Chapter XVIII

He reader will do well to skip this chapter.

If it were written to prove Scripture to be wrong, it would be interesting; and, moreover, it would betoken ‘‘culture,” and might even attract the notice of the newspapers. But as its object is merely to defend Holy Writ on a subject about which enough has been written against it to fill a bookcase, it is really not worth reading.

The first three Gospels agree that the Lord’s Supper was instituted at the Jewish Passover on the night before the Crucifixion! Here is Matthew’s testimony : —

“On the first day of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where wilt thou

* Theories of an “anticipatory celebration” by the Lord and His disciples on the 13th Nisan, or a deferred celebration by the leaders of the Jews on the 15th, are preposterous. Here I will but refer my readers to Dr. Edersheim’s Life and Times of the Messiah, a book which ought to be an “end of controversy” on the subject of the present chapter.

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that we make ready for Thee to eat the Passover?” Not ‘the first day of the Feasz,” as the A.V. gives it, but the day on which leaven was put away, namely, the 14th Nisan. Mark and Luke state even more explicitly that it was the day when the Passover was killed.

But, we are told, “It appears from John xviii. 28 that on the Friday morning the Jews who conducted our Lord to the pretorium had not yet eaten the Passover.” Zkat day, therefore, must have been the 14th Nisan. And this is confirmed by the fact that the Evangelist calls it “the preparation of the Passover” and adds that the following day “was a high day,”? which proves that it must have been the Feast day, or 15th Nisan.3

Now at this stage I do not ask that the Evangelists shall be believed as men who were inspired, nor that their writings shall be accepted

* Matt. xxvi. 17; Mark xiv. 12; Luke xxii. 7.

2 John xix. 14, 31.

3 In Hastings’s Bible Dictionary (vol. ii., p. 634), Prof. Sanday, after noticing that the Synoptists identify the Last Supper with the Passover, goes on to say, “St. John, on the other hand, by a number of clear indications (John xiii. 1; xviii. 28; xix. 14, 31), implies that the Last Supper was eaten before the time of the regular Passover, and that the Lord suffered on the afternoon of Nisan 14.” Prof. Cheyne’s Encyclopedia Biblica says, “The Synoptists put the Crucifixion on Friday the 15th Nisan, John on Friday the 14th” (article “Chronology,” p. 806).

as Divine oracles, but only that they shall be treated as intelligent and trustworthy witnesses are treated in our courts of justice. Three of them agree in giving a clear and explicit account of certain facts; while the fourth uses language which appears fo some to conflict with that of the others. The first question, therefore, would be whether either the competence or the truthfulness of any of them is open to suspicion. And to this the answer is an emphatic negative. The circumstances, moreover, veto the suggestion of a mistake; for the events of those dreadful days must have been burned into the memories of all who took part in them. This being so, the point upon which any tribunal would fix attention would be whether the evidence of the witness that seems to differ from the rest may not have been misconstrued.

I seize upon that point. And my contention is not that, by straining words or having recourse to far-fetched explanations, the last Gospel can be twisted into agreement with the others; but that the exegesis which makes it differ from them is in every part of it a tangle of blunders. For as Lange says, “If the expressions of John be pondered in their full significance, he will be found to have declared more accurately than the

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rest of the Evangelists that [the Lord] Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and that it was on the first day of the [Feast of the] Passover (viz., on the 15th Nisan).”!

First and chiefest among the blunders which mark this controversy is that of confounding the Passover with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Just as the Feast of Weeks came to be known as Pentecost, so the earlier feast was popularly called the Passover.2 But no intelligent and devout Jew would confound the Supper with the Feast. The language of the Law is clear, “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord’s passover; and on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread.” 3

Bearing this in mind, we open John xiii. The scene is laid at the Paschal Supper, before the Feast of the Passover 4 — that is, on the eve of the festival And when Judas went out, the disciples supposed he was gone to buy what was needed for the feast (ver. 29). The feast was a Sabbath, when trading was unlawful; but to

Life of Christ, pt. vi., sect. ii.

2 See Luke xxii. 1, and cf. Josephus, Anzé. xiv. 2, 1, and xvii. 9, 3.

3 Lev. xxiii. 5,6; Numb. xxviii. 16, 17.

4 We must distinguish this from such passages as Matt. xxvi. 17, where the A.V. wrongly introduces the word “feast.”

make provision for all that was needful for the feast was lawful on the preceding night.! For yet another blunder is the assumption that always and for all purposes the Jewish day began in the evening.2 The Passover was eaten during the evening of the 14th Nisan; the feast day began the following morning.

