Easter or Passover?
Tradition or Obedience to the Instructions?
Where do you find Easter in the Bible? If you read the KJV you can find it only in Acts 12:4. If you click the link, you will find that verse is translated as “Easter” only in the KJV; no other translation does that. That is the only place that “Easter” appears in the Bible. There are some people that hold that the KJV is the only true translation of the Bible, and that you shouldn’t trust any other as if the Bible was written in Elizabethan English. I posit that it was originally written almost exclusively in Hebrew, a little Aramaic, and I might give you that a few of the letters in the New Testament may have been written in Greek. That said, we get our English translations of the New Testament primarily from Greek manuscripts—No matter what language we are reading it in, it is always describing a Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish context, never a Greco-Roman one. The Greek word that the KJV translates as “Easter” is πάσχα (pascha) which is defined as: The feast of Passover, the Passover lamb. Of Chaldee origin; the Passover. So, why do Christians celebrate Easter every year when it is not in the Bible?
Easter is frequently also called Resurrection Sunday. The Passover lamb was killed on the 14th day of the first month; Passover is not a resurrection, it is a death. How then can Easter be the replacement for Passover when they are two different things? Consider the first Passover as told in Exodus 12:1-20:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.
“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.
“Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”
Where is Easter in that text? Where is resurrection in that story? The story does talk about how the blood of the Lamb protects from God’s vengeance, a very good thing but no resurrection. Let’s get a little more detail about the Feasts that make up the Passover season in Leviticus 23:4-14:
These are the LORD’s appointed feasts, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times. The Passover to the LORD begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of the same month begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD. For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to hold a sacred assembly; you are not to do any regular work. For seven days you are to present a food offering to the LORD. On the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly; you must not do any regular work.’”
And the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say, ‘When you enter the land that I am giving you and you reap its harvest, you are to bring to the priest a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD so that it may be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath.
On the day you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a year-old lamb without blemish as a burnt offering to the LORD, along with its grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil—a food offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma—and its drink offering of a quarter hin of wine.
You must not eat any bread or roasted or new grain until the very day you have brought this offering to your God. This is to be a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live.
First thing to consider here is that these are not Jewish Feasts. They are the LORD’s Feasts, big difference! The Passover Lamb is sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month. It is eaten after the sun sets on the fourteenth, meaning that it has now become the fifteenth day of the month. Passover is eaten on the fifteenth day of the month. The fifteenth begins the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. This fifteenth day is a High Sabbath. During those seven days, there will be a regular Sabbath (what we normally call Saturday). The day after that Sabbath, the regular one, will be the first day of the week (what we call Sunday). It is on this day that the First Fruits offering is made. Just like your birthday is on different day of the week every year, so the day that the Passover is sacrificed and the day that it is eaten will change from year to year, but the First Fruits of the barley harvest offering is always on the first day of the week. This is important as we shall see later.
Let us now consider what Yeshua/Jesus Himself said about his time in the grave, we can find that in Matthew 12:38-40 (emphasis added):
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
Jesus replied, “A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Common Christian reckoning of this time period has Yeshua/Jesus being crucified, dying, and being buried on Friday, being in the grave on Saturday and rising early Sunday morning before sunrise. If you count partial days, you could find three days in that sequence: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The problem arises in that there is no possible way to find three nights between Friday evening and Sunday morning. Impossible! There is a solution to that problem, for that I will quote a paragraph out of my book Blessings & Curses: if my people… (emphasis and hyperlinks added):
What about the Feasts of Yehovah, His Holidays? Yeshua kept the spring Feasts of
PassoverPesach,Unleavened BreadMatzah, andFirst FruitsYom Habikkurim; He never once celebrated Easter. He kept Shavuot, not Pentecost. In fact, His first coming was to fulfill these very Feasts and He did so to the very day and hour. How did He do that? He was chosen as the Passover Lamb on the tenth day of the first month (Exodus 12:3) when He came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, on Shabbat, as told in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 12. Four days later, on the fourteenth day of the first month, Wednesday in 28CE (Leviticus 23:5, Exodus 12:6), He was executed on the cross at the very time the Passover lambs were being slaughtered on the Temple Mount. He rested in the grave on the fifteenth day of the first month, the High Sabbath that begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzah) as Exodus 12:7 commands. He rose from the dead three days and three nights later, just as He said He would in Matthew 12:40, as the regular weekly Sabbath ended, at sunset, and the first day of the week was beginning. At that moment, He became “the firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:18 NIV). The next morning, on Yom Habikkurim, as the High Priest was presenting the First Fruits offering in the Temple (Leviticus 23:11), Yeshua, as the High “Priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:6 BSB), was presenting His First Fruits offering in Heaven. This happened between the events of John 20:17 and Matthew 28:9 which is why in John’s Gospel, Mary was told to not touch him, but in Matthew the women grabbed his feet; they were not rebuked because between these two events He had gone to Heaven, “Ascended to the Father” (NIV), and presented the First Fruits offering. What was the First Fruits offering that He presented? It was the people that came out of the tombs in Matthew 27:52-53; they are the First Fruits, not Yeshua. Fifty days later, on Shavuot, He poured out the Holy Spirit as Acts 2 confirms.
