by Esther Korson
If you were to visit Israel at this time of the year for the first time, you would begin to notice some unusual things happening. The first thing that you would notice would be that all of the major supermarkets have cleaning supplies on sale, and people are buying them like crazy. And people begin to clean their homes and later their cars as well! It is not what is known in the rest of the world as ‘spring cleaning’. It is to get any trace of leaven, or bread, out of the home in preparation for Passover when no bread products are eaten for a week. Somehow cleaning doesn’t seem so bad when you know that everyone else is doing it!
The next interesting thing to notice—schools are out and all of the kids are home—for almost 3 weeks!
The next thing you would notice, again in the supermarkets, is that boxes of unleavened bread (matzoth) suddenly appear and that they are beginning to move products around in a major way; until finally, huge aisles of food are covered over in paper, and only ‘kosher for Passover’ items remain available to the public. And then finally, the day before Passover actually begins, people eat bread products like they are never going to see them again! (I had eggs and toast for breakfast, a yummy bagel and lox sandwich at the central bus station for lunch and pasta for dinner!)Holidays in Israel begin at sunset, and so this morning you will then notice little fires all over the place—a bad pollution day!—as the final bread crumbs, purged from the house, are burned. And then, in the evening, as the sun sets, families and friends gather together around the Seder table to recount the miraculous story of God’s hand upon the Jewish people when He brought us forth from Egypt by His mighty hand. It is a long service, with lots of singing and four cups of wine and with a wonderful meal in the middle of it all. It is celebrated by Jewish people all over the world. In these days, it has more meaning than ever, since we are celebrating the miracle right here in Israel in the midst of a miracle of our own. God once again has brought us forth from the nations of our dispersal—over 100 of them—and returned us to our ancient homeland like He did in the ancient of days. Dear ones—we live in amazing times in the history of the world!
Passover has special meaning for me personally. It was way back in 1975 that I came to know Jesus in a personal way. The Bible says, “Before they ask, I will answer them…” (Isaiah 65: 24) and that is exactly what happened to me (as it has happened to many other Jewish people in these days). But at first I didn’t understand exactly who Jesus was for me as a Jewish person, until the Lord instructed me to invite the church that I was attending in Connecticut shortly after I came to know Jesus—to celebrate the Passover with me in the traditional way! The pastor at the church really knew the Lord and was truly happy with my suggestion. So very unexpectedly I found myself preparing a Seder meal and service for over a hundred people! It meant cooking a full dinner, including the traditional chicken soup with matzo balls as a first course. (The matzo balls are actually a Jewish secret weapon. If they are made right, light and fluffy, they are great—but if they’re made wrong, they are deadly!)
The night before the dinner itself, I was up late typing out the order of the service (the Seder) as I didn’t have enough Haggadot, the traditional Passover books, to go around. There’s no way that I can properly explain to you what happened to me on that late, quiet night so long ago, for a deep and personal experience with the Lord is almost impossible to describe. However, it was like, in a moment of time, the Lord took away the blindfold from before my eyes and I understood in a moment’s time the true identity of Jesus—“Yeshua” (His Hebrew name).
As a people, we have waited for a very long time for the coming of the Messiah. On that night in 1975, the Lord helped me to understand that the Messiah had indeed come—first, not as King as we had expected, but as the sacrificial Lamb, the literal fulfillment of the Passover. It was the fulfillment of the story of Abraham and Isaac, for just as God had asked Abraham to sacrifice his son; it was a picture of the day when the Lord Himself would place the wood of the sacrifice upon His very own Beloved Son as Yeshua became the Passover sacrifice, the sacrificial Lamb of God.
I cried tears of joy as I understood that the Lord had indeed kept His promise to us as a people, that we had not hoped in vain for all these centuries… the Messiah had come!! What a miracle of His grace and mercy! He also helped me to understand that in the not-too-distant future, the trumpets would blow and Yeshua would return to Jerusalem as King.
As we celebrated together the Passover meal the next night, it was with the new understanding that as a Jewish person I had not become a member of a foreign “Christian” faith—but that His great gift of love to us fulfilled me as Jew.
At sunset tonight, as we celebrate as a nation again the wonderful Passover story, it is with the longing in my heart for the Jewish people to also recognize at last the fulfillment of the holiday—that Yeshua became the final sacrifice for our sin so that we could be reconciled to God.
But this will be no ordinary Passover. Tonight will also be a ‘red moon’, the first of four configurations in 2014 and 2015, one red moon each on Passover and on Succoth. Although single blood moons are fairly common, four appearing so close together is a rare occurrence. (It happened in 1948 when the nation of Israel was born and it also happened in 1967 when Jerusalem, our eternal capital, became united to Israel again).
There are examples in the Bible where God used stars and the sun, as when a star led the wise men to Yeshua or how the sun stood still as Joshua led Israel to victory. Joel mentions the moon turning to blood “before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”
According to Pastor John Hagee, God is getting ready to speak this way once again. “I believe that in these next two years, we’re going to see something dramatic happen in the Middle East involving Israel that will change the course of history in the Middle East and impact the whole world,” he predicted.
In his latest book, “Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change,” he explains, “The sun and the moon and the earth are controlled by God Almighty. He is the one that is getting them in a direct alignment on a certain day and at a certain time—this time, it will be on Passover and Succoth two years in a row.”
He said it’s still unclear what the coming blood moons will bring, but he is certain of one thing. “When all is said and done, the flag of Israel will be flying over the walls of the city of Jerusalem when Messiah comes, and it’s going to be forever.”
So beginning with sunset tonight, and the first of the four blood moons, we will begin munching matzoh for a week. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if also during this week of miracles Israel could also at long last recognize Yeshua as the heart of the Passover? For this we can pray…Happy Passover!!!!!!! (I’ll be back next week after the end of Passover…)
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