISTIAN PASSOVER ~~~

~~THE END~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (k)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is the second last Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover lamb was killed on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan. Quotes are from Fred Coulter’s book, and some from his compatriots, all are in block form, in PINK. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 18

In earlier critiques, we have found that when Solomon had finished the Temple in Jerusalem the Lord appeared to the young king by night and said unto him as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there,” as affirmed in II Chronicles 7:11-12 “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place (Jerusalem) for Myself for a house of sacrifice.” 

God Himself had chosen Jerusalem and these Scriptures run in contradiction to Fred’s heresy that “[b]oth Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s temple-centered Passover observances were the result of a personal commitment by these kings to restore apostate Israel and Judah to the true worship of God” (The Christian Passover, pg 220).

And three times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built unto the Lord, and he burned incense upon the altar that was before the Lord. So he finished the house. (I King 9:25) — Adam Clarke: These three times were: (1) The passover. (2) The feast of pentecost. (3) The feast of tabernacles.

Second, it was God and not Ezra who instituted the laws regarding the slaughtering of the Passover lamb not needed be done solely within the Temple courtyard – but “inside or outside the camp.” This runs contrary to another of Fred’s heresies that “[a]fter the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity, Ezra promulgated the “new Passover law,” which designated Jerusalem and the surrounding festival area as the only place where the Passover could be observed” (pg 220). 

The principle requirements being that the blood had to be carried to the Temple courtyard for a priest to sprinkle upon the altar as commanded in Leviticus 17 – it wasn’t a “new Passover law,” and it wasn’t instituted “according to the commandment of the king” but a commandment of God. Any person offering a sacrifice inside or outside the camp but its blood not carried to the Temple be offered at the altar before the Lord risked being “cut off from among his people” (Leviticus 17:3-4). It was God who instituted this commandment way back during the time of Moses.

Before we go into the Passover issue in the New Testament  it is important to start with John the Baptist, the forerunner to the arrival of the Messiah. Note his prophecy:

Luke 3:³ And he (John the son of Zacharias) came into all the country about the Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, ⁴ as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. ⁵ Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; ⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

⁷ Then said he to the multitude who came forth to be baptized by him, “O generation of vipers! Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say unto you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. ⁹ And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees. Every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire (pyr g4442).” 

And further down, John prophesied about the Messiah:

Luke 3:¹⁶ John answered, saying unto them all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I cometh, the straps of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire (pyr g4442). ¹⁷ His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire (pyr g4442) unquenchable.”

The Greek word pŷr is “fire” literally or figuratively, especially lightning. A pyre in English is also known as a funeral pyre, which is a structure, usually made of wood, for burning a body as part of a funeral rite or execution. As a form of cremation, a body is placed upon or under the pyre, which is then set on fire. 

John was a voice crying in the wilderness, and he said to make the crooked paths straight, he needed to hewn some trees and cast them into the fire (verse 9).

Then John said that the Messiah that comes after him, will have a winnowing fan in His hand, and will thoroughly purge His floor by gathering the chaff together and burn them with fire (verse17). This story is so important that it is similarly recorded in Matthew 3:1-12.

Notice the consistency of “fire” is important. After the flood, God promised the world that whenever we see the rainbow it is a reminder of His promise not to similarly destroy the world by flood again. But about destroying by fire here are some of Jesus own warnings:

Matthew 7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

Matthew 13:40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of this world.

Matthew 13:50 and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 25:41 “Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Mark 9:44 where ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’

Luke 12:49 “I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?

John 15:6 If a man abides not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Acts 2:19 And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath — blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

And destruction came in AD 70, roughly 40 years after Christ’s warning! The Romans, led by the future Emperor Titus, came and destroyed Jerusalem, killing more than 1.1 million, with another 97,000 enslaved. “O Brood of vipers!” warned John the Baptist, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” From all the chaos that took place, only a few Jews escaped.

Once the Roman started the fire, it spread quickly and was soon out of control. The Temple was captured and destroyed on 9/10 Tisha B’Av, around the end of August, and the flames spread into the residential sections of the city. 

Josephus described some of the scenes:

As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command. Crowded together around the entrances many were trampled by their friends, many fell among the still hot and smoking ruins of the colonnades and died as miserably as the defeated. As they neared the Sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Caesar’s commands and urged the men in front to throw in more firebrands. The partisans were no longer in a position to help; everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.

During the four years of war, the Romans had taken 97,000 prisoners. Thousands of them were forced to become gladiators and were killed in the arena, fighting wild animals or fellow gladiators. Some, who were known as criminals, were burned alive. Others were employed at Seleucia, where they had to dig a tunnel. But most of these prisoners were brought to Rome, where they were forced to build the Forum of Peace (a park in the heart of Rome) and the Colosseum. The Menorah and the Table were exhibited in the temple of Peace. (Full Details in Wars Bk 6)

But John wasn’t alone, earlier King David also saw this, more likely one for the end-time, even “he shall fill the places with the dead bodies . . . over many countries”: “The Lord at thy right hand (i.e. the Son, who came later as the Messiah) shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries” (Psalm 110:5-6). Were these “baptised in fire” as warned by John the Baptist?

The foundation of Fred Coulter’s Passover on the early fourteenth of Nisan has been proven to be built on quicksand. Once this foundation is wacky, it shifts and moves and its consequence can be desperating. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall,” (Matthew 7:24-27).

That’s right! The Worldwide Church of God was growing at some 30 percent each year for decades, but it was built on sand. Once its founder died, the organisation imploded, and it fell like a bang, and great was its noise, scattering into many splinters as a result. Because Fred Coulter’s belief is similarly built on a shaky foundation it will with certainty come with a desperating end. So we’ll proceed with him to the New Testament era.

But notice the following four verses during the New Testament time before we proceed. They show that the Feast of the Passover were well understood by the writers as the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a composite Festival, known by either name.

Matthew 26:17 Now on the first [day of the Feast] of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto Him, “Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?”

Mark 14:12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said unto Him, “Where wilt Thou have us go and prepare, that Thou mayest eat the Passover?”

Luke 22:1 Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover.

Luke 22:7 Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread when the Passover lamb must be killed.

Now another quote from The Christian Passover:

When we examine the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last Passover, it is evident that Jesus and His disciples kept a domestic Passover at the beginning of the 14th, according to the commands of God in Exodus 12. On the other hand, the New Testament discloses that the Sadducees, scribes and Pharisees observed a 14/15 temple Passover, eating their Passover on the night of the 15th. This dichotomy makes it clear that the 14/15 controversy existed in New Testament times. We will have a better basis for understanding the observance of the Passover in the New Testament if we survey the terminology that is used in the Gospel accounts. (Pg 220)

There are many errors in the above paragraph. The Sadducees didn’t subscribe to a 14/15 Passover, the Pharisees did. The Sadducees (and also the Samaritans), kept an early fourteenth Passover, because they also define erev as twilight, and ben ha arbayim (between the two evenings) as between sunset and dark.

Fred Coulter must be suffering from memory loss, for he wrote in Chapter 10: “The Sadducees, including some high priests and their families, continued to practice the domestic killing of the Passover lambs at the beginning of the 14th,” (Pg 119).  Such oversight is glaring. And where are all his team? — Carl and Jean Franklin, Philip Neal, Albert and Mela Cataga John, Hiedi and Sasha Vogele — all sleeping?

The Pharisees, and later the Rabbinics considered the time when the sun began to descend from its zenith to be called the First Evening and the Second Evening when the sun disappears from sight over the horizon. The time between the eve of the First Evening and eve of the Second Evening is “between the two evenings.” Only the Pharisees retained keeping the Passover during this time frame which is also known as a late fourteenth Passover.

Both Mark and Luke make a clear distinction between the Passover day and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in their accounts of the events leading to Jesus’ last Passover. On the other hand, in his narration of the early life of Jesus Christ, Luke includes the Feast of Unleavened Bread with the Passover day as a single feast called “the feast of Passover.” In this passage, Luke does not distinguish the Passover day from the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but records that Jesus and “… His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover….[And] they departed after completing the days…” (Luke 2:41, 43). (Pg 221)

That’s right, the feast of the Passover involves several days. The gospel writers all well understood that the feast of the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread were a composite feast. By separating the Passover from the days of Unleavened Bread can also mean we are separating our Messiah’s sacrifice from the redemption of His subjects.

Can we redeem ourselves from sin when we separate ourselves from the One who makes our redemption possible? Certainly not, but to argue otherwise is going against the spirit of the Scriptures, and the writings of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Unless, of course, Fred Coulter, Frank Nelte and John Ritenbaugh are holier and more righteous than Ezra, Matthew, Mark and Luke.

The Gospel accounts make it clear that Jesus did not follow the traditions of men. Jesus strongly denounced the traditions of the Jews—ALL OF THEM! (Pg 222)

All of them? Nar. Early in His life, Jesus went with his parents to keep the Passover, Luke 2:41.

Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. If these Galileans were to keep a domestic Passover, as Fred Coulter alleges, they would stay back to keep a “domestic Passover” in Galilee. Bad traditions are already well documented, so I won’t reiterate them, but good traditions are seldom mentioned. Here there are, as Paul says:

“I profited in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers” Galatians 1:14.

“Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle” II Thessalonians 2:15.

“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother who walketh disorderly and not according to the tradition which you received from us” II Thessalonians 3:6.

And how come Jesus wore the tassels or ham, described as “edges”; a distinctively Jewish tallit (Matthew 9:20-22, 14:36; Mark 6:56)? Then Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Festival of Dedication (John 10:22), another Jewish tradition. To say that Jesus rejects “ALL” the traditions of the Jews is a presumption that could only come from one with a devious mindset, and it will come with a serious consequence. “And the man who will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest who standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die” Deuteronomy 17:12.

The Gospel of John shows how far the Jews had strayed from the worship that God desired. John records that the Jews were actually defiling the temple of God with their corrupt practices: “Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem . . .  (Pg 225)

Wasn’t a Jerusalem centred Passover an ordinance from God? Jerusalem was chosen by God as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem.” And the three annual feasts (Deuteronomy 16:5-6) were established in Jerusalem during Solomon’s reign, (I King 9:25). Jesus, setting the best example, went to Jerusalem to keep the Passover of the Jews. He didn’t stay back in Galilee, in their own homes, to keep a “domestic Passover” as occurred in the original Exodus. Neither did He keep a Passover of the Samaritans at Mount Gerizim.

Yet Fred harps and moans over this “domestic Passover” all over his book. To the knowledgeable this is revolting. The original Passover had to be observed in a strict prescribed manner because of what God was going to achieve through Exodus. However, in later years it was a commemoration of the event, not the event itself.

For in Deuteronomy 16:16 it commands “Three times in 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.” God had provided a provision where He will choose a place in the future where the Israelites are to worship him.  And that place chosen by God is Jerusalem as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there.”

And God’s prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Zechariah, they all say the same thing. In Isaiah 2:3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; Isaiah 24:23

Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously: Isaiah 28:14, Jeremiah 3:17, Joel 2:32, Joel 3:16, Amos 1:2, Micah 4:2, Zechariah 1:16,17, 2:12, 3:2, 8:3, 8:22, 12:10), and other follows identifying Jerusalem as God’s chosen city, but why is Fred Coulter still harping and whining about a “domestic Passover”?

And Jesus, at the age of twelve, readily went to Jerusalem to keep the Passover! “Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Deuteronomy 16:⁵) Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.

And when Jesus was twelve years old, they similarly went up to Jerusalem “after the custom of the feast,” rather than staying back in Galilee. Was Jesus misled? “Custom of the Feast,” that means to say, Jesus went to Jerusalem every year for Passover! 

But Fred still groans about a “domestic Passover” all over. In Old Testament times, the old Jeroboam stopped his subjects from going to Temple-based Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles; but here in modern times, a new Jeroboam also teaches against keeping Passover in a Temple-based Jerusalem. Amazing parallels!

In later chapters, John uses similar terminology when referring to the Jews’ observance of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near” (John 6:4). Again, John states, “Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from out of the country to Jerusalem before the Passover, so that they might purify themselves” (John 11:55). John’s repeated use of this terminology makes it clear that the Jews were not keeping these feast days as God intended them to be kept. (Pg 225-226)

Another work of high Satanic quality, so according to Fred, even Jesus and His disciples “were not keeping these feast days as God intended them to be kept!” 

Among the Gospel writers, John lived the longest. He was there when there arose a revolting movement by the Gentiles to get rid of anything that had to do with being adhering to Mosaic Laws, anything considered as “Jewish.” With that in mind, John emphasized the Jewishness of those feasts by reiterating “Passover of the Jews” or “feast of the Jews.”

He also mentioned a Jewish feast of tabernacles too in John 7:2 “Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand” which is also Jewish. Mosaic laws were considered among the Gentiles then and now as Jewish.

John emphasised their Jewishness simply because there was a real Samaritan counterfeit nearby: they practiced another version of the Passover, which were observed on a Samaritan calendar on the early fourteenth of Nisan, at twilight, on Mount Gerizim. Jewish and Samaritan rivalries were so intense and hence imbuled their perception that Samaritans were having a devil (John 8:48).

The animosity was well understood as Samaritans would often, among numerous devices, light bon-fires in order to deceive the Jews as to the tidings of the announcement of a new moon in Jerusalem, confusing and fooling them.

Being Galileans, John and the other disciples have to travel innumerable times passing Samaritan territories, including Jacob’s well in Shechem, which lies between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in the hill-country of Ephraim, to come to Jerusalem to keep the three annual feasts. So bad and threatening to these Jewish faiths and practises since Ezra’s time that eventually the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans, (John 4:9). 

So when John was writing, he emphasized “of the Jews” as distinct from that of the Samaritan’s. And to put a sting to their Jewishness, John even recorded Jesus in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah), which all the other Gospel writers ignored, for it says in John 10:22 “And it was at Jerusalem the Feast of Dedication,” where Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s Porch.

However, John writes differently when he refers to Jesus’ last Passover, which was observed on the night of the 14th, the time that God commanded. Notice that John does not use the phrase “of the Jews” to describe this Passover: “Now six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany…” (John 12:1).

Again, John records, “Now before the feast of the Passover, knowing that His time had come to depart from this world to the Father…” (John 13:1). As the subsequent verses in John 13 show, John is referring to Jesus’ last Passover, which He ate with His disciples on the 14th day of the first month, as commanded by God. The different terminology that John uses makes a clear distinction between Jesus’ observance of the Passover and the Jews’ observance of their feast. (Pg 226)

“And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?” (Mark 14:12, KJV.)

Although the translators did not insert the words “feast of” before “unleavened bread,” this translation of Mark 14:12 gives the impression that the lambs were killed on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Such a statement would be contrary to all records of Scripture and history.  (Pg 227)

Mark rightly didn’t incorporate the “feast of” before unleavened bread and credit should be attributable to him, not attacking him. This is a typical case of Fred having a preconceived notion of what the Scriptures say, and when it doesn’t fit, he attacks his own misconception: “If these verses are actually stating that the lambs were killed on the 15th, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, then we are confronted with gigantic problems.” And then he continues his attack with various “imaginary scenarios” (three in fact, on page 228) as he describes them.

Let’s recall what Fred Coulter wrote about sticking to the Scriptures on Chapter 1:

Fourteen Rules for Bible Study:

12) Do not allow your own personal assumptions or preconceived notions to influence your understanding and conclusions.

13) Do not form conclusions based on partial facts or insufficient information, or the opinions and speculations of others.

14) Opinions, regardless of how strongly you feel about them, don’t necessarily count. Scripture must be your standard and guide. (Pg 14-15)

Amazing! Fred Coulter has been making presumptions all the time. He doesn’t read that it was God who established Jerusalem where He put His name there for worship but keeps on harping that it was the commandment of the kings. And right here at the second paragraph of this chapter:

“When we examine the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last Passover, it is evident that Jesus and His disciples kept a domestic Passover at the beginning of the 14th, according to the commands of God in Exodus 12,” (Pg 220)

And the title for the next chapter, he already has his heading as, 

“Chapter Nineteen – Jesus’ Last Passover—When and How Was It Observed?” (Pg 232)

He already had a preconceived notion that it was “Jesus’ Last Passover” before he began to prove it.  Are these statements and headings not presumptuous? Are Fred’s devotees still adoring him? Are they not correctly described as “blind” “wretched” and “naked”?

The wording in Mark’s account causes confusion because it appears to contradict these facts, as does the wording in Luke’s account: “Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed” (Luke 22:7, KJV).

If these verses are actually stating that the lambs were killed on the 15th, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, then we are confronted with gigantic problems: (Pg 227)

No, there are nowhere considered as “gigantic problems” not even a slight problem. Exodus 12 confirms the opposite. Verse 18 says “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening (erev), ye shall eat unleavened bread until the one and twentieth day of the month at evening (erev).” 

Eating of unleavened bread starts BEFORE the beginning of the fifteenth. Unleavened bread is to be eaten “on the fourteenth day of the month at evening (erev),” (Exodus 12:18). As another testimony from Deuteronomy 16:1-8 shows, the full ordinances for Passover and the time for taking unleavened bread overlapped. The Targum translates and explains the Sacred Hebrew Text into the vernacular, in very simple language and is extremely clear: “And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan.”

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (j)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is a Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover lamb was killed on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan. Quoted are Fred Coulter’s book, from an internet online PDF version. Most of his quotes are in block form, in PINK and indented. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 16 – 17

Chapter 16 from Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover starts with the issue of how Deuteronomy 16 was different from other text, that Passover and Unleavened Bread should be distinct and separate, not a composite festival.

And that Deuteronomy 16 was edited by Ezra to make it as if it were a composite festival, confusing students and scholars by calling the festival by using either name.

The followings are from Chapter 14 of The Christian Passover, so it’s a bit of flashback:

The advocates of a 15th Passover claim that the commands of God in Deuteronomy 16 support the temple sacrifice of the Passover lambs. On the surface, it appears that these commands required the sacrificing of the Passover at the temple, and that the Passover and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread were combined into one feast. (The Christian Passover, pg 159)

Why do the commands in Deuteronomy 16 appear to be in conflict with all other commands of God for keeping the Passover? (Pg 159)

Why does Deuteronomy 16:1 use the term “Passover” in the context of commemorating the Exodus? What is the reason for this apparent discrepancy between Deuteronomy 16:1 and other Scriptural references to leaving Egypt in the month Abib? (Pg 164)

Remember, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers were mainly the words of God to His subjects — to Adam, Abraham, Jacob, on to Moses — but in Deuteronomy it was Moses speaking to the Israelites. Moses uses words and terms different from God’s so that the people could understand in a language the Israelites could understand. The introduction to Deuteronomy says:

“These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness . . . ” (Deuteronomy 1:1)

Yes, Moses combined Passover and Unleavened Bread into one festival as the two festivals were used interchangeably in this book of Deuteronomy. Moses wasn’t writing anything in conflict with the Words of God — surely he won’t dare to — he was making sure in clearer language so that the Israelites didn’t miss this amalgamated character of the feast. This character was already inherent in the original Exodus but Moses combined these two feasts explicitly here to ensure that those with a thicker head can also catch up.

One heading and its explanation in chapter 16 of The Christian Passover:

The Exiles Could Not Keep the Passover

Moreover, during the entire seventy-year captivity, the Passover could not be kept. The word of God makes it absolutely clear that when the people were not in the land of Israel, they could not keep the Passover on the 14th day of the first month. Notice the instructions that God gave to Moses when the children of Israel were in the wilderness: “And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month between the two evenings [ben ha arbayim] in the wilderness of Sinai. According to all that the LORD commanded Moses, the children of Israel did. (Pg 202)

If the Passover was home-centered – a “domestic passover” – the Jews shouldn’t have any inhibition about keeping the Passover in Babylon, as were in Egypt and in the Sinai wilderness, but Fred Coulter says, “The word of God makes it absolutely clear that when the people were not in the land of Israel, they could not keep the Passover.”

Why didn’t he provide any Scriptures to back up his claim? Actually the Scriptures say the opposite. Goshen wasn’t in Israel, neither the Sinai Desert in Israel while wandering in the wilderness for the next forty years, yet they kept the Passover. Are his devotees still sleeping? Why such wretched writing and none of his devotees are thinking?

In fact the Scripture in Leviticus 17 commands that in any sacrifice to the Lord  the blood must be brought to the tabernacle or later, the temple.

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), ⁹ and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation to offer it unto the Lord, even that man shall be cut off from among his people. 

A Passover is a sacrifice. Its blood must be brought to the tabernacle before the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar, at the door of the tabernacle. IT WAS THIS INABILITY TO BRING THE BLOOD TO THE ALTAR THAT DURING THE SEVENTY YEARS OF CAPTIVITY THE EXILES COULD NOT KEEP THE PASSOVER!

Below are further quotes from Fred Coulter:

That the Jews in exile could not observe the Passover is acknowledged by the Karaite Jews and recorded by Samuel Al-Magribi in 1484: “Today, however, by reason of our many sins, we are scattered over the four corners of the earth, we are dispersed in the lands of the Gentiles, we are soiled with their ritual uncleanness and unable to reach the House of the Lord, and our status is equivalent to that of persons ritually unclean or traveling far away. That is why this ordinance of the Passover sacrifice no longer applies to us, and the reason for this is our fathers’ exceeding disobedience to God and our own following in their sinful footsteps” (Nemoy, Karaite Anthology, p. 206) (Pg 203)

That the Jews were “unable to reach the House of the Lord” was because the Temple wasn’t in Babylon where the captives lived. This quote above confirms that the Karaites understand that Passover couldn’t be kept other than at the Temple.

But who are the Karaites? 

Anan ben David (715 – 795 or 811) is widely considered to be the founder of the Karaite movement, hence his followers were initially called Ananites; but now they are largely known as the Karaites.

These Karaites challenge the Rabbanite establishment as they do not believe the rabbinical oral law is divinely inspired. Thus when interpreting the Torah, Karaites strive to adhere to the plain or literal meaning of the text; much like the Sadducees.

Hence Abraham Geiger, a 19th-century German scholar who founded Reform Judaism, posited a connection between the Karaites and the Sadducees, simply because many of their beliefs are similar. 

When the Jews were in exile during the Babylonian captivity, they could not keep the Passover. This prohibition led to the replacement of the Passover with the Seder meal on the 15th day of the first month, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. To make their false substitute appear Scriptural, the Jews changed the name of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread to “Passover.” By changing the name of this feast, the Seder meal on the night of the 15th became the “Passover” for those who were living in exile. (Pg 203)

Typical of Fred’s writing, he doesn’t provide any evidence why this “prohibition led to the replacement of the Passover with the Seder meal” during the Babylonian captivity. He could just whip up something from nothing. Magic. A touch of Simon Magus again. On closer scrutiny, he contradicts himself later in Chapter Nineteen, saying:

“The Seder meal was adopted by the Pharisaic Jews after the destruction of the temple in AD 70,” (Pg 242).

