The Feasts as Template

God gave Israel a calendar before He gave it a prophet. And that calendar, so this chapter argues with due caution, is itself a prophecy — not in words but in days. Seven feasts stand in Leviticus 23, in two groups: in the spring three close together, with the Feast of Weeks 50 days later bound to them, and in the autumn three, after a long summer of silence. And it cannot be denied that the spring feasts draw precisely what happened at the first coming of Christ, while the autumn feasts draw precisely what the Day of the LORDDay of the LordNot a single day but a period in which God intervenes: it breaks in at the sixth seal (Rev 6:17; weighed), spans the wrath in two phases up to the appearing, and includes the kingdom up to the passing away of the first creation (2 Pet 3:10; weighed). has yet to bring.

The spring feasts are fulfilled, and the New Testament says so in so many words. Passover: "our Passover lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor 5:7) — on the day of Passover He died. Unleavened Bread: His burial. FirstfruitsFirstfruitsSee Aparchē. The English term used throughout this book for the harvest pledge.: "Christ has been raised as the Firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Cor 15:20) — on the day of the firstfruit sheaf He rose, according to the letter of Leviticus 23:11 the day after the weekly Sabbath. And the Feast of Weeks, PentecostPentecostThe feast occurring 50 days after the Feast of Firstfruits, also called Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks). The day on which the Spirit was poured out in 31 AD (weighed) and the Church was born as the wheat firstfruits (Acts 2). Treated in chapter 2.: on that day the Spirit was poured out (Acts 2). Four feasts, four fulfillments: for Passover and the Feast of Weeks the calendar day itself is well-documented, for Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits weighed. This is no coincidence you can explain away; it is a pattern that calls for continuation.

And then a silence falls. Between the Feast of Weeks and the next feast lies a gap of nearly four months — the long, hot summer in which the calendar is mute. In that silence we live: between the fulfilled spring feasts and the still-awaited autumn feasts. And the autumn feasts, in the seventh month, draw the Day.

The first is the Feast of Trumpets. On the first day of the seventh month: "a day of rest, a memorial day proclaimed with trumpet blast, a holy convocation."1 A day that begins with the trumpet — and the trumpet is, throughout Scripture, the signal of the Day: the trumpet on Zion (Joel 2:1), the great trumpet that gathers the scattered (Isa 27:13), "the last trumpet" at which the dead rise imperishable (1 Cor 15:52), the trumpet with which the Lord Himself descends (1 Thess 4:16). If there is one feast that draws the onset of the Day and the resurrection-gathering, it is this one.

The second is the Day of Atonement, Jom ha-Kippurim. On the tenth day of the seventh month: "you shall humble your souls."2 The one day of the year on which the whole people fasts and mourns, on which atonement is made for the entire nation. And Zechariah draws just such a national mourning on the Day: "they shall look on Me, whom they have pierced, and mourn over Him" (12:10). The Day of Atonement points forward to the moment at which Israel, at the end of the Day, recognizes its pierced Messiah and mourns — and is cleansed.

And the third is the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot. On the fifteenth day: seven days of dwelling in booths, the harvest feast of joy.3 It draws the ingathering and the dwelling of God among men — and Zechariah 14 says expressly that after the Day "all who are left of all the nations" shall go up yearly to "keep the Feast of Tabernacles" (14:16). The last autumn feast points to the Kingdom: God dwells in the midst of His people, the harvest is in, the joy is full.

See the line: trumpet (onset and gathering), atonement (Israel's mourning and cleansing), tabernacles (the Kingdom and the dwelling of God). It is the fourfold pattern of chapter 3, written in feasts instead of in words.

Here, however, a stern warning is in order, and this book gives it pointedly on purpose. The typology of the feasts is powerful, but for that very reason dangerous. The spring fulfillments are well-documented — the New Testament names them itself. The autumn fulfillments are cautiously weighed: the New Testament does draw the line (the trumpet at the resurrection; the mourning of Zechariah; the Feast of Tabernacles of the nations), but nowhere does it say in so many words "the rapture fulfills the Feast of Trumpets on such-and-such a date." Whoever turns the feasts into a calculator — deriving from the calendar day a date for the rapture — leaves exegesis and enters speculation (see chapter 4). The feasts give the sequence and the character of the Day, not its date. This book reads them as a template, not as a calendar. So, and not otherwise, do they bear.