[Robert Dick] Good morning, brethren. It’s not natural to say good morning to this group, but good morning just the same. I thought I was going to get to loaf through Mr. Wilson leading us in another song or special music, but here we are. It’s good to see all of you. Nice to have, even though it’s a wet week, before and after today, nice to have a little respite for those of us who are traveling down to Salem and those who did travel down to Salem already for Mr. Cafourek’s memorial.

Over the last two, three years, I have been developing a growing friendship with a neighbor. He lives right next to the mailbox, so obviously, the community mailbox sits right at the end of his driveway. It began with just the social hellos and, “How are you?” And over time, it has blossomed into a friendship where we may spend half an hour or so talking about what’s going on and what’s happening around us. He is an inveterate tease. He just absolutely loves to tease. So last year, late December, I went to the mailbox to get mail, and he came down the driveway at the same time to get his mail and engaged me in conversation. As we were finishing the conversation, he had to get a jab in. And that jab was…. I don’t know how long he’s known that I’m a minister, but probably a year and a half to two years, our conversations lead in such a way that it tells me that he’s aware that I’m a minister. But this time he just came right out and said – because he looks at my house, and between the two of us is a house that is decorated to the hilt for all the holidays, Christmas especially – mine, bare naked. I mean, there it is, sitting at the entrance to the subdivision, not a single solitary thing on it. He gave me that little grin and headshake, and he said, “You know, you being a Christian minister, I’m not sure how the boss feels about the fact that there’s no evidence that you’re celebrating His birthday.” And he grinned at me and I grinned back, and I thought, “I’ll file this one away. This is a quick passing at the mailbox, but I’ll file this one away, because there’s going to come a day where we’ll have a more serious conversation, and he’ll open a door and I’ll step into it, and I’ll give him some responses to his curiosity that he can mull even more.”

Our place in society is ironic, and I mean that in the literal sense. If people know what days we celebrate, they label us as keeping Jewish holy days. But we really don’t. At the same time, they see themselves as keeping Christian holidays. And they really don’t. It’s quite an irony. People in general are not really aware of the difference between Christian days and pagan days. And even within the Church of God, I don’t believe there is a full awareness of the difference between Christian days, pagan days and Jewish days.

This is an ideal time of year – and I appreciated Mr. Sexton putting me on the calendar at this time – because we’re literally sitting astride seasons of celebration. We’re about equal distance away from our fall holy days and the world’s Christmas. And straddling in between, of course, was Halloween on one side and Jewish Hanukah on the other side, so it is a season of celebrations representing all of the cultures that I have mentioned.

I don’t know about you, but I was shocked a week ago Sunday, I believe, with the Sunday newspaper. Opened it up and inside it were – from national chains, not local chains – sales sheets for Black Friday. It was only a couple years ago that Black Friday was the day after Thanksgiving, and now Black Friday is coming on the scene almost as soon as Halloween is over. So, we’re in the midst of celebrations.
So here we sit. Fall holy days ended. Halloween just over. Society, basically, full-bore looking toward Christmas. You know, Thanksgiving has become an afterthought, because you can’t make a lot of money off of turkey and cranberry sauce. So it’s a little noticed now and then, but basically, as soon as Halloween is over Christmas is in the crosshairs. So as I said, here we sit. Our fall holy days are over. We’re sitting between this world’s celebrations of Halloween and Christmas and the Jewish calendar is moving toward Hanukah. So in this season of celebrations recently ended and quickly approaching, I’d like to take today’s sermon to help you better understand the differences between Christian days, pagan days and Jewish days.

This is an overview sermon. Much of what I have to say, you already know. Many of you are rooted and grounded in this for decades, so it allows me to do a survey of some things without doing them injustice. Those of you that are newer and not as grounded in these things, let me simply say to you, one of the easiest things in the world to do is, simply to go on to Google or Bing – whichever search engine you have – type in the subject, and everything that you need to back up and support what I’m saying, will drop in your lap within the first page to come upon the screen.

It’s easiest to start with pagan days, because these are ones that we’ve become conditioned to – schooled to understand – and so let’s start with those. And when I use the term pagan days, what I mean by that is, days with either pagan origins, or days in which pagan customs are an integral part of the celebration of the day, or the combination of both. Why don’t we keep them? I think most of us know the answers, but let’s do a couple of simple, profound principles and they’ll take care of the need for any other scriptures during this section on pagan days.

The question of why don’t we keep them is answered very simply by two scriptures: Jeremiah 10 has been a go-to scripture for time immemorial, and it is such an overarching principle that it doesn’t include just days. It includes everything in your life. You can put everything in your life within this template and it answers questions that go far beyond celebration of days. Jeremiah 10, in its first two verses, lays down a simple biblical principle.

