C4-To Yeast or Not to Yeast?

For those of you that are ADHD, and want an answer now with no blabbering, it’s perfectly ok to yeast. For those of you that want an exact thorough answer on the matter, then please read on with me. Today is an exciting lesson on the timeline of Jesus and some history that you may not know. I will do my best to keep this short, promise!

There are some huge problems with Bible interpretation that cause confusion on several matters, communion is no exception.

Jesus did not die on Good Friday and rise on Easter Sunday. That is one of the biggest issues in understanding, to yeast or not to yeast. The pagan spring equinox is celebrated on what is now called Easter. That’s why Passover and Easter aren’t on the same date. Good Friday and Easter are pagan celebrations that got a makeover from the Catholic Church. Sorting this out will give us clear answers.

Here’s the real timeline of Jesus

according to scripture
(Jewish days end at sundown, like in Genesis)

Day 3 (Tuesday):
-Judas decides when to betray Jesus.

John 13:1
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father

—–
Day 4 (Wednesday, starting after sundown):
-Passover, and Last Supper
-Judas betrays Jesus and He’s taken
-Illegal mid-night trials
———-Sun comes up
-Official trial, crucifixion
-Earth quake, prophet tombs open up (that’s where they were buried) in preparation for First Fruits
-Joseph wraps Jesus in clean linen and improperly place Him in the tomb
-The women see Jesus improperly buried and leave
-Joseph returns with Nicodemus to use aloe and myrrh
-Preparations for Feast of Unleavened Bread, begin at sundown (date information below timeline)

John 19:31 Original Hebrew (Mat 27:62)
Now the evening would be Shabbat (Feast of Unleavened Bread). And thus the Yehudim (Pharisees)– in order that the bodies should not remain on warp and woof (the cross) on the Shabbat (for that Shabbat would be a great Feast) – entreated Pilate

—–
Day 5 (Thursday):
-Feast of Unleavened Bread, lasts one week
-Sabbath, because of the Unleavened Bread feast, not the weekly one
-High priest asks Pilate to place guards at the tomb

Matthew 27:62-63
⁶²And the day which came after the Pesach (Passover), the chiefs of the Perushim (Pharisees) and the priests came to Pilate, ⁶³saying, “Master, we remember that that deceiver said that he would stand up alive

—–
Day 6 (Friday):
-Women prepare spices, because they don’t know
-Women rest that evening to start the weekly sabbath 

Mark 16:1
And when the Shabbath (Sabbath) had passed over, Miryam (Mary) Magdalith and Miryam (Mary) the mother of Ya’aqov (James) and Shelomi (Salome),
(see Luke 23:54-56 below)

Day 7 (Saturday):
-Soldiers witness the angel that rolled the stone, freak out, hit the ground, some head to the city
-12:00pm-3:00pm Jesus resurrects on the Sabbath, 3 days and 3 nights
-Saints (prophets) with the open graves resurrect, enter the Holy City
-Women rest on the weekly sabbath

Luke 23:54-56
⁵⁴That day was the Preparation (Friday), and the Sabbath drew near (Saturday). ⁵⁵And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid (Wednesday). ⁵⁶Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils (Friday). And they rested on the Sabbath (Saturday) according to the commandment.

—–
Day 1 (Sunday):
-Chief priests and elders held counsel, decide to pay Roman guards
–Night (Saturday night for modern thinking), the women (Joanna, Mary mother of James, and other women) show up with spices, original spices girls
-Mary sees the empty tomb
-Mary sees Jesus
-Mary goes back to tell Peter and John, they all return to the tomb, then the disciples leave
(There is some textual confusion here if Mary saw Jesus before or after. Luke, which has not been translated from Hebrew, will sort this out. I’ll update this section.)
-Jesus ascends to Heaven to present First Fruits (the resurrected prophets)
-Later, Jesus appears to two disciples walking to Emmaus

John 20:1
The first day of the week, in the morning, Miryam (Mary) Magdalit came to the grave – but it was still night – and she saw the stone of the grave overturned.

Jesus told Mary not to cling to Him because He had not put His blood on the matching ark in Heaven, and also, He had not presented the First Fruits offering to the Father.

