Passover’s not important anymore, we have Easter and Lent.
But some say COVID 19 was a messenger sent!
And those who missed Passover will miss Pentecost too!
What say you?
Do you know of these things, or just casting in the dark?
There is mystery with God as he stirs the pot.
The waters are troubled, an angel touches down, but what know ye of these things?
I hope, a lot!
There is an awakening.
I’ve never been much of a cook. I mostly just don’t like taking the time for it. Especially when you add “clean-up” in. My specialty has always been breakfast foods. My second specialty is taking cheap can soup and adding celery, mushrooms, onions, cucumber, and rice to make it not so cheap soup. But in this journey of Early Church discovery, I have learned of the “Christian Passover Meal”, also known as the “Welcoming Table”, and my wife and I plan to conduct our first Christian Passover Meal this 30th of March.
None of the Churches I have spent my life going to, holds such a meal. So I guess I got to do it myself. Why our churches are not concerned that Bishop Polycarp, disciple of the Apostle John, defended this practice as a matter of importance, I do not know. Why we are taught so little about the practices of the early church fathers, I do not know and I find it highly suspect! I have learned so much in these studies! Why I am having to do this myself, I do not know.
Therefore, I have chosen to join Bishop Polycarp, and the Church of Smyrna in this practice. Even though I’m sure my knowledge is limited, I believe God is pleased that I’m making such an effort with the knowledge I have been able to glean. And just like God planted the “Tree of Life” and the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” close together in the Garden of Eden; I am doing my best to keep the “Tree of Life” very close too, as I learn this new knowledge.
It turned out to be quite an adventure. Yes, this is a picture of my wife with flour on her nose. I don’t know how she got it there, but it was a good laugh. I thought this was going to be easy to make. It’s basically just flour and water with some olive oil and salt added at the end. But not being much of a cook myself, I did not realize you only have so many minutes to mix and knead the dough, and get it spread out! It ended up being like a race on one of those cooking shows! And I lost! I did not make the time! But I must have been close enough because it still cooked up, thank the Lord!
Part of the Christian Passover Meal is all about family; both personal family, and church. So we decided we would try our first effort at my mom and dad’s, in order to add some variety to their day. They got a kick out my wife and I racing around the kitchen trying to make the time limit, but miserably failing. We had my mom working the timer clock. But all is well that ends well they say, and the Matzah bread came out excellent! Especially the ones we kept the olive oil just a light coating, (like the instructions said). But I like olive oil and tried a heavier coating on a few. The bread lost some of its crispiness and was not as good.
So we continue on our Early Church Journey and with our seven days of unleavened bread we will not starve in the wilderness, although I must admit it’s not real filling. I think my cheap soup will be excellent with it! Yes! Country boy will survive!
However, it still bugs me that I see so little concern from our modern Pastors as to how far we have drifted from the church Jesus started. Have we progressed, found a more excellent way than those directly taught by the Master himself? (I seriously doubt it.) Not when I look around at how much our modern church has in common with the ways of our modern world. I’m not even a Pastor, and it greatly concerns me, so much so I decided to explore on my own if need be. I hope you’re with me on this journey. I hope you’re learning things too. We are ships at sea, powered by the Wind, seeking Treasure Islands, and when we find them, we dig up the treasure and enjoy. May God’s Wind always be in your sails. Amen.
“Fellowship of the White Path” / Grandpa White Feather.
It has been my hope that I’m not taking this journey alone. It has been my hope that when others would see strong evidence, provided by the early church fathers, and confirmed in our Bible, that there would be those stirred from our modern comforts of mediocrity to join in this journey. Jesus walked the Red Path so we could walk the White! Do we feel that? Do we identify and embrace it for ourself? Do we show our love for Him in the same way He showed it for us, by our cross? Are we Americans “blue light special christians”? (small “c” intentional.) Is that good enough for us? Is that what we want to be as we embrace the pleasures of this world?
