The Feast of Pack and the Last Seder
Once again we have been reminded the Passover is not on Nisan 15, the Crucifixion was not on Friday, the Resurrection was not on Sunday, Easter is Pagan, and so on. And Dave Pack claimed several times to have proved through genealogical research that his surname is derived from the word Passover.
English has a problem in that the word Easter is used for the “Sunday Passover” whereas in the “romance languages” the words are similar: in French, for example, Easter is Paques and Passover is Paque; in Spanish, both are Pascua. So if Dave’s ancestry was French, Spanish, or Italian, Pack may be an Anglicized form of Passover. Or Easter. If it was English or German, the etymology is different.
That ties in with Passover, because Dave mentioned in a sermon that the “fifth cup” in the Passover Seder is for Elijah, and he “proved” he is Elijah. And he thinks calling himself Elijah and ‘Pack’ being derived from Passover will impress the Jews when he goes to preach to the cities of Israel (here he means Eretz Israel, not BI.)
Back in December 2014, Bob Thiel posted portions of a Good News article by Dr Hoeh. The excerpt is an attempt to show that the 10 Commandments are valid, but laws related to the Temple Korban, aka “sacrifices” are out. It concludes with comments of dealing with the Last Supper (the Last Passover Seder). Here HH tells us that Jesus substituted unleavened bread and wine for the Passover lamb, and this was absolute proof that offerings were done away. Maybe Paul forgot that when he made a Nazarite vow to show he hadn’t gone native with the Gentiles.
The traditional Passover Seder involved the Passover Lamb (until the Temple was destroyed) with bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and five cups of wine. The wine and bread Dr Hoeh mentioned was almost certainly the fourth cup, which, he failed to notice would then be ‘fulfilled’. The ‘unfulfilled’ fifth cup is for Elijah.
There were two remarks ministers would make before Passover: “If in doubt, out!” and “It’s not the Feast of Unleavened Beer!” Checking Jewish kashrut guidelines, some differences in the WCG and the ‘Kosher for Passover’ lists are apparent. While WCG may have been close to correct with what “bread” was, they didn’t have the cultural and contextual understanding of “leaven” right. Beer that was made from fermented grain should have been on the WCG “out” list, and the chemical compound Sodium bicarbonate on the “in” list. However, the slogan “If in doubt, out!” is a good guideline to follow in assessing what a COG minister tells you.
Just after this was posted, I heard a program in which a formerly anti-Catholic biblical scholar explained how the ‘Last Supper’ was definitely the Jewish Passover Seder, not, as Dr Hoeh wrote, a new and different one.
Ironically, the speaker said that understanding this led him to convert to Catholicism…
“However, the slogan ‘If in doubt, out!’ is a good guideline to follow in assessing what a COG minister tells you.”
I also find it’s a good guideline to follow in assessing COG ministers themselves…
Now in connection to this, there’s a mystery that brings up a question and maybe you can answer it. It goes like this:
Jesus (Yashua) was the New Covenant sacrifice which was pictured by the Passover on the evening of the 14th day of the First Month (I refrain from using the Names of Automobile manufacturers for the months). The lamb itself was sacrificed on the afternoon of the 13th day, so that the blood could be marked on the lintel of the door so the Death Angel would pass over the house. Anyone who watched the Ten Commandments movie knows that it’s dangerous to go out the evening of the 14th.
So if we follow type, Jesus would have to be sacrificed on the afternoon of the 13th, right? That evening would be the Passover (and if you read Exodus carefully, the Passover also begins the Days of Unleavened Bread, since if you kept it through the 21st instead of until the 21st, you’d be keeping it 8 days and not 7 — Paul Woods pointed that out). So, but, Jesus apparently met with the disciples on the evening of the 13th for The Lord’s Supper as the Apostle Paul (sometimes) calls it. But Jesus said he earnestly desired to keep this Passover with them. That’s kinda strange, since he couldn’t be the Passover on the 14th if he weren’t sacrificed on the afternoon of the 13th and he certainly didn’t keep the Passover with his disciples on the Passover because, well, he’s like, dead that day.
I’m so confused.
Can someone help me out here?