This chronology has Yeshua/Jesus in the grave for three days and three nights, exactly 72 hours! I wrote earlier about the day of the week that Passover falls on varies from year to year, but the Day of First Fruits is always on the first day of the week. That means that there are only certain years that it is even possible to have that sequence of events play out. 28CE is one of those years.
This sequence of events also confirms that the Last Supper was not the Passover meal. Yeshua/Jesus was the Passover Lamb. He died as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed on the Temple Mount which is how He became the Passover Lamb. The Pharisees prove this when they take Yeshua/Jesus to Pilot’s Praetorium to have Him executed which we can see in John 18:28:
Then they led Jesus away from Caiaphas into the Praetorium. By now it was early morning, and the Jews did not enter the Praetorium, to avoid being defiled and unable to eat the Passover.
Right there they told you that the Passover was to be eaten in the future, that evening, but the Last Supper occurred the night before. And this will blow your mind, at that meal they ate leavened bread, ἄρτον in greek which means: Bread, a loaf, food; From airo; bread or a loaf. It was not unleavened bread, it was a “loaf of bread.” It is correct that the Passover meal must include unleavened bread, but they were eating leavened bread at this meal because the Feast of Unleavened Bread had not yet begun. The Passover meal is eaten just as the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins just after sunset.
Some may counter Yeshua’s/Jesus’ own words in Luke 22:15-16:
I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before My suffering. For I tell you that I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
Of course He would eagerly wish to eat this [coming] Passover with them because that would mean that He would still be alive 24-hours later to actually eat it. It would mean that He wouldn’t have to endure what He was about to go through. That would not be the case, He would be sealed in the tomb before the Feast of Unleavened Bread would begin. He confirmed that He didn’t want to actually do this in Matthew 26:39:
Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”
At the Last Supper, that was not the Passover meal, we are told that He instituted “The Lord’s Supper,” that He created something new. That is not true. The bread and the wine had been part of many meals of the Israelites ever since Abraham and Melchizedek shared that very combination. Abraham taught that and the blessing to Isaac. Isaac taught it to Jacob, and it was passed down through the generations. They had been doing it for 2,000 years at that point in time! Yeshua told His disciples the meaning of what they had been rehearsing for millennia. By all means, keep this within the Passover context; it must stay there as that is what it has pointed to for the last 4,000 years. The story of Abraham and Melchizedek is told in Genesis 14:18-20:
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine—since he was priest of God Most High — and he blessed Abram and said: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
It is only tradition that has a Friday crucifixion and a Sunday resurrection; the Word of God, your Bible tells a completely different story. Also, nowhere in that story are Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, nor Easter Hams (see Leviticus 11). What do those have to do with the death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua/Jesus? Why do we continue with those traditions? Consider what God Himself says about that in Deuteronomy 12:29-30:
When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations you are entering to dispossess, and you drive them out and live in their land, be careful not to be ensnared by their ways after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire about their gods, asking, “How do these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise.”
