A Modern Passover
Contributed by Brett Ahern
Passover is April 22, in remembrance of Israel’s slavery-to-liberty experience in ancient Egypt. Let’s review its background to better understand the occurrence of a modern Passover.
Passover launches the Spring season. Transitioning from winter to spring parallels death to life transformations, equating the slavery-to-liberty experience of Israel.
On another level, Exodus casts the Creation in a new light. In Genesis 1 God took chaos and daily created order out of it, completing it by the seventh day. The Sabbath memorializes that chaos’ perpetual power is defeated by growing order, making life restful, a paradise. Our ultimate quest.
Exodus 1:7 states, “And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.” The words fruitful, increased, abundantly, multiplied and filled; were also used in Genesis 1:26-28, in God’s commission of humanity’s mission. We can see Exodus is Genesis 2.0. Exodus sets up fallen humanity to live Genesis’ divine commission, our ultimate quest.
Here’s more about this. In Exodus 1 Pharoah told the Egyptians to deal “wisely” with the Hebrews, he enticed them to eat the forbidden fruit of slavery. The Hebrews were cast out of humanity, exiled from their Egyptian Edenic garden, into the wilderness of slavery as subhuman animals.
Two midwives avoided killing the Hebrew males at birth as Pharoah instructed and received God’s blessings for mastering their destiny. It’s Cain and Abel revisited. Later, Moses relived Cain’s tragedy: he killed an Egyptian brother, was cast out of Egypt, and became a wilderness wanderer.
God later created 10 nature plagues in areas Egyptian gods controlled. They failed to reverse the chaos to restore the natural order. God ‘uncreated’ Egypt to restore Genesis 1’s chaos. Exodus as Genesis 2.0 shows fallen humanity is primordial chaos, needing God to create a new world order. God birthed a new nation at Passover, Israel, and instructed them in their new world order in the wilderness. Then they entered His Promised Land, where He supported them in following His Way.
God’s frequent instruction to wilderness Israel: ‘Do not oppress the stranger, since you understand the soul of the stranger, because you were strangers in Egypt.’ Israel was to be a “love your neighbor” culture, not “the strong exploit the weak” culture. Israel shows how God recreates humanity, to restore Eden.
Recently, restoring Eden happened. Exodus informed Gandhi in India, Martin Luther King Jr in the USA, and Mandela in South Africa. Each led successful revolutions against slavery. Each created nonviolent movements and said they utilized Biblical insights. For King in the USA, it went deeper. He earned a Dr in theology, pastored a black church, and radiated the deep Exodus worldview that carried his people through cultural racism. He restored America’s moral compass.
Now let’s discuss a modern Passover in-process, the Israel-Hamas War. Is Israel confronting Hamas’ evil, and liberating Palestinians from Hamas, an Exodus parallel? God used various empires, like the Babylonian empire, in Israel’s early days to do this. He separated them from their own sin-drenched culture, developed under the influence of their neighboring “strong exploiting the weak” cultures. Hamas took over Gaza and created a “strong exploiting the weak” culture. Can God use Israel to Passover their neighbor Gaza?
Palestinians are ‘educated’ to see Jews as oppressors, while Hamas ‘liberators’ indoctrinate them to war against Jews. Six months into this war Palestinians still vomit volumes of decades of lies.
Israel, after their Exodus, went through the same thing in the wilderness. They faced decisive moments to trust God. They repeatedly turned down God and longed for the ‘good old days’ of Egypt. After a dozen episodes of this God paused the project. Instead, Israel wandered the wilderness for forty years until the slavery mindset generation died off. God knew He couldn’t build a nation infested with this soul sickness.
Consider it. What needs to occur in Gaza for peace to finally develop? We did this to end WWII, with Germany, Japan, and Israel as rebirthed nations. How can Gaza repeat this?
Israel’s vigilance met the Arab Spring at the Middle East conference table. Relationships normalized between Islamic nations and the Jewish nation. Agreements were made and Saudi Arabia was next. This prompted a Palestinian decision. Does Islamic extremism end its racist war with Jews and return to the earlier part of Mohammed’s teaching: peace to all who show respect to his followers? Especially the People of the Book, the Jews, with God’s given land to live in peaceably, per the Koran’s teaching?
No. Hamas reignited the war. In Egypt, when Pharoah said ‘no!’ God pursued liberty. Pharoah decided a once and for all approach was required. God responded with three days of darkness, for Egypt to reconsider. They failed to get the message. Then Egyptian death was everywhere as Passover occurred.
Hamas decided ‘no!’ to life with Israel, with a once and for all approach. Death gripped the Palestinians, whose joyous participation in this massacre and their cultural Antisemitism propaganda feasts ignited their due-process retribution.
Since Hamas is so physically integrated in Gaza, Israel had to decimate a part of it to eradicate Hamas. We don’t like the consequences of the depth of depravity and evil Palestinians created for themselves, but people make their own choices and live with the consequences. But truth shows up. An illusionary worldview mushrooms ill-conceived fantasy. Their culture let brokenness multiply exponentially in their midst. And yet, the world still ignores the obvious consequences of truth!
World leaders are now pushing for the two-state solution again. We just tried a two-state solution! Even with Israel’s gift of total freedom to Gaza nineteen years ago, with no further Israeli management since then, Palestinian’s failed to use their freedom to grasp reality. Instead, they said yes to Hamas’ sweets that lured them into a death trap. And yet Palestinians are overwhelmingly against doing another two-state solution, because it allows Israel to live! Sick. Hamas is even now forcing starvation on Gazans to manipulate the world to hate Israel. Madness. We can’t be blind again!
Palestinian slavery led to a modern Passover event. Israel is fulfilling their role, responding as the decades-long victim. Israel, with centuries as a cultural racism target, now creates life’s victories and lives a ‘love your neighbor’ culture. It helps broken nations rebuild. Israel is where humanity’s ideal became real again.
Israel is a modern Passover nation, proof that God can take a broken people and create a stellar world-class nation. Each Passover they evaluate God’s love for them, recommitting to His commission, the fruitful path to well-rounded prosperity.
Let’s forsake the Palestinian fantasy. They showed us it didn’t work. Let’s treat them as real people: insist they live in truth, with the rest of us. Let’s call them to honesty and demand accountability from them, as life does with us. Let them demonstrate they heed the call and show they are established in God’s commission of really mastering life. Restore moral clarity! Show us the potential of Islam. Build a real nation. The world needs another world-class Passover nation, humanity’s ideal becoming real again. This is what we should support.