Passover Puzzle

The Ninevites

Mary was the first to arrive at the burial site after the soldiers fled. She gazed into the empty tomb and ran to tell the disciples that the body was missing. The other women arrived while she was away. They briefly encountered the angels who told them that Christ had risen. Not long after, Peter and John returned with Mary and saw how neatly the burial cloth had been folded, something Jesus would have done. They pondered these things for a while, and they went away, but Mary remained at the tomb weeping. Then, through tear-filled eyes, she saw the figure of a man. She thought it was the gardener, but when the Lord spoke, she recognized His voice. Jesus told her to share the good news. By then, it was approaching mid-morning, and Jesus ascended with the angels and the elders to His Father՚s Temple.

Many heard the testimony of the guards and the saints who had risen with Christ, and they reported the facts to the Sanhedrin, who sent for the soldiers. They were speechless when they received the report. When they gathered some composure, they bribed the guards to circulate a false tale. But the truth burdened them for the rest of their lives.

Jesus had warned the Judaeans of their danger for three inclusive days, but they rejected the warning. After Jonah was spat out of the sea, he prophesied to the violent Assyrians for three days, warning them of their impending doom in forty days. God had already sent omens that portended destruction, but now they heard the warning from the lips of God՚s prophet, and they responded to Jonah՚s message:

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown (Jonah 3:4).

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes (Jonah 3:5,6).

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? (Jonah 3:8,9).

The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, and the Lord happily stayed the forty-day siege. But the Judaean rulers became more hardened and merciless in their war against heaven. They had said, “… His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matt 27:25). Therefore, the siege against them began in 31 AD, during Passover. “The prince that shall come” joined the siege in 70 AD during Passover. Nebuchadnezzar had burned the Solomon Temple in Ab 10, 586 BC. Prince Titus burned the Herodian temple in a flood of destruction on Ab 10⁵⁷, Thoth 1, 70 AD, exactly forty inclusive years after the sign of Jonah.

Siege of Jerusalem

Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.

Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it (Ezekiel 4:3,6,7 Italics given).

Many of us thought Christ died on the fourteenth of Nisan for a good reason. After all, the Passover was slain on the fourteenth; Christ is our slain Passover. Therefore, Christ must have died on the fourteenth. But did Jesus have to die on all the other feast dates to fulfill their types? His sacrifice covered every facet, once and for all.