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The First Historical Records

The early Church of God in New Testament times was taught that Jesus was put to death on
the Preparation Day and resurrected from the grave on the first day of the week -- that He arose on
the third day after the crucifixion.

The Passover was observed annually, on the eve after Christ's death, on Nisan 15 of God's
Sacred Calendar. This New Testament practice was followed in the West universally until shortly
after the death of the Apostle John. In the Eastern Roman Empire the true practice continued even
longer.

Here is what happened in the East!

During the middle of the second century A.D., new ideas began to be introduced into the
professing Christian world. The true Christians who fled to Pella from Jerusalem "continued to use
the Jewish cycle [God's method of reckoning the Passover in the Sacred Calendar] till the bishops
of Jerusalem who were of the circumcision were succeeded by others who were not of the circum-
cision [unconverted Gentiles -- and] ... they began to invent other cycles" (Bingham's Antiquities
of the Christian Church, p. 1152).

This same author continues: "We see, at this time [middle of second century] the Jewish
calculation [determined by God's Calendar which the Jews had accurately preserved up to this
time] was generally rejected by the ... church, and yet no certain one agreed upon in its room
[stead] ...."

This is how the Passover -- sometimes called Lord's Supper or Eucharist -- was gradually
rejected.

Jesus Christ kept the Passover. So did the Apostle John. And so did some Christians in
Scotland even until the 7th century A.D.

This information comes from no less an ecclesiastical authority than the church historian
Bede. His Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation would astound many who have assumed
that Christ and the early apostles all kept Easter.

He writes that "John, following the customs of the Law, used to begin the Feast of Easter
[actually the Passover] on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month, whether it fell on the
Sabbath or on any other day" (III, 25).

The Apostle John was the author of five books of the New Testament and the "disciple
whom Jesus loved." Yet he kept the Passover on the 15th day of the first month (Nisan) just as God
commanded in the time of Moses. That is the plain statement of this early Catholic theologian!

But where did John's custom come from? From the very example of Jesus Christ! "Nor did
our Lord, the Author and Giver of the Gospel, eat the old Passover or institute the Sacrament of the

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