—–
Day 2 (Monday):
-Jesus appears to disciples in Jerusalem
(and so on…)

And you thought you had a long bad day, just think of Jesus on Wednesday!  Ok, so let’s talk about a few events we normally get confused. But before we go there, the timeline we typical use was charted by the Catholic Church who was busy transforming their paganism with a Christian facelift. There is a printable PDF below for you to follow along next time you read through scripture.

The soldiers headed for the city on Saturday, which is the sabbath. None of the Jewish people were really out mulling around. When Jesus resurrected, the saints headed to town. The soldiers hit the ground like dead men and were probably down for a while. Only “some of the guards” went to Jerusalem. So, they probably had a chat about what they were going to do, which means that the saints beat the Roman guards to town.

Matthew 28:11-12
¹¹And when they went, some of the guards came into Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) and reported to the chiefs of the priests everything that had happened. ¹²Then they gathered the elders and held a council, and they gave a great amount of silver to the guards

The New King James says, “they had assembled with the elders and consulted together.” We assume Jesus resurrected in the early dark morning, but it was most likely the exact time they killed him. It had to be before sundown with enough time for Joseph to place His body in the tomb, because of the High Sabbath. Sunday would have started at about 7:00pm Saturday in April, for us modern thinkers. We’re talking a matter of hours later that the leaders assembled, on Sunday, concocted a story, and paid the soldiers. I placed this on Sunday as first event, because it makes sense, but it could have been minutes before Saturday ended. Placing this event is like splitting hairs.

Luke 23:44-46
⁴⁴Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. ⁴⁵Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’” Having said this, He breathed His last.

The sixth hour is 12:00pm noon, and the ninth hour is 3:00pm. This verse is telling us that Jesus died while there was an eclipse of the sun between 12:00pm and 3:00pm, which would be the exact resurrection time.

Did you forget we were talking about yeast? I did too!

So, the answer is in the feasts, and two more Old Testament events.

Feast of Unleavened Bread
The title of the feast says it all. It’s a seven-day celebration, which the Jews, commanded by God through Moses, must remove all the yeast from their house. Traditionally, houses are cleaned that day as well in preparation for the feast. The feast starts the evening after Passover, and the year we are looking at with Jesus, that would be Thursday (Wednesday night in our modern mind). The first and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread are to be Sabbaths, in the Bible they are called High Sabbaths. These High Sabbaths differ from the weekly Sabbath (Friday night to Saturday evening) and may occur on any day of the week, not necessarily Friday-Saturday. The High Sabbath day changes from year to year, but no matter what day they occur on, the same rules apply as for the weekly Sabbath – rest and keeping the day holy.  

Communion is NOT the Passover meal. Jesus instituted a new convent meal. The Passover was a rehearsal of the things to come, and Jesus fulfilled the Passover rehearsal. We don’t have room here to go through the fulfillment, but it’s finished! I can’t tell you how many misguided ministers I’ve heard say over communion, “Lets partake of the Passover meal.” If they’re still doing Passover, they should be roasting a lamb in the kitchen and serving some bitter herbs, hopefully a little hummus too!

Communion is NOT the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus fulfilled the feast of unleavened bread. These feasted were prophetic rehearsals, so when the events took place, everyone could see for themselves that they were acting out, for many years, everything that took place. They didn’t need to be able to read the scrolls. The idea of the feast is to REMOVE YEAST, which is a representation of SIN. Jesus was hanging on the cross REMOVING SIN, the same day they were REMOVING YEAST. While they were without yeast, Jesus took their sin to hell. Jesus was walking the Earth during this feast, sinless. Feast fulfilled.  

Let’s go back even farther to Abraham…

Lot, Abraham’s nephew, was taken captive by 4 kings that came out to fight Sodom, Gomorrah and 3 other kings that no one likes to pronounce their kingdom. The Bible tells us,

Genesis 14
¹²They also took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.

Don’t mess with Abraham’s family! He assembled his trained servants, attacked them at night and chased them off!

¹⁶So he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his brother Lot and his goods, as well as the women and the people.

