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And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. Leviticus 23:1-2 KJV.
The details for the observation of the feasts are given in the remainder of Chapter 23 and would not be reproduced here. We will note here that what the Bible said about these feasts does not always corelate to what was practiced over time.
For almost a millennium, the centre of Jewish worship was the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was first destroyed in 586 BCE but was rebuilt a few generations later. The second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. This was a radical moment in Jewish history because the entire focus of Jewish life changed. When the Temple stood the central practice of Judaism was sacrifice. After the Temple fell, prayer fully replaced sacrifice as the central religious act. Jewish holidays dramatically changed as well. While the Temple was standing, all the holidays included sacrifices at the Temple. Following the destruction of the Temple, each holiday was recast. Prayers and rituals were added to celebrate the holiday in a post-Temple world.
The words “appointed times” are from the Hebrew mow’ed, which means: “fixed times, to meet at a stated time.” The word “holy convocations” is the Hebrew miqra, which means: “rehearsal.” In other words, the Feasts of GOD were “appointed times” of worship for Israel that would serve as “dress rehearsals” of prophetic events happening in the future. Through these Feasts GOD was showing Israel what His intentions for the nation. The feasts were pictures of their Messiah.
Therefore, the things occurring in Israel’s natural history would mirror the things which would happen to His people in the world. Although the Feasts were a part of the natural culture of Israel, it was also prophetic of greater things to come. GOD told the Israelites, “You shall proclaim…”, this is from the Hebrew, qara, it means: “to call out to those who are bidden.” As Israel rehearsed these Seven Feasts year after year, they were a calling out to those who were bidden. A New Testament verse which shows this is:
And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain King, which made a marriage for his son. And sent forth His servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Matthew 22:1-3 KJV.
Through the Feasts, GOD was calling out to Israel to trust their Messiah. These Feasts represent and typify the sequence, timing, and significance of the major events of the Messiah Jesus’ redemptive career. They commence at Calvary, where Jesus voluntarily gave Himself for the sins of the world (Passover), and climax at the consummation of the Kingdom of GOD the Lord’s Coming. These Seven Feasts depict the entire Redemption career of the Messiah. The seven annual feasts are:
1. Passover – Beginning of New Year and Freedom
2. Unleavened Bread – Beginning of Deliverance
3. First Fruits – Beginning of the Barley Harvest
4. Pentecost – Beginning of the Mosaic Covenant
5. Trumpets – Beginning of the Ingathering
6. Day of Atonement – Beginning of Judgement
7. Feast of Tabernacles – Beginning of or the Kingdom of GOD
The four Spring Feasts —are Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Pentecost. These four feasts were a prophetic foreshadowing of the Advent of the Lord Jesus. They spoke of His death, deliverance, resurrection, and the establishing of the New Covenant respectively.
The remaining three feasts are the Fall Feasts, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These began about 4 months after the Spring Festivals in the month of Tishri on the Hebrew calendar, approximately September or October on our calendar. These three feasts speak of the consummation of redemption after the outpouring of GOD’s wrath, and the New Heaven and Earth (Kingdom of GOD), which is typified by the Feast of Tabernacles.
The number “seven” is the biblical number of completions. After creating the world, GOD rested on the seventh day. He did not rest because of tiredness; Omnipotence does not get tired. But GOD rested in the sense of completion and satisfaction. What GOD created was good and satisfying. Nothing else was needed. On each seventh day, the children of Israel would observe a Sabbath Rest patterned after GOD’s creation rest. They were to cease from their servile work. This, however, is not regarded as a Feast of GOD:
Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings. Leviticus 23:3.
Before we begin our study of the Feasts of GOD, it is necessary to get acquainted with the typological teaching of the Old Testament.
TYPOLOGY
When talking to Jewish people one day, Jesus said, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” John 5:46
Moses wrote the Torah (Genesis — Deuteronomy). How is Jesus in those books? He is in the types and shadows.
Thomas Hartwell Horne defined type in An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures:
“A type, in its primary and literal meaning, simply denotes a rough draught, or less accurate model, from which a more perfect image is made; but in the sacred or theological sense of the term, a type may be defined to be a symbol of something future and distant, or an example prepared and evidently designed by GOD to prefigure that future thing. What is thus prefigured is called the antitype.”
The study of the Feasts is a study in typology. Typology is a method of biblical interpretation whereby an element found in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, is seen to prefigure one found in the New Testament. The initial one is called the type and the fulfilment is designated the antitype. Wick Broomall explained:
“A type is a shadow cast on the pages of Old Testament history by a truth whose full embodiment or antitype is found in the New Testament revelation” (Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, p. 533).
There are types and their antitype. The type is the picture, the anti-type is the reality. A type is a real event, person or thing in history ordained by GOD as a prophetic picture of the good things that He purposed to bring to fruition in Christ. Paul tells us that Adam was a type in:
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. Romans 5:14 KJV
Who is the antitype of Adam? It is Christ, who Paul calls the “last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. Paul tells us that the Feasts were types in:
And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam (Jesus) was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
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: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Colossians 2:16-17 KJV
The Greek word used of “festival” here is heorte, which is the word used for referring to the “Feasts of GOD.” Colossians 2:17 indicates that the Feasts are shadows to teach us about the Messiah. When we study the Feasts of GOD, we are studying the Messiah Jesus.Each Feast is a prophetic picture of the Messiah:
Remember the former things of old: for I am GOD, and there is none else; I am GOD, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Isaiah 46:10 KJV.
