The Feasts of the Jews become the Promises of God to the Church One only needs a basic understanding of how God uses the principle of "Substance and Shadow", to see how He reveals to us, that the Feasts of the Jews, fulfilled in Christ, become the Promises He makes to the Church. This is not going to be an in depth study of the Feasts, but rather an explanation as to how the basic meaning of the fulfilled Feasts relate to the promises of God to the Church. The Jews kept holy, the weekly Sabbath, which was the last day of each week, Saturday, and seven other Feasts, during their calendar year. The word Feast means "Set Time". The Feasts were the time that God set, on their calendar, for them to interact with Him, and He with them. Their Feasts, or set times began in the Spring and finished in the fall. Their first & most important Feast, held in the first month of their spiritual year was: The Passover - to be celebrated forever, in remembrance of their deliverance out of Egypt. Unleavened Bread - To remember their affliction under bondage in Egypt. First fruits - A Feast of Promise. Pentecost - 50 days after First fruits - A time for new offerings & a time of completion Then the fall Feasts: Trumpets - The Harvest Time/New beginning Atonement - The Affliction of their souls, and finally, Tabernacles - A time of thankfulness, gladness and expectancy. These are the feasts of the Jews, of which only the first four were fulfilled for the Jews by the coming of Christ, and are the ones that become the promises that God makes to the Church. Remember, Paul preached to the Colossians that the Feasts of the Jews were . . ."shadows of things to come . . . but the substance was of Christ" So, let's journey through each one individually to get an understanding of how their basic meaning relates them as God's promises to the Church. THE WEEKLY SABBATH To the Jews, the Sabbath meant rest. The law required that no servile work be done on that day. It was celebrated to represent a number of rests. Gods rest of Genesis 2:3, the rest of redemption, and the deliverance of Israel from Egypt from Deut.5:15, and also pointing forward to the "better rest" of Hebrews 4:9, and ultimately to the eternal Sabbath of completed work, of completed redemption, and completed ‘hallowing' of Rev. 11. This was the meaning, to the Jews, of the weekly Sabbath. The shadow cast was Rest! As a promise of God to the Church, Fulfilled in Christ, the word Sabbath becomes a verb - Sabbath- ing - because Christians REST in the work of Christ. We're not under the Law, we're under Grace! Christians keep holy the Sabbath by resting in the sure and certain knowledge that Christ died so that we might be free. We accept His salvation through unmerited favor {grace}, and we know that we are saved by Faith through His grace! And, we as Christians believe Paul's teaching that: "tho I am yet a sinner, He died for me". That's the rest of the Sabbath for a Christian. The Feasts begin with: THE PASSOVER Now to the Jews, the Passover represented their salvation from bondage through the blood of the Lamb for their obedience. The shadow cast was salvation by blood for obedience, WORK. As a promise to the Church, Passover is fulfilled in Christ. He was the Lamb of God as His blood shed at his crucifixion provides salvation to the Church, by Faith through the Grace of God. That represents a totally different covenant! UNLEAVENED BREAD To the Jews, leaven represented corruption and evil. This comes from their remembrance of their affliction in Egypt and yet is celebrated with joy, as Israel is always to remember their bondage in connection with their deliverance. For it had been their ‘affliction', and a mark of their subjection to the Egyptians, to be driven forth in such haste, as not to even have time for leavening their bread. As part of the celebration of the feast, the bread is hidden for 3 days, and is brought fourth on First fruits. The shadow cast overcoming corruption & evil. As a promise of God to the Church, Unleavened bread is fulfilled in Christ. Promising us that He overcame corruption and evil, but not for himself, and was the deliverer God sent. And He lays hidden in the tomb for 3 days to appear again on First fruits. FIRST FRUITS To the Jews, First fruits represented a promise of the full harvest yet to come. They took the first sheaf's of barley and ground them into a flour and offered it to God in the temple, symbolic of the full harvest yet to come. Shadow cast is the promise of the full harvest yet to come. As a promise of God to the Church, First fruits is fulfilled in Christ, as His resurrection on First fruits promises us the full harvest, or Rapture of the Church, yet to come. PENTECOST - The Pivotal Feast To the Jews, this was a time of completion and new offering made 50 days after First fruits. The offering made on Pentecost was not merely barley flour, but the completed product, a loaf of bread. The shadow cast was a new offering of completion made 50 days after First fruits. As a promise of God to the Church, Pentecost is fulfilled in Christ, as HE was the new offering, having been completed through His death on the cross, His resurrection as promised and His ascension back to His divinity, just ten days earlier. The True Messiah! These first four Feasts of the Jews, are the set times, that have been fulfilled by Jesus at His first coming that also fulfill the promises they become to the Church. The remaining set times, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles, not yet fulfilled, and have nothing to do with the church. They'll be fulfilled during the Great Tribulation and after Christ's second coming. Trumpets - which is the harvest of the Jews, is yet unfulfilled. But, God leaves