Jeremiah 10: 1-2 – Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: “Do not learn the way of the Gentiles.” Period.

It goes on to enumerate some of the things that were currently, at that day and time, really high on the Gentile or heathen hit parade of customs to practice. Ages change, customs change, the interaction in this round world we live in between different bodies that represent the nations, the world, the Gentiles change, whether you’re in the southern or northern hemisphere or eastern or western, but the principle stays the same no matter which century or what part of this world. Don’t learn the way of the nations. Depending on your translation, it’s the Gentiles, which translated means all of the nations. Some it says, in the old King James, I think, “learn not the way of the heathen.” So in anything you do – days, of course, are highlighted – but it really wouldn’t matter what you do. Whatever you do, filter it through a simple sieve: Don’t learn the way of the heathens.

History explains in detail how the Christian world has adopted pagan practices. It’s widely understood in both the Christian and the secular world. It’s no great mystery. You know, we’ve reached a day of pluralism, to the point where a Google search will lead to very candid, simple admissions that 30-40 years ago you’d never find, because you’d have a need to defend “why I do what I do.” And today it’s like, it doesn’t make any difference, so we’ll just say what is the fact.

The other scripture is Deuteronomy, chapter 12. On these two pillars rest the answer to “Why don’t we keep the celebrations that take place throughout the year that are labeled as Christian?” Deuteronomy, chapter 12, beginning in verse 28:

Deuteronomy 12:28-31 – Observe and obey all these words which I command you, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever – when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God. When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourselves – He’s saying, “pay attention” – or, as we say in a more slang form, “listen up” – take heed to yourselves that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.

We could stop the thought right there, because everything that follows is simply enumeration. If you want to read the enumeration do so, but He simply said, “Do not ask how others worshipped their gods so that you can incorporate it into the worship of Me. I don’t want it. I don’t accept it.”

These are the two pillars that we have stood on as long as anyone in this church has been in this church. So you can go back to whoever is the patriarch in this room, in terms of longevity, the pillars have never changed. These are the reasons why we don’t keep days that are, by the definition I gave you earlier, pagan days – by the definition I gave you earlier, which is, days that have been planted on significant historical pagan dates or have significant historical pagan customs entwined, or both. So, by the definition, in North America, the most celebrated pagan days, or the days with the most pagan roots, are Christmas, Easter, Halloween and Valentine’s Day. As we become more and more secular, Halloween and Saint Valentine’s Day have morphed to the place where, for many people, they don’t even think in terms of this is a Christian day. And yet, their genesis – their origin – were in church services, worship services, prayer, all the things that make something Christian.

Let’s walk through each of these four days, looking at the aspects within them that we were warned against in Deuteronomy, chapter 12, or in Jeremiah, chapter 10.

St. Valentine’s Day. Some of these I’ll read to you simply because it was easy to do a cut and paste and allow somebody who is an authority to make the statement, rather than for me to make the statement. “The history of St. Valentine’s Day and the story of its patron saint is shrouded in mystery. February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and Saint Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman traditions. While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial, which probably occurred about AD 270, others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place Saint Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to Christianize the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.” Now Lupercus was a wolf. Rome – the city of Rome – traces its ancestry back to Romulus and Remus, two young men who were supposed to have been raised by a she-wolf in a cave. So the Lupercalia goes all the way back to the celebration of the origins of the city of Rome. The dichotomy between the death of a martyr and love letters, poems, romantic cards, and naked infants flying around with wings, shooting love darts at young couples in the spring of the year is obvious. There really is no connection between the celebration of the death of a martyr and all of the symbols that all have their genesis back in ancient Roman custom.

Halloween has risen in America to the place where it is the second most profitable annual holy day – second only to Christmas – but it too is pagan with a very thin veneer of Christianity. “Halloween is also known as All Hallows Eve or All Saints Eve, and it is a celebration observed in a number of western countries on October 31. In the religious aspect, it begins the three-day observance of All Hallow Tide, a time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed. The practice of Halloween mostly comes from Celtic paganism in the British Isles and the feast of Samhain. They believed it was a time when ghosts and spirits came out to haunt and the Celts would appease the spirits by giving them treats.” So basically, this was an evening of extortion by demons. “You either appease me or I will do something destructive to you or your property.” Hence, the children that go out and say, “Trick or treat,” are simply practicing a custom that goes all the way back to the extortion of the demonic world that “you either appease or I will do something unsavory to you and yours.” “The feast was celebrated in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and parts of Britain. When Christianity came to Britain, like what happened in many Christian areas, they figured the best way to convert people was to incorporate their practices instead of banning them. It so happened that November 1 was the Christian feast of All Saints and the next day All Souls Day, so October 31 became the eve of All Saints or All Hallows Eve.” So the modern practice of Halloween is simply an amalgamation of early Roman Catholic holy days and pagan customs.

