Resurrection Sunday 2023 (04/09/2023)

Musical Praise and Easter Sunday Welcome

I think our musical group hit their peak today. That was amazing. Charlotte and I cut our teeth on that music when we first got saved. And we've always loved it. You nailed it. All of you did. Matt, the guitar was great.

Bass was great. The rhythm was great. And the singing was great. That was so good. What? Oh, man, the piano. The piano, like you, stayed up all night, right? That's not an easy song. Yeah. Because, you know, Keith Green was a pianist.

So he wrote his songs. And he could get with it on that piano. But you did. It sounded just like. I mean, I was sitting up there this morning. Charlotte and I hadn't been saved all that long, maybe about a year.

We were doing youth work. And we would put big speakers up on the drag in Mahea, big speakers, and play that music through it and draw a crowd of teenagers and then witness to them. And the pastor who founded this church had problems similar to like some of us went through legalism.

So he said we had to get rid of that music that you listened to right there. He didn't want that. It was too rocky or whatever. So anyway, that was fantastic this morning, beautiful. And Maddie, I know the range on that song.

You hit every note, the low notes and the high notes. It was so beautiful. And so just appropriate lyrics for this morning. So welcome to Easter Sunday here at Park Meadows. And you've all been already kind of bubbly today and a lot of fellowship going on.

It's a beautiful day outside. And spring pictures life, springing from death. God's put it all, everything's orchestrated. Everything is in its place. Let's have a word of prayer. And we'll begin with the message today.

Lord, thank you so much for this congregation and for being able to be a part of this congregation, this local church. Thank you that you have your people scattered around this world in different places.

And you're speaking to their hearts this morning. Lord, speak to our hearts through your word. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let me tell you about the only mention of Easter in the whole Bible.

Turn to Acts chapter 12 with me, verse 1. It's interesting to note that it's only mentioned once, once in the English Bible. It's never mentioned in the Greek Bible. I'll show you why in a second. We miss the boat a lot at Easter.

And we'll be talking about that some in the message today. We're going to have what the modern church calls the Lord's Supper during our mealtime together in the other room. Not an upper room, but the other room.

And we'll talk about it a little more when we get in there together as well. But each year as we grow in the Lord, we've tried to make the celebration of the Lord's Supper more biblical, which is very difficult to do when you realize that the Roman Catholics entirely ruined it.

And our wonderful reformers brought a lot of Catholicism out with them, unfortunately. But boy, the things that they did get right were so amazingly beautiful. Salvation by grace is what they restored into the entire world, which was lost during the Dark Ages almost.

There were just little groups of born-again Christians around kind of running parallel with the Roman Catholicism in the Dark Ages that kept the light there. God had his people hidden in the mountains, the Waldenses in Europe, and different groups that kept the word going in its purity.

But when we came out the other side, we brought a lot of Catholicism. And the idea of having the Lord's Supper every day or even every week is Roman Catholic in nature because they believe when you take the Lord's Supper that you're saved every Sunday.

You have to be re-saved. And you're literally eating his body. And it literally turns into his body when you put it in your mouth. And the wine turns into his blood when you put it in your mouth. I've always wondered how any doctors or scientists of any kind would remain Roman Catholic.

But they do. And I guess they just say that they're doing that by faith. The Lord never intended for that. It's a symbol. It's a picture. It's a picture of his body and his blood. And best I can tell, it was done once a year at Passover.

And that's when we do it here. But I'm not dogmatic about it. I don't really care to debate it. But I wouldn't even mind if we had it more often. But right now, until someone convinces me that it was done more than once a year at Passover, we'll do it this way for now.

But it's all about Passover. And the Passover pictured Jesus, death, burial, and resurrection for thousands of years among the Jewish people. And because they became so legalistic, and mind you, I cannot say it enough.

Legalism kills. The letter killeth. And the spirit brings life. And so everywhere where we've seen the truth squandered in this world, it's because of legalistic people. So beware of them. Never let them come into this church.

And if they come, you can let them stay one hour, is what the Apostle Paul said, one hour. And that would have to be Ben's hour, because I'm not going to let them be here during my hour. All right, so let's read Acts chapter 12, verse one.

Now, about that time, Herod the king stretched forth his hands, I'm going to get a little assistance here, my glasses, stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. Notice what he's doing. He's going to persecute certain of the church.

