"Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it." Leviticus 23:10-11

"And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.
And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD'S Passover." Exodus 12:1-3,6,11

"Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover." John 18:28

"The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day (for that Sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away." John 19:31

Greetings! And blessings to the children of God, near and far away; and may this day be one of great joy unto you, for I bring you happy news of marvelously good things! Our God is good, and since I am a servant of His, I can have nothing but good news for you.

If you have your Bible convenient, I suggest you look up Leviticus, the 23rd chapter, from which I will quote shortly. God weaves into all of His works and declarations the highlights of things to come – this we call prophecy. But unfortunately, the ministers of God have understood so little of His prophetic revelations.

His ministers have confined His prophecies to that which was openly declared as prophetic. But since the people at that time were not prepared to receive the fullness of truth, God chose to hide vast amounts of truth and prophecy under a thin veil, which was either wrought out in living drama, or declared in symbolic language. Repeatedly, through Moses as well as through the Prophets which followed him, God spoke against His Own Chosen People, charging them with a brow of brass and neck sinews of iron (Isa. 48:4), who would not hear His word (Jer. 6:17, 44:16, 66:4), neither bow to His requests, having their hearts uncircumcised and hardened (Jer. 9:26; Zech. 7:11-12). Therefore, He could only set before them the rudiments of truth, for there was not the slightest chance of their accepting its fullness. The fullness of truth, and the events to come, He hid in symbolic language, and veiled in living dramas, directed by His Own hand.

This time I want to quote from the Old Testament. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that the Old Testament was written for the Jews, and that we should not be concerned over it. The truths of God are eternal, and He changes not (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8). Perhaps it would not be out of place if I were to make a little confession: had it not been for clearly seeing in the Old Testament the unmistakable and precision prophecies concerning the Messiah to be sent unto Israel, I, for one, would never have been able to accept the account of Jesus' life, and the testimony of the Apostles that He was the Savior of man. For, well did I know that liars have ever been in the world, and since the dawn of learning they have also put their lies into writing. But according to authentic history, I saw that all the sacred scrolls of the Jewish priesthood had been translated into Greek about 300 years previous to the commencement of our Common Era. By that, I knew it impossible that the Old Testament prophecies could have been forgeries at any time following the Cross of Calvary. And, since I saw in the Old Testament the numerous prophecies pointing to their awaited Messiah, and some of them carrying time measures which pinpointed the precise time of our Savior's birth into this world, as well as the Cross of Calvary, then of necessity did I have to accept the basic substance of the New Testament record.

This time, I propose to set before you another one of these prophetic treasures from the Old Testament, but first we will deal with the spiritual marrow of His Word. So, let me quote from Leviticus 23:1011:

"Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, `When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.'"

As we study the details dealing with the Jewish festivals unto the Lord, as God declared them unto and through Moses, we find that this wave sheaf was waved two days after their Passover (Lev. 23:4-7,9-11). The feast of their Passover approximated sundown as closing the 14th day of their first month (Ex. 12:2-3,6,11). (Our Easter is based on the time of the Jewish Passover.) Then on the following day, which would be the 15th of that month, there was to be what is termed a "holy convocation": it was considered as a Sabbath day. Now, at the close of verse 11, we read that "on the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it." As I have just said, that Sabbath referred to the 15th day of the month, while on the day after that Sabbath – that is, the 16th of the month – the priest should wave that sheaf (which was out of the harvest). Now observe carefully those words, "...he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you."

When we study the Gospel accounts, especially John 18:28, we see that at the time of our Lord's crucifixion, it is stated clearly that the Jews were afraid to go into the judgment hall lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. That, in the clearest of language, tells us that our Lord was crucified on the day of the Jewish Passover. You see, it was the wisdom of God which decided on the dates for the sacred festivals. And it was the hand of Almighty God which guided and directed all the events in the life of His Chosen People, in order that every little detail should combine to make a perfect picture, and tell a complete story. The Jewish Passover was not set because the Israelites sacrificed the paschal lamb in Egypt on that evening, but they sacrificed it on that evening because it was at that time of the year that God decided that Christ our Lord should be sacrificed for the people.

Naturally, this wave sheaf out of the harvest contained grain. In the clearest of language, our Lord likened Himself to a kernel of grain (Jn. 12:24). This wave sheaf had to be waved before the Lord on the morrow after the Sabbath, in order that the people would be accepted by God. I must again draw those words to your attention, "...to be accepted for you...." Here, then, in the clearest of language, God showed us through symbolic rites how He would ordain a wave sheaf "...to be accepted for the people." And according to the ordinance, its waving was to be "...on the morrow after the Sabbath...."

Now, we know according to the Gospel accounts that our Lord was crucified on the day of the Jewish Passover. That is made clear in Scripture. He was put in the tomb, and the Sabbath drew on (Lk. 23:52-56). And we are told that Sabbath was "a high Sabbath" (Jn. 19:31). That expression a "high Sabbath" applied to their usual Sabbath as and when their Saturday coincided with some sacred festival day. Now, according to the Jewish calendar, the only high festival day near the Passover was the 15th of the month, that is, the day following their Passover. We know, therefore, that the statement of that Sabbath being a "high day" necessitates the 15th of the month to coincide with their Saturday. And we also know by the Gospel accounts that the resurrection of the Lord took place near sunrise on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1-6; Mar. 16:9; Lk. 24:1-3): thus was His resurrection "on the morrow after the Sabbath," which is in perfect synchronism with the ordinance in Leviticus 23:11. And according to the plainest of wording, that wave sheaf was to be accepted by God for the people. There, in the clearest of language, between 13 and 14 hundred years previous to Calvary, God did foreshow that there was to be a vicarious atonement for His people.

