Adam was supposed to live forever. When he was created, God knew the dilemma that faced Him; If God wanted a real being that could think for itself, that would mean creating a being that possibly would not love God back.
What would you do in this situation?
If you understand what God was (is), then you realize that He was unique, and was unable to duplicate Himself. You might ask, “Well can’t God do anything?”
The answer to that question is, “No.” God can’t do ‘anything’.
Before you have a problem with that, just bear with me a moment:
See, God IS everything.
Prior to anything created, there was only God. He was everything.
Being everything, He could not duplicate Himself into another ‘everything’. You can’t have two ‘everythings’. (“Everythings” even violates my spell-checker.) His only ability was to create something within everything.
While I won’t speculate on all of the time or things or beings that He may or may not have experimented creating, it’s obvious that He concluded that IF there were going to be other beings, those beings had to be able to make their own decisions, or they would just be fake.
So God created a companion, and gave him the God-like ability to think for himself – To make his own decisions just like God Himself was able to do.
God was aware of the strong possibility that this new friend would ultimately choose to be his own god, and so He formulated a ‘contingency plan’, but He still had hope that He would never need to implement it.
God called His new friend ‘Adam’.
He saw that Adam suffered from the same loneliness that God Himself suffered from. However, Adam, not being the ‘Everything’ that God was, was not able to create for himself. Adam couldn’t make his own non-fake being.
To fix Adam’s loneliness, God separated part of Adam, and made him into two parts - Adam-A and Adam-B. Separate, they would not understand the fulfillment that God longed for with them, but together they would make one person – One complete Adam.
The hope was, that they would then understand how God wanted to be one with them.
Then came sin:
Life was good for a while, but then sadly, and perhaps inevitably, the complete A+B Adam decided that he knew better than God, and chose to take control over his own well being, choosing to be god himself.
This broke God’s heart. Our imaginations are not advanced enough to fully understand exactly how hard this pain hit God, and our understanding of the universe limits our ability to comprehend the entire ramifications of this event.
God had warned Adam that choosing to try to take control over his life, would ultimately result in him dying. This was actually a two-fold warning; Adam would not only die physically, but he would be severing the oneness that he had with God.
Now I personally believe that prior to Adam making this choice, he existed as a kind of pseudo-flesh being – part spirit, and part flesh. His choice to eat of a particular kind of fruit, didn’t come with the understanding that the fruit had the ability to alter his physical existence.
The moment it entered his body, he became fully physical, and he immediately had all of the desires that the physical body sought after. He became as the animals, fully physical, and lacking the spiritual composure that he had prior to making this choice.
Every action now became an attempt to gain and secure his own happiness. Without the knowledge and understanding that God has, Adam, like every one of us, are blindly shooting in the dark hoping that our actions will ultimately bring us happiness.
So what does all of this have to do with Passover, or with sacrifice?
As I said, God had a contingency plan, even though He had hopes that He would never have to implement it.
Adam was now ‘spiritually dead’, and in time, would also die physically.
The betrayal that he induced by his actions, ‘killed’ his relationship with God. Just like cheating on a spouse, it could not be undone.
If you think about what it would take for a spouse to rebuild trust after being unfaithful, probably the most significant action would be to destroy the replacement relationship - To ‘die’ to the external relationship person, and to live solely to the other half of your original complete-Adam.
The very moment that the fruit touched the lips of Adam, he changed the state of being that everyone after him now exists in. Once he was fully flesh, he could not go back being part spirit. That type of being was extinct.
We are all now subject to the lusts of the flesh, mainly sexually, but also in all of our pursuits – food, dominance, recognition, respect, etc.
We will all die now also.
Even if, by our own free choice, we make God in charge of everything in our lives, we are still that fully-flesh being now, and because flesh dies, we are subject to death.
But none of us do that. None of us put God in charge of every decision in our lives from our birth, and keep Him there our entire lives.
At some point, usually early in our lives, we all decide that we know what’s best for ourselves and reject the guidance of God, choosing to be our own god.
