What are the Fall Feasts?
Three Mo’edim are known as the Fall Feasts. In these, we see and anticipate the Messiah taking His Bride, the Father judging the nations and testing Ya’akov/Yisra’el, and the final, visible return of Messiah Yeshua.
Leviticus 23 lists these. They are: Yom Teruah, Yom HaKippurim, and Sukkot
After a long, hot summer, Yom Teruah comes on the seventh crescent moon, and is the beginning of the fall Mo’edim, of the harvest of fruit trees for winter food and wine. Yom Teruah is the Day of the Awakening Blast, also called the “Last Shofar” in Judaism (a Shofar is a Ram’s Horn Trumpet). It is a “High Day,” and is thus treated like a regular Sabbath. This is compelling, since Sha’ul said, “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the Last Shofar.” (See 1 Cor. 15:52 and 1 Thes. 4:17). This is the Resurrection of those who die “in Messiah,” meaning, being obedient to Him. This day is also known as “Yom HaDin,” or “Judgment Day,” but it is the judgment of the Tzaddikim, the Righteous Ones.
Ten days later is the feast of Yom Kippur, or the day of “Atonements.” This is the High Day of the year. This is the day of final judgment for the lukewarm and the cold. During the seven days between Yom Teruah and Yom Kippur, there are the “Terrible Days,” or the “Days of Awe”, which are given prophetic treatment as seven years in Hitgalut, or “Revelation.” These seven Terrible days start each year on Yom Kippur, when the “great shofar” is blown (Matt 24, Revelation’s 7 ‘trumpets’). This is the Day that Messiah comes with the Tzaddikim behind Him, plants His feet in Yisra’el on the Mount of Olives, and every human eye will behold him. He will destroy the unrighteous on that day. This is why this day is a ‘day of afflicting of the soul,’ so that we are contemplative of judgment on that day, depriving ourselves of all human pleasure to focus on the ‘awe’ of Elohim and His Messiah.
Four days later is Sukkot. “Tabernacles/Booths,” the commemoration of living in ‘booths’ for forty years. This is also the biblical time of Yeshua’s birth, himself having been born in a Sukkah in the fall feast, which is why everyone was flooding into Jerusalem and Bethlehem. (They were given 2 years to pay their Roman tax, and shepherds don’t feed their flocks grass in the dead of winter.) The ‘grapes of wrath’ have been harvested at this time of year, and it is time for the guests of the ‘feast’ to sup with the Lamb and His Bride, who have returned to earth.
This season of living in ‘booths’ for seven days is symbolic of the temporal nature of life on earth, which will last for only seven thousand years; even in the Millennium it will be ‘temporal,’ and we will all commemorate this feast still, and all the others. (Zech 14), as we will see heaven and earth ‘rolled up like a scroll’ at the end of the thousand years that begin on the last shofar when Messiah blows the Shofar in reality. Sukkot ends with Sh’mini Atzeret, or “The Eighth Day,” the Day of “Rejoicing in the Torah,” which is symbolic of the period of ‘Infinity’ that starts after Messiah reigns for 1000 years. The first day of Sukkot is a “High Day,” and this Eighth Day is a “High Day,” treated like a Shabbat.
Other Feasts
Two feasts are not given in the Torah, but are observed nonetheless. One is Khanukah, during which Messiah preaches a compelling message about the anti-Messiah or “false shepherd” in Yerushalayim, in Yokhanan (John) chapter 10. This feast commemorates Yisra’el rededicating the Temple after it had been defiled for nearly three years. The Menorah was lit for the first time after three years of “darkness,” and so this is called the Festival of Lights, as well as “Dedication,” (Khanukah means “dedication”). So, this is an “eighth” feast, and is symbolic of the “eighth millennium,” which will actually be “infinity,” (the symbol for 8 is “infinity,” and in Hebrew, the symbol for 8 is a khet (with hard gutteral “h”), for “Life”, which is eternal/infinite in Messiah Yeshua.)
The other feast in scripture not listed in Torah is Purim. This is from the book of Ishtar, Esther, and is the only book in the scriptures in which Elohim is not mentioned even once. But Esther is a story of a woman risking her life to save Yisra’el while in a foreign land. She is a “picture” of the Bride of Messiah.
With these two feasts, our total comes to nine. Interestingly, over the years, a “Khanukiah” or “Khanukah Menorah” has developed. At first, way back in the time of Messiah, it was an oil lamp with eight lights. Today, it is a lamp-stand with nine lights. The eighth light is supposed to represent that “Sukkot” celebrated “Out of Season” in the time of the Maccabees, when they cleansed the Temple, having enough oil to celebrate Sukkot in winter and not in the early fall as usual. The ninth light was added outside the land of Israel, by accident, and was thus treated as the Shammash, or “Servant Candle.” So while we await Messiah, once a year we contemplate “infinity” during the season in which Messiah was conceived (Khanukah)