And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Did you guys remember that, that that happened? If you forget these things, sometimes we forget the persecution. They all died at the hands of the evil men, except for John.

But James was one of the first, and Herod took his life with the sword. And because he saw that that pleased the Jews, so Herod was a politician, and you have to watch them as well, right? They will destroy everything you have, because all they care about is power and money.

And so many of them, I won't say all of them, but many of them. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. Then were the days of unleavened bread. Now that gives us a clue of the time period, because along with Passover, the biblical Passover includes a week of what they called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, coincides with the time of Passover.

It's all done together. And so now we know that this time period is at the time of Passover. And when he apprehended Peter, he put him in prison and delivered him to four quatrains of soldiers to keep him.

He did not want him getting loose. He was gonna kill him. And it says right at this point in your English Bible, it says, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. Peter, now that means the Jewish people who would have killed him.

Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto God for him. Keep that in mind. Now this word Easter in the Greek is Pascha, which means Passover. It is not Easter.

The word Easter is not found in the Bible. It's a pagan religion. It comes from pagan religion. The little eggs or the fertility goddess, the whole thing is pagan. Doesn't mean that we have to celebrate it as pagans.

However, and it comes through Roman Catholicism who would go out into the world and in order to get converts, they would pick up their habits and their pagan things and bring that into their Christian religion to make them more comfortable.

Do you see any resemblances to the modern mega church today to bring in any filthy thing into the church to make people more comfortable so more people will come and pay the rent for the church, right?

Same thing is repeating itself today. We are going into what I would call the modern dark ages. And Jesus and the apostle Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit said that a great falling away must happen before the antichrist reveals himself and Jesus comes back after that.

The great apostasy and we're in the midst of it now. Well, so this word is not Easter. It's the word Passover. And let's keep reading though because this is kind of fascinating. I want you to watch what happens with the powerful prayers that were going up for Peter after James had just been killed and they know, well, he's gonna kill Peter and they're praying without ceasing.

See, the church does not like to pray. She prefers to play. But when things get serious enough, just like the children of Israel will do so many times when they're taken captive into a pagan land after about 50 years of that, they get tired of it and they start to pray.

What a picture of us that is. We finally get tired of the trouble Satan brings into our homes and our churches and we begin to pray. Now they're under dire trouble because their pastor is in prison about to be killed by the same person who just killed one of their key apostles, James.

And so they're praying and they're praying and they're praying and they're praying all night. Watch what happens. Verse six, and when Herod would have brought Peter forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, I mean, not enough to have him in prison, they put two soldiers in and made him sleep next to him, bound with two chains and the keepers before the door.

So you had keepers at the door, you had two sleeping next to him and two chains holding him to the wall of the dungeon. And behold, the angel of the Lord came into him. Now, many times when we see the word angel, it always in the Greek means messenger, but it can be various types of messengers.

It can be an angelic being, it can be Jesus Christ, it can be any type of messenger depending on the context. Well, normally when it calls them the angel of the Lord, that's a reference to Jehovah or Jesus incarnate.

Now, this is kind of interesting when you look at the time period of this, this is after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And yet it says the angel of the Lord comes to Peter while he's in prison.

Was this Jesus? Well, it could be an angelic being, but it calls him the angel of the Lord. So sometimes that's Jesus. So we'll just leave it at that. But look what happened. Light shined in the prison.

Do you think this could have been a frightening experience for those two soldiers laying beside Peter? Maybe even for Peter. So I think we can read so quickly through scripture, little phrases like light shined in the prison.

Well, imagine you're lying there in complete darkness with no light at all between two soldiers with two chains around you about to be killed by Herod, the politician. And it just lights up. It lights up.

That's one reason I like alien movies, science fiction, because they'll be in their pickup going down the road and all of a sudden there's no noise and it just goes, doom, you know what I'm talking about?

Doom, there's that light. This is what happened. Okay, this is what happened. Now, I think that it was quite an experience. And so the Bible just says light shined in the prison, but you have to picture that.

And now picture this. This heavenly being, whether it be an angel or the Lord himself, smoked Peter on the side. Do you think Peter was sound asleep? Now, think about that a minute. You just had your friend killed by sword by the very leader that just put you in prison.

You got two soldiers laying there with you, two at the door and a whole bunch, several quatturions of Roman soldiers out there. And he's sound asleep. Do you think Peter had given it over to the Lord?