Second, the terms “Passover” and the “Days of Unleavened Bread” had been established as a composite Festival right during the Exodus as was proven in the last few critiques.

“And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity kept the dedication of this house of God with joy….And the children of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. The priests and the Levites were purified together, all of them pure. And they killed the Passover lamb for all the children of the captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves. And the children of Israel ate the Passover lamb, all who had come again out of exile, and all such as had separated themselves to them from the uncleanness of the nations of the land in order to seek the LORD God of Israel. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had made them joyful…” (Ezra 6:15-16, 19-22). (Pg 204)

During the original Exodus, the Passover was killed in the evening by “the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel” but once the Levitical priesthood was established, most of the ordinances were carried out by the Levites and priests. And given that Ezra was a righteous scribe, what he did was righteous in the sight of God: “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments” Ezra 7:10:

And they set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses for the service of God, which is at Jerusalem, as it is written in the Book of Moses.¹⁹ And the children of the captivity kept the Passover upon the fourteenth day of the first month. ²⁰ For the priests and the Levites were purified together; all of them were pure, and killed the Passover lamb for all the children of the captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves, (Ezra 6:18-20).

The Talmud has listed 613 mitzvot from the Torah but there is no command that the Passover should ONLY be killed by members of the congregation of Israel or by the Levites and priests. That isn’t an issue. The important criteria is that the Levites and priests must be clean and the Passover lamb must be killed on the fourteenth of the first month at even (ben ha arbayim, Exodus 12:6). 

The priests and Levites did as they “were purified together; all of them were pure,” on behalf of the returning Exiles who had returned to Jerusalem. If Ezra wasn’t a righteous scribe, he wouldn’t “seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.”

Fred Coulter is a false accuser, along with Frank Nelte and John Ritenbaugh. Instead of upholding the Scriptures and Ezra as a man of God, these accusers are demeaning Ezra and the Scriptures.

The Scriptures quoted above (Ezra 6:19-20) reaffirm the followings about keeping the Passover:

(1) the divisions and duties of both priests and Levites were reestablished at the Temple, “as it is written in the Book of Moses” (Ezra 6:18). The Sanctuary in JERUSALEM was reinstituted. There is no such a thing about a “domestic” passover.

(2) the priests and Levites “killed the Passover lamb for all the children of the captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves.” — contrary to what Fred hopes for, the common people didn’t do the killing, the priests and Levites did in this instance.

When God gave unto Moses the law in Mount Sinai, He also gave the interpretation of the law, commanding Moses to put the former into writing, but to deliver the later only by word of mouth, to be preserved only in memories and be transmitted down from generation to generation orally; and from hence the former is called the Written Law and the latter the Oral Law. Sometimes later the Prophets came along and added more light on certain Laws. Ezekiel 45:21 and Ezra 6 are examples of further enlightenments.

As the account in the book of Ezra shows, the Levites themselves killed the Passover lambs at this observance.  This was not a purely domestic observance, as was the Passover that the children of Israel observed in Egypt, and in the wilderness, and in their early years in the Promised Land. This Passover—the first recorded observance by the returned exiles—was centered at the newly dedicated temple and was kept according to the new Passover law that Ezra had instituted.  Ezra’s new law was enacted primarily because of the apostate Jewish temples in Samaria and Elephantine, where unauthorized sacrifices were being made.  The new Passover law enforced the Scriptural teaching that Jerusalem was the only city where God had placed His name and that the altar at the temple in Jerusalem was the only authorized place to offer sacrifices to God.  Since the Jews of Ezra’s day were accustomed to observing a temple-centered Passover, those who lived near the apostate temples in Samaria and Elephantine would naturally have been tempted to observe the Passover at these sites.  The majority of the Jews still lived in exile, and less than 60,000 lived in Judea.  By restricting all Passover observance to the area of Jerusalem, Ezra hoped to prevent the exiles from falling prey to the counterfeit religions that were competing with the true worship of God at the temple in Jerusalem. (Pg 204-205)

Regardless of whether other temples had been established in Samaria or Elephantine, God’s law was instituted that the Passover sacrifice had to be done at the Tabernacle or in Jerusalem. Once King Solomon had finished building the Temple in Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him: “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself for a house of sacrifice” (II Chronicles 7:11-12). What happened in Mount Gerizim or Elephantine had no consequence with what God had intended for those who would come to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices. Fred Coulter is continuing with his distortion.

And “this place” that God had intended is in Jerusalem:

“I (God) have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there” (II Chronicles 6:6).

And continue in other Scriptures:

II Chronicles 7:1 Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house. 2 And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’S house.

3 And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, “For He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever.”

4 Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord.

5 And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep; so the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.

I King 9:3 And the Lord said unto him, “I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast made before Me. I have hallowed this house which thou hast built, to put My name there forever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually.

II Chronicles 7:12 And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him: “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place [Jerusalem] for Myself for a house of sacrifice.

I King 9:25 And three times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built unto the Lord, and he burned incense upon the altar that was before the Lord. So he finished the house. — That house chosen by God is in Jerusalem: “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there,” II Chronicles 6:6, 

God had His plan all worked out early. And those Scriptures quotes above are testimonies to the truth that Jerusalem is the ONLY place to offer sacrifices. Again we should refer to what Fred Coulter wrote back in Chapter One: “Anyone who twists and distorts the Scriptures is “using the law unlawfully,” and will end up believing false, satanic doctrines,” (pg 13). Only the blind couldn’t see this. And not only blind, but they are also described as wretched and naked.

~~17~~

It takes blood to cover sin. Blood represents life. 

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11). 

Only the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, can pay for the sins of all mankind. Then why wasn’t His blood acknowledged to be sprinkled at the alter? Why were all the other sacrificial blood offered at the alter, but not that of the Lamb of God. The blood of all the other sacrifices could never pay for the sins of anyone, yet they were offered and sprinkled at the alter. But not that of the Lamb of God?

Fred Coulter’s quotation from the Reform Movement “authority” continues:

Hellenism was introduced by the Greeks in the days of Alexander the Great. The Greeks actively promoted their Hellenistic beliefs in the lands that they dominated. The spread of Hellenism among the Jews was curbed for a time by the influence of Simon the Just, who was high priest in the last years of the Great Assembly. As the last of the Sopherim—the great teachers of the law—Simon was held in high esteem by all Jews. With his death, the rule of 206 the Great Assembly came to a close, and Hellenism became the dominant influence in the lives of the people. Its impact on the Jewish community led to major changes in the teachings of the religious leaders. (Pg 205)

Dr. Lauterbach, a Jewish historian, describes the changes that occurred during this period: “Thus we see that after the death of Simon the Just, the conditions of the community and as a result thereof the activities of the teachers differed greatly from those that obtained in the times of the Soferim [the teachers of the Great Assembly]” (Rabbinic Essays, p. 200). (Pg 206)

Jacob Zallel Lauterbach (1873–1942) was an American Judaica scholar and author who served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College and composed responsa (written decisions and rulings) for the Reform Movement in America. His work, Rabbinic Essays, drew heavily from Abraham Geiger (1810 – 23 October 1874), known as the Father of the Reform Movement. And his other Works include contributing many articles to The Jewish Encyclopedia, another spinoff from the Reform Movement. 

The Movement sought a more coherent ideological framework to justify innovations in the liturgy and religious practice. Originated in Germany, one characteristic of their progressive revelation that started the ball rolling was the institution of a “Second Sabbath” on Sunday, modeled on the Second Passover, as jobs were hard to come by and so they started crafting a way out.

The Reform Movement claims their Movement is in “a process of constant evolution” and this movement “rejects any fixed, permanent set of beliefs, laws or practices.” They stated that the old mechanisms of religious interpretation (meaning the Mishnah and the Talmud) were obsolete.

Today, Reform Judaism has two major objectives:

(1) Reform Jews are committed to the absolute equality of women in all areas of Jewish life. “We were the first movement to ordain women rabbis, invest women cantors, and elect women presidents of our synagogues.”

(2) Reform Jews are also committed to the full participation of gays and lesbians in synagogue life as well as society at large.

The book of Ezra records the first Passover to be observed after the dedication of the second temple. Although the Passover was centered at the temple, the lambs were slain at the beginning of the 14th and were eaten on the night of the 14th (Ezra 6:19-21). 

It is important to understand that Ezra’s decree did not change the time for killing the Passover lambs. His Passover law did not in any way alter or contradict the Passover ordinances of God, as recorded in Scripture. The measures that Ezra enforced were aimed at protecting the true worship of God and upholding His laws—not changing or replacing them. His restriction of the Passover to the area of Jerusalem promoted a temple centered observance, but it did not replace or prohibit the domestic killing of the Passover within that area. (Pg 206)

A cluster of truths and lies. Although it’s correct to say the returned exiles kept the Passover on the fourteenth and centered at the Temple, nothing in Ezra 6:19-21 was said the time the lamb was slain was “at the beginning of the fourteenth and were eaten on the night of the 14th.” If Fred wants to say that the lambs were slain at the beginning of the fourteenth, that’s okay, at least we know Fred says it, but to quote Ezra as saying it, it’s lying about his writing. That’s a sign of desperation. 

And this lie continues, sugarcoating about Ezra “upholding His laws” and yet “it did not replace or prohibit the domestic killing of the Passover within that area.” These continuous lyings are a presumptuous way of ascertaining “truth” — a deceitful way.

Although the temple sacrifice in the afternoon of the 14th became a widespread tradition, it did not wholly replace the domestic sacrifice of the lambs at the beginning of the 14th.

It is important to understand that Ezra’s decree did not change the time for killing the Passover lambs. His Passover law did not in any way alter or contradict the Passover ordinances of God, as recorded in Scripture. The measures that Ezra enforced were aimed at protecting the true worship of God and upholding His laws—not changing or replacing them. His restriction of the Passover to the area of Jerusalem promoted a temple centered observance, but it did not replace or prohibit the domestic killing of the Passover within that area. (Pg 206)

There is so much double-talk above. And just in case: “double-talk” is “a language that appears to be earnest and meaningful but in fact is a mixture of sense and nonsense.”

If the law and ordinances for a “domestic Passover” were still in force, then changing it to a temple-centered observance would be a violation, a sin, nor matter what the intention was. Second, if the law and ordinances were for the lamb to be slain at the beginning of the fourteenth, then moving it to the late fourteenth would also be another sin. The presentation is “a mixture of sense and nonsense.” 

Ezra was accredited with the beginning of the synagogues, where after the Babylonian captivity, the men of the Great Assembly formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers and worship. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.

We must be reminded that Ezra was a righteous scribe and a righteous high priest, one who “tenaciously studied, practiced, and taught the Eternal’s law to Israel” that he was regarded as the second Moses.

After the return of the Exile, the Jews were back in Jerusalem and the law was explained to the returning Exiles in the Aramaic language where they could understand that were originally written in Hebrew. Since most of the people, after 70 years of Exile, had lost the knowledge of the ancient Hebrew to such a degree that they need the Word of God, not only translated, but explained in the vernacular. 

And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. . . . ⁷  . . . .and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law; and the people stood in their place. ⁸ So they read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. (Nehemiah 8:6-8)

In order to give “the sense and caused them to understand the reading,” they need to understand the Scriptures in Aramaic, hence this gave rise to the origin of the Targum version of our modern Bible.

And the Targum says of the original Passover in Exodus 12:6-8 “And it (the lamb) shall be bound and reserved for you until the fourteenth day of this month, that you may not know the fear of the Mizraee (Egyptians) when they see it; and ye shall kill him according to the rite of all to congregation of the assembly of Israel, between the suns. And you shall take of the blood and set it upon the two posts and upon the upper board outside of the houses in which you eat and sleep. And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan.”

It is clear and simple. The Targum says the instruction was to eat the flesh of the lamb on the fifteenth of Nisan. And this is confirmed by Deuteronomy 16:4, which commands us regarding the Passover Sacrifice: “and there shall not remain of the flesh [and bones] that you slaughter at evening on the first day until the morning.” — “first day” of course, refers to the seven days of unleavened bread earlier in the same verse.

Josephus states that 256,500 lambs were killed for the Passover that year. To kill 256,500 Passover lambs at the temple, 85,500 lambs would have to be slain in each of the three courses.  But the size of the sacrificial area limited the number of lambs in each course to less than 6,500.  The number of lambs that Josephus records is thirteen times the maximum number that could have been killed in the three courses.

WE CAN CONCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: Far more lambs were sacrificed for the Passover than could possibly have been slain at the temple during the allotted courses. The only logical explanation is that most of the lambs were not slain at the temple! (Pg 219)

The Scriptures have provided such a scenario of people making sacrifices in Jerusalem, “inside or outside the camp,” at or beyond the Temple courtyard, so long as the blood from the sacrificial animals were collected and splinked by a priest on the altar, on pain of death.

In Leviticus 17 it says if one were to make a sacrifice, “in the camp or out of the camp,” the blood must be brought to the tabernacle, and the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar. The critical performance of a sacrifice, including the Passover sacrifice, is that “the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle” (verse 6).

So the 256,500 lambs mentioned by Josephus need not be sacrificed within the Temple courtyard. In fact, most of them could be sacrificed outside, but not too far, least during the trip to the altar in front of the Temple the blood collected in their bowls could set down, and they might coagulate before a priest could sprinkle the blood upon the altar before the Lord. So there is absolutely no doubt about the accuracy of Josephus’ testimony.

Second, the slaughtering of the Passover lamb needed not be done by a Levite or a priest. Any layman (hence the phrase “the whole congregation of Israel” – usually head of household – were allowed to kill the Passover lamb, provided they were ceremonially clean, otherwise the Levites or priests might have to do it for them (II Chronicles 30:1).

The whole assembly could kill their lamb, and most would have done so beyond the Temple courtyard, “without waiting for the priests” to kill for them as testified by Philo (Special Laws, II, XXVII). The requirements were that the ones who did the killing must have to be circumcised and be ceremonially clean. Second and most important, the blood must be taken to the Temple courtyard and only a priest could sprinkle upon the altar as commanded in Leviticus 17. 

¹ And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,

² “Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them: ‘This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying:

³ Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel who killeth an ox or lamb or goat in the camp, or who killeth it out of the camp,

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]

Rashi: inside the camp: But outside the Courtyard. — [Torath Kohanim 17:89; Zev.107b]

⁴ and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord, blood shall be imputed unto that man: he hath shed blood. And that man shall be cut off from among his people, (Leviticus 17:1-4).

Any person offering a sacrifice inside or outside the Temple precinct but its blood not carried to the Temple be offered at the altar before the Lord risked being “cut off from among his people” (Leviticus 17:3-4); that man “is liable to the death penalty” (Rashi). It’s a serious charge, hence the Passover sacrifice couldn’t be practised in Galilee nor in Babylon but near Jerusalem. “Blood shall be reckoned to that man; he hath shed blood, and that man shall be destroyed from his people” (Targum).

