Seven feasts (or festivals) are set forth in the Law. Other Jewish holidays, such as Purim and Hannukah, were added later. In this post, I am going to explore the idea that the seven feasts foreshadowed Christ’s advents. The feasts naturally divide into two groups, the spring and fall feasts.
The Spring Feasts are a Type of his 1st Advent
They are: Passover, Unleavened bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost. These are all closely tied together.
Passover (Pesach) - The Jews take the lamb into their household for four days, inspecting it closely to assure themselves that it is whole and unblemished. (I’m imagining a mediterranean style house, with courtyards and such). It is thus certified as kosher (clean or without blemish) before slaughter. On the first Passover, its blood is placed on the door frame - sides and top with a sprig of hyssop. The destroying angel then passed over the houses that are thus marked. To commemorate that first Passover the unblemished lamb is eaten with unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and four (small) cups of wine. Since the new day starts with sunset in the Jewish calendar, the Passover feast takes place at the beginning of the day just after sunset.
Palm Sunday and the days following, Jesus is in the temple and Jerusalem. He is closely inspected and passes all the gotchas and criticisms they can throw at him. On the fourth day, he is taken into the High Priest’s household for a trial. Again, nothing can be found against him as the witnesses do not agree. He is taken before the Romans. Pilate questions him and has him scourged (a Roman interrogation technique.). Pilate finds no fault in him. Other nations taking part in this examination is symbolic that Christ is the Paschal lamb for all nations.
Jesus is slain, his limbs splayed out on a frame with his blood smeared on the sides (from the nails) and on the top (from the crown of thorns). The image this symbolism draws forth, when considered as being represented by the Passover, is Christ being the door that protects from death. He is the (door)Way from death to life. The New Testament most closely and most commonly associates Jesus with the Lamb (i.e. the Passover offering), and not the sin offering, or any of the other types of sacrifices.
Unleavened Bread - they get rid of all leavened bread in the house and eat matzah instead for seven days. (This symbolizes the haste at the first Passover, and incorruption and sinlessness later. Yeast is the same type of agent (bacteria) that decays a dead body.) While not in the Law it is a common tradition to have a meal to eat up all the leavened bread the day before and then carefully clean the house, so that even the smallest crumb of leavened bread has been removed before Passover starts.
Jesus is the sinless one, we must ‘eat of him’ to have eternal life. Not entirely sure what this means literally. I don’t think transubstantiation is it. If I were a Catholic, I would be inclined to think that the miracle of transubstantiation is also a symbol, not the real thing in itself.
First Fruits (Bikkurim) - this is a faith offering. The first ripening of the harvest is offered in gratitude with the faith and confidence that the whole harvest will be successful and gathered in its time.
Jesus’ Resurrection and the ‘many others’ mentioned are the first fruits. Their bodies were sown in the dust, and these first fruits sprang up from the dust. However, it is a faith offering, a token that the full harvest will come, even if there has now only been a few ‘first fruits’ that were resurrected.
Feast of weeks (Shavuot, Pentecost in Greek meaning 50 days) - seven weeks (week of weeks or 49 days is the Pentecost. This is one of the three pilgrimage feasts. It commemorates Moses receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai. A peace offering is made. It falls at the start of the wheat harvest, while First Fruits starts at the beginning of the barley harvest near Passover. Two loaves of wheat bread are offered.
The Christian fulfillment of this is receiving the spirit on Pentecost. The spirit is the new law and the new covenant. ‘The Holy Ghost will tell you all things which you should do.’ Moses ascended Mt. Sinai and brought back the Law. Christ ascended into heaven and sent down the second comforter. The Law Moses originally brought down was broken, when he saw them sacrificing to an Egyptian God. He went back up and got a lesser law to prepare Israel to receive the Law God really wanted for them. I am using Israel in the sense here of ‘chosen’ - God’s own particular people.
To be clear the Christian version is dated starting from Easter, not Passover, the old law having been fulfilled by Christ. Thus it falls a few days after Shavuot.
The Fall Feasts are a Type of His Second Coming
They are: Trumpets, The day of Atonement, and Tents. These are also all closely tied together in a sequence.
The Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah meaning New Year) - This is observed by blowing horns (it’s supposed to be rams horns (shofar), I think) and celebrate. God is said to appear in his role of the king of all creation. This begins the ten days of awe. The whole sequence of fall feasts is about a month long. It starts with the new moon, so it was also called ‘No Man Knows the Day or the Hour’, since the exact day of the new moon may vary with clouds and with (pre-modern) uncertainties about the lunar cycle. (The lunar cycle is on average 29.5 days but varies due to its elliptical shaped orbit.)