The weekly Sabbath was reckoned from evening to evening. And every day was so reckoned for purposes of ceremonial cleansing — a fact which enables us to detect another of the blunders of this theory. Ceremonial defilement lapsed at sundown.3 Therefore, as the Paschal Supper was not eaten until the evening, the Jew would not have been precluded from partaking, by reason of his having entered the Pretorium early in the day. Not so, however, with the holy offerings of the feast day,4 which were eaten before evening. The only question, therefore, is whether partaking of them could properly be described as ‘‘ eating the Passover.” The law of Moses supplies the answer — ‘ Thou shalt sacrifice the Passover unto the Lord thy God of the

* Edersheim’s Life and Times of Messiah, vol. ii., p. 508.

2 One source of error here is the assumption that either the modern Jewish calendar or practice is the same as in the days of the Ministry.

3 Lev. xxii. 7. 4 The Chagigah of the Talmud.

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flock and the herd... seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith.”!

And further still. The Pharisees planned the betrayal on the night of the Supper, because they feared a riot if they seized the Lord upon the day of the Feast.2 For the suggestion that it was unlawful to be out of doors on that night is due to confounding the law of the Passover in Egypt with the law of the annual celebration.

But the day of the crucifixion was ‘‘ the preparation of the Passover;”3 and must not this mean the day before the Passover? My answer is that not a single writer, sacred or profane, can be quoted in support of such a view. ‘The preparation” was a term in common use among the Jews to describe the day before the weekly Sabbath. It is so used by each of the Evangelists, and by none more definitely than the Fourth, 2 this very chapter. Every Friday was “the preparation”; this particular Friday was “the Passover preparation.” 4

* Deut. xvi. 2, 3, cf. 2 Chron. xxxv. 7, 8.

2 Matt. xxvi. 5; Mark xiv. 1, 2. 3 John xix. 14.

4 See Matt. xxvii. 62; Mark xv. 42; Luke xxiii. 54; and John xix. 31 and 42. Josephus (Ant. xvi. 6) cites an imperial edict relieving the Jews from appearing before the tribunals either on the Sabbath or after the ninth hour of preparation day. This term was so universally used that it even passed into the Chris-One point still remains: “that Sabbath was a high day.” True; for not only was it, as being the Sabbath of Passover week, one of the greatest Sabbaths of the year, but further, as being the second day of the Feast, it was kept by the Jews as “the day of the First-fruits” — one of the “‘red-letter days” in the calendar.

And now I will turn away to criticisms of another kind, far higher than any of which the Higher Critics take cognizance. Men would be happy in this world if only they could. shut out God. And every human religion is designed as a sort of dacksheesh to appease or please the Deity. But the Divine religion of Judaism was for a redeemed and happy people; and its special characteristic was a series of festivals — seasons of national rejoicing. The month Nisan began the sacred year ;? and in that month the first great festival was celebrated — the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or of Passover. One of the rites pertian Church; and in his note on Mark xv. 42, Dean Alford quotes Bishop Wordsworth as saying that it is “the name by which Friday is now generally known in Asia and Greece.” See also his note on Matt. xxvii. 62.

* John xix. 31.

* Before the Exodus it was the seventh month (Exod. xii. 2), a position it still holds in the civil year.

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taining to it was the cutting of the first sheaf of the ripened grain, and presenting it in the Temple. During the seven succeeding weeks the entire grain harvest was garnered; and then took place the ‘“‘ Feast of Harvest,” or as it was commonly called, of Pentecost. But in Palestine the harvest of the trees was as important as that of the field; and in the autumn, when all had been gathered in, was celebrated the “Feast of In-gathering,” or of Tabernacles — the great ‘harvest-home” of the nation. feasts they were, and the people were called upon ‘“‘to rejoice” as they celebrated them. All human religion is marked by sadness: in the harmony of the Divine religion the ruling note was joy.!

The first great festival immediately followed the Paschal Supper; the last, the Day of Atonement. For all true worship and all real joy begin with, and are based upon, redemption and forgiveness. The sacred calendar was thus intended as a prophecy; and every part of it has its fulfilment in the great reconciliation. Holy Writ teaches expressly that the Sheaf of the First-fruits prefigured the resurrection of Christ. Its acceptance was the public proof of the Divine

: The law of the Feasts will be found in Exod. xxiii. 14-17; Lev. xxiii.; and Deut. xvi. I-17.

blessing upon the harvest, and the pledge that all would be safely garnered. And so, in the antitype, the resurrection of Christ is the pledge and proof that all His people shall, like Him, be raised — ‘“Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s, at His.coming.”!

