Tuesday 11 October 2016

The Feast 'Was' - not 'Is'

In teaching about the ancient Feasts, I think I would be careful to always speak of their Observance in past-tense terms - not in the present tense, as if the Torah-Feasts are still being carried-out today - because they're not. 

The Feast of Trumpets isn't being carried-out by anyone anywhere anymore.

Even though many label what they do 'the Feast of Trumpets', that doesn't make it the Feast of Trumpets. 

What they are doing really only mimics or commemorates the ancient Torah-Feasts, but no-one is actually carrying-out the Feasts themselves - not even in Israel. Not in the way that was demanded by the Torah itself anyway. 

No-one needs to, and no-one can anyway - not even if we want to!

So rather than say that the Feast 'is' an annual reminder (in the present tense), I would probably just teach instead that the ancient Feasts 'were' (past tense) a shadow of...

The ancient Torah-Feast 'was' - not it 'is'.

Otherwise someone who hears us might mistakenly assume we're giving legitimacy to the idea that the Feasts must still be Observed today. They're not meant to be. 

Very often I feel less than satisfied with the way some Bible-teachers apply certain verses of Bible-Prophecy to Israel's future, when it seems to me that the Apostles defended their Gospel by quoting many of the very same verses, asserting and explaining that there'd already come the fulfilment of those verses in Israel, for Israel, in their own day. 

Since many today instead see such verses as delayed until some future time, rather than grasp the sense in which the Gospel interpreted those verses as already-fulfilled, it's no surprise then that many also seem to be giving legitimacy to carrying-out the Feasts today, as if that's even possible to do.

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