It's an old joke that I first heard maybe thirty years ago.....there is a community ministerium meeting in an auditorium....and a number of denominations are represented. A fire breaks out in the kitchen.....and a Baptist minister jumps up and yells...."Fire!"....followed up by a Methodist minister who jumps up and yells...."Water!"....followed by a Presbyterian minister who jumps up and yells...."Order!"
We Presbyterians like to maintain order in everything.....especially Reformed Presbyterians. So we have confessions and catechisms and protocols and rules for this and rules for that. They work out very well....but they have limitations with God who is not confined to everything that we write down. One of those things is with prophecy....and the Jews....and Israel....not to mention blood moons and solar eclipses and Jewish feasts!
God uses Jewish feasts and fasts....more after-the-fact than to predict anything. Both Jewish temples were destroyed on the ninth of the Jewish lunar month Av....therefore known as the...Ninth of Av....or Tisha B'Av.....and a lot of other disasters happened on that Jewish date over the centuries and millennia.....and this emphasis on Jewish feasts by God continues....as the massacre in Israel leading to upheaval in the world....happened on the feast of Sukkot. Even this war going on now....which is also bringing turmoil to the world....began only hours after Passover.
Donald Trump....was born on a blood moon....and he famously came down that golden escalator into evangelicalism....in the middle of that equally famous tetrad of blood moons on Jewish feasts in 2014/2015. So....scoff if you want....and jump up and yell...."Order!"....but God will continue with His perfect order of things.
So having laid the groundwork here....which I do fairly often....the next Jewish major feast begins on Thursday....May 21....it is a one-day feast.....and ends on Saturday....May 23 at nightfall. The feast is commonly called Shavuot in the Hebrew....(three syllables)....or Weeks....the Festival of Weeks.....celebrating two things....the giving of the Torah....or the law....on Mount Sinai....and also the first issues of wheat. The term 'weeks' comes from the feast being fifty days from the sabbath after Passover. It is therefore fifty days. Is this beginning to sound familiar? It is celebrated as Pentecost to Christians....when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in the upper room!
Jerusalem at the time was filled with Jews from all over.....celebrating Shavuot....but many of them would go home different.....first fruits of redemption! Whether God uses this Jewish feast in prophecy or not....may He....if it be His will....and to His glory alone....move in our pulpits....and all of us in the pews....to His glory....and our benefit as a people in need of His mercies and graces and discernment!
