What Christians Need to Know About Passover & the Feast of Unleavened Bread

by Russ Schmidt; 3/5/2025

“All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”– Revelation 13:8

We read in scripture that God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). And in our scripture above, we are told that the Lamb, Jesus Christ, was slain at the foundation of the world.

When we consider the foundation of the world, we open our Bibles to Genesis chapter one. Of course we know that God is eternal, and has always existed, which is something we, as carnal human beings, cannot comprehend (Psalm 145:3). As a matter of fact, it is a stumbling block for many who just can’t wrap their minds around that and find it hard to believe.  

We just have to accept that as the case and trust God. Even if God explained it to us, we couldn’t comprehend it, so why try?

So, when we read the Lamb (Jesus) was slain at the foundation of the world, we are being told that right from the beginning, God knew that He would have to send His only begotten Son to earth, as a man, fully human, in order to redeem His creation of man back to the perfection in which He created us through Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Although at the foundation of the world, man was not yet created, and the Word, who ultimately became the Christ (John 1), had not yet been physically slain, God knew that this would ultimately have to be done in order to complete His eternal plan, which included mankind.

Of course, we all know the story of Christ, and how He was born of a virgin and would eventually go to the cross for the sins of all mankind. But what many Christians don’t know, because it gets neglected within the Christian history, is that God gave man a blueprint of His plan approximately 1,500-years before it would actually come to pass.

That blueprint is recorded within the Old Testament. We are going to begin with Exodus 12:1. Although the blueprint starts from the time of Messiah’s first coming, and goes all the way to the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21, in this article we are only going to look at the first three events that God prophesies will occur, and already has. The remaining events will be discussed in a future article.

Let me first set the scene as depicted in the Bible. The Israelites, at this point, have been in Egyptian bondage for 430-years. Moses has been called by God to free His people from Egyptian captivity. We pick up the story in Exodus 12:1, “1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2“This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.”

God is establishing the beginning of the year for the Israelite people. The month is actually established with the first new moon after the Spring Equinox; that would be the first day of the month of Abib, which is also known as Nisan.

Once we get to Abib 1, we count 10 days to the 10th day of the first month. On this day is when the Israelites were told to set aside a Lamb. We read this in Exodus 12:3, “3Speak 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.”

What is the significance of this day to Christians today? It is the day Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, and all the people would call out “Hoshana in the highest,” and throw palm branches and clothing on the road before Messiah. This would occur on Abib/Nisan 10. As far as the year, no one knows for sure, but the overwhelming consensus is 32 A.D.

We can read of the Triumphal Entry in Matthew 21:7-9, “7They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them. 8 And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’”

This is the day most of Christianity calls Palm Sunday; However, if we calculate the days properly, this would actually have occurred on a Friday and not a Sunday. You can read more about that and how to accurately calculate the Passover timeline here.

For the next significant day, we go back to Exodus 12 and verse 6, which reads, “6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.”

The next four days, from the 10th to the 14th, would be fulfilled with all the events that occur from the Triumphal entry in Matthew 21:7, all the way to the Last Supper on the Passover itself, to Christ’s arrest, His torture, and ultimately His crucifixion.

One of Jesus’ first important events after His Triumphal Entry, was when He cleaned the Temple from the money-changers. This is significant because the day following the Passover, begins a 7 day feast called the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Prior to Christ, this feast was represented by the removal of all leavened products from the foods they ate. In other words, bread that was made with yeast would, for the next 7-days, be made without yeast.  

The removal of the yeast represents Christ going to the cross and dying and taking all our sin upon Himself, and incur the punishment that is required by law to those who committed those sins. But this event of Jesus cleansing the Temple of the money-changers, is representative of preparing oneself for the Feast by cleaning the leaven out of their lives, or their bodily temples.

Of course, the leaven represents sin, and the cleansing of the leaven is representative of removing those sinful things from you life, whatever that might be.

So, observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread for Christians, is a remembrance for us of what Christ did in removing the penalty of the sins we committed, and died in our place, so we can live! This is why we should commemorate this season and observe it not with the restrictions of Old Covenant, but with the freedom that comes through the fulfillment of this season.  

