There are seven feast days given to Israel in the Law of Moses. It was a mandate to follow these feasts. Our modern culture finds it odd that God would command a nation to keep feasts. However, the feasts foretell the plan of God and point directly to each fulfillment that Jesus Christ accomplished or will complete at His second coming. Israel was God’s light to the nations. God warned that anyone who did not follow these feasts would be cut off from His people. If a man or woman in Israel wanted to bear the name of God, they were required to obey God. They could not represent God while challenging His authority or refusing to practice these feasts that proclaimed His glorious plan. Each of the feasts were testimonies of the blessing of God during the Old Testament and the fulfillment of Christ in the New Testament. Let’s summarize the seven feasts:
Passover was to be celebrated on the 14th day of the first month. Passover is a celebration of the Jews deliverance from bondage and it always falls on a full moon. The Passover lamb was to be a lamb without spot or blemish. The blood of the lamb was posted on the top and both sides of the doorpost. When Israel was in bondage in Egypt and the ruler of that kingdom refused to let the people go, God sent an angel into the land to take the firstborn of each house. When the angel saw the blood on the doorpost, he passed over the house without taking the firstborn. When Pharaoh saw the death throughout the land, he set God’s people free. They were passed over in judgment and delivered from bondage.
The blood on the doorpost is a picture of the cross and the lamb is a picture of Christ. Jesus was without spot or blemish because He lived a perfect, holy life without sin. He was the firstborn that died on our behalf and His sacrifice for sin delivered us from our bondage to sin. The Christian has been passed over in judgment and has been delivered from the bondage of sin in this temporary world. We now are on our journey to the Promised Land of Heaven.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins 1 day after Passover and is celebrated for 1 week. Leaven is symbolic of sin in our human lives. Jesus stated that when a little leaven is allowed into dough, it soon leavens the whole lump. Sin tolerated always spreads and contaminates the body of Christ. Unleavened bread symbolized a holy walk in the Old Testament and is symbolic of the perfect bread of life – Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
This feast is held on the Sunday following the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The feast of First Fruits is the spring planting and a dedication unto God the first of the harvest. Leviticus 23:10-11 tells us that the first fruits are unto the priest. Jesus’ resurrection occurred on the feast of First Fruits which we now call Easter. The first fruits harvested were unto the priests and the first resurrection was our High Priest. Jesus Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:23).
This was celebrated exactly fifty days after the first-fruits on the first Sunday after the Sabbath. This feast marks the summer harvest. Leviticus 23:17 tell us that there are two loaves offered to God in this feast. One represents the Gentile church and the other represents the Jewish church. In the New Testament, Pentecost is the first great harvest when 3,000 souls were saved by the Apostle’s preaching. This event occurred fifty days after Jesus was resurrected.
This feast is celebrated on the first day of the seventh month. Trumpets are a proclamation of liberty and a call to worship. When the trumpet was sounded, the workers in the field would immediately leave their labor and assemble in the temple. The non-Jew would stay working in the field. Even if the work is not complete, God’s people were commanded to cease from the labor and come to the worship. This is symbolic of the rapture. Even though the field still requires harvesting, when the Lord sounds the trumpet, we will leave our work immediately and come to worship. This is described in two places:
Luke 17:
36 "Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left."
37 And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."
Matthew 24
40 "Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.
41 "Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.
42 "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
43 "But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
44 "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
45 " Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?
46 "Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.
This day is honored on the tenth day of the seventh month. The Jewish people would afflict their souls in reflection and confession for the past year’s sins and the next years direction from God. The priest would enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of their sacrifice offering on the altar of God. If the priest failed to follow the law perfectly, God warned that he would be struck down. If the people failed to follow this law to the letter, they would be cut off from the congregation and from the hope of salvation. Jesus Christ is our perfect atonement. He is the true High Priest and the perfect sacrifice for our sins. The Old Testament law pointed to the absolute necessity for a perfect sacrifice for sins and this feast symbolically represented the ultimate perfect sacrifice that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is our atonement. Now instead of bringing our sacrifice before the altar, we celebrate the bread and wine of communion in remembrance of the broken body of Christ which was our atonement for sins.
This final feast is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. This is to celebrate the shelter God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness. The Bible states, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous run to it and are safe”, Proverbs 18:10. This is a celebration of God providing shelter and new hope after Israel left Egypt. It will ultimately be fulfilled in the new kingdom when Jesus Christ will tabernacle among His people. He will be the shelter of the new kingdom. Look at Revelation 21’s description of the new heaven:
22 But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.
25 Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there).