Hey, Marian, you were talking to me. I love to share private things about Marian with all the rest of you. But he said, you know, I'm learning as a new Christian, I'm learning to give things over to the Lord.

And he said, and the best thing is I'm learning not to take it back again. That's good. That's good. We can all learn from that. But look at Peter, so sound asleep. Okay, he's laying there about to be killed, but he's sound asleep, trusting the Lord, totally peaceful, sleeping, no entrepreneurial fear, sound asleep, the whole room lights up, still sound asleep.

Now that would have gotten me, wouldn't it, Charlotte? Like you can put a little blue light on our Apple TV comes on and out, there's a burglar in the house. And I'm up with my nine millimeter, walking around looking for the burglar and it's just the Apple TV.

But he's still sound asleep. So here we see the Lord himself, perhaps, come up and smite him on the side, picture that, wake up, boom. You can picture, you know, one guy waking up another guy, right? Boom, he wakes him up.

Now Peter's eyes open up to this resplendent light that's in the room and this angelic being and two totally unconscious soldiers who just had a heart attack. That's what he wakes up to. And it doesn't stop there.

After smiting him on the side, he raised him up saying, arise quickly. And the chains fell off of his arms and his legs. It just fell off. And so, now this is interesting. So they just walk out of the prison, right past everybody.

Now, the angel leaves him on his own. That would be interesting. By now he has escaped prison and he's walking down the street, looking for the house that the disciples are in, praying for him to not be killed.

By now we're possibly in the middle of the night, right? So I'm gonna pick it up in verse 16 of chapter 12. It says, but Peter continued knocking. So now he's at the door where the disciples, his brothers and sisters are knocking.

They're in there praying for God to raise him up and save his life and get him out of prison and save him. And he's knocking and they won't answer the door because it can't be Peter, he's in prison. Isn't that how we pray?

Would you admit to me that every time you get a prayer answered, you are surprised? Yeah, why is that? Because we're human. Peter continued knocking, they wouldn't let him in. And when they had finally opened the door and saw that it was him, they were astonished.

Lord, get him out of prison. He knocks on the door and they're astonished. I love that. Verse 21 says, here's how the story is. And upon a set day, do you think God is sovereign? Do you think that he has like to the hour and the minute of when every one of us is going to go either to be with him or to be in hell forever?

Not us, but humans will be with him. That he knows the exact minute that's going to happen already. And you can't cross the bounds thereof, Job says. Well, on a set day, Herod arrayed in royal apparel as this great politician sat upon his throne and made an oration unto the people.

He's probably going to give a speech and say, I'm going to kill Peter because you liked it when I killed James. He gives an oration and the people gave a shout saying, it is the voice of God and not a man.

This man was an orator. He was a genuine politician. And immediately the same angel of the Lord that had smitten Peter on the side and awakened him and taken him out of that prison, that same angel of the Lord smoked this man because he gave not God the glory for his gifts and abilities as a speaker and a leader.

And he was eaten by worms right in front of the people as they watched the speech and he gave up the ghost and died. Worms coming out of his mouth, ears, eyes, and nose. This is how he ended. And then it ends with this.

But the word of God grew and multiplied. So guess what? The, excuse me, I didn't do that. The politicians cannot stop the spread of the word of God. They cannot stop Christian schools. People will just give more.

It'll grow. We'll still get our gym without the government money. I wasn't comfortable with it anyway. I guess you saw the newspaper. Oh, you didn't see it yet? You didn't see it. Did you see it? Yeah.

So they voted it down and I think most of them were Republicans, right? It's not, well, they, this was a vote on the finances of apparently the budget. And they just said, we're not gonna allow our budget money to be spent on private schools.

So it's pretty well shot down for another year anyway, maybe, we'll see. But it doesn't matter. The point is, it doesn't matter. The word of God grew and multiplied. Now, let me talk to you a little bit about what this day is all about from scripture.

The same, we were in the same time period when this happened when this amazing miracle was done where Peter was released from prison and miraculously. And even God's people were surprised at that. And it was at the very time of the Passover and the Feast of Weeks, which is the feast, I should say the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.

