Passover falling on a saturday for many people this year should open eyes to the issues of a fixed saturday sabbath, as well as the true scriptural calendar. Many people celebrated Passover and the weekly sabbath on the same day this year (saturday).
The problem with this is that Passover is not a sabbath day in Scripture—it’s a work day. It is a day of preparation in which the lamb had to be slaughtered and cooked (Exodus 12:6). There are people who will say that Scripture doesn’t explicitly state that Passover (Abib 14) is a commanded work day, but it is certainly implied in the text.
Let’s use two witnesses.
Luke 23:54-56 (after they took Yahusha’s body off the stake):
“That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.”
Mark 15:42:
“Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath,”
The preparation day (which in this case is Passover/Abib 14) is being distinguished from the sabbath day here. A sabbath day is a day of complete rest. The day before the weekly sabbath, many of us (myself included) PREPARE the day before. The day before the weekly sabbath is a day where I get all of my cooking and cleaning done so that I can truly and fully rest on the sabbath day.
It should also be noted that Abib 15 (the “High Sabbath” talked about in Scripture, see John 19:31) was called a “High” Sabbath because it was the first day of Unleavened Bread. While many people add an extra sabbath day in their week during this time, calling it a “High Sabbath,” they unfortunately miss the fact that it was called a “High” Sabbath” because it will ALWAYS fall on the regular weekly sabbath according to the true scriptural calendar!
The High Sabbath was special in the sense that the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread also fell on the weekly sabbath day. That is not a coincidence.
The beauty of the true scriptural calendar is that Passover (Abib 14) will never fall on a weekly sabbath day—Yahuah intentionally designed it to be that way. The first day of Unleavened Bread will always align with the second weekly sabbath of the month. The harmony is undeniable!
Yahuah’s calendar does not have anything in common with the Gregorian calendar. In fact, it is completely divorced from it—it’s an entirely different system of timekeeping, in which the sun and moon are ordained to bring about the days, months and years. When you leave one of those out, it will cause confusion.
While many may think that these kinds of posts are “senseless arguments/debates,” the reason I continue to talk about the calendar is because it’s truly not as confusing as people think. This is just my attempt to help cut through the noise and bring reconciliation to a topic that many people are searching for.
Many people add sabbaths or have back-to-back sabbaths where it is not called for or needed during the feasts. It’s simply not a coincidence that Yahuah aligns many of His appointed times with weekly sabbaths.
P.S. The same thing will happen on Sukkot this year!
The other issue with a fixed saturday sabbath in terms of preparation for the Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread, is what happens when Abib 10 falls on a saturday?
Abib 10 can never fall on a sabbath day in Scripture, as this was the day that the lamb for Passover had to be purchased, in which they would keep until the 14th day of the month. If saturday has always been the “biblical” sabbath, then this causes some serious problems.
“Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.”
Exodus 12:5
While Scripture doesn’t explicitly say, “this is a working day,” we can infer from the text that this was a working day because this indicates that business was open in order for buying/selling of the lamb to be done. Same thing goes for Passover/Abib 14—we can infer this is a working day because it was a day of preparation.
These are issues that cannot be reconciled with a fixed saturday sabbath on our Gregorian calendar (or any “fixed” Gregorian day for that matter). This is one of many reasons that crumbles the idea of the scriptural sabbath day repetitively occurring on the same day of the Gregorian week and claiming that it “goes all the way back to creation.” It’s just silly and unbiblical.
You will never have these issues with Yahuah’s calendar. But you have to be willing to take the time to humbly sit with Scripture, sit through your questions and confusion, and endure through the things you may not understand in order to see it. It takes time, and that’s okay.
So many people dismiss things that don’t make sense, and speaking from personal experience, some things can take months or even years for Yahuah to bring understanding, and that’s okay too.
Saturday sabbaths are a Jewish tradition of men, and there are people who are clinging to this doctrine so tightly, and then slander other brothers and sisters and accuse them of pride, arrogance, condemnation, or sowing division, who are truly trying to help the body and bring reconciliation to the errors that are undeniable with the concept of a fixed saturday sabbath.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” not peacekeepers.
Making peace and keeping peace are two totally different things.
With Love,
Stephanie Green