Unleavened Bread study series, pt. 1/7: the 1st-century apostolic eating of the bread of the life

Yea! this shall be a seven-part Bible study series.

Introductory overview: Passover and Unleavened Bread

As of typing, yesterday was Nisan 14, a.k.a. the annual Passover. In keeping with the biblical command, that of course is the communion feast commemorated annually as the unleavened-bread-and-unfermented-grape-juice communion, where literal unleavened bread is consumed as the representation of internalizing the body of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,¹ followed by the drinking of fresh, non-alcoholic grape juice as the representation of internalizing the covenantal centrality of the shed blood of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for the sin of humanity.²

Doesn’t ring a familiar bell with your preconceived assumptions about Christianity?

The full restoration of Jehovah’s truth is an endeavor and project that—as of typing—is pending completion. And so, an arduous journey of instructive edification impacting both the flesh and spirit remains still unto the close of probation for those out of every nation and tongue whom God has predestined for salvation unto everlasting life unto the end of the ages!

A brief summary of Passover–Unleavened Bread

In their typifying, Mosaic origin, Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits were the first three ordained annual feasts, spoken during the Exodus (whereas the latter four were specified later in Leviticus).³ Firstfruits is later specified in Lev. 23 as the second day of Unleavened Bread, so more on this tomorrow.

Passover, in a nutshell, is commemorated biblically on the fourteenth day of the first Biblical Hebrew month, Nisan. Much confusion remains to this day over whether it is supposed to be observed on the fourteenth or fifteenth day—contrary to the mainstream assumption that places its observance on Nisan 15, the proper reckoning of the day-night continuity affixes the ordained observance to the beginning of Nisan 14, a.k.a. the evening “of” the “prior” day.

This year, Nisan 14 fell on Wednesday, Apr. 1, 2026—this means that the actual bread-and-juice passover communion feast was held on what would be designated by mainstream terminology as Tuesday evening, because the ancient Semitic-Hebraic reckoning is that the new day begins at sunset and is measured from evening to evening.⁴ Note the specification in both Ex. 12⁵ and Lev. 23⁶:

And it hath become a charge to you, until the fourteenth day of this month, and the whole assembly of the company of Israel have slaughtered it between the evenings; and they have taken of the blood, and have put on the two side-posts, and on the lintel over the houses in which they eat it.

In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month, between the evenings, [is] the passover to Jehovah.

When the Biblical Hebrew text reads “between the evenings,” it means the day—as defined from the Creation Week precedent—from sunset to sunset. For this year, in what already came to pass, Passover was yesterday on Apr. 1st, and therefore transpired from sunset of Mar. 31st (IOWs, the sunset of the “previous” day in the standard midnight-to-midnight reckoning) until the sunset of April 1st.

Subsequent to the passover are the seven days of Unleavened Bread from Nisan 15 unto Nisan 21:⁷

And on the fifteenth day of this month [is] the feast of unleavened things to Jehovah; seven days unleavened things ye do eat;

on the first day ye have a holy convocation, ye do no servile work;

and ye have brought near a fire-offering to Jehovah seven days; in the seventh day [is] a holy convocation; ye do no servile work.’

As I more or less explained before, a fire-offering in antitype metes out to effectual, saintly communication of the oracles of God in truth and verity. Hence why this shall be a seven-part series of in-depth studying.

What Jesus’s apostles understood (that is almost entirely forgotten today)

The mainstream bulk of modern-day “Christianity” is a lukewarm boondoggle of unbiblically schizophrenic self-contradictory premises. On the one hand, the sabbath days as ordained in Lev. 23 are declared null and void supposedly due to the cross of Christ, and yet the passover is sometimes indicatively acknowledged as commemorated in the form of the Lord’s Supper, even if not by name, apparently passed off under the auspices of having “replaced” the old Passover.