And today the Jewish people call it the Seder. They still celebrate this, this time they're celebrating it now. It's interesting. It's coincides with the Muslim Ramadan, which is going on right now. And so the word Seder itself in the Hebrew means order, kind of like the order of the cosmos that's mentioned in John 3 .16, the order of God's universe, the order that the Holy Spirit, as he hovered over the earth when it was without form and void and the Holy Spirit hovered over it and all of a sudden order came into everything that we see today.

And not exactly as we see today because we're on this side of the curse, but I often, do you ever thank the Lord that it's still so beautiful even on this side of the curse? His world is so beautiful even after the curse.

But anyway, so that word means order. So the celebrations that the Jewish people do in their homes this time of year, every year, it's all about God's order, number one. Now they have perverted the celebration of it obviously, because obviously when Jesus Christ was nailed to that cross, that was the end of the Jewish sacrificial system.

Now, no historian can explain why that just stopped right there. I don't even think the Jewish historians can explain why that stopped right there. But when Jesus became the antitype of the type, and by that I mean all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed as a picture to the real lamb of God, Jesus.

So he's the antitype, he's the one that fulfilled the type. And when it was fulfilled, it ended because you can only crucify him once. And Ben said it so well in Sunday school this morning, there are many people in denominate, supposedly Christian denominations across the city today that preach to their people that they can lose their salvation, and then they say they can get it back again.

Hebrews chapter 11, I believe it is, first several verses of that chapter. Prove if you, now you've got to read it grammatically and carefully. If you don't understand grammar, you'll never figure it out.

But if you understand grammar and use the rules of interpretation using grammar properly, what that passage literally says is, well, okay, if you think you could lose your salvation, then you could never get it back again, because to do so, you would have to re-crucify the son of God and put him to open shame, it says.

That's not happening. Ben said that this morning. It's not happening. He died once for the sins of his people. And these denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, the Methodists, Pentecostals, and yes, I name them because they're wrong and they're false prophets, and they're teaching every day to re-crucify Jesus and get saved again.

Come down to this altar, bring some money with you, because they're all in it for their belly's sake, the Bible says, and re-crucify the son of God today, even on Easter. How about that? Ain't gonna happen.

You can teach your false doctrine all you want to, and the word of God will continue to spread. The truth will continue to spread because God's people will not compromise on it. Now, this is all about order.

And they have perverted it today. What's interesting is God, in his grace, gave me a Jewish believer as a mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman. And he taught me a lot about what's actually supposed to happen in a biblical Passover.

And so you can go out and read about it on Google, but I got it straight from the Jew, as he called himself. Oh, no, no, no, no. He's an evangelist, right? And they take up love offering. He said, no, you don't take up a little love offering for the Jew.

I want a big love offering. He would say stuff like that. But so they messed it up a little bit, but let's see if there's still some truth in the pictures, even that the Jewish families are doing today.

But better than that, let's look at the scripture and see what the Bible says these things actually do picture and symbolize. So there's three major things that the Jewish family have got to have. Now, they've added two or three other things, such as they've added an egg that they put on the table.

That's nowhere in the Bible. That's paganism, just like the Roman Catholics brought paganism into it. They put an egg on the table, just like we have little Easter egg hunts, which is ridiculous. We shouldn't do it.

But when you're a grandpa, sometimes you allow it. But I mean, I didn't as a parent, and I'm kind of starting to not like it as a grandparent anymore either. The newness of the grandkids is worn off. Let's stop.

But it pictures a fertility god, and a rabbit lays the egg, which is a picture of, if you're an adult, you know what rabbits picture, right? It's unclean. Okay, so the Jews bring it in too and put the egg on the table.

They can't even tell you why the egg's on the table. Can you tell me why we have Easter egg hunts? Okay, so there you have it. Satan will bring in the leaven when this feast is all about unleavened bread.

It's all about no leaven because leaven pictures sin. So here we have these things that they, I'm gonna give you three things that they have on their table that is correct and biblical, and I'm gonna leave the unbiblical stuff out, okay?

But the first thing is called the Pesach. And the Pesach is the shank bone of the lamb. Now we have cow today for our dinner, but it has a shank bone as well. It's the hip bone of the lamb. And what's interesting about the Jewish families is this side of the cross, since there is no more sacrifice, they don't do a biblical Passover anymore because they used to sacrifice the lamb right up until Jesus was offered.

In fact, when they nailed the nails into his hands and his feet, the high priest had to leave immediately after that and run down the street to go into the temple and kill the last sacrifice. And that was the last one ever done.

