The Future Passover During the Millennium
Ezekiel 45:21-25
Although the first mention of the Passover is in Exodus 12, we are going to start in the future, and work our way backwards to get to Exodus 12. I start here because, not only do we have the Passover mentioned as part of the seven days of Unleavened Bread, as well as the equation of the Passover day with the first (holy) day of Tabernacles, but also we can understand the significance of the sacrifices that will be offered on those days during the Millennium, which sheds light on which day is set apart as the first holy day.
Ezekiel 45:21-25…Context: the Millennial sacrifices for Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles (verses bolded for emphasis, comments italicized in brackets). The sacrifices during this thousand years will be different in type and number than what is prescribed in the Torah. See Numbers 28 and 29, specifically 28:16-25 to compare and contrast the Passover sacrifices then, and the sacrifices in the Millennium.
Here, we are concentrating first on the mentioned days of the month…
(AFV) Eze 45:21 “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall observe the Passover; for the festival of seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten.
[In many of the translations, it is implied that the Passover is a part of the seven days…Mr. Coulter wrote a tome on “The Christian Passover” which promulgates the 8-Day viewpoint. I respect his viewpoint, as it was also the viewpoint I grew up with in the Radio Church of God, and later, the Worldwide Church of God. In his “Original Order” translation (AFV in e-Sword), the Old Testament was translated by E. Michael Heiss, who took a literal viewpoint, which is significant in the way 8-Dayers and this viewpoint emphasizes. So we are in agreement on this point as to which day is the first day.]
Eze 45:22 And on that day [the 14th day] the prince shall prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bull for a sin offering.
Eze 45:23 And the seven days of the feast of unleavened bread he shall prepare a burnt offering to the LORD, seven bulls and seven rams, without blemish, daily for the seven days, and a kid of the goats daily for a sin offering.
Eze 45:24 And he shall prepare a grain offering of an ephah for a bull, and an ephah for a ram, and a hin of oil for an ephah.
Eze 45:25 In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast of tabernacles he shall prepare likewise for these seven days, according to the sin offering, according to the burnt offering, and according to the grain offering, and according to the oil.”
In the King James Version, with Strong’s: “In the firstH7223 month, in the fourteenthH702 H6240 dayH3117 of the month,H2320 ye shall haveH1961 the passover,H6453 a feastH2282 of sevenH7651 days;H3117 unleavened breadH4682 shall be eaten.H398 [H2282=chag=feast]
Eze 45:22 And upon thatH1931 dayH3117 shall the princeH5387 prepareH6213 forH1157 himself and forH1157 allH3605 the peopleH5971 of the landH776 a bullockH6499 for a sin offering.H2403
Notice, starting in verse 21, that the Passover is “a feast of seven days”, implying, from this viewpoint, that the Passover is a contiguous part of the seven days, and in verse 25, how the same sacrifices for “that day”, verse 22, (the 14th day of the first month mentioned in verse 21, which is always the 14th) will be the same for the first holy day of the Feast of Tabernacles, in verse 25. In several translations, the word “likewise” or “do the like”, in verse 25, strongly implies that, unless the Passover date is going to be changed in the Millennium from what it is today, and was back then, then the same sacrifices for the holy convocation of the 15th day of the seventh month (the first holy day of Feast of Tabernacles), ARE THE SAME as for the 14th day of the first month. Compare verse 25 here with Leviticus 23:34. This EQUATES the Passover, on the 14th day of the first month, to the first holy day of the feast of Tabernacles, the 15th day of the seventh month.
Lev 23:34 “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD.
Lev 23:35 On the first day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no servile work therein.
Now, compare this with the Passover offerings in Numbers 28:
Num 28:16 And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the Passover of the LORD.
Num 28:17 And in the fifteenth day of this month is the feast. Seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten. [The difference between the 14th and the 15th will be explained when we go deeper into Lev 23]
Num 28:18 In the first day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no kind of servile work.
Num 28:19 But you shall offer an offering made by fire for a burnt offering to the LORD: two young bulls, and one ram, and seven lambs of the first year.They shall be to you without blemish. …
Num 28:24 In this way you shall offer daily, seven days, the bread of the sacrifice made by fire for a sweet savor to the LORD. It shall be offered besides the continual burnt offering and its drink offering.
Num 28:25 And on the seventh day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no servile work.
In the Millennium, in addition to killing 7 bulls and 7 rams, they also first killed a bull. I will give my opinion of what this will mean in a later chapter, as I go into more detail regarding these sacrifices in Chapter 6 “Additional Proofs from the Sacrifices”.