Not only that, but the Lord’s Supper is arbitrarily held according to the dictates of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy that lords over itself to rule over the denomination—Protestant denominations for instance claim to observe it differently from high-church Catholics, but at the end of the day are on record of green-lighting—a la plausible deniability—acquiescing permissibility towards wholly abominable perversion of the feast according to the dictates of man that are nothing short of contrary and oppositional to what Jehovah commanded.

I: Passover

Leavened bread or juice? biblically impossible!

For Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the Lord’s Supper is celebrated as the “eucharist” where fermented, alcoholic wine is normally mandated for consumption, and likewise in a large number of Protestant denominations, at least those of an “ecumenical” orientation who compromise doctrinally on this issue and claim that it is a non-issue of little or no significance whether the grape juice in communion is alcoholic or not.

In the Bible, literal leaven/yeast is a type that serves as a representation of sin—Jesus said to His disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which was misconstrued by His then-youthful apostles for literal bread until they were rebuked for their obstinate ignorance and made to understand that when the Lord and Savior referred to “leaven,” He meant the hypocrisy embodied in the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees.⁸

And in the typifying commanded keeping of Unleavened Bread, it was unequivocally clear that no literal leaven/yeast was to be consumed from God’s covenant people by pang of being cut off from the nation of then-ancient-Israel.

The passover feast, observed in antitype as the bread-and-juice communion, is symbolically reflective of the crucifixion, where the body and blood of Jesus Christ the Messiah were offered as the propitiation for sin. How then can literal leaven—symbolically reflective of sinful hypocrisy and evil—be consumed in the passover communion that commemorates the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God⁹ in whom was found no guile! To drink for cup of communion from alcoholic wine, a.k.a. leavened grape juice, is to satanically insult and deny the passover by which the God of Heaven provided in substance and verity in the shed blood of His Son to atone for the sins of humanity, because it insinuates with implied denigration that the blood of Jesus as impure and stained with the leaven of sin.

As the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian assembly:¹⁰

Not good [is] your glorying! have ye not known that a little leaven the whole lump doth leaven?

Cleanse out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, according as ye are unleavened, for also our passover for us was sacrificed—Christ, so that we may keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of evil and wickedness, but with unleavened food of sincerity and truth.

And Paul added in the same letter a few chapters subsequent:¹¹

The cup of the blessing that we bless, is it not the fellowship of the blood of the Christ? the bread that we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of the Christ? because one bread, one body, are we the many—for we all of the one bread do partake.

See Israel according to the flesh! are not those eating the sacrifices in the fellowship of the altar?

what then do I say? that an idol is anything? or that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything? [no,] but that the things that the nations sacrifice—they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not wish you to come into the fellowship of the demons.

Ye are not able the cup of the Lord to drink, and the cup of demons; ye are not able of the table of the Lord to partake, and of the table of demons.

Just as in time past, so too it is in time present, for nothing new is under the sun¹²—the idolatry of old as practiced by the apostate Jews of the 1st century and the idolatry of present practiced by the apostate mainstream of Christianity are two sides of the same coin. Just as the divinely ordained holy feast in honor of the messianic sacrifice for sin was satanically perverted then, so too it is satanically perverted today.

The truthful reality is that neither the “wine” in the wedding feast of Cana nor the “wine” in the Last Supper were fermented/alcoholic, contrary to mainstream assumptions.

Transubstantiation? also biblically impossible!

And of course, another commonplace assumption in the Christian mainstream is that the bread and juice in communion literally becomes (I kid you not) respectively the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and that the Christian who partakes in the feast must actually believe that they are consuming the literal flesh and blood of Jesus.

This interpretation relies on a hyper-literalized, face-value simplistic misconstruing of what Jesus said at the Last Supper. If taken literally without contextual consideration, it appears at point-blank face value that the Lord and Savior declared the bread and juice to be His literal flesh and blood.

