Messiah’s Return in the Feasts of the Lord:
The Spring Feasts
What if Jesus’s first coming is only a hint at what might happen at Messiah’s return? What if a blueprint for what’s coming lies hidden in the seven Feasts of the Lord?
In my previous post, I demonstrated some of the ways he began fulfilling what the feasts promised. This time, we’ll focus on what he has left to accomplish in the last days. And since John’s spectacular vision on the Island of Patmos gives the most panoramic view of end-time prophecies, we’ll rely heavily on his account.
The book of Revelation can be challenging to read because the vision (or series of visions) he was trying to describe was multi-dimensional and enormous in scope. In presenting a full picture, John sometimes deviated from a chronological narrative and inserted flashbacks or more details about certain portions of the vision.
John faced the age-old difficulty of describing a proverbial elephant to someone who’s never seen one before. He could only illustrate one portion of the vision at a time, so one minute he was painting a picture of the beast’s head, and the next he focused on its tail, or belly, or legs. Only when we understand how all its parts fit together do we get a more complete picture of the vision and understand what it’s meant to depict.
If we look at the book of Revelation in overview, however, we can at least see the seven feasts appear throughout Jesus’s return.
More Passover to Come
Jesus appeared as the Lamb of God in his first coming. But there was more to the original Passover than the meal and the blood. It took fourteen chapters of Exodus to fully tell the story. And most of that space had to do with a great battle between the God of Israel and the gods of Egypt in the form of ten plagues. We don’t know exactly how long it took to get through them all, but by the time the tenth hit, the nation of Egypt was in a shambles. On the Passover when Jesus died, the only events that could be described as plagues were a couple of earthquakes and a few hours of darkness. These hardly measure up to the Exodus account.
In the book of Revelation, plagues reappear as part of an end-time prophecy. And the way John described them, it’s clear they’ll arrive in exponentially more powerful, widespread, and terrifying forms than during the first Passover.
While the water of a single river turned to blood in Exodus, all the water on earth—both salt and fresh—goes foul in John’s vision. The plagues that ruined the crops and livestock of a single nation in Exodus hardly compare to the worldwide loss of vegetation and animal life during Messiah’s return. Firstborn sons were the only human casualties in Exodus. But in Revelation, more than a third of mankind dies. The darkness that overshadowed one nation during the first Passover pales in comparison to the darkness that eclipses the Antichrist’s entire kingdom when Jesus comes again.
Jeremiah warned we can expect something more startling than the Exodus account with Messiah’s return. “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.’” (Jeremiah 16:14-15). A few chapters later, in Jeremiah 23, he repeats his prophecy almost word for word.
In other words, God’s fame will come more from what he’s about to do than from what he’s done so far. I think something like Passover on steroids is yet to come.
Unleavened Bread
The Feast of Unleavened Bread originated as a memorialization of Israel’s hasty departure from Egypt. But it also seems to relate to trusting in God’s faith and provision. For example, Israel might have starved in the desert. Instead, God taught them an object lesson in trust by providing the manna every morning. And Jesus might have lain in the tomb forever after entering on the opening of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But he firmly believed God would fulfill his promise to raise him from the dead. Where do we see the need for such trust at Messiah’s return?
The Antichrist in Revelation 13 requires a mark on everyone’s hand or forehead if they want to buy or sell. It’s a brazen challenge to recognize him as the great provider. Believers will have to decide whether to lean on him for their daily bread, or step into the wilderness of faith and trust Jehovah Jireh for his miraculous provision.
Messiah’s Return and the Feast of First Fruits
A key ritual for the Feast of First Fruits was waving a newly-ripened barley sheaf before the Lord (See a previous post). As the first of the grains to mature, barley represented the opening salvo of the coming harvest and held a strong symbolic connection to the nation of Israel (Judges 7:13-14).
Israel should not have survived plunging into the desert after the first Passover, loaded down with herds of cattle and flocks of children. Instead, they walked through the waters of the Red Sea and up the opposite bank into a new life as a nation. Neither should Jesus have escaped the tomb. Yet that’s what he did on the Feast of First Fruits.
The book of Revelation hints at the Feast of First Fruits in the fourteenth chapter, when 144,000 chosen Jews appear alive and well. Having refused the mark of the beast, they stand undeterred on Mount Zion alongside the returning Messiah. These are the first fruits of Israel—gathered in like the barley sheaf of the Feast of First Fruits.
The destruction of Egypt’s army after Israel walked safely through the Red Sea, becomes but a prelude to the pouring out of God’s wrath on Babylon in Revelation 14:8. The waves of judgment smashing the kingdom of the Antichrist will far surpass those that surged against Egypt in Exodus.
Four feasts remain in the harvest cycle. How will they appear in the end times? How much greater will their fulfillment be with Messiah’s return to earth. Stay tuned for upcoming posts.
Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t done so already, then check that you received an email confirmation.