Points to consider: 1) In the Old Testament, there is never any mention of the 15th day of the first month as being Passover; it is always the 14th. Some Jews and some Messianics keep the service of Passover, including the meal, on the 15th …implying, to me, that they understand the actual sacrifice of the lamb and eating it on the 15th, as more significant as a memorial than the actual Passover, implied in the name, that the “passover” that occurred was at midnight, the night of the 14th, when the ancient Israelites were cooking and eating the sacrificial lamb. Although the Passover lamb was killed in the afternoon of the 14th by the Jews, they kept the Passover as the memorial on the 15th , which also started the seven days, as the first holy day of the seven, as well. (Lv 23:6-7) The Jews seem to conflate (collapse together) the killing of the Passover lambs or goats, during the afternoon of the 14th, with the service, which they celebrate after the 15th starts. In actuality, the “passover” that the Israelites kept, and the 8-Dayers and those who keep this third viewpoint memorialize, happened in the middle of the night of the 14th.
2) For the 8-Dayers, unleavened bread is eaten on the 14th (at the end of the 13th), at the Passover service, but then there is a gap between that service and the beginning of the 15th day, when the eating of unleavened bread resumes. Leavened bread, from their viewpoint, can be eaten from the 14th night service until the start of the 15th, upon which unleavened bread is again eaten, in a meal celebrating Israel leaving Egypt “with a high hand”, which they call “The Night to be Much Observed”, based on Exodus 12:42, 14:8, and Numbers 33:3.
[In this last revision, completed 2/28/26, Mr. Coulter announced, on 2/13 and 20/26, that the first day of unleavened bread IS indeed when unleavened bread starts to be eaten. He still may not see that the first day of unleavened bread is actually the first holy day of the feast. But he has gone half-way to understanding what we are presenting here.]
3) The sacrifice of a bull as a sin offering on the 14th in this Millennial context is in alignment with the sin offerings in Lev 1-7. The bull offered as a sin offering in Ez 45:22 pictures Yeshua the Anointed One (Jesus the Christ) for the whole house of Israel. All the sin offerings picture the expiatory work of our Savior on the stake, without exception.
Eze 45:22 “And on that day the prince shall prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bull for a sin offering.”
This was uncovered to my understanding by Andrew Jukes, a writer who lived from 1815 to 1881, writing in a book published in 1847 entitled, “The Law of the Offerings”, subtitled “The Five Tabernacle Offerings and Their Spiritual Significance”. In it, he shows that all sin offerings were burnt up outside the camp or temple, not within the tabernacle or temple complex. Our Savior was also crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem. More about this later…
The point here is that the bull represents Jesus the Christ, Yeshua our Savior being sacrificed for us, the whole house of Israel, and by extension, the “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16), the firstfruits, who are being trained right now as priests.
It will take a few minutes to uncover this, so I hope you will see its significance. I will go into more detail in Chapter 6 regarding the meanings of these sacrifices and the numbers.
The sacrifices during the Millennium are different between what ancient Israel was commanded to do and what will be in the future, but that’s not the point. The day mentioned is the point …
Important PRESUMPTION: The feasts of Passover/UB and Tabernacles will be kept on the same days in the Millennium that were commanded in the Torah, which would have been when Yeshua and His disciples kept them correctly. In this study, I hope to show that we, as well, should keep them today, as Moses and Israel kept them, and as Yeshua kept them in the New Testament, to be consistent with history and the future.
A significant difference between what was commanded in the Torah and what Ezekiel mentions as being done during the Millennium is the role of “the prince” versus the sons of Zadok, the priests. Some believe that there will NOT be sacrifices in the Millennium, as Yeshua has completely done away with them…that they are mentioned in Ezekiel 40-48 only IF Israel had obeyed God. I take the view that the nine chapters of Ezekiel 40-48 are literal, and that they will be kept by a literal, genetic 12 tribes newly settled in the land promised to Abraham, at the beginning of the Millennial rule of Yeshua, with physical Israel being ruled over by the newly-resurrected, spirit being named David, the same David that ruled as the second king of Israel.
I welcome any and all critiques on this study. But back to the point:
While this particular passage doesn’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 14th is the first day of Unleavened Bread, it does put the 14th in the same category as the 15th day of the seventh month. In the next following passages, we see more and more clearly which day the first day is.
To summarize then, this passage implies 1) that the 14th day of the first month is included in the seven days of the feast of Passover, also called Unleavened Bread; 2) that the 14th day of the first month is EQUATED WITH, or is put on equal status with, the 15th day of the seventh month, which is the first holy day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Ez 45:25); and 3) that the bull that was sacrificed first, on the 14th day in Ezekiel 45:22, pictures Christ as well, who was sacrificed on Passover the 14th day. See Chapter 6 for more details regarding this.
Now, to 2 Chronicles 35, the Passover of King Josiah…