The Feasts - Type and Antitype

LEVITICUS 23

PURPOSE

To reveal the Sacred Year and the meaning of its Feasts in the Proto-type and Anti-type

INTRODUCTION

3ANS 9 – 13 (The Answerer p. 9-13, by VTH)

“Question 50:

Can you tell us the Hebrew New Year's day, and the days of their sacred feasts, in terms of our Roman calendar?

Answer:

While leading the Hebrew host from bondage to freedom, the Lord was firmly establishing them in the truth of all things, including the truth of the day on which the year begins, of the day on which the month begins, and of the day on which the week begins. Obviously, the Hebrew religion had largely to do with the days of the week, of the month, and of the year……..

“ The Hebrews were forever to keep holy,

(1) not a seventh, but the seventh, day of each week, the Sabbath;

(2) the days from the fifteenth to the twenty-first day of the first month, the Passover week;

(3) the fiftieth day after the sheaf of the first fruits was offered, the Pentecost;

(4) the tenth day of the seventh month, the Atonement;

(5) the days from the fifteenth to the twenty-first day of the same month, the Feast of Tabernacles; and

(6) the feasts of the new moons. Thus the All-knowing One, He who created the heavenly bodies and knows the very moment He set them in motion to govern the day, the month, and the year, decreed that the holy feasts be observed in the very month and on the very day on which they were first ordained………

“…..And He appointed the "lights in the firmament. for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Gen. 1:14), by the movements of which He fixed each solar and each lunar date, so that it could never be lost sight of. Then to make doubly secure against such a loss. He "spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." Ex. 12:1, 2. Thus we see that His great and never erring timepiece for earth, the earth's own invariable movements, fix the day and the year; whereas the moon's revolving round the earth makes the months.”

Leviticus 23: 10, 11,14-17, 39

10. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:

11. And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.

14. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: [it shall be] a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

15. And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:

16. Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.

17. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; [they are] the firstfruits unto the LORD.

39. Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: on the first day [shall be] a sabbath, and on the eighth day [shall be] a Sabbath.”

3ANS. 10-11

“Thus we see that His great and never erring timepiece for earth, the earth's own invariable movements, fix the day and the year; whereas the moon's revolving round the earth makes the months. But the Roman New Year, January 1, finds its establishment, not in the movements of the solar system, but in the notions of mythology. Consequently, as the date does not coincide with either the vernal or the autumnal equinox, or with either the summer or the winter solstice, then should earth's inhabitants ever lose count of the day, and need to recover it, they would be helpless to do so. To prevent His people from bringing upon themselves such a catastrophe, and to have them intelligent as to the time the year begins, the Lord gave to Moses the sacred yearly calendar, which cannot be lost or miscalculated…..

…so long as the earth remains. He told him that the day which preceded the exodus was the fourteenth day of the first month; and that forever thereafter, they were to commemorate the Passover on that very night each year, the night following the fourteenth day. Thus was the Lord re- establishing the creation calendar, reaffirming that the year begins on the day of the vernal equinox, on which spring, the first season of the year, commences, and on which the sun and the moon were created (the fourth day from the beginning of creation)--the only point in time at which, in the very nature of things, the year could begin. And so it is that the Passover, the Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles (the three most important feasts in the year), besides other feasts, are controlled by the solar year and by the lunar month; the weekly Sabbath by the day on which creation began; and the year itself by the vernal equinox, the immovable sign-post…..

Beginning its first month of the year with the first new moon, at, or after, the vernal equinox, March 20-21, it puts the fourteenth day, that on which the Passover lamb was to be slain, on April 3. Once for all, is seen the utter impossibility of the Roman month's having the slightest thing to do with fixing the time of either the Passover or the sheaf offering, and thus not the slightest thing to do with reckoning the time of either the crucifixion or the resurrection of Christ. This is more graphically seen from the correspondence of the sacred events which came in the spring of the year A.D. 31, the year Christ was crucified, with the sacred events which came in the fall of the year A.D. 27, the year in which He was baptized, as viewed diagrammatically:

3Tr. 75

“Illustrating our salvation in completeness, the harvest rites of the ceremonial system must therefore corroborate both the testimonies of the prophets and the parables concerning the harvest, for all are inextricably bound up together. The ceremonies of the first and the second fruits of grain must accordingly unfold the truth concerning the first and second fruits of humanity.”