Christmas observance has probably received more comment than any other, because it’s the most prominent day of the Christian calendar. The first and most obvious thing that comes onto the scene is a very simple one: there is no way Jesus Christ was born in December. We are in a world that travels more now and, as a result, there are more of you who have traveled to the Middle East, and more of you who have been to Israel. My family has lived in Israel. In fact, they’ve lived in Israel twice, and believe me, from firsthand experience, shepherds are not out in the field tending their flocks in December. I have some beautiful pictures of my parents’ home in a suburb of Jerusalem with about 6-7 inches of snow covering everything in December. I have stood on the top of the Mount of Olives in early December with a full wool sweater and a leather coat on top like this, just to brace against the winds. Now December 24th, considering that the solstice is December 21st, is the ideal time to celebrate the rebirth of the S-U-N. The more you’ve had an opportunity to be exposed to, especially to the archeology – the architectural archeology of Europe – the more fascinating it is to see the ruins, both in England, Ireland, Scotland. There now is a World Heritage site on the islands, clear up off the north end of Scotland that are almost as close to the Scandinavian countries as they are to Scotland, where entire complexes are being excavated., And the dominant feature is the fact that the orientation of their temples and their worship centers are such that exactly on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises right straight down the middle of one door, shines all the way through the building and out the other door. And they were erected for the purpose of commemorating and memorializing the shortest day of the year. Christmas is simply the merging of a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on top of a day that is infamous for celebrating the rebirth of the sun.

It’s interesting. If you ever have the time to go through a study of Puritanism during the Reformation…. I’ll back the tractor up a step further. The term Protestant Reformation is a standard piece of our vocabulary – so much so that we don’t think, “What is that name saying?” It’s saying, first of all, “We protested.” And the protest was intended to lead toward a reformation of practice. The European world and its effort to reform went everywhere from cosmetic to serious. The English church simply reformed by changing its prelate from the pope in Rome to the king in England, and changing a few of the colors of vestiges, and a few of the ceremonies, but for all intents and purposes, it remained a Catholic church with an English name. The Germans, under Luther, went a little bit further, but still many of the formulas, many of the ceremonies, many of the sacraments are, basically, just a little lower down reformed versions. Among the more radical reformers were the Puritans – people who actually took seriously the need to reform. Under Oliver Cromwell – to use him as a pivot point – in Puritan England, it was illegal to keep Christmas. The Puritans who left England, under the persecution of English kings and settled in New England, also considered the worship and commemoration of Christmas as a punishable offense. So, in Puritan New England, it was illegal. It was punishable.

What many people in our society, and probably many people in the church, may not fully understand is, colonial New England came and went and was replaced by the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. And when the dust settled and the United States was free and thirteen colonies, it was still illegal to keep Christmas. We muddled through getting ourselves formed. And England tried one more time to see if they could come at us again in the War of 1812. And when the War of 1812 was finished, the Star Spangled Banner was written – the flag still flew and we were still free, even though they burned down Washington DC, Christmas was still illegal. Decades went on and the United States decided to fight a Civil War in the time of Abraham Lincoln. The war was fought, blood was shed, peace was declared, the war was over, and Christmas was still illegal. In Boston, the center of the Puritan world, a school child was not free to miss school on Christmas day until 1870. It was a work day. It was a school day. It was a labor day. And in the earlier years, it was punishable if you tried to celebrate it, and later, as things simply became more liberal, it simply was a day that nobody had permission off from work. So really, what we do today is not that old.

The last of the four days is Easter. The formula…the easiest way to identify the genesis of Easter is, that the formula for counting it was determined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. That council was a battle between quartodecimans – the Latin name for fourteenthers…. And whether you know it or not, you are a fourteenther. So there was the tug-of-war, and the declaration that, from this time forward, we observe formally and officially Easter – and it is determined by this formula – and we no longer acknowledge fourteenthers. When do you keep Passover? The fourteenth of Nisan. You are a fourteenther. You went out of vogue at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It suffices to say, brethren, as you well know, bunnies and the absolute absurdity of rabbits laying eggs have absolutely nothing to do with a risen Jesus Christ. So it too is nothing more than an amalgamation of very pagan fertility practices, appropriately in the month of April when the blossoms are blossoming, the trees are beginning to turn green and life is coming back once more, with elements and a veneer of Christianity. I might say simply that the English and American Puritans also banned as pagan the celebration of Easter. So in the beginning of our country, these particular days were acknowledged for what they were.

So in summary, the picture is a simple one. As we look at what are called the major Christian holidays, all of them are recognized by historians and social scientists as, at the very best, an amalgamation of pagan customs and symbols, combined with practices originally adopted by the Roman church. Hence, the label, pagan days. For any of us, regardless of how they are viewed by anyone else, they are for our purposes simply pagan days – at least to an obvious question.

