Shabbat Shalom

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long, host and producer of Shabbat Shalom. Welcome to our final hour. Before Rabbi Michael Washer comes to teach, I want to comment on an observation I find significant as it relates to Black History Month. Let's return and examine Jethro for a moment. He was known to be a god seeker, but he admitted experimenting with many forms of idolatry. He was the priest in Midian, an advisor to Pharaoh, but he did not worship Yahweh.

In Exodus 18, verses 10 through 12, after hearing all that God did for Moses and the Hebrew children during the Exodus, Jethro openly confessed, saying, "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods," and he totally aligned himself with Moses and the children of Israel. The sages note that at that time, he converted to Judaism before the Torah was even given through circumcision and immersion. And the dignitaries or the elders of Israel joined him as he made his own sacrifices to the Lord.

A single burnt offering is required of all new converts, but the early records show that Jethro brought many sacrifices, not just one. After that, he was fully integrated and embraced into the commonwealth of Israel. Hashem even named a portion of Scripture after him to show Jews that in every generation, there are people of great wisdom and insight among the Gentile nations. We also learn from the sages that God designated part of the land of Israel near Jericho and gave it to Jethro and his descendants.

But after the section where Jethro helped Moses develop a system of delegated authority, we find at the end of chapter 18 that, "Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way to his own country." Now, here is where I believe we encounter an important tavnit for the people of color. The rabbinic commentary says that Jethro left for a while to convert his family.

I spent two years researching the origin of the races before writing my book, Letters to Aliyah. Much hardship befell the descendants of Ham, the forefather of Jethro, which paralleled the difficult times that befell the Jewish people. And what I began to see was that the pain that many blacks went through in life, brought on by many descendants of Japheth, the white people, sadly.

And while I was writing, I did a lot of confessing for my own ancestral sins for the pain that we caused God's children of color. Finally, toward the end of my research, I tapped into God's heart for the message that he wanted me to give to Aliyah, the black woman who appeared to me in a dream in 2009 asking for help in negotiating a contract for the freedom of her children. And the answer was found in what Jethro discovered. He finally found the one true God in the tent of Shem.

In the tent of the children of Israel, and it is only under this tent that all of Noah's children will one day be united. The picture I see so clearly here is that Jethro left the scene for a time to bring his family, the children of color, into proper alignment with the tent of Shem and the commonwealth of Israel. He is still out there in the metaphorical sense, praying for all those who perhaps like him got lured into worshipping other gods. And many are hearing the call to come to the God of Israel. After all, Jethro has a designated place in Israel for him and his descendants forever.

As we begin this hour of instruction, allow me to recite one of the prayers we say before studying the Torah. Baruch atah Adonai, hamelamed torah le'amo yisrael. Venatan lanu torato bavasar, Yeshua Hamashiach le'amo yisrael. Blessed are you, Lord, teacher of Torah to his people Israel, and who gave the Torah in flesh, Yeshua the Messiah, to his people Israel. Join me in welcoming Rabbi Michael Washer.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Shabbat Shalom, chaverim, friends. This is Rabbi Michael Washer. Today we will look at one of my favorite Torah portions in the Torah. It is Exodus 19 when Israel arrived at Mount Sinai and were camped at its base. After leaving Egypt and passing through the Reed Sea, the Jews traveled for seven weeks, 47 days to be exact, until they arrived at the mountain of God. And three days later on Sivan 6, the revelation of God on Mount Sinai occurred and a million people saw God manifested in fire, smoke, lightning, earthquake, and words emitting in flames of fire in 70 languages.

When I was a child and up to the age of 19, I didn't know anything Jewish. And I didn't do anything Jewish except for the prayer for lighting the menorah at Hanukkah and the Hamotzi prayer for bread, and even those I only knew partially. I didn't even know all of the Hebrew letters. However, I had pretty strong connection to the Jewish people, with a deep feeling of belonging to a people, a clan, a tribe, even to Israel the nation, but not to a religion.

And then I was born again on Shavuot of 1979. I decided to believe Yeshua was the Messiah. I did not pray a sinner's prayer. I did not accept Jesus into my heart. I did not accept Jesus or even Yeshua as my personal Lord and Savior. All of this was foreign to me as a Jew and none of it made any sense to me. And as I said in last week's teaching, it still doesn't. I simply asked Yeshua to make my dead spirit alive. And he did. And I immediately began to study Scripture.