THE PROTO-TYPE OF THE FEASTS

DA 786-787 - “Christ arose from the dead as the first fruits of those that slept. He was the antitype of the wave sheaf, and His resurrection took place on the very day when the wave sheaf was to be presented before the Lord. For more than a thousand years this symbolic ceremony had been performed.

As Christ arose, He brought from the grave a multitude of captives. The earthquake at His death had rent open their graves, and when He arose, they came forth with Him. They were those who had been co- laborers with God, and who at the cost of their lives had borne testimony to the truth. Now they were to be witnesses for Him who had raised them from the dead. But those who came forth from the grave at Christ's resurrection were raised to everlasting life. They ascended with Him as trophies of His victory over death and the grave…”

3TR. 82-83 – DOUBLE APPLICATION

“The Pentecost after the resurrection was for the ingathering of those who were to die, there must, correspondingly, be a Pentecost for the in gathering of those who are to be translated. And by the same token of logic, the wave-sheaf and the wave-loaves must have a double application, each to the dead and to the living, together comprising the total fruits of the anti typical harvest.”

3TR. 80 – WAVE SHEAF OF THE DEAD AND OF THE LIVING

“Those whom Christ took with Him were the living wave-sheaf and the only one that has been offered in the heavenly sanctuary. As ones raised from the dead, they are the wave-sheaf of the first fruits of the dead, the 120 disciples. As ones ever-living before the Father, they are the living wave-sheaf of the first fruits of the living, the 144,000 servants of God.”

3TR. 85 – PROTOTYPICAL WAVE LOAVES

“The Apostolic Pentecost

The Holy Spirit fell upon the 120 disciples (Acts 2: 1-4) on the very day the wave-loaves were to be presented before the Lord. Hence the wave-loaves were a figure of the 120 Spirit filled disciples who were the full complement of first fruits of the dead, and who were gathered in after the resurrection.”

3TR. 80, 82, 83

“The 120 disciples on the day of Pentecost being the gospel's first fruits of the dead, it follows that the great multitude added to the church daily thereafter (Acts 2: 40-47), naturally were the gospel's second fruits of the dead. As the Pentecost after the resurrection was for the in gathering of those who were to die, there must, correspondingly, be a Pentecost for the in gathering of those who are to be translated -- the 144,000 and the "great multitude," -- all the saints who are to be translated.”

Tract 3 page 80.2

“From these facts it can more clearly be seen that those whom Christ took with Him were the living wave- sheaf and the only one that has been offered in the heavenly sanctuary; and that as ones raised from the dead, they are the first fruits of the dead, whereas as ones ever living before the Father, they are the living wave-sheaf of the first fruits of the living, the 144,000 servants of God…”

Tract 3 page 84.3

“The reader will remember that those who arose with Christ on the eighteenth day of the first month (follow the chart of page 55), were immortalized and received into heaven as the anti typical sheaf, pointing to the in gathering of the fruits that shall never die. Their resurrection from the dead signified the beginning of the first-fruit harvest of the 120 disciples who were to die and be resurrected…”

Tract 3 page 85.2

“Just as Christ and those whom He raised and took with Him became the prototypical sheaf, betokening the in gathering of the first fruits (the 120) of those who are to be resurrected, so also when He entered upon His priestly ministration in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, and presented Himself and His trophies before His Father, they became the anti-typical sheaf, betokening the in-gathering of the first fruits of those who are to be translated (the 144,000 living saints)…”

Vol. 3 Symbolic Code Nos. 5, 6. page 12, 13

“Question No. 165:

"If Christ is the first fruits of the dead, is He not also the first fruits of the living?" Answer:

This query is answered in tract No. 3, "The Harvest," in the illustration on p. 44, of which the barley sheaf of the first fruits is pictured in type and anti-type; that is, the ceremonial sheaf of barley prefigured the resurrection of Christ, the first fruits, including those who arose with Him. These resurrected ones constituted the spiritual sheaf which, at the beginning of the judgment of 1844, was offered before the Father as a sheaf offering of the living first fruits.”

WHEN DID THE GATHERING OF THE 1^ST FRUITS START?

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