Each Feast is an announcement showing GOD’s prophetic timeline for the Redemptive work of the Messiah. Notice from Colossians that the Feasts were a shadow of things to come. “To come” is from the Greek word mello. The Greek verb “mello” in the infinitive means “to be about to”. At the time of Paul’s writing of Colossians, all the Feasts, were all about to become shadows. The realities were about to come.
Most believers and most Bible teachers see the first four Feasts as being fulfilled in Christ’s First Coming. But they are still looking for the fulfilment of the Fall Feasts in our future. But as I said, In Paul’s day all the Feasts were about to become shadows:
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: Hebrews 10:1-5 KJV.
The Law was a shadow. The coming of Christ cast its shadow in the Tanakh. The purpose of the Law of Moses is to give us a foreshadowing, a pre-figuring, of the person and work of Christ. The sacrifices were a shadow, never substance. Shadows aren’t enough. You can’t live in the shadow of a house; you need a house. Notice again that the “good things,” the realities to which the shadows pointed, were “about to” come.
I believe Seven Annual Feasts were all fulfilled prophetically and spiritually in the 40 year-period from the Crucifixion of Jesus to the fall of Jerusalem which coincided with the end of the Jewish age and the consummation of the kingdom of GOD in A.D. 70.
These Feasts must be viewed in their strategic order. Judaism today treats Trumpets as the New Year which is an error. This causes the misinterpretation of the Old Testament prophecy. Passover is the beginning of the Redemption, and the Feasts must be viewed in their order from Passover to Tabernacles. This reveals two forty-year Exodus periods. The first is a Physical Exodus when Israel was freed from bondage to Egypt at Passover and began a physical journey to a physical promise land. The second is a Spiritual Exodus and began at the last Passover of the Cross and continued to the destruction of the Temple and the City of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Let’s look at the “Mount of Transfiguration” in Luke:
And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Luke 9:29-31 KJV.
Moses and Elijah appear in glory, and they speak of Jesus’s departure. The word for “departure” is the Greek word exodos. This same word is used in Hebrews 11:22 and translated: “exodus.” There was an exodus that was to begin at the cross and start another forty-year journey. In this exodus, Israel after the Spirit, left its bondage to the Law of Sin and Death (Ro. 8:2) and begins a forty-year spiritual journey to a spiritual inheritance, the Kingdom of GOD or the New Heavens and New Earth.
The whole Levitical System was a type of Christ, illustrating His person and work that was to come. Jesus Himself testified to the fact that the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) pointed to Him in:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. John 5:39-40 KJV.
The Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, all point to the coming of Christ the Redeemer.
These feasts are clustered according to the rainy season in Israel. Passover, the Feast of Unleavened bread, first fruits, and Pentecost come under a period known as the latter rain. The latter rain brings forth the beginning of the harvest, it comes in the spring. Then you have a four month or about 120 days of dry season, which I believe represents the confirmation of the New Covenant between Pentecost and A.D. 70. This four-month period represents the forty-year second exodus. Then we have the former rain that occurs during the end time Feasts of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles. We will see that these feasts represent the fall of Jerusalem, the end of Old Covenant Israel, and the establishment of the New Heavens and Earth where GOD’s tabernacle is with men.
Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence. Amos 8:1-3 KJV
The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” is qets which means: “end.” It was the last harvest in Palestine. It has the idea of completeness. This vision of a basket of summer fruit is symbolic of Israel’s end. These Fall Feasts picture the end of physical Israel at the end of the forty-year Second Exodus.
The antitype of the last three feasts has no Scriptural reference concerning their fulfilment. No books of the Bible were written after A.D. 70. However, we know from Jesus’ saying, “that all things which are written will be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22) came to pass at the destruction of the Temple and the City in that year. Therefore, the type of the three Fall Feasts has to be interpreted using the same principles used for the Four Spring Feasts.
THE PRIESTHOOD
There are reports of the breeding of red heifers today in Israel as an effort to restart the Levitical Priesthood. But the red heifer does no good without a priesthood. And there can be no priesthood because all the genealogical records were destroyed in A.D. 70 at the destruction of the Temple. The feasts were historical, celebrated in Israel every year, yet also TYPES of GOD’s prophetic calendar for the setting up of the Kingdom of GOD in the Last Days. Following the destruction of the Temple and the City of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), their observance was either discontinued or altered. Without a Temple and Priesthood, the sacrificial system required by the feasts could no longer be observed.
It was of the greatest importance for potential priests to prove their parents were Israelites and their lineage of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron. It was stated in the Law:
To be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the LORD; that he be not as Korah, and as his company: as the LORD said to him by the hand of Moses. Numbers 16:40 KJV.
Nehemiah found some Israelites desiring to be priests after their return from Babylon:
And these were they which went up also from Telmelah, Telharesha, Cherub, Addon, and Immer: but they could not shew their father’s house, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel. The children of Delaiah, the children of Tobiah, the children of Nekoda, six hundred forty and two. And of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz, the children of Barzillai, which took one of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite to wife, and was called after their name. These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but it was not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood. (Nehemiah 7:61-64 KJV).
Without the priesthood the Temple is useless. No genealogical records, no priest, no priesthood, no Temple. Therefore, the prophetic fulfilment of the feasts had to be before or at the destruction of the Temple and the City of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Three chapters of the Pentateuch, Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28 and 29, record the festivals and their regulations. This is the largest source of information on the subject in Bible. A difference of opinion exists as to the number of the feasts. Some maintain that Leviticus 23 records but five—the Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles. Others recognize seven; in addition to the five, Unleavened Bread and the First fruits. I will use the last plus the Feast of Unleavened bread as a separate feast from the Passover since these two require different sacrifices. The Seventh Day Sabbath was not a feast.