26 And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.
27 But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
The prophetic symbols that would soon be fulfilled in Jesus Christ are clearly seen in the feast days God gave Israel. Zola Levitt made a very interesting discovery in the parallels between the development of a child and the feast days of Israel. Zola Levitt Ministries published a booklet in 1979 entitled, ‘The Seven Feasts of Israel’. In this booklet, Zola Levitt describes an interview he had with an obstetrician named Dr. Margaret Matheson. Without revealing his intentions, he inquired about the major lifecycle changes of a developing child so that he could compare it with the seven feasts of the Old Testament. I am going to quote some of the highlights of this interview from this book.
I learned that the average pregnancy is 280 days and is counted from the first day of the last menstrual cycle before conception. …I placed this 280 days on an ideal Jewish year…occurring on the first day of spring, March 21st. I found that a pregnancy of 280 days, begun on March 21st would end on a very interesting date, December 25th.
It was Margaret’s first statement that turned me on to the whole system I’m about to disclose. …She began with the statement, “On the fourteenth day of the first month, the egg appears.” Leviticus 23:5: “In the fourteenth day of the first month…”, God’s original instruction for the observance of Passover. The Jews use an egg on the Passover table as symbolic of the new life they were granted by the sacrifice of the lamb in Egypt. The egg, of course appears in the Easter celebration as well, symbolic of the same thing, although not from biblical sources. (The Easter egg is a pagan symbol of fertility.) I was fascinated that the fourteenth day of a pregnancy does the same thing as the fourteenth day of God’s festival year: It brings the chance for new life.
I questioned her carefully, keeping in mind that the next feast, Unleavened Bread, must occur the very next night, the fifteenth day of the first month (Leviticus 23:6). I asked how soon fertilization of the mother’s egg must occur if pregnancy is to happen.
Her answer was very clear and very definite. “Fertilization must occur within twenty-four hours or the egg will pass on.” Not only did the two momentous prenatal events occur on the right days, but they were also the appropriate events. The egg, for the Passover, and the idea of fertilization – the planting of the seed – for Unleavened Bread, the burial of our Lord. His crucifixion on the Passover gave each of us the chance for life everlasting. His burial in the earth, prepared for each of us, the glorious resurrection to come.
I almost held my breath as I inquired about First Fruits. I realized that this third feast is not on a definite time cycle. It simply occurs on the Sunday following Unleavened Bread. It could be the day after, or it could be almost a weak away. I asked cautiously what happened next in the birth process.
“Well, that’s a little bit indeterminate; the fertilized egg travels down the tube at its own speed toward the uterus. It may take anywhere from two to six days before it implants.” I loved her word “implants” because it so suggested the festival of First Fruits, the spring planting, and it was the correct technical term, I found out. This marks the moment when the fertilized egg arrives safely in the uterus and begins its miraculous growth into a human being.
The seven feasts’ schedule now called for that long wait until Pentecost. I asked Margaret what the next development would be with our implanted egg. “Well, of course, we have a slowly developing embryo here for a long time. It goes through stages, but there’s really no dramatic change until it becomes an actual fetus. You can see it right here an the chart.” I saw a human baby, and beside that drawing, the very scriptural message, “fifty days”.
I next asked Margaret about the first day of the seventh month (Feast of Trumpets). I had hoped that there were no big events through what would be the long summer on the schedule of the feasts, and indeed, there were none. There were a few small perfections to be added by the hand of the Creator, and I was delighted to find that one of these coincided so exactly with the next feast. Margaret’s medical text books included the definitive Williams Obstetrics, stated that the baby’s hearing was now fully developed. At the first day of the seventh month, the baby could discriminate a sound for what it really was. For example, a trumpet was a trumpet!
Blood would represent the sixth feast, the Day of Atonement. I specified to Margaret that I wanted to know if there was any development just ten days into the seventh month. I was still careful not to imply just what I was looking for. If Margaret had said, “the elbows are finished”, then I suppose my system would have been finished. Margaret stated that the important changes now indeed were in the blood. It was necessary for the fetal blood, which carried the mother’s oxygen through the baby’s system, to change in such a way that the baby could carry the oxygen that it, itself, would obtain upon birth. Technically, the hemoglobin of the blood would have to change from that of the fetus to that of a self-respirating and circulating human being. Naturally, this system must be changed before birth, and that change occurred, according to the textbooks, in the second week of the seventh month (the Day of Atonement).
