Exodus 23:29 - A few questions!

[jessicaleks93]

1.) Exodus 23:14-16 - Three annual feasts
14 “Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
15 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
16 “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. “Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.
When are these dates for the three annual feasts? Spring Equinox, Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice?

2.) Exodus 24-29 in general
1.)In these chapters we learn of Aaron making and wearing a breastplate of various crystals, so why do Christians teach crystals are evil?
2.) The combination of anointed oil, spices, incense, cleansing, the menorah candle, and the structure of the tabernacle along with the blood sacrifices and rituals of sprinkling the blood etc - Can anyone else see the likeness in all of this to 'witchcraft' and 'magic', and where did these original teachings in the Bible go astray become evil?
I come from a New Age background, and have read up on such things, and I'm very, very surprised to see these things mentioned in the Bible and I always thought Christians taught such things to be evil, of the devil and to stay away from it. So I am guessing somewhere along the lines, these practices were adopted by an offshoot that perverted it and used it for evil?

3.) Exodus 20:4
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
Are we not allowed statues of Jesus?

 

[Pearl]

Are we not allowed statues of Jesus?

No, no statue of Jesus. Amy images that are supposedly of him are either of somebody else or from somebody's imagination. And nobody knows what Jesus looked like?

This one is the actor Robert Powell. And this is what somebody thinks he looks like Anyway he wouldn't have been white with blond hair and blue eyes because he was Jewish.

 

[Jim C]

No, no statue of Jesus. Amy images that are supposedly of him are either of somebody else or from somebody's imagination. And nobody knows what Jesus looked like?

View attachment 40738This one is the actor Robert Powell.View attachment 40739 And this is what somebody thinks he looks like Anyway he wouldn't have been white with blond hair and blue eyes because he was Jewish.

And no artist, no matter how talented, could ever come even remotely close to capturing God's glory.

 

[ScottA]

1.) Exodus 23:14-16 - Three annual feasts
14 “Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
15 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
16 “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. “Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.
When are these dates for the three annual feasts? Spring Equinox, Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice?

2.) Exodus 24-29 in general
1.)In these chapters we learn of Aaron making and wearing a breastplate of various crystals, so why do Christians teach crystals are evil?
2.) The combination of anointed oil, spices, incense, cleansing, the menorah candle, and the structure of the tabernacle along with the blood sacrifices and rituals of sprinkling the blood etc - Can anyone else see the likeness in all of this to 'witchcraft' and 'magic', and where did these original teachings in the Bible go astray become evil?
I come from a New Age background, and have read up on such things, and I'm very, very surprised to see these things mentioned in the Bible and I always thought Christians taught such things to be evil, of the devil and to stay away from it. So I am guessing somewhere along the lines, these practices were adopted by an offshoot that perverted it and used it for evil?

3.) Exodus 20:4
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
Are we not allowed statues of Jesus?

Your questions are legitimate, however:

“To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, 12so that ‘Seeing they may see and not perceive, And hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, And their sins be forgiven them.’ ”​

13And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? Mark 3:11-13​

And yet, most do not teach the actual parable subject, but rather teach the parable object and miss the point. Unfortunately.

 

[Jim C]

1.) Exodus 23:14-16 - Three annual feasts
14 “Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
15 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
16 “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. “Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.
When are these dates for the three annual feasts? Spring Equinox, Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice?

2.) Exodus 24-29 in general
1.)In these chapters we learn of Aaron making and wearing a breastplate of various crystals, so why do Christians teach crystals are evil?
2.) The combination of anointed oil, spices, incense, cleansing, the menorah candle, and the structure of the tabernacle along with the blood sacrifices and rituals of sprinkling the blood etc - Can anyone else see the likeness in all of this to 'witchcraft' and 'magic', and where did these original teachings in the Bible go astray become evil?
I come from a New Age background, and have read up on such things, and I'm very, very surprised to see these things mentioned in the Bible and I always thought Christians taught such things to be evil, of the devil and to stay away from it. So I am guessing somewhere along the lines, these practices were adopted by an offshoot that perverted it and used it for evil?