If the symbolism is to be carried over to the New Testament period, Jesus Christ didn’t die within the Temple Courtyard, but outside, even outside the city walls — “outside the camp” — outside the Walls of Jerusalem. What an amazing parallel!

~~~

For the rest of chapter 17, Fred Coulter went to quote or but more often misquote from many non-biblical sources. From experiences cited in previous critiques, his misquoting is obvious, blatant and a constant irritant that it’s not worth following him to — Dr. Lauterbach, John G. Wilkinson, Solomon Zeitlin, Philo, Josephus, Joachim Jeremias, Alfred Edersheim, etc. Besides, he is so spiteful of the Rabbinic interpretation that everything he quoted had to be twisted to suit his preconceived notion of an early fourteenth passover. 

We will, instead, go back to a critical point about Deuteronomy 16 being edited or forged. Fred Coulter, Frank Nelte and John Ritenbaugh have all colluded that the text, especially chapter 16:1-8 have been forged. They all meant it in the maligning sense, of course, their minds are vented on attacking a holy man of God, Ezra. 

So back to chapter 15. There were lots of more to say in this chapter:

Under Sanballat’s jurisdiction, a temple was built on Mount Gerizim, which was originally the Mount of Blessing for the children of Israel (Deut. 27:12). Now Samaria had a temple similar to the one in Jerusalem. Manasseh, a descendant of Aaron, was a high priest, and he had a whole corps of Levites as assistant priests. They were setting up a “Moses-like religion” that would compete with the true worship of God. For their Scriptural authority, they claimed and used the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah. (See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11, Chapters 7 and 8.) They offered the commanded sacrifices, observed the Sabbath, festivals and holy days, and fulfilled all the requirements of the Torah—with the exception of the law against intermarriage. Because they had their own temple and their own priesthood, they did not have to comply with the law against intermarriage. They were now under Sanballat’s jurisdiction, where they were safe from any interference by Ezra and Nehemiah. Through their counterfeit religion, they could begin to influence Jews everywhere in the empire.

What an alarming turn of events! What an absolute disaster this could bring! Only sixty miles north of Jerusalem was a competing religion, a new Jewish/Samaritan religion, with authentic copies of the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. Because the founders of this religion had rebelled against the law of God, it was obvious that they did not respect His Word. They would not hesitate to alter the text to suit their own purposes. The Scriptures were in great danger of being corrupted. (Pg 181)

The narrative above is already self-contradictory – if they had “offered the commanded sacrifices, observed the Sabbath, festivals and holy days, and fulfilled all the requirements of the Torah” how could this same religion be a “counterfeit religion”?

Second, if Ezra had forged the Scriptures, a comparison would show the difference with the Samaritans’ version: “with authentic copies of the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible.” The Samaritan religion was established earlier, but close and north of Jerusalem, around 720 BC. Since they have their original Samaritan version, “authentic copies” as Fred Coulter put it, any editing by Ezra, will show the difference.

Shortly after the northern Exile, in II Kings 17:

²⁴ And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof.

²⁵ And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them.

²⁶ Therefore they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, “The nations which thou hast removed and placed in the cities of Samaria know not the manner of the God of the land; therefore He hath sent lions among them, and behold, they slay them because they know not the manner of the God of the land.”

²⁷ Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, “Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.”

²⁸ Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord.

²⁹ However every nation made gods of their own and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.

³² So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves from the lowest of them priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.

So “one of the priests whom ye brought from thence,” (verse 27) had been brought from among the northern Exile to teach the new settlers. It is with certainty he had some scrolls of the Torah with him, otherwise how could he teach the new settlers? By the time Ezra arrived, (around 440-480 BC), the Samaritan religion would have been around for about 250 years. 

But for both versions — Deuteronomy 16:1-8 — evidence shows otherwise especially the Passover in verse 2: “of the flock and the herd” are exactly the same. And second, the usage of Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread are similarly used interchangeably in both versions. Hence this proves conclusively that there were no editings and the composite characteristics of the festivals were established by Moses himself.

Deuteronomy 16 (KJ21)

1“Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto the Lord thy God; for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.

² Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the Passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name there.

³ Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste, that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.

⁴ And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy borders seven days, neither shall there anything of the flesh, which thou sacrificed the first day at evening, remain all night until the morning.

⁵ Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee;

⁶ but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the Passover at evening, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.

⁷ And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt turn in the morning and go unto thy tents.

⁸ Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord thy God. Thou shalt do no work therein.

The Samaritan Pentateuch (translated by Aleksandr Sigalov)

Deuteronomy 16

1 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. 2 Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD God of you shall choose to place his name there. 3 Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. 4 And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day between the even, remain all night until the morning. 5 And thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee: 6 But in the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt. 7 And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy God shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents. 8 Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread: and on the seventh day shall be a celebration to the LORD thy God: thou shalt not do any work of service therein. 

Even though the Samaritans consider the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as two distinct festivals, their Pentateuch remains much the same as the Masoretic Text in Deuteronomy 16:1-8. The difference, if any, is no more than the difference between the KJ21 and the NKJV, or between the KJV and the RSV.

Fred Coulter, Frank Nelte and John Ritenbaugh — these are Liars and Blind Guides! Three wolves who had subjected themselves to lyings and deceits and come to believe in their own mischieves.

They came to study the Bible with a preconceived notion that the Passover is at the start of the fourteenth.

So when other Scriptures don’t fit into their preconceived notion, they attacked the Scriptures; attack King Hezekiah, attack King Josiah, where both conducted a centralised Feast of Tabernacle and Passover in Jerusalem; attack the people behind the Scriptures, singling out Ezra who is a righteous scribe as the main culprit in forging Deuteronomy 16:1-8.

Is there any wonder for us to wonder if the Sovereign God deems these Samaritan-influenced apostates as the three shepherds whom He hates?

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (i)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is a Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover is on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan. Quoted are Fred Coulter’s book, from an internet online version, which I presume, is his latest. Most of his quotes are in block form, in PINK and indented. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 14 – 15

Ezra was a righteous scribe. He was also a righteous high priest. His priestly lineage could be traced all the way back to Aaron, the first high priest established under Moses (Ezra 7:1-5).

Ezra returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile and faithfully reintroduced the Torah to all those who followed him (Ezra 7:10 and Nehemiah 8). For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.

He was so righteous that he was regarded as the second Moses in the Voice Translation of Ezra 7:¹⁰ He was like Moses who tenaciously studied, practiced, and taught the Eternal’s law to Israel.

With the above in mind, we’ll continue with our critique:

WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF DEUTERONOMY 16?

The advocates of a 15th Passover claim that the commands of God in Deuteronomy 16 support the temple sacrifice of the Passover lambs.  On the surface, it appears that these commands required the sacrificing of the Passover at the temple, and that the Passover and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread were combined into one feast. This interpretation of Deuteronomy 16 is taught by Jewish and Christian scholars alike. As the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible states, “The section in Deut. 16:1-10 was interpreted as an attempt to abolish the private Passover celebrations…” (p. 668). 

Is this interpretation of Deuteronomy 16 correct?  Did God abolish the domestic Passover by commanding that the Passover sacrifice be offered at the temple?  If that is the meaning of God’s commands in Deuteronomy 16, then these commands are clearly contradicting His commands in Exodus 12, Numbers 9 and Leviticus 23 concerning the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (The Christian Passover, pg 159)

During the forty years of wandering in the desert, the children of Israel performed their sacrifices at the Sanctuary, but when the Temple was established God told King Solomon that He had chosen for Himself to move the place of sacrifice to Jerusalem. Hence a Temple-centered sacrifice in Jerusalem is a God-ordained command.

And just a reminder — The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, published by Abingdon Press from 2006 to 2009  — Its chief editor is feminist Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, a spinoff from the Reform Movement!

Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house; and all that came into Solomon’s heart to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house, he prosperously effected. And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him: “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself for a house of sacrifice” (II Chronicles 7:11-12).

And “this place” is in Jerusalem:

“I (God) have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there” (II Chronicles 6:6).

And continue in II Chronicles 7:1 Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house. ² And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’S house.

³ And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, “For He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever.”

⁴ Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord.

⁵ And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep; so the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.

That place chosen by God is Jerusalem as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there.” Only the stiff-necked think otherwise.

I King 9:³ And the Lord said unto him, “I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast made before Me. I have hallowed this house which thou hast built, to put My name there forever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually.

II Chronicles 7:¹² And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him: “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place [Jerusalem] for Myself for a house of sacrifice.

I King 9:²⁵ And three times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built unto the Lord, and he burned incense upon the altar that was before the Lord. So he finished the house.

Adam Clarke: Three times in a year did Solomon offer – These three times were: 1. The passover 2. The feast of pentecost 3. The feast of tabernacles.

Whedon’s Commentary on the Bible – Three times in a year — At the three great feasts required by the law of Moses. Exodus 23:14-16. The feast of unleavened bread, or the passover; the feast of harvest, or of weeks, (Exodus 34:22;) and the feast of ingathering, or of tabernacles. 

Undoubtedly this means at the three solemn great feasts (Deuteronomy 16:16) — the Passover (which is often used interchangeably with the Days of Unleavened Bread), Pentecost and Tabernacles. And Jerusalem is not only a house of sacrifices. It is also a house of prayers:

II Chronicles 7:¹³ If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land or if I send pestilence among My people,¹⁴ if My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

¹⁵ Now Mine eyes shall be open and Mine ears attentive unto the prayer that is made in this place.

¹⁶ For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually.

And many people, seeking the Lord God of Israel, setting their hearts right, went to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, any sacrifice, including the most important of all sacrifices, the Passover:

“And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord God of their fathers,” (II Chronicles 11:16).

Before Moses sacrifices could be made anywhere. But once the tabernacle was built, Moses received the command from the Lord God of Israel that sacrifices could only be brought to the “entrance of the tent of meeting” as instructed in Leviticus 17. And when the Temple was built in Jerusalem, God placed His name, eyes and heart there “forever” and “perpetually,” (I King 9:3).

Although Deuteronomy 16 contains instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the two other holy days seasons, the fact that the word “Passover” appears in Verse 1 has caused great confusion in the minds of many Bible students and scholars. They are not aware that these verses were edited by Ezra long after the book of Deuteronomy was originally written, and that in Ezra’s time the entire eight-day observance of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread was called “Passover.” When we understand that the term “Passover” was used for the Feast of Unleavened bread, the seeming discrepancy between Deuteronomy 16 and other Scriptural passages is eliminated. (Pg 165)

First of all, Ezra couldn’t have edited Deuteronomy 16 and yet remained one who “had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD,” (Ezra 7:10). He was so righteous that he was regarded as the second Moses, so how could he had obeyed the commandment: “not add to the Word that I tell you, and do not take away from it?” (Deuteronomy 4:2).

When we place all the jigsaw pieces together and they fix nicely, there isn’t any confusion. If the puzzle doesn’t fit, Fred Coulter’s understanding is obviously wrong, and so there is “great confusion.” The plain meaning of Deuteronomy 16 supports the theme that the amalgamation of the Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread started way back during the Exodus. 

The books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers were mainly the words of God to His subjects — to Adam, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses — but in the book of Deuteronomy it was Moses speaking to the Israelites. Deuteronomy 1:1 says “These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness . . . ³ And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke unto the children of Israel according unto all that the Lord had given him in commandment unto them.”

So when Moses spoke, he spoke “according unto all that the Lord had given him.” He uses terms that were slightly different from what God spoke as expressed in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.

In Deuteronomy Moses couldn’t be just repeating the same line, word for word, that God used before. Moses would sometimes clarify seemingly confusing issues, or to elucidate complex subjects as the wordings in Deuteronomy 16 show. 

Beside the fact that the Passover is a composite feast composed of an eight days festival, Scriptures show that it could be known by either of its names. Hence sometimes it is referred to as the Passover while other times as the Days of Unleavened Bread, as the following shows.

Deuteronomy 16:1 “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto the Lord thy God; for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.

Exodus 34:¹⁸ “The Feast of Unleavened Bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

Both verses claim it was during their time that they came out of Egypt! This couldn’t be possible if Passover is distinct from the Days of Unleavened Bread. The children of Israel knew this composite characteristic from the beginning all along. There is no confusion.

If Moses had any doubt, he had full access to God at the Holy of Holies at the Sanctuary to ask and seek clarification. One example is found in Numbers 9 when some Israelites had came in contact with the dead, and thought they couldn’t keep the Passover. Moses said to them, “Stand still, and I will hear what the Lord will command concerning you” (verse 8). Moses had never been denied access to God to seek clarification on any issue or for any reason.

The book of Deuteronomy is composed entirely of the words of Moses, spoken from his heart to his people Israel. And since Moses was a righteous man, he spoke in a language that we can understand, yet it’s the Word of God.

Years later Ezra used the same methodology for those who returned from the Exile and who had lost the Hebrew language, and who knew only the Aramaic language, and this same process gave birth to the Targum, another source of the Scriptures that we should refer from time to time. And the Targum says in Exodus 12: that the Passover was a late fourteenth and the eating was on the fifteenth: “And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan . . .” 

And this is confirmed by Deuteronomy 16:4, which commands us regarding the Passover Sacrifice: “and there shall not remain of the flesh [and bones] that you slaughter at evening on the first day until the morning.” — “first day” of course, refers to the seven days of unleavened bread earlier in the same verse.

The Targum is a Ezra-inspired Scripture.

Nehemiah 8:⁸ So they read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading.

Nehemiah 8:8 implied not only the reading of the Law, but also made interpretation of its Hebraic meaning — its translation and interpretation — were simplifies from Hebrew to Aramaic, so that the common people in the streets could understand, and this practice was broadened and spread to all the synagogues in Judea. Before long the Aramaic Targum was written, and today, translated — including some explanations — in the English language.

Let’s have another look at the original Passover, during the Exodus:

Exodus 12:⁶ And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening (ben ha arbayim).

⁷ And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it.

⁸ And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roasted with fire; and with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. (The Targum identified that night as the night of the fifteenth of Nisan).

Note in verse 8 that the Targum identified that night as “the night of the fifteenth.” Along with the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint, the Targum is also an important source of our Bible and ignoring it could only lead to our own paucity.

It was Ezra whose work gave rise to the Targum, translating the Hebrew Text to Aramaic so that the rank and file could understand. Ezra was a righteous priest and “a scribe skilled in the law.” Ezra 7:¹⁰ For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. The Voice translated this same verse as ^“He (Ezra) was a second Moses, and tenaciously studied, practiced, and taught the Eternal’s law to Israel.”

Let’s have another look; let’s accept that the Pharisees sat on Moses’ seat as Christ instructed, instead of twisting the Scriptures for their own evil end and stigmatizing them:

Exodus 12:6 says to keep the Passover, where the lamb was sacrificed at even — “after noon and until nightfall.” From verse 7 to 11, it is describing the night as the Passover, ending by saying “it is the Lord’S Passover.” So the Passover stretched into the Days of Unleavened Bread. The eating of unleavened bread also starts from the fourteenth of Nisan, at even (verse 18, ba-erev). 

Further, commenting on the beginning verse 8, “And they shall eat the flesh in that night,” the Targum translates this as the night of the fifteenth (of Nisan).

That same night was what the Lord (often deemed as the Death Angel) would do, to “execute judgment.” That night, when the Lord execute His judgment, was meant to be a memorial, and it was “a feast to the Lord.”

The Targum says further, “And it was in the dividing of the night [idiom for midnight] of the fifteenth, that the Word of the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Mizraim (Egypt), from the firstborn son of Pharoh, who would have sat upon the throne of his kingdom, unto the firstborn sons of the kings who were captives in the dungeon as hostages under Pharoh’s hand.”

The subject was still the Passover — about how Passover was to be kept. What happened on the Passover night. And how we should be keeping Passover by having seven days of eating unleavened bread — observed Passover by eating unleavened bread for seven days. And this amalgamation is confirmed in the Mishnah:

What is the difference between the pesah [which was offered] in Egypt and the pesah of [subsequent] generations? The pesah in Egypt was taken on the tenth [of Nisan], And it required sprinkling with a bunch of hyssop on the lintel and on the two door-posts, And it was eaten in haste on one night, whereas the pesah of [subsequent] generations is kept the whole seven [days]. (Mishnah Pesachim 9) 

Only in verse 17 is the phrase “the Feast of Unleavened Bread” appears. And how should we keep it? The answer is found in verse 18; we are to keep it by eating unleavened bread from the fourteenth, at even. So the Days of Unleavened Bread starts a few hours before the fifteenth, overlapping with Passover which is also to start the fourteenth, at even.

The Scriptures were a bit vague on casual reading, but on closer scrutiny, it is extremely clear. The two feasts, known by either name, are a composite, and this Exodus 12 account shows that the original distinction between the two feasts were well interweaved right from the start. 

Moses knew he would not be crossing the Jordan with the Israelites. So he took the opportunity to point the Israelites toward the Lord and impressed upon a new generation the importance of heeding His Commandments. For God it is His glory to conceal a mystery, sometimes to hide a truth and sometimes to hook out those having a contemptuous attitude. And Moses warned those found to be guilty of persisting with this contemptuous spirit, a serious charge, would be put to death: 

Deuteronomy 16:18 “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

Deuteronomy 17:¹¹ According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. ¹² And the man who will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest who standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die.

Moses knew he would die soon and his understanding had been conveyed to the judges, the Levites and priests where the true interpretation of the law were taught. So in the book of Deuteronomy Moses spoke and explained unto all Israel “according unto all that the Lord had given him” as to how to keep them, the blessing they would have if they obey, or cursing if they disobey, in a language they could understand. Men may have good intentions, but may do things seen as presumptuously? What is presumptuous or presumptuously? 

Below are its synonyms: 

arrogant, bumptious, cavalier, chesty, haughty, high-and-mighty, high-handed, high-hat, huffish, huffy, imperious, important, lofty, lordly, masterful, overweening, peremptory, pompous, presuming, pretentious, self-asserting, self-assertive, sniffy, supercilious, superior, uppish, uppity

And those judgments have the force of law, and of God. In Deuteronomy 19:17 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges. When we stand before a judge, we stand before God. “Then his master shall bring him unto the judges [H430 elohim]” (Exodus 21:6). In the Septuagint, it is translated as the judgment-seat of God. Elsewhere God says He is coming as a consuming fire. “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24, 9:3, Hebrew 12:29). 

On another note, the word “pesach” has a few timeframes. Just like the word “yowm” could be a 24-hour day or a 12-hour day, both concepts are contained within such a verse like Genesis 1:5. But pesach could be any one of four timeframes:

(a) An approximately 6-hour period — “after noon and until nightfall” erev or ben ha arbayim, when the lamb was killed. 

(b) A one day 24-hours concept, as in Numbers 28:¹⁶ “‘And on the fourteenth day of the first month is the Passover of the Lord.

(c) A seven-day festival as in Exodus 12:4-15, Deuteronomy 16:1-8, and as in Ezekiel 45:21 where it is explicitly described, “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days. Unleavened bread shall be eaten. 

(d) An 8-day period when the 7-days Days of Unleavened Bread is added to the 14th day Passover. The whole period is also known as the Passover. Another reason is given below: Back when the months of the Jewish calendar were determined by observations of the new moon, eyewitnesses would bring their testimony to the rabbinical court in Jerusalem, and the court would sanctify the new month based on this testimony. But faraway communities such as Babylonia couldn’t get the message in time, and didn’t know when the new month had begun, though they could narrow the possibilities to two days. So to play it safe, they observed another day, so Pesach were observed as an eight-day festival.

Deuteronomy 16 clarifies some earlier Scriptures as to how to keep the Passover:

(i) Passover was to be offered in the place which the Lord shall choose, not within any of their gates (Deuteronomy 16:2,5). It was no longer in their houses as was during the Exodus, hence a “domestic passover” for later observances is a misconception.

(ii) For purposes of the timing of the sacrifice of Pesach, the time is erev (Deuteronomy 16:6), the same time as ben ha arbayim (Exodus 12:6). Thus erev, for this purpose, is also “after noon and until nightfall” (Exodus 12:6).

(iii) Erev (Deuteronomy 16:6) is being defined as “at the going down of the sun.” It’s the first moment when the sun starts to go down when it passes its zenith. It is also the same time to start eating unleavened bread (Exodus 12:18). So the eating of unleavened bread started earlier than eating Pesach by some 6 or more hours.

(iv) God specifies that three times a year all males should appear before Him in the place which He shall choose, which were later identified by God to be in Jerusalem (II Chronicles 6:6): in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and in the Feast of Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16:16, which clarifies Exodus 23:14,17; 34:23).

We should study the Scriptures in great detail and scrutinise microscopically what it actually says, not presuming what we thought it says. Start eating unleavened bread from the fourteenth onward, at even, ba–erev, don’t wait until the fifteenth: “Thou shalt not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread” reaffirms Exodus 23:18.

The originator of the idea that these feasts as distinct originated from the Samaritans and then penetrated the Sadducees, who died out during the AD 70 inferno, but resurfaced during the ninth and tenth century by the Karaites. And since the last two centuries, this Samaritan idea had been promoted by the Jewish Reform Movement, and since then by the Worldwide Church of God and its splinters: the CoG Communities. “You shall know them by their fruits” Matthew 7:16. And they all bear the same Samaritan fruits.

And just as a reminder of what Fred Coulter wrote so truthfully of himself and his comrade in the CoG Communities back to Chapter One: 

“False doctrines and misinterpretations are continually being spread because ministers and teachers use the Word of God deceitfully. How diabolical it is to take the Word of God, which is the truth, and misapply it to create a lie!” (Pg 13)

So true, for it was well prophesied way ahead when God looked down from heaven and said in Hosea 11:12: “Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit.” 

~~15~~

In this chapter, we will examine the historical circumstances that led to the modifications that Ezra made in Deuteronomy 16. These same circumstances led Ezra to institute a “new Passover law,” which officially centralized the Passover at Jerusalem. As in the days of Hezekiah and Josiah, this action was an emergency measure in response to a national crisis. The true worship of God in Jerusalem was being threatened by a Samaritan conspiracy, and the Scriptures—particularly the books of the Law—were in danger of being corrupted. (The Christian Passover, pg 174)

Ezra would have sinned if he had instituted a “new Passover law.” The Scriptures says Ezra was a righteous scribe and a righteous high priest. After returning to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile, he reintroduced the Torah to all those who followed him (Ezra 7:10 and Nehemiah 8).

For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. He was so righteous that he was regarded as the second Moses, but Fred Coulter finds it appropriate to demonise a righteous man of God, sugarcoating his statements but actually vilifying him by accusing him of forging the Scriptures.

To preserve the true worship of God, Ezra used his authority as priest and religious leader of the Jews to edit and canonize the Old Testament Scriptures.  As part of his work in preserving the Book of the Law, known today as the Pentateuch, Ezra edited Deuteronomy 16 in order to make the text more understandable to the Jews of his day.  Since they referred to the Feast of Unleavened Bread as “Passover,” Ezra edited the commands in Deuteronomy 16 to fit this later terminology.  The offerings for the seven days of unleavened bread are referred to as “passover-offerings” because the Feast of Unleavened Bread was called “Passover.” (Pg 174)

While Ezra was responsible for centralizing the Passover, it is important to remember that his action was intended to protect the true worship of God. He was not acting in opposition to God’s ordinances and therefore was NOT ACTING AGAINST THE AUTHORITY OF GOD. (Pg 177)

Why such doublespeak above? Or a gobbledygook? A doublespeak is a language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. If centralizing the Passover in Jerusalem is not against God, then it is for God. Why so much ambiguity in his language to distort his true message?

A gobbledygook is usually used as either a substitute for a speaker’s lack of knowledge or confusion about a subject. If forging the Scriptures is “NOT ACTING AGAINST THE AUTHORITY OF GOD” then what is it? 

This is not only lying but playing with various forms of deceits, a prime example of Ephraim’s character:

“Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit;” (Hosea 11:12).

Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Lord and to teach in Israel His laws, statutes and judgments. He was so highly regarded that he was appraised as the second Moses.

To this day, the members of this Samaritan religion keep their Passover at the beginning of the 14th, in the same manner as their ancestors. The fact that this Jewish/Samaritan sect has always observed a domestic Passover indicates that the temple sacrifice of the Passover lambs was not the practice in Jerusalem when their religion was founded. The following description of their Passover confirms that it has not changed from the original domestic observance: (Pg 182)

No, they don’t. The Samaritans kept their passovers outdoors at Mount Gerizim, just as the Sun was about to set and their celebration went into the night under the light of the moon, near today’s city of Nablus in the West Bank. This mountain isn’t at their homes, so to say it’s a “domestic Passover” is another lie. 

But yes, the Samaritans kept their passover at the beginning of the fourteenth, and through Tobiah, the Ammonite, this belief penetrated the Jewish community through a sect later known as the Sadducees, accompanied by their close comrade, the Boethusians, who both died out during the AD 70 inferno, but this belief resurfaced in the ninth and tenth century with the birth of a Jewish sect known as the Karaites. 

And since the last two centuries, this idea of an early fourteenth passover was regenerated by the Jewish Reform Movement and modern Protestants (A.T. Olmstead, including Ernst Würthwein both works Fred relied heavily from) springing forth as experts many from Jewish background. And then at the tail end by the Worldwide Church of God and today its Laodicean splinters: the Church of God Communities who are described as blind, wretched and naked. “You shall know them by their fruits.” And they all bear the same fruits of whom the CoG Communities today follows exactly in the same manner like their forebears. 

“They, therefore, observe Pesach exactly as it was observed two or three thousand years ago [emphasis added]….Modern historical research has proved that the Samaritans are not descendants of the heathen colonists settled in the northern kingdom by the conquerors of Samaria, as was once assumed….Actually the Samaritans of today are a small and poor remnant of an old and great Jewish sect….The only religious books that they possess, however, are the Pentateuch and Joshua….these two hundred [remnant] Samaritans observe Pesach to this day on Mount Gerizim, in a manner that other Jews ceased practising thousands of years ago. The custom of offering sacrifices has died out with the Samaritans, except on the fourteenth day of Nisan, when they offer the ceremonial Pesach sacrifice” (Schluss, The Jewish Festivals, pp. 60-61). (Pg 182)

Another book published by Schocken, a spinoff of the Reform Movement, author Hayyim Schluss would like us to think that the Samaritans are “not descendants of the heathen colonists” but “a small and poor remnant of an old and great Jewish sect.”

But the Scriptures give a different view, that the new settlers weren’t a Jewish sect but pagans from various regions of Babylonia when the Assyrians captured their land and redistributed its captives throughout the Assyrian empire. The background of the arrival of the Samaritans to live in Samaria is recorded in the Scriptures for our enlightenment, hence there is no need to seek guidance from Schluss’ heresy. 

And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hands of despoilers until He had cast them out of His sight. ²¹ For He rent Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin. ²² For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them, ²³ until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. ²⁴ And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof (II Kings 17:20-24).

The newly arrived Samaritans occupied the country formerly belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, Manasseh and the other Lost Tribes where most of today’s Church of God communities come from. The capital of the country was Samaria, then a large and splendid city.

When the ten tribes were carried away into captivity to Assyria, the king of Assyria sent people from Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim to inhabit Samaria (II Kings 17:24). So for simplicity sake, Jews assert that the Samaritans are “Cutheans.”

In order to preserve the true worship of God, it was essential to differentiate the Scriptures of the Jerusalem Jews from the Scriptures of the Jewish/Samaritan religion. The first step was to set the Scriptures in order and canonize each book as the authentic Word of God. When this work was completed, accurate copies of the entire text had to be made and distributed to Jewish synagogues throughout the empire. Once canonized, the Word of God could be preserved for all time. (Pg 183)

As part of the canonization of the Scriptures, Ezra also edited the books which became the Old Testament. This editing included the substitution of current terminology for ancient names that were no longer in use. (Pg 184)

Ezra edited Deuteronomy 16 from the then old Samaritan version, so Fred Coulter alleged, as the Samaritan version must be the authentic version. Quoting his own work, “The Original Bible Restored,” he says, “Although a few alterations were made in the text of the Old Testament after its canonization, there is no question that Ezra was the one who compiled the books, edited them and canonized them.” But of course, Fred was mainly referring to Ezra’s forging of Deuteronomy 16 (mainly verses 1-8). 

“Whatever I command you, observe to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it (Deuteronomy 12:³²). Forging the Bible is a serious charge, risking eternal life (Revelation 22:18-19). But on the other hand, if Ezra isn’t guilty of forging, then his accusers would be in danger of death.

Fred Coulter’s charge isn’t alone. He has a few comrades who share his view. 

From Frank W. Nelte, referring to Deuteronomy 16:1, 2, 4, 5, 6

These verses give the impression that the Passover is being spoken about. But the word “Passover” was deviously inserted into these verses by some dishonest scribe. The motivation for these devious changes was to justify the Jewish custom of referring to the Seven Days of Unleavened Bread as “Passover”.

The evidence for the fraudulent changes in this section of Scripture is not found in preserved manuscripts but in the pages of the Bible itself. We are dealing with a passage that is absolutely vital to upholding a Jewish belief, which belief is clearly unbiblical according to all the other Scriptures in the entire Old Testament. And these fraudulent changes have been accepted in every preserved manuscript, because they endorse a specific Jewish custom.

In addition, there is also a mistranslation in verse 6.

The only evidence for these alterations consists of exposing incompatible, contradictory and illogical statements in the changed text, when compared to other biblical passages. The person who altered this text overlooked some things which expose his fraudulent tampering.

Here are the changes that were made:

In these verses some scribe REMOVED the expression “the Feast of Unleavened Bread” from verse 1, and then REPLACED IT with the word “Passover”. In addition, this scribe also simply INSERTED the word “Passover” into the text of verses 2, 5 and 6 (SOME SCRIBES CHANGE THE TEXT OF DEUTERONOMY 16:1-6).

From John W. Ritenbaugh:

In the context of Deuteronomy 16, the word “Passover” is beginning  to look clearly out of place. As we continue to look further, we are going to see that verses 1-8 have nothing to do at all with instructions for the Passover lamb, but rather for Unleavened Bread, and specifically the Night To Be Much Observed, which is of course the first night after the Passover, not the same night as the Passover.

How did the name “Passover” get in there? God certainly did not inspire it to be in there. It had to have been edited into Deuteronomy 16 at a much later time (when the entire eight days of the spring festival were commonly called Passover) than from when it was originally written. You will see this very clearly in the New Testament that the entire spring feast was commonly called Passover by the Jews. Somebody, in copying, must have deliberately removed the name “Unleavened Bread” and placed the name “Passover” into Deuteronomy 16 in order to give support to a 15^th Passover—to a Temple-centered 15^th Passover (Passover transcript, Part 9). 

“Why were these particular Scriptures chosen as the ones to be edited? It was very likely because Deuteronomy 16 does not contain any numbered dates—for example, “Passover is on the 14th, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the 15th.” Because of the lack of numbers, the text in Deuteronomy 16 could be edited and changed to give the appearance of a 15th Passover. But if the texts of Exodus 12, Numbers 9, and Leviticus 23 would be altered, somebody would have to alter the numbers, and that would result in very dramatic editing. That was unthinkable, and it would have been very obvious, too, that the Scriptures had been tampered with.”

“Who would have the authority to make such a change from Unleavened Bread to Passover in Deuteronomy 16? The finger of history points to someone during or after the time of Ezra. Ezra came along in the period roughly between 530 BC and about 515 BC. When Ezra came on the scene, the Jews, who had just come out of captivity, were again starting down the same path that originally took them into captivity” (Passover transcript, Part 10).

Tampering and forging God’s Word are serious charges, whose penalty is death (Revelation 22:18-19):

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.

“And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life and out of the Holy City, and from the things which are written in this book,” Revelation 22:18-19. 

Zechariah 11:8 is one of the most intriguing verse in the Scriptures. It says, “Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul loathed them and their soul also abhorred me.” Who are these three shepherds? Could they be Fred Coulter, Frank Nelte and John Ritenbaugh? (JR died May 28, 2023; ”Pentecost,” Sunday)

My nerves stand on end when I think about this. I hope it isn’t, of course.

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (h)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is a Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover is on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan. Quoted are Fred Coulter’s book, from an internet online version, which I presume, is his latest. Most of his quotes are in block form, in PINK and indented so as to differentiate his writings from other comments. The Scriptures, in RED, must and foremost, be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 12 – 13

II Chronicles 29:2 says “And he (Hezekiah) did that which was right in the sight of the Lord” and this, of course, includes sanctifying the house of the Lord cleaning the altar, all the vessels, and the table for the shewbread (verses 17-18). It was reemphasized in verse 12 that the commandment of the king, as well as “by the word of the Lord.”  

Verse 12 says: “Also the hand of God was in Judah, to give them one heart to do the commandment of the king and of the princes by the word of the Lord.” The burnt offerings and peace offerings were accompanied by much rejoicing, enhanced by having music, songs, accompanied by various instruments — cymbals, psalteries, harps and trumpets — which were commandments of King David and other prophets, and they performed with praises and gladness.

In his account of Hezekiah’s Passover, Ezra records that “the runners went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah…according to the commandment of the king…” (II Chron. 30:6). (The Christian Passover, pg 142)

After taking counsel, the decree was to invite the other tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh — to make proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan — and the running and sending out letters to inform the other tribes, were the king’s command to keep the Passover in the second month. “So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh even unto Zebulun: but they laughed them to scorn, and mocked them” (II Chronicles 30:10).

In response to Hezekiah’s command to come to Jerusalem for the Passover, Ezra records that “…many people gathered at Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month…” (verse 13). This is the first Scriptural record in which the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover are used interchangeably in referring to the spring festival season (verses 1-2, 13). (Pg 143)

No, it’s not the first record. Earlier in the original Exodus 12 the two feasts have been all along a composite. As a reminder of my observation of previous critique (chapter 11):

Of the 51 verses in Exodus 12 (not counting verse 1):

— 29 are clearly pertaining to the Passover or its ordinances (2-14, 21-28, 43-50); 

—   5 are judgement on those not defended by the blood of the sacrifice (29-33); still related to the Passover above, totalling 34 verses relating to Passover or its ordinances;

—   8 are coming out of Egypt (35-38, 40-42, 51); and 

— only 8 are about unleavened bread (15-20, 34, 39). In fact, eating unleavened bread wasn’t planned; it was thrust upon them, v 34.

Further, in Deuteronomy 16:1-8 when Moses wrote it in his last days (39 years after the original Exodus), the names Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread were used interchangeably.

In Hezekiah’s instance, the name “Passover” is used in II Chronicles 30:2 “to keep the Passover in the second month,” and then in verse 13 “And there assembled at Jerusalem many people to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month.” 

They were indeed a composite feast, right at the start in Exodus, and reaffirmed during Hezekiah’s time. And even in the New Testament times, the Gospel writers also used the terms “Passover” and “Feast of Unleavened Bread” interchangeably. 

Second, Hezekiah was a good king, who was righteous before God. The Scriptures speak well of him, who “kept His commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him”: 

II Kings 18:³ And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did. ⁴ He removed the high places, and broke the images, and cut down the Asherah poles, and broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan. ⁵ He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any who were before him. ⁶ For he cleaved to the Lord and departed not from following Him, but kept His commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. ⁷ And the Lord was with him, and he prospered whithersoever he went forth; and he rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not.

And they (the congregation of Israel that assembled at Jerusalem) stood in their place, according to their order “according to the law of Moses,” II Chronicles 30:16. Surely anyone who postulates about Hezekiah not keeping the law of Moses is a liar, and Fred Coulter continues:

As we continue to study the account in II Chronicles, we will see that Hezekiah’s Passover is the first record in Scripture of killing the Passover lambs at the temple.  Although Ezra’s account does not state the time that the lambs were slain, it appears that they were slain during the day portion of the 14th.

. . . This is also the first Scriptural record of killing the Passover at the temple and dashing the blood of the lamb against the altar instead of applying the blood to the door posts at home, as was done with the domestic sacrifice of the lamb. Why did Hezekiah institute these changes in the observance of the Passover? (Pg 143)

It is an absolute truth that the Passover lamb were slain during the day portion of the 14th, but it wasn’t the first time. So says  II Kings 18:³ And he [Hezekiah] did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. Only those with a perverted mind says otherwise. 

Second, Leviticus 17 says if one were to make a sacrifice, any sacrifice including the Passover “in the camp” or “out of the camp,” the blood must be brought to the tabernacle, and the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle (verse 6).

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. In the Good News Translation, it says “who offer a burnt offering or any other sacrifice.” 

Referring to the phrase “that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice,” John Gill says “any other sacrifice besides a burnt offering.”

All indications are that the sacrifice mentioned would inevitably include the Passover sacrifice, only that the GNT made it clearer. 

Leviticus 17 in the Targum gave a clearer warning:

“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.”

The critical performance of a sacrifice or any sacrifice “in the camp” or “out of the camp” which includes the Passover, is that “the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle.” 

Since memorial time, the priests had sprinkled the blood upon the alter evidently from the time of Moses and evidentently down to King Hezekiah and Ezra. The penalty for infringement is DEATH: it is “as if he had shed innocent blood, and that man shall be destroyed from his people.” If Moses had any doubt about such ruling, he had all the opportunity and time to ask God who dwelt between the cherubim in the Sanctuary for any clarification.

There is not one detail in the account which resembles the domestic observance that is recorded in Exodus 12.  To the contrary, the account in II Chronicles 30 points out the changes that were instituted for the temple sacrifice of the Passover. The lambs that were killed at the temple were slain by the Levites, not by “the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel,” as in Exodus 12. (Pg 144)

Of course the domestic Passover in Egypt was a one-off occurrence. Never were the children of Israel required to experience a night of trepidation again, nor to experience a night of the Death Angels’ bloodbath to all the firstborn. 

The Levitical duties of the tribe of Levites and the Sanctuary were not instituted at the time of the Exodus. But once instituted, it was centralized.

Although the tabernacle moved with the Israelites in the wilderness it was in Jerusalem in later years that God’s Holy City was chosen to place His name there. “Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” Deuteronomy 16:5.

Hence most of the Exodus 12 requirements were a one-off situation, otherwise 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, pretending to flee from a non-existing Pharaoh and his non-existing armies in an re-enactment of the Exodus.

Ezra’s account in II Chronicles 30 shows that God accepted this temple-centered Passover, although it was contrary to the ordinances that He had established, because of the prayers of Hezekiah and the repentance of the people. But God’s acceptance of this Passover does not mean that He intended this type of Passover to replace the domestic Passover. The commands for the domestic observance of the Passover, as recorded in Exodus 12, were still in effect. Consider this: If the ordinances of the Passover were not in effect at that time, there would have been no need for Hezekiah to pray for forgiveness for those who ate the Passover contrary to God’s requirements. (Pg 147)

If “it was contrary to the ordinances,” then Hezekiah wouldn’t be a righteous King. But the Scripture in II Kings 18:³ says: “And he (Hezekiah) did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.” So this is a clear case whether Fred Coulter is telling lies or the testimony from the Scriptures is false. 

During the Exodus the command to kill the lamb in their houses (a domestic passover) were obviously a one-off situation. Later, other laws and ordinances were established, like the command to commence a holy assembly on the first and last days of Unleavened Bread, which wasn’t in the original Exodus.

Hezekiah’s prayers were for the fact that they were late for the Passover, which should be on the first month, but they celebrated it on the second month, which is contrary to the law. But the main reason was stated in II Chronicles 30:¹⁸ For a multitude of the people, even many from Ephraim, and Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “The good Lord pardon every one ¹⁹ who prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.” ²⁰ And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.

We should refer back to Chapter One, this is what Fred Coulter wrote: “Anyone who twists and distorts the Scriptures is “using the law unlawfully,” as Paul said, and will end up believing false, satanic doctrines, which subvert the souls of men,” (pg 13). Yes, Fred Coulter is describing his own satanic doctrines. Has any of his sleepy sheep awakened by now? Can this be brought to Fred’s attention? 

~~13~~

II Chronicles 34:1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years. ² And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined neither to the right nor to the left. Adam Clarke comments further, “He never swerved from God and truth; he never omitted what he knew to be his duty to God.”

And the testimony from II Chronicles 34:31-33:

 And the king (King Josiah) stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. ³² And he caused all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. ³³ And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. And all his days they (the children of Israel) departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers.

Note that King Josiah “made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and with all his soul.” King Josiah was a good king: “And all his days they (the children of Israel) departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers.”

But as usual, Fred Coulter always has something bad to lie about King Josiah:

The description of the sacrificing does not fit the ordinances that God established for the domestic observance of the Passover. There is no mention of the lambs being killed by “the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel,” as in Exodus 12. Rather, the account gives a detailed description of the slaying of the lambs at the temple by the Levites, and the sprinkling of the lamb’s blood against the altar by the priests. (Pg 153)

The sacrificing that was performed by the priests and Levites in this account was not conducted according to the ordinances that God gave to Moses for the observance of the Passover. (Pg 154)

And there were no mention of the lambs being killed by “the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel,” was because the Exodus 12 experience was a one-time incident. The Levites and priesthood were instituted in Leviticus 17 which commands that if one were to make a sacrifice, “in the camp” or “out of the camp,” the blood must be brought to the tabernacle, and the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle (verse 6). 

So there was also a change in the practice of killing the lamb from their Exodus experience as the Scriptures say: “And they (the Levites) killed the Passover lamb, and the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands (at the alter), and the Levites flayed them, (II Chronicles 35:¹¹). Josiah was a good king; he “took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel,” but Fred Coulter is lying with deceit and contempt that he was a bad one, one whose (Josiah’s) Passover “was not conducted according to the ordinances that God gave to Moses for the observance of the Passover.” But this is what the Scripture says: “And like unto him was there no king (referring to Josiah) before him, who turned to the Lord with ALL his heart and with ALL his soul and with ALL his might, according to ALL the Law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him” II Kings 23:²⁵.

Notice the four “ALL”

(1) with ALL his heart;

(2) with ALL his soul;

(3) with ALL his might,

(4) according to ALL the Law of Moses.

Can we say any one of our endtime crop of religious leaders — wretched, blind, and naked — has any of these qualities today? Is the Scriptures lying, or is it Fred Coulter who is lying?

As we read the account in II Chronicles 35, we find that the entire ceremony was conducted by the priests and Levites, who stood in their places to serve at the altar, offering sacrifices and carrying out all the duties that were assigned to their courses (verses 2-5). Notice Josiah’s exhortation to the Levites: “ ‘And kill the Passover, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare your brethren so that they may do according to the word of the LORD by the hand of Moses.’ And Josiah gave to the people from the flock, lambs and kids, all for the Passover offerings, for all who were present, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand oxen. These were from what the king owned” (verses 6-7).

This verse is significant because bullocks and oxen were never to be used for the Passover sacrifice.  God had commanded that the animals for the Passover sacrifice be selected from the sheep or the goats (Ex. 12:5).  The bullocks that Josiah gave to the people were not for the Passover sacrifice itself.  These “Passover offerings,” were to be sacrificed by the priests and Levites as burnt offerings, peace offerings and thank offerings.  The priests received “…for the Passover offerings two thousand six hundred sheep, and three hundred oxen.” And the Levites received “…for Passover offerings five thousand sheep, and five hundred oxen” (II Chron. 35:8-9). (Pg 154)

Notice the PASSOVER offering came from BOTH the flock and from the herd:

(I) King Josiah himself gave from the “lambs and kids from the flock, all for the Passover offerings for all who were present, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks,” (II Chron. 35:7);

(II) Josiah’s princes, chief priests and officials gave “for the Passover offerings two thousand and six hundred small cattle and three hundred oxen,” (verse 8); 

(III) Conaniah and other chief Levites gave “for Passover offerings five thousand small cattle and five hundred oxen,” (verse 9).

The fact that oxens were included for the “Passover offerings” is because the Passover and Unleavened Bread were well amalgamated. And since King Josiah did “according to ALL the Law of Moses” meant that right at the beginning at the time of the original Exodus the amalgamation was instituted then. The composite feast consisted of sacrificing one lamb on the fourteenth for the Passover proper and “two young bullocks, and one ram, and seven lambs of the first year” for each of the seven Days of Unleavened Bread.

Sacrifices from the flock and the herd are needed for the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, all seven days (Numbers 28:19).

Numbers 28:16 And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the LORD. 17 And in the fifteenth day of this month is the feast: seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten. 18 In the first day shall be an holy convocation; ye shall do no manner of servile work therein:

¹⁹ But ye shall offer a sacrifice made by fire for a burnt offering unto the Lord; two young bullocks, and one ram, and seven lambs of the first year: they shall be unto you without blemish: ²⁴ After this manner ye shall offer daily, throughout the seven days, the meat of the sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord: it shall be offered beside the continual (daily) burnt offering, and his drink offering. (Numbers 28:16-19).

The Passover is a composite feast composed of the Passover proper and the seven Days of Unleavened Bread. Once this concept is mastered, all the rest just fall into place. The Jewish Encyclopedia (initiated by Reformed Jews) digged deeper into this phenomenon by stating the concept that the two festivals as distinct was promoted by the Samaritans: “The Samaritans consider the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as two distinct festivals.” 

These animals from both the flock and the herd were offered as burnt offerings, peace offerings and thank offerings.  They were offered on the night of the 15th and each day during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  The fact that they are called “Passover offerings” indicates that during this time in history, the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread began to be called “Passover.”

As the account shows, the lambs were brought to the temple to be sacrificed by the priests and the Levites, and the blood of the lambs was sprinkled against the altar in the manner that was practiced for peace offerings and thank offerings.  This was done by Josiah’s command: “So the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the Levites in their courses, according to the king’s commandment.  And they killed the Passover offerings, and the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands, and the Levites flayed them [cut them open and removed the guts].  And they removed the burnt offerings [the interior fat and genital organs] so that they might give, according to the divisions of the families of the people, to offer to the LORD as it is written in the book of Moses; and so they did to the oxen” (verses 10-12). (Pg 154)

Again once the composite feast is understood there is no problem understanding that the sacrifice and other offerings were composed of animals from the flock and from the herd, composed of thirty thousand lambs and kids as well as three thousand oxen owned by King Josiah.

In fact, since King Josiah was a righteous king, his action validates the concept that Passover and Days of unleavened Bread were and have always been a composite Festival. In fact Fred Coulter admitted: “The fact that they are called “Passover offerings” indicates that during this time in history, the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread began to be called “Passover” (pg 154). To be more correct, the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread and “Passover” began as a composite Festival during the Exodus. 

The sacrificing that was performed by the priests and Levites in this account was not conducted according to the ordinances that God gave to Moses for the observance of the Passover.  The Passover ordinances that God delivered to Moses are recorded in the book of Exodus, which is the second book in the Pentateuch, or the “Book of the Law.”  These ordinances of God do not instruct the priests and Levites to sacrifice the Passover lambs and sprinkle the blood on the altar, nor to burn the fat and other parts. The phrase “as it is written in the book of Moses” is not referring to the ordinances for the Passover, but to the ordinances that God established for peace offerings, which required that the blood of the sacrificial animal be sprinkled against the altar, and the fat and certain organs be burnt on the altar (Lev. 3). (Pg 154-155)

Not so, II Chronicles 35:⁶ says “So kill the Passover lamb (not the peace offering) . . . that they may do according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses.” The central theme about King Josiah was about keeping the Passover, not about offering a peace offering. So much twistings and lyings of God’s word! The verse actually reaffirms that the blood of the sacrificial animal should be sprinkled against the altar. Josiah was a righteous king. “And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left” II Kings 22:2. Fred Coulter has so much lying problems reading the Scriptures or is he suffering from memory lapses? Instead of sending tithes to Fred, his sleepy sheep should send him to the nearest hospital for a thorough clinical checkout.

After relating the sacrifice of the lambs and the oxen, the account describes the manner in which they were cooked: “And they roasted [Hebrew bashal] the passover with fire according to the ordinance; and the holy offerings they sod [boiled] in pots [Hebrew bashal], and in caldrons, and in pans, and carried them quickly to all the children of the people” (II Chron. 35:13, JPSA)

Bashal is never used to signify the act of roasting. The use of the word “roasted” in II Chronicles 35:13 is a blatant mistranslation of the Hebrew text. Bashal is first used in this verse to indicate that the sacrifices were cooked over fire, and then to specify that the cooking was done by boiling the flesh of the animals in pots and pans. None of these sacrifices were roasted, as God had commanded for the sacrifice of the Passover lambs (Ex. 12:9). (Pg 155)

If “they roasted [Hebrew bashal] the passover with fire according to the ordinance” then they must be doing the right thing. So why all the complainings? If they had boiled the Passover then it wasn’t according to the ordinances. The KJV translates Strong’s H1310 (bashal) in the following manner (and times): seethe (10x), boil (6x), sod (6x), bake (2x), ripe (2x), roast (2x).

The KJV and most translations translate bashal as “roasted”: “And they roasted the Passover lamb with fire according to the ordinance.” The Bible says they did the roasting “according to the ordinance.” The same word bashal is used in Deuteronomy 16:⁷ “And thou shalt roast (H1310 bashal) and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.” Only “A Faithful Version” by a “not-sure-what-his-level-of-Hebrew-is” author translates it as “boil.”

Bear with me that I should dive deeper into this leather bound Faithful Version. II Chronicles 35:13 is translated as “And they boiled the Passover offerings over fire according to the law.” 

If it is “according to law” it is correct to translate it as “roast.” But what this translator means is that what they did is contrary to the law. In which case it should be translated, “And they boiled the Passover offerings over fire contrary to the law” if he insists bashal should be translated as “boil.” 

Hope one of his sleepy devotees will finally wake up, do humanity a favor, and inform the author of this paradox, or at least ask for clarity how boiling is “according to law?

And the king commanded all the people, saying, “Keep the Passover unto the LORD your God, as it is written in the Book of this Covenant.” Surely there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel nor of the kings of Judah, but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah wherein this Passover was held to the Lord in Jerusalem. (II Kings 23:21-23). 

Rashi: such a Passover sacrifice had not been performed: So many people had not assembled at any Passover sacrifice as assembled at this one.

Clarke: – Not one on purer principles, more heartily joined in by the people present, more literally consecrated, or more religiously observed. The words do not apply to the number present, but to the manner and spirit.

This is similar to II Chronicles 35:18 “There was no passover like that” which means that this Passover distinguished from all the former Passovers because it was performed with great generosity — from Josiah, his princes and others who contributed to his people such a great number of lambs and oxens — boosting their joys and spirit that neither even David nor Solomon had done.

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (g)

Passover at the beginning or end of the 14th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is a Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover Lamb was to be killed at the early or at the end of the fourteenth of Nisan. Quoted are Fred Coulter’s book, from an internet online PDF version. Most of his quotes are in block form, in PINK and indented so as to differentiate his from other comments. The Scriptures, in RED, must, foremost, be our primary focus and guide.

Chapters 11

While reiterating the story of Israel in Chapter 11 of The Christian Passover from the time of Joshua, the judges and then Samuel, King David and Solomon, and so on, Fred Coulter seems to avoid one critical sin of King Jeroboam. Jeroboam not only moved the Feast of Tabernacles to the eight month, he also set up altars in Bethel and Dan as houses of worship.

“Then the king [Jeroboam, now king of the northern ten tribes of Israel] took counsel, and made two calves of gold and said to them, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ And he set the one in Bethel, and he put the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even to Dan. And he made houses of worship on the high places [pagan temples to Baal], and made priests of the lowest of the people, who were not the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam ordered a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah. And he offered upon the altar. So he did in Bethel [meaning “house of God”], sacrificing to the calves that he had made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.

“And he offered unto the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month which he had devised out of his own heart. And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel. And he offered upon the altar and burned incense” (I Kings 12:28-33). (The Christian Passover pg 127).

But why didn’t Fred Coulter bold by emphasising Jerusalem as God’s designated holy place to keep the Feast? Or has he deemed it wasn’t a sin? That Jeroboam’s sin were only moving the Feast from the seventh to the eight month and worshipping the two golden calves? 

Notice Fred Coulter also didn’t emphasize the other cities — Bethel and Dan — neither cities authorised by God as a place of worship. This runs parallel with his thought that the Israelites were wrong to keep the Passover in Jerusalem, that they, like King Jeroboam, should keep a “domestic” Passover — for it is too hard to keep the Feast in Jerusalem!

Later the Samaritans came along and said Mount Gerizim is the holy place to worship. But the truth is that Jerusalem is a very important city to God, one close to His heart.

The Lord said, “In Jerusalem will I put My name,” II Kings 21:4.

The Lord said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put My name for ever,” II Kings 21:7.

“(God) have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there,” II Chronicles 6:6.

The Lord had said, “In Jerusalem shall My name be for ever,” II Chronicles 33:4.

And many nations shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.” For the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Micah 4:2

At that time they shall call Jerusalem the Throne of the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem. Jeremiah 3:17

“Thus saith the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her,” Ezekiel 5:5.

“Thus saith the Lord: ‘I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the Holy Mountain.’ Zechariah 8:3

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God, and I will write upon him My new name. Revelation 3:12

And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:2