Everyone is happy. Out of nowhere, we meet Melchizedek.

¹⁸Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. ¹⁹And he blessed him…”

The end of Melchizedek’s story. They do believe they found his temple to the Lord. You can Google it. But… no one hears about him until David brings him up in Psalm 110:4.

“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Then silence again until the author of Hebrews starts bringing him up repeatedly!

Hebrews 7:14-16
¹⁴For it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood. ¹⁵And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest ¹⁶who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life.

What he’s saying is… Jesus came from Judah, the tribe that has nothing to do with priesthood, but yet there’s more evidence Jesus was like Melchizedek than the priesthood! The only scriptures we have are saying, “He brought out bread and wine… and blessed.” The author of Hebrews sees in the spirit that breaking of the bread and drinking wine were a representation of what was to come through Jesus. Back to Abraham, after Melchizedek blesses him,

Genesis 14:20
… And he gave him a tithe of all.

Why in the world would Abraham give him a tithe? Not only was he a high priest, but he was also a representation of Christ. We don’t know for sure, obviously, but it’s likely Melchizedek shared a prophetic glimpse of Christ. But for our purpose, we’re looking at the bread and wine. The Hebrew word for bread used is lechem, and most likely contained yeast. We see a pattern in the Bible where non-yeasted bread would be specified, whereas yeasted bread was bread.

One last example in Genesis 16

⁴Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.

¹⁵So when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

²³…Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil…

³¹And the house of Israel called its name Manna. And it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

³⁵And the children of Israel ate manna forty years

Psalm 78:24
²³… And opened the doors of heaven,
²⁴Had rained down manna on them to eat, end given them of the bread of heaven.

Opened the doors of Heaven, and sent bread of Heaven, this was a prophetic depiction of Jesus. The manna, bread from Heaven, physically saved them from dying; but Jesus was the Bread of Life sent from Heaven to spiritually save them. Not all of them could read and no one could really afford scrolls. That’s why there is a lot of physical prophetic events in past times. Manna is the Hebrew word for What is it? And what did people think of Jesus? They didn’t know who He was. Peter boldly blurts out, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus tells Peter, he only knows that because God revealed it to him. In the same way that most of Israel didn’t know what manna was, they didn’t know who Jesus was either.

Yes, we are still talking about yeast! According to David, the “bread of heaven” wasn’t recorded in as lechem, but he used dagan. The translation of dagan in our Bibles is sometimes translated as corn, but that’s a BAD translation. Corn originated in South America, didn’t arrive in Africa until the 17^th century and it’s heavily genetically modified. We are going to go with the translation of grain cereal, as that’s much more accurate! Moses uses the word lechem for manna, the standard word for bread which most likely contains yeast. Manna is sweet white multi-grain bread. We see in Genesis 23 they were boiling it. Any skilled baker will agree with me on two points with this information given, sweet multigrain bread needs yeast or else you’re baking a very firm undesirable dense loaf that would be very unpleasant to chew. Not only that, but Moses mentions boiling sweet multigrain dough. You cannot roll a dough thin and boil it to cook it, so that rules out that they rolled it thin as a cracker. The boiling water has a higher density than the density of thin dough and would push it into a thick clump. It would result in a dense gummy dough ball with water pockets, that can trap heat and burn someone’s mouth. This information tells experienced bakers that yeast was present. Think of bagels or pretzels, they’re boiled then baked. Yum!

To Yeast!

Communion is not Passover. Communion is not Feast of Unleavened Bread. The two representations in the Bible of Jesus, manna and bread and wine of Melchizedek, contained yeast. Moses wrote both yeast and no-yeast events, and he would have been smart enough to specify when required. You are free to break bread as Jesus’ sinless body given for you, or break bread as Jesus bore our sin in his body. Paul does communion in Corinthians, and he never mentions using non-yeasted bread, but the Greek has the standard word for bread.

I hope you enjoyed this study on Jesus as much as I enjoyed writing it down. Don’t let anyone condemn you for yeast or no yeast. You have complete freedom in Christ.

We’ll see where the Lord leads us for the next series. Until then… blessings of God rain down on you like sweet manna from Heaven.

    Christi

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