God’s seven annual feasts, or holy days, picture the entire purpose for human life! They picture, in moving, beautiful, rich types and shadows, the plan of salvation; the progressive fulfillment of all prophecy; how the saints of this time are but the “first fruits” of the great latter-day time of judgment; the second coming of Christ; the banishment of Satan; the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, and the great general resurrection of the “rest of the dead” (Revelation 20:5) to take place AFTER the millennium.
By understanding the types and shadows implicit in each of the annual Sabbaths, or holy days, one comes to understand the very purpose of one’s own life!
- The Passover, or Lord’s Supper as it became to Christians, is the one annual festival which symbolizes, more than any other, the very way to salvation. We reaffirm each year our acceptance of Christ’s broken body and shed blood. We continually reconfirm our faith in Jesus Christ, and in Him ALONE, for salvation!
- The Days of Unleavened Bread picture Christ as the “bread which came down from heaven” and the eating of unleavened bread focuses on Christ coming to live within each newly repentant Christian, thus driving sin out.
- The Feast of the Firstfruits, or Pentecost, shows us that God is calling only a “kind of firstfruits of His creatures” in this dispensation, and shows that the great latter, fall harvest of human lives is to come during the millennium, and even afterward. The New Testament observance of Pentecost portrays Christ sending the “other Comforter” to be generally available to human beings for the first time.
- The Feast of Trumpets pictures not only the announcements of Almighty God from the time of Christ until the time of the end by the preaching of the Gospel, but God’s own righteous angels, sounding the alarming trumpets leading up to the last plagues and the final great trump, announcing the second coming of Jesus Christ.
- The Day of Atonement, the only FAST day (Acts 27:9; Lev. 23:32) among the seven holy days, depicts the whole world finally AT ONE with God through the atoning work of Christ; Satan, banished, will be unable to deceive the nations any further.
- The Feast of Tabernacles acknowledges that we are living, as human beings, in but a temporary dwelling place, but it looks ahead to the PERMANENT dwelling place in God’s Kingdom! Jesus Christ said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” which can also be rendered “positions of responsibility,” or “offices.”
- The Last Great Day typifies the “Great White Throne Judgment” of the 20th chapter of Revelation.This final annual holy day signifies the completion of God’s plan, the last great general resurrection and the final destruction of the incorrigibly wicked, and leads directly from the Great White Throne Judgment in Revelation 20 to the “new heavens and new earth” of the last two chapters of your Bible.