~~~~

While going into details reiterating the fall of Israel’s apostasy in Chapter 11 of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover, we’ll take this opportunity for better use studying into the original Exodus. Exodus 12 is a chapter where the principal subject is the Passover and its ordinances, with all other secondary issues incorporated to support the main structure.

Evidently, the Samaritans were the first to propagate that the festivals of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were distinct and separate originally, but were combined by the wicked Jews, so they claimed. Today there are many modern “authorities” where Fred Coulter could draw support from. But the best authority is right at the source — Exodus 12.

When we examine Exodus 12, we’ll see that the primary focus is the Passover and its ordinances. Those secondary subjects are the death angels passing over, a memorial experience, the days to take unleavened bread, etc.

The first 7 verses apply principally to the Passover sacrifice. Verses 8 to 11 say about how to eat the Passover meal. Verses 12-13 say about God’s judgement and the protection for those who obeyed.

Verse 14 describes the day as a memorial and how to keep “it” i.e. the “it” is the Passover — by keeping IT as a feast, and that Passover feast is a composite Feast which includes the Feast of Unleavened Bread, verse 15. Verses 16 to 17 go into details about keeping IT with unleavened bread. Verses 18 to 20 is a reinstatement of keeping the Passover with unleavened bread. 

Then Moses reiterates the Passover in verses 21-33, reemphasizing it by adding details as to how to keep it. In verses 34 and 39, it explains why the dough couldn’t leaven.

Then in verses 35-38, it says about spoiling the Egyptians, then back to Passover in verses 43-50.

Verses 40-42 and 51 emphasize the Exodus from Egypt since the prophecy God had given to Abraham 430 years before. The primary focus of Exodus 12 is the Passover; the eating of the meal with bitter herbs and unleavened bread and keeping it as a memorial are also important but secondary.

Exodus 12 (any capitalized IT is referring IT to H6453 pecach; the Passover LAMB).

¹ And the Lord spoke unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,

² “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. — setting the background to the Passover

³ Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth day of this month they shall take for themselves every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house. — preparing for the Passover

⁴ And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take IT (the Passover LAMB) according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. —  preparing for the Passover

⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year; ye shall take IT out from the sheep, or from the goats. — identifying the Passover

⁶ And ye shall keep IT up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill IT in the evening. — the killing of the Passover LAMB

⁷ And they shall take of the blood, and strike it (the blood) on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat IT (the Passover LAMB). — the blood and the eating of the Passover

⁸ And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roasted with fire; and with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat IT. — the Passover meal (the Targum says this meal is to be taken on the night of the fifteenth of Nisan). The main focus is still the Passover LAMB).

⁹ Eat not of IT raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire — his head with his legs and with the viscera thereof. — how to eat the the Passover meal

¹⁰ And ye shall let nothing of IT remain until the morning, and that which remaineth of IT until the morning ye shall burn with fire. — Passover meal (the Targum says the night of the fifteenth)

¹¹ And thus shall ye eat IT: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat IT in haste; IT is the Lord’S Passover. — Passover meal on the fifteenth

¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite 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. — Passover and the judgement on Egypt

¹³ And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. — Passover judgement on the night of the fifteenth of Nisan

¹⁴ “‘And this day (of the LORD’s judgement above) shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep IT a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep IT a feast by an ordinance for ever. — the Passover is a feast and was also an ordinance on the night of the fifteenth forever

¹⁵ Seven days (Rashid: Heb. שִׁבְעַתיָמִים, seteyne of days, i.e. a group of seven days) shall ye eat unleavened bread. Even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses; for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. — seven days of Unleavened Bread, i.e. a group of seven days

¹⁶ And in the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation to you. No manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done by you. — details of observing the seven days of unleavened bread

¹⁷ And ye shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever. — seven days of Unleavened Bread as another ordinance of Passover

¹⁸ In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. — the eating of unleavened bread starts at the same time as the killing of the Passover lamb, “on the fourteenth day of the month at even”

¹⁹ Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses; for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger or born in the land. — more details of observing the seven days of unleavened bread

²⁰ Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.’” — details of observing the seven days of unleavened bread

²¹ Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said unto them, “Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the Passover.  — back to the Passover sacrifice (H6453 pecach)

²² And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it (the hyssop) in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out from the door of his house until the morning. — what to do with the blood of the Passover sacrifice

²³ For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He seeth the blood upon the lintel and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over (H6452 pacach) the door and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. — the passing over (H6452 pacach)

²⁴ And ye shall observe this thing as an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. — an ordinance for the Passover sacrifice

²⁵ And it (at a later time) shall come to pass, when ye come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as He hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. — the Passover ordinance is to be kept as a memorial

²⁶ And it (at a later time) shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, ‘What mean ye by this service?’

²⁷ that ye shall say, ‘IT is the sacrifice of the Lord’S Passover (H6453 pecach), who passed over (H6452 pacach) the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. — the Passover sacrifice is to be kept as a memorial

²⁸ And the children of Israel went away, and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron; so did they.

²⁹ And it (at a later time) came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne, unto the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. — the judgement on the night of the fifteenth is to be kept as a memorial

³⁰ And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead. — the judgement

³¹ And he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel! And go, serve the Lord, as ye have said. — judgement on those who were not defended by the blood of the sacrifice

³² Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said; and be gone, and bless me also.”

³³ And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, “We are all dead men.” — the judgement

³⁴ And the people took their dough before it (the bread) was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. — the feast of unleavened bread

³⁵ And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses, and they borrowed from the Egyptians jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment. — a process of being thrust out of Egypt

³⁶ And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they despoiled the Egyptians. — a process of being thrust out

³⁷ And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot who were men, besides children. — a memorial for being thrust out of Egypt

³⁸ And a mixed multitude went up also with them, and flocks and herds, even very much cattle.

³⁹ And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt; for it (the bread) was not leavened because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual. — the feast of unleavened bread

⁴⁰ Now the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.

⁴¹ And it (at a later time) came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even on the selfsame day it (at a later time) came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. — a memorial

⁴²  IT is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord to be observed by all the children of Israel in their generations. — a memorial for being thrust out of Egypt for later generations

⁴³ And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof; — the night for being thrust out of Egypt was to be a Passover ordinance

⁴⁴ but every man’s servant who is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. — the Passover ordinance

⁴⁵ A foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat thereof. — the Passover ordinance

⁴⁶ In one house shall IT be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth any of the flesh abroad out of the house, neither shall ye break a bone thereof. — the Passover ordinance

⁴⁷ All the congregation of Israel shall keep  IT. — the Passover sacrifice to be a memorial

⁴⁸ And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee and will keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep IT; and he shall be as one that is born in the land, for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. — the Passover sacrifice to be kept

⁴⁹ One law shall be for him that is homeborn and for the stranger who sojourneth among you.” — the Passover ordinance to be a memorial

⁵⁰ Thus did all the children of Israel; as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they. — the Passover ordinance to be a memorial

⁵¹ And it (at a later time) came to pass the selfsame day that the Lord brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies. — a memorial for being thrust out of Egypt

Of the 51 verses in Exodus 12 (not counting verse 1):

— 29 are clearly pertaining to the Passover or its ordinances (2-14, 21-28, 43-50); 

—   5 are judgement on those not defended by the blood of the sacrifice (29-33); still related to the Passover above;

—   8 are coming out of Egypt (35-38, 40-42, 51); and 

— only 8 are about unleavened bread (15-20, 34, 39). In fact, eating unleavened bread wasn’t planned; it was thrust upon them, v 34. 

In summary, the primary focus of Exodus 12 is the Passover, which also included bringing God’s judgement on the Egyptians, allowing the children of Israel to be freed from captivity. The process involves selecting and killing the Passover lamb, spreading its blood on the lintel and doorposts, the eating of the meal with bitter herbs and unleavened bread and later, keeping IT as a memorial which are all considered as ordinances to the Passover. 

