One of the most overlooked aspects in “big picture” Biblical Prophecy is the Old Testament admonition for the Passover Lamb to be thoroughly examined for 4 days before it is sacrificed at Passover. This rule was implemented to ensure that the lamb would be a perfect sacrifice, a sacrifice that was “without blemish” (Exodus 12:1-6).
When considering the life of Jesus and its relationship to the Prophetic Word, we must always remember that Jesus came to fulfill God’s Law perfectly :
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come
to destroy, but to fulfill.” Matthew 5:17
We must also remember that Jesus Christ was and is the unique Personage of the Universe, being both God and man at the same time, as He stated, “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). Before the Incarnation, Jesus Christ was the Eternal 2nd Person of the Trinity, Jehovah, of the Old Testament record. It was this same Jehovah who had walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and had made the promise to personally undo and rectify the results of their Fall into sin.
It is therefore of great interest to realize that in God’s Prophetic Word, Jesus Christ in both His Humanity and in His Divinity had to be subjected to a thorough 4-day examination to ensure that He was qualified to be the Perfect Sacrificial Lamb.
The 4 Day Examination of Jesus
In the Book of Exodus, we read of how each Hebrew house was to bring a lamb without blemish into their house to be examined for 4 days to ensure that it was indeed perfect. At the end of the 4th day, the lamb was then to be sacrificed. When we remember that Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), it is then that we begin to understand the events that occurred in the 4 days prior to Jesus’ Crucifixion. While common Christian culture teaches that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, this is an impossibility, as Scripture clearly indicates that He was to remain in the grave a full 3 days and 3 nights (Matthew 12:40. Therefore, the Crucifixion would have to have occurred at the end of the day on the Wednesday prior to Jesus’ Resurrection. This means that in order to perfectly satisfy the Law, Jesus’ examination would have had to begin on the Sunday before the Crucifixion. This sheds new light on the events of the 4 days prior to the Crucifixion. For when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the young donkey on Palm Sunday, He was not only fulfilling prophecy presenting Himself to the Nation of Israel as their Messiah (Zechariah 9:9), He was indeed also beginning the process of the necessary 4-day examination prior to His sacrifice at Calvary. When the Hebrew people laid down palm branches in front of Him, they were in essence acknowledging the fact that Jesus was the perfect Son of God, an event which is recorded in all 4 Gospels (Matthew 21:8, Mark 11:8, Luke 19:36, John 12:13).
Later, Jesus would also be examined numerous times by both Pilate and Herod (Luke 23:15), which had prompted Pilate to famously remark that neither he (nor Herod) had “found any fault in this man” (Luke 23:4,14,15).
Even the Jewish religious authorities unwittingly acknowledged the perfection of Jesus, as we are told that they had attempted to find “false witnesses” to testify against Jesus (Matthew 26:59), thereby acknowledging that Jesus was indeed perfect in all His ways.
This examination of Jesus continued even while He hung on the Cross. For on the Cross one of the thieves who was crucified with Him came to the realization that Jesus was truly the Perfect Son of God, stating, “…this man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:41), after which he acknowledged Jesus as his Lord, “Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42). The perfection of Jesus was then also attested to by the Roman soldier administering the Crucifixion when he stated, “Certainly this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:47).
Jesus as Jehovah in the Old Testament
It is of great interest to recognize the fact that Jesus Christ was both God and man at the same time. Therefore, to properly examine His qualifications for being an acceptable sacrificial Lamb, not only does Jesus’ New Testament humanity have to be examined for 4 days, but also His actions as Jehovah in the Old Testament record need to be scrutinized.
The duality of Jesus’ Personage is evidenced by the statement that Jesus made to the religious leaders of His day when He proclaimed to them, “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). By making this statement, Jesus was equating Himself with the “I Am” of the Old Testament, and thereby claiming to be the same Person who had met with Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3:14).
We know from God’s Word, that the active member of the Godhead who was predominantly dealing openly with humanity, and especially with the Nation of Israel, during Old Testament times, was in fact the 2nd Person of the Trinity, Jehovah. We know this because Scripture explicitly states that, “no man hath seen God (the Father) at any time (I John 4:9-12), and on numerous occasions in the Old Testament record we are told that God, as Jehovah, had openly appeared unto mankind.
Except for conversations with some of the major prophets, God the Father, “Adonai”, is noticeably absent from the Old Testament record, while God the Son, “Jehovah”, is extremely active in open and visible dealings with mankind. While no man has ever seen God the Father at any time (I John 4:12), God the Son, or Jehovah, was often openly seen by individuals throughout the Old Testament record.
One of the benefits of using the King James Bible is that in this version of the Bible there is a differentiation between the 1st Person of the Trinity, God the Father or Adonai, and the 2nd Person, God the Son, or Jehovah, through the capitalizing of specific letters in the phrase “Lord God”. When the particular passage in question is making reference to God the Father, the King James Bible capitalizes all of the letters in the word “GOD”, and when the Son of God is being referenced, the word “LORD” is capitalized. Thus, God the Father is indicated as “L-o-r-d G-O-D”, and God the Son is rendered as “L-O-R-D G-o-d”.
The first time that Jehovah appeared to mankind was unto Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We know that this was a physical appearance, because we are told that after the Fall, Adam and Eve “hid themselves from the presence of God” (Genesis 3:8). If God in the Garden was merely just a voice, there would obviously be no need to physically hide from Him.
