Trumpet Ministries The Feasts of the Lord
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The seven feasts of the Lord are an illustration that can be used to describe the program of salvation. Back to FIFTY-TWO KINGDOM TOPICS
The feasts and their symbolism is as follows:
Passover tells us of the blood of the Lamb that protects us when the destroyer executes the Divine judgment.
Unleavened bread shows that God wants us to repent of our sinful ways and to be baptized in water as a sign we are leaving the spirit of the world and are ready to walk in newness of life.
Firstfruits speaks of the born-again experience in which a firstfruits of our personality, our inward nature, comes alive and is brought up to abide in Christ at the right hand of God.
Pentecost symbolizes the outpouring of the Spirit of God on us. The two loaves of wheat baked with leaven remind us of the portion of the Spirit given on the Day of Pentecost, and then of the double portion of the Spirit that is to be poured out in the last days—the latter-rain outpouring.
This is as far as we have come in the Church Age. The last three feasts will be fulfilled spiritually during the period from now until the Lord returns.
The Blowing of Trumpets announces the coming of the Lord of Hosts to declare war on Satan, beginning with Satan's influence in the Church.
The Day of Atonement foretells the time when Jesus Christ deals with the worldliness, lust, and self-will in His people. We think the Day of Atonement has begun and will extend throughout the thousand-year Kingdom Age.
The Feast of Tabernacles shows us that God's ultimate intention is to dwell in people, not just with them.
Because we are leaving Pentecost and entering the last three feasts, we are encountering the spiritual fulfillment of the Blowing of Trumpets. This means there will be increasing emphasis on spiritual warfare as Jesus descends to confront His enemies.
You may be in a church in which the music is becoming militant. There are songs about God being a man of war; about the Lord Jesus coming on His great war stallion followed by His saints clothed in white. We are being taught in the newer choruses about the Lord of Battles.
We also are hearing about Joel's army. We of the churches have been an undisciplined mob up to the present hour. We went where we desired and did pretty much as we wanted. If we despised the pastor we told him so and left the assembly and went where we pleased.
For those on whom the hand of the Lord is resting, the day of such willful behavior is over. Either we will obey the Lord strictly and those whom He places over us, or else we will be left behind as the cloud and the fire move forward.
The Day of Atonement is the day of reconciliation. We have been reconciled to God legally through the blood of the cross. Now it is time to be reconciled to God in our personality.
If we are worldly we cannot have fellowship with God. God is not at all pleased with the spirit of the world. We cannot love God and at the same time love the spirit of the world, finding our survival and security in the things of this life.
If we are full of the lusts and passions of the flesh, we cannot have fellowship with God. God is Light. He will not have fellowship with moral darkness. If we would draw near to God we must be holy as He is holy, not by imputation but by actual spiritual cleanliness of thought, speech, and action. The Holy Spirit is able to produce such holiness in us if this is what we desire and will pursue.
If we are moved by our self-will, self-centeredness, self-seeking, self-love, we cannot possibly have fellowship with God. God has given a cross for each one of us to bear. If we will bear our cross patiently, remaining in the prisons in which God places us, our self-will shall be destroyed and we will press into untroubled rest in the Father through the Lord Jesus.
But if we refuse to deny ourselves, refuse to give to God our idols when He asks for them, insist on having our own way, force our way out of all the prisons the Lord provides in order to destroy our self-will, then we cannot in any manner enter the Kingdom of God. We can pray to Jesus, use faith, ask for grace and mercy, read the Bible continually, and wait on the Lord all night. But until we are willing to yield to God and do things His way we are a destructive force in the universe. We will slander those who love Jesus.
The original sin was Satan's self-will. His self-assertion is the source of all other sin. As long as we are alive in our own will, even our Christian or ministerial will, we will destroy the work of God all around us. We can speak in tongues, prophesy, work miracles, all in the name of Jesus. Thousands of souls may make a profession of faith in Christ. But in that Day we will hear, "Depart from me."
The greatest problem of Christianity of every age is the self-will of the ministry and the people. It is self-will that caused the death of the millions of martyrs who refused to bow to the demands of the popes, priests, and Catholic and Protestant kings and queens. It is self-will that produces turmoil and division in the little store-front church.
Until we are willing to permit God to crucify our self-will we are an enemy of God and man.
The primary characteristic of the individual who is walking in the life of the adamic nature is his insistence on having his own way. He will have a childish tantrum if his desires are thwarted.
"Not My will but Thine be done."
The seventh and last celebration, the feast of Tabernacles, portrays the will of God for all mankind. It is that God dwell in every person.
The mystery of the Gospel is Christ in us, not Christ with us.
The Father's house is Jesus Christ. There are many place of abiding in this house, many rooms. Christ went to the cross, and then to Heaven that we might live in God and He in us.
If I understand the Scriptures, some people will reap Christ a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. How much of Christ we reap depends on two factors, as I see it: first, our Divine calling; second, our willingness to be pruned.