In fact, the eating of unleavened bread is just a sideshow of the Passover; at best it’s as integrated like a flower girl in a wedding, which is extremely important to the celebration but definitely secondary to the main rite, the Passover. The SACRIFICE of the LAMB is of primary importance. The LAMB is the FOCUS, all others are secondary.

~~~~

In a previous post, we went through Conservative Judaism, a spinoff of Reform Judaism. Here, we’ll dive deeper into how the Movement started, a serious subject that most seekers of the truth ignore. 

The origins of Reform Judaism lay in 19th-century Germany, where its early principles were formulated by Rabbi Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) and his associates (Samuel Holdheim, Israel Jacobson and Leopold Zunz). Since the 1970s, the Movement adopted a policy of inclusiveness and acceptance, inviting as many as possible to partake in its communities, rather than “strict theoretical clarity.”

They claim their Movement is in “a process of constant evolution” and this movement “rejects any fixed, permanent set of beliefs, laws or practices.” They stated that the old mechanisms of religious interpretation were obsolete. 

Geiger sought a more coherent ideological framework to justify innovations in the liturgy and religious practice. While Reform Judaism initially developed as lay Jews simply lost interest in the strict observances required of Orthodoxy, with many seeking shorter services, more frequent sermons, and organ music, modeled after Protestant churches.

In Germany, one characteristic of their progressive revelation was the institution of a “Second Sabbath” on Sunday, modeled on the Second Passover, as most people desecrated the day of rest. 

Discrimination and persecution against Jews in Germany were rampant in the 19th and early 20th century. Work were hard to come by and such new interpretation made sense in a community struggling to survive. “If you cannot keep the Sabbath on its appointed time, you keep it on the next available day,” and so the Sabbath was shifted from Saturday to Sunday. “God would accept it,” they encouraged each other.

America was opening up to immigrants and in a new Land of the Free, the five-day workweek soon made the Sunday Sabbath redundant. But nevertheless, the Movement had already had its momentum and today the Reform Movement’s largest center today is in North America. 

Reform Judaism encourages adherents to seek their own means of engaging a new Judaism, enhancing “individualism.” Tolerance for LGBT and ordination of LGBT rabbis were also pioneered by the Movement. It started slowly then gathered speed. Intercourse between consenting adults was declared as legitimate by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1977, and openly gay clergy were admitted by the end of the 1980s.

Same-sex marriage were sanctioned by the end of the following decade. In 2015 the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) adopted a Resolution on the Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People, urging clergy and synagogue attendants to actively promote tolerance and inclusion of such individuals.

Today, Reform Judaism has two main objectives:

(1) Reform Jews are committed to the absolute equality of women in all areas of Jewish life. “We were the first movement to ordain women rabbis, invest women cantors, and elect women presidents of our synagogues,” they claim.

(2) Reform Jews are also committed to the full participation of gays and lesbians in synagogue life as well as society at large.

As of 2013, the Pew Research Center survey calculated Reform Judaism represented about 35% of all 5.3 million Jews in the US, making it the single most numerous Jewish religious group in the country. Based on these, the URJ claims to represent 2.2 million people.

It has 846 congregations in the US and 27 in Canada, the vast majority of the 1,170 affiliated with the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) that are not Reconstructionist. Its rabbinical arm is the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), with some 2,300 rabbis as members, mainly trained in Hebrew Union College. As of 2015, the URJ was led by President Rabbi Richard Jacobs, and the CCAR headed by Rabbi Denise Eger.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada. Today, the CCAR is the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in the world. Its current president, and its first openly gay president, is Rabbi Denise Eger.

Denise Eger became the first openly gay president in 2015. The Reform Movement acknowledged that Jews and their rabbis “have long been part of the struggle for gay rights, and that includes advocacy for marriage equality.”

Rabbi Denise Eger was also the founding President of the Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Interfaith Clergy Association. In the summer of 2010 she was named one of the fifty most influential women rabbis.

Some Reform rabbis have other objectives in the Land of the Free. In 1888, the Jewish Publication Society (JPS), originally known as the Jewish Publication Society of America (JPSA), was founded  by reform Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf among others in Philadelphia. It claimed to be the oldest nonprofit, nondenominational publisher of Jewish works in English.

As the years rolled on, JPS became well known for its English translation of the Hebrew Bible, the JPS Tanakh. As JPS moved into the 20th, its popularity grew rapidly. After years of meetings, deliberations and revisions, the entire translation of the Bible was finally completed in 1917.

In 1985, the newly translated three parts of the Bible (the Torah, Prophets, and Writings) were compiled into what is now known as the JPS Tanakh (or NJPS, New JPS translation, to distinguish it from the OJPS, or Old JPS translation of 1917). Hence the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) is credited as both Publisher of the TANAKH 1917 and 1985 editions.

The JPS followed a central tenet, to adopt “a policy of inclusiveness and acceptance, inviting as many as possible to partake in its communities, rather than strict theoretical clarity.” It is strongly identified with progressive political and social agendas, mainly under the traditional Jewish rubric Tikkun Olam, or “Repairing of the World”.

In their endeavour to avoid the “bondage of Judaism,” a new policy of inclusiveness and acceptance was established. And a new Tikkun Olam became a central motto of Reform Judaism — to “express wholeheartedly the idea of universal equality, freedom, and peace for all,” and to “forge a common bond in true harmony to banish all hatred and bigotry.”

The results:

Exodus 12:6 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year; ye shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats; 6 and ye shall keep it unto the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at dusk.

The 1988 edition (hard copy) says “at twilight,” published by the New JPS Translation. And as a result it has overwhelming influence in every major English translation:

NKJV: Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. The NAS, NIV, NKJV and NRSV all render this similarly as “twilight.” “The Message Bible” produced by Eugene Peterson, and CJB by David Stern translates this as “dusk” like the JPS. *

And besides Fred Coulter there are others yielding great influence among the CoG Communities:

And John W. Ritenbaugh wrote: “Ba erev means sunset. It is very specific. It includes no time before sunset. It is a period that begins whenever the edge of the sun hits the edge of the horizon. If you stood and watched how long ba erev takes, it takes about three to five minutes of time. It is very specific” (Passover, Part 3).

After discussing the meaning of Exodus 12:6, Frank W. Nelte of South Africa, an ex-WCG minister, states: “The JPS translation of “between the two evenings” is AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT that dusk is bounded by “the two evening.” Frank emphasized further, “Now “dusk” is NEVER before sunset. Dusk is ALWAYS AFTER SUNSET! 

It follows that dusk can ONLY refer to a period of time at the very start of a day. Therefore this instruction to kill the Passover “at dusk” could only be at the very start of the 14th day. The word “dusk” does not allow for any other possibility.”(The Meaning of ‘Between the two Evenings’)

As of this writing, a new “gender-sensitive version of the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation” is on promotion in their endeavour to adapt to the needs of the day. It’s a “largely gender-neutral God language” and a completely fresh translation of the Torah. This new translation will prove exceedingly useful not only for clergy and synagogue professionals, but also for anyone interested in Biblical learning, so they claimed.

The next challenge for Fred R. Coulter, John W. Ritenbaugh and Frank W. Nelte is to continue cutting off from the “bondage of Judaism” to attain their next level of spirituality.

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (f)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

Chapters 10 

This is a continuing Critique of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover. The main issue is whether the Passover Lamb was to be killed on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan. Quoted are Fred Coulter’s book, from an internet online PDF version. Most of his quotes are in block form, in PINK and indented so as to differentiate his from other comments. The Scriptures, in RED, must, foremost, be our primary focus and guide.

Chapter 10 started with the issue of how to interprete the time for slaying the lambs—Hebrew ben ha arbayim, “between the two evenings.” 

There is no question that the Passover commands in Exodus 12 have been misinterpreted and given different meanings than the true scriptural meaning of God’s ordinances and statutes delivered to Moses. False interpretations of key Hebrew terms that are used in the Scriptural commands have caused great confusion as to which day God designated for the Passover observance, the 14th or the 15th. (The Christian Passover, Pg 115)

This is very true, even an understatement, especially to people who thought they are better than those having Hebrew as their first language.

If ba·erev is followed by ben ha arbayim then two lambs would be needed, one at ba·erev to fulfil Deuteronomy 16:6 and another at ben ha arbayim to fulfil Exodus 12:6. It is not just “great confusion,” it is magic—the type of Magic that Simon Magus had mastered that mesmerised many of his followers.

And then the issue is whether the Passover ordinances were seven or eight days, and whether the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were originally observed as two separate and distinct feasts. Fred Coulter wrote:

Contrary to God’s commands in Exodus 12, the traditional Jewish Passover combines the Passover meal with the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, dropping an entire day from the Scriptural chronology. (Pg 115) — an opinionated statement, but no proof given.

Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread Originally Were Two Separate Feasts—Not One Combined Feast (Pg 116) — again, an opinionated headline, no proof given as usual.

The commands of God in Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23 make it undeniably clear that the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to be observed as two separate feasts, one following the other. (Pg 116) — the writing in Leviticus 23 may appear to be two separate feasts but in Exodus 12 the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are surely a composite Feast. Just prove it for yourself by reading the chapter.

The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia reveals that many of the Sadducees—which included the high priests’ families—retained the practice of the domestic Passover at the beginning of the 14th.  This fact is quite surprising.  We would expect the high priests to observe the temple sacrifice of the Passover on the afternoon of the 14th, since they were in charge of the temple.  But such was not the case. (Pg 118) — the Sadducees (like most CoG Communities today) kept their Passover at the beginning of the fourteenth is an absolute truth.

And Fred Coulter isn’t alone; there are many modern “Jewish authorities” to support him:

(1) The Jewish Encyclopedia states, “Comparison of the successive strata of the Pentateuchal laws bearing on the festival makes it plain that the institution, as developed, is really of composite character. TWO FESTIVALS ORIGINALLY DISTINCT HAVE BECOME MERGED…” (Vol. IX, “Passover,” emphasis added). (Pg 116) 

(2) The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible . . . Amid all the uncertainty about the Passover and Unleavened Bread in Israel there is general agreement on two points: the feast contains two originally separate components” (Vol. III, s. v. “Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread,” emphasis added). (Pg 117) 

(3) The Encyclopedia Judaica: “The Feast of Passover consists of two parts: The Passover ceremony and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Originally both parts existed separately, but at the beginning of the Exile [in Babylon 603-585 BC] they were combined. (Pg 120) 

And this is picked up by Fred Coulter, admitting that the Samaritans were the first to start this observation:

The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible points out this marked change in the observance of the Passover: “In many respects the observance [of the Passover at the beginning of the 14th by the Jewish Samaritans] corresponds more closely to the scriptural prescriptions, notably those of Exod. 12, than the true observance in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus—a reminder, among other things, that in its three thousand years or more of history as an Israelite observance, Passover has never ceased to change, however imperceptibly. (Pg 118) — In fact, the Passover observed at the beginning of the fourteenth originated with the Samaritans! More on this later.

The “authorities” quoted above are from The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible and The Encyclopedia Judaica. But who are they? What were their motivation behind their work?

Research shows that these publications are mainly by either (a) Protestants with a Jewish background or (b) Jewish Reformists having strong aversion or hostility against the Rabbinic Orthodoxy — both are critics of the “Bondage of Judaism” claiming that their predecessors had somehow amalgamated the Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread and call that the Passover or the Jewish Passover.

Being dissatisfied with the strict Orthodoxy, they left their original faith and craved an alternate explanation rather than remained with a “static religion.” The Jewish Encyclopedia digged deeper into this phenomenon by stating the concept that the two festivals as distinct was promoted by the Samaritans: “The Samaritans consider the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as two distinct festivals.” Of course the Samaritans were the first to promote this distinct concept.

“You shall know them by their fruits.” The originator of these feasts as distinct originated from the Samaritans and then penetrated the Sadducees, who died out during the AD 70 inferno, but resurfaced in the ninth and tenth century with the Karaites. And since the last two centuries, by the Jewish Reform Movement and modern experts who were mainly Protestants from a Jewish background.

And at the tail end by the Worldwide Church of God and today its splinters: the CoG Communities. “You shall know them by their fruits” Matthew 7:16. And they all bear the same fruits.

In more details, the following “Jewish authorities” are largely the works of (a) Protestants with a Jewish background and (b) the Jewish Reform Movement: 

The Jewish Encyclopedia — Its managing editor was Isidore Singer (1859–1939) and the editorial board was chaired by Isaac Funk and Frank Vizetelly. Singer was born Austria and studied at the University of Vienna and the Humboldt University of Berlin, receiving his PhD in 1884. One who held “extremely liberal views” and one who had described the Sabbath as “heavy burdens,” and annual holy days as “mere ceremonies.” Singer moved to New York in 1895 where he started work which resulted in the Jewish Encyclopedia.

The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible — Its chief editor was feminist Katharine Sakenfeld (b 1940). She is Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary, having previously been William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis. Sakenfeld studied at the University of Rhode Island and Harvard Divinity School before obtaining her PhD at Harvard University. She was ordained as a Presbyterian teaching elder in 1970, and has served as the moderator of the Presbytery of New Brunswick in the PCUSA.

The Encyclopedia Judaica — Its first chief editor was Cecil Roth (1899–1970). He was educated at Merton College, Oxford (PhD, 1924) and later returned to Oxford as Reader in Post-Biblical Jewish Studies from 1939 to 1964. Thereafter he was visiting professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel (1964–1965), where he found his position unattainable when he’d shown sympathy to those “arguing that Moses never existed.” Unable to redeem his reputation in Israel, Roth went to teach at the City University of New York (1966–1969), worked as general editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and ended his career there. 

Anti-Jewish sentiments were ranpant throughtout Europe through the second millennium. These hostilities have contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an “ideal underpinning” for the Nazis’ attacks on Jews.

In Martin Luther’s work, “The Jews & Their Lies,” Luther advocates (1) the burning of Jewish synagogues; (2) that their houses also be razed and destroyed; (3) that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings be destroyed; (4) that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb . . .

Jews have persistently been painted in a negative light, stigmatized upon, both spoken and in writing: antisemitism had been around since the ancient time of old, resurfaces its urgy head time and time again in various forms . . . and today very prominent among the CoG Communities.

No, it wasn’t the Jews who amalgamated the Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread. It was Moses who did that. For in Deuteronomy 1:1 These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel . . .

And jumping to:

Deuteronomy 16:1 “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto the Lord thy God; for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. ² Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the Passover unto the Lord thy God, “of the flock” (of sheep and goats) “and the herd” (bulls or bullocks), in the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name there.

The Passover and the days of unleavened bread are well interlaced during the Exodus that it is a composite festival. This is what Moses explained to the children of Israelites in more details. 

In Exodus 12:5, it says, “You may take it either from the sheep or from the goats” but in Deuteronomy 16:2 above it includes from “the herd,” which is from cattles or oxens.

To include cattles or oxens can only mean to include the Festival of the Days of Unleavened Bread where among other animals, two young bulls were sacrificed. Therefore the idea that the Passover was restricted solely to the fourteenth day is unattainable.

Also the composite festival was hinted at earlier in Numbers 28:¹⁶ “‘And on the fourteenth day of the first month is the Passover of the Lord. ¹⁷ And on the fifteenth day of this month is the feast: seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten. ¹⁸ On the first day shall be a holy convocation. Ye shall do no manner of servile work therein, ¹⁹ but ye shall offer a sacrifice made by fire for a burnt offering unto the Lord: two young bulls, and one ram, and seven lambs of the first year. They shall be unto you without blemish.

The verses above should be read to describe the seven-day feast of the Passover, including eating of unleavened bread. Also, below it continues to describe how eating unleavened bread is part of observing the Passover:

Deuteronomy 16:³ Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste, that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.

⁴ And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy borders seven days, neither shall there anything of the flesh, which thou sacrificed the first day at evening, remain all night until the morning.

⁵ Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

And this composite festival is confirmed by prophet Ezekiel:

“‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days. Unleavened bread shall be eaten” Ezekiel 45:21.

Later practice of keeping this composite feast in Jerusalem was a departure from the original Passover in Egypt where they were to stay in their houses. In fact the command is exactly the opposite of the idea of a “domestic passover.” That they should “NOT sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gate.”

The Israelites should keep this composite feast in Jerusalem!

Deuteronomy 16:⁶ but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the Passover at evening (erev), at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.

This evening (erev), is the same time where they kill the daily sacrifice. 

Exodus 29:³⁸ Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually. ³⁹ The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even (erev). — It is also the time (ba erev) when they were to start eating unleavened bread Exodus 12:18.

This amalgamation was reaffirmed in Ezekiel 45:21 where it describes the Passover as a seven-day festival! “‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days. Unleavened bread shall be eaten.

Septuagint: And in the first [month], on the fourteenth [day] of the month, ye shall have the feast of the passover; seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread. 

And again in Luke 2:⁴¹ Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. ⁴² And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the Feast. ⁴³ And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew not of it. (Feast of the Passover – same expression as used in Exodus 34:25)

Deuteronomy 16:⁷ And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt turn in the morning and go unto thy tents.

⁸ Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord thy God. Thou shalt do no work therein.

So the amalgamation of the Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread started way back to Moses at the time of the Exodus, and this interlacing characteristic was reaffirmed by Ezekiel, a prophet sent to the northern stiffnecked Israelites; the Jews, also stiffnecked, knew this all along.

“Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit” (Hosea 11:12). Only the stiff-necked and blind couldn’t see this. The house of Judah operates with hypocrisy but the house of Ephraim operates with lies and deceit!

Below are some classic examples of lying and deceit in the house of Ephraim for reflection:

“But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie. Not a single time. Never,” Bill Clinton testified before the nation, Jan. 26, 1998. For his deceit, Clinton became the second president in American history impeached by the House of Representatives.

In an August 2002 speech that kicked off the Bush White House administration’s campaign for war against Iraq, Cheney asserted, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” 

In October 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed he had “bullet-proof” evidence that Saddam was tied to Osama bin Laden. And a National Intelligence Estimate said Iraq had “continued its weapons of mass destruction program.”

“However, there is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat not just to the region, but to the wider world.” – Tony Blair, House of Commons, 10 April 2002

Prime Minister Tony Blair defended himself in 2005: “I have never told a lie. No. I don’t intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq.” 

“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole,” former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on April 15, 2019 at a forum at Texas A&M University, TX. “It was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” Interestingly, a Christian religious news broadcaster was the only media that seemed to pick up on Pompeo’s words and described it as follows: “that’s not the resume of the Secretary of State… that’s the resume of Satan.”

“The Bible nowhere sanctions the use of intoxicating wine. The wine that Christ made from water at the marriage feast of Cana was the pure juice of the grape” (Ellen G. White, Ministry of Healing p.333).

“I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas. They are what God has opened before me in vision–the precious rays of light shining from the throne” (Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p.67).

“The chronological events that are recorded in Exodus 16 clearly define ben ha arbayim— “between the two evenings,” or “between the setting times”— as the time period that immediately FOLLOWS sunset, or ba erev” (Fred R. Coulter, The Christian Passover, p 48).

“There is no question that the Passover commands in Exodus 12 have been misinterpreted and given different meanings than the true scriptural meaning of God’s ordinances and statutes delivered to Moses” (ibid, p 115).

Gerry Flurry’s chronic lying claim of a Mighty Angel that had handed Malachi’s Message to him must be confused and not very articulated because Flurry in later years has to make revisions after revisions to get the messages right for his so-called Philadelphia Church of God. Flurry also prophesied that Donald Trump would serve his second term to fulfill Jeroboam II revival, “BECAUSE A BIDEN PRESIDENCY IS CONTRARY TO BIBLE PROPHECY.”(Pg 1, The Philadelphia Trumpet, January, 2021). — Full of Flurry’s BULLSHIT! 

“It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!” ²⁹ And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan . . . ³¹ And he made a house of high places . . . ³² And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah. (King Jeroboam: I King 12)

A day will come when all the people of the earth will wake up and say: “Surely our fathers have inherited lies,” and we, too, have been deceived.

“Erev” is the evening time, and at around 3 PM, the Jews killed the evening lamb since the time of Moses. If Moses had any doubt about its timing, he had full access to ask God who speaks to Him from between the cherubim!

No, it was God working through Moses who intertwined the Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread! For it is said that the glory of God is to conceal a thing, (Proverbs 25:2), and Moses was revealing its composite character when he described the law in his own words in the Book of Deuteronomy. “These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness,” Deuteronomy 1:1.

To make this clear enough: the Passover amalgamation occurred right at Exodus 12, the original Passover in Egypt: Moses only made it clearer in the Book of Deuteronomy.

The first time “Passover” was mentioned is in Exodus 12:11, not at verse 6, even though verse six was describing the process of the Passover, the killing of the lamb. Verse 11 described the same continuing process of the Passover; i.e. the process of Passover runs into the Days of Unleavened Bread! The two feasts overlap right at the beginning.

Exodus 12:⁶ And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. . . 

¹¹ And thus shall ye eat it: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste; it is the Lord’S Passover.

The Targum translates and explains the eating of the Passover from the Hebrew in Exodus 12 into the vernacular, in a very simple language, and is extremely clear: “And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan . . .”

And here is a description of the CoG Communities: It says in Revelation 3:¹³ He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches!’ ¹⁴ “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write . . .¹⁵ I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. ¹⁶ So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth. ¹⁷ Because thou sayest, “I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing,” and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked . . . ”

And Fred Coulter quoted another “authority”:

In his book The Jewish Festivals—From Their Beginnings to Our Own Day, Hayyim Schauss explains the changes in the observance of the Passover that were instituted at the time of Josiah’s reform: “It was in this way that Pesach [Passover] and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were joined, and the two distinct spring festivals became one historical holiday. (Pg 121)

No, Fred is now getting desperate: Schauss didn’t say the amalgamation of Passover with Days of Unleavened Bread took place during Josiah’s time. With deception in mind, Fred Coulter lies that the changes started  at Josiah’s initiative “at the time of Josiah’s reform.” Schauss says the reform took place after the Exodus but he wasn’t sure when:

“We cannot be certain how long a time passed before the Jews accepted these reforms in practice and eased to offer the Pesach sacrifice in their own homes. Nor can we be certain how long it took for Pesach and the Feast of Unleavened Bread to become as one festival” (The Jewish Festivals, pg 46).

And just in case we didn’t dive deeper for more details: “The Jewish Festivals” is written by Hayyim Schauss, most probably a Conservative Jew, part of the Reform Movement where modern Jews found “the old ceremonies lack meaning,” and new interpretations are needed to be relevant to our modern era. Hence the terms that Schauss changed in his book are not surprising: the annual solemn convocations or “holy days” as were perceived in Biblical times become a vacation or “holidays” in a character change.

The most solemn Passover and Unleavened Bread festival became “the greatest Jewish national holidays.” In modernity, Jesus and His disciples must be seen as taking their annual vacation in Jerusalem. This is a character change. This is real heresy! Second, the book is published by Schocken Books, it is the same publisher Everett Fox and the Schocken Bible that Fred Coulter quotes for his authority throughout. So the saying goes: foxes and wolves, wolves and foxes of the same colours.

To be sure, where the two feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread were intertwined, they were intertwined right in the original Exodus:

Exodus 12:⁶ And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening (ben ha arbayim). This ben ha arbayim is the time to kill the Passover (lamb).

In Deuteronomy 16:6 ba·erev is also the time to kill the Passover.

The above time is also the time to start eating unleavened bread: Exodus 12:¹⁸ In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening (ba–erev), ye shall eat unleavened bread until the one and twentieth day of the month at evening (ba-erev).

Compare this to Leviticus 23:⁵ On the fourteenth day of the first month at evening (ben ha arbayim) is the Lord’S Passover.

In Leviticus 23:5 and Exodus 12:6 where the same expression ben ha arbayim is used it is when the Passover was killed on the fourteenth.

In Deuteronomy 16:6 ba·erev is to commence the Passover; and in Exodus 12:18 ba·erev is also to commence eating unleavened bread. Passover and Unleavened Bread. Hence the festival has already taken a composite character and is well entwined right at the beginning, at the time of the original Exodus.

This is plainly and simple as to 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. Simple and plain.

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (e)

Passover on the 14th or 15th?

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

Chapters 8 – 9

The Critique of Coulter’s The Christian Passover continues:

In Chapter 8, vanity aside, Fred Coulter is quoting his own translation as before. For one who doesn’t have Hebrew as a native tongue it’s an amazing feat!  What reward would he give to himself? Ten crowns?

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). (The Christian Passover, Pg 89)

Fred’s analysis is all over the place. Nobody knows what level of Hebrew he has but he could pull another rabbit out of a hat that his Samaritan comrade couldn’t. Okay, let’s get back to the topic. Can anybody see 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 unleavened bread on ”the fourteenth day, at even, until the twentieth-first day of the month at even” in Exodus 12:18.

“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even (ba-erev), ye shall eat unleavened bread until the one and twentieth day of the month at even (ba-erev)” Exodus 12:18.

