God’s Great and Magnificent Plan by Rory Ries
Have you ever heard of the seven annual Holy Days? If you have, can you name all seven? God has given his children a beautiful blessing and the blessing is knowing about the Holy Days and being able to keep them each passing year. They start in the spring and they end in the fall. They are associated with harvests and there is much rejoicing and celebrating that takes place with each Holy Day. Each one is listed in your Bible and there are specific instructions from God when we are to keep them and what we are to do on each day. We start with the weekly Sabbath (Leviticus 23:1-3). The weekly Sabbath is a delight and is considered a Feast day. It is not a day of do’s and don’ts like the Pharisees’s tried to turn it into during the time Christ walked on this earth. Christ set the example in many places how we are to view the weekly Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28, Mark 3:1-5, and Luke 6:1-5). The weekly Sabbath is a Holy Day in itself, and just think, we get 52 of them every year. We are also to go out into the world and proclaim the weekly Sabbath for the whole world to come and rejoice.The seven annual Holy Days are listed throughout Leviticus 23:4-44. We are instructed to keep them at their appointed times which means you actually have an appointment with God. It’s no different when you make an appointment to visit the doctor or dentist. You normally mark it down on a calendar so you don’t forgets. Then when the day comes you go to your appointment. God is the same. He is a loving Father and He has marked down on His calendar the days we are to meet with Him.
God has given us His calendar and when the day that is marked arrives we prepare to worship Him on that day and we meet with those who think the same way. We have a Holy Convocation which is simply having a church service, the assembling of those who belong to Christ. As you may be aware of there is usually a lot of excitement and a lot of energy at these Holy Convocations, especially for the 8 days we spend at the Feast of the Tabernacles. Not only is it a time of great fun and excitement, it is a time where we can learn more about God and Jesus Christ.
God has a great plan and it is being worked out right now at this present time. Each Holy Day pictures a great event that has taken place or will take place in the near future (Colossians 2:16-17). Each Holy Day also points to Christ. It all starts with Passover which is in the spring and ends with the Last Great Day in the fall. Only those who have become baptized can partake of the bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper. The Last Great Day is for everyone and it pictures all of mankind having the opportunity to know who Christ is. God started this plan with a small number (Genesis 12:1) and it will grow into all of humanity when He has completed all things and all things will be reconciled to Him (Colossians 1:20).
Adam and Eve were given instructions to multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). God’s name used there in Genesis actually means family (Genesis 1:1). God is the Father and we are His children. God is seeking godly offspring (Malachi 2:15). He is family oriented and His Holy Days are part of His plan . When we keep His Holy Days they are a reminder to us what He is going to do here. Isn’t that awesome news? God is giving you everything you need to become a child of His.
Many have asked why then doesn’t the world keep these Holy Days? We mentioned before how God is working with the few (1 Peter 2:9). He is not trying to save the whole world at this time. The world has been held captive and is being deceived (Revelation 12:9 and 2 Corinthians 4:3-4). The church is being judged today (1 Peter 4:17) while the world will be judged at another time (Revelation 20:11). The world has rejected the Holy Days and have incorporated heathen practices that have been going on for thousands of years.
Man has changed Passover to Easter. Instead of rejoicing before the Lord for eight days during the Feast of Tabernacles man decided to create Halloween and worship the dead. If you really look close you can see how Satan has tried to counterfeit everything good God has created. God loves children and what does Satan do? Satan promotes abortion. God gave man the beautiful institution of marriage and Satan promotes divorce. God gives man and woman the blessing of marital sex and Satan promotes fornication and adultery. God’s way produces beautiful fruit and Satan’s lies produce misery and suffering.
Satan has even convinced the world these Holy Days have been nailed to the cross. Your sins, along with mine, were nailed to the cross and the sacrificial system that was set up for ancient Israel. All of the disciples kept the Holy Days long after Christ had died ( 1 Corinthians 11:23-28, 1 Corinthians 5:8, Acts 2:1, Acts 12:3, Acts 18:21, Acts 20:6, and Acts 27:9). The early Christian church did the same as they followed Christ. Christ’s true church today is practicing the things Christ taught when he was here in the flesh and even today as he leads his followers.
