Question: You state that Jewish feasts "are specifically for Jews to keep...," but I fail to find ...

Question: Regarding your article on replacement theology and Israel in the Q&A of June 2007, since our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and all His disciples kept the Jewish festivals (“With fervent desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” - Luke:22:15And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
See All...); Paul commands “keep the feast” (1 Corinthians:5:7-8 [7] Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: [8] Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
See All...); he hurried to Jerusalem to celebrate another Jewish holiday (Acts:20:16For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia: for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.
See All...); he told the Colossians that the Jewish festivals were a shadow of the Messiah, good reason to celebrate them (Colossians:2:16-17 [16] Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: [17] Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
See All...); the Jewish festivals are “statutes forever” (Leviticus:23:14And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
See All...); and at the last supper Christ declared that He would someday drink the passover cup anew with His followers in His Father’s Kingdom (Matthew:26:29But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
See All...; Mark:14:25Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
See All...); and since neither God nor Jesus makes any distinction between Christian Jews or Gentiles regarding these festivals, could you please explain your statement: “...for a Gentile to keep those [Jewish] feasts today would be a fraud.”

You state that Jewish feasts “are specifically for Jews to keep...,” but I fail to find any Scripture that so states or even so implies. Do you mean that Jesus’s statement at the Last Supper about drinking the cup anew with His followers in His Father’s kingdom only applied to Jewish followers...? I still don’t see where observing the Jewish holidays and feasts is prohibited in the scriptures. Are you saying that it’s ok for Jewish Christians to celebrate Jewish festivals, but not for Gentile Christians to do so? Please explain.

Response: You read your own ideas into Matthew:26:29But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
See All... and Mark:14:25Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
See All.... Jesus did not say “Passover Cup” but “fruit of the vine” as also in Luke:22:18For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.
See All.... Most of your misunderstanding comes from failing to recognize that the Last Supper was not the Jewish Passover but a new remembrance of Himself that Christ inaugurated for the church: it was not in memory of deliverance from Egypt but the deliverance “the Lamb of God” (Jn:1:29The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
See All...) who is “Christ our passover” (1 Cor:5:7Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
See All...) would effect on the Cross, the lamb foretold in Exodus:12:6And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
See All... that the “whole assembly of the congregation of Israel [would] kill...in the evening.” That is why He called it “this passover” (Lk 22:15)—to distinguish the Old Testament picture from the New Testament reality.

When Paul said “let us keep the feast,” he was not referring to the Jewish Passover but to “this passover” involving “Christ our passover” in remembrance of Himself that Christ initiated at the Last Supper, which was not the Jewish Passover. That idea is a grave misunderstanding. We’ve been over this before in previous TBCs, but here it is again.

John:13:1Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.
See All... says the Last Supper was “before the feast of the Passover.” Had it been the Passover, no one would have thought that Judas went out to buy anything (13:29), for all stores would have been closed on the “high Sabbath” that began the seven-day feast with the Passover supper. Furthermore, the Last Supper couldn’t have been the Jewish Passover because the next morning the rabbis hadn’t yet eaten the Passover (Jn:18:28Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.
See All...), and later, that “morning after,” it was still “the preparation of the passover” (19:14).

There was no Passover lamb at the Last Supper because the lambs were not slain until the following afternoon—when Christ was dying on the Cross, as it had to be in fulfillment of Scripture. Christ’s “this do in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor:11:25After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
See All...) was not a command for Christians to keep the Jewish Passover with a new meaning. Read Exodus 12 again. There is no way the Passover could be given a new meaning for Christians (Jews and Gentiles) while retaining its primary meaning for Jews—and why should it? Never was it said that the wine drunk at the Passover was a symbol of blood, either of the Passover lamb’s or of Christ’s. Christ inaugurated something entirely new, unrelated (except symbolically) to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.

The gospel has nothing to do with keeping Jewish feasts. Though symbolic of much that pertains to the gospel, the feasts are part of the law of Moses, not to be observed by Christians (Acts:15:24-29 [24] Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment: [25] It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, [26] Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [27] We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. [28] For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; [29] That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
See All...). They provide pictures of Christ and the gospel but are primarily and eternally related to Israel, the Promised Land, and the coming Messianic kingdom—not to the church. Gentile believers on Christ have no reason to, as Paul put it, go back “to the weak and beggarly elements” (Gal:4:9But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
See All...) of the law.

The Passover was always a remembrance specifically for Jewish persons of the fact that God miraculously delivered their ancestors from Egypt. Those who keep it today (only Jews do, not Arabs or “Palestinians”) prove to the world their descent from those God delivered from Egypt and led into the Promised Land. That land belongs to Jews, not to those who fraudulently claim to be descended from the original “Palestinians” and accuse Jews of occupying their land. It would destroy the proof and change the meaning for Gentiles to keep the Jewish Passover, which does not pertain to them at all!