As I said earlier, we have the irony of people saying – well, as my neighbor did – “How does the Boss feel about you not showing any respect for His birthday?” And as I thought to myself, we will have a conversation one time where we will approach the subject of the Boss not celebrating that birthday, but what the Boss really did celebrate. The simple fact is, when it comes to practices and symbols and events, the selected times of the year, our Christian world keeps pagan days, and it looks at us, and says, “Well, that means you must be keeping Jewish days.” But do we?

I hope by the end of this sermon, you have a far, far fuller understanding of the reality that we don’t even remotely celebrate Jewish days. Observant Jews keep a range of days, some national and some religious. Let’s dismiss the national very quickly – the ethnic – because, as with any society, it only stands to reason that in the United States, we would celebrate the Fourth of July, and the English wouldn’t. It’s a national day. Our Thanksgiving Day is on a different day than the Canadian Thanksgiving Day, and that is a very natural event. The Jews have two national days that have nothing to do directly with religion. And if I were a person of Jewish ethnicity, these would be very important days to me because of who I was.

Purim, which celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the time of Queen Esther. I think it is natural in society for people to have a much better grasp of current history than ancient history, but it’s very sobering to realize that, if Haman had had his way, the results would have been worse than Hitler. We see Adolph Hitler as the most atrocious crime against the Jewish people in all of history – only because he had the power to carry it out. Haman would have exterminated all Jews. And the Jews celebrate Purim as a day that says we were delivered from extermination. They also observe Hanukah, the Festival of Lights, to picture a time during the intertestamental era – between the Old and New Testament – when Judas Maccabeus and the Maccabeans fought against those who suppressed them. They had desecrated the temple. They had slaughtered priests and faithful people. They had offered swine’s blood on the altar of the temple. And as they were able to liberate themselves from their enemy and to restore the temple and its services, they established a holiday called the Feast of Lights to commemorate that event. These are very proper ethnic days – very proper Jewish days. Many people think the remainder of the days, which are religious days, we share in common. The reality is, as you will see, the picture really is quite different.

Let’s do the Passover. We’ll walk through them in order. Let’s do the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread, first of all. In terms of Jewish observance, somewhere between the time of Ezra, the priest, and Jesus Christ, Jews by custom combined Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread and they became one festival. When we turn to John 19, we see a scripture that all of us have seen before, but it helps to answer a question – why it is that, when we keep Passover, and you go to your regular calendar, and you look at the calendar the church gives you, the calendar the church gives you and the regular calendar on your wall never have Passover on the same day? You think, “What’s going on?”  Well, what’s going on took place somewhere, as I said, between Ezra and Jesus Christ. By the time of Christ, the combining of Passover with the Days of Unleavened Bread was already a fact. Jesus Christ, as we will discuss in greater detail later, kept the Passover with His disciples. We do this every year. After it, He went out to the Garden of Gethsemane, He was caught because of the betrayal of Judas by a contingency of soldiers. He was taken, arrested, interrogated, beaten through the night, taken before Pilate the following day, crucified and died by three in the afternoon. Why was it so imperative that He be dead by that time of day? John simply says in passing, in John 19…. You know that Pilate brought Christ out and he said, in essence – he went back and forth with the Jews – saying, “I can’t find anything wrong with Him. Why should I crucify Him?” And they said, “Do it anyway.” And he said, “Well, you have the liberty to set somebody free. Should I set Him free?” And they said, “No, give us Barabbas, but crucify Him.” And so back and forth and back and forth.

In the context of that, which is John 19, we come to John 19:13, and it says:

John 19:13 – When Pilate therefore heard that saying – because now they said…now they took a goad and they poked Pilate, and they said, “Anyone who is supporting letting this man loose is not a friend of Caesar’s. Now, Caesar was the boss, and Caesar was not the one to get cross-wise with. So the previous verse, they had said, “Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar.” That was the trump card that they played. So in verse 13: “When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the preparation day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”

So as John is doing the timekeeping for the events, he says now, this is about the ninth hour on the preparation day for the Passover. No, it wasn’t the preparation day for the Passover; the Passover had been the previous evening. But the Jews’ Passover was going to be after sunset. For the entire history of the Church of God, we have never kept Passover, and we have never treated Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, in the manner of a Jewish observer. So we strike off the first one. We don’t do the same calendar. We don’t do the same observances.

That takes us to Pentecost. The Bible, in Leviticus 23:16 – and I’m not going to turn back there; you can go back at your leisure – gives the formula for determining when to keep Pentecost, or the Feast of Firstfruits, or the Feast of Weeks. It had multiple names. It said you should count from the morrow after the Sabbath, seven Sabbaths, or seven weeks, and that will bring you to this Feast. Again, from somewhere prior to the days of Christ, we have kept this differently.

