Trimm Group Restores 'Lost' Festival - Chag Yeshua (The Feast of Deliverance)

A messianic Group claims that it has 'rediscovered' a lost festival and that it will be celebrating it for the first time in 2,000 years. I leave you to judge for yourselves:

There is an amazng and important festival on the Biblical calendar which has been lost and has not been observed for centuries. The festival was enacted in the 3rd Book of the Maccabees, but since this book was removed from the canon (along with the rest of the apocrypha), this festival was effectively removed with it. As the restoration of truth continues, one of the things that we need to do is restore this lost, biblical festival to our observance.

What is the background of this festival? After the Battle of Raphia in 217 B.C.E. Ptolemy IV sought to enter the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, but was miraculously repulsed (3Macc. 1:1-2:24). Upon returning from Egypt he seeks to punish the Jews there for his humiliation. He lowers their political status and seeks to impose paganism on them (3Macc. 2:25-33) and tortures and kills those that refuse to renounce Judaism (3Macc. 3:1-5:51) An elder priest named Eleazar prays for the deliverance of his people (3Macc. 6:1-25), YHWH intervenes bringing about the repentance of the king and the deliverance of the Jews (6:16-7:23) The Jews declared an annual festival called “The Feast of Deliverance” (Chag Yeshua) as an annual celebration of the salvation of the Jews in Egypt at this time. The festival enacted from the 8th to the 14th of the Egyptian month of Epeiph. The Egyptian calendar was a Solar Calendar and these days correspond to 19 August 217 BCE on the Julian Calendar and this was 12th Elul 3544 on the Hebrew calendar. This festival should be observed on the 12th of Elul each year.

And there is another element in this festival for us as believers in Messiah. The Hebrew word for “deliverance” is YESHUA so we have here “The Feast of Yeshua”. The deliverance of the Jews from the hand of Ptolemy IV points us forward to the deliverance of Israel by the Messiah Yeshua. This feast gives us another important theme, Messiah and the deliverance of Israel.

What do we do on Hag Yeshua? The text of 3 Maccabees tells us that the day was celebrated with rejoicing and they “were crowned with all kinds of fragrant flowers” beyond this we must simply reach to the festival theme itself. Obviously the festival should involve recounting the story of 3 Maccabees. Since the festival is in the summer (at least in the northern hemisphere) this points obviously to summer festivities. Modern activities could include barbeques and pool parties.

In 2010 Chag Yeshua (The Feast of Deliverance) will run seven days beginning Aug. 22, 2010 .I want to encourage you to join WNAE and other Nazarenes around the world this summer as we observe this festival again for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.

James Trimm
Worldwide Nazarene Assembly of Elohim
WNAE http://www.wnae.org

http://nazarenespace.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2182335:BlogPos...

If you look at the Orthodox Jewish calendar you will find all sorts of "Torah-Plus" festivals cluttering up the year. At the risk of being accused cynical, I have observed that in the absence of spiritual life there is a tendency in the Messianic movement to keep on adding 'more teachings' and 'more festivals' to keep up peoples' interest and involvement. Just because a Jew (or anyone else for that matter) invents a new festival to celebrate this or that event (usually a military victory or some well-known Jewish rabbi) does not mean that Yahweh sanctions it. This is how the traditions of Talmudic Judaism evolved (which Yah'shua sternly censured).

Though Paul certifies our right to observe private things (like anniversaries) we have not been authorised to add to what Yahweh commanded to be observed religiously-speaking in Torah, even if 'extra' festivals that were added by man (or woman) - the Pharisees adding Hanukkah (a late Feast of Tabernacles) and Queen Esther adding Purim. There are only 9 mandated observances in Torah - the weekly Sabbath, the monthly New Moon and the 7 Annual Festivals.

Chag Yeshua sounds very Christian/Messianic because Deliverance is Yeshua in Hebrew, but it is not.

Reply by Lev/Christopher on November 24, 2009 at 5:03am: See my understanding of this at:

http://nccg.org/618Art-JudahiteFasts.html

Lev/Christopher said:
As this has now developped into a separate discussion on the APOCRYPHA I have created a separate group specifically for that topic so that we can continue the debate there. I am copying the relevent posts over to the Apocryphal Group at:

Apocrypha Group

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