It was five years later that I met Joe Good. He's a Gentile from the oil country of the far East Texas, and he came to our Messianic congregation in far West Texas to teach. He asked me a question, "Michael, do you know what the day of the Lord is?" in his East Texas drawl. And from that day, my life changed radically. I had learned just about everything that Messianic Judaism had to offer through its teachers and those who called themselves pastors and rabbis.

But when this Gentile, Joe Good, began to teach me scriptural things, I had no capacity to follow what he was saying. Why? Because he only taught from Judaism. And I hadn't been taught Judaism, even while I learned for five years in Messianic Judaism, doing the Shabbat and keeping the kosher laws and doing the festivals. Something is wrong with this equation. I bombarded Joe Good with questions and every single answer he gave was studded with dozens of scriptures and quotes from the Mishnah and Midrashim and Talmud, and all of it from memory. I had never heard any of this, and it made me so jealous I could not eat or sleep or think. I stayed in touch with Joe Good for years in person and on the phone, studying for hours at a time.

Sometime in 1984, Joe Good began to teach me about Shavuot or Pentecost. It blew my mind. Shavuot is when I had been born again, and I had already lived through five of them or four of them, I can't remember. I was filled with the Spirit at the same time that I was born again. In fact, I started speaking in tongues quietly with no one's notice, perhaps seven seconds after I prayed. I was around people who did that and encouraged others to do that for those years after I was born again. But up to that time, something about it always bothered me, especially when I was in a church setting.

What was I doing in a church setting? Well, the rabbi of our congregation and a group of us would travel the southwest going to churches. He would preach as evangelists do. My mother, brother, and I and about six others would do Israeli dance, and my brother and I would sing Hebrew songs. These experiences are the only exposure I had to churches except for what I saw on television and heard on radio. And speaking in tongues always mystified me, even though I had done it and continued to do it since the day I was born again. But I always felt like I was betraying my people, the Jews. Jews don't pray in tongues. At least that's what I was led to believe. And it certainly isn't a Jewish doctrine. This is also what I was led to believe. But that Gentile from Southeast Texas showed me different. And he showed me from Judaism.

Well, in our Torah portion this week called Yitro, Israel has finally gone out of Egypt. And then for seven weeks or 47 days, Israel followed the pillar of fire and cloud through a circuitous route until they finally arrived at Mount Sinai in Arabia, called Jabal al-Lawz today. And then in Exodus 19, we read that on Sivan 3, Israel came to the foot of Mount Sinai. Three days later on Sivan 6, we come to the revelation of God on Mount Sinai at the festival of Shavuot. You may know it as Pentecost.

And on this day, God reveals the two most important things in all the world: his Torah and his Spirit. And on this day, they are seen as exactly the same thing. The Torah is the Spirit of God and the Spirit is the Torah. This is how we can know if the Spirit of God is speaking. Does the message comport with the Torah? And I do not mean the interpretation of the Torah through the lenses of Hellenistic Christianity. I mean the Torah through the lenses of the ones to whom the Torah was given and who were told to keep it and cherish it and spread it, that being the Jewish people. And of course, the sages and rabbis who knew its secrets and taught them to us through the ages.

Before I go any further, I'd like to say that I have written a book about this amazing correlation of the Torah and the Holy Spirit, establishing them as synonymous, as exactly the same. It is called Torah and Spirit are One and it's available on my website, michaelwasher.wixsite.com/michaelwasherart. It is on the page called My Writings.

So at Shavuot, God speaks from heaven, from the mountain, and gives what has erroneously been called the Ten Commandments. It is actually ten words or ten things, Aseret HaD'varim in Hebrew, which appears in three verses. But how do the actual words of God come? They come as flames of fire or tongues of fire. And how many tongues exactly? 70. 70 tongues, 70 languages.

Many years ago, I asked Joe Good in astonishment, "Are you telling me God spoke in tongues?" I came to find out that yes, Shavuot is where this whole thing of speaking in tongues started. And God is the one who did it first. God spoke in tongues. When I actually found it for myself written in the ancient Jewish writings, I cried. I simply couldn't believe that Judaism teaches this doctrine. But it sure didn't comport with the Christian culture I had now been exposed to since being born again. None of the weird and bizarre displays that I saw on television are present in Judaism.

