9. The Feasts of Israel (Part II)

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In this session, we hope to capture the entirety of the Feast of Tabernacles as succinctly as possible, that is, as we understand it in the present. We assume that Jesus began His ministry in the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, with His baptism by John, making it six months plus three years to His crucifixion at Passover. Then, John 2 and the first cleansing of the temple was the first Passover during His ministry, followed by healing the man at the pool of Bethesda on His second Passover. Feeding the five thousand in John 6 was the third Passover, a year before Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The Feasts in the Gospels. As I glance through The Reese Chronological Bible, I see, without a precise look, that it is John who mentions the feasts, and not the other gospel writers. Then, the Feast of Tabernacles that is the setting for Jesus’ words in John 7 is the final Tabernacles, in AD 28, about six months before the Atonement. John has mentioned all four of the Passover feasts, but only this last Tabernacles.

Indeed, this is the third time only when the keeping of Tabernacles is mentioned in the Bible. The first was Solomon’s dedication of the temple, and the second was with Ezra and Nehemiah. Tabernacles is almost obscure.

The Parts of Tabernacles. The timing of Tabernacles corresponds with our late September and early October. It has three parts, with the Feast of Trumpets beginning on the first day of the seventh month, running for seven days. Then, there are two non-feast days followed by the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month. The Day of Atonement is followed by four non-feast days with the first day of Tabernacles being the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Technically, Tabernacles runs for seven days, but then the eighth day is also included, the great day of the Feast.

God Filling His House. Tabernacles was the celebration of the harvest, similar to what we celebrated in Canada as harvest day. During the feast, the people lived in “booths” or small “tents.” They gathered branches of trees for worship, and, we assume, for constructing the booths.

Ostensibly, the purpose was – that you may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. Nonetheless, this memorial was only a shadow of the real event in Israel’s history for which Tabernacles was intended, which was God filling His House in Jerusalem with His revealed Presence.

Three Times of Celebration. And so it is from the three times the celebration of Tabernacles is mentioned in the Bible that we draw its real meaning for us, its fulfillment in the life of the Church. God filled Solomon’s temple on the first day of the Feast, thus signifying our being filled with all the fulness of God, not as individuals only, but as the Church together. The celebration of Tabernacles under Nehemiah and Ezra signifies that the focus of Tabernacles is on the final restoration of all the revelation of Christ. And the outpouring of rivers of living water is spoken by Jesus on the eighth day, the great day of the Feast.

The Completion of Christ. We place the fulfillment of Tabernacles in the life of the Church, then, as that which bridges this age and the next, the closing out of the age of human folly and the beginning of the Age of Tabernacles. A Church filled with all the fulness of God; a Church as the completion of Christ and of God; a Church revealing God to all – as loving one another with pure hearts fervently.

Passover is the Church redeemed, one member at a time. Pentecost is the Church birthed upon the earth, a Church capable of knowing God together. And Tabernacles is the Church fulfilled, the completion of the revelation of Christ.

The Calling of God. Now we can begin with the Feast of Trumpets. And because this is a brief study only, we must simply sum up our understanding of the fulfillment of these things in our lives and in the Church today.

Trumpets is the calling of God in His Church through many different voices and across the last several decades, that a people might leave all behind to come up to the soon-coming fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles. I am convinced for myself that the fulfillment of Trumpets began in 1948, with its beginnings expressed through George Warnock’s little book, Feast of Tabernacles.

The Hearing of Trumpets. I first heard the calling of trumpets catching my heart in its mighty power in September of 1977, again, at the time of Tabernacles. I was twenty years old. You are gathered here in this Zoom session because God used my little bit as part of His fulfillment of Trumpets in your life, calling you to come up to the Feast.

Let me define the hearing of Trumpets. Trumpets is that moment when the thought first enters into a believer’s heart that God WILL fulfill all that He speaks right here on this earth, right now in this age, and even inside of me. That “I will be just like the Lord Jesus.”

The First Call of Trumpets. Here is the first call of Trumpets in the life of the Church, calling all into Christ Community. This is a Spirit call.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.

Christ Community. Trumpets is a call to journey; trumpets is a call to war. Trumpets is a call to leave behind every aspect of your own petty life and your own myopic involvement with self and to become a part of something far bigger than yourself, the very House and Dwelling Place of God All-Carrying. Trumpets is a call of separation from this world; Trumpets is a call of forsaking all to be a part of the CHURCH, that is, the completion of Christ.

From that moment at age twenty, when I first heard the trumpets of God calling me, they have not once ceased drawing my heart, calling me to the revelation of Christ, drawing me to Christ Community.

