We often talk about the return of the Messiah during the fall feasts, but did you know that many ancient Nazarenes believed the Day of Judgement would be at Passover? The following is an ancient reference to the “Gospel according to the Hebrews”. What is the Gospel according to the Hebrews? The Gospel according to the Hebrews was an ancient, lost, apocryphal gospel which was used by the ancient Nazarenes, the original followers of Yeshua as Messiah.
The Third Century “Church Father” Eusebius wrote of this document:
“And among them [doubted books] some have placed the Gospel according to the Hebrews which is the especial delight of those of the Hebrews who have accepted Messiah.”
(Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 3:25:5)
When speaking of the Ebionites, Epiphanius calls GH “their Gospel” (Pan. 30:16:4-5) and Jerome refers to GH as “the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use” (On Mat. 12:13). The actual document has been lost to history, but about 50 quotations and citations of this document are preserved in quotations and citations from the so-called “Church Fathers” and other commentators even into the middle ages.
The twentieth Century Scholar Hugh Schonfield wrote of this lost gospel:
“The Gospel according to the Hebrews is a literary outlaw with a price on its head; but in spite of the scholarly hue and cry it still evades capture. Neither monastic libraries nor Egyptian rubbish heaps have so far yielded up a single leaf of this important document….
For behind Hebrews lies the unknown potentialities of the Nazarene tradition, which may confirm or contradict some of the most cherished beliefs of Orthodox Christianity. It is useless for certain theologians to designate Hebrews as “secondary” on the evidence of the present fragmentary remains preserved in quotation. …
Judged by ancient testimony alone it is indisputable that Hebrews has the best right of any Gospel to be considered a genuine apostolic production;…
Here is obviously a most valuable witness, perhaps the most valuable witness to the truth about [Yeshua]… whom even a jury composed entirely of orthodox Christians could not despise, and who ought to be brought into court. But the witness is missing, and all that we have is a few reported statements of his taken long ago…
…it may be argued that there has been dependence not of ‘Hebrews’ on the Synoptics but vice versa– that ‘Hebrews’ was one of the sources on which one or more of them drew.”
(Hugh Schonfield; According to the Hebrews; 13-18)
In an obscure reference to the Gospel of the Hebrews in the Cateches celtique of the Breton Vaticanus Reginus we read:
These eight days of Passover, at which Messiah the son of God rose again, signify eight days after the recurrence of the Passover, at which the seed of Adam will be judged, as is proclaimed in the Gospel of the Hebrews; and for this reason the learned believe that the day of judgment will be at Passover, because on that day Messiah rose again, that on that day also the saints should rise again.
(cited in Cateches celtique of the Breton Vaticanus Reginus, lat. 49; Studi e Testi 59, 1933, p.58)
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It is evident that the Passover was a deliverance to the Israelites and a judgment on Egypt. To this witness we have the Second Cup of the Seder which is called The Cup of Deliverance and The Cup of Judgment.
We are convinced by Paul that the catching up occurs at the Second Coming along with the Resurrection of the Dead, and not a rapture without the Second Coming. The Last trump occurs at Yom Teruah which will proclaim the Coming King, the Resurrection, and the Gathering of the Exiles.
The Day of Judgment here could be the Great Tribulation which will test the hearts of men like a fire tests gold.