On our American calendar, we have festivals that are referred to as fixed festivals and we have festivals that are referred to as moveable festivals. The Fourth of July is a fixed festival. You can count on the Fourth of July being celebrated every year on the Fourth of July. So your calendar will always tell you that the Fourth of July will be celebrated on that fixed date. Thanksgiving is a moveable feast. It is kept on the last Thursday of November, and so you never know the calendar date for Thanksgiving, until you look at your calendar and you look at what the last Thursday in November is. Simply put, you want to know the difference between our celebration of Pentecost and the Jewish celebration? Theirs is a fixed calendar; ours is a moveable calendar. The Jews keep Pentecost on Sivan 6 every year. It’s a fixed date. We simply say, “Why in the world, when this day was established, should the instructions for keeping it start with ‘count from the morrow after the Sabbath seven weeks, and then you’ll arrive there?’” If it’s the same calendar date every year, there’s no need to count. I never have to count as to when the Fourth of July will occur, because it will always occur on the fourth of July. When you set it on a fixed day such as Sivan 6, there is no need to count. There’s no counting involved. It is when it is.

That brings us to Trumpets. So, if someone says, “You keep Passover like the Jews,” say, “No, we have different times.” “Well, you keep Pentecost like the Jews,” “No, we have different times.” What about Trumpets? I’ll read you a simple citation that will answer that question easily. “Since the time of the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, normative Jewish law appears to be that Rosh Hashanah” – that’s the Feast of Trumpets – “is to be celebrated for two days because of the difficulty of determining the date of the new moon. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that Rosh Hashanah was celebrated on a single day in Israel as late as the thirteenth century. Orthodox and conservative Judaism now generally observe Rosh Hashanah for the first two days of Tishrei. Even in Israel, where all other Jewish holidays dated from the new moon, last only one day. The two days of Rosh Hashanah are said to constitute yoma arichta, which in Arabic means one long day.”

Have you ever celebrated a two day-long Day of Trumpets? I’ve been keeping the Day of Trumpets for sixty years. I’ve never celebrated a two day-long Feast of Trumpets. So if somebody says, “Your days are their days,” I say, “No, you’ve struck out for a third time.”

The Day of Atonement, which seemed to be a day where, “How can anything be that different?” I don’t know anybody that wants to fast for two days, so we’re safe stretching it. But I’ll give you a tease. I want you to go back to Matthew, chapter 6. I want you to go back to Matthew, chapter 6 for one reason: because Matthew, chapter 6, serves as the guide for how we physically observe the Day of Atonement. Now we know that in terms of afflicting our souls, it has to do with not consuming food or water. But in Matthew, chapter 6, and verse 16, Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount said:

Matthew 6:16 – “Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you – and now we enter the area of proscription for us, so you, me, and everyone else since this was given. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

From a Jewish website, here are the five prohibitions of Yom Kippur. And again, you will note our nonconformity with Jewish practice. With two of the five, we would have no objection. With one, we would scratch our head and ask, “Why?” And with the remaining two, we would simply say, “The instructions of our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, instruct us otherwise.” Here are the five prohibitions for keeping the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur: No eating or drinking. As I said, “We have two that we really don’t have any argument with.” One we never discuss, but I think the logic of it doesn’t escape any married couple: No engaging in marital relations. So the first two, we have no trouble with the logic or the actual commandment. I said, “One we just scratch our head.” The third prohibition is: No wearing leather shoes. Don’t ask me to explain it because I’ll scratch my head right along with you, and when we’re finished we’ll both walk out saying, “I don’t know.” The next two I said, “We simply were instructed by our Lord otherwise.” The fourth prohibition is: No bathing or washing. And the last is: No anointing, applying creams, lotions, makeup, etcetera, etcetera. You and I simply do not keep a Jewish holy day.

Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day. We’re arriving at the end of the calendar, brethren, and so far, for a knowledgeable member of the Church of God, if somebody said, “You keep Jewish holy days,” the answer you would give them is simply, “No, we don’t. And if you want me to enumerate, I can enumerate for you.” But we come to the very end – the last of it all – the feast and the appendage – the Last Great Day or the Eighth Day. So far, every Jewish day has been celebrated differently than our practices. You’re going to find the end of the season is no different. In Jewish practice, the first two days of the Feast of Tabernacles are treated the same. They’re both treated as a Sabbath or a high day, meaning there is no work allowed on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, as we know. That’s a holy day. But the second day in Jewish practice is treated the same way. And so it starts off with two days that are work-prohibited days. At the end of the Feast, when the Feast is over and we keep the Eighth Day, they add on a ninth day. And so they have the Eighth Day, and it’s followed by Simchat Torah – a ninth day. So they actually have two back-to-back holy days, one of biblical origin and the other simply a day that originated with tradition.

