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Date Posted: 20:18:17 09/21/02 Sat
Author: Sola Scriptura
Subject: Feast of Tabernacles / Festival of Sukkot

My Jewish Calendar has expired and I need to find a new one! I am of the belief that the Rapture will occur during one of the Feasts of Tabernacles / Festivals of Sukkot in coming times. Just skimmed this article the author is not always trustworthy and is sometimes in error, but the article may provoke some thought.


From: Koenig's International News

Feast of Tabernacles / Festival of Sukkot
begins at sundown Friday
September 21st -- 29th


The Feast of Tabernacles, known as Sukkot, is held by divine decree on the fifteenth through twenty-first days of Tishri, September or October on the Julian calendar. The festival begins after the ingathering of the fall harvest, and is the happiest of the biblical feasts. It celebrates God’s bounty in nature and God’s protection, symbolized by the fragile booths in which the Israelites dwelled in the wilderness. According to Jewish belief and tradition, Sukkot also involves Gentiles, and seventy bullocks were offered up in the Temple for the seventy nations of the world (all they knew existed in that time). In the messianic age, the prophet Zechariah predicted, all nations will come up to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot as an affirmation of faith in God’s guidance of the world (Zechariah 14:16).

As seven is the number of fulfillment and completion, this seventh festival ushers in God’s rest and points to the one-thousand-year Millennium, the reign of Christ

”Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “the fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be a holy convocation. You shall do not customary work on it. For seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. It is a sacred assembly, and you shall do not customary work on it ... Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest.

“And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.’”

Leviticus 23:33-36, 39-43 NKJV

The Feast of Tabernacles is also called the Feast of Lights. To commemorate the pillar of fire that led the children of Israel by night, at the end of the first day of the feast the priests and Levites went down to the court of the women, where four huge golden candelabra had been placed on bases fifty cubits high. Each candelabrum had four branches, and each branch terminated in a huge basin in which rested a twisted wick – made of holy garments the priests had worn in the previous year. While the Levites and priests sang praises and waved torches, sixteen young men of priestly descent climbed ladders in order to pour more than seven gallons of pure oil into each basin. When the great wicks were kindled, the light from the flames was so intense that the Mishnah says there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that was not lit up with the light.

How fitting that Jesus stood in the midst of His people and proclaimed, “I am the light of the world” (John 9:5 NKJV).

The Feast of Tabernacles is also called “the season of our joy,” I believe Jesus was born during the time of Sukkot. He was obviously no born in December, for Luke 2:8 records that at the time of Jesus’ birth there were “shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night” (NKJV). From biblical times to the present, shepherds in Israel leave the cold of the open fields and pen their sheep at night beginning in the month of October. Due to the nighttime cold, there were no shepherds in any fields in December. It was customary, however, to send the flocks out after Passover, and they would remain in the fields until the first rain or frost in October. Jesus’ birth, then, had to occur sometime between Passover and early October. I believe He was born during the Festival of Sukkot, the season of joy!

The angels gathered on the first Christmas morning and announced, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10 NKJV). They knew the King of kings had come into the world. In the same way, the Feast of Sukkot celebrates the coming time when Jesus Christ will rule over the entire earth..

Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would be God’s greatest gift to the earth. “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth,” he wrote. “In that day it shall be– ‘The lord is one,’ and His name one” (14:9 NKJV). The Messiah’s coming will bring joy to the nations of the world.

Jesus Christ is our joy. As we await His second coming when He will rule over the entire world, we rejoice in the power of the name that is above every name. One of the given names of Jesus, Emmanuel, means “God with us.” He is the wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. Our Savior and Deliverer is also our Friend and Comforter. He gives us joy today the world will know tomorrow. In His presence is fullness of joy.

Nearly 250 years ago, the English writer Isaac Watts wrote a hymn based on Psalm 98. Although we traditionally sing his song at Christmas, the lyrics are really about the millennial reign of Christ. How appropriate it would be to sing this song during Sukkot, the festival that points forward to the Millennium and backward to the wonderful nativity of Christ.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come;
Let earth receive her king;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.

Isaac Watts

Present Day Tabernacles


Contemporary Jews still consider Sukkot to be a time for great rejoicing. The festival is observed from the fifteenth of Tishri for seven days and concludes on the eighth day with the observance of Atseret/Simchat Torah a service in which the congregation finishes reading the last verses of Deuteronomy and immediately begins again with the first verses of Genesis. Jewish tradition has divided the Torah into weekly portions so that one reads through the entire Torah each year. The immediate reading of the first verse of Genesis illustrates that the study of God’s Word should never end.