Because if you can’t, then it means that the Armstrongists never have kept either the Lord’s Supper or the Days of Unleavened Bread correctly, unless by accident because of the Postponements, which is whole other discussion….
Pack? Pack?
Doesn’t his name mean that he’s filling a satchel so he can skip town?
Re: Pack?
If his surname was of Germanic origin, it may have been derived from “transporter of wool” – wool to pull over our eyes…
One must be careful in generalizing some of Paul’s symbology. He was writing to Gentiles, not living in Israel; even if they were in Jerusalem, the Temple authorities would not let them go beyond the court of the Gentiles. Also, as stated in Exodus 12:43-49, the uncircumsized were not allowed to participate in the Passover services.
I just noticed another Armstrongist misunderstanding by COGWriter, in a post on a “Blood Moon” –
NASA predicts a “Red Moon” lunar eclipse on April 4, and mentions “coincides with the Jewish Passover holiday”.
Of course, Bob wants to correct them with “The dates related to Passover are late by a couple of days and not truly the biblical ones, but align with the Days of Unleavened Bread”.
If you look at a Jewish calendar, you will see Abib 15 (April 4) is labeled “Pesach (Passover) Day 1”. Even in the Gospels, “Passover” and “Unleavened Bread” are used interchangeably to refer to the spring pilgrimage festival.
One would think that if God really wanted Christians to keep the Days of Passover, He’d have made it really clear when and how Gentiles were to keep them and not have this incredible mess of mass confusion.
The interesting aspect to all of this is that when the Jerusalem Council decided that circumcision was not to be required of gentile Christians, this enactment had far greater impact and meaning than the simple abolishment of the ritual itself. Christianity had a symbiotic relationship with the Hebrew religion during the first century, and Christian gentiles who were uncircumcised would not be permitted to participate in most of the customs and rituals of Moses, and that is actually per Moses himself! How could Armstrongism have failed to pick up on the significance of that?
Most splinter members could learn much from a topical concordance study based on the word “circumcision”.
You have Christians dependent on the Temple for the calendar, the holy days, the rituals, place to bequeath sacrifices and offerings, and many of the other social conventions on which daily life was based in Israel, and, first the temple veil is rent from top to bottom, then the Temple is actually destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and further early in the next century during bar Kokhba. Circumcision is abolished. Jewish Christians are for the most part persecuted and starved out of existence, and the centers of Christianity move to Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, with the gentiles at that point becoming the predominant Christians yet actually being prohibited by Levitical law from participating in all of the Old Covenant rituals by virtue of their lack of circumcision! 1900 years later, HWA blames the transition or expansion of Christianity from Jewish into the Gentile communities on Simon Magus, a gnostic who claims to have special knowledge much as HWA himself. I surely wish the internet had been around when I was a teenager. Better knowledge of first century history, and better rooting from a philosophical standpoint could have saved all of us a whole lot of trouble!
BB
@BB
With the problems that faced the Gentiles, I can see why ritual conversion to Judaism (“circumcision”) looked like the easy way out. But Paul was furious with the Galatians treating this as “good news”. As hinted in Paul’s letter, the “18 Measures” of Shammai some Gentiles chose to follow to become Jews included not only accepting all of the Torah, but the Oral Law and Traditions as well.
When HWA began his radio days, influenced by BI, he possibly thought he was only speaking to Israel. The bulk of the work of the old WCG and the current splinters is still focused on countries considered a part of “Israel”. My niche in COG critique is mainly that they teach keeping the Law, but they pick and choose, and what they do choose they don’t really get right. And those who want to stick close to HWA’s teaching show and propagate “deliberate ignorance” of history, culture, and scripture itself.
The internet – ah, yes, when I first heard GTA on the radio, none of my extended family ever heard of him, HWA, the R(adio)CG or Ambassador College. There were very few references to HWA et al in library books, and I remember only one small pamphlet, “HWA – Mr Confusion”. Being already steeped in his teaching, I found arguments presented by critics fairly easy to dismiss. Now, all a prospective member needs to do is a simple search to find all they need to know the good, bad and ugly about HWA and the splinters.