Check out the Holy Days. If you already know about them that’s great, then go out and proclaim them to the rest of the world so they can see what it is they are missing. Here is another opportunity our Heavenly Father has given us where we can use the time to get to know Him better and develop a lasting relationship with not only Him but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That is something worth proclaiming and shouting out with great joy.
Q: The Sabbath is not mentioned in any of the lists of evils or lists of virtues in the New Testament. Doesn’t this suggest that the Fourth Commandment is no longer in force? A: It is a mistake to view the New Testament as a “systematic theology” or “statement of beliefs” or “creed” compiled by the apostles for the purpose of providing church members with an exposition on all the laws, commandments, and doctrines of the New Covenant. The church already had access to the Old Testament, and believed it to be “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).One reason the Sabbath is rarely mentioned in the epistles is that there was no conflict over which day to keep, or whether to keep it. At first, the church was entirely Jewish. Aside from the Samaritans, who were also Sabbathkeepers, the earliest non-Jewish Christians were people biblical historians describe as “God-fearers.” They were gentiles who, though uncircumcised, worshiped the God of the Hebrews. Many of them first heard the gospel while in the synagogue on the Sabbath day (see Acts 13:1416, 26,3845; 14:1; 16:13,14; 17:24; 18:4). Thus, the church, from its foundation, was a Sabbath-keeping church.
The silence of the New Testament epistles on the subject of the Sabbath, if anything, supports the Sabbathkeepers’ position. Had the church with its Jewish leaders, thousands of Jewish converts, and growing number of God-fearing gentilesnot been keeping the Sabbath, it is extremely doubtful that we would find such silence in the New Testament. Surely the Pharisaic believers who caused such a stir over circumcision (Acts 15) would have vigorously and loudly voiced their objection had the early Christians abandoned the Sabbath. Yet, no such objection is recorded in the New Testament.
Large sections of the Old Testament make no mention of the Sabbath, though we know that the Sabbath was in full force and was being observed during the times those sections were written. Therefore, New Testament silence on this subject by no means indicates that the apostles and early Christians regarded the Fourth Commandment as obsolete.
Q: I have read of the church keeping the feast days as well as the Sabbath days, and have accepted these teachings. However, after reading Galatians 4:9,10, I am having trouble with why we are to keep these days. Is Paul saying we are not to be bound by the festivals and Sabbaths set forth under the law if we are in Christ? A: Paul writes, “But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain” (Galatians 4:811).Since the problem was that some of the Galatian believers were being persuaded to adopt some form of Judaism as a means of salvation or spiritual perfection, many have thought that the “days and months and seasons and years” were the Sabbaths, new moons, festivals, and sabbatical years described in the Law of Moses. But let’s remember that Judaism is not precisely the same as the Law of Moses, or religion of the Old Testament. Some forms of Judaism revised the Law considerably, and picked up certain pagan elements along the way. Daniel G. Reid states, “From Second Temple Judaism there comes ample evidence of speculation about the universe and how the heavenly bodies were related to angels. The Book of the Heavenly Luminaries in 1 Enoch 7282, a work dating from perhaps the first century B.C., testifies to Jewish astrological ideas and the association of an angel, Uriel, with the stars. This is set within a context in which particular attention is paid to times and seasons” (Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 1993, p. 231, emphasis added).
These astrological beliefs were probably held by some Jewish sects during the time of the apostles. In all likelihood, the astrological “times and seasons” are the “days and months and seasons and years” Paul has in mind in Galatians 4:10. The apostle warns these former pagans that those who were taking up astrological observances common to certain Jewish and pagan religious sects were returning to the base and worthless elements they had served before they became believers in Jesus Christ.
Paul fully recognized the Christological significance of the weekly Sabbath and annual holy days. By no means was he condemning the observance of these divinely ordained institutions.
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