At the conclusion of the reading, the Torah scrolls are removed from the ark in which they are kept and carried around the synagogue in a celebratory procession. Like the Jews who circled the altar in Jesus’ time, the present-day celebration of Sukkot is a joyous occasion, but modern Jews credit their joy to having lived to complete the reading of the Torah yet another time so they can begin reading it again.

In some synagogues, the children are called forward at the conclusion of the service. While the adults form a canopy over them by holding their prayer shawls over their heads, the blessing of Jacob, from Genesis 49, is recited over them. As a symbol of the blessing falling upon the children of Israel, the children are given candy to remind them that the study of God’s Word is sweet.

During the Feast of Tabernacles, each Jewish family participates in the building of a sukkah, or booth. Many families begin construction of their sukkah immediately after the conclusion of the Yom Kippur service. The booth will not be an elaborate structure. Just like the booths of Jesus’ day, they may spring up almost anywhere. Sometimes apartment dwellers choose to help build a sukkah at the synagogue or at the home of friends.

The use of the lulav and etrog is an ancient practice that dates from the time of the second Temple. The lulav and etrog are also call the four species – citron, palm, myrtle, and willow. The identification of the four species is based on Leviticus 23:40: “And you shall take for your yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook...” The etrog, or citron, remains a separate entity, but the branches are bound together around one palm branch and called the lulav.

The etrog is a yellow citrus fruit about the size of a lemon, but not as sour. For generations, as the Jews celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, they held the lulav in one hand and the etrog in the other, waving them in all four directions, north, south, east, and west.

Over the years, in an effort to understand why God commanded this ritual, the Jews have ascribed various meanings to the four species. One belief is that all four species cannot exist without water, and the Feast of Tabernacles did include prayers for rain to ensure the next year’s harvest. Another idea is that the four species represent Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, or that they represent four classes of Jews. The first class, represented by the tasty, fragrant citron, is made up of those Jews who have knowledge of the Torah and do good deeds. The palm date has taste, but no smell, so it represents Jews who know the Torah, but do not practice good deeds. They myrtle has aroma, but no taste, so it represents Jews who perform good deeds but do not know the Torah, and the willow has neither taste nor aroma, so it portrays Jews who neither know Torah nor do good deeds.

I believe, however, that the true meaning is found in the way these items are used in the Sukkot ceremony. At the beginning of the ceremony, the etrog is held upside down and in the opposite hand, but by the end of the service it is turned right side up and joined with the lulav.

I believe that the citron may represent the Gentiles who have been brought into a covenant with God through Jesus Christ. As Paul wrote in Ephesians, at one time we were “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:12-13 NKJV).

During a contemporary celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, a Jewish family will eat a holiday meal in the sukkah they have prepared. The mood is relaxed and happy more like a picnic than a religious ritual. After blessings for wine and bread are recited, the head of the home will say a special blessing for Sukkot: ”Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who has set us apart by Thy commandments and commanded us to celebrate in the sukkah.”

Local congregations may hold special Sukkot services on the first two nights of the festival, in which participants wave lulavs while reciting the praise psalms. If weather permits, some families may choose to sleep in their sukkah.

The eighth day of the festival, Shmeni Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Assembly), is set apart as a Sabbath and a holy assembly. Why? Ask any devout Jewish parent – on the eighth day, Jewish baby boys take the sign of Abrahamic covenant through circumcision (Genesis 17). So, too, with Jesus. Scripture tells us that when “eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21 NKJV).

If there is one thing we can learn from the contemporary Jewish observance of Sukkot’s eight-day service, it is that God’s Word must be honored. How many Christians do you know who make a practice of reading the Bible through each year? How many church members would rise up and circle the sanctuary seven times while the pastor carried a copy of the Word of God in his arms?

The Word of God is worthy of our veneration, respect, and study. The Old Testament promises and prophecies are still valid and important for us to understand. Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17-18 NKJV).

My friend, we must return our attention to the study of the Bible, God’s holy Word. These treacherous times require it, our love for God compels it. May we join with the Jews during Sukkot as they say, “How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103 NKJV).

Hear the command of Paul: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV). Now answer this question: If you read the Word of God ten minutes each day and watch television seven hours, who is Lord of your life? Hollywood or the Holy Spirit?

The law of the Lord is perfect,
Converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure,
Making wise the simple;
The statutes of the Lord are right,
Rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure,
Enlightening the eyes.

Psalm 19:7-8

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