So brethren, I’ve just finished giving you all the Jewish holy days. Now if somebody says to you, “Do you keep Jewish holy days?” I think you’re prepared to give a very simple two letter answer, N-O – “No, I don’t.” My purpose for walking you through all the Jewish holy days was to help you see that the oft-made, offhand comment, “Oh, you keep Jewish holy days,” is just simply not factual.

The apostle Paul said, in Titus, chapter 2, something that we pass over. (Pardon the unintended pun there.) We need to stop and think about it on occasion, and as we look about days that we celebrate, it’s a good time to look at this particular verse. Paul’s not the only one to make this comment. Peter, in his epistles, also made this same comment – used the same word. The New King James does a disservice to the term, and I’m going to read (because I have the New King James up here), as I read it, and you’re reading in the New King James, you’re going to hear one word that your eyes are not going to see. And that’s the word that appears in the old King James. Verse 14 of Titus 2, speaking of Christ:

Titus 2:14 – ...who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own peculiar people, zealous for good works.

You really are a peculiar people. You don’t fall on one side and you don’t fall on the other side, and so here you sit in the middle between the two, and it is truly a peculiar position. Peter said, “You’re a peculiar people, a royal priesthood headed toward the kingdom of God.” So we’re all familiar now with the pagan days and with the Jewish days.

What I’m waiting for with my neighbor is the day when we really…. And we don’t have that too often. We had one here about a month ago, where we sat on my front porch, and we talked for about forty-five minutes. And I thought, “This is what I need. I need his full attention, where we’re both relaxed, and then we can approach this particular subject.” But the reality, brethren, is, you are the only ones who keep Christian days. What I hope one day to share with my neighbor is, “I don’t keep this celebration, but I do keep the original Christian days.” Let’s walk through the why.

(Let’s see how we’re doing time-wise – that we’re okay.)

Some of these scriptures, because you know them well, I’ll give you the scripture rather than going and reading it. Every year we keep the Passover, don’t we? We keep the symbols – the bread and the wine. Jesus Christ, as He’s talking to His disciples at Passover…. And what I’m doing is walking you through the holy days all over again. The Passover, brethren, that we celebrate, it’s no mystery to any of us. It is a purely Christian day. We assemble on Passover to commemorate the death of our Savior Jesus Christ. We’re not there spending the evening talking about Egypt, we’re not there talking about Pharaoh, we’re not there talking about the plagues, we’re not there talking about the parting of the Red Sea. We are there talking about the death, the shedding of the blood and the breaking of the body of Jesus Christ. As He was instructing His disciples on that day, in Luke 22:19, one of the things He said is, quote:

Luke 22:19 – “…this do in remembrance of Me.”

Passover is the first Christian memorial – commanded that we walk through these reminders of who our Savior is and what it cost to redeem us annually on this day. Twenty-five years later – a quarter of a century later – in a European cosmopolitan city, members of the Church of God are reading a letter from Paul, who is saying to them, “I am delivering to you what was delivered to me by Christ – that on the night He was crucified, He took bread and broke it, and said, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’” It didn’t end with the disciples. It didn’t end with the Jewish Christian church. It was alive in the work of the apostle of the Gentiles and in the Gentile churches in Asia and in Europe. It is the first Christian holy day.

The Days of Unleavened Bread. You know, all you have to do is do a further study of 1 Corinthians. And I appreciate these, because time has the way of eliminating things that are casual. Christ is dead. He’s buried. The disciples have scattered. By twenty-five years later, you can’t even find the names of the apostles in the book of Acts. They have disappeared from history. You take all twelve apostles, and you say, “How many of them” – once you get past the Day of Pentecost – “how many of them have names that ever again appear in the New Testament?” You know why? He said, “Go you therefore into all the world and preach the gospel.” So history – traditional history – tells us there were some in the British Isles. There were some as far as India. There were some down in Ethiopia. There were some in Spain. They had done what they were commanded to do. And as a result, we see Peter, we see some who now have risen in prominence, because of the vacuum and because of their qualifications.  So we see a physical brother – or half-brother – of Jesus Christ, James, rising. We see John, as the anchor in terms of longevity, but it comes down to, basically, it doesn’t take long before you all you see of the original apostles are Peter and John. They have gone to do the work they were assigned to do. Times changed. Things could be forgotten. But they weren’t forgotten. Paul took into the Gentile areas the very same practices that were practiced by the twelve and by Jesus Christ. The symbolisms…. They weren’t looking back to coming out of Egypt. Coming out of Egypt was a metaphor for them, just the same as when the Bible was talking about how despicable Jerusalem had become. They talked about the city and they used the term Sodom and Egypt, “where our Savior was slain,” to depict the character of the city and what it had degraded to. As we keep the Days of Unleavened Bread, the Days of Unleavened Bread are about what Paul spoke to the Corinthians about – getting rid of vanity – being puffed up, arrogant – being so sophisticated that sin no longer is treated as sin – becoming, in that sense, willing to compromise the standards of the word of God to simply accommodate the times in which we live. This is how he spoke to the Corinthians. Egypt – coming out of Egypt – has always been symbolic – walking away from those things contrary to Who God is, what God says, how God feels, and what He wants us to do.