However, anyone possessing the utmost baseline understanding of the OT precedent grasps the simple fact that any consumption of literal fleshly blood is unequivocally forbidden without exception, going right back to the Noahic Covenant whose statutes were not charged solely/merely upon God’s covenant people, but upon all of humanity as genealogically descended from Noah.¹³ In the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles of Jesus agreed to count, as one of the four laws as the standard for acceptation of new converts into the Christian assemblies, abstaining from blood, which obviously entails as a corollary that any consumption of blood is forbidden, period.¹⁴

It is therefore utterly implausible that Jesus was literally asserting the unfermented, fresh grape juice at the Last Supper to literally constitute His own life-blood, because the consumption of the juice would thereby—if it were actual human blood—have obviously violated the fundamental biblical rule ordained at the very least all the way back in the immediate post-Flood Noahic Covenant that no blood is ever to be consumed by any person.

Sin is expressly defined as the transgression of the law,¹⁵ a.k.a. the commandments of God as expounded in the Five Books of Moses a.k.a. the Torah. Jesus came to take away sins, and no sin was ever found in the spotless lamb of God, a.k.a. Jesus never once violated the Torah.¹⁶ The Lord Himself stated:¹⁷

Do not suppose that I came to throw down the law or the prophets—I did not come to throw down, but to fulfill;

for, verily I say to you, till that the heaven and the earth may pass away, one iota or one tittle may not pass away from the law, till that all may come to pass.

Whoever therefore may loose one of these commands—the least—and may teach men so, least he shall be called in the reign of the heavens, but whoever may do and may teach [them], he shall be called great in the reign of the heavens.

The heaven and earth do not pass away until the Parousia (a.k.a. the Second Advent),¹⁸ which means that until then, the entire Torah—as properly understood in antitypical verity in the fulfilled substance of Jesus Christ—is fully binding upon the adherent of Jehovah who is redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

In a nutshell: the Law of God—as relayed through the prophet Moses—was never abrogated with the cross. What was rendered obsolete was the typifying mode of observance of the law in types and shadows, as the completed substance in messianic atonement for sin has forever effected a change in the law from ancient anticipation of a then-yet-future fulfillment into a commemorative reflection of the fulfillment that already came to pass, because no longer are the priestly functions administered by an earthly Levitical high priest who himself is a sinful human being in need of a Messiah, but rather by the Messiah Himself who—through His suffering and atoning death for sin on the cross—became the eternal High Priest of the heavenly sanctuary as the author of everlasting salvation unto the end of the ages.¹⁹

And so, the passover was never abrogated and “replaced” as if the Lord’s Supper was a diametrically new invention detached and separated from the passover. Rather, it is the antitypical fulfillment representing the very substance which the Mosaic Jewish mode of observance served as a shadow to point towards all along. Passover was observed in the form of a literal lamb slaughter in the ancient Mosaic Jewish type when Jesus was not yet sacrificed on the cross in order to foreshadow the crucifixion, and once the completed atonement for sin made by Jesus Christ was fulfilled, the passover feast is commemorated henceforth—according to the Lord’s Supper command—in reflective honor of the cross.

Quartodecimanism, not ‘Easter’

The record of the early church presbyters proves without a doubt that the apostolic lineage of the 1st-century disciples of Jesus observed Passover annually as the Lord’s Supper, and that moreover the communion feast was held once a year SPECIFICALLY on solely the evening beginning of Nisan 14. This antitypical, wholly biblical observation of Passover is what came to be known as Quartodecimanism. While this detail is not expressly stated necessarily verbatim in the New Testament—whose contained writings at face value seem ambiguous to the modern-day Marcionite/Gnostic-brainwashed average mind—it is documented in the writings and testimonies of the early Christian church in its first few centuries of existence.