He says to not do things that He did not command. Do not change His calendar, do not invent your own holidays, do not add Easter eggs, bunnies and hams. He said, “Don’t do it!”
Yeshua/Jesus also has something to say about these traditions in Matthew 15:3:
And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
He’s asking you that question. What is your answer?
Consider another quote from my book:
Let us jump forward in Jeremiah to a story recorded in chapters 42-44. I highly recommend you read it, but I am going to summarize it here. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried many of the survivors off to Babylon leaving only a remnant behind. This remnant approaches Jeremiah and asks him to make an inquiry to Yehovah about what they should do. They say to Jeremiah that whatever he tells them that Yehovah says, that they will do, echoing their ancestors back at Mt. Sinai. Jeremiah agrees. Ten days later, Jeremiah speaks to the people the words that Yehovah gave him. The very short version of the reply was, “Go to Egypt and die, stay here, in the promised land, obey, and prosper.” They accused Jeremiah of lying and said they would not obey; they’re going to Egypt! Jeremiah reminded them about why all this trouble had fallen upon them, about their idol worship, pouring out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven, etc. They were supposed to repent for those things and stay in the land in order to prosper. They refused, arguing that when they were pouring out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven that things were good, their bellies were full, so why would they ever stop. Keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results? Insanity!
They wanted to keep their traditions, “pouring out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.” They refused to hear from God. Is that us? You have now read the true story. Are you still going to celebrate “your own way,” or the way that God commanded? Most will say, “We’re going to Egypt! Pass the Easter ham!” That doesn’t have to be you. Maybe it is this year that you realize that we have gotten it all wrong, that we have been deceived (another chapter in my book). Look at the world around you, it is crumbling. We are at war. Famine is coming because of the lack of fertilizer getting through the Strait of Hormuz. Disease will increase because of no food, no water, and medications that can’t be produced or shipped. The four horsemen are riding (Revelation 6). The book of Revelation is playing out before your eyes. But, go ahead and hunt Easter eggs, eat chocolate Easter bunnies, and devour Easter hams when God commanded us to keep His (not Jewish) Feasts, His appointed times.
Please consider my book Blessings & Curses: if my people…
This book reveals who we are, where we are, and what we can expect in the near future. Those are big claims. Get your copy today at Amazon and test those claims!
Visit the book’s website here: www.blessingsandcursesbook.com
New here? Consider reading the introduction here.
If you found this interesting or thought provoking, please consider subscribing, liking and sharing it. You may also join the conversation in the comment section below.
Nice work, sadly most of Christianity prefers church teachings over the founder of the church. So many doctrines have no connection to scripture !
Most blithely believe they go to heaven when they die.
John, thank you for sharing this with me in your comment on my article.
I agree with you that the resurrection should not be detached from the appointed times of YHWH. Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Shavuot provide the covenant calendar setting for Yeshua’s death, resurrection, and the outpouring in Acts 2. I especially appreciate the emphasis that resurrection belongs with First Fruits rather than with a later Easter framework.
Where I would frame it differently is on the identity of the First Fruits. I would still identify Yeshua himself as the First Fruits because Paul says directly, “Messiah has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” in 1 Corinthians 15:20, and again, “Messiah the firstfruits” in 15:23. So I would be cautious about saying the raised saints in Matthew 27 are the First Fruits instead of Yeshua.
I do think Matthew 27 may serve as a witness or sign that the harvest had begun. But in my framework, Yeshua remains the firstfruits of resurrection life, and those raised ones testify to the larger harvest his resurrection guarantees in God's plan of restoration of humanity.
I also agree that the death of Yeshua belongs in the Passover setting, while the resurrection belongs in the First Fruits setting. That distinction is important. Passover points us to deliverance through death and blood; First Fruits points us to accepted life and the beginning of the harvest. That actually strengthens the point I was making in my article: the empty tomb is not merely the aftermath of the cross. It is the beginning of new creation harvest.
So yes, I agree that First Fruits deserves more attention maybe in another article. I would simply keep Yeshua himself as the First Fruits, with Matthew 27 as a confirming sign of the harvest to come.
Again, thank you for sharing this with me. I always appreciate respectful dialogue.