Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. (Leviticus 23:24)

Two overlapping years. The Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement mark the beginning of the new agricultural year (as well as the end of the old). The feast of Passover begins the religious year.

The Jews have two overlapping years, just as the United States has a calendar year and fiscal year that overlap. The Jews today seem to regard the new year that occurs at the time of the blowing of trumpets (Rosh Hashanah ) as being the New Year, just as the United States regards the calendar year that commences on January 1 as the New Year. July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, is not as widely celebrated.

So it is with us Christians. We have a "year" that begins with "Passover" (our first approach to Christ) and a "year" that begins with the Blowing of Trumpets (the time when Christ the King comes to us to judge our sins). These both occur as part of the one redemption that we have in Christ.

We commence a new way of life at our "Passover" when by faith we sprinkle the blood of Jesus on our life and flee from "Egypt" (the world, the spirit of the present wicked age). We receive Christ and are baptized in water. Our "Passover" experience begins our life and walk with God.

Another beginning. When we come in our experience to the Christian counterparts of the Jewish Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement it is as though we have arrived at another beginning.

It is not that we have come to a new Christ or a new cross or a new Holy Spirit. A Christian never should "remove the old landmarks" no matter how advanced in God he thinks he may have become.

Passover is supposed to be repeated annually. Today, thirty-five hundred years after the exodus from Egypt, the Passover is observed by the faithful of Israel. God's method of teaching is to have us do a thing again and again and again until it becomes part of our personality.

The Communion service is our equivalent of the Jewish Passover. At the Lord's Table we bring to mind the death of our Lord on the cross and our union with Him in His death and resurrection. The repetition of the Communion service implants the death of Christ on the cross in our personality and also imbues us with the concept that we continually must eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood.

By talking about a "New Year" with Christ we are not suggesting that we are to forget or forsake our experience in Christ up to this time.

The original Passover occurred on the last day the Jews spent in Egyptian bondage. The first week of Unleavened Bread was observed during the first seven days of the Exodus (the Israelites left at midnight of the fifteenth of Abib, which is the high Sabbath, the first day of the week of Unleavened Bread). The remaining feasts took place at a later time because the celebration of them depended on the existence of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, the Levitical priesthood, and farms—none of which the Israelites had at the time they departed from Egypt.

The land of Egypt is symbolic of the spirit of the age in which we live, and Pharaoh typifies Satan. We observe Christ, our Passover, on the last day of our bondage to Satan and his kingdom of darkness. Then we "come out of Egypt" under the mighty hand of God. Therefore, Passover begins the "first month of the year" to us (Exodus 12:2).

To be continued.