When the pagan-syncretism-propagating Roman pontiff Victor I decreed against the Passover-Communion Nisan 14 annual commemoration in favor of Easter Sunday, the apostolic bishop Polycrates of Ephesus wrote in refutation:²⁰

As for us, then, we scrupulously observe the exact day, neither adding nor taking away. For in Asia great luminaries have gone to their rest, who shall rise again in the day of the coming of the Lord, when He cometh with glory from heaven and shall raise again all the saints. I speak of Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who is laid to rest at Hierapolis; and his two daughters, who arrived at old age unmarried; his other daughter also, who passed her life under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and reposes at Ephesus; John, moreover, who reclined on the Lord's bosom, and who became a priest wearing the mitre, and a witness and a teacher-he rests at Ephesus. Then there is Polycarp, both bishop and martyr at Smyrna; and Thraseas from Eumenia, both bishop and martyr, who rests at Smyrna. Why should I speak of Sagaris, bishop and martyr, who rests at Laodicea? of the blessed Papirius, moreover? and of Melito the eunuch, who performed all his actions under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and lies at Sardis, awaiting the visitation from heaven, when he shall rise again from the dead? These all kept the passover on the fourteenth. day of the month, in accordance with the Gospel, without ever deviating from it, but keeping to the rule of faith.

Anti-Quartodeciman arguments advanced by bootlickers of the Constantinian-Nicene “creed” can be easily debunked through a rigorously critical study of the record of the early anti-Quartodeciman syncretists—contrary to the assumption that Quartodecimanism was a fringe sectarian practice “refuted” by the Council of Nicea, the fact of the matter is that the apostolic assemblies in Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria were observing the Lord’s Supper as Passover annually on Nisan 14 evening-time as the undisputed preservation of 1st-century apostolic faith, and that this persisted even into the 4th-5th centuries. How is this certain? Because the Constantinian-Nicene anti-Judaic enforcer, John Chrysostom, was—this was well after the Constantinian-Nicene syncretic abomination was already cemented—hounding down Quartodeciman remnants in Antioch and throwing them out of the assemblies, per the church historian Socrates of Constantinople.²¹ Even after the Nicene Balaamists from Constantinople decreed against Quartodecimanism, there were still faithful adherents of Jesus Christ keeping the feast and who faced persecution from infuriated satanic syncretists as a result.

II: Unleavened Bread

Now, subsequent to the passover feast of Nisan 14 are the seven days of Unleavened Bread from Nisan 15-21, where the first and seventh days are kept as high sabbaths. As to how these seven days are meant to be observed antitypically, both the biblical and 2nd-century apostolic church record are less overtly clear AFAIK at the present moment (as of typing), though a robust study of typology does reveal some fascinating corollaries as to the underlying basic premises.

First off, it should be noted that the literal consumption of unleavened bread in antitype is meant for the feast of communion on the evening of Nisan 14 a.k.a. Passover, not for the seven days of Unleavened Bread from Nisan 15-21.

Sound a little confusingly strange? Here is the underlying reason why: the consistent rule of typology as articulated by the Bible is that the shadow/type is a forerunner which foreshadows the completed substance a.k.a. antitype, and therefore cannot be the same thing as the antitype/fulfillment it points towards. Therefore, whatever was the exact mode of observance of the annual Mosaic Jewish feast days in the Levitical type are definitely not the same form of expected mode of observance in the Jesus Christ-centered antitype, since the substance has already fulfilled the shadow.²²

And so:

• Passover (Nisan 14): slaughter and consumption of the passover lamb (typical observance) → crucifixion of the Lamb of God for sin → consumption of the unleavened bread and unfermented grape juice (antitypical observance)

• Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15): consumption of literal unleavened bread for seven days and proscribing against any leaven (typical observance) → the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the substantive manna from heaven who is pure apart from the leaven of hypocrisy → ??? (antitypical observance)

In the Levitical type, Jehovah’s command unto the children of Israel (the actual ancient Israelites, nothing to do with the modern-day neo-Nazi hexagramic-cabalistic Fourth Reich a.k.a. the genocidal so-called “State of Israel”) was that no yeast and anything leavened by yeast was permitted consumption for the seven days of Unleavened Bread. Since that functioned of course as a shadow, it is pertinently obvious that this is tied to—as mentioned above—the theme of leaven as a symbol for sin and hypocrisy.

