The Day of Faith
“Stand still and see Yeshua Yahweh”
The Seventh Day of the Feast of Unleavened Breads
Nisan 21 on the Biblical Calendar – from Sunday April 24 at sunset until
Monday April 25 at sunset in AD 2011.
This is a Holy Day, to be observed like a Sabbath – a day set aside for
the worship of our Creator. It is an appointment with Yahweh: a sacred
rehearsal must be included – a public worship service to rehearse
historic past and prophetic future acts of God. It is the last of the
seven annual days wherein no leaven is allowed, (a negative command) and
unleavened breads are required to be eaten (a positive command). This is
an ordinance – one of the three categories of Torah commandments
(judgments, ordinances, and statutes): ordinances are physical
performances to display spiritual truths.
“Then the fourteenth day of the first month shall be for Yahweh’s
Passover offering (preparation of the lamb). On the fifteenth day of
this month shall be a feast, unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven
days. On the first day shall be a sacred assembly; you shall do no
laborious work. . . . On the seventh day you shall have a sacred
assembly; you shall do no laborious work” – Numbers 28:16-26
“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, between
noon and sunset, is Yahweh’s Passover offering (preparation of the
lamb). Then on the fifteenth day of the same month there is the
Feast of Unleavened Breads to Yahweh; for seven days you shall
eat unleavened breads. On the first day you shall have a sacred
assembly; you shall not do any laborious work. But for seven days
you shall present an offering by fire to Yahweh. On the seventh
day is a sacred assembly; you shall not do any laborious work" –
Leviticus 23:5-8.
“Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it
as a feast to Yahweh; throughout your generations you are to
celebrate it as an everlasting ordinance. Seven days
you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall
remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything
leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall
be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall have a sacred
assembly, and another sacred assembly on the seventh day; no work
at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every
person, that alone may be prepared by you” – Exodus 12:14-16.
Counting the Omer
The seventh day of unleavened breads is the sixth day of counting
the omer,
as the count begins after the (First Day of the feast) High Sabbath.
“You shall
count for yourselves, from the morrow after the (High) Sabbath –
from the day when you bring the Omer of the Waving, seven weeks –
they shall be complete. Until the morrow after the seventh week you
shall count fifty days” – Leviticus 23:16, Deuteronomy 16:9.
Blessed are You, Yahweh our God,
King of the Universe,
Who has sanctified us by Your Word, and instructed us to count the
omer.
Today is the sixth day of the omer.
The theme of this day is: after God
delivers His people, the wicked try to take them back, but then God
destroys the wicked. This is what happened at Israel’s deliverance from
Egypt, and will happen at the end of this age.
On this date the Israelites had come to
the Red Sea, and the Egyptian army caught up to them. The people greatly
feared, but Moses said: “Stand still and see Yeshua Yahweh (the
Salvation of Yahweh).” Israel entered the Red Sea mikvah
(baptistery) on dry ground, and came up the other side, but the Egyptian
army was drowned upon following.
“But Moses
said to the people, "Do not fear! Stand still and see Yeshua
Yahweh (the salvation of Yahweh) which He will accomplish
for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will
never see them again forever” – Exodus 14:13.
“When Israel
saw the great power which Yahweh had used against the Egyptians, the
people feared Yahweh, and they believed in Yahweh and in His
servant Moses” – Exodus 14:31.
The Talmud
teaches that some had faith to jump off the banks before the waters
parted, and landed on dried seabed, while others entered after seeing
the parted waters. All had greater faith after crossing and seeing the
Egyptians killed.
“For I do
not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under
the cloud and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into
Moses in the cloud and in the sea”
– 1 Corinthians 10:1-2.
It was the Torah’s required day for a
mikvah immersion for Yeshua, beforehand being untouchable, but after
which “doubting Thomas” could touch Yeshua and come to faith.
”Anyone who
in the open field touches one who has been slain with a sword or who has
died naturally, or a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean for seven
days. . . . On the seventh day he shall purify him
from uncleanness, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in
water and shall be clean by evening” – Numbers 19:16-19.
“The first
day of the week (the fourth day of the feast) came Mary Magdalene
. . . Yeshua said to her, ‘Do
not touch Me; for I am not yet ascended to my Father’” (a phrase for
ascending from a mikvah) – John 20:1, 17.
“But
Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Yeshua
came. So the other disciples were saying to him, ‘We have seen the
Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of
the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my
hand into His side, I will not believe.’ After eight days His
disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Yeshua came, the
doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be
with you.’ 27 Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach here with
your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it
into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ Thomas
answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him,
‘Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did
not see, and yet believed’” – John 20:24-29.
Three kinds of faith are distinguished
in the Hebrew Bible:
·
Emunah b'moach
- Intellectual faith (belief in a fact or historical event - such as
Yeshua's crucifixion).
·
Emunah b'lev
- Faith of the heart (trusting one's safety or security to something -
such as salvation by Yeshua's work).
·
Emunah b'evarim
- Faith that encompasses one's entire being (the controlling factor of
one's thoughts and activities).
In the end of this age, Yeshua will
reign on this earth for a thousand years, with those whom He has
delivered. At the end of that Millennial Sabbath, the armies of the
world will gather for “the final solution” – to destroy the Holy City,
but fire from God will destroy them.
“And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed
to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for
their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not
worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on
their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with
Messiah for a thousand years. . . . Now when the thousand years have
expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to
deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog
and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the
sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and
surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire
came down from God out of heaven and devoured them” – Revelation
20:4-9.