Trumpets. Trumpets is the calling of God in His Church through many different voices, that a people might leave all behind to come up to the soon-coming fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles. Trumpets is that moment when the thought first enters into a believer’s heart that God WILL fulfill all that He speaks right here on this earth, right now in this age, and even inside of me. That “I will be just like the Lord Jesus.” Trumpets is a call of forsaking all to be part of the CHURCH, the completion of Christ.

The Doorway. The Day of Atonement is the doorway into Tabernacles. The Day of Atonement is a decision inside the heart of each believer in Jesus, a decision to accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus as absolute, all-encompassing, and finished. – One unlimited sacrifice for sins – having our hearts sprinkled from an evil consciousness (Hebrews 10).

The Day of Atonement is that one day in the year when the high priest took blood into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle that blood upon the Mercy Seat in the presence of God. Two times the high priest took blood into the Holiest, first for himself and second for the people, and two times he did something absolutely remarkable, even mind-boggling.

He Turned Around. The high priest was facing that place upon the Mercy Seat of God where the pillar of fire touches down and there he sprinkled the blood, two different times. Then the high priest did the most faith-filled action any human could ever do. He TURNED AROUND.

You see, God does not live in time. God is all here now. That means that God-All-Now knows the Blood of His Son poured out always all, always now. The question never has been – Does God accept the Blood? The question is always – Do you, dear brother and sister, accept the Blood of the Lamb shed for you.

You Must Accept. To enter the Holy of Holies, dear reader, you must first accept the Cross, that it is finished, that it stands as a wide-open Door for you to freely enter into all that is Christ. Then, inside the Holiest, you must accept the Blood, that it is sufficient for you.

And there, inside of God, you turn around. Never again do you think about re-connecting with God or about “going to” heaven. To turn around is to live out from God, out from all salvation now, in every moment of your life and through every aspect of your weak and foolish humanity. And to accept the Resurrection means that you live sharing LIFE with the Father inside of and as the Lord Jesus.

The Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement is the doorway into Tabernacles. It is a personal decision to accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus as absolute, all-encompassing, and finished. – One unlimited sacrifice for sins. The Day of Atonement is that one day when the high priest took blood into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle it upon the Mercy Seat in the presence of God. Then the high priest did the most faith-filled action any human could ever do. He TURNED AROUND.

– We accept the cross as our doorway into Christ, the blood as our all-connection with God, and the resurrection as the only life we are. To turn around, then, is to live out from God, out from all salvation now, in every moment of our life and through every aspect of our weak and foolish humanity.

Firstfruits. Tabernacles itself has three parts, the first day, a Sabbath, the six days in-between, and the final eighth day, the Great Day of the Feast. We must look at all three together first, and then we will consider the eight day again by itself.

Let me set forth, with strength, what I believe with all my heart that God means by these things. God is about to fill His firstfruits with the knowledge of Himself in fullness, God among us, as love one another. These firstfruits are utterly pure. Pure means no contempt towards others and no dishonesty towards self.

The Ingathering. This firstfruits is the fulfillment of the first day of Tabernacles, God filling His fully prepared House with His knowledge, that is, the completion of Jesus, love one another. This firstfruits together then extend the Mercy Seat of their hearts out over the hundreds of millions of Christians across the earth, all whom God has given to the Lord Jesus.

This is the harvest, the ingathering, the “dwelling in booths,” the “waving of branches.” It is similar to, though far greater than, the drawing of the hearts of our brothers and sisters of the early church into the Community of Christ in Jerusalem.

As Two Hands. I see the First Day of the Feast, filled with all the fulness of God, and the Great Day of the Feast, rivers of Spirit flowing out, as two hands encircling this great ingathering into the fulness of Christ as love one another. This is the sheltering roof, typified by the booths, coming out from the confidence and example of the firstfruits. Inside this ingathering, Christians will learn by Spirit and Word of a God who is meek and lowly of heart, a God who carries all. They will speak Christ alone back to the Father.

Then, out from the belly of this perfected Church will flow rivers of life into all the earth, beginning with our bodies.

As Examples. People are as sheep, for God made them that way. For that reason, they need an example of faith in Christ before their eyes before they will know how to enter in. Placing God as all our connections together is not an event in the future, but rather, the exercise of our faith. Placing God between us, and not darkness, requires the greatest humbling of self we have known. This is what people see.

Then, just as Nehemiah was a man of the Spirit, an outward leader, and Ezra was a man of the Word, a teacher of Covenant, so the purpose of the ingathering into the Church is a time of learning Spirit and Word together.

Tabernacles – the First Day. The First Day: God filling Solomon’s temple on the first day of Tabernacles shows us His intention towards the Church. God will cause His firstfruits to know God among them as love one another first, as an example to the many who are yet unable to believe. God filling His Church with the knowledge of His fulness is the visible expression of love one another, the completion of Christ. By this, the Church will know.

