BIBLICAL BRIEFS 40
God’s calendar of “holy days” (from which the word ‘holidays’ originates), gives shape to a Godly blueprint, a schedule whereupon man can be tuned in to God’s eternal plan. Each festival is exactly right on time. In Col. 2: 16-17 Paul writes however, that the festivals are a mere shadow of things fulfilled in and through the Messiah. All the “appointed times” of the festivals have thus already been fulfilled. There is currently a new Jewish acculturation amongst many believers who again, according to the Old Testament prescriptions, want to celebrate festivals that have already been fulfilled. This is wrong. In Gal. 4: 9-11 Paul admonishes: “But now that you have come to know God … how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have laboured over you in vain.” Col. 2: 16-17 spells this out, unambiguously and frankly: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day: which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.” The festivals are merely a shadow, a shade caused by the interception of light; an image cast by an object and representing the form of that object. THE TRUE LIGHT HOWEVER, HAS ALREADY COME (John 1: 9). The lunar (moon) calendar of the Jews is a reference to Jesus Christ’s complete time dance with mankind – a dance of grace, and can only be remembered, but BY NO MEANS needs to be commemorated anymore.
Dr. Tom Gouws
