Friday, April 06, 2012

Happy Easter and Passover!

Happy Easter to all our readers.
Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.” Luke 18 ; 31-33
 
Happy Passover to all our Jewish readers also. Last week we had a presentation of the Passover Seder at our church titled 'Christ in the Passover' it was really interesting! When I was a youngster we had Jewish neighbors who always bought us a box of Matzo crackers at this time of year - they were huge but not very tasty! It was really interesting though to hear how the Matzo (which means "unleavened bread" in Hebrew) were used in the Passover Seder.

3 Matzo crackers were placed into a Matzo cover which is like a bag that had 3 separate compartments in it. One Matzo cracker went into each compartment. The top and bottom Matzo remained out of sight but the middle Matzo was taken out, broken and part of it was hidden out of sight until later in the Seder. Before the significance of this was mentioned, my mind had already jumped to the Incarnation, atoning death, burial and resurrection of Jesus!

I've been getting into apologetics recently and there are some excellent resources out there dealing with the evidence and the Historicity of the Resurrection. I would highly recommend that readers visit the Reasonable Faith website where you can find the resources of philosopher, theologian and apologist William Lane Craig. I had the privilege of hearing Dr Craig in a debate at Manchester University a couple of months ago. Great stuff!

The picture above is from our website where you can download sets of Bible pictures covering the Trial, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. The picture above is from our Passover set, (18 pictures), and shows the blood of the sacrificed lamb being applied to the doorposts and lintel with a branch of Hyssop. All our picture sets are available for immediate download!

May I wish you the peace of the risen Lord Jesus Christ this Easter.

5 comments:

deboraw said...

Very good. I'll have to check back at a little slower time, but am looking forward to your pictures! Such an important time of the year!

Bible artist said...

Look forward to your comments Deboraw.

I've always thought that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, but I know that not everyone agrees with that.
Anyone have any thoughts?

Paul Green said...

Happy Easter to you and your family Graham.

Bible artist said...

And to you & Bev Paul.

Patrick said...

A Happy Easter to everyone. Christ is risen!

The whole debate about whether the Last Supper was a Passover seder or not stems from the fact that while the Synoptics identify the day as "the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb" (Mark 14:12), John says that the next day, when Jesus was crucified, was "the day of Preparation of the Passover" (John 19:14) and that the chief priests had yet to eat the Passover meal (18:28). I've seen quite a lot of answers to this supposed discrepancy, more than I could type here.