And so they used to literally kill a lamb or a little goat without blemish, had to be a male. All of it's a picture of Jesus. And then they would take the blood and that blood pictured the blood of the Messiah that would die for us for the sins of God's people.

And then they would eat the lamb and any of it that was left over had to be destroyed by fire because you couldn't keep it for the next day. It was totally consumed, which is a picture of Jesus Christ totally allowing himself to be consumed by the father turning his head from him and separating himself from him, which is hell.

Total sacrifice of body, soul, and spirit for us. But in pictures, the Jews don't know this anymore, but they used to see a little more of it than they do now. But when they rejected their Messiah, they lost even that.

You talk about seeing through a glass darkly. They are blinded, the apostle Paul said, and until the end when Jesus, when he comes back at the second coming, their eyes will be open and all Israels that are alive and see it will receive him as their Messiah and they'll be saved because they get called at that moment.

Many of them, in fact, all of them will be ushered into the millennial kingdom and save people and a bunch of Gentiles will too as well. So now we have this shank bone is what they use now. Why? Because they're not offering a little lamb anymore.

So they have a resemblance of it, the shank bone of the lamb. They still eat lamb in their meal and the shank bone reminds them of they've forgotten what. Isn't that sad? They don't know. They don't know why it's there.

Do you know what they've done? The Jewish person today who's not born again believes that all of these things picture their own sufferings as a Jew. If you take Isaiah chapter 53 and you read it, it's so clear.

It is like the Roman's road in Isaiah. It shows that Jesus died for the sins of his people as a sacrifice, as a ransom, all of that's in there. But if you go and you read the Targums which are the paraphrased versions of the Old Testament that the Jews were teaching for 300 years prior to the time Jesus came and the reason the Jews missed their Messiah is they weren't taught by the Bible anymore.

They were taught by paraphrases like the living Bible is today. Those kinds of things where instead of reading the Bible to people, they'd say, here's what we think the Bible means and they read that to them.

And in Isaiah 53, the Targums say that the nation of Israel suffered, not that the Messiah suffered, totally removes it and inserts the nation so the poor pitiful Jew is suffering and it makes it about themselves.

This shank bone to them pictures the sufferings of the Jew, the dispersed Jew around the world. Well, they have suffered, but that's not what it pictures. It pictures the death of Jesus Christ, the Messiah on the cross for the sins of his people but it's still important to them so they have that.

Now let's go to Exodus chapter 12, verse five and let's look at the biblical Passover explained in scripture. Exodus 12, five, your lamb shall be without blemish a male of the first year. You shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats but it has to be without blemish in male and you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month.

Now we know that this is the month of Nisan which is the first month in the Jewish year which is now in our Western world, it's March, April March dash April is when Nisan occurs. So this is the Jewish January.

This is their first month. In this 14th day of the first month is when they do Passover and have done it for thousands of years this way. And you shall keep it up until the 14th day of the same month and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening and they shall take the blood and strike it on the two posts and on the upper door post of their house wherein they live shall eat it and then they eat it.

Now this is the genuine Passover. This is the only, the shank bone does not picture this. The shank bone is replaced this. What they are supposed to do is kill the lamb. And I will tell you, I did it once with a Jewish believer friend of mine and thought he was doing the biblical Passover.

And I wanted to see what he did. So you were little Katie at the time but we went over to his house. Y 'all watched, we didn't let you watch too close from the porch. And me and my friend went out in the middle of his little backyard and he's Jewish.

He was a Jewish guy. And he said, I'm gonna hold the little goat down, David. Here's the knife, you kill it. And I'm going, okay, it's a picture. It's, you do realize this will be done in the millennial kingdom as memorial.

It'll be looking back at the cross. So it's not like it's wrong to do it by the way. But I took, listen to me. I took that knife. I grew up in the country. So like I can kill stuff. You know, I killed too much stuff as a boy before I was saved.

I mean, animals, not people. And I, a few fish, some birds too. I took that knife and I sliced the throat of that goat while my friend held him down. And you know what the goat did? He, I'm sure went into shock, but he just laid there.

He didn't fight. He didn't move. He just laid there and slowly bled to death. And I'm holding the knife with the blood on it and picturing that's Jesus and I killed him. Tell me that's not a good thing to do with your kids.