Tabernacles – the Days Between. Dwelling in Booths, the Six Days Between: It is the restoration of Jerusalem that shows us God’s meaning for the six days of dwelling in booths. Ezra was a man of the word, and he planted covenant word into the hearts of the people. Nehemiah, along with the three restoration prophets, were men of the Spirit, and they imparted, “But by My Spirit,” into the people. The Church will learn the completion of Spirit and of Word.

“My Completed Work.” The final part is “The Eighth Day,” the Great Day of the Feast, the Day of Rivers flowing out, the Day of Resurrection. This is the full meaning of God’s name written upon our foreheads – “This is My completed work; this is My full expression inside of creation.”

This is what Jesus was referencing in His prayer to the Father in John 17 – That the world may believe – That the world may know. This is the Day when millions of believers in Jesus move together as one body, as Father among us, now made visible to all right here on this earth inside of heaven.

Another Feast. Yet John also mentions another Feast, one that came later. Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter (John 10:22).

When you compare the Feasts with the development of the child in the womb, as John does in the totality of his writing, this is the nine-month point, the time for the child to be born into the new age. For this reason, I also suspect that inside the meaning of the Great Day of the Feast is our absolute faith in an invisible Spirit Word, that we think and live as if we are already resurrected, as if we are already just like the Lord Jesus.

The Eighth Day. The Eighth Day, the Great Day of the Feast: The words of Jesus in John Chapter 7 show us God’s meaning for the final day of the Feast, that is, rivers of Spirit flowing out of our bellies, bringing healing and life to all. The first thing to be swallowed up by life will be our physical bodies. Thus we walk now as if we are already resurrected, just like the Lord Jesus. As millions of Christians love one another, so the whole world will KNOW.

Pondering the Feasts. John had been pondering the Feasts in the time prior to writing of these things in the same way that the writer of Hebrews pondered the meaning of the Tabernacle. Of truth, John placed the layout of his version of the gospel upon the Feasts.

In other words, God intends us to know the meaning of the Feasts by John’s gospel and the meaning of John’s gospel by the Feasts. And since John’s gospel is about how God shares His life with the Church, through the weaving together of symmorphy, transubstantiation, and metamorphy, then the Feasts are the same – being inside of a Living Spirit Word and coming into harmony with that Word.

Applied to John. John places his gospel upon the feasts of Israel; the feasts and the gospel must be known together. Jesus’ ministry began with Tabernacles and ended with Passover. God plants His very life into us and into the Church together.

There, inside this knowing of Father, we learn of Jesus, that His Words inside our hearts are Spirit and Life. We eat of Him; we come into harmony with Him by being in His presence.

Then, as the Church as a whole learns “love one another,” the completion of Jesus, so rivers of Spirit flow out from the many into all the world, and the world will know that God sent Jesus. This is John’s gospel and the Feasts.

Understanding Rivers. I know the Feast of Trumpets by deep experience. I know the Day of Atonement as the only way I have thought for nearly nine years. After Tabernacles itself has become the experience of the Church, I may well word things slightly differently. Nonetheless, I am rejoicing in the clarity and precision which this little exercise has wrought in our understanding of all the Feasts and of their flow together.

I think that we now have the raw material we need to understand John Chapter 7 and rivers of Spirit flowing out from us everywhere we go.

Reading for Next Time. The next session is titled “The Generation of Life.” I am inserting this additional page in order to sum up the LIFE John has introduced to us and to further develop John 6:63. For this session, read all of John 1-7, seven chapters. Read it in the JSV, in one sitting, and think of it as a whole. Pay close attention to the words “life” or “living” and “conceived” or “birthed” of God.

All the way through, John is talking about God-Life, the Father utterly together with us. It is the Spirit that gives [God-]Life; the natural flesh benefits nothing. The Words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are [God-]Life.

Let’s Pray Together. Our prayer this time is metamorphy. Truly, we want to dwell inside the meaning of the Feasts, so that we might know the Lord Jesus in perfect harmony with ourselves.

“God, our Father, we want to know You as all our connections together. For that reason, Father, we place all of our actions towards one another into the light, so that You might be Love among us, and so that You might remove those things we do that hurt one another for self-gain.

“Father, we know that the real meaning of eating of Christ, of coming into harmony with Jesus, is found only inside the Church, inside the commitment of friendship, inside honesty of heart towards one another.

“Father, we know that Your purpose for Word and Spirit together is that we might reveal You to all as our love and respect for one another. Therefore, Father, we ask that You cause us to walk only in the light, that we might KNOW Jesus Sent into us as every Word that You are and by Your Spirit.

“Father, we know that the greatest issue of the highest heavens is our relationships together. For there alone is an invisible God seen and known inside Your creation. Therefore, Father, we ask that You give us the grace of Your knowing, that we might humble ourselves before one another for the sake of one another.

“Father, we would be Your firstfruits, we would know Word and Spirit, we would love one another.”