Ours is a quiet and respectful religion lived out by people who do not sound quiet and respectful, full of humor and irony and logic and words, words, words all the time. There is no slapping on the forehead and falling into the arms of ushers or jumping like kids in a mosh pit while singing about my feelings, no barking like a dog or lifting the skirts over the head, no speaking in the same gibberish that everyone in the same denomination speaks. And isn't it strange that the tongues are consistent depending on the Christian denomination? These and other strange things cause me, and I'm sure many thousands of others, to see a huge disconnect between the worlds of Judaism and Christianity. And speaking in tongues as it is practiced in many denominations is one of the most distant from Judaism.

But here's the amazing thing: God spoke in tongues. This is why he had Jews speak in tongues. There's not a single Gentile involved in this doctrine from the beginning of its appearance in Exodus to its next enormous establishing event in Acts chapter 2 in the New Testament. It is all Jewish from beginning to end. God spoke in tongues is a Jewish thing? Absolutely. This doctrine comes from the Hebrew of the following passage, Exodus 20 verse 15. It's 20:18 in some translations: "And all the people saw the thundering and lightnings and the sound of the shofar and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw, they trembled and stood at a distance."

The people saw the thunder and lightnings and saw the sound of the shofar? How do you see sound? In Hebrew, the word for thunder is plural, not singular. It is kolot, which literally means voices or languages. Voice is kol and voices is kolot. Why did God choose to use this word? There are other words for thunder in Hebrew such as barak. Why the word for voices rather than thunder? Well, it is from this verse and a couple of others that the sages saw the tongues or languages flying out from God's mouth, so to speak, and coming into the heart of the Jewish people.

Here is only one quote of what the sages said about this. It is found in Exodus Rabbah 5:9: "When God gave the Torah on Sinai, he displayed untold marvels to Israel with his voice. What happened? God spoke and the voice reverberated throughout all the world. It says, 'And all the people witnessed or saw the thundering.' Note that it does not say thunder but thundering or thunders plural. Wherefore Rabbi Yohanan said that God's voice, as it was uttered, split up into 70 voices in 70 languages so that all the Gentiles could understand. When each nation heard the voice in their own language, their souls were in terror except for Israel, who heard the voice and were not hurt."

When the ten words were spoken from heaven, they were offered in all the 70 tongues of the earth. They were offered to all the Gentile nations but rejected by them and only and exclusively accepted by Israel. There are many Midrashim about which Gentiles heard the ten words offered and why they rejected them, always because the ten words keep them from living the sinful lives that their cultures were based on.

And remember, four Torah portions ago as the book of Shemot began, we are told that 70 came from the loins of Jacob. And we are told in Deuteronomy 32 that when God made the divisions and boundaries of the Gentiles, he made them according to the number of the sons of Israel. This is why there are 70 Gentile nations. And it is the languages of those 70 enumerated in Genesis 10 in which God's voice was heard. So God didn't just speak in tongues, he spoke in all 70 tongues simultaneously.

In Acts chapter 2, God repeated all of the same sounds and visuals that appeared to Israel at Mount Sinai. It's just that they were pared down to edible bite-size pictures. What I mean is the fire of God's Spirit did not appear like a volcano on one mountain. The Spirit appeared as small fires, one on each Jew present in the temple where this event took place. Remember, it is Shavuot in Acts chapter 2, and in the Torah we are told that every Jewish male must go up to the temple for the three main festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.

And remember also that in the temple there were "devout Jews from every nation under heaven" as Acts 2:5 puts it. How many nations are there? 70. So God had all of them speaking in tongues, just as he had some 1,500 years before. The pictures always repeat one on top of the other to show us a pattern, his pattern. And these patterns should never be changed or God forbid replaced.

There are many other correlations between the events of the first Shavuot and its memorial at Shavuot in the first century. It's very unfortunate that by disconnecting Acts 2 from its Jewish world, many Christians have spread the mythology that Pentecost is the birth of the church. In reality, Pentecost or Shavuot was the birthday of Judaism and the Jews. It was at Mount Sinai at Pentecost or Shavuot that the Jewish people received our wedding contract, our ketubah in Hebrew, that being the Torah.

It belongs to us exclusively. And it was in the desert at Mount Sinai that we are first called a nation, a goy kadosh, a holy nation. We were born as a separate people there with our job description, our constitution, our bureaucracy and infrastructure all rolled into one, that being the Torah as well. It is not the church that was born there, it was Judaism and the Jewish people that were born at Shavuot.

