The
Seven Jewish Feasts
are key waypoints on a roadmap in holy history.
They tell the story of the main Covenant events
between God and His Elect people as they occur
here on the earth and in time.
The story begins back with the people God called
in Old Testament times. And it extends right through to the
Apocalyptic events John saw in vision and wrote about in the Book of
Revelation. Indeed the very next feast, the
Feast of Trumpets
is coming up in some future new moon of Tishrei
to express its New Covenant fulfillment in holy history.
The Feast of Trumpets will almost certainly be the one
that will usher us into the
70th week of Daniel and the final seven years of this present age.
At the end of those seven years the final
Day of Atonement
will come into its ultimate fulfillment as well. This will be the very
last day of this age.
The Jewish Feasts will take us beyond the Apocalypse.
The seventh feast, the joyous Feast of Tabernacles,
will come into its ultimate fulfillment
as the true new age dawns.
This will bring in the
Millennium of Messiah, that glorious age to come.
The deserts will bloom and streams of waters will
break forth upon the dry ground.
God will camp out with mankind for 1,000 years as Emmanuel, "God with us".
And as a shepherd feeds and tends his sheep He will
draw His people to Himself.
Is there an 8th feast? Might the Feast of Hanukkah, the festive winter season of the Eternal Light
celebrate the glorification of all the saints from both this age and
the 1,000 year Millennial age to come? Our Apostle Paul
gives us a glimpse of that. - 1Cor. 15:24-28
But that will be a study for another time.
The first four of the Seven Jewish Feasts have already been fulfilled.
They were fulfilled in spectacular
fashion. They were fulfilled right on the auspicious Hebrew calendar dates
on which they have been celebrated in times past, the same dates that
will be celebrated forever more.
The three spring feasts were
fulfilled by Jesus our Savior.
And the summer Feast of Pentecost was fulfilled as well.
It was fulfilled by the Holy Spirit 2,000 years ago.
Here is the situation so far.
1.
Passover
Fulfilled! (By Jesus/Yeshua at His crucifixion
on Nisan 14 in the spring of 32 A.D.)
2.
Feast of Unleavened Bread
Fulfilled! (By Jesus/Yeshua at His burial in the tomb
on Nisan 15 in the spring of 32 A.D.)
3.
Feast of Firstfruits
Fulfilled! (By Jesus/Yeshua at His Resurrection
on Nisan 17 in the spring of 32 A.D.)
4.
Feast of Pentecost
Fulfilled! (By the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost
on Sivan 7 in the summer of 32 A.D.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
.
.
.
.
(A gap of 2000 years or so has allowed the Light of Israel to
.
go forth into the nations for the Gentiles to be evangelized).
.
.
.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
WE ARE HERE - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now here come the Fall Feasts.
They are probably just up ahead.
.
5. The
Feast of Trumpets
Unfulfilled ....(as of yet).
Tishrei 1 in a future Jewish New Year.
6. The
Day of Atonement
Unfulfilled ....(as of yet).
Tishrei 10 seven years beyond that epic future Feast of Trumpets.
This will be the final Day of Reckoning, for that year, for the Jubilee, and for the age.
The Jewish nation and "all Israel" will be saved! - Zech.12:8-13:1, Rom. 11
And then comes the Day of the Lord. It is Doomsday for the wicked. (Mat.13:30)
The sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens. (Mat.24:29-31)
He will deliver His people at Jerusalem by His action at Armageddon. (Joel 2:28-32)
And He will deliver His people
in exile in the magnificent
Bozrah Deliverance.
He will glorify all His Elect at the
Resurrection-Rapture . (1Thes.4:15-17)
They will be drawn out from Israel, from the Church, and from the gentile nations.
7. The Feast of Tabernacles
Unfulfilled ....(as of yet).
Tishrei 15 will come five days after that final epic Day of Atonement.
This will mark the coming of Messiah to tabernacle with His covenant people.
Thus begins the long awaited 1000 year
Millennium of Messiah.
.........................................................
.........................................................
All these above are the Seven Jewish Feasts.
As we can see, the next three events on God's agenda
will bring in the fulfillment of
each of the three
Fall Feasts of Israel.
