God Wrote His Plan on a Calendar

For almost 50 years now — around September or October — I have had to ask my teachers or employers for eight days off to attend the Feast of Tabernacles. Whether those days are God’s is not settled by my practice. It is settled by Scripture.

Everybody knows about Christmas and Easter. But how many have heard about the Feast of Tabernacles, or the other observances God commanded in Leviticus 23?

Most think those are Jewish. Mosaic. Old Covenant. Legalistic. Done away.

Wait a minute.

Does God have a plan for humanity? Most say yes. But ask for the order of it — what comes first, who is saved when — and the answers scatter. The sequence was never taught.

Here’s the truth: God did not leave His plan to be guessed at. He fixed it to a calendar and called the days His own.

The annual Holy Days are not Israel’s invention. They are God’s appointed times — a yearly rehearsal of what He is doing with mankind. This essay proves from your Bible that the feasts belong to God, that their order carries the meaning, that the apostolic church still kept time by them after the crucifixion, and that Yeshua (Jesus) is returning to fulfill the ones still ahead.

God Calls Them His Feasts, Not Israel’s

The chapter that lists them settles ownership at once: “The feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts” (Leviticus 23:2).

The Hebrew word for feast is moed — an appointed time, fixed by the one who calls it. These are appointments with God. Israel no more invented them than a guest sets a meeting. Verse 3 heads the list with the weekly Sabbath — the sign of Week 30 (The Commandment That Identifies You) sits inside this system, not apart from it.

The Order Is the Message

God could have handed Israel a list of doctrines. Instead He commanded a rehearsal, repeated annually in fixed order: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost. Then months later Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. It opens with a sacrifice and closes with a harvest. Everything God is doing falls between.

That order is not our reconstruction. It is printed in the chapter. God works this way elsewhere: the resurrection comes “each one in his own order” (1 Corinthians 15:23) — tagma, a rank in formation. He is a God who is “declaring the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10).

Shadows Fall Forward

The passage most often used to retire the feasts instead dates them. Paul tells the Colossians to let no one judge their keeping of “a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:16–17).

Things to come.

Paul wrote decades after the crucifixion, and the shadow still pointed forward. Hebrews says it identically: the law holds only “a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1). A shadow is not a falsehood — it is proof something solid is casting it. You do not discard an outline while its events are still arriving.

The Apostolic Church Still Kept Time by These Days

Paul still ran his travel by this calendar: “I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost” (1 Corinthians 16:8). He sailed past Ephesus to reach Jerusalem for that day (Acts 20:16). He was not dating a letter by a familiar holiday. He was rerouting a journey to be there for one.

He assumed the same of his readers. To Gentile Corinth he wrote: “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast” (1 Corinthians 5:7–8). The sacrifice is his reason for keeping it, not cancelling it.

Why This Matters for the Kingdom

The feasts do not expire when the Kingdom arrives. Ezekiel’s vision of restored government still schedules offerings “at the feasts, the New Moons, the Sabbaths, and at all the appointed seasons of the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 45:17).

The shadow ends when the substance arrives. The appointments do not. These are the days on God’s own calendar — not a memorial the Kingdom retires, but its working schedule. Learning it now is orientation, not nostalgia.

Conclusion

A plan you cannot put in order is a plan you cannot follow. That is where most of Christianity stands — certain God is doing something, unable to say what comes next.

God removed the guesswork. He wrote the sequence into a year and told His people to keep it, so every generation would rehearse the plan until it arrives.

The days were never Jewish alone. They were always prophetic.

And the last of them has not yet been fulfilled.