One of the most well-known Jewish doctrines about Shavuot found in our Torah portion is the idea of Am Echad Lev Echad, which means one people, one heart. And it's used a lot in Israel for campaigns and movements and religious and political speeches. We are one people, we are unified. But there is so much more that appears in this fascinating portion of Scripture about our unity.

Acts chapter 2, verse 1 begins, "When the day of Shavuot had come, they were all together, unified in one place." This is a direct reference to the Am Echad Lev Echad nature of the Jewish people at Shavuot. And back to Exodus 19, 1 through 2, it starts: "In the third month, they came to the wilderness of Sinai. When they departed from Rephidim, they came to the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness, and there Israel encamped before the mountain."

Four times Israel's pitching their camp is written in the plural. First is they came, ba'u. Then they departed, vayis'u. Then and they came, vayavo'u. Then and they encamped, vayachanu. Each time before they come to Mount Sinai, the nation is spoken of in the plural. But the very next words in Hebrew magically and suddenly switch tense and the singular is used, "and there Israel encamped," vayichan sham.

Not only does the tense switch, but the tense switches using a word that had just been used only two words before. The Hebrew switched from vayachanu to vayichan, written by the same person, speaking of the same group, at the same event, and even in the same verse. Israel was one when they came to Mount Sinai, they were one man, at least in God's eyes. But if that's true, if they were one person, what person were they?

This seems like a question with a simple and obvious answer, but it is not. The 1 million or more people included a mixed multitude of Gentiles. And if they were there out of choice without rebellion and hate in their heart, wanting to know God, they too were part of that one man, the one man Israel. This is the pattern that God created and it would be repeated 1,500 years later after Yeshua rose from death.

But if that is true, if Shavuot is the original pattern of God creating his one people, then the repetition or anniversary of that event has to be about and for the same person. Changing or replacing the event's meaning would be like celebrating somebody else's birthday on your child's birthday every year. This is the simple way to understand the awful heresy of replacement theology.

As I said, for centuries it has been taught in the Christian world that Pentecost is the birthday of the church. That cannot be possible if Pentecost or Shavuot is the repetition of the original pattern involving the nation Israel. The people that became one were Jews as one person. They were Israel. They were at the foot of Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.

And in the memorial or anniversary of that Shavuot, God poured out his Spirit on the very same day and on the very same people that he poured out his Torah in words of fire. The whole purpose of this rehearsal was to reveal to mankind that the Spirit of God is the same as the Torah or the law as it is usually called. They are one.

The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Yeshua in the New Testament in Acts 16:7, Romans 8:9, Philippians 1:19, and Galatians 4:6. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Yeshua and the Spirit of God is the Torah. Therefore Yeshua and the Torah are one. They speak the same things, they look and act and feel and communicate the same. Think about that and what that means to us. The Torah and the Spirit are one.

They are inseparable. In fact, they are synonymous for the very same thing. Well, to bring it down to earth, that means if Yeshua and the Torah are synonymous, Jesus cannot possibly have long curly hair and an effeminate nature. That breaks the Torah. So it has to be someone else that is the Messiah Yeshua, not that invented character.

And because this day is the birthday of the Jewish people, the people were one. But they were not a church, they were Israel, the Jewish people. And the very same sounds and visuals took place in the temple in the first century to confirm for all time that the Torah is the Spirit of God, and it can be written engraved on the hearts of the Jewish people.

And as a secondary issue, and I do mean secondary, Gentiles who chose to join the Exodus and the stand at Mount Sinai were also part of that congregation. And the same applies to the congregation of Israel after Yeshua resurrected. Also as a secondary issue, Gentiles are invited into that Jewish world to come to know God now.

Gentiles must come to Yeshua through a Jewish world that defines and describes him, or God only knows who they're coming to. So what is a spiritual Jew? Well, I'm sorry to say no such phrase exists in the New Testament. It was made up to go along with the mythology that Pentecost is the birthday of the church and sweeping away the previous 1,500 years of truths and doctrine and teaching and wisdom given to the Jewish people about how to come to know God. Those 1,500 years being from Shavuot at the Exodus and Shavuot in the first century.

This amazing event recorded in the Torah portion Yitro establishes the unity that can exist in the Messiah's body. However, it can only happen if the Torah and the Holy Spirit weave and braid together within that one person, that Israel, that Yeshua. It is a Jewish body, literally from head to toe. The body of Messiah is a Jewish body and Gentiles are invited into that Jewish world, not the other way around.