His last 2 witnesses and 144,000, marked out of the tribes of Israel, as servants specifically to preach the "gospel of the Kingdom", and then to be caught away. In Revelation, John reports seeing, in Heaven, those who are singing the song of Moses. Those are the Jews. The ones who are caught away, the man child, the two witnesses, who are resurrected and called to heaven, and the martyred. The Raptured Jews, are caught away on the Feast of Trumpets, fulfilling the harvest, as He promised them! Meanwhile on earth, the woman, the people Israel, are going through the Tribulation, Atoning for their sins before being rescued and hidden in the desert, awaiting the return of Christ the King, to lead them in the millennium, during which the feast of Tabernacles will be fulfilled for them. And, the believers, who stayed in Jerusalem, are massacred by the Antichrist, martyred, offering their own blood to God as the token of their faith for salvation. But be sure of one thing, John sees them, after he sees the saints who are singing the song of the redeemed! The redeemed are the twenty four elders, those who are under the covenant of grace, and they are seen in heaven before those who sing the song of Moses! And because of that, we are required to search for another set time, other than the one reserved for the Jews, The Feast of Trumpets, for one reserved especially for the Church, because the twenty four elders are already in heaven when the Jews arrive! That's because they are under a separate covenant. So the time set for them to arrive in Heaven is not the same as the time set for the Jews to arrive in Heaven. That brings us back to the journey of the Feasts. They have come full circle. They went from work for the Jews, to promises for the Church, and now must be returned to the Jews, because we know that the final three Feasts will be fulfilled in Christ for the Jews. So there must be a time when God returns the Feast of Pentecost to the Jews in order that the new offering, with Christ as it's substance, can be made in preparation for the 2nd coming of Christ, and that requires a Temple! That can only happen when the covenant of grace is closed! With the Church gone, it's time to return the Feasts back to the Jews. And that time has already been set by God before the foundation of the world. The Feast of Pentecost is the set time for new offerings of completed things! And it will be on that day that God returns the Feasts to the Jews. As Pentecost will be used yet again by God, sealing or marking the Last Two witnesses and then later, the 144,000 of the tribes of Israel, destined to becoming preachers of the gospel of the kingdom, and on that day of Pentecost, they will go forth with the new offering of Jesus as The Messiah, pointing out that the earthly deliverer that the Jews have crowned, is a false Messiah, as God returns his attention to completing the covenant he made with them, having already ended the covenant made with the Church. Now the stage is set for Christ to fulfill the last three Feasts for the Jews! Trumpets - Atonement - & Tabernacles, which are, the harvest of the Jews, the affliction of their soul during the Great tribulation, and the time of their kingdom, here on earth, under the Messiah and His redeemed. Why are they for the Jews, and not for the Church? Because God harvests the Church under a separate covenant. The Church has nothing to atone for, Christ paid the price, that's why the Church belongs to Him, and during the millennium, all the saints, Old and New Testament and the saved Jews, returns to be the rulers and reigner's of revelations, in the capacity described in Hosea - as kings and priests of the Lord. Hosea also tells us how that can be lost - Hosea says that you loose that reward because of a Lack of Knowledge! That's right out of scripture - and that's truth you can't deny! But before any of that can happen, God closes the covenant with the Church, and that, according to Paul is the event known as the catching away, or Rapture! So, now you know how the feasts of the Jews become the promises of God to the Church that are already fulfilled in Christ. The mystery of the Church was not yet revealed, but it was there, awaiting the decision of the Jews. When they rejected Jesus as the Messiah, the mystery was revealed to Paul and the Passover became our salvation by His blood for FAITH, not Obedience, and through Grace, not Work! And unleavened bread became our covering as he overcame corruption and evil, for us, not for himself. And His resurrection is our guarantee of the Rapture! And Pentecost becomes the pivotal Feast. It went from a new offering of Bread in the temple - the Jews offering to God - to a new offering of Jesus as the completed Messiah - God's offering to the Jews (Then a parenthesis during the age of the Gentiles, when God's offering to the Jews became a promise of God to the Church.) And after the closing of the parenthesis, Pentecost goes back to the Jews for the re-offering of Jesus as the completed Messiah - God's offering to the Jews revisited. The three unfulfilled feasts of Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles, are yet unfulfilled because of the parenthesis. During the time of the Gentiles, these feasts, which don't apply to the Church, have been set aside waiting for their time, which comes after the rapture, during the Great Tribulation and beyond into the millennium. That's what Paul meant when he said to the Colossians: . . . The feasts of the Jews are but shadows of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. So now lets explore where scripture refers to the Rapture and see what it has to say. ON TO SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES OF THE RAPTURE