We ALL would have done the same thing Adam did, and would have severed our relationship with God to seek after our own flesh. Even in the slightest little thought, all of us have chosen our own wisdom over God’s. Most, if not all of us, have done so multiple times, even countless times.
So not only are we all fully-flesh, and subject to death, but all of us are guilty of, at one time or another, cheating on God, and killing our relationship with Him.
Just like the cheating spouse, to even attempt to fix the relationship that we have destroyed with God, we all need to put our relationship with the cheating member (the flesh) to death.
We chose the flesh over God. You could also say that we chose the ‘mind’, or our own rationalizing, over God.
This means that to make things right, we need to die to this flesh.
Self-Sacrifice. Suicide.
Now God knew that if everyone killed themselves trying to make things right, that there would be nobody left on Earth. So He said that you could substitute yourself with what you deem most valuable.
When human life was still a new thing on Earth, man’s first born son seemed to be the most valued thing to him.
God’s most valued thing at the time was probably Adam – His first created, fully free-willed individual. His first ‘born’ so to speak. (Don’t get too upset over that statement. Just consider it in context for a moment. I’m trying to show that the origins of sacrifice began with the symbolism of Adam being God’s first, and how that relates to man’s first born sons. Adam kind of took himself from God by his disobedience. You could say that Adam sacrificed God’s first, forever-living, spirit-flesh creature. This could not be undone or fixed. Adam couldn’t go back to being a spirit-flesh creature, and the only thing that would remotely convince God that Adam was truly repentant, would be for Adam to sacrifice his first.)
But God extended even more mercy, and said that instead of sacrificing our first born sons, we could take the next valued thing to us, that would still represent our flesh.
At the time, this was usually the nicest, fattest, biggest animal in a herd or flock. A vegetable farmer may have been able to substitute his largest and most beautiful pumpkin, but short of choosing the most beautiful (as was probably in the case of Cain), would not really be saying that you are sincerely turning over control of everything back to God.
Thus, the sacrifice of animals as a substitute for our disobedience (sin), became a traditional way for us to at least try to get back to the relationship with God that had originally intended.
Abraham:
Now Abraham was old, and so was his wife, and she was never able to have children. However, God told Abraham that he would not only have a son, but that he would be the father of an un-numerable family.
Against all odds, Abraham believed God, and he had his son.
Years later, God asked Abraham to follow the tradition and make a sacrifice. Testing Abraham, God said to go up to the alter, but only take your son.
The substitute for Abraham’s guilt and debt was his son, but there wasn’t any substitute, as they went up the hill.
Abraham knew his guilt in being his own god in the flesh, and knew he was worthy of death. He knew that God was having him substitute his son – The promise of a huge family, for his own guilt. He didn’t understand why, but he trusted that God was righteous in requiring this sacrifice, put God in charge of his decision making, and obeyed.
God of course, didn’t let Abraham go through with it, and provided a ram (sheep) to substitute for his son, who went on to father a great family. God actually called this family His “First born son”. (Exodus 4:22)
Egypt:
Abraham’s family got themselves into a mess, and ended up as slaves in Egypt. This wasn’t what God wanted for them, but God would use the situation as an example.
It was time to give the world a vision of what was to come. God wanted His family, Abraham’s family, to be a pure-hearted people. He wanted to separate them from the Egyptians, not only physically, but also in their righteousness.
God could have just made all of the Egyptians to go to sleep, and walked His family out of Egypt to safety, but He wanted to show both the Egyptians and His family, that He was the ‘one and only’ god.
Now the Egyptians were not a righteous people. They had enslaved the Jews, and were brutal to them. When the king saw that the population of the Jews was getting larger than the population of the Egyptians, he started killing off any baby that was born male.
So God brought all kinds of plagues on the Egyptians. He was only dishing out justice for what the Egyptians had already done. The last plague that He would bring on them, was to kill all of the first born sons in all of Egypt.
