The Feasts of the LORD:                                                                                                          God’s Prophetic Timetable for the First and Second Coming of Jesus Christ

If you have been a Christian for any amount of time, you have no doubt heard it said that Jesus could come back at any time and no one knows the day or the hour when He will return. This is true in some respects, but not in others. What matters is what you understand as ‘any time’ and how you interpret the ‘day or hour’ that Jesus was referring to when He spoke those words in Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:36.

Before we take a look at how those phrases should be interpreted, we need to take a look at something that is repeated several times in the Bible and are the very words of Jesus in the book of Revelation, and that is that Jesus said He is ‘coming soon.’ In the last book of the Bible, in the last chapter of that book, Jesus says three times in Revelation 22 that He is coming back soon –

“And behold, I am coming soon.” (Rev 22:7, ESV)

“Behold, I am coming soon,” (Rev 22:12, ESV)

“Surely, I am coming soon.” (Rev 22:20, ESV)

In case we didn’t get it the first two times, Jesus said He is ‘Surely’ coming soon. Other versions of the Bible use the word ‘quickly’ instead of soon, which gives the meaning of those statements an even greater sense that Jesus could return at any time.

One of the writers of the New Testament, the apostle Paul, also believed Jesus could come back soon, possibly even during his lifetime. When Paul was talking about the return of Jesus from heaven in 1st Thessalonians he said, “…we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17a, NLT) Paul was including himself as possibly being alive at the second coming of Christ. Obviously that didn’t happen, as we are nearly two thousand years later from when Paul wrote his letter to the church at Thessalonica, but the idea that Jesus could return soon has been a big part of the message of the church from way back then until now.

So what’s changed, and why hasn’t Jesus come back yet? Well, nothing has

changed regarding God’s prophecies in His Word, the Bible; those haven’t changed. What’s changed is through the benefit of being able to study the history of the last two thousand years (during which Jesus has not returned yet), our understanding of those prophecies in the Bible has increased because we can see things that happened (and didn’t happen) over that amount of time, and start to plug in the missing links that were not available to the authors of the Bible, like the apostle Paul.

Paul did not understand things like the destruction of Jerusalem was only a few years away (70AD) and that the people of Israel would be dispersed over the entire world for the next 1900 years, only to be re-formed as a nation again on May 14th, 1948. In a single day no less! Fulfilling a prophecy from Isaiah 66:8-9 that God would cause the nation of Israel to be reborn in a single day. God used the United States in His plan to do this, and to later sustain the nation of Israel as well. I would recommend if you haven’t already, to see the article I wrote about that here - Israel, the Nation Born in a Day | Crossmap Blogs

Paul didn’t know other things, like the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersing of the people Israel over the next 1900 years, or he wouldn’t have included himself as possibly being alive at the second coming of Christ. But now, with the benefit of being able to study the last two thousand years and see how many of God’s prophecies have been fulfilled, we can make a better determination as to when Jesus might return again.

We must do this with caution, however, as anyone who claims they know exactly when Jesus will return, meaning the day or hour, can automatically be considered a false prophet because that’s what God’s Word says in Matthew 24:36 - no one knows. “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angles of heaven, but My Father only.” (NKJV) So where does that leave us? Well, in a pretty good position actually.

Again, with the benefit of hindsight, we can know we are in the end times because we are seeing so many of the things Jesus talked about happening shortly before His return (which have not happened over the last two thousand years). Along with the coup de gras, where Jesus made reference to when Israel was a nation again the season for his return was near. For an in depth look at this subject, I recommend reading chapter 1 in the book How Much Time Has God Given This World, the book is available here – awareofthetimes.com

So we’ve covered the day and hour (kind of, more on that in a minute). What about ‘any time’? That’s where the feasts of the LORD help tremendously.

The feasts of the LORD were given to the people of Israel in Leviticus chapter 23, and were to be observed every year at certain times as celebrations to the LORD. The seven feasts were Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of First Fruits, the Feast of Weeks (Shavout), the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot).

The first four feasts occurred in the spring and the last three in the fall. This is very important to this discussion and to the understanding of ‘any time’ because, here’s the thing. The people of Israel followed these feasts as appointed religious festivals for thousands of years (to be faithful to God who gave them) but they never understood the hugely significant role the feasts would play in the first and second coming of Jesus the Messiah.