Two interpretations came to my mind: Moroni and his trumpet, i.e. proclaiming the gospel to the entire earth. The ten days of awe would be ‘the marvelous work and a wonder’. The other is the trumpets of the heavenly host as they approach the earth in the clouds. Or possibly we should see this as corresponding to the trumpets of the book of Revelation. God appearing in the role of a king makes me think of the prophecy of Zechariah 13 or Doctrine and Covenants 45.
<I’m guessing the second coming interpretation is the primary meaning while the Moroni trumpet foreshadows and is in preparation for this, and intentionally plays off of this type.>
Random thought: is there a Moroni statue on a temple somewhere that is blowing a ram’s horn trumpet? If Moroni is associated with this, I would expect something significant to have happened on the date: early September or late October.
The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) - A Day of fasting and repentance coming right after the feast of trumpets (5 days after the days of awe?).
On this day the High Priest changes his radiant priestly clothes for a plain white linen to symbolize repentance and humbling oneself before the Lord. He then sacrifices a bull and a ram (sin offering for himself and the priests respectively), then takes two goats, selects one by lot to sacrifice for the sins of the people and the other is designated the scapegoat and driven out into the wilderness to symbolized driving out sin from among the people. It concludes with blowing a horn. God is said to open the Book of Life and consider whose names should be in there based on the past year. Hebrews Chapter 10 refers to this sacrifice offered on the day of atonement, one of the few places in the New Testament where Jesus is compared to sacrifice other than the Passover Lamb. My assumption is they are all types of Him directly or indirectly, but the Passover lamb best typifies his first advent.
The word Kippur (Atonement) may be related to and share meaning with cover, as in a protection. (For example, the colloquial English ‘cover our asses’). Possibly related: “…and for your sins, ye have no cloak.”
Going with the Moroni interpretation above, this might be the day spoken of in Ether 9, when the church needs to wake up to the awful state they are in and the destruction hanging over them. But its primary significance is clearly Judgement Day.
The feast of Tents (Sukkot or Tabernacles, also called the last fruits) - five days after the day of atonement. They live in tents to remember living in the wilderness after being liberated from Egypt. While it’s not in the five books of Moses, some rabbinic writings indicate water rituals. Jesus’ invitation on the last great day of the festival to come to him and drink to have everlasting life may have been playing off of that. They make fire offerings for seven days. They take four different kinds of tree branches and wave them in a procession.
Tents (Tabernacles) could mean our mortal body or could mean temples. The meaning of our mortal body is they are a temporary dwelling place for our spirits during our earthly sojourn. The word ‘dwelt’ in the KJV is translated from a Hebrew verb derived from ‘tabernacle’, literally ‘to tent’. Given the spring of water bubbling up to everlasting life, I think this means the resurrection. The temporary homes (tents) that is our bodies become eternal.
The Tabernacle was the tent they carried through the wilderness to house the presence of God and the paraphernalia of their covenant with him. In other words, it’s a temple in a tent. A possible meaning of the festival is that temples dot the earth. Or perhaps the earth becomes a temple, i.e. the presence of the Lord fills the whole earth. He lives (dwells or tabernacles) among us again in the flesh.
The New Feast
New feasts were instituted throughout the history of the Israelite nation to commemorate important events. Hannukah for the deliverance during the Maccabee revolt. Purim for the deliverance made possible through Esther. For those Jews who were first to believe in Christ, it was natural to assume there would be a new feast associated with his death and resurrection. And indeed, there is, instituted by Him, himself. It is the ‘love feast’, Communion, Eucharist (thanksgiving), or ‘the sacrament’ in my church.
The Last Supper is when he deliberately establishes this new feast. But what to call it? The initial thought would be to call it a memorial, as per what Jesus said at the Last Supper and the sacrament prayer. But that doesn’t work because several of the feasts are memorials of one thing or another, and a memorial kind of implies he was dead, when the main point of it was the opposite was true - he was the man who lived, though completely, thoroughly dead. What they settled on was to call it by the new commandment that was associated with it - ‘to love on another’. Hence the name: ‘love feast’, or I suppose, “the feast of (brotherly) love". As this became mostly an ordinance and less of a feast, the name changed to reflect that in the various traditions. In the restoration church, ‘the sacrament’ (meaning the ordinance) highlights its importance as the most common, basic, and fundamental of all the ordinances and sacraments.