Now Abraham’s family, had not been exactly righteous either, and like all those before them, and all of the population of the world, were guilty of trying to be gods themselves, cheating God out of that role, and doing whatever their imaginations guided them to do, which in most cases, was ultimately destructive. Everyone was guilty. In all actuality, God would have been righteous in destroying every human being from the face of the Earth. Instead, because He loved us, He allowed people to take innocent lives of animals to replace our guilty lives.
In Egypt, God would bring a final plague on, not only the Egyptians, but also on Abraham’s family. It wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a rendering of justice. God was putting everyone in Egypt on trial, and judging them all guilty. They all deserved to die.
Mercy:
God, in His love and mercy, did not want to kill off everyone. He would substitute their guilt for the first born son, the most treasured thing, in place of an entire household of people.
Because the Egyptians would not listen to anything God had to say, they wouldn’t listen to the next part; God would allow anyone to substitute their first born son for the life of an innocent lamb.
Anyone who chose to listen to God, could take the blood of that lamb, and cover the doorframe to their houses with it. This would protect everyone within that house.
God set midnight as a time for the execution of justice to take place. When He would sweep across the land of Egypt in judgment, He would ‘pass over’ any house that had the blood covering. He wouldn’t see their guilt, or anything about them. He would just see the innocent blood, and move on.
So all of the firstborn Egyptians were killed, but the firstborn of Abraham’s family were spared, and God freed them from slavery.
Afterwards, God told His family to remember how he spared their children forever. He actually commanded that they should do so.
Remarkably, God never commanded that anyone should celebrate Christmas, or Easter, or Thanksgiving, St. Patrick’s Day, etc, etc, etc.
Passover however, was commanded, and with very good reason.
This was the example of the ‘contingency plan’ that I mentioned earlier, the one that God had fashioned from the very beginning.
The plan was playing out throughout man’s existence, and would still take several thousands of years before it would fully be revealed, but this Egyptian event would be the thread that ties it all together, and remembering the event, was very important.
Jesus:
Then came Jesus.
You might consider God’s ability to externalize His Will to be His ‘Communication ability’. Another way to put it would be to call it His ‘Voice’, or even His ‘Word’.
This aspect of God was put into the soul of a human being.
As a result, this human being was the first flesh human to have an unbroken relationship with God.
Adam had this relationship with God prior to becoming fully flesh, but this new human had it while He was flesh.
Jesus never did anything to sever that relationship to God. He was pure, and God was god over everything He did.
Because of all of this, God called this human His “Son”. This was the first ‘born’, fully-flesh human to not only be one with God, just like Adam was intended to be, but the only human to remain in that state while being tempted with the same desires we have to be our own god.
People tend to get hung up over exactly how Mary got pregnant. ‘How’ is not the point. Having the aspect of God’s Voice as a human soul, made Him God on Earth. Together, God and Jesus had that oneness relationship – One mind, one Spirit.
Jesus was also a fully-flesh human being. He was a very unique hybrid being.
Calling Jesus God’s “Son” is just semantics. Just like Jesus calling Himself the “Son of Man” is semantics.
Get this though - These two definitions were used specifically to tie sacrifice, the Passover, and Jesus’ death on the cross all together.
And if you can’t see it already, the term “Lamb of God” was also coined specifically to reference sacrifice and Passover.
Technically speaking, God was Jesus on Earth, and Jesus was God on Earth. God was not His own son. The ONLY reason God referred to Jesus as His “son”, was to tie sacrifice, Passover, and the cross together. God was finalizing the revealing of His contingency plan.
God was setting up the Final Sacrifice that would restore the oneness relationship with Him and anyone that would participate in the final Passover.
God was never guilty of anything. It is each and every one of us that are guilty of cheating on God, committing adultery, choosing this world over Him, and trying to be god ourselves.
But God, being innocent, made Himself into a “Lamb” with the specific intent of being the final substitution for our guilt. If we make the decision to make God the god over our decisions, and we continual to do so, daily showing our dedication symbolically with the blood of the Lamb covering our hearts and our guilt, then when God once again judges, He will Passover us, only seeing the blood of the innocent lamb.
