The Last Supper 2021

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The Last Supper 2021

Post #1

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Passover this year begins at sunset on the 27th of March; which is a Saturday, viz: the pesach lamb is supposed to be dedicated, slain, and roasted with fire Saturday afternoon in preparation for dinner that night in accord with Ex 12:1-21.

This year's Passover is interesting because the beginning coincides with the end of the weekly sabbath; so pious Jews will have to observe two consecutive holy days this year seeing as how Passover itself is a holy day (Ex 12:16 & Lev 23:5-8) and that's regardless of which day of the week it falls on. In other words; the day of the routine weekly sabbath is pinned to Saturday while Passover's special day floats.


FYI: Other floating holy days are Yom Kippur and the Feast of Trumpets which are themselves specifically categorized as sabbaths (Lev 16:29-34 & Lev 23:23-25) implying that any holy day whereupon no work is allowed, regardless of its position in the week, is observed the same as a normal sabbath day. It is very essential to keep this in mind in order to avoid making a mistake when charting the chronology of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

Jesus ate his last pesach the night of his arrest (Matt 26:17-20, Mark 14:12-17, and Luke 22:7-15) whereas the Jews ate their own pesach after Jesus was dead and buried. (John 13:1-2, John 18:28-29, John 19:13-14, and John 19:31)

In other words: Jesus ate his own pesach early, i.e. one night ahead of the Jews' night.

So then seeing as how the Jews are supposed to eat their pesach Saturday night this year; then Jesus, were he to be crucified in 2021, would be eating his last supper Friday night and then crucified and buried Saturday afternoon prior to sunset. In other words: Jesus would be spending his first of three nights in the tomb while the Jews are at home processing their Seders.


OBJECTION: If Jesus had eaten early, then he would've broken the law of the Passover, which is very strict in regard to the date. According to Mark 14:12, Jesus observed the Passover right on time.

RESPONSE: Jesus was a prophet, and always in direct contact with God. He therefore would've been privy to the correct date. I think it's pretty safe to assume that the Jews' religious calendar wasn't all that reliable back then.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

Post #2

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WebersHome wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:52 amJesus ate his own pesach early, i.e. one night ahead of the Jews' night.
Working with that information, it becomes really easy to chart Jesus' three nights in the tomb for the year 2021 in accord with Matt 12:40.

This year Jesus would eat his last supper on Friday night March 26, wherein he would also be arrested; and then next day Saturday March 27 stand trial, be executed, and laid to rest.

So his three nights in the tomb for the year 2021 would be Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday night; with his resurrection taking place early Tuesday morning.


FYI: I've deliberately limited my chart to the three nights Jesus predicted in Matt 12:40 in order to avoid controversy over the placement of the three days.

NOTE: I highly recommend avoiding the impulse to force 24-hour days into the narrative; and instead just let Days be when the sun is up and Nights be when the sun is down.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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WebersHome wrote: Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:00 amI highly recommend avoiding the impulse to force 24-hour days into the narrative; and instead just let Days be when the sun is up and Nights be when the sun is down.
Seeing as how Jesus actually lived in the land of Israel those many years ago, then it is my opinion that he is better qualified to define the hours of day and night back then in his era than anyone in ours.

Accord to him: days were when the Sun is up, and nights were when the Sun is down.


John 11:9-10 . . Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.

This world's light is of course the Sun.


FYI: In the very beginning, God made a distinct difference between night and day on Earth; so that His day on Earth is not a 24-hour amalgam of light and dark; rather, His day on Earth is when the Sun is up, and His night on Earth is when the Sun is down.

Gen 1:4-5 . . God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

Gen 1:14 . . And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night

Gen 1:16 . .And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.

Gen 1:17-18 . . And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.

If only people kept those God-given physical characteristics in mind when working with the days and nights related to Matt 12:40, their calculations would be greatly simplified.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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WebersHome wrote: Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:00 amI've deliberately limited my chart to the three nights Jesus predicted in Matt 12:40 in order to avoid controversy over the placement of the three days.
Some of the controversy is related to one side of the aisle insisting that portions of a day count as a day, whereas the other side of the aisle insists that in order for a day to count as a day, it has to be a whole day.

