Christ has already kept four of Israel’s appointed feasts, to the day. Three remain on the calendar — and they are not decorations.
Most Christians read Leviticus 23 the way you read the terms of service. Eyes moving, nothing landing. A chapter of ancient agricultural observances belonging to a nation that is not yours, from a system that is finished.
But look at what the chapter calls them. Not holidays. Not even festivals, exactly. The Hebrew is moedim — appointed times, fixed meetings. And the LORD does not say they are Israel’s feasts. He says something far more pointed:
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.
Leviticus 23:2 (KJV)
My feasts. These are appointments God made with Himself, and Israel was told when to show up. That single word changes what the chapter is. It is not a liturgical schedule. It is a calendar of divine intentions.
Four Kept Already, and Kept Precisely
Here is the fact that should stop you. The four spring feasts were not fulfilled approximately. They were fulfilled on their own days.
- Passover. The lamb is killed. Christ our passover is sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). He dies on Passover.
- Unleavened Bread. Leaven is the picture of corruption; the bread is set apart without it. His body goes into the ground and does not corrupt (Acts 2:31).
- Firstfruits. The first sheaf of the harvest is waved before the LORD on the day after the sabbath. He rises. Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming (1 Corinthians 15:23).
- Pentecost. Fifty days later, two loaves baked with leaven are waved. The Spirit falls, and the church — Jew and Gentile, sinners both — is born (Acts 2).
Four appointments. Four kept, in order, on the day, without a miss. Then the calendar goes quiet. Between Pentecost in late spring and the next feast there is a long summer gap — the longest gap in the whole cycle. And the church has been living in that gap ever since.
Now ask the obvious question, and be honest about it. If a man kept four appointments precisely, and three remain on the same calendar, in the same order, what is the reasonable expectation about the three?
Paul Says the Shadow Is Still Casting Forward
Some object here — did not Paul tell the Colossians to stop letting anyone judge them over feast days? He did. And notice the reason he gives:
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Colossians 2:16–17 (KJV)
Read the tense. He does not say the feasts were a shadow of things that came. He says they are a shadow of things to come. The observance is not binding on you. The meaning has not expired. A shadow is cast by a solid object, and the object is Christ — which means every unfulfilled feast is a shadow still lying across the ground, thrown by something that has not yet arrived.
So do not keep the feasts. Do read them. They tell you what He intends to do.
The Three That Remain
Trumpets. The autumn cycle opens with a day of blowing — a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation (Leviticus 23:24). A convocation is a summoning. And when the New Testament describes the gathering of the church to Christ, it reaches for exactly that sound: the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (1 Corinthians 15:52); the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God (1 Thessalonians 4:16). A day of summoning. A gathering by trumpet. That is not a strained connection; that is the same image.
Atonement. Ten days later, the most solemn day of the year — a day of affliction of soul, when the nation confesses and the high priest goes into the holiest place. Israel has never yet done nationally what that day pictures: looked at the One who was pierced and mourned. But Zechariah says the day is coming when it will: they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him (Zechariah 12:10). A national day of atonement is still on the calendar.
Tabernacles. Then, five days after the mourning, the feast of dwelling — booths, ingathering, the harvest home, seven days of joy. And the prophet does not describe it as a memory. He describes it as the future practice of the whole earth:
And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.
Zechariah 14:16 (KJV)
Summons. Mourning. Then God dwelling with men and the nations coming up to Jerusalem. That is not a random sequence. That is the shape of everything the prophets promised, laid out in a calendar God gave Moses before Israel had a land to plant it in.
Now the Discipline: Do Not Set a Date
Here is where this teaching goes wrong every single autumn, and it has gone wrong for decades. A man sees the pattern, gets excited, and concludes that because Trumpets pictures the gathering, the gathering must occur on a Feast of Trumpets — and then he picks a year.
Stop. The pattern tells you the shape of what is coming. It does not hand you a year, and Scripture forbids the leap:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Matthew 24:36 (KJV)
Every date that has ever been set has failed, and each failure has cost the church credibility it did not have to spare. Worse, date-setting quietly reverses the doctrine it claims to defend. Imminence means He could come at any moment. A predicted date means He could not come until then — which is precisely the servant’s error in the next chapter, the one who says in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming (Matthew 24:48).
Hold both. The calendar is real. The date is not yours.
What This Is Supposed to Do to You
Prophecy in Scripture is never given as entertainment. It is given to produce something in the man who reads it. And what the unfulfilled feasts should produce is a very specific posture: readiness that does not need a countdown.
You are living in the summer gap. That is the plain fact of your situation. Four appointments kept, three pending, and no announcement of which morning the trumpet sounds. The whole point of an appointment you did not schedule is that you stay ready for it.
So let this land where it should land. Not in speculation about a year. In the unglamorous question of whether the way you are living this week is the way you would want to be found living.
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.
1 John 3:3 (KJV)
The Feast He Is Waiting For
There is one more thing in this that is easy to miss. On the night before Passover was fulfilled in Him, Christ took the cup and said He would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until He drank it new with them in His Father’s kingdom (Matthew 26:29).
He is keeping an appointment too. He has a meal He has not yet eaten, and He said so out loud, and He has been waiting on it for two thousand years.
The feasts that remain are not a code to crack. They are a promise with a shape. The One who kept four of them on the day will keep three more on the day, and the last of them is a homecoming with a table in it — and the invitation went out long before you were interested.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist