The Fall Festivals of Israel – Prophecy As Yet Unfulfilled
Yom Kippur, Judgment Day
God has ordained the single most important day of the Jewish Year as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a day to remember holiness, and to remember that Israel was to be set apart as holy from the nations. Although many don’t see it, the principle of grace runs through the Old Testament, and is most obvious in the sacrificial system set up by God to reconcile His people to Himself. An entire day was set aside so that each individual could find forgiveness for past sins and be restored to fellowship with his Maker.
The Ten Days of Awe
When the month of Tishrei arrives, the feast of Rosh Hashanah begins the sober countdown to Yom Kippur known as the Ten Days of Awe. During these ten days, the Jewish people are commanded to begin the process of repentance. If the Feast of Rosh Hashanah anticipates the Second Coming of the Lord, the Resurrection of the Dead and the Rapture of the living Christians, then the Ten Days will really be the final ten days preceding Judgment Day. During these ten days, the Lord will be conducting the Battle of Armageddon. Hundreds of millions of soldiers from around the world will have converged on Israel to annihilate her, and He will destroy them with the breath of his mouth and in the winepress of God’s Holy Wrath. During these ten days, the Jews will have time to consider their long denial of their own Messiah and His Faithfulness, regardless of their faithlessness. They will have time to consider what they did to him the first time He came to them. These ten days will be the fulfillment of Zechariah 12: 10-14: 9 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. 10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. 11 In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. 12 And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; 13 The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimeid apart, and their wives apart; 14 All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.
Tradition in Judaism teaches that on the first day of Tishrei, a heavenly judgment takes place, the sentence for the coming year hangs in the balance during the next ten days, and is finally sealed on the Day of Atonement. We can see that this will be the time during which the Jews remaining alive will watch their Savior save them, and knowing that they will stand before him in Judgment. The repentance that occurs during these then days will determine if they are allowed to enter the Millennial Kingdom, or will be found unfit. We know already what Israel shall do: Rom 11:26: And so all Israel shall be saved. But Israel is not the only nation facing God on Judgment Day. All living flesh will bear this judgment, and the sheep will be separated from the goats, Matt 25:31-34, 41, 46:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. . . . 41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, . . . 46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
As Matthew continues, we see that the Lord distinguishes between the sheep and the goats primarily by their acts of charity during their lives [after all, they were all unsaved prior to His return or they would have been raptured]. For this reason, the Jewish synagogues on Yom Kippur have tables set up for the facilitation of giving to charities. This day is a reminder that God will look at their actions when he judges them.
The Biblical name for the Day of Atonement is Yom HaKippurim, or the Day of covering or concealing. It is to be observed on the tenth day of the holy seventh month of Tishrei. On this day, the Israelites were to humble themselves and fast, and to offer a sacrifice by fire to God for the covering of their sins. The system was set up to hide sin from God until it was taken away by the death of Jesus Christ. The Atonement only hides the sin – it does not take it away. But the covering is complete, allowing God to look upon the Israelites as if their sin did not exist.
Yom Kippur establishes the principle of a ‘Life for a Life’. The gory sacrifices of the innocent animals reminded the people of the ugliness of sin. And Leviticus 17:11 says “for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” Note that, like Living Water, [that is, flowing water] the blood is the circulating fluid, a Living fluid, bringing nourishment to the body and removing waste, and representing life itself. And it is only by the giving up of that life, that atonement is made, so that we can live.
God ordained that Yom Kippur should fall on the tenth day of Tishrei, ten days after the feast of repentance, the feast of Trumpets, because repentance must precede redemption. He also ordained that it should be celebrated forever.
It is important that we understand the Hebrew concept of ‘forever’ which is different than the Greek concept of endless time, which western civilizations have adopted, forgetting the original Hebrew concept to our own detriment. The New Testament ‘forever’ refers to ‘eons of eons’ or ‘ages of ages’, but the Hebrews had no such concept. The Hebrews thought in terms of ages having a distinct beginning and a distinct end. So the command to keep this day as a perpetual statute means that it was to be celebrated until the day came when a new day of forgiveness dawned, and the old age was complete and passed away. This happened with the first coming of Jesus Christ, as prophesied by Jeremiah in Jer 31:31-34: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah-- not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, *though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Also note that God placed the feast of Yom Kippur before the feast of Tabernacles, the season of joy. The children of Israel could only rejoice once they were redeemed and their sins forgiven.
There are four main elements of Yom Kippur, as stated in Leviticus 23: 27-28: On exactly the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your souls and present an offering by fire to the Lord. Neither shall you do any work on this same day. So it was a holy worship event that was to draw people to the altar of Divine Mercy. Isaiah 58:3 established the principle of fasting to accomplish humbling of the soul, and on this day, the Israelites were to repent and mourn for their sins. Atonement was so important that the entire day, and an entire chapter of the Bible, [Leviticus 16] was dedicated to the sacrifices to be made in atonement for the sins of Israel, to accomplish redemption of those sins. And finally, it was a sabbath of sabbaths – the Israelites were to do no work at all and were subject to capital punishment if they violated this statute.