Here below is a Hebrew calendar with a narration outlining the 7 feasts.
So will the Hebrew calendar dates
of those Fall Feasts deliver up earthshaking future events?
It would be foolish of us to believe otherwise.
Look at the first four feasts.
Weren't the first four feasts
fulfilled in spectacular fashion?
And have we not already seen four epic events unfold right on those very
auspicious dates on the Hebrew calendar to which they belong?
Dear saints. All seven of these Jewish Feasts have been celebrated annually
since the day Moses gave them to us at Mt. Sinai 3500 years ago.
So every one of the seven must be extremely important. Right?
So, will every one of those Seven Feasts of Israel,
including the last three, the
Fall Feasts, (Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles), explode into their New Covenant fulfillment as well?
Most assuredly they will!
As we have seen, the first three of the feasts, the spring feasts,
have already had their New Covenant fulfillment. They were fulfilled by Jesus Himself
in his death, burial, and resurrection.
Jesus fulfilled them right on the set calendar dates of the feasts.
He entered Jerusalem 2,000 years ago right on
the day appointed in His
first coming as Messiah. He came as the
Suffering Servant, riding on a donkey.
Four days later, just as the Passover Lambs were being killed
He gave His life blood for us
on the cross of Calvary.
Surely He was the promised Sacrifice Lamb.
So He was crucified on
Passover.
He was buried that night and laid in the tomb just in time for the Feast of
Unleavened Bread.
On the third day he rose from the grave. On
the Feast of
Firstfruits He was resurrected as the firstfruits from the dead.
50 days later the Holy Spirit fell
upon the 120 in the upper room. This happened right on the Feast of Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit outpouring seen that day was unprecedented
and glorious. The revival of Israel spread into the city of Jerusalem
and thence to Judea, Samaria, and eventually to the utmost parts of the earth.
Thus was fulfilled the summer
Feast of Pentecost.
This epic event happened right on the very day of the Hebrew calendar
that saw Moses bring the Law down from Mount Sinai to the children of Israel .
The Feast of Pentecost was Israel's birthday.
Israel's birthday is also turned out to be the birthday of the Church!
Is God trying to tell us something here? - Gal.3:29, Rom.11, Eph.2:12-13, 1Pet.2:9
These were four blockbuster events
in the covenant history of Israel.
From the precedent set by these earlier four feasts
we can know for a certainty that
the next three feasts, the
Fall Feasts will rock our world as well.
They will erupt into history
in just as spectacular a fashion
as those former four feasts.
The Seven Jewish Feasts are very important for
Christian-Messianic believers to understand.
All seven of them are celebrations of epic events
in the holy history of God's covenant people.
That history involves the saints from both
Old Testament times and New Testament times.
The feasts mark out the significant events of the
first coming of Christ in His priestly role
as the Suffering Servant 2,000 years ago.
Then they run on into and through the end-time drama
when He returns in His kingdom role as the Conquering King.
The next two feasts, (# 5 and #6), mark out
the
70th week of Daniel, the final seven years of this age.
At some point in those five days between that epic final Day of Atonement, (the last day of this age),
(which is on the 10th of Tishrei), and the Feast of Tabernacles, (which comes on the 15th of Tishrei),
Christ will return to this earth and glorify His saints
at the
Resurrection-Rapture.
The 7th feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, will come into its ultimate fulfillment
on the opening day of the glorious Millennium to come.
The next two feasts that are due to come up for fulfillment are the
Feast of Trumpets and the
Day of Atonement, (Day of Reckoning, or Judgment Day).
And here we note something very interesting.
The Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement will almost certainly mark out the
beginning day
and the
ending day of the
final seven years of this age.
Here is how it happens.
According to the positioning of a given seven years in the 19 year
metonic cycle a seven year time span beginning and ending on the months of Tishrei
can span 86 moons or 87 moons.
When it is 86 moons then something extraordinary is noted.
The number of days
spanning these two feasts, that is, Trumpets on Tishrei 1 and Atonement on Tishrei 10
seven years later is a time span of
exactly 2550 days.