What the Scripture says is very often different from what we assume it says. 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 was also the same time that any leavened product had to be removed, and only unleavened bread was to be eaten. In both instances, in  Deuteronomy 16:6 and Exodus 12:18 the same expression ba-erev is used. 

The Scriptures make it explicitly clear that the Passover day and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are two separate feasts with two different meanings. The Passover day, the 14th day of the first month, was established as a memorial feast to commemorate God’s passing over the houses of the children of Israel. The 15th day, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, was established as a memorial feast in commemoration of the Exodus: “And you shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for [for the following reason] in this SAME DAY I HAVE BROUGHT YOUR ARMIES OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT…” (verse 17). (Pg 89)

GOD DID NOT COMBINE THE PASSOVER AND THE FIRST DAY OF UNLEAVENED BREAD.  It was the leaders of Judaism who changed the commandments of God and combined the two feasts, eliminating the 14th Passover and proclaiming the 15th as the Passover day, and then supporting their erroneous teaching with the empty argument of a “day’s delay.”  (Pg 90)

Passover and Unleavened Bread were well amalgamated right at the beginning, at the time of the original Exodus.

And this amalgamation is confirmed in another passage in Exodus 34:25

“Thou shalt not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until the morning” Exodus 34:25. — Note that Passover is a Feast expressed above and it is to be celebrated as a feast of Unleavened Bread, hence the Passover Feast is a Composite Feast. No need to argue otherwise.

Rashi: You shall not slaughter…: You shall not slaughter the Passover sacrifice as long as leaven still exists. This is a [specific] warning to the slaughterer, to the one who sprinkles the blood, or to one of the members of the group [bringing this sacrifice]. -[from Pes. 63b].

In Deuteronomy 16:6 ba·erev is the time to kill the Passover on the fourteenth; and in Exodus 12:18 ba·erev on the fourteenth is also to commence eating unleavened bread. The Composite Feast started on the fourteenth, at erev, and continued through the fifteenth to the twentieth (Exodus 12:18).

Here is a great revelation from Ezra: in Exodus 12, verse 8, the Ezra-inspired Targum had made it clear that the Passover was a late fourteenth and the eating was on the fifteenth: “And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan . . .” the Targum says.

And this is confirmed in the New Testament time: “Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover,” Luke 22:1

In both Testament times (Old and New), the Passover and Unleavened Bread ordinances were well interlaced. The testimonies from Exodus 12 and the New Testament are like twin mirrors: when placed against the CoG Communities, they reflect their nakedness. But these Wretches and Blind could not see their Nakedness because they are blind and they continue speaking with various deceptions.

This is plainly what the Scriptures say, but “Ephraim compasseth me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit” (Hosea 11:12). Only the stiff-necked and blind couldn’t see this. Plain and simple. The modern day descendants of Ephraim operate with lies and deceit! 

And they are throwing diatribes and lying against the one with the Oracles of God, the Jews (Romans 3:1-4). Below is another verse great for reflection:

“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” (Isaiah 9:21).

John Gill: for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still; that is, the anger of God, that was not turned away; he had not yet stirred up all his wrath, he had not done with them, he had still other judgments to bring upon them; and his hand continued to be stretched out to inflict them, seeing they were not brought to repentance by what was already done unto them; so the Targum, “for all this they do not return from their sins, that he may turn away his anger from them, but still retain their sins; and yet his stroke will be to take vengeance on them.’

The anger of God will begin at His Sanctuary:

“Go ye after him through the city and smite. Let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity.6 Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary,” Ezekiel 9:5-6.

Again, Fred Coulter spent a lot of time whinging about travelling in the darkness of the night.

He wrote:

When the sun began to set, ending the 14th, and beginning the 15th, the children of Israel were all ready to begin the Exodus. . . . 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. (Pg 94)

Eleven o‘clock at night is deep into the night!  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).” (Pg 97)

Deuteronomy 16:6 (thou shalt sacrifice the Passover at evening [ba-erev], at the going down of the sun) is a passage identifying the time when the Passover was to be killed, not when the Israelits were to go out of Egypt. But a few pages earlier, he wrote, contradicting himself again and again, adding errors to errors:

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. (Pg 91)

So it was possible before midnight, but impossible after midnight! In these few pages, Fred Coulter whines back and forth about travelling in the dark contradicting himself what he wrote earlier in the same paragraph: with no light to guide them some “families might have ended up in the wrong city and missed the Exodus!”

And 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 where they saw the Emperor has no clothes?

Deuteronomy 16:6, “at the going down of the sun,” is the time to kill the Passover, at even, but is misquoted above to indicate when God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. Fred Coulter has a habitual style of misquoting the Scriptures, on becoming a chronic liar.

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 or precedents could be bad, but it could also be good. To say all traditions are bad are just too foolish. 

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 sorts 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.

~~9~~

Critique of Chapter 9 continues:

In our study of the Passover account in the book of Exodus, we found no evidence to support the Jewish tradition of a late afternoon temple sacrifice of the Passover lambs.  On the contrary, we found that all the Scriptural evidence points to a Passover at the beginning of the 14th.  By letting the Scriptures define “morning” and “night,” we have determined that the children of Israel killed the Passover lambs on the 14th as the day began, right after sunset of the 13th day. (The Christian Passover, pg 101)

Do not be mistaken, the Bible isn’t a dictionary. At best, a verse here or there could hint what a word means, but normally it doesn’t. Most of the meaning of these words are known orally to people who have Hebrew as their native language.

In fact the Hebrew Text that Moses wrote doesn’t have any vowels, thus the Text couldn’t give any clue how the words are to be pronounced, least of all the meanings of each of those words.

To say that “the Scriptures define “morning” and “night”” is not just being misguided, it’s a fool by itself. The Samaritans were the first pretenders who foolishly thought of themselves as capable of interpreting the Scriptures, and so they led a string of heresies along the way down to our modern era.

For more, see

What are the Oracles of God? (Part I)

What are the Oracles of God? (Part II)

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? (The Christian Passover, pg 102)

Of course, He did. The original Passover had to be observed in a certain manner because of what God was going to achieve through it in Egypt. However, in later years it was a commemoration of the event, not the event itself. If not, during each Passover thereafter, every Israelites would still be:

(a) Eating with their loins girded, sandals on their feet, staff in their hands; and they were to eat in haste;

(b) Go and spoil the Egyptians: jewellery of gold and silver; raiment and any other things in the morning;

(c) 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? (Pg 102)

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. They should have kept it back in Galilee, but they didn’t.

Also, the Mishnah sheds more light on this:

What are the differences between the Paschal lamb that was offered in Egypt and the Paschal lamb offered in all later generations? The Paschal lamb offered in Egypt had its blood sprinkled upon the lintel and the two doorposts with a bundle of hyssop, unlike the Paschal lamb in later years. In addition, the Paschal lamb in Egypt was eaten in haste on only one night, whereas the Paschal lamb of subsequent generations is observed for the whole seven days (Perushim 9).

The Mishnah supports the Scriptures intimately.

After Israel’s first Passover, did He institute a mandatory tabernacle sacrifice of the Passover lambs? (Pg 102)

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. The Scriptures warn in Leviticus 17 to bring the blood of any sacrifices to the sanctuary:

Leviticus 17 says if one were to make a sacrifice, any sacrifice including the Passover “in the camp” or “out of the camp,” the blood must be brought to the tabernacle, and the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle (Leviticus 17:1-6).

The penalty for disobedience is death as any man who refuses to do so would be “cut off” from the children of Israel (Leviticus 17:8-9).

Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee; but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name in (Deuteronomy 16:5-6). 

During the time of Moses, Joshua and the Judges the sacrifices were performed where the Sanctuary was situated, but when the Temple was established permanently in one place it was God who told King Solomon that He had chosen for Himself to move the place of sacrifice to Jerusalem. Hence a Temple-centered sacrifice in Jerusalem is a God-ordained command:

Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house; and all that came into Solomon’s heart to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house, he prosperously effected. And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him: “I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself for a house of sacrifice” (II Chronicles 7:11-12).

And “this place” is in Jerusalem: 

“(God) have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there” (II Chronicles 6:6).

And many people, seeking the Lord God of Israel, went to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices:

“And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord God of their fathers” (II Chronicles 11:16).

The Scriptures are extremely clear but the Blind couldn’t see this because they are blind.

Did God require that the blood of the Passover lambs be sprinkled on the altar? (Pg 102)

Of course, He did. Otherwise during Passover celebrations righteous King Hezekiah and King Josiah would have commanded the people should instead be taking the blood and striking it at the lintels and both sides of the doorposts 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. (Pg 103)

Conveniently, Fred Coulter alleges that the original morning and evening sacrifices were offered “at the beginning of daylight” and “at the beginning of darkness” but offers any record (unless that record came from the Samaritans) or evidence of when the change took place. If he could, he would be a Biblical genius, worthy of a Nobel Prize, if not he must be displaying a figment of his own imagination or he is just a serial liar.

Throughout Fred’s writings, he harped continuously about observing a “domestic Passover” but he never defined it. Okay maybe the case in Egypt should serve as the best example, since he advocates the nine 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 need 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 in subsequent years. It wasn’t allowed. It would be outright rebellion!

That place chosen by God is Jerusalem as affirmed in II Chronicles 6:6, “I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name might be there.”

THE SCRIPTURES DO NOT COMMAND A PASSOVER SACRIFICE AT THE TABERNACLE.

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. (Pg 109)

And a few pages later, Fred Coulter wrote a headline:

All Sacrifices except the Passover

Were to be Brought to the Tabernacle (Pg 113)

Number 28-29 may not specify that the sacrifice be conducted near a Sanctuary, but Leviticus 17 did. Anyone who read Fred Coulter’s argument in the whole chapter and wouldn’t find further in Leviticus 17 would be persuaded to his allegation. In fact Leviticus 17 refers to any sacrifice offered and commanded that the blood needs to be brought to the tabernacle. And Passover is inherently a sacrifice! Christ, our saviour, is a sacrifice! (Ephesians 5:2; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 

Hebrew 10:12)

In verse 8-9, 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) and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation to offer it unto the Lord, even that man shall be cut off from among his people.

Also, the Targum Leviticus 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 (outside) 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 inherently 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 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]” 

Note also that the Targum says about those not obeying, “that man shall be destroyed from his people.”

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 and 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” makes sense in our language English. Passover isn’t a day! We couldn’t kill a day, neither can we eat a day. 

For completeness, references of Passover as the sacrificial lamb being made are as follows:

(a) “to eat the Passover”— Exodus 12:43;

(b) “to kill the Passover” — Exodus 12:21, II Chronicles 35:6;

(c) “to sacrifice the Passover” — Deuteronomy 16:2;

(d) “to roast the Passover” — II Chronicles 35:13.

The two characteristics (implicit and inherent) in Hebrew, 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 he 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 testimony 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.”

Christ’s testimony is another witness that the Passover Lamb was to be sacrificed at 3 PM in the afternoon, “at even” on the fourteenth, otherwise Christ’s death couldn’t have fulfilled the Passover ordinance.

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 with so much forethought right from the foundation of the world. Well planned and well thought-out by the Great God of this Universe. Are we amazed? I’m stunned. It is the mystery of mysteries!

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (d)

Passover on the 14th or 15th? 

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

This is a continuation of a Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover. This Passover controversy is an important Bible subject and we’ll follow it in detail. The main issue is whether the Passover is on the early or late fourteenth of Nisan.

Quoted are Fred Coulter’s work, from an internet PDF version. These excerpts are in block form, in PINK, and indented so as to differentiate them 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 begin:

Chapter 6 – 7

The killing of the Passover lambs took place AT THE BEGINNING of the fourteenth day.  As the thirteenth day of the month drew to a close, all the children of Israel assembled their families and gathered around the lambs, watching the sun set and waiting for the sun to disappear below the horizon.  The instant it dropped below the horizon, ending the thirteenth and beginning ben ha arbayim of the fourteenth, all the children of Israel killed the Passover lambs at precisely the same time!  What a fantastic occurrence!

 As God had commanded, “And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it BETWEEN THE TWO EVENINGS [Hebrew ben ha arbayim]” (Pg 57).

What is being described above – “watching the sun set waiting for the sun to disappear below the horizon” – resembles a counterfeit passover! The Samaritans, donning long white robes, chanting prayers and eating in haste would keep their passover — with belts on their waists, sandals on their feet, and staffs in their hands — at Mount Gerizim at sunset.

What Hayyim Schauss wrote below about facing WESTWARD toward the setting SUN and about the REJOICING KISSES could complement Fred Coulter’s book:

“Exactly at sunset the High Priest faces westward and reads that portion of the Pentateuch which orders the slaughtering of the Pesach sacrifice. About twelve or fourteen of the younger Samaritans busy themselves, meanwhile, with preparing the sacrificial animals. They form a circle about the pit of fire, holding the lambs between their legs, and as the High Priest utters the words, ‘And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at dusk,’ they utter a benediction and throw the lambs, throats to the pit, where they are slaughtered by two ritual slaughterers. Six or seven sheep are slaughtered.

“The slaughtering is a signal for general rejoicing. Greetings are exchanged in the oriental manner; the participants kiss one another, first on the right shower and then on the left” (Schauss, The Jewish Festivals, Pg 63).

The Samaritans were very particular that the sheep should not be killed a minute before or after the sun went down. Just as the sun dipped into the Mediterranean the sheep were killed, the people shouting all the time. In reality, the Samaritans, exactly “AT SUNSET” and facing “WESTWARD” are SUN WORSHIPPERS, a syncretic blend of paganism and heresy, and this ancient apostasy is continuing in the CoG (CoGs) Communities today, unabashed.

“At sunset, or ba erev,” according to Fred Coulter, “is a very short period of time. It begins when the sun appears to touch the horizon,” and that’s when the lamb was killed, all simultaneously, during and is no more than 3-5 minutes. “What a fantastic occurrence!” Fred Coulter added his expression as the Samaritans began kissing each other on the shoulders, first on the right , then on the left. 

But note one significant difference. The Samaritans don’t have another sacrifice following one at  ba erev to satisfy ben ha arbayim as expressed in Exodus 12:6. Even the Samaritans are not that foolish, but Fred Coulter would whip out another rabbit from his hat and make another sacrifice. He wrote of others but in reality some of his observations are for himself. Here is one:

“WHAT FOLLY!  What foolishness to accept a traditional belief that directly conflicts with the truth of God’s Word, and to use interpretations of Scripture that promote the false ideas of men!  No wonder God says that He entraps the intelligent in the foolishness of their own human wisdom” (Pg 61).

According to Fred, “there can be no doubt whatsoever that ben ha arbayim comes after ba erev, or sunset.” And he kept on harping his stupidity, “we have found irrefutable proof that ben ha arbayim — “between the two evenings,” or “between the setting-times”—begins immediately after the day has ended at sunset, or ba erev.” 

His analysis requires two rabbits for his passover, called Fred Coulter’s passover, one for his analysis of Exodus 12:6 ben ha arbayim and the other to satisfy his definition of Deuteronomy 16:6 ba erev.

Like a magical touch of Simon Magus, it’s another sleight of hand. And together with most of today’s Churches of God Communities, they also believe the same magic. It’s no surprise they came from the same homeland — from Samaria. 

“Ephraim compasseth me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit” Hosea 11:12.

“And the head of Ephraim is Samaria” Isaiah 7:9 

The Churches of God Communities may fervently consider themselves as virgins, waiting, waiting, but they haven’t realized they are being described elsewhere as “wretched” and “blind” and “naked,” and lies!

But the House of Israel continue with their deep-seated hatred of their brother Judah:

“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” Isaiah 9:21.

The Orthodoxy Rabbinic interpretation as to when to correctly kill the lamb is confirmed by the work of Ezra: The lamb were indeed killed on the afternoon of the fourteenth and eaten on the night of the fifteenth. The Targum (530 BC to 500 AD), whose origin was during the intertestamental period, translates and explains the eating of the Passover from the Hebrew in Exodus 12 into the vernacular, in a very simple language, and verse 8 is extremely clear: “And you shall eat the flesh on that night, the fifteenth of Nisan . . .” (Targum Exodus 12:8) 

When the Exile returned from Babylon, Ezra, a Levite and high priest, read and translated the Torah in Hebrew into the common Aramaic language, and he, or other Levites, explained the Torah so the people could understand.

“The Levites … instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read” (Nehemiah 8:7–8).

Another way of saying: The Law was read by Ezra, verse by verse, and each verse was followed by a recitation by the Levites into the Aramaic version. Hence in Nehemiah 8:8 Ezra narrated not only the reading of the Law, but the Levites interprete and explain the Torah from Hebrew into the vernacular in Aramaic.

Now on the subject of the true timing of when the quail arrived in the evening, the Rabbinic understanding is that the quail arrived in the afternoon, anytime when the sun moved passed its zenith, until sunset, which is the first phase of erev — this same period could also be described as ben ha arbayim — “between the two evenings,” or “after noon and until nightfall.”

During this time of about six hours, it is daylight time and the Israelites wouldn’t have any problem catching the quail, killing them, skinning and cleaning them, cooking and having them for food. There wouldn’t be any problem at all about keeping the Sabbath when it arrived a few hours later.

Also, the Scriptures are silent about the quails appearing six times a week in any manner like manna did for forty years as expressed in Exodus 16:35. In fact, the story of the quail in Numbers 11 strongly hints, especially with a plague involved, that it is a one-off event, or probably, twice.

Numbers 11 has a chronological order. It began with “And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord; and the Lord heard it, and His anger was kindled. And the fire of the Lord burned among them, and consumed those who were in the uttermost parts of the camp.”

Despite fire consumed some of them, others still complained: 

Numbers 11:⁴ And the mixed multitude [Targum: strangers as well as sons of Israel] that was among them fell to lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again and said, “Who shall give us flesh to eat? ⁵ We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic;

Notice the next verse, this took place when the children of Israel already had manna to eat:

Numbers 11:⁶ but our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes.”

While the story of the quails was taking place, the children of Israelites were already having “this manna before our eyes,” speaking with “disdain and contempt of the manna.” So pretending that their bodies lack fresh food, and having no moisture in them (John Gill comments on what “our soul is dried away” means), they murmured and complained. This complaining continued until they weep pitifully in their eyes, so the wrath of God was rekindled again:

Numbers 11:¹⁰ Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent. And the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly;

So in short, God in anger sent them a month’s supply of quails, so much for them to eat until they came out at their nostrils . . . “And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague” (Numbers 11:³³).

Sometimes the Masoretic Text is vague on certain issues, but the Targum could shed further light on these uncertainties. Numbers 11 ended with a plague where “the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the wicked (Targum) people with a very great plague,” (v 33) killing by “a flaming fire from the Lord” (Targum) all those who murmured against Him, being “contemptuous” (Targum) and lusted for flesh to eat, and after eating, and “offered no thanksgiving to Him” (Targum). 

However, if the quails had continued coming down throughout the 40 years, what about the plague? Was there only one plague regarding eating the quails in all that 40 years? And if so, did the people in later weeks or years stop grumbling?

Or that God had relented in His anger, feeling later that the son of Israel’s grumblings were legitimate compared to one recorded in Numbers 11?

The Scriptures offered no clear answer, but indications are that it was a one-off event, or only twice.

Also, the Targum in Numbers 11 confirms the time “all that day and all that night and all the next day” (v 32) was actually the time spent on waiting, watching and when the quails came, the catching and gathering the quails. No other details were given but Scriptures commented that the gathering of the quails was so great that the catch could last not just a week or two, but a whole month’s supply.  

The story of the quails has nothing to say about the time preceded by the Sabbath, disproving Fred Coulter’s sole hypothesis “that ben ha arbayim comes after ba erev”:

Thus says the Targum:

“And they who had been wanting in faith arose: and all that day, and all the night, and all the day that followed, they gathered the quails; even he who was lame and infirm gathered ten korin (ten donkeys’ loads), and they spread them abroad round about the camps” (Targum: Numbers 11:32).

And after this incident, no repeat of the quail’s appearance were ever mentioned again. The story of the quails is about a contemptuous, a wicked and a lusting people, offering no thanksgiving to Him that fed them, thus deserving a death penalty by a flaming fire from the Lord – all hinting that Numbers 11 was the final event. 

Below are more Scriptural evidence that the quails didn’t arrive again:

Deuteronomy 8:3 And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. — no mention of quails but manna only.

Deuteronomy 8:16 who fed thee in the wilderness with manna which thy fathers knew not, that He might humble thee and that He might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; — no mention of quails but manna only.

Joshua 5:12 And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. — surely this incident would include the quails if quail arrivals had occurred throughout the forty years in the wilderness; also no mention of the ceasing of quails before entering the Promised Land but manna only.  

Nehemiah 9:20 Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not Thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. — no mention of quails but manna only. 

Psalm 78:24 and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. — again, no mention of quails but manna only. 

In the New Testament, no mention of quails were ever mentioned. Only manna were mentioned a couple of times. However there is only one Scripture in the Old Testament that has quails in it and that it maybe of interest to take a closer look:

Psalm 105:40 The people asked, and He brought quails and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. — The people asked [grumbled, lusted] for fresh, and God brought quails but satisfied them only with the bread of heaven. The “bread of heaven” is manna. Again no mention of quails to satisfy them, but they were satisfied only manna from heaven. The quails were not from heaven.

John Gill, however, thought the quails appeared twice. He commented on Psalm 105:40: “the people of Israel asked flesh of the Lord, and he gave them quails; which he did twice, first at the same time the manna was first given, Exodus 16:13, and some years after that a second time, when the wrath of God came upon them and slew them while their meat was in their mouths, Numbers 11:31.”

Regardless of the quails appearing once or twice, the story of the quails is about a contemptuous, a wicked and a lusting people, offering no thanksgiving to Him that fed them, thus deserving a death penalty by a flaming fire from the Lord. Whether it was a one-off event or twice it wouldn’t make a difference. All these bad attributes mentioned above brought about their downfall, a lesson they needed to learn to be content, be humble and be thankful with having manna for the rest of their forty years wandering in the desert.

Besides flouting and stigmatizing the Rabbinic understanding of evening (erev), Fred Coulter also redefines what morning (bôqer) is in Genesis 1:5 And the evening (erev) and the morning (bôqer) were the first day. Such a day is a full 24-hours day. And this 24-hour day is divided into evening  (erev) and morning (bôqer), each could only be a 12-hour period. The full extent of time for evening (erev) is from noon to midnight; and the full extent of time for morning (bôqer) is another 12-hour period, from midnight to noon.

~~7~~

Up to Chapter 7 of Fred Coulter’s The Christian Passover, we can see the author had quoted a lot from Everett Fox’s translation and from the Schocken Bible. And both sources translate boqer as “until sunrise” or “UNTIL DAYBREAK,” (pg 71) or “beginning at the crack of dawn,” (pg 77). 

Flashback to Chapter 6, Fred Coulter wrote:

These two key verses must be kept in mind: “…And none of you shall go out of the door of his house UNTIL SUNRISE….And the children of Israel went away and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron; so they did” (Ex. 12:22, 28). (Pg 64).

The Schocken Bible conveys the directness of the command even more emphatically and pinpoints the exact time that they were permitted to leave their houses: “…Now you—you are NOT to go out, any man from the entrance to his house, UNTIL DAYBREAK” (Ex. 12:22, SB). (Pg 65).

And this is repeated in Chapter 7:

God strictly forbade any Israelite to leave his house until sunrise.  The Schocken Bible conveys the precise meaning of the Hebrew word boqer, showing the exact time at which the children of Israel were permitted to leave: “Now you—you are not to go out, any man from the entrance to his house, UNTIL DAYBREAK” (Ex. 12:22, SB). ( Pg 71)

Morning, or boqer, does not include any part of the night, or lailah. Boqer begins with the first light of dawn, just before the sun rises above the horizon. Nowhere in Scripture is there any indication that boqer is “long before sunrise” or “the latter portion of the night.”  The Scriptures never refer to the dark hours after midnight as boqer, or “morning.” (Pg 78)

So who is Everett Fox, since he is greatly admired by Fred Coulter? And who are behind the Schocken Bible? Since Fred had quoted principally from Fox’s translation and the Schocken Bible we’ll take a deeper dive to find out more. Aren’t you curious? I am sure we all do.

Everett Fox spent years at Brandeis University as a college student, majoring in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. He is the husband of Jewish educator, Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox (a Jewish feminist), yet he is described, at best, as a conservative Jewish scholar.

Although he studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) of America in New York for only one and a half years at the Seminary, the influence from the reform-minded Seminary had a deep impact on him, as evidence showed in his translation of the Bible, published by Schocken Books. And they all teamed up to publish the Schocken Bible (described as an offshoot of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation), from which Fred Coulter quoted extensively.

The JTS seminary was started by Rabbi Zecharias Frankel (1801-1875) who was a leading figure in mid-19th Century German Jew. Known both for his traditionalist views and the esteem he held for scientific study of Judaism. Frankel was, ironically, at first considered a conservative within the nascent Reform Judaism Movement. 

The Reform Judaism Movement, or Reform Judaism, or sometimes just the Reform Movement advocates that Jewish laws are not static, but rather have always developed in response to changing conditions. In his endeavour, Frankel amassed scholarly support which showed one must be open to a changing environment and developing Judaism in the same evolving fashion that the law should be reinterpreted, and as a way of restoring meaning to modern life.

Although the Jewish Theological Seminary of America was alleged to be a product of the Reform Movement, it claimed to be “a new rabbinical school” in New York City.

There were power struggles between the two, but eventually Reform Judaism gained ground as the Seminary developed a new movement known as Conservative Judaism. This conservatism may not sound conservative — traditionalist, orthodox, conventional — but Reform Judaism were just only taking place at a slower pace. Nevertheless the Jewish Theological Seminary became the primary educational and religious center of Conservative Judaism. 