Why is it so important that Polycarp stood up against the change Rome wanted to bring to the “Christian Passover Supper”? Why is all of this so important? Do we not care that we’ve been sold a weak and sickly cow, instead of a strong and healthy bull? We’ve been told, “Buy into this! This will make you strong in the Lord!” But like Jesus said to the church of Laodicea: “…and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
I did not know I would discover a “Master Key”. God in his wisdom provided a Master Key, and he made it the Lord’s Supper! (How incredibly like God!) Once I saw the change of emphasis that for some reason Polycarp seemed to be so intense and distraught about, everything else began to unfold. I had explored some false rabbit trails that wasted my time, twisted my mind, left me near ready to give up; but when I began trying to understand what Polycarp was so upset about, the MAZE started opening!
The Cross! “By faith Moses when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt…” (!)
And God chose “THIS MAN” (Moses!), to be the one through which the Passover Meal would come about! The choice Moses made, before he was then chosen, is symbolic of everything we are talking about. This is the choice we made at the altar that day we got saved! A choice to leave this world for the greater values of the Kingdom of God! But are we indeed doing this, or have we like so many others… slid with the slight-of-hand?
Let me show you this same shift in another way. It is amazing how many ways this “slight of the devil’s hand” has permeated everything. As in our short-form Lord’s Supper, which as we celebrate the Lord’s Meal, the Passover, has become a Resurrection service on Sunday, we call Easter. In most churches even Peter Rabbit comes to church on that particular Sunday, but that is not the item I’m talking about. Keep your eyes on “the shift”, the slight of hand. (Peter rabbit is just by-product of the magician’s show.)
Did you REALLY understand the supernatural event your Baptism symbolized and testified to the world on that day? Assuming you were even told how important it was for you to get Baptized, and assuming you knew that meant complete immersion in water. I’m sure many of today’s Pastors would argue with me on this, because of the way we have been raised to think, the slight-of-hand; but the emphasis of that Baptism is the DEATH OF THE OLD MAN! Once again, the emphasis is meant to be DEATH! And why is that so important?
You may have been sold the sickly cow of “once saved, always saved”, but that simply is not true. If we thought we were being baptized into an easy ride to heaven, that simply is not true! If we don’t make the same choice Moses made, that resurrection is not yet ours! And this is all vividly shown in the Christian Passover Meal. What we have right now is that cross! The resurrection is future! He that endures to the end shall have it. And yes, nothing will separate us from God’s love. He will always love us even if we prove to be the sinner he has to judge on judgement day. He loves every person alive on this earth, and proved it on that cross when he died for the sins of “the world”! But we show our love for him through a death also, a death to our old man, and a life of sin, a life spent on SELF.
The DEATH is the important thing, because if the DEATH happens, the walking in the NEWNESS of LIFE will be automatic! (By that I don’t mean “easy”, just that it is sure to happen. A good tree will bear good fruit. Agape love.God’s love.) But God knows who we are, and our continual need to embrace a cross, and this only happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. Satan knows he’s got to divert our eyes from the cross, if he is going to pull off his evil magic show. The master of illusion, sucking us in.
ROMANS 6:3 > “Know ye not, that so many of us that were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”
I was baptized at age of twelve, and even at that age, I wish I had been required to sit down with the Pastor and been taught “in detail” what that Baptism was supposed to mean to me, other than an escape hatch from hell. The scriptures go on to say we were baptized into his DEATH, “so that” we could be raised into a “walk” (present tense), that the world would say…Wow! Look at the change! Can you believe Moses has actually left us? He left all the pleasures we Egyptians gave him? He’d rather suffer with those stupid Israelites, who claim to be the people of God? Look at them! How stupid! Obviously our Gods are much more powerful than whoever their God is. Who would want to live like that? He deserves whatever he gets! After we were so good to him!
However…as they say…it is not he who starts a race well…but he who finishes well. I got to say…Egyptians are not known for finishing well in the Bible. And I guess they convieniently would not consider how evil they were being to God’s people, as they were being good to Moses. I’m so glad Moses had a heart to see the truth, and not serve self, even when his personal cost was so high! He lost everything but his life, and barely kept that.
