Page 3 - TORCH Magazine Issue #6

Photo: Moses, Aaron and Israelites at Passover supper
JESUS IN THE PASSOVER
And the Jewish roots of Christianity
“So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations.” Exodus 12:14a
For more than three millennia, the Jewish people have faithfully kept from generation to generation the observing of the Passover. This important festival retells the story of the nation
of Israel with its account of obedience, expectation and deliverance when the people of God were redeemed from brutal enslavement in Egypt. The focus of the celebration is a remembrance of the Passover lamb, which was sacri ced so that the rst born of every home might be spared as the Lord passed over the houses during the last and nal of ten plagues
in Egypt. The slaughtered lamb was to
be eaten and its blood smeared onto the doorposts of their properties as a sign of faith.
For Christians, it is important to recognise that Passover plays a central part of the Christian faith. In fact the early church celebrated Passover for 300 years after the death of Jesus until Constantine made it illegal in an e ort to separate Jews from
Gentiles. This deliberate severing led to horri c anti-Semitism across Europe, including in England as we explain later in this article.
JESUS KEPT THE PASSOVER
The Bible presents the Jewish feast of Passover as an important component
in understanding Christianity. The rst occurrence of the Passover in the New Testament was when the young Jesus visited Jerusalem with his parents, as He did every year.
Luke chapter 2, verse 41 states:
“His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.
After two thousand years of anti-Semitic
teaching, the church has lost sight of
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