The central theme for the Conservative Movement is that Jewish Law shouldn’t be regarded as static, but “to reignite a fresh religious insight,” that Rabbinic Judaism be regarded as non-binding and that individual Jew should be regarded as autonomous, and that our perception of Judaism “should incorporate openness to external influences and progressive values” as the years unfold. Concurrently, examining Jewish history and rabbinic literature through the lens of academic criticism, it maintained that these laws were “always subject to considerable evolution, and must continue to do so.”

Thus from the beginning in the 1970s, the topic of women’s ordination was regularly discussed at JTS. A special commission (which consisted of 11 men and three women) was established by the chancellor of the Seminary to study the issue of ordaining women as rabbis. After years of discussion, the JTS faculty voted to ordain women as rabbis and as cantors in 1983.

The first female rabbi to graduate from the school (and the first female Conservative Jewish rabbi in the world) was Amy Eilberg, who graduated and was ordained as a rabbi in 1985. The first class of female rabbis that was admitted to JTS in 1984 included Rabbi Naomi Levy, who later became a best-selling author and Nina Beth Cardin, who became an author and environmental activist. Erica Lippitz and Marla Rosenfeld Barugel were the first women ordained as cantors by JTS (and the first female Conservative Jewish cantors in the world). They were both ordained in 1987.

Since March 2007, JTS has accepted openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual students into their rabbinical and cantorial programs. This is to uphold the Seminary’s non-discrimination policies for their new founded admission policy, without taking a stance on same-sex unions. JTS marked the first anniversary of the change with a special program.

Since then, special programs were established to recognize the pluralism in the student body. In April 2011, JTS held a Yom Iyyun, or day of learning, about LGBTQ issues, and their intersection with Judaism. Joy Ladin, a transgender woman who teaches English at Yeshiva University, gave a talk about her life. Other programs included creating welcoming communities, and inclusive prayer, among others. It was sponsored by other Jewish social action groups to ensure that all other queer individuals are  included in all sectors of Jewish life. 

Ladin has described her girlhood intuiting at a young age, viewing her assigned male identity as “false” as a child. At age eight, she began calling herself a “pacifist” in order to avoid combative play and athletics.

She received her PhD from Princeton University in 2000, her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995 and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1982. In 2007, Ladin received tenure at Yeshiva University, and thereafter announced her gender transition. In consternation, the Yeshiva could only place her on 18 month paid leave, but with the aid of lawyers from Lambda Legal, Ladin returned to work at Yeshiva University in 2008.

Since its birth, Reform Judaism had given themselves a new challenge. In an effort to avoid what they perceived as “bondage to Judaism” the Bible has to be reinterpreted in a different way from what the Rabbinic Orthodoxy believes.

Thus the Hebrew term ben ha arbayim is reinterpreted as between the setting-times and erev as dusk. And bôqer, which Orthodoxy defined as the time after midnight to noon, is redefined and restricted to daybreak or sunrise. So Passover and the Exodus were redefined to recapture the spirit of the ancient Samaritans, a spirit that persistently looked at Jewish laws and issues not from a static viewpoint, but from an evolving angle.

Biblical and non-Biblical history has recorded a couple of evolving reinterpretations at various times to suit a new social and political environment, each has its own axe to grind:

(1) King Jeroboam — Being anointed King of the Northern Kingdom he quickly felt he needed a new place of worship, lest his subjects could be influenced to pledge their allegiance back to the Kingdom of Judah based on Jerusalem. For the convenience of his subjects, he chose two places: Bethel and Dan. And to differentiate from Jerusalem’s feasts, he moved the Feast of Tabernacles to the eighth month. Also, he made himself the high priest, whose action drove most of the Levites and others in the priesthood south to the Kingdom of Judah.

(2) The Samaritans — After the Shalmaneser king of Assyria had taken the Ten Tribes into Exile, he took the surrounding heathens to resettle the land. But lions plagued the new settlers, so they needed a priest from the previous populace to come and teach them how to worship the God of the land. Having secured a returning priest, the new settlers “feared the Lord, but served their own gods, after the manner of the nations who carried them away from thence” (II Kings 17:33). 

(3) Sanballat the Horonite — He was a Samaritan governor and was a chief opponent of Nehemiah and Ezra, and who, with some Jewish allies, constantly fought against Jerusalem and the teaching of Ezra. Failing to infiltrate Jerusalem in the rebuilding Temple activities, he sought consent from the Persian Court to build a similar temple on Mount Gerizim as Nehemiah had done in Jerusalem. And he had one of the grandsons of Eliashib, the high priest in Jerusalem, made a high priest in Mount Gerizim. He was Manasseh, who married a daughter of Sanballat, and was dispelled from Jerusalem for not keeping his lineage pure (Nehemiah 13:28). The Mountain Gerizim was inserted into the Pentateuch to make the new mountain under their control as God’s sacred mountain.

(4) The Sadducees — the Sadducaic sect claimed they drew their name from Zadok, the first high priest of Israel to serve in the First Temple, with further claims they were the “sons of Zadok,” descendants of Eleazar, son of Aaron. Many of the Pharisees were also priests and both participated in the Temple and in the Sanhedrin, so there were intense rivalries battling each other for centuries. The Boethusians and the Herodias had strong blood ties and were close compatriots of the Sadducees.

(5) The Karaites — Anan ben David (715 – 795 or 811?), a nasi, a prince, from a family of exilarchs, the leaders of Babylonian Jewry, was the founder of the Karaite movement. His followers were, at first, called Ananites, but adopted Karaism as their movement. They rejected the Oral law as divinely inspired and because many of their other beliefs were similar to the Sadducees, some claimed they were descendents from them. Nehemia Gordon is a prominent Karaite today among English-speaking audiences.

(6) Reform Judaism — Abraham Geiger (1810 – 1874), a rabbi in Germany,  was considered the founding father of the Reform Movement. Emphasizing Judaism’s constant development along history and universalist traits, Geiger sought to reformulate a new form of Judaism in what he regarded as a religion compliant with modern times. And so he did, splitting Judaism further in varied forms: Reform, Conservative, Progressive, Liberal, Humanistic and Reconstructionist.

(7) Church of God Communities — together with the Church of God, Seventh Day, the Seventh-Day Adventists came from the teachings of William Miller (1782 – 1849), especially the need to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. Next came Herbert W Armstrong who started the Radio Church of God in 1933 (renamed Worldwide Church of God in1968), and Ambassador College in 1947. Following his death in 1986, the church and the college collapsed, and now a couple of its splinters remain, known collectively as the Church of God Communities.

But here our concentration is on the (6) Reform Judaism for the moment:

The Orthodox or Rabbinic life faced many challenges since the Industrial Revolution and were subjected to numerous scrutiny among the majority of Jews living in the diaspora at large. And soon their claim as sole traditional theological authority to Torah Law and practice were not sustainable over time. This gave rise to demand for changes and reforms in various guises —  a stiffnecked people adding sin to sin, a rebellious and lying children —  all ending with a consuming fire. Thus says in the Sacred Text:

“Woe to the rebellious children,” saith the Lord, “that take counsel, but not of Me, and that cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sin to sin . . . ⁹ that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord”  (Isaiah 30:1,9).

 And the Lord said unto Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people.¹⁰ Now therefore let Me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them” (Exodus 32:⁹).

“Understand therefore this day that the Lord thy God is He who goeth over before thee as a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 9:3).

Could this wrath of “a consuming fire” that were destined for other people in ancient times be turned around in our modern era toward the CoG Communities by the same Lord? And could it “begin at My sanctuary?” (Ezekiel 9:6). We’ll see as we investigate this question further in future critiques.

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Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (c)

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

The Christian Passover What Does It Mean? When Should It Be Observed—the 14th or 15th? 

The Critique continues:

Chapter 5

Exodus 16 begins with an account of the journeying of the children of Israel from Elim to the Wilderness of Sin, where they murmured for want of bread, Exodus 16:1, when the Lord told Moses that he would rain bread from heaven for them.

The issue in this chapter is mainly about God providing food for the children of Israel while they were travelling to the Promised Land. The test was the sixth day, where they were to gather twice the amount of manna needed for that day and the following Sabbath where no food would be provided. 

The topic on the manna and problems raised in Exodus 16 are never about how to define what evening (erev or ben ha arbayim) is, as Fred Coulter alleges, but about those Israelites who gathered too much food, except on the preparation day, who found their collection bred with worms or rotted.

To repeat this focus, this chapter (Exodus 15) isn’t about how to define what erev or ben ha arbayim mean, but about preparing for a double portion for the Sabbath; and those that went out on the Sabbath couldn’t find any. The subject matter was about preparation and keeping the Sabbath, a concept that God had to teach them by way of practical example.

God promised in Exodus 16:¹¹ And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, ¹² “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak unto them, saying, ‘At evening (ben ha arbayim) ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

What is the true meaning of the Hebrew phrase ben ha arbayim? The traditional Jewish interpretation defines it as the time from shortly after noon until sunset. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has accordingly translated ben ha arbayim as “afternoon” in the Passover command in Exodus 12:6. He has done the same thing in Exodus 16:12: “I have heard the complaints of the Israelites. Speak to them and say, In the afternoon [Hebrew ben ha arbayim], you will eat meat and in the morning, you will have your fill of bread….That evening [Hebrew ba erev], a flock of quail came and covered the camp” (Ex. 16:12-13, The Living Torah). (Pg 40)

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, an American Orthodox Rabbi, was correct in the above definition. “Ben ha arbayim” is defined as the time “after noon until sunset.”

These Orthodox Jews had survived the Jerusalem AD 70 inferno simply because they rightly bore the Oracles of God that God had committed unto them (Roman 3-14). But the Sadducees, along with their perverted teachings would be deemed unworthy of any value, perished in that judgement!

The evening in Exodus 16:12 is ben ha arbayim but to Fred Coulter, he redefines it as a very short period of time, “between sundown and dark, a period of about an hour or so.” Words in the Scriptures shouldn’t be redefined, but Fred Coulter, revived by a Sadduciac conviction, seems able to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

And Fred wrote in Chapter 5, pages 40 and 46:

We do not need to rely on the traditions of rabbis and on scholars who follow them.  There is a valid, Biblically based, chronologically sound, conclusive way to determine the true meaning of ben ha arbayim.  God has preserved this knowledge for us in Exodus 16.  By examining the context and chronological order of the events that are recorded in Exodus 16, we will be able to determine the exact point in time at which ben ha arbayim begins. (Pg 40)

Now it was AT SUNSET [Hebrew ba erev] a horde-of-quail came up and covered the camp…” (Ex. 16:13) (Pg 46)

The Scripture isn’t a dictionary, but Fred advocates erev is a transition of 3 to 5 minutes of one day to the next, perhaps half in the new day and the other half in the previous day (Pg 36-39).

The truth is, at “evening” (ben ha arbayim) ye shall eat flesh. At ben ha arbayim, the flesh arrived during the first evening, or during the time “after noon” but before nightfall. This is done during the day where there is light, from Noon to sunset. The bread arrived during the next morning where there is also light.

The Hebrew phrase ben ha arbayim has been used 11 times in the Bible but it has never been used for the beginning of a Sabbath, weekly or annual, or a beginning of a day in which case erev (which would be the second erev) is used. “Between the two evenings” is an idiom meaning “between the beginnings of the two evenings,” or the “between the eves of two evenings.”

The first evening is right “after noon . . .til nightfall.” The second evening begins at nightfall till midnight. This second erev is one that begins a day, a Sabbath.

The problem is how could the Israelites eat the quails within the hour and a half after it had just arrived after dark? And here is Fred’s definition: “Between the time that the sun is below the horizon, no longer visible, and total darkness.” Yes, all the gathering, killing, cleaning and cooking within such a time constraint after dark?

The answer lies in the first part of Exodus 16:5 “And it came to pass . . .” [וְהָיָה֙] indicates a lapse of time had passed. How long the time had passed, it wasn’t given. It could be a day, it could be a few days, or it could even be a gap of 430 years apart as expressed in Exodus 12:41. And this phase had been used numerous times in chapter 16 alone (verses 5, 10, 13, 22, 27), which means, there are numerous lapses of time for this chapter. 

Elsewhere “And it came to pass . . .” occurs 396 times in the KJV.  But when the “and” is excluded [i.e. “it came to pass . . .”] this phrase exploded to 2,204 times.

In short, in most contexts, this phrase “and it came to pass” means “and when the appropriate time came,” or “and when the time came,” or “and it shall be.”

Do not be mistaken, the Bible isn’t a dictionary, neither does it have an appendix which might elaborate on what a word means. Sometimes a verse could hint what a word means, but more often than not, it assumes the readers already know its meaning. 

Most of these Hebrew words and meanings were already known orally when Moses wrote them down, and later some of these knowledge and commentaries were written down into what is known as the Talmud. To say that erev is a transition of 3 to 5 minutes from one day to the next is not only misguided, but foolish. Pure foolishness!

It was a concept that originated and pioneered from those who didn’t have any oral traditions — they were cut off from the mainstream although these misguided were also serious about studying the Scriptures. These misguided concepts originated first from the Samaritans, who then infiltrated the Jewish community and these were known as the Sadducees.

The Scriptures cannot be broken, and often in the Scriptures, it was written to conceal a mystery, but the honor of serious Biblical students is to search out a mystery (Proverbs 25:2). And that searching out could only come from their Oral traditions, which says “between the two evenings” is a period of time between the first phase of erev when the sun had passed noon at its zenith to the next phase of erev following sunset. 

Chapter 16 of Exodus has a timeline of what happened during the seventh day, the Sabbath, and Fred Coulter alleged the time was the evening after sunset. He wrote:

The account in Exodus 16 explicitly tells us that God promised to provide meat for the people at sunset. In Verse 13, we read that God fulfilled His promise at that exact time: “And it came to pass AT SUNSET [Hebrew ba erev, the sunset ending that Sabbath], that the quails came up and covered the camp…” (Pg 46).

Note the start of verse 13 “And it came to pass . . .” as how long has passed wasn’t given — it could be a day, it could be several days. As stated above, it simply means “and when the time came.” Second, how often these waves of quails came wasn’t given, but one thing is certain — the story of the quails wasn’t used to teach the Israelites about keeping the Sabbath, only the story of manna did.

The Scriptural account makes it absolutely clear that the quail arrived at ba erev, or sunset.  Then the quail covered the camp; that is, they were sent by God into the camp of Israel, not outside the camp.  This event was another miracle of God.  To fulfill His promise, God instantly created the quail and caused them to fall into the camp.  Apparently, when the quail came, they literally fell out of the sky onto the camp grounds, and on the tents, which made gathering them a very easy task. (Pg 47).

Just a paragraph earlier, Fred Coulter noted: 

When God promised to provide meat for the children of Israel, He said that they would be able to eat the meat “at dusk,” or ben ha arbayim.

That’s right: the Hebrew used is ben ha arbayim (Ex 16:12) which for this case is also the same time as erev (Ex 16:13). The only time the two phrases coincided is when erev is the first erev (see illustration above). That’s right, ben ha arbayim, normally a six-hour period, is also the first erev. Both terms mean, “after noon and until nightfall” not dusk. 

Second the Scriptures give a different picture after the quails arrived. In verse 13, the Scriptures were silent when the next wave came. Again, it “and it came to pass” could be a day later, or it could be after several days. No details were given but other Scriptures commented that the gathering of the quails was so great that the catch could last not just a week or two, but a whole month’s supply, as testified in Number 11:18-20:

Numbers 11:18 ‘Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow, and ye shall eat flesh. For ye have wept in the ears of the Lord, saying, “Who shall give us flesh to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. ¹⁹ Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days, ²⁰ but even a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and it be loathsome unto you, because ye have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, “Why came we forth out of Egypt?”’” — “a whole month” is repeated in verse 21.

³⁰ And Moses got him into the camp, he and the elders of Israel. ³¹ And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on the other side round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. ³² And the people stood up all that day and all that night and all the next day, and they gathered the quails. He that gathered least gathered ten homers, and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp.

Adam Clarke: The people stood up, etc. – While these immense flocks were flying at this short distance from the ground, fatigued with the strong wind and the distance they had come, they were easily taken by the people; and as various flocks continued to succeed each other for two days and a night, enough for a month’s provision might be collected in that time. If the quails had fallen about the tents, there was no need to have stood up two days and a night in gathering them; but if they were on the wing, as the text seems to suppose, it was necessary for them to use dispatch, and avail themselves of the passing of these birds whilst it continued. 

The context of this quail, is that the Israelites already had been given manna and were therefore well supplied with food.

But they demanded meat in addition to the manna, and their insistence on having more than they needed displeased God. He was angry over their rebellion and grumbling and sent a severe plague among the people: 

Numbers 11:33 And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague.

The plague was a disease carried by the quail as a lesson to His people. When God rises up His anger against grumbling and rebellion, it is so that the Israelits could learn to be content. Many Israelites died from the plague and they named the place Kibroth Hattaavah (“The Grave of Lust”). This was to remind them of what happened when in their greed they had grumbled against the Lord:

Numbers 11:34 And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah [that is, The graves of lust], because there they buried the people who lusted.

The catch was an enormous catch and it lasted a month. The Scriptures are silent about any other catch of quails, unlike the manner which came every six days for forty years in the desert (Exodus 12:35). In fact, the story of the quail in Numbers 11 hints strongly that it is a one-off event. The chapter ended with a plague where “the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague,” (v 33). As no mention of the quail’s appearance were ever mentioned hereafter, it seems proper this is a one-off event. 

This was God’s response to their grumblings:

Numbers 11:4 And the mixed multitude that was among them fell to lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again and said, “Who shall give us flesh to eat? 5 We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; 6 but our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes.” 7 And the manna was as coriander seed, and the color thereof as the color of bdellium.

Excerpts from the Targum is more explicit in their grumblings and punishment:

And the strangers who had gathered together among them demanded with demand, and they turned and wept; and the sons of Israel said, Who will give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we had to eat in Mizraim freely, without (being restricted by prohibitory) precept, the cucumbers and melons, the leeks, onions, and potherbs. But now our life is dried up; there is not anything; we see only the manna, as the pauper who looks upon a morsel (bestowed) by the hands. Alas for the people whose food is bread from the heavens! And so murmured they, because the manna was like coriander‑seed, round, when it came down from the heavens, and when it had been sanctified its appearance was as the likeness of Bedilcha. And the wicked people looked about, and collected, and ground it in the mill. But he who would, bruised it in the mortar, or dressed it in the pot, or made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of cream covered with oil.

And Mosheh heard the people lamenting with their neighbours, who had gathered every man at the gate of his tent and the displeasure of the Lord was strongly moved, and in the eyes of Mosheh it was evil; and Mosheh said before the Lord, Why hast Thou done ill with Thy servant, or I have not found mercy before Thee, that Thou shouldst have laid the toil of this people upon me? Have I made or borne all these people as from the womb? are they my children, that Thou saidst to me in Mizraim, Bear the toil of them with thy strength, as the instructor of youth beareth, until they be carried into the land which Thou hast sworn unto their fathers?

Whence am I to find meat to give to all these people? for they are cry crying to me, saying Give us flesh that we may eat. I am not able to bear all these people, for it is too weighty for me. But if Thou do this with me, to leave all the labour of them upon me, let me now die with the death in which the just have repose, if I have found mercy before Thee, that I may not see mine evil. [JERUSALEM. That I may not see the evil of them who are Thy people.] Then spake the Lord unto Mosheh, Gather together in My name seventy righteous men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be elders of the people, and who were set over them in Mizraim, and bring them to the tabernacle to stand there with thee. And I will be revealed in the glory of My Shekinah, and will speak with thee there, and will amplify the spirit of prophecy that is upon thee, and bestow it upon them; and they shall sustain with thee the burden of the people, that thou mayest not bear it alone. And say thou to the people, Make ready against the morrow that you may eat flesh; because you have lamented before the Lord, saying, Who will give us flesh to eat? for it was better with us in Mizraim. The Lord therefore will give yon flesh that you may eat. You shall not eat it one day, nor two days, nor five, nor ten, nor twenty days; for a month of days, until the smell of it cometh forth from your nostrils, and it become a loathing to you; because you have been contemptuous against the Word of the Lord, whose glorious Shekinah dwelleth among you, and because you have wept before Him, saying, Why should we have come out from Mizraim?

And Mosheh proceeded to the camp, he and all the elders of Israel. And the wind of a tempest went forth, and came violently from before the Lord, so as to have swept the world away, but for the righteousness of Mosheh and Aharon: and it blew over the Great Sea, and made the quails fly from the Great Sea, and settle wherever there was place in the camp, as a day’s journey northward and southward, and at the height as of two cubits; they flew upon the face of the ground, and went upon their bellies, so that (the people) were not wearied while they collected them. And they who had been wanting in faith arose: and all that day, and all the night, and all the day that followed, they gathered the quails; even he who was lame and infirm gathered ten korin, and they spread them abroad round about the camps.

The wicked ate of the flesh, yet offered no thanksgiving to Him who had given it to them: but while the flesh was between their teeth, and not consumed, the anger of the Lord waxed strong against the evil people, and the Lord slew the people with a very great mortality. And he called the name of that place, The Graves of the Desirers of Flesh; for there they buried the people who had desired flesh. And from the Graves of the Desirers the people journeyed to Hatseroth, and they were in Hatseroth.

Exodus 16 is a chapter where the usage of erev and ben ha arbayim is used interchangeably with various events in between. But everything makes sense when erev is deemed as the daylight portion (or the first erev in the illustration) for the Israelites to capture, clean, roast and eat the quails. It would be extremely difficult to do all these four things (gathering, killing, cleaning and cooking) within the one-and-a-half hour period, especially most of the time would be in the dark, more so when they were travelling in the Sinai Desert, and an impossible task when it is winter, on an even shorter interval — “In the winter, ben ha arbayim is approximately 30-40 minutes” (Pg 50).

Exodus 16:⁸ And Moses said, “This shall be when the Lord shall give you in the evening (erev) flesh to eat and in the morning bread to the full, — the erev in this verse could either be a day or night portion of erev when the Lord gave them flesh to eat, but the next few verses indicate it is the first erev (afternoon till nightfall) when the quails’ arrival and eating occurred during the day or light portion of the evening.

¹¹ And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, ¹² “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak unto them, saying, ‘At evening (ben ha arbayim) ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” ¹³ And it came to pass that at evening (ba-erev, the first evening, the daylight portion) the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.

The gathering of manna were to be done on the preparation day, Exodus 16:⁵ And it shall come to pass that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.” This same phase was used during the creation of man in Genesis 1:³¹ And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening (erev) and the morning were the sixth day.  

A full day is a 24-hour period. In Genesis 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. So the full evening (which makes up of two phases of erevs) is a 12-hour period.

On the sixth day, the preparation, the second phase of erev starts at around 6 pm Thursday for a 6-hour period until midnight. Then from midnight until noon is another 12-hour period which we call morning (boqer). The sixth day continues with another phase of erev, from noon to sunset, which is another 6-hour of daylight evening. Altogether they totaled a 24-hour day.

The truth is so easy to understand if we use the Orthodox Jewish definition of these technical words. These words in Hebrew are in the Jews’ native language, it’s their Sacred Text, it’s written within the Jewish culture.

The Orthodox Jews are the custodians of God’s oracles. Many critics have made a habit of stigmatizing them. The infidelity and obstinacy of the Jews could not invalidate the Oracles committed to these Jews. In fact, they were given the Oracles DESPITE their hypocrisies and frailties (Roman 3:1-4). 

What if they don’t believe? Nar, let every man (including Fred Coulter, a misguided Pastor of over fifty years) be a liar and God be true, the Orthodox Jews would still be the custodians. Their claim to the Oracles rests not upon the precarious fidelity of men, but upon the infallible promise of God. This was God’s promise! Ben ha arbayim is the time “after noon and until nightfall.”

Fred wrote further, “The account of these events shows that the 15th day of the second month was, in fact, a weekly Sabbath” (Pg 41). This is another sweeping statement; where could he prove that?

Chapter 5 proves nothing about the above quote. His 15-paged “analysis” goes round and round addressing issues that are imaginary, displaying more of his loose and wishful thinking than any solid exegesis. This reminds me again of what Norman Edwards wrote, as quoted earlier: “. . . and every time he ran into a scriptural obstacle, he wove an elaborate web to get around it—hence the large size of his book, The Christian Passover. Readers frequently accept his arguments, not because they are simply and clearly true, but because proving or disproving his vast amount of writing is an exhausting task that few have the time to complete” (Edwards, Norman: Servants’ News. May/June 2002). 

Below is another example of his floating analysis throughout which could only bring his own demise. Fred wrote: 

And since God Himself said that they would eat flesh during the time known as ben ha arbayim— ”between the two evenings,” or “between the setting-times”—we know without a doubt that ben ha arbayim IS THE TIME PERIOD THAT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS SUNSET. (Pg 47).

The chronological events that are recorded in Exodus 16 clearly define ben ha arbayim— “between the two evenings,” or “between the setting times”— as the time period that immediately FOLLOWS sunset, or ba erev. (Pg 48).

Wow! A touch from Simon Magus. For his magic to work two lamb would be needed to be killed for the Passover during the Exodus; one, within the first 3-5 minutes at sunset for Deuteronomy 16:6 (ba erev; reaffirms in Joshua 5:10) and the other within the next hour or so to satisfy Exodus 12:6 (ben ha arbayim; reaffirms in Leviticus 23:5 and Numbers 9:5).

But only one lamb were selected on the tenth of the first month (Exodus 12:3-5) for Passover. For these Israelites to suddenly sacrifice two lambs, one during erev and the other during ben ha arbayim they would need to perform miracles.

Nar, all Bull Shits! Let’s be reminded of Fred’s own diatribe when he wrote of himself earlier in Chapter One: 

“In order to justify doctrinal beliefs that are not taught in the Bible, many writers and preachers have twisted and distorted the Scriptures to fit their own private interpretations. Whole churches have been subverted by arguments and disputes over words which have not been profitable but have been damaging to faith!” (Pg 13).

And further down on the same page:

False doctrines and misinterpretations are continually being spread because ministers and teachers use the Word of God deceitfully. How diabolical it is to take the Word of God, which is the truth, and misapply it to create a lie! (Pg 13).

Such are false prophets, deceptive workers. It’s Fred Coulter who has 

“twisted and distorted the Scriptures to fit their own private interpretations.” 

“taken the Word of God, which is the truth, and misapply it to create a lie!”