A preponderance of textual evidence strongly suggests that Jesus Christ's crucified dead body was restored to life during the third day rather than the end of the day.


Matt 17:22-23 . . Jesus said unto them: The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

Mark 9:31 . . He taught his disciples, and said unto them: The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.

Luke 9:22 . .The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Luke 24:5-8 . . In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them: Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again."

Luke 24:21-23 . .We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulcher; and when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

Luke 24:46 . . He said unto them: Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day

Acts 10:40 . . God raised him up the third day

1Cor 15:4 . . he rose again the third day
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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The day that Jesus was crucified coincides with preparation day (John 18:28 & John 19:14) which is the day during which pious Jews prepare for their Seder in accord with instructions per the 12th chapter of Exodus. That's the day when Passover's lambs are slain; but it's not till after sundown that the ritual is finalized by they're consumption.

So then, I do not recommend counting preparation day as one of the three days that Jesus predicted per Matt 12:40 because the Jews' preparation day was the day of his own preparation when he too was slain along with all the other lambs, viz: Jesus didn't become our Seder per 1Cor 5:7 till after sundown.


FAQ: If the ritual isn't finalized till the lambs are consumed: then how does one finalize Jesus as a Passover? By cannibalizing his remains?

A: Well; the difficulty with cannibalizing Jesus' remains is that there are no remains. His dead crucified body was restored to life; and yet according to portions of the sixth chapter of John's gospel, Jesus' flesh must be eaten if people are to have any hope at all of escaping the sum of all fears.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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Instructions given for the original Passover included painting a lamb's blood on the doorposts of people's homes. That step in the procedure was never repeated because all Passovers following the original were for a different purpose.

The original served to protect people from God, whereas succeeding Passovers protect nobody from God because they merely commemorate the original. This is very important.


1 Cor 5:7 . . Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us

Now the point is: it's necessary to somehow apply Jesus' blood in order to obtain its protection.

The original Passover's blood was applied with a brush made of a desert shrub called hyssop. Quite a few of the expositors that I study under are convinced that hyssop symbolizes faith. In a nutshell, the application of Jesus' blood is accomplished by simply believing it's an effective protection from the wrath of God.

And like the original Passover lamb's blood, Jesus' blood has to be applied only once, and from then on its purpose is merely commemorated by a communion service sometimes called the Lord's Supper, a.k.a. the Eucharist.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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John 6:53 . . Jesus said to them: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you drink the Son Of Man's blood, you have no life in you.

In all the years that I was an active Roman Catholic, not once was I given the wine species to drink. The obvious conclusion to draw is that I was dead the entire time.

It gets worse:


John 6:56 . . He who drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him

Jesus abides in his own, not visibly, but invisibly, i.e. via his spirit.


Rom 8:9-10 . . But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness

So then, if transubstantiation effectively conveys Jesus' blood in the wine species per John 6:54, then due to my being deprived of the wine species, not only was I dead, but neither was I abiding in Christ nor he abiding in me, and neither was I his, i.e. not one of Jesus' sheep.

I was on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division during the Cuban missile crisis back in October of 1962. My unit was fully armed and equipped ready to be in the air to Cuba within one hour had President Kennedy given us the green light.

Passover is an excellent time of year for many of us to remember how near we came to eternal suffering at one time or another due to close brushes with death before we were saved.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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FAQ: Why are wafers wrong for the Communion service?

A: Jesus didn't give his men wafers that night; he gave them pieces of torn bread. Wafers are too nice; they fail to speak of the violence done to Jesus' body the next day.

The man that emerged from the three hours of darkness on the cross was so badly injured that even his own mother wouldn't have recognized him had she not been there to see for herself.

Isa 52:14 . . Just as there were many who were appalled at him-- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man, and his form marred beyond human likeness

Did the Romans do that to Jesus? No; Jesus' destruction was the handiwork of his own beloved benefactor.