I do believe when we neglect it, as if it didn’t happen, and observe a pagan day called Easter, with all it’s pagan traditions, it is a slap in the face of God and Jesus Christ for what He had accomplished through His suffering.

Let me just add a little disclaimer here. Resurrection Sunday is a day to celebrate, and also is a Holy Day of God, described in Leviticus 23:9-14, called The Feast of First Fruits. Clearly we can see the symbolic nature of the day, as Jesus is called the First Fruits of those who have fallen asleep in 1 Corinthians 15:20.

It’s the man-made traditions that are attributed to the day with bunny rabbits and Easter Eggs, and the renaming of the day to a pagan goddess of fertility that establishes its blasphemous nature.

So getting back to the significance of the Feast of First Fruits, we read in Leviticus 23:9 that it’s a day during the Feast of Unleavened Bread where the priests offer the first fruits of the spring barley harvest and wave the sheaf of ripened barley to the Lord.  

The passage does not indicate where it falls within the 8-day observance (1 day for the Passover and 7-days for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for a total of 8 days), at least not numerically. However, it does state in verse 11, that the priest will wave the sheaf offering on the day after the Sabbath. This is where many get confused.

Before I give a brief understanding here, I have an article which details, what is called, Passion Week, where I explain in detail how to calculate the week and what days the Triumphal Entry falls on and the Passover takes place. You can read that here.

But by telling us that the first fruits wave sheaf offering is the day after the Sabbath, is a clue to how many days it will be after the Passover sacrifice of the Lamb. But in brief, in order for Jesus to fulfill His own prophecy of being in the grave for 3 days and 3 nights, the Passover would have had to occur on a Tuesday evening (again, please click on the link for a full explanation).  

And sure enough, when we look back at history and past Passover’s, we see that in 32 AD, the Passover fell on a Tuesday evening.  This would definitely fall within the timeline of what scholars say would be the possible years for Christ’s crucifixion.

(*Important Note: Because of calendar changes over the millennia, more likely than not, the days, somewhere along the line, have been corrupted. It is impossible to know for sure what year the Passover fell on a Tuesday evening. However, most scholars are convinced that the timeframe of Christ’s crucifixion fell somewhere between 30 to 33 AD.)

So, how does this relate to Christians today? Well, just by the name of First Fruits we can certainly see how it ties in with history, as the Feast falls 3-days after the Passover, just as Jesus was in the grave for 3 full days and nights, and became the First Fruits of those who have fallen asleep, completing His redemption of mankind.

Jesus was crucified with all the sin and suffering that mankind had brought on themselves throughout man’s history, and rose 3-days later, purified and in the glory of God.

It was the first fruits of what will become many when Jesus calls His Church home through the rapture.

So, let me summarized what we discussed here and why, we as Christians, should honor these days that God calls, His days, in Leviticus 23:2. Not out of the restriction of the law, but out of a reverence and a remembrance of what God the Father and Jesus did for us, and the cost that was paid. To neglect these days and observe pagan traditions is a disrespect to both the Father and the Son.

Following is a chart that lists each Holy Day we discussed here, and what the significance is for a Christian. I’ve also added the Holy Day called, the Feast of Weeks, that we call Pentecost today, that we find in Leviticus 23:15.

To the ancient Israelites, as well as the Jews today, it is the summer harvest of the wheat, where they are to set aside this day as a Holy convocation to the Lord. For Christians this day is significant because it represents the very first Pentecost when the apostles received the Holy Spirit as per the account in Acts chapter 2. It was the beginning of the Church Age, which I believe is quickly coming to a close as the times of the Gentiles is being fulfilled.

So, as we see, the first four feast days of God have already been fulfilled by Jesus, in the Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Feast of First Fruits, and the Summer Holy Day of Feast of Weeks, or as we call it today, Pentecost. The remaining Feast Days that occur in the Fall, and also have great significance will be discussed in a future article.

See the chart below...