~~~~~

Posted in Passover - Fred Coulter

A Critique of Fred Coulter’s Passover (b)

The Christian Passover What Does It Mean? When Should It Be Observed—the 14th or 15th? 

Fred R. Coulter
Christian Biblical Church of God
Post Office Box 1442
Hollister California 95024-1442

Chapter 3 – 4

Quoted are excerpts from Fred Coulter’s book, The Christian Passover. These excerpts are often in block form, in PINK, indented so as to differentiate it from other quotes or comments. The Scriptures, in RED, must be our primary focus and guide, and often times the Scriptures, which include the Septuagint and the Targum, present concepts very different from what we think!

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

In Chapter 3 and 4, Fred Coulter takes issue of the word evening (h6153 ba·erev), which according to him, is correctly translated as “dusk” or translated elsewhere by other English translations as “twilight.” It is a time period of 3 to 5 minutes, he wrote.

By quoting JPS translation, Fred felt he was right to have a Jewish Publication Society on his side, but he didn’t know that publications from JPS were from a new movement where they call themselves the Reform Jews, and not by the Rabbinic Jews.

More on this later, but in the meantime, we’ll consider the term ba·erev ’ which is translated into English as “at evening” or in some other places ben ha arbayim, translated as “between the two evenings.” Since Strong Concordance allocates both terms as h6153, it indicates both words came from the same root.

However, both words or phrases are used in the Scriptures to describe the timing of the Passover. Below, we’ll analyse their differences:

(1) Exodus 12:6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening (h6153 ben ha arbayim).

A prominent medieval Rabbi Rashi (1040-1105) explains this phase ben ha arbayim in Ex 12:6: Heb. בֵּין הָעַרְבָּיִם From six hours [after sunrise] and onward is called בֵּין הָעַרְבַּיִם, literally, between the two evenings, for the sun is inclined toward the place where it sets to become darkened. It seems to me that the expression בֵּין הָעַרְבַּיִם denotes those hours between the darkening of the day and the darkening of the night. The darkening of the day is at the beginning of the seventh hour, when the shadows of evening decline, and the darkening of the night at the beginning of the night. — in short, this means ben ha arbayim is the time after midday till sunset.

(2) Deuteronomy 16:6 But at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even (erev). Or Exodus 12:18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even (ba·erev, same root word as ben ha arbayim), ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even (ba·erev). — In Orthodox terminology, there are two evenings (erevs), one from the time the sun begins to decline, and the other evening is after the sun has gone down. 

To make this clearer, “between the two evenings” is from the time when the sun begins to incline towards the west, which is from the sixth hour [noon or 12 o’clock] and onwards. It is erevim [“evenings”] because there are TWO EVENINGS, for “between the two evenings” is from the time that the sun begins to decline as one evening, and the other evening is after the sun has GONE DOWN. It is the space of time in between which is meant by “between the two evenings.”

The Orthodox definition of ben ha’arbayim “between the two evenings” makes great sense. It is in between the first phase of erev when the sun had passed noon to the next phase of erev after sunset. Or as another way of expressing it, “after noon and until nightfall.”  Note that “after noon” is a 2-word phase.

Fred Coulter wrote:

In all eleven passages where ben ha arbayim is used in the Scriptures, Strong’s concordance numbers and defines it as #6153, including it with ereb (Chapter 3, The Christian Passover, Pg 23-24, PDF copy).

This is correct, ben (h996) ha arbayim (h6153) occur 11 times, so let’s study them in details:

(1) Exodus 12:⁶ And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

(2) Exodus 16:¹² “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak unto them, saying, ‘At evening ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

(3) Exodus 29:³⁹ The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning, and the other lamb thou shalt offer at evening.

(4) Exodus 29:⁴¹ And the other lamb thou shalt offer at evening, and shalt do thereto according to the meat offering of the morning and according to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savor, an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

(5) Exodus 30:⁸ And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at evening, he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

(6) Leviticus 23:⁵ On the fourteenth day of the first month at evening is the Lord’S Passover.

(7) Numbers 9:³ In the fourteenth day of this month at evening ye shall keep it in his appointed season. According to all the rites of it and according to all the ceremonies thereof shall ye keep it.”

(8) Numbers 9:⁵ And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at evening in the Wilderness of Sinai. According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel.

(9) Numbers 9:¹¹ The fourteenth day of the second month at evening they shall keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

(10) Numbers 28:⁴ The one lamb shalt thou offer in the morning, and the other lamb shalt thou offer at evening,

(11) Numbers 28:⁸ And the other lamb shalt thou offer at evening; as the meat offering of the morning and as the drink offering thereof thou shalt offer it, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord. 

When the Orthodox definition of ben ha’arbayim “between the two evenings” is interpreted as “after noon and until nightfall,” all the pieces from the Passover puzzles fall into place. From the study of eleven cases above, there are five observations:

(1) The commandment to sacrifice a lamb daily in the morning and one in the evening: normally one at 9 AM and another at 3 PM, where ben ha’arbayim is defined as “after noon and until nightfall” (3, 4, 10, 11).

(2) The Passover lamb to be killed on the fourteenth at around 3 PM: (1, 6, 7, 8, 9).

(3) Lighting of the Sanctuary before nightfall, not after nightfall (5).

(4) Quails arriving as food for the Israelites in the “after noon” when there was light to do the catching, cleaning and cooking and not after nightfall (2).

(5) And most importantly, note that NONE of the above ben ha’arbayim were to start a Sabbath, or to start a new day, which would be after 6 PM (sunset, dusk, twilight) or after nightfall.

When ben ha’arbayim is interpreted as “after noon and until nightfall,” there are ample time for killing, cleaning and roasting of daily sacrifice and Passover lamb before nightfall arrives. And Aaron wouldn’t stumble lighting the Sanctuary after darkness had fallen, neither with the Israelites catching quails among nocturnal snakes in the Sinai desert.

~~4~~

Fred Coulter wrote in Chapter 4:

The slaying of the lambs was the first of nine ordinances to be fulfilled on the Passover day. (Pg 33).

Look, Fred Coulter couldn’t even quote his own work accurately. Being so desperate trying to prove some misguided hypothesis he ran too fast that he put the cart before the horse! Caught flat-footed again and again, how could anyone trust his interpretations? Just a reminder of his first ordinances, in case: 1) Select an unblemished male lamb less than one year old on the 10th day of the first month (Ex. 12:3). (Pg 19). 

Also, to make his “domestic” Exodus passover more complete, Fred Coulter shouldn’t forget to include at least two other ordinances that night to his nine already stated: