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September 21, 2014 |
| Fall Feasts | ||
In Romans 11, the Apostle Paul explained to the Church of Rome the place that Israel has and still plays in God's plan. He also explained that we are grafted into that tree that God had built from Israel. The Church of Rome chose to ignore that message and became Anti-Semitic. Instead of seeing its community as branches grafted onto Israel it chose to see itself as a new tree founded on the Apostle Peter.
One result of this view was that they threw away or changed all of the holy days God had given to Israel. Some they moved around on the calendar and renamed such as Easter Sunday. Others they created out of nothing such as Ascension, Assumption of Mary, All Saints Day (Day after Halloween), and Christmas.
Almost all Christian churches in existence now are daughters of the Church of Rome. Therefore the result of these changes to the holy days is that most Christians today don't know God's holy days and don't know the messages that he showed through them. Overall the message in these days is a prophetic description of God's plan for salvation and restoration of mankind and how Jesus would fulfill that plan.
This Wednesday at sunset begins the Jewish Feast of Yom Teru'ah - which means the day of sounding. It is the first of the major feast days of fall that God gave Israel. Like the other feast days it is also prophetic. These feast days were not just days of rest and a time to socialize and have fun; they were also prophecies of things to come.
In the spring feasts we see the major points of Jesus' first coming. Therefore we expect the fall feasts to mark the major events of his second coming. In this lesson we will learn what God is telling us from the fall feast days.
There were 7 required feasts on God's calendar. He had given Israel the dates to observe these days or feasts. It was the duty of every Jew to make his best effort to come to Jerusalem for these. These feasts are separated on the calendar into two halves; the spring feasts days and the fall feast days. There were 4 of these feast days in the spring and 3 in the fall.
We'll begin with a quick review of the spring feasts. The spring feasts were all symbolic of the major events of the First Coming. The reason most Christians don't know this is that someone moved them around and renamed them and therefore the teaching value they have is lost and their value as fulfilled prophecies is also lost.
| Jewish Feast Days | When | Symbolizing | Catholic Days | When |
| - preparation - all yeast is removed from the home (Exodus 12:15,19) | Previous month |
← Removing sin
? →
|
Lent - Hot Cross Buns are eaten | Previous 6 weeks |
| - selecting the lamb (Exodus 12:3,5) | Nissan 10, 4 days before Passover |
← Choosing a flawless lamb
? →
|
Palm Sunday | Sunday, 5 days before Good Friday |
| Passover | Nissan 14, any day of the week | Sacrifice of the Lamb for sin | Good Friday | Friday, 2 days before Easter |
| Days of Unleavened Bread | 3 day period beginning at Passover | A sinless sacrifice in the grave | ||
| First Fruits | Nissan 17, 3 days after Passover | Resurrection from the grave | Easter | Sunday, complex formula |
| Shavu'ot | Sivan 6, 7 weeks plus a day (50 days) after the day after Passover | The giving of the Holy Spirit | Pentecost - Greek word meaning 50 days | Sunday, 49 days after Easter |
These notable changes occur in the Catholic Days.
Everything in the Jewish feast days is symbolic of what Jesus would accomplish. Everything in the Catholic days is a twisted version of that.
As bad as this is, it was worse for the fall feast days. They were completely blotted out of existence. No remnant of them remains on the Christian calendar.
As we have seen, each of the feasts foreshadowed an event during the First Coming and was fulfilled by that event happening or beginning on that exact day.
After the Spring feast days comes the summer. But this is not a time for lazing around in the sun.
"In Leviticus 23, God had just completed addressing the spring festivals; and before addressing the fall festivals, He had this to say, seemingly out of the blue:"
When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 23:22)
"Why should God be addressing the providing of food for the needy and the alien at this point? The answer is this: The feasts all have sequential prophetic outworkings, and this admonition also has a prophetic outworking, and perfectly in sequence with the feasts."