I will not take the time to read the various passages, but you will find when studying the various Gospel accounts, that the risen Lord said to Mary Magdalene, "Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father, but go tell My brethren that I ascend to My Father...to My God and your God" (Jn. 20:17). Then in the evening of the same day, He appeared unto His disciples, and requested them to handle Him, to see for themselves; to feel His reality lest they be unbelieving. So, when we add these facts together, we cannot help but conclude that some time between His appearance to Mary and His revelation unto His disciples, that He had ascended unto the Throne in the heavenlies to present a token of His sacrifice before the Father, and thereafter had returned to earth.

When we take a sheaf of grain – or any object for that matter – and put it through a waving motion, we find that motion contains an ascending arc and a descending arc: that was what the risen Lord duplicated in His ascension to the Father and later in His return to earth. Thus we see that every little detail of the ordinance through Moses was fulfilled in the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord on that first day of the week.

Now we are going to look briefly at the prophecy of this festival; that is, the festival of the Passover lamb. It portrayed the crucifixion, or sacrifice of God's Lamb for the people, which two days later was to be waved before the Lord, that it might be "accepted for the people." According to the chronology furnished us in Genesis and Exodus, we find that the first Passover was sacrificed in Egypt 2,666.5 years after Adam's sin. Subtract this from the time of our Lord's crucifixion. Chronologies differ a few years, but the one I use gives an even 1,368 years to Calvary's Cross.

Since that first Passover took place in Egypt (that being a Gentile land), it stood numerically in relationship to His Chosen People as one to ten. That would necessitate a reduction of the 1,368 years by dividing by 10, or moving the decimal place over 1 to the left, giving us a reading of 136.8. Now bear in mind, God ordained the Passover to take place as closing the 14th day of the month. We find no wording to indicate that a precise moment was required, but rather "at even" (Ex. 12:6). Therefore, that rite might vary quite a few minutes in time. So, to complete the prophetic equation, we already have 136.8, which we multiply by 14 – being the full measure of that first month unto the moment of the Passover sacrifice. You will find the result to be 1,915 almost evenly. Of course, were we to use an earlier date for Calvary's Cross, it would shorten the prophetic equation in the amount of 1 year to as much as 6 years. But even so, that makes very little difference in that which we are now considering. For, we must bear in mind that there was no precision moment for the paschal sacrifice, but rather an approximate requirement which could vary many minutes. Therefore, regardless of whose chronology we use, we cannot pinpoint the equation to the year and month.

Nevertheless, when we consider this measure of 1,915 years, or any other measure in several years less, adding that to the time of Calvary's Cross, we arrive at some year in the decade of the 1940s. If we use my Pyramid chronology, it takes us into 1949 or 50. It was in the summer of 1948 that the regathered Jewish people declared themselves a reborn nation in Palestine, and by the summer of 1949 they had vanquished their enemies and got an armistice signed. I repeat, regardless of whose chronology we use, considering the minor latitude allowed or implied by the wording of the ordinance, we arrive at virtually a precision agreement with the exact time that His Chosen People came back into their homeland, in order that the balance of prophecy might be fulfilled! That was a fulfillment of the prophetic silhouette wrought out through the wave sheaves: "...to be accepted for you....."

Again you have seen the marvelous works of God, and how the patterns which they trace for man are in perfect agreement both as to nature as well as to time for the conclusion of this dispensation. Wherefore, I repeat my warning to you: our time is short.

Now once more let us come back to the precious truth of the festival ordinance, that there was to be a harvest sheaf waved before God of heaven, to become "accepted for the people." And we know by history that this Lamb of God, Who was a sheaf out of the harvest-field of humanity, did get waved by the same High Priest before the God of heaven, "to be accepted for the people." Therefore, as He was accepted for us, it is high time that you and I start laughing, and shouting, and singing, because our redemption was accomplished, and peace with our God was established in an absolute totality!

The independently thinking and vigorously reasoning person is certain to conclude that whatever the "sacrifice" made by a man in the long ago cannot affect the future and eternal destiny of man later. From the strictly human perspective, this is sound reasoning. Yet from the perspective of God it is but childish and willful thinking: reasoning (so-called) in utter ignorance of the spiritual factors involved.

Man, being conceived in sin, has an inner vortex pattern (you may call it "soul") which leads to sin, making one unfit to be in the presence of God.

Because the life of the Nazarene was the perfect and sin-FREE life, He achieved (or built up) the perfection "vortex" within, resulting in a spiritual seed which could (and can) be transmitted through His spoken word (God's way of creating) into the soul-vortex of another. With that perfection-seed engrafted, the ultimate good fruit is assured – even though the "tree" may be slow in bearing.…

"In a nutshell," that is the secret of the "new birth" – "born again" (or more literally rendered from the Greek: "generated from above").

What blessed "wavesheaf" forecast by Moses "to be accepted for you"!