Isa 53:10 . . It was Jehovah's will to crush him and cause him to suffer

If God would do something like that to His own son; think what He might have in store for folk who mock Jesus' crucifixion, and write it off as a silly fantasy.
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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Luke 22:19 . . He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying: This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.

1Cor 11:23-24 . . I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night 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.

The bread that Jesus served his men isn't specifically identified as either leavened or unleavened. It's translated from the Greek word artos; which basically speaks of ordinary bread; but not always because artos is somewhat ambiguous.

For example Jesus called the sacred bread artos (Matt 12:3-4). Well, for sure that particular bread is not ordinary bread. According to Lev 24:5 it's only ingredient is virgin flour, i.e. the sacred bread was unleavened.

* This is important because the sacred bread wasn't food offered to God, rather food blessed of God and offered to the priests. Well; we can't imagine God offering His priests bread made from fermented dough, rather, bread made from the best and the freshest ingredients. (cf. John 6:26-58)

So we can safely assume that bread described as artos is nondescript; and a pretty weak argument that Jesus and his men ate the wrong kind of bread with their Seder.


FAQ: What constitutes unleavened bread?

A: The essential consideration when undertaking unleavened bread is age.

Given time, fresh dough will spoil on its own without the addition of yeasts and/or starters because all flour, no matter how carefully it's milled and packaged, contains a percentage of naturally-occurring fungi.

Back in the day, there were no sanitary, indoor facilities with which to grind flour; in point of fact, they used stones exposed to the open air so their product was no doubt contaminated with far more fungi than in our day; which means that back in Moses' day-- and in Jesus' day too --there was no such thing as flour containing zero yeasts. It all contained yeasts, more or less, and without refrigeration and there was no practical way to stop fresh dough from fermenting.

Passover is supposed to be eaten with bread made from fresh dough rather than dough that's been allowed time to ferment. Sourdough bread is safe for human consumption, but it doesn't convey a sense of urgency. Fresh dough for dinner bread is the dough of choice when people are in a hurry to get fed and get going.


Ex 12:11 . . 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

Ex 12:38-39 . . And a mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock. And they baked the dough which they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of unleavened bread. For it had not become leavened, since they were driven out of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.

(cf. Gen 18:6 & Gen 19:3)
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Re: The Last Supper 2021

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FAQ: Does unleavened bread for Passover have to be made with only flour and water?

A: To my knowledge unleavened bread for Passover can be made with any ingredients you desire except for one very unacceptable material: fermented dough, a.k.a. starter.

1Cor 5:6 . . Do you not know that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump?

That's actually saying that a little ferment, will cause an entire batch of fresh dough to spoil and thus render it no longer virgin.

I suspect it's for that very reason that God requires the Jews to ensure there is no fermented dough anywhere in their homes before they start making bread for Passover lest they inadvertently contaminate their fresh dough with remnants of an older dough (Ex 12:15 and Ex 12:19). Nowadays some Jews even go so far as to either discard, donate, give away, or sell all their old cookware and buy brand spanking new kitchen equipment for preparing their Passover bread.


FAQ: Is it okay to bake in an oven?

A: To my knowledge, the Bible does not specify a method for cooking unleavened bread. Sarah made hers on a griddle (Gen 18:6). I'd imagine you could even boil it to make dumplings. (Can't boil the lamb, the whole critter has to be roasted with fire: Gen 12:9)

FAQ: What about the size and shape?

A: I really don't think that matters; nor does it matter how the bread is served. Get creative; enjoy your food, and have fun. Passover night may have been grim for the Egyptians but it was a joyous event for the Jews; they were getting out of Dodge free as emancipated people.

FAQ: What's with the bitter herbs? (Ex 12:8)

A: Nondescript sauce or a dip, e.g. John 13:26. Personally I prefer Whole Foods' 365 barbecue flavor, whereas my wife likes Trader Joe's Balsamic Glaze.
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