Christ IS our Passover.
Paul recognized this, and in 1 Corinthians 5:7, he even stated such.
The ‘blood of the Lamb’ was shed in place of the ‘blood of God’s Son’, which was shed in place of our blood, just like in the example of the blood of the Passover lamb was shed in place of the first born son, which was to be shed in place of our blood, which was the only way to even try to fix the pain of us ‘killing’ our relationship with God.
God should be god to us. He should make the decisions for us. He should “Lord” over our choices. We should be His servants by choice.
If we make Christ in charge of everything, and let the blood of His sacrifice cover the entry into our hearts, then when the day comes that is coming, in which God will judge every human being that ever existed, He will “PASSOVER” our guilt of treason, of cheating, of the adulterous relationship that we have with our flesh of making ourselves god, and of severing our relationship with Him.
In all actuality, we will already be one with Him as His Spirit will be living in us. God will look to judge every decision we ever made denying Him, and being god ourselves, and won’t see those decisions because the blood of the Lamb will be covering them. He will then ‘passover’ judging us.
THAT is the entire reason that God came to Earth. THAT is the entire reason that Jesus is the ‘Christ’, or ‘Savior’, or ‘Passover’.
Jesus did not come here to bring peace on Earth. He wasn’t here to teach us how to live, or how to treat other people. His purpose for being here wasn’t to be an example, or to tell us about God.
He did all of those tings while He was here, but He came here specifically to be the final sacrificial Passover lamb that will cause God to not judge us.
The term ‘Christ’ means ‘Savior’. Jesus’ blood shed on the cross is the Passover blood that will ‘save’ us from judgment, which is to say, from us having to sacrifice our eternity because we wanted to be god ourselves, and cheated on God by doing so.
His entire existence is for the purpose of Passover. The ‘Last Supper’, Communion – These are just symbolic ways to show our adherence to our decision to make God the god of our decisions. They symbolize the Passover, and the taking on of the blood of the lamb as a covering. Take some time and meditate on all of the symbolism of the Last Supper, and of Jesus observing Passover on the night of His betrayal.
Christ can not be separated from the Passover – He IS the Passover.
A few side notes:
1.
Many people do not believe in God. Many of those think that man created the Bible from his imagination. The Contingency Plan spans beyond the entire timeframe that humans existed on Earth. Some of the Books of the Bible were written thousands of years apart. Different parts of the plan have been revealed in different books within the Bible. It would be impossible for men, thousands of years apart, to have dreamt up the Contingency Plan. With the exception of Paul, and possibly not even him to the fullest, there is no evidence that anyone in the Bible other than God and Jesus, knew or saw the completed picture. They each had their own puzzle pieces, but were basically clueless as to what the final product would look like. We can’t even see every detail today.
The story of Joseph in the Bible, being rejected by his brothers, sold into slavery, jailed, and then becoming the second in command in Egypt, could have been dreamt up by man. It was written by one person, and written after the fact.
Contrarily, parts of the Contingency Plan were recorded by many people, each of which did not understand what the final result would be, many times not even knowing that there was a final result, and done so over thousands of years.
Atheists credit the Essenes as having dreamt up and written the New Testament. There is no evidence that the Essenes had any insight into the complete Contingency Plan, which if they had, would have been extremely important to their mission, and would have been revealed in their writings. Not only was it not, but the Old Testament writings are not considered in this theory either.
Had the entire New Testament been written by one group of people (which it wasn’t), with the intent of building on all of the stories of the Old Testament, and tying them all together into one purpose, which is that of the Passover, there would have been much more written that linked everything to the Passover.
Yet, with the exception of Paul’s one short line in Corinthians, there is no mention or building to a climatic tying of everything in the Bible together.
It was only after all of the Old and New Testament books were combined and assembled together, that we can see this picture of Passover. If the Essenes wrote all of the New Testament books, why didn’t they make any effort to summarize what they would all say together, or what they were all written for in the first place?