Our Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread are very, very Christian observances. They deal with the death of Christ and the need to have His blood applied to our bodies. We look at the basic Christian doctrines of faith toward God – of repentance, and of baptism – and we’re right here in what these days are talking about.

Pentecost came along and we had no real mystery about what was going on. Luke, chapter 24 – if you wish to have another Christian holiday – Luke, chapter 24. If you have a red-letter edition of the Bible, simply go to the very end of the book of Luke, and look at the last batch of red letters, and you will be looking at the very last things that Jesus Christ said to His disciples before He disappeared into a cloud into heaven. In verse 46, at the end of Luke 24:

Luke 24:46-49 – Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”

They did tarry in Jerusalem. On the Day of Pentecost, they were miraculously given the Holy Spirit, and the first batch of several thousand people repented and were baptized, and the Day of Pentecost, at that day, became became the birth day of the Church of God. It has become the day where we see the birth of the church, and we also see what made the birth possible – the giving of the Holy Spirit. So both the element that made it possible and the literal fact took place on that day, and from that time forward, that has been what our focus is. We’re not looking back at whether barley is ripe or barley’s not ripe, whether we should go out and harvest it as “that’s our celebration.” That’s incidental. That’s incidental.

In James, chapter 1, and verse 18, he talked of us, and said that we should be a kind of firstfruits. And into the Christian vocabulary came the word firstfruits, of which Jesus Christ is the first of the firstfruits, and then we are looked at as also the firstfruits of God’s creation. And so it is the church that is the early harvest. It is those who are called who are the early harvest. That’s where our focus is. That’s what we look at.

The Day of Trumpets. It is only in the New Testament, after the church was founded, that certain spiritual concepts came into clear focus. For a number of these, we can go back to the Old Testament for support – in fact, it’s very easy to find support – but the specifics – the whats and the whys and the hows and the wherefores – do not seem to be revealed until the church has come to be. From Trumpets onward, the why and how of the holy days were not made clear until Christ had built His church.

Turn with me to 1 Peter, chapter 1, beginning in verse 6, Peter says:

1 Peter 1:6 – In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes – though it is tested by fire – may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith – the salvation of your souls. Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but – to you – to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven – things which angels desire to look into.

Do you realize, brethren, that once you pass the memorials – Passover, Unleavened Bread and Pentecost – you are looking at things that are yet future? And Peter so eloquently said that the prophets wanted to know the details, and God simply said, “The details are not for you to know. The details are for those who come later to know.”

You know, we keep the Feast of Trumpets, and we keep it looking forward to, as the apex, the blast of the seventh trumpet, the descending of Jesus Christ from heaven and the changing from mortal to immortal of the children of God. That’s the apex. Mr. Sexton, recently in a sermon, walked through the trumpets – rather walked through the seals. We’ll work toward the trumpets. We keep the Day of Trumpets. It’s not until Paul wrote the resurrection chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 that the term, last trump, appears in the Bible. Were people unaware earlier that the resurrection of the saints would take place at the sound of a trumpet? No. Were they unaware that an angel would sound and they would be resurrected? No. But the details that allow us to frame what we are looking for in that day are not in the Old Testament – shadows, allusions – not the details. It isn’t until we get to Revelation that we get the detailed account of one trumpet, two trumpets, three trumpets, four trumpets, five, six, seven, and the resurrection of the saints and the return of Jesus Christ. The Jews as a people, anchored in the Old Testament, simply can’t celebrate these days with the same clarity offered the Church of God. It’s just that simple. The point that Peter was making is that you have to walk this far along to have the clarity to allow you to keep it this way. And, if you don’t walk that far, the clarity isn’t there. You will have to keep it for some other reason – for some other motive.

The Day of Atonement is no different in general principle. Do you realize how infrequently Satan is even noticed as existing in the Old Testament? He is, for all intents and purposes – when you consider the number of books that make up the Old Testament – a nonentity. He appears in the Garden of Eden with Eve. His grand show is the book of Job. His name is mentioned one time in one scripture in Chronicles, one time in one scripture in Psalms, and two times in Zechariah. And then, he is referred to one time as Lucifer. And that’s all of Satan that you get directly in the Old Testament.