When the unfaithful Jews of the late-Judean era during the 1st century, in Jesus’s earthly ministry, inquired Jesus for a sign and cited their ancestors as having ate manna in the wilderness, the Lord informed them what the real bread is:²³

Jesus, therefore, said to them, ‘Verily, verily, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread out of the heaven; but my Father doth give you the true bread out of the heaven; for the bread of God is that which is coming down out of the heaven, and giving life to the world.’

They said, therefore, unto him, ‘Sir, always give us this bread.’

And Jesus said to them, ‘I AM the bread of the life; he who is coming unto me may not hunger, and he who is believing in me may not thirst at any time.’

And again, Jesus affirmed:²⁴

Verily, verily, I say to you, He who is believing in me, hath life age-during; I AM the bread of the life.

Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died; this is the bread that out of the heaven is coming down, that any one may eat of it, and not die.

I AM the living bread that came down out of the heaven; if any one may eat of this bread he shall live to the age; and the bread also that I will give is my flesh, that I will give for the life of the world.’

Cont.:²⁵

The Jews, therefore, were striving with one another, saying, ‘How is this one able to give us [his] flesh to eat?’

Jesus, therefore, said to them, ‘Verily, verily, I say to you, If ye may not eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and may not drink his blood, ye have no life in yourselves; he who is eating my flesh, and is drinking my blood, hath life age-during, and I will raise him up in the last day; for my flesh truly is food, and my blood truly is drink.

He who is eating my flesh, and is drinking my blood, doth remain in me, and I in him. According as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, he also who is eating me, even that one shall live because of me; this is the bread that came down out of the heaven; not as your fathers did eat the manna, and died; he who is eating this bread shall live to the age.’

So right here is found the key to both Passover and Unleavened Bread! Note that after Jesus affirmed Himself to be the bread of the life, He then notes that the bread of communion—representing His flesh—is also given, hinting that it is related to but not of the exact same application as the chief bread of the life, signifying thereby that the bread of the life which is meant to be “eaten” (spiritually speaking) in the seven days of Unleavened Bread is the chief bread of the life that is Jesus, while the bread that is also given—a.k.a. the one representing Jesus’s flesh, just as the grape juice represents the Lord’s shed blood of the New Covenant—is the one for Passover.

What does it mean then to “eat” in a spiritual sense rather than the literal connotation of physical ingestion? Obviously, it must mean to internalize with heartfelt acceptation. When the revelatory prophets Ezekiel and John ate booklets by which their mouths were sweetened,²⁶ was the end point that Jehovah sought to fill their individual stomachs physically? Even if they “literally” physically ate a scroll in vision—which is likely improbable anyways (I determine not)—the end purpose was internalization of the underlying message that must be understood and accepted from the conscience.

As the prophet Jeremiah declared:²⁷

Thy words have been found, and I eat them, And Thy word is to me for a joy, And for the rejoicing of my heart, For Thy name is called on me, O Jehovah, God of Hosts.

What is the living word of God? None other than Jesus Christ,²⁸ the selfsame bread of the life! The proper observance of Unleavened Bread in antitype thereby must be none other than the full heartfelt internalization of the doctrine of Jehovah—as relayed through Jesus, and understood by teaching of the Holy Spirit of Jehovah of Hosts²⁹—without the leaven of hypocrisy and sinful guile, and that anyone who in antitype refuses to observe Nisan 15-21 according to this principle will be cut off from the New Covenant and severed to be cast unto the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Now, considering that internalization of Jesus’s doctrines and covenantal separation from hypocrisy is supposed to be part and parcel of the daily walk with Jehovah anyways, there must obviously be some denoted special importance encompassing the significance of the seven days of Unleavened Bread in particular.

This author—I—cannot claim at the very moment to fully determine (at this time being) the full meaning of Unleavened Bread towards that specific regard, as there is much left for all people on this planet who are behooved to learn in self-abased humility in the thoroughly professed admission that each one of us individual human beings lay no claim to any righteousness of our own nor any attained knowledge of God’s holy ways by our own mortal human understandings, myself included.

