God's Holy Days as Prophecy

On June 11, 2008, at the Maranatha Chapel in San Diego, Pastor Ray Bentley interviewed Mark Biltz. Mark Biltz is the pastor at El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, WA. A webcast of the interview is here. Skip about 42 minutes into this church service to get to the beginning of the interview.

I wrote three articles concerning the topics covered in this interview. The material in these articles is derived almost entirely from this interview, and I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due: Mark Biltz for explaining so clearly and effectively the nature of God’s feast days as prophecy, and for discovering the relationship of the four total lunar eclipses and two solar eclipses in the years 2014 and 2015 to the feast days, and their implications, and Ray Bentley for conducting an excellent, very coherent, interview.

The three articles cover roughly these three topics:

1. God’s Feast Days as Prophecy;
2. Why we can expect the Rapture to occur on Rosh Hashanah (The Feast of Trumpets), and the Gentile Church’s misinterpretation of Jesus’ words concerning the timing of His coming; and
3. The findings of Mark Biltz (and others) regarding the eclipses in 2014 and 2015, and what they might tell us about the timing of the Lord’s return.

This is the first of these articles.

Genesis 1:14 says “And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years”. The Hebrew word translated as “signs” carries a connotation of being a signal for His coming or appearing. The word translated as “season” means “appointed times”, as in feasts, convocations, dress rehearsals, and assemblies. Therefore, God himself has told us that the sun and the moon were placed in the heavens to be signs and signals for us.

It is important to note that when God gave these feast days to Moses, He called them the Feasts of the Lord, not Feasts of Israel, or Feasts of the Jews. They are His. To man, this should emphasize their importance.

If there are signs and signals during the feast days, the signs and signals would be solar and lunar eclipses. An eclipse on a feast day is a sign that Heaven is intersecting with earthly history and something exceptional is about to happen. More on this in the third article in this series.

Mark Biltz views the festivals/feasts as dress rehearsals of what Israel is going to go through in the future. The seven feasts are all to be fulfilled in Jesus, all are pictures of Him. The First four are a type of the First Coming and have already been fulfilled; the last three are a type of the Second Coming and will be fulfilled soon.

In this article we will mostly discuss the first four of the seven feasts. These are Passover (Pesah), Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Weeks (also known as Passover).

Passover

Christians know Passover as the day the Angel of Death passed over the children of Israel in Egypt, because of the blood of a lamb over the door of the Israelite’s house. We also know Passover because our Lord, Jesus Christ, died for our sins on Passover. We know Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” The Passover lamb was offered to God to cover up the sins of Israel for the year. Jesus atoned for them forever.

The killing of the Passover lamb every year was a dress rehearsal of the death of Jesus on the cross. The Lord was bound to the cross the third hour of the day (9:00 AM). This is the time of the morning sacrifice. At this very time, the priest was binding the Passover lamb to the horns of the altar. Jesus died at the ninth hour of the day (3:00 PM). This is the time of the evening sacrifice. Jesus died at the very same time that the high priest was killing the Passover Lamb, fulfilling this prophecy!

Unleavened Bread

The Feast of Unleavened Bread is the next day after Passover, and celebrates the Israelites' release from slavery in Egypt. In the Bible, leavening (yeast) is used to represent sin, so unleavened means without sin. Jesus was without sin, and His body did not decay.

Firstfruits

The Feast of Firstfruits is three days after Passover. This is the day that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion. Imagine! The Jews had been celebrating the feast of Firstfruits for 1500 years before Jesus fulfilled it, for He is the firstfruits of the resurrection!

Weeks (Pentecost)

The first Pentecost was the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. On this day God killed 3,000 Israelites who sinned against God by worshiping the golden calf. After Jesus’ resurrection, on this day the Holy Spirit was poured out, first on the disciples, then on the 3,000 who were redeemed by receiving Jesus on that day. The Jews kept Pentecost for 1500 years before its fulfillment by the Holy Spirit on our Pentecost!

There is a gap in the feasts, known as the Summer Harvest. This symbolizes the 2000 years from the first coming to the second coming. It is a time of harvesting. We are somewhere near the end of the Summer Harvest. Now the time of the Gentiles is almost fulfilled.

The last three feasts are the Feasts of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and Tabernacles (Sukkot). We will discuss them in the next two articles.