Why did Matthew record the earthquake when the rocks were rent and the graves were opened, and
then continued with an event that happened three days and three nights later, when those saints
came out of the grave and appeared publicly in Jerusalem? Why did he, in the middle of a
chronological narration, jump completely out of sequence and tell the "punch line" (the
resurrection) before the burial of Yahshua even took place?
It is because he is showing the fulfillment of the rehearsal of the Bikkurim.
After the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the high priest declared that, "It is finished," the priests
would go over the Kidron Valley bridge to the Mount of Olives where the barley had been planted
after the feast of Sukkot. Before sundown on the 14th, they would bind the standing barley into
sheaves, "marking out" the very barley that would be harvested on the day of Firstfruits. The side of
the Mount of Olives is where the saints and prophets were buried. When the messiah cried out from
the cross, "It is finished," the earth quaked, the rocks rent, and the graves opened. The first fruit
saints were "marked out" for the resurrection to occur three days and three nights later, on the Day
of Firstfruits. On the first day after the weekly Sabbath, the priest would again cross the Kidron Valley
and publicly cut the barley sheaves that had been "marked out" late on the afternoon of the 14th for
the Firstfruit harvest days later. Yahshua, having been raised on the weekly Sabbath after three days
and three nights in the grave, performs his duty as priest by "harvesting" the firstfruit saints on the
Mount of Olives.
Those saints present themselves publicly to many in Jerusalem. The following morning as the high
priest presented the processed firstfruits barley harvest as the wave offering in the temple, the risen
Messiah ascends to present the saints in incorruptible bodies before the holy place in heaven.
If the preceding paragraph was a bit hard to follow, the parallels are presented in the abbreviated
chart below.
The priests did not and could not have walked 3 to 4 hours to "mark out" a crop of barley in the
Jordan valley and returned that night for the Passover seder. For the priests to leave after sundown on
the weekly Sabbath and walk 3 to 4 hours to cut the barley and then 3 to 4 hours back to process the
barley into the wave offering early the next morning would have been an athletic adventure of foolish
proportions. Furthermore, we know that because of the contention of the Pharisees in Jerusalem and
the farmers in Jericho, this did not happen. The overwhelming weight of evidence, for those who
believe that Yahshua of Nazareth is Messiah, is that the Jewish disciple Mattityahu detailed the
fulillment of a rehearsal obscured by time and men’s traditions. Every detail of this rehearsal was
fulfilled by Yahshua after His resurrection, proving again that He is Messiah.