3.) Exodus 20:4
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
Are we not allowed statues of Jesus?

To answer a couple ?s

1) there is no set dates for those celebrations on the modern calendar as the Jewish calendar only has 360 days.

2) Crystals aren't inherently evil. Using them for witchcraft, new ageism, etc is. Some Christian sects likely overstate the issue.

3) Yes, witchcraft and the like use much of the same components They are essentially perversions of the original Godly uses, brought to us courtesy of one Satan. Never forget that he is the Father of Lies and the Great Deceiver and will twist anything Godly to try to draw people away from God and down the wrong path.

On a side note; while reading the entire Bible certainly isn't a bad thing, I would strongly recommend that as a new Christian that you first skip ahead to the New Testament -- particularly Matthew - Romans. These books are where you build your foundation in Christ and are more immediately relevant to your life. The OT is primarily history and prophecy and is of lesser benefit to your growth at this stage.

 

[jessicaleks93]

To answer a couple ?s

1) there is no set dates for those celebrations on the modern calendar as the Jewish calendar only has 360 days.

2) Crystals aren't inherently evil. Using them for witchcraft, new ageism, etc is. Some Christian sects likely overstate the issue.

3) Yes, witchcraft and the like use much of the same components They are essentially perversions of the original Godly uses, brought to us courtesy of one Satan. Never forget that he is the Father of Lies and the Great Deceiver and will twist anything Godly to try to draw people away from God and down the wrong path.

On a side note; while reading the entire Bible certainly isn't a bad thing, I would strongly recommend that as a new Christian that you first skip ahead to the New Testament -- particularly Matthew - Romans. These books are where you build your foundation in Christ and are more immediately relevant to your life. The OT is primarily history and prophecy and is of lesser benefit to your growth at this stage.

1.) It makes it sound like Spring, Autumn and Winter?

2.) Thank you, agreed.

3.) Yep, that's what I gathered, that these are original teachings that got perverted and twisted by evil. Is that what goes on into Jewish Mysticism and the Kabbalah? I've seen a bit about that and how its evil.

Lol the temptation is there to skip to those books trust me haha, but I want to read it with the context of the Old Testament and for the comparison of pre-Jesus and Jesus

 

[Jay Ross]

1) there is no set dates for those celebrations on the modern calendar as the Jewish calendar only has 360 days.

Jim, this statement is not true.

The OT informs us that the start of a new year is dependent on when the bailey crop is ready to be harvested and the observation of the first sliver of the new moon. If these two conditions are not meet, then an additional month must be added to that year to adjust it for these two signs to be in sync and this also aligns the Jewish calendar to the calendar based on the solar years. So, over a period of two ages, an additional 30 years has an extra month added to those years over the duration of the two ages so that the Jewish calendar keeps in step with the Solar calendar.

This is the reason why the Jewish Passover remembrance and the Christian Easter remembrance do not coincide with each other. The other factor for the two remembrances not coinciding is that the Christian Easter remembrance is forced to have the Eater Friday as the day in which Christ was crucified on the cross. But even this "fact" is in question from a scriptural reading perspective. This is because the Passover Lamb was killed and prepared in the hours just before the commencement of the Passover Feast that started when the sun went down.

The Jewish Passover Feast also occurred on the same day within the month so that only occasionally it did occur on the Friday/sixth day of the week.

@jessicaleks93 Keep reading the Old Testament and the above requirements to determine where the new year begins will be found by you.

In the use of crystals today for healing and other outcomes, the problem is that God like attributes are assigned to the crystal to perform such things as healing etc. In other words, the crystals displace God, and this causes us to turn away from God and that is our primary sin.

Our primary sin occurs when we turn away from God and His Glory. Because we have turned away from God, we begin to manifest other sins, which, if we recognise the sins, tells us that we have turned away from God and need to repent for having turned away from God's Love for us. The manifested sins that occur because we have turned away from God are forgiven when we repent of turning away from God, but the manifested sins have consequences that we must address with the people we have hurt when committing these manifested sins by asking for their forgiveness for what we did.

Shalom