This just happens to equal the exact number of days, (1260 plus 1290),
that span the
70th week of Daniel along with its 30 day extension that reaches beyond
the 1260 days of the Tribulation to go to day 1290! (Dan.12:11)
The diagram below shows how the 70th week of Daniel with those extra 30 days
is staked out perfectly
by the two upcoming
Fall Feasts of Israel.
The discovery that the 2550 days encompassing the 70th week matches perfectly
the 2550 days in between the next two fall feasts when they are
spaced out 7 years apart and embracing 86 moons, (and not 87 moons),
in the 19 year
metonic cycle
was something this author noticed in 2003.
THE SCOPE OF THE SEVEN FEASTS OF ISRAEL AS THEY SET FORTH
GOD'S WONDERFUL PLAN OF THE AGES FOR THE COMPLETE REDEMPTION,
SANCTIFICATION, AND GLORIFICATION OF ALL HIS COVENANT PEOPLE
God began His work in the nation of Israel about 3500 years ago.
The exodus from Egypt took place in approximately
1500 B.C. Soon afterwards, at Mount Sinai, God, through his servant Moses,
brought the nation of Israel the Law.
Right there at Sinai Moses instituted the Seven Feasts of Israel.
They are recorded in the Old Testament
book of
Leviticus chapter 23.
Each one of these seven holy convocations are laid out on the Hebrew calendar.
God calls upon His covenant people to join Him in celebrating them every year.
The feasts will continue to be celebrated in the Millennium to come.
The first three of the Seven Jewish Feasts are in the springtime.
One is in the summer and three are in the fall.
All seven of these holy days,
(from which we get our word 'holiday'), are special occasions in which God
calls His people aside. As the Israelites would go up to Jerusalem to the feast
they would join with the whole Assembly of God in a grand family camp-meeting of sorts.
There at these feasts certain spiritual lessons would be demonstrated
before their eyes. It would provide a wonderful opportunity to
teach their children the ways of their God.
The seven Jewish Feasts are not just quaint
religious festivals of a bygone era.
They are, (and will be in times to come), occasions when God's people
pause to remember
seven epic days in their history.
These seven noteworthy events will be memorials of
events that will have occurred on those very same
special Hebrew calendar dates set out by Moses 3500 years ago.
Each feast will be a waypoint in our understanding of
the character of our God.
Each feast will illustrate a certain essential truth
relating to the unfolding of the Everlasting Covenant
into the history of this earth.
Step by step the God of Israel is establishing and explaining certain truths.
He is helping His people to come to know Him.
The feasts are signposts guiding God's covenant people
in their personal and national pilgrimage.
They are waypoints into the Kingdom of God.
Each feast provides a wonderful occasion for parents
to teach these lessons and precepts to their children.
These are the seven Jewish Feasts. For those who ask
the big questions of life and wonder what God is doing
in this world a study here will give some definite answers.
Our God is not idle.
He is hard at work on a continuing seven part project.
He is redeeming, sanctifying and glorifying His covenant people out of their
dispersions among a lost mankind.
He is drawing out for Himself a chosen people,
even a royal priesthood and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:6, 1Pet.2:9)
In the same process He is defeating Lucifer and the angelic powers
of darkness.
These Seven Jewish Feasts are not just "religion".
They are real past and future history, a history that
is in the hands of the Sovereign God of the Cosmos.
They are waypoints on a roadmap that tracks from the passion of Jesus to the
final glorification at the end of the Millennium.
The Feasts of Israel can have a personal application
in a devotional sort of way as well.
They track the progress of believers
as they go forward into their own personal walk with God.
He takes them from salvation, to infilling of the Holy Spirit,
to sanctification
and ultimately into glorification.
We shall take on new spiritual bodies
at the
Resurrection-Rapture at the last day.
The most important application of the Seven Jewish Feasts
comes as they relate to
the national history of Israel and God's people
around the world.
The first four feasts that have been fulfilled in the past
show God's Judeo-Christian people where they
and their God have been.
The three feasts whose fulfillment is yet future show
us where we are going.
In these seven sacred convocations God's people learn God's
plan of the ages. His agenda for the redemption of man and the
restoration of the cosmos
has already been set.
