Today is 5 days before the first day of Pesach/Passover and the first feast of Passover (next Tuesday, April 23). That feast was when the Lord held His Last Supper with His disciples (John 12:1, 12:12-13; Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7-8). Last month was the church’s timing for Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Pascha/Easter), but I stated I prefer to celebrate those things according to the Hebrew calendar because Christ and His disciples celebrated God’s holidays based on the ancient Jewish calendar, not the church’s calendar.
So I remind you that today would be the actual celebration of “Palm Sunday” when Christ made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem with joyful shouts of Hosanna! and palm branches from the people who welcomed their Messiah King. That was five days before the Passover according to John 12, which by standard math would
NOT fall on a Sunday, because Christ was crucified on a Friday after He was captured the night before, not long after the Last Supper ended
(on a Thursday; see more about Holy Week in The Lord’s Holidays and Sabbaths).
The Last Supper being on a Thursday means that five days before Passover falls on the previous Saturday or Friday after sundown, depending on when you set a day to start (the ancient Hebrew calendar ends a day and begins the new one at sundown while modern calendars end and begin days at midnight). Either way, Christ’s Triumphal entry was not on a Sunday, so the church’s insistence on always making it on Palm Sunday is a twisting of events.
Also today is the 10th of Nissan/Aviv, the first month of the year for God’s people, and this day was when the first actual Passover event happened – when God sent a destroyer to kill all the first born of Egypt (Exodus/Shemot 12:3). It was this night that the last plague of Egypt went through the country to make much crying and laments, so that the next morning, pharaoh and his people urgently rushed the Israelites out. That was how God freed His people from slavery in Egypt.
But for that night, God told His people to spread the blood of a Passover lamb over the doorposts of their houses so that His destroyer would passover their houses and spare their first born (Exodus/Shemot 12:3, 12:7, 12:12-13). That is how the holiday got the name – Pesach in Hebrew or Passover, but what is very important to know is that if a family did not do as God said, the destroyer would have killed their firstborn too. It was not being an Israelite that saved them from the last plague, but obedience to the conditions of His protection.
This point is often missed by believers today, especially Jews and Christians who love to remember and bring up God’s blessings and protections, but fail to realize that most of those blessings, even eternal ones, have conditions.
The New Covenant has its conditions, too, so when you remember Christ was another Passover Lamb who was killed to spare all peoples, remember also to value what God says is complete and true love for Him – to obey His commands which must include removing sin from yourselves
(John 14:15; 1 John 5:3; for more, see True Love - What does it mean to God? and Gems That Prove Destiny, True Love, and Christ Are Real).
And likewise, just as today’s reminder of the very first Passover night's protection from God’s plague included to act by His command, to spread the lamb’s blood over their doorways, remember that today, too, in God’s plagues for mankind which are now going throughout the earth, but will be much worse at the end, you must also act in His calling His people out of that Harlot Babylon I’ve been speaking of these past years
(see God’s Alarm for more). Leave your corrupt institutions of faith and their false teachings, for the times are urgent.
For a final reminder, God considers Pesach/Passover an important and “mandatory” holiday for His people. He made it a point to coincide the last days of Christ with Passover and in the Law of Moses, it was one of three national mandatory holidays; Shavuot/Pentecost and Sukkot/Tabernacles were the other two. God said of these holidays, “Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast to Me” and explicitly said all males had to attend (Exodus 23:14-17, 34:23-24; Deuteronomy 16:16-17; 2 Chronicles 8:13). Combined with the knowledge that AFTER Christ returns, Sukkot/Tabernacles will also be mandated for all peoples (Zechariah 14:16-19), we should hold God’s ancient holidays with importance and should try to observe ones that are more important to God.