This is why God spoke in tongues. The fire of his words flowed from his mouth, so to speak, into the hearts of Israel. But only because they accepted the Torah. They accepted the invitation to know him through the Torah. And remember, Judaism is not just for the Jews. On Shavuot we see that God gave the same invitation to every person on earth, every one of the 70 nations. But that invitation is to come to the Torah, the Spirit of God. That, in a word, is Judaism.

This is why the Jews spoke in tongues in the temple in the first century. The Holy Spirit flowed from God's mouth, so to speak, and was written on the hearts of the Jewish people and any Gentiles that wanted to come along for the ride. And out of their mouth came the same words, the words of the Spirit of God, of the Torah, but in the languages of the Gentile nations. So you see, Judaism is not just for the Jews, it is for anyone who wants to know God.

I still feel a deep and profound connection to Shavuot, even though it was 47 years ago on that festival that I was born again. And it was only because I asked for the Spirit of Yeshua to make my dead spirit alive that I have had the capacity to understand as many pictures of Messiah that I have seen. It's only because of Judaism that I know anything at all about God.

It was shortly after I learned about Shavuot in 1984 that I heard a tape of Joe Good teaching about the festival of Rosh Hashanah. And in it he spoke about Judaism as pictures of the spiritual world. That's all he said, and he went on to speak about other things. But I rewound that tape four times, listening over and over to those words and pondering what they meant.

And slowly, it began to come together inside of me just like the congealing of the waters of the Reed Sea, the immense significance of this truth. It was clear to me as I studied it out that everything we need to know is in the shadow, that all of our questions are answered in the set of patterns of heavenly things that God gave to the Jewish people. And I've never deviated in all that time from the path of Judaism as a set of pictures, a shadow cast by Yeshua. So if you have questions to bombard God with and a hunger to understand the truths of all things biblical, join me, Rabbi Michael Washer, again next Shabbat Shalom.

Candace Long: You can hear Rabbi Michael teach more pictures to prepare us for the kingdom every Saturday morning from 8:00 to 8:30. In a couple of weeks, he and I will introduce a new segment at the beginning of the second hour called Ask the Rabbi. He loves nothing more than to defend the faith of his fathers and help Gentiles understand God's ways. So if you have questions you'd like him to answer, click on the button on our main page that says email the show. He and I look forward to bringing this segment to you.

I'm Candace Long, your host for Shabbat Shalom. I'm ending today's program with part two of Lessons from Exodus 12. I will continue sharing the implications of the divine interruption that God did in Exodus 12 when he established a whole new calendar. This was a very big deal that happened some 3,500 years ago to prepare the people for their Exodus. But as you will see, the instructions that he gave the people then were meant for the generation living at the very end of days, and that's us. We are about to be taken.

I'm ready because I have heard the instructions. You're going to learn the four sacred charges that God gave his people through this interruption. You'll learn how soon after hearing the instructions were they taken at the Exodus. And you'll learn what happens if Christians continue to ignore these instructions. I've added a few more graphs to my handout, which you'll find a link to on our main page. Just look for the Candace Long handout and you'll find the new graphics on the last page. Be instructed.

I'm Candace Long with lessons in the latter days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times we're living in. Today's episode is part two in Lessons from Exodus 12. We're exploring why God interrupted the narrative in Exodus 12 to change the calendar by making the month of Nisan the first month of the year rather than the seventh month, which is where it had been for 2,000 years.

It reordered the people's sense of time and direction. Now, having been a pilot for many years, I understand the magnitude of this shift because when you're flying, the gyroscopic magnetic compass inside the plane precesses or drifts off course little by little because it is rotating against the magnetic and gravitational forces in the earth. In fact, one of the first things a pilot learns is to constantly keep your eye on the compass throughout the flight and manually reset the heading from time to time. If you don't do this, you could take off heading to Nashville and wind up in Pigeon Forge.

Now this magnetic precession illustrates a natural law that God put in the universe to teach us an important spiritual concept that we see here in Exodus 12. God set up a law meant to serve as a spiritual compass to keep his people on course and not be in danger of missing the intended destination, which is the kingdom. This inner compass is very much a part of who I am and why so many of my episodes deal with dates and timetables. I have been trained to be alert to directional signals, and I hope you are seeing that God is giving us a huge alert here in Exodus 12.