It was decreed in heaven from before time began.
Things on this planet may be in a mess right now, and getting worse by the day.
But that will not be always the case.
God will step into history again.
He will surprise us again just as He has done in the past.
He has an ongoing program.
God's agenda is in full operation and right on schedule.
Four feasts are down. Three fall feasts and one winter feast are yet to go.
THE UNFOLDING SEVEN JEWISH FEASTS OF WESTERN JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY
VERSUS THE YING AND YANG AND MEANINGLESS CYCLES OF EASTERN MYSTICISM.
History is not just a series of endless meaningless
circles in the pattern given to us in the hypnotizing eastern mysticism.
The pantheism of the east
sees life as little more than the
ceaseless, repetitive, and meaningless cycles of summer and winter,
life and death, sex and death, marriage and funerals.
That is all that the heathen know.
The Hindu God Kali doesn't care. She disembowels children.
And as Buddha contemplates his navel there is little more that he can add.
Holy history, as laid out by the God of Israel, is different.
God has come into the cosmos.
He is the Apha and an Omega, a beginning and an end.
History is His-story. It runs forward in linear teleological fashion.
The road takes the saints on a journey from the pit to the throne,
from Desolation Road to the Holy City.
What could possibly be more exciting?
God's covenant people are different from the people trapped in
pantheism and eastern mysticism. Instead of going round and round
in circles they have found the Way. It is the
Paradise Road.
And now with the seven Feasts of Israel they have a chart into the future.
As they move forward with the God of Israel they find themselves being drawn into a greater
and more wonderful reality than they have ever known before.
Holy history is not just a balancing act between the 'ying' and the 'yang',
the so called 'positive' and the 'negative' forces of the spirit realm and of nature.
History has been decreed by God.
It has a plan and a purpose.
It has a beginning and an end.
The covenant people of God are moving onwards and upwards.
The times have been set by the Cosmic Christ our coming Jewish Messiah.
He is the Creator of the universe, and the incarnate Son of God.
He came to earth as a little baby who became the Suffering Servant, the promised Sacrifice Lamb.
And He will come again as the conquering King, the Judge of this world.
Then as Messiah of Israel He will establish His Millennial Kingdom
and be the Ruler of this earth for a literal thousand years.
This may come as a surprise to some.
But life on this earth does have a meaning after all.
History is going somewhere.
There is a plot and a counter plot.
There is a main character or protagonist, even the Lamb of God.
And as the story unfolds we also see
an antagonist, Satan, along with his man, the Antichrist and another religious pretender known as the False Prophet.
All these players along with a host of others are woven into in the matrix of the end-time story.
At the end of the saga this earth's history sees a final contest between Good and evil.
The great adventure, that divine romance of the ages will
come to a climactic and glorious conclusion.
This will be followed by a grand resolution at the end with some more big surprises thrown in
for good measure.
WORLD HISTORY IS ULTIMATELY GOD'S HOLY HISTORY.
THE CLIMAX OF THE BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL
WILL BE PLAYED OUT RIGHT HERE ON PLANET EARTH.
God is at work in history.
He is the sovereign author and the finisher of our faith.
He is the active agent in this unfolding story.
So we know that the conclusion of the saga
will be far more magnificent than we can presently imagine.
Furthermore, God is now operating in ever increasing ways
by His Holy Spirit and through the greatly expanding witness of His
covenant people around the world.
Earth is not the only place where God is going to make some changes.
Up in the heavenly realms Lucifer is increasingly finding himself in a spot of bother.
He is being progressively cast down.
At some point in the remote past he was cast down from the
throne of God into the lower heavens. (Isa.14:12)
In the middle of the 70th week Lucifer will be cast down a step further
from the second heaven to earth. (Rev.12:6-10)
At the end of the 70th week, when the saints have finished their 5th seal witness,
he will be cast down even further.
He will be bound in the abyss,
the bottomless pit, for a thousand years. (Rev.20:1-3)
At the end of the thousand year reign of Messiah,
Lucifer will have his final play in the Millennial Rebellion.