This selfsame Jehovah, whom we now know as Jesus, would also later appear to Noah and his family from inside of the Ark. For notice the language of how He had beckoned them to, “Come into the Ark” (Genesis 7:1), after which He had closed the door, quite possibly also from the inside (Genesis 7:16). This Pre-incarnate Jesus also appeared on numerous separate occasions unto Abraham. The first time when He told Abraham to leave his father’s house (Genesis 12:1), a second time when He promised Abraham that his seed would inherit the land of Israel (Genesis 12:7), and later again when He showed Abraham the expanse of the land of Israel (Genesis 13:14-18), and then when Abraham was 99 years old, Jesus met Abraham to promise him an heir whom we now know as Isaac (Genesis 17:1). Jesus also later appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre to announce the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:1).
We know from the encounter that Hagar had with the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 16:7-13, that the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament was none other than the Pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, as Hagar had confirmed that she had physically seen God, and no person has ever seen God the Father at any time (I John 4:12).
It was the Pre-incarnate Jesus, known then as Jehovah, who appeared to Isaac at Beersheba (Genesis 26:24) and had wrestled with Jacob at Peniel (Genesis 32:30), after which He had changed Jacob’s name to Israel at Padanaram (Genesis 35:10). It was this same Jehovah- Jesus who had appeared unto Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:2), assuming the names of both “the Angel of the Lord” and the great “I Am”, and then later had given Moses the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20).
It was also the pre-incarnate Jesus, then known as Jehovah, who had led Israel through the Wilderness (I Samuel 10:18), for we are told that the Hebrew people did not tempt God the Father in the Wilderness, but rather, they had “tempted Christ”, I Corinthians 10:9), and also appeared to Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders at Israel’s 1st Communion (Exodus 24:10) . It was this selfsame Jesus to Whom Moses is said to have spoken to “Face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).
Jesus as the Captain of the Lord of Hosts later appeared unto Joshua before the Battle of Jericho (Joshua 5:15), and to all of Israel in Judges 2:1-4. Jesus as the Angel of the Lord also appeared to Gideon before he fought the Midianites (Judges 6:12), then later to Manoah and his wife to announce that they would have a son, Samson (Judges 13:21). It was Jesus who appeared twice to Samuel (I Samuel 3: 1-21). Jesus also appeared physically to David as the Angel of the Lord (II Samuel 24:17), and twice in dreams unto Solomon (I Kings 11:9). It was Jesus who had twice comforted Elijah in his time of need (I Kings 19:7) and had later killed the 185,000 soldiers of the Assyrian army during the reign of Hezekiah (Isaiah 37:36).
The actions of God the Father are noticeably absent in the Old Testament record. Apart from appearing unto Abraham in the form of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp (Genesis 15:17), and in non-visual conversations with the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the actions of God the Father are seldom mentioned in the Old Testament.
The 4 Day Examination of Jehovah
The Old Testament record is filled with information about the actions of Jehovah the 2nd Person of the Trinity, whom we now refer to as Jesus Christ. It’s important to realize that the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, was and is perfect in all of His ways, and therefore is also qualified to be the perfect Passover Lamb sacrifice, as He had promised to be in Genesis 3:15. Notice the wording of this passage of Scripture. Here Jehovah states that He personally will undo the tragedy of Satan’s work in the Fall: “I” will put enmity between thee and the woman…” So, in that Jehovah Himself was to be the Passover Lamb, He too must be subject to a 4-day examination prior to the event itself, as God lives by His own principles, for God truly, “magnifies His Word above His Head” (Psalm 138:2).
It is also of great significance to know and understand that this examination of Jehovah would also occur over a period of exactly 4 days, but measured in “God Years”, or a period of 4,000 years, for “One day with the Lord is as one thousand years with man” (Psalm 90:4, II Peter 3:8).
When the Archbishop of Usher developed his Biblical timeline, he established the fact that Adam was likely created in the year 4004 B.C. Modern scholars now confirm that the most probable year of Jesus’ birth would have been in 4 B.C., making the expanse of Old Testament time to be exactly 4,000 years. Incredibly, this makes the period of the Old Testament record to be the exact length of time of 4,000 years needed for an examination of Jehovah Himself to qualify as the Passover Lamb!
At the birth of Jesus Christ, the Old Testament Personage of Jehovah no longer existed as solely the 2nd Person of the Trinity, for now Jehovah had become both God and man at the same time. This was necessary to qualify Him to be able to redeem humanity in a just manner. Therefore, the Old Testament record of the actions of Jehovah concerning mankind are complete and cover a length of time of 4 “God Days”, or 4,000 years. These days which can be examined by one and all to prove that Jehovah as God is qualified to be the Sacrificial Lamb, for the entirety of the Old Testament record reveals Him to be perfect in all His ways.
When we now take these 4,000 years of the Old Testament record, and add them to the 2,000 years of Israel being set aside as prophesied by Hosea starting with their rejection of the Messiah at the Crucifixion in 30 A.D., we once again arrive at the year of 2030 A.D. as being the time for the completion of mankind’s 6,000 years of self-rule, followed by the initiation of man’s 1,000 years of rest in the Millennium, beginning in the Jubilee Year of 2031 A.D.