He totally stopped the clock on where his people were at that place in time in Egypt. It was all they knew for 210 years, which amounts to three generations. But that life was no longer where God wanted them. And that is our lesson. It was time for God to put into motion what was in his heart, namely to reach in and pluck out a people he was calling to himself, to become a nation of priests that he would personally train to become the governing arm of his kingdom.

We learned in part one that exactly what was going on to them then during Exodus 12 applies to us today because the Hebrew words that God used in the first two verses are said twice, which the sages tell us means he's speaking to two audiences. First, he's speaking to those about to leave Egypt some 3,500 years ago. And second, it was intended for the final generation living right before the day of the Lord, and that is us. God had to get their attention because it was time.

He was about to go get them and bring them out, but they were not ready. They were not pointed in the right direction and aligned with the month of Nisan because the time of their deliverance was happening in two weeks. Now how do we know it was two weeks? Because he alerted them saying, "This month shall be for you." The month he was talking about was Nisan. And if you break down the days that God laid out for them what to do when, the first seven days prepared them mentally, they were about to leave. That's week number one.

Then from Nisan 7 through the 14th, which is week number two, they were to choose the lamb, inspect it, kill it, put its blood on the door, and eat it that evening, which became the 15th at sundown, and prepare to leave at daybreak. So God was announcing their deliverance was two weeks away. This announcement could not be more personally affirming to me because my research places us living in the year 2025 to be year six of the final seven years of the church age.

If these final seven years began in 2020, which I have presented to you, meaning that we are some two years away from our deliverance. Two weeks for them then, metaphorically two years for us today. Now the sages all agree that the interchanging of weeks, days, and years is very much a part of the way God speaks. Let me give you an example. In Hosea 6, 1 and 2, we read, "Come, let us return to the Lord for he has torn that he may heal us. After two days he will revive us, and on the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him."

This verse refers to the Messiah. After two days he will revive us, meaning two days of 1,000 years each, referring to days five and six since he was crucified at the end of day four. Days five and six, the two days, are the 2,000 years known as the church age. And the phrase "on the third day" refers to day seven when he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight. This refers to the first resurrection, known by most as the rapture. This is metaphorical language and the way God speaks.

Today we find ourselves toward the end of day six, 2025, and we really are at the place the Jews were then. We are witnessing God's judgment on our nation like they witnessed God's judgment on Egypt. Violent weather patterns threaten our crops. Diseases plague our livestock, which in turn threatens our food supply. Life is filled with chaos, violence, diseases, and hatred. And it's here and now that God brings this Exodus 12 shift, because for the Torah-observant, Exodus is what we've been studying.

That's why God said this calendar shift is for you, because those who study the Torah hear it. And if you don't study it, you won't hear it. God's message is not for you. It's that simple. Now, what I'm saying is not meant to be fatalistic because God is merciful and patient and we haven't gone yet. There is still time, which is why I said in the last episode I feel strongly that here and now in day six, this message is God's final warning that the magnetic compass inside most Christians is severely precessed.

Since 2022, God has spoken through three eclipses and a series of EF3 tornadoes, all of them warning that we're not lined up correctly with the month of Nisan. That's why Exodus 12 is so pregnant with meaning now because the world is about to birth the messianic kingdom. And those of us who are hearing him know we're in the preparatory stage of being separated and consecrated because, hear me now, our Exodus is at hand.

God told Moses what to say, and I paraphrase this: tell the people the time has shifted, so listen to the next four things I have to tell you because doing these things will get you out of here and bring you to me. Today we're going to learn what those four things are. And if you are hoping to be taken in the rapture, please listen carefully as this concerns your standing in the kingdom. First, I want to remind you of the meaning of the word Exodus. This is again metaphorical language. It means a mass departure of people from one location to another.

Now let me pause right here for a bit of commentary. Many Christians have no concept of the timetable of the rapture. That's why they're just tooling along thinking we have all the time in the world. I dare say though that most believers have embraced a lie, a subtle belief system that says, "no man knows the time of his coming, not even the angels in heaven." Yes, that is a verse in Matthew 24.

But from the Jewish point of view, it is taken out of context and does not mean we're not supposed to know. I devoted an entire episode to straightening out this false theology, and it's found in the episode called What Do You Mean Mom Has Disappeared? I encourage you to listen and I'll put a link to it in the notes to this episode. Bottom line though, the error is found in a misunderstanding of the sequence of events that Jesus lays out for us in Matthew 24 and all of the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus is referencing in that passage.