I need to add one more thing before we close. As the Israelites were rushed out of Egypt that Passover night, God was not finished painting US his picture. That painting even goes into the Promised Land and unto David. But the first thing we see is the Israelites trapped against the Red Sea, and Pharaoh in hot pursuit! As I hope you know, the Red Sea became a picture of Baptism immediately following salvation. (As immediate as possible.) But it is a Baptism of DEATH!
Pharaoh and his armies die there, but also the Israelites are not delivered into the Promised Land on the other side, but into the WILDERNESS, where they will receive the LAW! And remember this, because they failed to “die to self” and trust God, the “OLDER GENERATION”, or “THE OLD MAN”, all died in the wilderness! (Except for the 2 who successfully died to self.) The wilderness is a picture of the old man dying! And then there is another “CROSS”-ing, (a 2nd CROSS), a picture of complete surrender, maturity, fullness of Holy Spirit, into the Promised Land. Wow! What a painting! But what has Satan done in his slight-of-hand?
Today…many people think you can skip the wilderness, not die to self, and jump right into the Promised Land, which they picture as a place where they live in milk and honey. (Have you ever studied their life in the Promised Land??? Maybe we need to study in detail, God’s version of milk and honey?)
In Satan’s painting, a perverted image of the real, the wilderness is belittled and lost in all the talk of the Promised Land. Because Satan knows, if he can keep our eyes looking back to Egypt, we will be judged in that wilderness, and never make that second “CROSS”ing. Can it be any more plain?
I really wish more people would comment on how they feel about our modern version of Church. I’m looking more and more at Home Church, Micro-Church. This is a movement that doesn’t seem to be going away, and is growing stronger day by day. I will likely write about what I learn eventually, but my journey still has a lot of “checking” to do. I recently read a whole book on the “Church of Christ”. It did cause me to get a little stronger in defending my faith. But in the end, I still did not see what I’m looking for. (Not that they don’t have something to offer, as today’s churches go, but it still don’t fit what I believe is out there…somewhere!)
I know I’m not the only one having these thoughts about our modern church. But how many of us are actually making an effort to “change”? Learn, seek, and find. I do not know. If the amount of comments I receive on this site is any indication, then I would guess not many. Most are content in our modern mediocrity, or see no real problem. The sickly cow must be blind also. How convienient for the devil. If this article seems hard to you, compare it to our Lord’s words to Laodicea. You’ll find I’m a kitty-cat compared to HIM. Selah.
My journey continues. I think I got a long ways to go, but I’m not giving up, and I’m very excited about the progress I’ve made so far! I’ve seen so much I never saw before. We are doing a Christian Passover Meal at our house this 30th of March, starting at sundown and running to midnight. So far I’m having trouble finding anyone to do it with us. Some of my friends no longer trust me because I left “their” church, and since I have not found another yet. And then other people I know, don’t like the idea of being up so late with their children, and for something they don’t see the importance of anyway. I’m not discouraged because this is my first year doing this, a year for learning, and once I do find a church, it will be with a people who do see the value of such a thing, or I won’t be going there. Next year will likely be different.
I have done much research, study, and writing of all these things in previous articles. So if you have questions about how I got to the place I currently am, I have detailed pretty much every step of the journey. It’s all here if you have a desire to know. Our Lord willing…more to come soon…including our experience in the Lord’s Passover Supper. The Jews believe that night is the most powerful night of all year to be set free from something. Well…I know the name of Jesus is always FULLY powerful…but if something in that night increases my own faith, humility, and obedience? Well, who’s to say?
“Fellowship of the White Path” / Grandpa White Feather.
Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before his baptism in the River Jordan, the same 2nd River Israel had to cross. The Jews spent 40 years! Hhmmmm? (And then a dove decended, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Wow! What a picture!)
Path Without End 