After that Lucifer/Satan will be cast down even further.
The Great White Throne Judgment will order Him cast into the Lake of Fire
for all eternity. (Rev.20:10)
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SEVEN JEWISH FEASTS FOR CHRISTIANS TODAY
Why is this information on the Seven Feasts of Israel so important?
It is because the covenant people of God
have not just purchased a "ticket to heaven".
They are in a
blood covenant relationship with Jesus Christ/Yeshua Hamashiach.
At some point in the future the saints will
be going up onto the stage of history.
The next two feasts provide vital keys to what will happen.
We do not know which year the next feast will open up.
But in some future September-October time window the next feast, the
Feast of Trumpets,
will come into its epic and climactic fulfillment.
What is the big event that will have happened? Daniel tells us.
(Dan.9:27)
Our sovereign God is in control.
He, and He alone is writing the play of the ages.
And His epic saga is well underway.
Four chapters, even four Feasts of Israel are fulfilled.
Three feasts are left to go for this age.
And as we look at the final
Fall Feasts it becomes obvious
that we are not just passive theological observers in all this.
The lives of each one of us will be actively woven into the story.
Every Christian believer is a living epistle read of men.
God only knows what adventures and wonders that lie ahead of each one of us.
As the feasts move forward our involvement as covenant partners
with YHVH/God is taking us onwards.
We are being drawn into the grand and splendid purposes of God,
towards the climax of this age and into glories we have not yet seen.
Earthshaking events in holy history are up ahead.
They will break into our future in spectacular fashion.
God will revive His people. There will be an epic
End-Time Revival. Joel saw this magnificent awakening
of the saints rising up in the end-time and coming to a peak
right at the end of the age amidst the
6th seal cosmic signs when the sun turns to darkness
and the moon to blood. - Joel 2:28-32
But for many in western Christendom this will not be a happy surprise.
Many, even Christian believers, are bound and determined to go there own way.
The woman of wisdom is crying out in the streets. (Prov.1)
But they remain willingly ignorant of the things of God.
So for them these events will be a rude awakening.
In a future pivotal year the
Feast of Trumpets will sound the alarm.
For us in the comfortable western
Church of Laodicea this future event will be a wake-up call.
It will, as the saying goes, "rock our world".
So. All that being understood, isn't it time that we began
to study the Feasts of Israel with more diligence?
And isn't it time we began to take our relationship
with YHVH Jesus/Yeshua with the seriousness He deserves?
Now is the time to get to know our God both in Spirit and in Truth.
Now is the time to open our hearts and open our Bibles and get
to know Him personally.
We are His "called out congregation", we are His ecclesia. We are His church,
even the Congregation of Israel.
He is calling us, even wooing us, to walk with Him in the gentle bonds of Agape love.
And why is this so important, you ask?
Because we are in a religious fog.
A thick smokescreen of religious misinformation is obscuring the way ahead.
We are in an
information war so sinister that we are scarcely aware that we are
being led astray.
The end-time information we as western evangelicals have been given is quite incorrect.
We are not passive in the covenant as we have been told. Far from it.
We are a responsible party in the heralding of our coming Messiah.
We are His witnesses!
Awesome days lie ahead up there on the
Road to Paradise.
Oh yes. There is a race to be won.
Some group of saints will run on that final leg
of the relay race. Some company of committed saints will break the tape at the end.
It will be grand finale of this age.
The writer of the book of Hebrews brings us this exhortation.
Hebrews 12
1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The race will call for our devotion and our commitment.
God is calling for us to participate.
Are we willing?
As the final curtain of the history of this age opens
each one of us will have a vital role to play.
God has given us this time for us to get to know Him.
Only then shall we learn and understand our parts and get to know our lines.
Because the curtain of Israel's history will surely open up on some future Rosh Hashanah.
This not be a voyeurist's Hollywood melodrama. It will be a stupendous event of great drama
involving us!
And it will probably erupt suddenly in our lifetime!
These are the Seven Jewish Feasts.
They are the story of national Israel.
And they are the story of the Church in the Wilderness.
They are God's story.
And they are our story.
Grace and shalom to all the saints.