But in the post-captivity revival, the Jews misread the long-neglected law, and .in error appointed the day after the /eas¢ day, instead of ‘“‘the morrow after the Sabbath,” for the presenting of the first-fruits. And thus it came about that the Lord was lying in the grave upon the very day the rite was celebrated which prefigured His resurrection from the dead. That rite belongs not to the Sabbath, but to ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ — not to the seventh day, which was the “rest” of the old creation, but to “the first day of the week,” the rest-day of that new creation of which He is the First-born and the Head.?

* 1 Cor. xv. 23. The words are év rj zapovsig abrov. It is not an isolated event, but the time of His presence as contrasted with this, the time of His absence.

? Deut. xvi. 9 makes it clear that the day of the first-fruits was not to be a Sabbath, and that the Divine intention was that a sheaf of corn, cut that very day, should be carried to the Temple and waved before the Lord. And it follows, of course, that the true day of Pentecost (which in that year was observed upon a Sabbath) must always be the first day of the week — a fact

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The seeming fitness of assigning the death of Christ to the very day the Paschal lamb was killed has weight with many.’ But this is owing to the almost exclusive prominence which popular theology accords to that most popular of types. The offerings of the opening chapters of Leviticus? have a still larger place in the doctrinal teaching of the New Testament3; and these great sacrifices of the law marked the /feas¢ day on which the Lord was crucified.4

Other synchronisms, too, there were. The greatest mystery of the Passion was not His suffering from men, but His being forsaken of God. In a real sense, indeed, the sufferings inflicted upon Him by men were but a consequence of this. Hence His reply to Pilate,

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which confirms the presumption that it was when assembled on the Lord’s Day that the Church received the gift of the Holy Ghost. It is held by some that the ambiguous word employed in Acts ii. 1 means “fulfilled” in the sense of passed (Smith’s Bible Dict., “Pentecost,” vol. ii., p. 786).

: To suppose it occurred at the same hour is a blunder. The lamb was killed “between the evenings,” i.e. between the sun’s decline and its final disappearance — about 6 p.m. (Edersheim, ii. 490).

2 The burnt-offering with its meat-offering, the peace-offering (the Chagigah of the T almud) and the sin-offering (Lev. i — iv.).

3 In Hebrews, ¢.g., the offerings of the law are prominently mentioned, while the Passover has no place in the doctrine of the Epistle.

4 Numb. xxviii. 17-23. (Comp. Josephus, Ant. iii. 10, 5.)

17 “Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above.” If men seized and slew Him, it was because God had delivered Him up. “This is your hour and the power of darkness,” He exclaimed in Gethsemane. And not till that destined hour had struck was the Almighty Hand withdrawn which till then had shielded Him from ‘outrage. His death was the close, and not the beginning, of His sufferings: in truth it was the hour of His triumph.

The yearly Passover was merely a memorial of the Passover in Egypt; and the midnight agony in Gethsemane was the great antitype of that midnight scene when the destroying angel flashed through the land of the Pharaohs. And as His death was the accomplishment of His people’s deliverance, it took place upon the anniversary of “that selfsame day that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” And that day again was a great anniversary: it was “the selfsame day” of the covenant with Abraham.?

* Exod. xii. 51.

? Ibid., verse 41. The day of the resurrection was also an anniversary. On the 17th day of the month Nisan (or Abib) the renewed earth emerged from the waters of the Flood (Gen.

viii. 4); the redeemed people emerged from the waters of the sea, and the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

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As we have seen, then, the Sacred Calendar of Israel is a prophecy of redemption. In the Temple there was the inner shrine within the second veil, where none but the High Priest might ever enter; the holy place, into which the priests might come; and the court without, where all the people could approach. And in redemption we have the same threefold division: first the Christ, and those who, as “partakers of the heavenly calling,” have, in Him, the right of nearest access; secondly, the earthly people, yet to become a kingdom of priests; and, thirdly, the great multitude of the redeemed of earth. And so here. The sheaf of the first fruits in its primary interpretation stands for Christ alone. But the prophecy of the Calendar, like many another prophecy, has a double fulfilment; and, in its secondary application, that sheaf represents not merely the personal Christ, but the official Christ, including all who share “the heavenly calling.”! And the wave loaves of Pentecost

t “The heavenly calling” is not limited to “the Church which is His body” — the special election of the present dispensation; it includes also the Bride — a special election out of Israel in the dispensation to follow. John the Baptist — the last great prophet of the earthly people — speaks of the Bride (John iii. 29); and then the Bride disappears from Scripture, to reappear in Rev. xix. 7, xxi. 9 ff., which relate to the restoration of the earthly represent the earthly people, as such, in their special place of privilege and blessing.