There remained still another feast. I asked for the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and she immediately recognized the date as the beginning of the safe delivery period. “You see, that’s when the lungs are developed, and as long as they can get their little lungs going, we can bring them along, even if they are born at that early time. A normal baby has two healthy lungs, and if born at that point, can take in its own air and live on it.” Tabernacles is the end of the road – the end of the feasts, the end of God’s plan, the beginning of the kingdom. The baby would live if born at Tabernacles. The believer will live once he enters the kingdom.
End of Quote
I use this chart to illustrate Levitt’s point:
This parallel between the development of a child and the development of God’s plan revealed in the feast days is fascinating. Levitt compares this to the coming of Christ and His crucifixion – and rightly so. I believe it also fits hand-in-glove with the prophecies fulfilled in Revelation and other prophetic books. The feast days mark the end of the development of God’s plan, but to complete our understanding, we should take time out to examine the delivery of His plan as revealed in scripture.
If we take the information we have learned from the feast days and apply it to prophecy we can see how everything fits perfectly together to paint the complete picture of God’s amazing plan. The feast days foretell of the development of God’s plan to ultimately be reunited with His people and dwell among them as it was intended from the beginning. At the end of the development of a child the delivery takes place. As the delivery nears, birth pangs begin and each contraction grows with intensity and frequency. It starts off slow and ends with great travail. The pain of childbirth is the result of sin. When Adam and Eve fell, God declared that part of the curse of sin would be pain in labor. Genesis 3:16 says, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children”. This is a literal event and literally applies to each woman who has a child. However, it is also a prophecy about the pangs that the world will experience during the time God’s plan comes to be delivered.
Prophecy is described frequently as birth pangs. Look at Isaiah 13:
6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is at hand! It will come as destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore all hands will be limp, Every man's heart will melt,
8 And they will be afraid. Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them; They will be in pain as a woman in childbirth; They will be amazed at one another; Their faces will be like flames.
9 Behold, the day of the LORD comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate; And He will destroy its sinners from it.
Micah 5:
1 Now gather yourself in troops, O daughter of troops; He has laid siege against us; They will strike the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek.
2 " But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting."
3 Therefore He shall give them up, Until the time that she who is in labor has given birth; Then the remnant of His brethren Shall return to the children of Israel
Micah 4:
9 Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in your midst? Has your counselor perished? For pangs have seized you like a woman in labor.
10 Be in pain, and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, Like a woman in birth pangs. For now you shall go forth from the city, You shall dwell in the field, And to Babylon you shall go. There you shall be delivered; There the LORD will redeem you From the hand of your enemies.
11 Now also many nations have gathered against you, Who say, "Let her be defiled, And let our eye look upon Zion."
12 But they do not know the thoughts of the LORD, Nor do they understand His counsel; For He will gather them like sheaves to the threshing floor.
Romans 8:
22 For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.
Jesus also pointed out this truth when foretelling about the future of Israel. He warned of the wars, persecutions and sorrows to come and then He spoke of the birth pangs Israel would face. Look now at John 16:
20 "Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.
21 "A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
22 "Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.
This is the hope of Israel and the hope of the believers who come to faith in Christ during the tribulation. Even though the sorrows and pain will be severe and almost unbearable, when the new life God has created has been delivered, no one will remember the sorrows. I have had the privilege of witnessing all three of my children enter into the world. All three were natural births. With each contraction the pain intensified until my wife was unaware of anything but the pain. Just before the child emerged the pain was at its highest possible point and everything faded accept the hope of getting through the pain. Then suddenly a miracle happened – the pain instantly disappeared and new life arrived. My wife did not show any signs of pain but was instead filled with the joy of the new life that had arrived into our family.
This is the promise God has given to Israel. The final days of the world will be severe and anguishing. The pain may be the focus of those who are suffering, but in reality the true purpose is to deliver the promise that Jesus Christ will dwell among us and we will experience the eternal joy of His new life for us. In great travail, the plan of God will be delivered and the Feast of Tabernacles – the new life in the new kingdom – will be delivered. The pain of birth is the curse of sin, but the new life is the end of the curse and the promise fulfilled. Once delivered, all the pain of the past will be forgotten and only joy will remain. The Bible makes this plain in Revelation 21:
3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.
4 "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
This pang in history is but a moment and though the pain will be overwhelming during delivery, it is a small price to pay for the new life God has promised to those who love Him.
Eddie Snipes
Exchanged Life Outreach
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