God's Calendar, Passover 2021, and Replacement Theology

Hello, friends. I'm Chadwick Harvey, and this is Faithful Performance, where we explore the testimony of the biblical prophets and how they perfectly correlate with the current events of today. Thank you for joining us.

In this episode we are going to discover the Feast of Passover, God's calendar, and the dangers of replacement theology. We'd like to begin with an understanding of how Gentile believers should look at the scriptures and how we are grafted into Israel — into the commonwealth of Israel. I think that is one of the great misconceptions held by the Gentile church across all denominations: that we are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel. We need to understand what that exactly means.

Once you are saved by Jesus, by the blood of the Messiah, you are no longer a Gentile. You are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel. That understanding leads directly into the Feast of Passover, which begins this Saturday, March 27th — the divine appointments of the Lord in the spring, also called the feast days. And that, in turn, gives you an understanding of the dangers of replacement theology.

In Ephesians 2:11–13 and verses 19–20, Paul writes: "Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called the Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands — that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone."

This is critically important. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus, giving them clarity on what it means to be saved. He is saying that we were once aliens, strangers to the covenants — the Abrahamic, the Davidic, and even the New Covenant. We must understand that the New Covenant is made with the children of Israel, with the Jewish people. Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, Isaiah 59 and 60 — no covenant is made with the Gentiles. Every covenant is made with Israel. And Paul is telling you that once you are saved by Jesus, you are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel, because we were once aliens from it, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope in the world. But now, he says, you are no longer strangers — you are citizens and members of the household of God.

This is so important to understand because, again, no covenant is made with the Gentiles. The Gentiles are grafted in, just as this scripture says. Romans 11, and also Galatians 3:26–29: if you are a seed of Christ, you are a seed of Abraham. He is telling you to cross over and to be a Hebrew — "Hebrew" simply means to cross over. This is not a Jewish thing; this is a God thing, the God of Israel thing. He gave all these beautiful things to the Jewish people to be a light to the nations, so that we would cross over. He did choose Israel to be kings and priests, to spread the holy scriptures to us.

We have to understand there are not two ways to worship — Gentiles worshipping one way and Jewish people another. There is one way. What Paul is telling you is that you are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel. That means we need to understand what is taught in the Torah, what is mentioned in the prophets, and what the Messiah confirmed over and over again in the Gospels.

This is also why replacement theology is so dangerous. If you are not familiar with it, replacement theology is essentially the doctrine that the church has replaced Israel with respect to the promises of the covenants. That teaching is demonic — it is a lie from the pit of hell — because it makes God a liar. When you read the scriptures, His promises are everlasting. Everlasting means everlasting: to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and through Yeshua, to the Jewish people. We are grafted in. Many prophecy teachers address the basic form of replacement theology — the church replacing Israel — but it goes further than that. It extends to the replacement of God's calendar, the replacement of His festivals, His divine appointments. We need to bring this to light and have an honest conversation, and I say this in love. I was once deceived in this same way for 38 years, and then I crossed over, because it does not make any sense when we read the holy scriptures regarding how we are to worship.

I come to you in love and in the truth of the scriptures, and I hope you can be open to these things if they are new to you. We are grafted in, just as the New Testament declares. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, says you are a part of the commonwealth of Israel — you are no longer a Gentile. You have been saved by the blood of the Messiah, and now you are engrafted into Israel's tree. This is not merely spiritual; it is both literal and spiritual. We need to understand that, because it is at the root of replacement theology.

Now let us confirm this in the holy Bible, because there must always be at least two witnesses to establish a matter. Paul was pointing us back to Exodus 12, when the nation of Israel left Egypt. We are now in this Passover season, and when you read the account in Exodus 12, it was a mixed multitude — Jews and Gentiles together. If we had been Egyptians at that time, watching all ten of Egypt's gods being crushed and dismantled by the God of Israel, I believe most of us would have left with the children of Israel. Even Pharaoh's daughter left — that is recorded in 1 Chronicles 4. The same daughter who had saved Moses departed with the children of Israel, along with many other Egyptian Gentiles who wanted to be a part of the Almighty God. The nation was born as a mixed body — Jew and Gentile — going out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, traveling to Sinai to receive the Torah, the original divine revelation at Pentecost. Paul is reverting us back to this scripture because of its perfect tie-in with the commonwealth of Israel.

Exodus 12:47–49 says: "All the congregation of Israel shall keep it" — speaking of Passover — "And when a stranger" — a Gentile — "dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat it. One Torah, or law, shall be for the native-born Jew and for the stranger — the Gentile — who dwells among you."

This is what Paul is trying to tell us: there are not two ways to worship. Some go to Galatians 4 and argue about the feast days, but they misunderstand the passage. You have to understand what was happening in Acts, and you have to understand the Torah. In the prophets, the Lord says, "I don't like your feast days" — but He is addressing the way they were celebrating those feast days, which are His feast days. He is speaking about worship corrupted by their own oral traditions and abominations. In Galatians 4, Paul is not even addressing the Lord's feast days; he is addressing the corrupted manner in which they were worshipping. Without understanding the Torah, you cannot understand what Paul is saying in Galatians or in other chapters.

In Exodus 12, God says "all the congregation of Israel." He did not say "children of Israel"; He said the congregation. Paul used the word "commonwealth." Commonwealth and congregation are the same concept — everyone shall keep it. He speaks of circumcision, and what did Paul say in Ephesians 2? Once you receive the blood of the Lamb, you are in — you are circumcised in your heart. You should keep this Feast of Passover, not according to the traditions of men, but according to the Torah of God, the Psalms, the prophets, and the Messiah Himself. We are going to examine all of these. Then Moses declares: "One Torah shall be for the native-born Jew and for the stranger — the Gentile — who dwells among you." One way to worship.

There are not separate paths — Jews worshipping this way and Gentiles that way. At the core, the Jewish people need Yeshua as their Savior, and they need to set aside the oral traditions that the Messiah came against. And the Gentiles need to understand that they must stop following Constantine and stop following the church on festivals that have no foundation whatsoever in the holy Bible — they are simply traditions of men. The Gentiles are doing exactly what the Jewish people were doing in the Messiah's day, and He called them hypocrites, serpents, and vipers. Now look at what we are doing on the Gentile side: we are obeying Constantine and the Roman Church, the Protestant Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church — every Gentile denomination, the vast majority of churches, has adopted this replacement theology of worshipping on festivals that have no relevance to the holy Bible, simply because men decided to change it. But God did not ask them. Who has the authority to edit God's Word? The church does not. Rome does not. The Baptist Church does not. The Episcopalian Church does not. Any Gentile church or any synagogue does not have the right to edit God's Word. His Word is His Word, and it is for citizen and stranger alike — one way to worship, not a multitude of human traditions on both the Jewish and Gentile sides.

We have to get this right. Those of us in the middle, standing between Jew and Gentile, understand: the Jewish people need Jesus as their Messiah and need to set aside the traditions of men; and Gentiles need to abandon the paganism of Constantine and the festivals invented by Rome, the Protestant Church, and all the other churches that we have all inherited and adopted. In fact, at the end of Jeremiah 16, around verses 17 or 18, it says that the Gentiles will come to Jesus at the millennial kingdom and declare: "We have inherited lies from our fathers — they are all lies." Some of these things are replacement theology — the replacement of God's calendar, the replacement of His festivals — and they stem from anti-Semitism and a bias against the scriptures of the Jewish people.

As we are about to see, these are not the Jews' feasts. These are not Israel's feasts. These are God's feasts — His divine appointments — period. You will see this clearly in the scriptures. They were given to the Jewish people to be a light to us.