Now, if you do it, we'll be another cult group, right? So I don't want you to do it, but I did it once. And it was profoundly affected me for months and months and months, if not even till now. As Satan would do, he had someone in our church who found out about it, who's no longer with our church.

And that person called a very close Bible teacher, friend of mine in Mahea and told him on the phone that David Mitchell is now offering live sacrifices as part of what they do in their church, which was not done at church.

It was in my friend's backyard one time just to see what it was like. And now I'm offering goats, goats. And she believed it. And I grew up under her ministry, the woman believed it. So finally she gets the guts to call me and ask about it.

I said, no, no, that did not happen. This is what happened. Oh, I'm so glad to hear it, David. So anyway, but here's the point. My point is this. Why is it now they just have a shank bone on the table?

They're not doing this anymore. So they're not picturing it. They're not even seeing it, but they did for thousands of years and still missed it, didn't they? So here you have this and verse eight says, and they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire along with, very important, unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

So now the first thing is the shank bone, which really should have been, pictures the sacrificial lamb dying or the goat. It doesn't matter. Pictures the death of Jesus. They're not doing that, but they do have part of it.

The hip bone of the lamb that they're gonna have at their meal. Second thing is mentioned right there with unleavened bread. That's now called the matzo. You've heard that word. It's unleavened bread.

Leaven pictures sin. So unleavened pictures sinlessness. And to them, that's what it pictures is sin. To us, what it pictures is the body of Jesus Christ given for sin. His body, his perfect sinless self, holy was given for us so that we would never see hell or even know what it's like or know anything much about.

He suffered that for us. And that's what the unleavened bread pictures. That's part of what we call the Lord's supper, which I'm not even sure that's the right name for it, but it's okay with me to use it.

The third thing that is part of is also mentioned in verse eight, it says, they ate the flesh thereof roast with fire with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it. And today the Jew calls it the maror.

And it's a bitter herb that they have at the table. Sometimes they, most of them make it out of horseradish. Luckily we're going to have that today, but Charlotte didn't make it out of that. Lucky for you, because that can be so hot.

It just kill you when you touch it, but it needs to be a bitter herb of some kind. And we will have that at the table. So we'll have everything at the table. That's the three main things that are mentioned here.

Now there is a fourth thing. So look at verse 13, and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. You see, they were supposed to kill that lamb and put the blood above the doorpost of their house, their front door, picturing the Passover of the death angel coming by and killing the firstborn of all the pagans, but not doing that in the home of those who are covered by the blood, which pictures our salvation.

They were supposed to be doing this every year at Passover. Now they got a hip bone, right? But, and they forget, but this is the way it should be. So the blood was taken as a token. That tells you right there that the Roman Catholic has it wrong.

Look up the word token sometime when you have time in the Hebrew, and you'll see that it means this, token. Did you get that? A token is not the real thing. It is a pipe or a symbol or a token of the real thing.

And so the blood does not turn into his blood. It is a token of his blood. The unleavened bread does not turn into his body when you eat it. It is a token or a picture of his body when you eat that, and a remembrance of what he's done for us is what this is all about.

And so here, this blood was taken as a token upon their houses where you are. And when God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt.

You're talking about the plague. If you want to think about the wrath of God on this world, the wrath of God is going to annihilate this world. It's coming, and yet God is going to pass over his people.

He's going to protect his people. If you're walking with him in the scripture, you will be protected. There's even information in the Old Testament that you will be hidden. I don't know how all that works yet.

It's not the rapture, by the way. It doesn't happen till after it's all over, or most of it's over, not all of it, but all at the end. Let's put it this way. It won't happen until after the resurrection, which happens at the end of the seven-year period, but he will protect us and hide us if we're walking with him and we're in the word, and we are in his church, the best we can be.

So this is what was happening. This was the Passover. Now, this one other thing we must mention, the fourth thing here is the blood. It's pictured by the wine, correct? So we will have what we call here among former Baptists, we call it the new wine, and it's grape juice.

You cross the street over here at the Bible church, they serve real wine, not very Baptistic. But anyway, it is new wine that we will serve today, and it obviously pictures the blood of Jesus. It is a token picturing his blood that was given for us.

Now, in Exodus 12, verse 18, it says, in the first month, that's Nisan, their first month of their year, which is now for our year, March, April, on the 14th day of the month in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the one and 20th day.