I picture the new world of righteousness as being inhabited by four basic kinds of people: those who have reaped Christ one hundredfold; those who have reaped Christ sixtyfold; those who have reaped Christ thirtyfold; and finally those who are lost forever to the Presence of Christ.
If I am correct, the Church, the elect, the new Jerusalem comprises the hundredfold and sixtyfold. The saved nations, who are the inheritance of the Church are the thirtyfold. The lost have no part of Christ. They have chosen to reject Christ in favor of being able to pursue their own will.
Christ is seen to be in everyone (except the lost) in the new world, and God in Christ. All is subject to Christ. Christ is subject to God, as the Scripture teaches.
I think this is what the Scripture means by saying there is "no more sea." I believe this means there will be no people in the Kingdom who do not have a portion of God in them; no more mass of the wicked who can be driven by self-seeking leaders.
It seems to me that in our day God is emphasizing the hundredfold—those who have a passion for the holiness of God, who want only to dwell in the center of the consuming Fire of Israel. It is well to have a genuine passion to dwell in the fullness of the Fire of God's Person, a hunger that cannot be measured; a thirst that cannot be quenched, at least for now. We must have more and more and more of God's holiness. This is a gift well worth desiring—an utter passion to do God's will to the fullest.
How does God dwell in us? Remember, Jesus Christ is the house of God and the only house of God. We can only be the house of God to the extent Christ dwells in us.
First Christ must be conceived and formed in us through the travail of the ministries of the Body of Christ. Then the Father and Christ as Persons come and dwell in the Substance of Christ that has been formed in us. We will have to possess a glorified body, I believe, before we will be able to receive the fullness of God and Christ.
Thus we are being made the eternal temple of God, the chariot of God through which He can move throughout His creation.
Those who overcome the challenges placed before them, in the present hour, will receive all the rewards mentioned in the first and second chapters of the Book of Revelation. Actually these are not gifts that will be handed to us at some later time. They are abilities we are gaining today, to a great extent. They are steps in our progress toward attaining to the first resurrection from the dead.
Let us think then of the pattern of the spiritual fulfillments of the last three of the feasts of the Lord:
We are entering the Blowing of Trumpets, the beginning of the attack on the enemy. The Lord is changing from the good Shepherd of the Twenty-third Psalm to the Lord, strong and mighty in battle of the Twenty-fourth Psalm. This is taking place now.
The fulfillment of the Day of Atonement also is upon us. We supposed that the sin question had been settled when we came to the cross. Indeed, the question of the guilt of our sins was settled. But the removal of the power sin has over us is just now beginning. It actually is a manifestation of the Judgment Seat of Christ.
If we are willing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit we can pass through the Judgment Seat and be prepared to be changed into glory when the Lord appears.
But if we cling to our worldliness, lust, and self-will, we will not be prepared to be changed into glory when the Lord appears. We will suffer much in the days ahead because we are not dwelling in the secret place of the Most High and therefore not under God's protection.
It means vastly more to be a true Christian than currently is presented in the Christian churches in the United States of America. The truth is, we are badly backslidden and need to return to the Lord.
The feast of Tabernacles is beginning now as Christ is being formed in us. The Church is in travail that Christ might be formed in the members of His Body. But the fullness of Tabernacles, which is the coming of the Father and the Son to dwell forever in that which has been formed in us, and the final filling of our body with the incorruptible Life of the Holy Spirit of God, may be a bit ahead of us. But the all important preparation must take place now. The fullness of the Tabernacles experience cannot be experienced in one dramatic moment. It requires the step by step progress that occurs as we pass through the spiritual fulfillments of the preceding six feasts. Yet, for all of that, we have all the feasts when we have Christ. It is a matter of working out that which we already possess.
It is though God has freely given us a grand piano. Now we have to learn how to play it.
We may think of the fulfillment of the seven feasts as being a spiral staircase. We keep ascending, but we keep coming back to the same feast, but now on a higher level. I know the blood of Passover is more real to me than ever before; repentance and water baptism are more meaningful; the born-again experience is more comprehensive.
We are not climbing rungs on a ladder, we are experiencing more and more of the one Lord Jesus Christ.
The understanding of "Christ in you" began with me in the late 1940s. It remains as the centerpiece of my doctrine. All that God has done with me over the last fifty years has been an unfolding of that one glorious revelation.
I remember when a distinguished elder taught us there was more to come after Pentecost. I was so lifted up at the thought that I actually had an out of body experience while sitting in my Greek class in Bible school, if you can imagine. I had to make myself come back down from the ceiling into my body so I could remember the Greek lesson I had studied diligently.
Those were glorious days, but today the revelation of Christ is much, much more glorious. I hope it is that way with you.
Speak to the Israelites and say to them: "These are my appointed feasts, the appointed feasts of the LORD, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies." (Leviticus 23:2)
Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the LORD empty-handed: (Deuteronomy 16:16)
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:11,12)
The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. (Matthew 13:41)