But you come into the New Testament, and it immediately begins with Jesus Christ contending with Satan over the governance of the entire world, where his final blow is, “Look, if you’ll bow down, I’ll give you everything in this world.” And Christ never looked at him, and said, “You can’t do that!” And He didn’t say, “You can’t do that,” because he could do that. “You’ll forfeit your eternal life, and you can have whatever you want in this world under my dominion.” It is the New Testament, where it is simply a fact of life, that the god of this world is Satan. Mr. Sexton went through a couple of very clear scriptures recently, in a sermon, that just laid out that the god of this present world and age is the one who was once Lucifer – who is now the adversary. It isn’t until Revelation that all the long ritual back in Leviticus 23 – about the goats – becomes totally, completely clear. The beginning of the rule of Jesus Christ begins by an angel, with a strong hand, taking Lucifer and binding him and casting him into a bottomless pit where he can deceive the nations no more for a thousand years. How do you become at one with God? There are multiple pieces to the answer, but one of them is the removal of the greatest instigator of rebellion and contention in all of human existence, Lucifer.

You know, there’s a certain irony…and I have alluded to this in holy day messages a couple of times. There’s a certain interesting piece that, I think, when the resurrection comes, there’s going to be a very interesting conversation. The Jews keep Trumpets and Atonement very appropriately for someone who is Jewish – very appropriately. And we keep it very appropriately for someone who is a part of the Church of God. We’re tracking different tracks. The more you study the period of time – the Ten Days of Awe between Trumpets and Atonement – the more you realize that, for a Jewish observer, the Days of Awe – the whole period starting with Trumpets and ending with Atonement – is really our Passover. It’s a time of reflection. It’s a time of looking at your sins. It’s a time of considering your conduct and your actions. It’s a time of looking at your accountability to God for what you’ve done and what you need to change in it. It’s very appropriate. They don’t realize that as we’re keeping Trumpets and Atonement, what we’re looking forward to is God gathering from all the corners of the world all twelve tribes – all the Jews and all the Israelites – bringing them back – combining them, where they’re no longer at contention with one another – and bringing them back as a contrite, humble people who rejoice at the opportunity to worship their God. I find it absolutely fascinating that the Days of Awe are very appropriate for the observers. And the day will come, I think, where their jaws will drop when Christ comes, and say, “We never realized the import and the impact.”

Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles we understand – from a wealth of Old Testament prophetic scriptures that are synthesized and crystalized – when we finally come to the end of Revelation and find out that this is a thousand year period when our Lord Jesus Christ will rule on this earth, and we will reign and rule with Him. I’ll read you a simple statement about the Jewish observance. “Succoth” – Feast of Tabernacles – “is the last of the three pilgrimage festivals. Succoth has a dual significance – historical and agricultural.” While you are celebrating the rule of Jesus Christ, this is what is being celebrated. “Historically, Succoth commemorates the forty-year period during which the children of Israel were wandering in the dessert living in temporary shelters.” The temporary shelters that an observant Jew builds is not looking at the millennium. It’s looking back at forty years in the wilderness when “we lived in structures like this, and so we’re doing that again.” “Agriculturally, Succoth is a harvest festival and is sometimes referred to the Festival of Ingathering.” When the Old Testament is all you have to guide you, unfortunately, these festivals go backward in time and become memorials. When you have the New Testament to guide you, as Peter was stating so eloquently, it becomes things that we look forward to in the future, and we celebrate them in a very different way.

Finally, the Last Great Day. Rabbinic literature explains the holy day this way. This is what the Last Great Day means to an observant Jew. I don’t need to explain to you what it means to us. You know what it means to us. It is, in one sense, the greatest day of all time. I know it’s hard to juggle…. The greatest day of all time is at the sound of the last trumpet when we change from flesh and blood to immortal. On a personal basis, that’s the greatest day in time. Collectively, the greatest day in time is when the billions of people, who’ve never had a chance for salvation, get their one, only and first chance – phenomenal days. The Last Great Day by Jewish custom – Rabbinic literature explains the holiday this way: “Our Creator is like a host who invites us to visit for a limited time” – Feast of Tabernacles – “but when that time comes for us to leave, He has enjoyed Himself so much that He asks us to stay another day – the Eighth Day.” Another related explanation: “Succoth is a holiday intended for all of mankind.” So, Feast of Tabernacles, for all mankind. “But when Succoth is over, the Creator invites the Jewish people to stay for an extra day, for a more intimate celebration.” We’re going in very, very, very different directions.

Well brethren, as I said when I began, one day I have a conversation filed away back here with a neighbor. I’ve been pondering it for a year now, as you can tell. And all the time I’ve been pondering it, in those moments of meditation and reflection, it has been a fascinating time to ponder and meditate the profound difference between pagan days, Jewish days, and Christian days.