“Add year on year; let feasts run their circle.” (Isa 29b, LITV)
A few concluding remarks in our discussion of the Biblical feasts as shadow of the first and the second coming of Jesus Christ. If we look at all the Moedim (Feasts) of Israel, it makes perfect sense for us in the New Covenant from the view point of a redemption history that the new years starts in the time of Pesach and ends in Sukkoth.
We often do not understand the view of reality of the Mid-Eastern culture in which the Jews lived and had their being. One of the most crucial aspects of the Hebrew way of thinking about time is that it is not linear but circular. That does not entail a never-ending process of going round and round without end, but a movement in cycles. The meaning of the concept “year” in Hebrew specifically implies repetition. God’s ordinances regarding the feasts are aimed at sensitizing us to the fact that we are given another opportunity for sanctification, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1)! In Ps 23 the well-known third verse states: “He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake“, which in the original Hebrew puts it as follows: “He leads me in the cycles of righteousness”, for the sake of His Name! The feasts are explicitly the pathway through which the believer walks upon the Way (John 14:6) of our Messiah, revealing Him progressively, so that we will more and more recognize Him as we “are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit” (2 Cor 3;18, ASV).
This is the highest prototypical meaning that we can attach to the feasts.
If we can give a summary of the Biblical feasts and their symbolic meaning in our journey as New Covenant believers, it will schematically look like this:
| PESACH |
| FESTIVAL OF THE UNLEAVENED BREAD |
| FEAST OF THE FIRST FRUITS |
| FEAST OF PENTECOST |
| FEAST OF TRUMPETS |
| YOM KIPPUR |
| FEAST OF TABERNACLES |
| CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS |
| JESUS DIED AND REMAINED THREE DAYS IN HADES |
| JESUS RISES FROM THE DEAD |
| OUTPOURING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT |
| CALLING THE BRIDE TO AWAKEN TO HER HIGH CALLING |
| SECOND COMING OF JESUS |
| THE MILLENNIUM OF PEACE |
- Selah: Explain the symbolic meaning of the feasts to somebody.
- Read: Deut 28; SoS 2; Seph 3.
- Memorize: Deut 28:47-48
