Please scroll down for articles explaining why Passover applies to Christians instead of Easter. The two files, available in both Microsoft Word and PDF, are to help people who are learning to observe Yahweh’s festivals and shed the pagan observances of mainstream Christianity.
Below the documents is an explanation of why Christians ought to be observing these things. If you want to know more, please contact us.
Passover Downloads
The first document is called “The Night He Was Betrayed.” This is a template for observing the night Yeshua was betrayed which is done the night before Passover.
The second document is called New Covenant Haggadah. This is a Passover Seder created for those who believe in Yeshua.
The observances move around on our calendars because they occur on the Jewish calendar.
Yeshua was betrayed the night before Passover therefore the “The Night He Was Betrayed” document is used on Abib 13 at sunset.
Passover is on Abib 14 at sunset, so we use the “New Covenant Haggadah.”
Please contact us if you need help with dates.
Do you believe Yeshua is the Messiah?
If the answer is yes, then you probably need to make some changes.
This is the question that begins our walk. The single most important piece of information available to mankind today is the identity of the Messiah, the Son of Yahweh. Those who accept this have come into life and will escape judgment.
Those who believe Yeshua is the Messiah will attain the first resurrection:
The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1Jn 5:10-12)
Is your faith active?
This is the dividing line between life and death, accepting Yeshua as the Messiah. So it is my hope your answer to the question in the title is “yes.” But after that “yes” things have to change. Knowledge of the Messiah must be followed by action.
Yes, salvation is a gift, but the only way to show that you have accepted that gift is to use it and display it. Imagine if you gave your child a new bicycle as a present. It’s beautiful with shiny chrome and looks like a lot of fun. Your child is now a bike owner. Your child tells you they like the bike and acknowledge it belongs to them. But they never use it. It sits in the garage collecting spider webs and dust. How do you feel? Did they really accept the gift? Technically yes, but if they don’t use the bike then your feelings are hurt and before long you and they forget about it. Perhaps a year passes and you give the bike to somebody else or your child sells it for lack of use.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” (Mat 7:21-23)
This is where the rubber meets the road. Believing Yeshua is the Messiah, the Son of God, means obeying God’s Torah. Yahweh’s will is expressed in the commandments, the Torah. We use this knowledge to gain a closer relationship with Yahweh through the love of His Son. To do that, we have to change our lives to match how they want us to live. And this is the week to begin.
Even if you have believed in Yeshua (Jesus) from an early age, it’s very likely time to make a change and start doing what He and His Father want you to do. And that starts this Tuesday at dusk. (Thursday, April 14th is Abib 13 on the Hebrew calendar.) This is the anniversary of the night Yeshua was betrayed.
‘For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.’ (1Cor 11:23-26)
The bread
Yeshua commanded His followers, which now includes us, to do something specific and something new every year to remember His sacrifice and resurrection. He commanded us to wash each other’s feet, eat bread (leavened), drink wine, and sing a hymn on a particular day each year. I point out that they ate leavened bread here because there is an error in almost all assemblies to have unleavened bread at the Last Supper, what we at our assembly call The Night He was Betrayed. But if you look into the words for bread in the NT, they were eating “artos” which is Greek for normal, leavened bread.
The Greek word for unleavened bread is “azumos” and is used when the NT speaks of the bread eaten at Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. So if you believe Yeshua is the Messiah then you should really be doing what He said to do. And you can start on Tuesday night.
Passover, a command of God
Observing Passover is absolutely something Yeshua and His Father, Yahweh, would have us do. This is a remembrance that traces all the way back to Abraham and Isaac, where Yahweh commanded Isaac to slay his son and then substituted a ram. Then, in the Exodus, Yahweh substituted a lamb for every firstborn in Egypt. Then Yahweh substituted His Son, the Lamb of God, as an offering for all of our sins on Abib 14 in the first century.
Yeshua was crucified on Pesach (Passover) as the Lamb of God. This was to fulfill prophecies and prove He is the Messiah. We need to observe Passover also as a remembrance of what God did for us by giving His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish. So, Friday, April 15th our assembly will be observing a Messianic Passover.
Easter is unbiblical
It is very important to note that nobody in the Bible ever celebrated Easter. Part of doing what Yahweh and Yeshua want us to do is to abstain from unbiblical practices. Easter is a pagan observance of the fertility goddess called Astarte, also called Artemis or Diana of the Ephesians. This goddess is referenced in Acts 19, starting in verse 23, and worshipped with very similar practices as modern-day Easter, in the springtime, when things blossom.
Paul started a riot getting people to stop worshiping this false goddess so we also ought to be very careful with our own observance. Easter became substituted for Passover a couple of hundred years after Yeshua ascended due to, among other things, anti-Semitism. Many believers stopped this observance at the Reformation and we should not be practicing it today. Since we know the truth now, we need to observe Passover but in a fashion that has Yeshua, the Messiah, in His proper place.
Feast of Unleavend Bread
“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1Cor 5:6-8)
Believers in the Messiah are also supposed to observe the Days of Unleavened Bread. This is where we have removed all leavening from our homes and eat unleavened bread, and it begins the day after Passover. Paul wrote to the congregation at Corinth, one with many gentile believers, that they are to celebrate this feast. This congregation was established perhaps a decade after Yeshua ascended. Paul calls them to observe this Torah-commanded feast in such a way they can understand. This is proof the first-century Christians were keeping this feast in honor of Yeshua being the Messiah, so we need to do the same.
Brothers and sisters, if you accept Yeshua and the Messiah, also written as Jesus the Christ, then understand it comes with a life change. The change moves one away from the practices of the world, and into accepting the practices of Yahweh.
This article briefly covers a lot of important topics. It is my prayer that it reaches many and causes them to study, prove these things, and adopt them. For those who already have, let’s rejoice together this Passover season!