When you look at it correctly through the eyes of those who understand Hebrew and the Tanakh, the passage makes perfect sense and concurs with what God shows us right here in Exodus 12. If you examine Exodus closely, God gave his people, those who were listening and following Moses, he gave them exact time signals of when their deliverance would be. This is the pattern he sets here. His people are supposed to know the time of his coming, and it's all tied in to our alignment with the month of Nisan.

As you know, I spend every Sabbath studying the Torah readings using the five-volume Schottenstein Chumash. This is an interlinear translation of the Torah from Hebrew to English and it includes commentary from the rabbinic writings, collectively referred to as the sages. This commentary contains tremendous insight that helps Gentiles understand what was going on, important Hebraic concepts and how they are to be applied today.

As a chronicler, I appreciate how the sages put each passage into its proper context. And this wisdom, combined with Holy Spirit working inside me as I'm studying the Torah, makes it come alive every week. I'll put a link to the Chumash in the notes to this episode.

What follows next are the four sacred charges that God gave his people through this divine interruption. Number one, the Lord sanctified the new moon signaling the month of Nisan. That means he set apart that new moon and hallowed it. Number two, God told them the exact time they would leave and step-by-step instructions to experience his miraculous deliverance. Number three, he consecrated this remnant of people, meaning that he set them apart from all the other Jews that were in Egypt and prepared only them to meet him at Mount Sinai. And number four, he taught them the Passover laws and promised that those who followed these laws would get to the kingdom safely.

Now the application of these four sacred charges is critical to those who want to be taken at the rapture. We have to align ourselves with Nisan and follow these laws. God set them here in the holy books for all eternity. Now what alarms me most is that the majority of Christians have chosen to ignore all of this, celebrate Easter and follow the Gregorian calendar.

They have allowed themselves to be severed from God's times and seasons and the rehearsals that he meant for us to experience. The danger is that many who love God will miss the signals and be left behind like the 50 percent in the parable of the ten virgins which Jesus taught in Matthew 25. Sacred charge number one is the big one where I'll spend the rest of our time in part two.

God sanctified the new moon at Nisan and set the entire month apart from all the other months. From the beginning, God used the moon to signal for his people to meet with him and rehearse everything they need to prepare them to live in his kingdom. Once you identify Nisan, you know where you are on God's calendar and you can therefore determine the exact date of every festival throughout the year, because they can only be established at the new moon at Nisan 1.

Let me share a section from the book Rosh Hashanah and the Messianic Kingdom to Come. It's by temple scholar Joseph Good, who is a Torah-observant Gentile, by the way. In his book, Joe Good explains that there are two calendars in Judaism. There's a civil calendar and a religious calendar. You see, from the beginning in the time of Abraham, the civil calendar was the only one. The first month on that calendar is the month of Tishrei, which is in the fall during September and October on the world's calendar.

You should be familiar with Tishrei 1 because this date is regarded as the birthday of the world and the beginning of creation. Consequently, Adam was created on Tishrei 6 and the first Sabbath was on Tishrei 7. So when we read in Genesis 8:4 that Noah's ark rested upon Mount Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month, it is understood to be the month of Nisan, because Nisan is the seventh month on the civil calendar. Now does the 17th of Nisan ring a bell with you?

It should. Nisan 17 was when the Red Sea parted and the Hebrews crossed over to the other side. This was the date of their Exodus. Nisan 17 was also when Jesus burst through the tomb and crossed over to the other side as the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. This date was his Exodus. So God uses the same picture here in Genesis. Noah made it to "the other side" of the flood safe and sound on Nisan 17 by an equally miraculous deliverance.

The civil calendar is used for the counting of years to determine the sabbatical years and the years of the jubilee. But here in Exodus 12, God introduced and established the religious calendar with the month of Nisan as the first month. On the first day of Nisan in the year 2448 from creation, two weeks before the Exodus, on that very day, God showed Moses the crescent new moon and instructed him regarding the setting of the Jewish calendar and the mitzvah or commandment to sanctify the new month.

It was to be an honored celebration. This was the very first commandment given to the newly-born nation of Israel even before the Exodus and the giving of the Torah. The new moon was not easy to determine, it had to be done officially. In the beginning, by a pair of witnesses who watched the heavens each night until they saw the faint crescent of the new moon. The fixing of the religious calendar was determined officially by the Sanhedrin, and over the centuries the Jews were the only ones who could accurately determine when to meet with God.

