As our worldly activities come under the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, as has been the case since the start of 2020, each day we face the uncertainty of when this nightmare will ever end. There’s talk it could be around for two years, based on the experience with dealing with similar pandemics. No one knows for sure.
The world needs hope, the real one, not the false ones which we set our minds on – money, prosperity, power, and happiness, all of which are temporary and will end at some point in human history.
September 28, this year, is an important day on God’s calendar. I deliberately did not say Christian calendar because the vast majority of Christians don’t observe this day, or any of the annual festivals or “appointed times” of God, noted in creation week (Gen. 1:14). This will be the Day of Atonement – the day pictures the atoning sacrifice of YAHWEH’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. The sacrifice that gives us true hope.
For people familiar with Judaism, the most sacred day for the religion, is the Day of Atonement. If there’s one day out of the year that they go to the synagogue is it is Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is seen as Jewish holy day as do many other days and observances in the Bible. The seventh-day Sabbath, for example, is also regarded as Jewish, as do Passover, Days of Unleavened Bread, The Feast of Firstfruits (Pentecost), Rosh Hashanah (The Feast of Trumpets) and Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles.
It’s quite easy for a Christian to roll the words off their lips to say these are Jewish holy days or that they belong to the Jews only, and that Christians don’t, and should not, observe them. That reasoning is flawed with so many errors. First, they were not given to the tribe of Judah alone. They were given to all the tribes of Israel, including the Jews. The big question is why? The answer is simple. God was only dealing with one nation at that time – Israel. “He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord,” Psalm 147: 19-20.
As such, God dealt with no other nation in that manner. All other nations were cut-off from God, therefore, all the laws and statues were given to Israel. That is a biblical fact. But how can you just pluck out one commandment from the Ten and disregard it and embrace the other nine because it is not convenient for you? Is that how one should serve the True and Living God?
When will Christianity ever come to recognize this biblical fact that God was using Israel as a model nation, that Israel was God chosen people based on a promise he made to Abraham. DEUT. 7:6-9: “ For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:8 But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.9 Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.
When God gave Israel these festivals, he called them “my feasts,’ or a “feasts of the LORD.” They are not Jewish feasts as Christians label them. The Day of Atonement is such an important festival for God’s people. Christianity is all about God’s mercy and grace, and one cannot think of a more appropriate occasion, apart from the Passover, to recognize the saving grace and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, for the sins of humanity. That’s why every Christian should recognize this day for what it represents. A future time when the world will be at one with God, made possible by the atoning sacrifice; a day when Satan the Devil will be chained for one-thousand-years and will be allowed to deceive the nations no more.
The Word of God tells us in Isa. 66 and Zech. 14 all nations will be bound to appear before Him on the Sabbath day and during these festivals when Jesus Christ returns. All nations were “aliens,’ so to speak, until Jesus Christ came to atone for the sins of humanity. It was His atoning sacrifice, which had brought now all nations to inherit the promise made to Abraham. It was through His atoning sacrifice Gentiles have now be “grafted” to become part of the promise. Christian churches like to talk about the grace of God granting salvation, and rightly so, but grace could not be extended without the atoning sacrifice of the Christ.
If there was ever a time to celebrate the grace of God that has been extended to humanity it is the Day of Atonement. The world needs real hope that stems only from that atoning sacrifice. For more on this subject, download FREE our booklet The Fall Festivals.
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