It is just not plausible that man could have made perfectly fitting puzzle piece images without knowledge of what the final picture looked like.
2.
I have to laugh when I hear people tell me that Christianity is a younger religion than other beliefs. While it is true that Christ was here about 2000 years ago, as you have hopefully seen in this writing, His existence here was only a fraction of the entire reason that He was here. Followers may have been called ‘Christian’ starting 2000 years ago, but the complete belief – The ‘Contingency Plan’, spans the full timeline of man’s existence.
3.
Don’t get hung up on my use of the phrase “Contingency Plan”, or anything else in this writing. Don’t go starting a religion around it, or adopting the phrase into some “We are part of…” thing, such as, “We are part of the Contingency Plan People.” Just take what I’ve written here and let the Spirit convict you and/or give you peace about what I’ve written, and discard the rest, or at least wait and revisit it at a later date. God doesn’t need another religion. He just needs people to follow Him in Spirit and in Truth.
4.
After Christ came to Earth, the need to practice the example of the coming of the Contingency Plan, or Passover, lost some of it’s importance, being fulfilled with Christ’s sacrifice. Yet, God still command that it be recognized ‘forever’.
I believe that this was so that we would fully understand the plan that was established even before Adam was ever made, understand what relationship we are mending, and how we can accomplish that.
It’s a bit ironic that the Jewish faith celebrates Passover, without understanding what it is about. While modern Christianity seems to disregard Passover and the commandment to observe it, and in doing so, losses the full understanding of what the Savior was all about.
I hope you’ll join me in celebrating Passover and rejoicing in the blessing of understanding all of it’s symbolisms.
5.
There is freedom in the Spirit. Mostly, this comes from both understanding, and from obedience.
Understanding that pork was usually not cooked enough, and would make you sick, is the main reason that there was an Old Testament law that said not to eat pork. Many Old Testament laws actually had to do with bacteria, and ways to prevent people from getting sick.
With Christ fulfilling the law (actually, fulfilling the ‘plan’), once the Spirit moves into a person, the understanding of the law and the reasons for it, should become embedded into the whole relationship.
What do I mean by that? I eat bacon. I eat it without any conviction from the Holy Spirit. I fully cook it, and I eat it with thanks and appreciation. I understand that the ‘purity’ of eating ‘clean’ things was symbolic of the purity of God and that He wanted a people that were separated from the ‘world’, clean, pure, righteous. I also understand that a pig, or eating a pig, or refraining from eating a pig, doesn’t accomplish that, and I understand the health reasoning behind not eating pork.
It was a symbolic gesture, and a health thing, but now, knowing the Spirit, being one with God through the Spirit and through Christ’s perfection and blood which covers my imperfection, I’m already there. I don’t need to not eat the pig to remain pure or to remain one with God. Through Christ, I’m already there. I do believe though, that certain things like celebrating Passover, while not required to know Christ, should still be observed as long as we are in this flesh.
It’s just a good time to revisit all of the understanding and appreciation of Christ. And God said ‘forever’, so it was obviously important to Him for us to continue practicing it even after Christ’s resurrection.
Communion is traditionally observed around the time of Easter, which of course coincides with Passover. Neither Communion or Easter were ever commanded to be observed by God. Easter is actually a perversion of combining pagan rituals with Christian ideas. Communion conceivably should be practiced daily, if not physically, at least in spirit. We should be acknowledging the Passover blood of Christ covering our sin everyday.
But certainly, we should observe the full holiday and all of it’s traditions once a year, especially if we are going to observe the perversion traditions of Easter.
With all of that said, it was commanded that during Passover, you would rid your house of all leavening.
I’ve heard theories over this that the reasoning behind this rule was that the Pharisees were ‘puffed up’ in their egos.
In chapters 4 & 5 of 1st Corinthians, Paul talks a lot about being ‘puffed up’.
Thus, people tend to ‘speculate’ that the rule of leavening was there so that we wouldn’t get too self-centered.