"Pentecost has come [and gone], and we are now in the [time of the fullness of the Gentiles1], the summer, and it's the time for laboring in the fields. Jesus said, Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest (John 4:35). It's the time in which we all need to be laboring to provide spiritual food for the spiritually needy and the alien to bring in a harvest of souls for the Lord, each of us doing his or her part according to our gifts and callings."2
The fall feast days together make up a 15 day period. These are the most holy days on the calendar and the most holy of all these days is Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.
The Feast of Trumpets is celebrated by shouting and the blowing of trumpets, both metal and ram's horn trumpets. At the start of each month the priests blow the trumpet to tell the people to warn the people to turn away from their sins. It is also a warning that the king is coming. At the start of this month, Yom Teru'ah, everyone blows the trumpet. This is a welcome for the king.
Because this is the 7th month on the religious calendar, this is the 7th blowing of trumpets on the calendar. In the Book of Revelation and in many of the epistles there are references to 7 trumpets, or just the 7th trumpet, or the final trumpet. This feast of Yom Teru'ah is the symbolic representation of that 7th trumpet. Especially from 1st and 2nd Thessalonians we know that the final trumpet is the call to God's people to arise and to ascend to be with him in the event now called the Rapture. Here are the verses from 1 Thessalonians 4
16 Because Our Lord shall descend from Heaven with a command and with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet blast of God, and the dead who are in The Messiah shall rise first; 17 and then we who remain, who have life, we shall be carried away with them together in clouds to a meeting of Our Lord in the air, and in this way, we shall always be with Our Lord.
1 Corinthians 15 says it this way
52 Suddenly, like the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet, when it shall sound, and the dead shall rise without corruption, and we shall be transformed.
This day was known to Israel as the day that no man knows. This is because the priests determined the exact day by observation of the moon. So no one knew the day until the priests said it was the day. Now we know the lunar cycles with great precision and can predict the day. The Bible has many references to Jesus returning on a day you do not know and the theme of coming unexpectedly like a thief in the night is everywhere.
The Feast of Trumpets begins a 10 day period called the Days of Awe. The generally accepted understanding of the meaning of these days is that this is a time of judgment and a last chance for each person to consider their sins and repent. At the end of this period it will be too late.
This is the Jewish perspective on the meaning. "This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur. One of the ongoing themes of the Days of Awe is the concept that God has 'books' that he writes our names in, writing down who will live and who will die, who will have a good life and who will have a bad life […]. These books are written in on Rosh Hashanah, but our actions during the Days of Awe can alter God's decree."3
The Days of Awe end with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, also called the Last Great Day. At the end of this day in Israel the final sacrifices were made and sin was symbolically removed completely. All those who had not repented of their sins by that time were "cut-off."
This feast involves a complicated set of sacrifices that show that although Jesus' sacrifice has taken sin away from us, the record of sin still exists. This feast symbolizes the removal of sin the day that Jesus' atoning sacrifice wipes the record clean.
This may be hard for some to understand. In a previous lesson we learned that we are justified before God because Jesus' paid the debt we owed. This is in the same way as a legal court where a man is freed or redeemed because his debt has been paid. But the court record still exists. This feast points to a day when even the court records will be destroyed.
The Feast of Tabernacles begins 5 days after the Day of Atonement and lasts for 8 days. It marks the period of time when God was with his people, the Israelites, while they wandered in the desert. It symbolizes the coming time when God will again be with his people. It is also associated with temporary dwellings where God kept his people before they were to come into their promise.
The direct relationship between man and God was ruptured in the Garden of Eden and sin entered into the world. These are the 7 steps that God has taken and will take to restore that relationship and remove sin.
When God gave these feasts to the Israelites they never understood there was this prophetic message in them. There is no evidence that any Jewish scholar prior to Jesus' time understood the message. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit was given that any man understood that there was a message and what the message was.
That is amazing when you think about it. Some people claim that the Old Testament was written by men and is not by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If that's the case how could men write words that they didn't know were prophecies?
1 Spoken of by Paul in the previous lesson on Romans 11
2 http://www.biblestudyproject.org/feasts-of-israel-messianic.htm