But the covenant promise to Abraham included blessing for all the nations of the earth. This is in the book of the beginnings — the book of Genesis; and in the visions of the Revelation, the book of the endings, we read of the elect Pentecostal company of the redeemed of Israel on earth, and then of the palm-bearing multitude of the Feast of Tabernacles — “a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds, and people and tongues.”!

This is not a wild inference from isolated texts. It is the burden of prophecy as a whole. The present dispensation, we are expressly told, is typified by the first of the sacred festivals. ‘Our passover has been sacrificed, even Christ,” says the

people. But Christian theology more suo appropriates all Israel’s. blessings, the bridal glory not excepted, and with exemplary discrimination apportions the curses to the Jews! Holy Scripture nowhere speaks of the Church of this dispensation as the bride; and Eph. v. 25-33 asserts by implication that it is nof. To appeal to 2 Cor. xi. 2 is mere trifling.

* Gen. xxii. 18, Rev. vii. 3-9. (The carrying of branches of palm trees marked the Feast of Tabernacles, Lev. xxiii. 40.) And compare Rev. xiv. 1-6. The scene here again is laid on earth. First we have the 144,000 of the redeemed of Israel; and their promised blessing is followed by the proclamation of “the everlasting gospel” to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” Zech. xiv. gives the result in plain, prosaic words.

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Apostle in enjoining holiness of life, ‘‘ wherefore let us keep the feast.”! And the true Pentecost is yet to come. The great event of the Church’s baptism, as recorded in the Acts, was within the scope of Joel’s prophecy,? but it was not the fulfilment of it. hat belongs to those wonderful and awful days of mingled blessing and judgment, which are to herald ‘the times of the restitution of all things” — the period of the last great festival, the Feast of Tabernacles.

For the ‘restoration of all things” is not, as some would tell us, the accomplishment in eternity of a scheme, now secret, to bring all the lost to heaven. It is the realisation upon earth, and in days which shall yet be marked and measured in human calendars, of a Divine purpose plainly declared upon the open page of Scripture. Of these “times of restoration” the inspired Apostle tells us, ‘God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.” And to make it more emphatic still, he adds, ‘“Yea, all the prophets, from Samuel and those that

* Cor. v. 7, 8 (R.V.) The subject here is, not the Eucharist, but the Christian life on earth.

2 Joel ii. 28-iii. 2. Mark the language of the inspired Apostle in Acts ii. 16. In the accuracy of Scripture a distinction is often made between events which are within the scope of a prophecy and events which fulfil it.

follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.” In a word, they are the burden of all prophetic testimony, from first to last, in relation to what theologians call “the Second Advent.”

In the simple prose of the Epistle to the Romans this same truth is plainly taught. The “fall” of Israel has proved ‘the riches of the world”; the setting aside of Israel, “the reconciling of the world.” What then, the Apostle asks, shall be their restoration to favour but ‘life from the dead”? Mark the force and meaning of these words. When the coming Pentecost — the presentation to God of the “two wave loaves” of Israel and Judah restored to Divine favour and blessing — leads on to the last great Feast of Ingathering, results will be achieved on a scale so vast and wonderful that, in contrast with them, the greatest present-day successes in evangelising the world will seem like death. In comparison with the Feast of Passover the Feast of Tabernacles — that coming triumph of redemption — will be “as life from the dead.”

But in the great mass of critical literature all this is absolutely ignored. And yet it is but the realisation of the prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven” — words

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which are daily uttered as an incantation by multitudes of people “who regard the hope of their fulfilment as a dream of fanatics.

Even that poor type of Evangelicalism whose horizon of truth is narrowed to what might be described as the Police Court Gospel which tells how Christ has paid the sinner’s penalty, stands on a vastly higher level than the mere religionist, with his “carnal ordinances,” not omitting ritual and millinery. But such teachers, one and all, leave us an easy prey to rationalistic critics. For while they vehemently assert that the Bible is the Word of God, they use it merely as a book of piety or of religion.

The story is told of one who hid himself in the library of a famous German theologian of the eighteenth century, that he might learn the secret of his fellowship with God. Let us thus take the place of eavesdroppers upon the Apostle of the Gentiles as he writes his great Redemption treatise. He first unfolds the wonders of grace in the gospel. Then he turns aside to mark how every Divine scheme of blessing for man on earth has been baffled by human sin. And lastly he goes on to show how this tale of apostasy and ruin is but a dark background for the display of a supreme purpose which is to include the fulfilment of all that has thus seemingly been thwarted and lost. And having thus reached the climax of the revelation entrusted to him for the Church, nothing remains but to enforce by exhortation and appeal a life of holiness and righteousness befitting those who are recipients of such “mercies.” But ere he turns the page he exclaims in adoration, “‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to Him be the glory for ever. Amen.”