I could never get peace from the Spirit over this explanation.
A few years ago during Passover, I was praying and God showed me what I believe is the full reason for the leavening rule.
But before I go into why, I also want to give an example of speculation vs Spirit;
As I was writing this message about Passover, I had the thought in my fleshly mind, that perhaps leavening had something to do with the fact that Jesus was not born yet, and therefore was not raised (leavened) yet, and that this all somehow was the reasoning behind not eating risen bread.
But I had no peace about that, and no understanding – It just didn’t make sense. It was just a thought.
When the Spirit talks to you, understanding is transferred, and with it comes peace. When this happens, many people describe this by saying that you “Know that you know”.
You suddenly understand things clearly. It’s a lot like receiving enlightenment on an individual topic.
And then you have incredible peace about it.
I didn’t have that when I thought about leavening having something to do with Jesus’ resurrection, or even with Him being lifted up on the cross. It was just me ‘speculating’.
Many preachers and teachers preach and teach using only speculation. Whole religions have been started based on speculations.
In contrast, a few years ago, I believe the Spirit gave me some further insight into the leavening rule.
Now I have been wrong about things before, and I could possibly have misheard God. I try extremely hard to be objective over revelations of the Spirit, and I am my own worst skeptic.
Considering all of that, I believe that this was from the Spirit;
The Egyptians did not follow God, at least not the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. The family of Abraham followed God, although not very well. When God decided to free them from Egyptian slavery, He also wanted to show a separation of His people from the rest of the world that didn’t want anything to do with Him.
Here is what the Spirit told me:
Prior to coming to Egypt, Abraham and his people did not use, or even know about leavening. Their bread was flat like pita bread.
The Egyptians were an advanced society and had developed many methods that were not known or used in the rest of the world.
Leavening was one of those things.
God wanted His people to be pure and not spotted by the world, or by the non-God-following Egyptians. So He said to remove all traces of the Egyptian way of baking bread.
Exodus 23:18 could kind of confirms this idea.
Also in Exodus, God says that the reason for not eating leavened bread, is because He wanted His people to move in haste, to get out of Egypt in a hurry. They didn’t have time to let their bread rise, and so symbolically, when we celebrate Passover, we should give tribute to the plight of those people by not having leavened bread.
Likewise, throughout the Bible, God tells us to be ready for His return, always watching, sober minded, ready to leave in haste, not looking back or trying to hold on to anything in this world.
Therefore, have empathy for those who were slaves and had to leave their homes in a hurry, and understand that God wants us separated from the world.
If it were anything more than this, if leavening represented being ‘puffed up’, it is very likely that Christ would have commanded us not to use it, ever, even to this day. Understanding this was just extra confirmation of all the Spirit taught me.
Does all of this mean that I forsake the rule to rid my house of leavening?
No, but within reason, while still respecting the reasoning for it; I refrain from eating risen bread (doughnuts, muffins, pizza, cookies, etc) the week of Passover. But risen sprouted grain bread stays in my freezer for the week. I don’t eat it – It stays frozen, but I don’t throw it out. I eat wheat crackers that may have a touch of yeast in them, or things that might have been made with a little baking powder.
I just don’t eat risen bread products, and I have peace with the Spirit. What I don’t eat, I don’t eat with thanksgiving, and what I do eat, I do eat with thanksgiving.
All things were fulfilled in Christ, and because I am now one with God through Christ, through the Spirit, the things of the law are part of my whole being.
I see and understand their purpose and have adopted those things into myself. I observe the not eating of leavened bread, not to follow a law, but to respect all that surrounds the origin of that law, and to do so with thanksgiving. The Spirit gives me the freedom to not have to follow the letter of the law.
I empathize with my brothers and sisters of thousands of years ago that had it far worse I than I ever will, as I try to keep myself unspotted from this world, and I am forever grateful for the Passover gift of Christ.
I hope and pray that these writings will be nothing less than a blessing to you.
Thank you for your time,
-Tilt