It was not a loose date. Nisan 1 was fixed and could not be changed ever. The Gentile rulers did not like this and realized that if they took away the new moon celebration at Nisan, they could effectively destroy Judaism, which is exactly what the Hellenists did during the times of Persia and Greece. And the same thing was done by the Romans during Jesus' day. Hellenism forbid the Jews from doing three things: honoring the Sabbath, being circumcised, and celebrating the new moon.

These three commandments are always attacked most because these are the key attributes that define what it means to be a Jew. Let me explain how important this is by reciting part of almost every Jewish prayer, which is prayed multiple times every day. Part one begins this way: Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha'olam, which means blessed are you, Lord our God, Master of the universe.

Here's part two: asher kidshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu, which means who sanctifies or sets us apart by doing those things you set up for us to do, most commonly translated as commandments. And one of those things is to sanctify the new moon. You see, a devout Jew is set apart and sanctified by those very things God gave us to do. Now this is where it gets really hard for Christians to understand, because most Christians follow the ways of Hellenism and they do away with the things that are considered too Jewish.

And there are many teachers and pastors out there who say that we don't need to do these things anymore, which contradicts what God set up for us in Exodus 12, calling these laws surrounding Nisan and Pesach eternal laws that are a central part of the way he governs his kingdom. Now many might say, well, I'm sanctified by the blood of Jesus and that's the only thing that's important.

But you see Jesus was and is Torah in the flesh. It is not within his nature to violate something the Father established in the Torah, for he cannot contradict himself. Jesus said, "I am the way." What was that way? It was what's called the derech, which represented the ways of God, all of his ways. If you go off doing your own thing and establish your own traditions apart from the derech, then very frankly you are not walking in the way of Jesus.

If you are uneasy about what I'm saying and feel an inner block inside you against doing any of these Jewish things such as honoring the Sabbath or celebrating the festivals, this unrest is Hellenism. It means you are in its grip and it will threaten the place in the kingdom that the Lord desires for you. Now I know that I'm messing with your mind here, but I'm trying my best to untangle you from a dangerous belief system that has entrapped a lot of people who genuinely love God.

He did not add a parenthesis after Exodus 12 saying that when Messiah comes, his people could ignore everything he literally engraved in stone. Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill the law, not to dismiss it or scoff at it. Every Gentile who calls themselves Christians are held accountable by which calendar system you follow: the ways of God or the ways of the Hellenistic world that we live in.

In closing, by way of encouragement, I want to share an insight into the spiritual condition that the young nation of Israel was in at Exodus 12. Lest you think his people were spiritual giants, I found it very comforting to learn from the sages that at that time in Egypt, the sages write that the nation had fallen to the 49th level of impurity, which is one level above spiritual extermination.

But by God's grace and his love for them, they heard these words from Exodus 12 and mustered up every ounce of resolve to leave where they were and follow Moses. And God blessed them with such a sense of his presence that they were able to stand before him at Mount Sinai and found worthy to receive his Torah. There is no shame to admit to God where you are in this discussion.

Our Lord told us, "small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." May the Lord bless you as you consider this teaching. Next time in part three, we'll discuss the remaining three sacred charges. To refer this episode to others, go to candacelong.com/podcast and look for this episode, Lessons from Exodus 12, part two. I hope you join me again next time for lessons in the latter days.

Thank you so much for being with us today. I want to close our time together the way our Jewish forefathers close every service, with the Aaronic benediction that has been chanted the same way for thousands of years. To get the most out of this blessing, if you're listening with family or friends, pull them close to you and spread a shawl or a scarf over your heads all together. Rabbi Michael will close our time today, first in Hebrew followed by the English translation.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yevarechecha Adonai veyishmerecha. Ya'er Adonai panav eleicha vichuneka. Yissa Adonai panav eleicha veyasem lecha shalom. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his face to you and give you peace.

Candace Long: Thank you so much for being with us today. I look forward every week to our times together studying the Torah. Please let us know if you have questions, and remember at the bottom of the page, you will find all of our programs archived by date, teacher, and topic if you missed an episode or you want to listen to something again. On behalf of our team of teachers, I invite you to study the Torah with us next Saturday morning from 6:00 to 9:00 on WECE Radio 590, our media partner for ShabbatShalomRadio.com.