The High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies only once each year on this day. When he entered, he saw the Lord’s presences as a brilliant cloud hovering above the Mercy Seat. The Mercy Seat can also be translated as ‘the Seat of Atonement’, since atonement and mercy come from the same Hebrew root word, kafar. The Mercy Seat stood upon the Ark of the Covenant, but was not a part of it. It was surrounded by the Cherubim, who were the guardians of the Divine Presence. This was the place in the Tabernacle where Moses met with God and spoke to him face to face. It was on this precise location that heaven reached down to earth, enabling man to make peace with God.
The High Priest was also required to wash himself from head to foot, and to put on linen clothing, the same kind of garment worn by the angels. The washing is a reminder of God’s purity and our sinfulness, the linen represents the putting on of Yeshua the Christ, and His promise to clothe us with His righteousness instead of our own rags. On this day, the High Priest was NOT required to wear the Urim and Thummim, the vestments that were used to understand God’s word to His people, since on this day, the High Priest would meet with God face to face.
The sacrifices that day included sacrifices for the priests and their families, and for the people, a burnt offering consisting of a bull, a ram, and seven lambs, and a sin offering. The blood of the bull was first sprinkled on the Mercy Seat to cleanse it, because it had become filthy with the sins of the people. The sin offering consisted of two goats, one of which was killed, and its blood sprinkled on the Mercy Seat, while the other was allowed to escape into the wilderness [the Scapegoat].
The Scapegoat was the most unusual part of the Yom Kippur sacrifices. The two goats were considered one offering for sin. The Scapegoat was called ‘azazel’, which means ‘Removed from the Lord’. The goat which was slain was a reminder to the people that their sins required the sacrifice of blood to cover them before they could approach a Holy God, and the azazel was the goat which took the guilt of their sins and carried it away from the people, representing the idea that not only were the sins to be forgiven, they were to be removed and forgotten. These two goats foreshadowed the sacrifice made by Yeshua the Christ, when He died for our sins and took them on himself as He went into the underworld for us for three days. John the Baptist called Yeshua “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” He is the sheep led silently to the slaughter, but also the azazel, removing our sins completely.
Golden lots were cast to determine which goat was the Lord’s goat and which was the scapegoat. The golden lots were marked ‘For the Lord’, and one marked ‘for azazel’. The high Priest drew the lots from the bowl and placed them on the heads of the goats, sealing their fate. It was considered a favorable sign if the Lot for the Lord’s goat came up in the right hand of the High Priest. While the Lord’s goat waited, a crimson sash was tied around the horns of the scapegoat, symbolically representing the sins of the people. A portion of this sash was also tied to the door of the Temple. After the Holy of Holies was sprinkled with the blood of the bull, the High Priest sacrificed the goat for the Lord, and sprinkled its blood, once toward heaven, and seven times downward on the place inside the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant used to be before it disappeared. Whatever blood remained was poured on the great fire altar outside. The High Priest then approached the scapegoat and confessed Israel’s sin over it. Another priest then led the scapegoat away into the wilderness. When they reached the cliff, the priest would remove the crimson sash and tear it in half. Half was tied to the goats horns and half to the cliff. Then the priest would push the goat backwards over the cliff, where it carried Israel’s sins to its death.
In connection with this ceremony, an interesting tradition arose. When the scapegoat was pushed over the cliff to its death, the crimson sash tied to the door of the Temple would turn white, indicating the favorable response of God to the Yom Kippur sacrifices, and that their sins were forgiven.
Once the altar, the tent of meeting and the Holy of Holies were cleansed, they were again fit to be used in service to the Lord for the next year.
According to the Talmud, the destruction of the Temple did not come as a complete surprise to the Jewish people of that day. In fact, the Talmud records that four ominous events occurred approximately FORTY YEARS prior to the destruction of the Temple, or around 30 A.D. These four events were to warn the rabbis of the Temple’s impending doom. According to Jewish tradition, all four of these signs came to pass:
1) The Lot for the Lord’s goat did not come up in the High Priest’s right hand
2) The scarlet cord tied to the door of the Temple on the Day of Atonement stopped turning white after the scapegoat had been cast over the precipice.
3) The westernmost light on the Temple candelabra would not burn. It is believed that this light was used to light the other lights of the candelabra.
4) The Temple doors would open by themselves. The rabbis saw this as an ominous fulfillment of Zechariah 11:1, “Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that fire may devour thy cedars. The opening of the doors to let in the consuming fire foretold the destruction of the Temple itself by fire. [The inner rooms of the Temple were lined with the cedar from Lebanon].
The sages understood that the destruction of the Temple was God’s judgment on a sinful people for their ungodliness, and that it gave them time to prepare for existence without a Temple, and with only synagogues to commemorate their rituals.
But God did not remove His presence forever – He did more than could have been expected. He came and dwelled with us in the flesh rather than limit His presence to the Holy of Holies. The forgiveness he provided was not a once a year ritual, but a sacrifice that need never be repeated. For Jesus was both the perfect High Priest and the perfect Sacrifice.
Taken from The Fall Feasts of Israel, by Mitch and Zhava Glaser, p 105.