What we can see now, that they could not see then, is that the Feasts of the LORD foretold of a time when Jesus was going to fulfill each one them, to the day, through His death on the cross and resurrection. Jesus has already fulfilled the first four feasts in His first coming, and He will fulfill the last three feasts in His second coming. I will explain this.

The feast of Passover says on a certain day (10th of Nisan on Jewish calendar) to select a lamb, without defect, bring it into the home, observe it for four days to make sure it is not ill, but also because God wanted the families to bond with it. Then four days later the lamb had to be sacrificed and parts of it were eaten as part of the Passover meal which celebrates when God brought Israel out of slavery from Egypt.

Jesus, who is called the Lamb of God, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey on the 10th of Nisan (we know this was the date from history) and became the Lamb selected to be slain for the sins of the world, yours and mine. Four days later, on the 14th of Nisan, He was killed on the cross.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread starts the very next day, 15th of Nisan, and is a time where Israelites must get leaven out of their homes. The symbolism here is leaven is often times associated with sin in the Bible (Matthew 16:6, Mark 8:15, Luke 12:1, 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 are a few examples)

Jesus was the perfect, sinless sacrificial Lamb of God, there was no sin (symbolized by leaven this feast) in Jesus (1 Peter 2:22, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15 among other proofs)

The Feast of First Fruits is always on the day after the Sabbath day that follows Passover. The Sabbath day in Israel is always on Saturday on our calendar, so the Feast of First Fruits is always on a Sunday, and it was a day for Israel to celebrate the spring barley harvest.

Jesus rose from the dead on that first Sunday after He was crucified on the cross and won a harvest of souls that continues to this day through faith in Him.

The Feast of Weeks takes place 50 days after the Feast of First Fruits and is where the Israelites would be required to bring their first fruit offerings to the LORD in the form of grain and flour made into bread.

Pentecost, where the church was born in Acts chapter 2, took place exactly 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead, and was when the Bread of Life, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, was poured out into the hearts of those three thousand people who believed that day, and in every person since that time, who calls on Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

So, since Jesus fulfilled the first four Feasts of the LORD to the day, He will most certainly fulfill the last three feasts to the day as well.

The next feast is the Feast of Trumpets, and that feast was in the fall on the first day of the seventh month, which was always on a new moon, and is in September or October on the non-Jewish calendar. The feast has very little explanation in the Bible, other than it is a solemn day of rest. But what is most important to point out is it is started with the blowing of the Shofar, which is a trumpet, hence the name Feast of Trumpets.

A lot of people who study Bible eschatology believe this feast corresponds to the rapture of the church, spoken of by the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, because Paul talks about the blowing of a trumpet before this occurs. But whether you believe in the church being taken to heaven before God pours out His wrath on the world or not, the next feast is most likely when Christ is going to return to fulfill the final three feasts of the LORD. This is because it is the only one that corresponds with a date that really isn’t known, and is consistent with Jesus’ statement that no one knows the exact day or hour. Here’s what I mean by that.

In ancient Israel, Passover could be pushed back 30 days if it was obvious the barley wasn’t ready to be harvested, which is also how Israel knew when it was time to add a thirteenth month to make up for their calendar that follows the lunar cycle and not the sun. They were always a few days short of the solar year and had to correct for that every few years by adding a thirteenth month to their calendar called Adar II; and keeping track of when the barley was to be harvested was how they did it.

That is probably way too much information for you right now, but this assures that what Jesus said about no one knowing the day or hour is correct because they do not grow barley in Jerusalem anymore, so they cannot possibly know what new moon in the fall each year (there are three) is the correct one to celebrate. We see Rosh Hashanah on our calendar every year but the truth is they don’t know for sure if it’s the correct new moon or not (only God knows).

What does all this mean for us? Well, the last three Feasts of the LORD were always in the fall, so Jesus will return in the fall. Not in the winter, spring or summer, but in the fall. I’ve read more than one book where the author states Jesus could return before you finish reading this sentence. Well, no. Not unless you are reading it in the fall; and not unless it’s around the time when one of the three new moons in the fall is about to occur.

We just passed the last new moon of the fall this year on Nov 1st, 2024, so Jesus is not coming back until the fall of next year at the earliest; you’ve got at least nine more months before Jesus possibly returns next fall. If you want to do a deeper study into this subject that takes a look at a possible group of years, or by this year kind of scenario, chapter two of How Much Time Has God Given This World talks about that, available here – awareofthetimes.com