Restored peace with the God of the universe, then and now

Behold the pericopal chiasm of the first epistle out of the seven letters to the seven angels of the seven assemblies in Revelation!³⁰

• a: ‘To the angel of the Ephesian assembly, write:

  • b: These things says He who is holding the seven stars in His right hand, who is walking in the midst of the seven candlesticks—the golden: I have known your works, and your labor, and your endurance, and that you are not able to bear evil ones, and that you have tried those saying themselves to be apostles and are not, and have found them liars.

    • c: And you did bear, and have endurance, and because of my name have toiled, and have not been weary.

      • d: But I have [this] against you: that your first love you did leave!

    • c’: Remember therefore [from] whence you have fallen, and repent, and the first works do; and if not, I come to you quickly, and will remove your candlestick from its place if you will not repent.

  • b’: But this you have! that you do hate the works of the Nicolaitans, that I also hate.

• a’: He who is having an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies! to him who is overcoming, I will give to him to eat of the tree of life that is in the midst of the paradise of God.’

This is a description of the first church era, a.k.a. the apostolic one in the 1st century: a time when the assemblies of God’s people of the New Covenant throughout Asia Minor, Syria, north Africa, western Rome, and beyond—guided by the apostles of Jesus Christ—lived in the faith of Jesus, the bread of the life, and guarded the mysteries of the faith from the Nicolaitan-Gnostic perverters who called themselves apostles but were not. The Nicolaitans, whose objective was to instrumentalize and co-opt Christianity into a self-power-grab empire, were kept out, and the bread of the life was sustained in the hearts of the faithful adherents of Jehovah comprising the assemblies throughout the whole world where penitent believers out of all nations, ethnicities, and tongues were grafted into the covenant and and its promises.

And likewise, the first day of Unleavened Bread is a high day of sabbath rest. Jesus, after all, said:³¹

Come unto me, all ye laboring and burdened ones, and I will give you rest; take up my yoke upon you, and learn from me, because I am meek and humble in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls, for my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light.’

This rest of God that is granted unto the faithful believer was experienced in the first church era. Although it was lost in the subsequent centuries into the present day, there awaits a restoration of the apostolically experienced rest of God in the final church era preceding the close of probation, just as the seventh day of Unleavened Bread is a high sabbath. But in between the two high sabbath rests are situated a tumultuous, shaky era of gospel dispensations which are anything but resting.

Before the ultimate completed rest of the seventh dispensation of Unleavened Bread can be grasped, the preceding six days’ worth of spiritual manna must be “eaten” a.k.a. understood with heartfelt internalization.

1. Mk. 14:22; Matt. 26:26; Lk. 22:19.

2. Mk. 14:23-24; Matt. 26:27-28; Lk. 22:20.

3. Ex. 12:1-28, 13:1-16.

4. Gen. 1.

5. Ex. 12:6-7.

6. Lev. 23:5.

7. Lev. 23:6-8.

8. Mk. 8:13-21; Matt. 16:5-12; Lk. 12:1.

9. I Pet. 1:19; Jn. 1:29, 35-36.

10. I Cor. 5:6-8.

11. I Cor. 10:16-21.

12. Ecc. 1:9b.

13. Gen. 9:1-7.

14. Acts 15:1-29.

15. I Jn. 3:4.

16. I Jn. 3:5.

17. Matt. 5:17-19.

18. II Pet. 3:10.

19. Heb. 7:12.

20. Polycrates of Ephesus, Epistle of Polycrates to Victor I.

21. Socrates of Constantinople, Church History, book VI, ch. xi.

22. Col. 2:16-17.

23. Jn. 6:32-35.

24. Jn. 6:47-51.

25. Jn. 6:52-58.

26. Ezek. 2:9-3:3; Rev. 10:1-11.

27. Jer. 15:16.

28. Rev. 19:13; I Jn. 1:1-3; Jn. 1:1-5.

29. I Cor. 2:11; Jn. 14:26.

30. Rev. 2:1-7.

31. Matt. 11:28-30.