My wife and i have been corresponding over email to a friend that i went to school with who is now a Messianic. This subject of the feast days was bound to come and it has been interesting talking with her. So I wanted to pose a couple questions to all of you. What do you think about the feast days? Do you believe they are still binding or were they nailed to the cross as the SDA church believes? Also, what can we Learn from the feast days in regards to the ministry of Christ? Look forward to seeing some good discussion on this.

Hello SBG,

Could you describe or define a Messianic?

In my understanding (perhaps too literal for this application), Messiah means Christ (lit. the Anointed One), thus Messianic would mean a Christian, or Christ-like, or a follower of Christ - what we all claim or aspire to be...

Or does it mean a Messianic Jew; a Jew who accepts Christ? Or...?

My feast day comment is once more a question - Which Day of Atonement? Much hangs upon this interpretation. Does one observe the typical (O.T.) D.o.A. each year with an earthly high priest, or do we accept the anti-typical (real thing) D.o.A. with our High Priest in Heaven's Most Holy place since 1844? There is not room for both. This Sanctuary truth is the unique pillar of Seventh day Adventism. Which view does your friend espouse?

(Dan 8:14 is "the foundation and central pillar of the advent faith" - Great Controversy 409)

Following this train of thought, at what point in time will the saints know they are truly sealed by God? Of course, your user name prompts this final query.

Regards,

Gordon

Sealed, I love that quote in AoA in your signature. Thanks for sharing that.

My view - Feasts are nonbinding. That said, they are also neglected as sources of inspiration and prophecy by Adventists. We should be paying much more attention to all of them.

Hi Gordon,

In regards to what my friend considers herself, she told me in her email that she was a Messianic, which i am quite sure she is referring to the Messianic Jewish religion. She does believe in Jesus as Messiah. According to what she said, they do not believe any of the law was done away with which would mean that she believes the feast days are still binding and need to be kept according to the Old Testament standard. However, she also stated that since the temple was destroyed by men, it is impossible to continue with the sacrificial services as well as the levitical priesthood. This comment greatly disturbed me. For one thing, it was not "Men" who destroyed the temple. Jesus specifically told the disciples that the temple was going to be destroyed. Though He may have used man to carry forward His judgment, it was God who destroyed the temple. It should have been destroyed around 40 years earlier when Jesus hung on the cross and cried out "It is finished!" and the veil was torn from top to bottom. But God in His mercy allowed it to stand a few years longer although the sacrifices and services done therein were meaningless.


As to your second question,
I am not sure if the saints of God will ever really know if they have been received the Seal or not. Sister White in the Great Controversy tells us that during the time of Jacobs trouble and when God's people stand on this earth without an intercessor, they will have a great sense of their sinfullness and feel as though they have sins not repented of but none will come to their memory. Also even as they Jesus coming in the clouds of glory as they see Him in all His majesty, they will cry our, "who shall be able to stand?". She goes on to say that the angels stop their singing and there is silence as we all wait for an answer. It is then we hear our Savior say "My grace is sufficient." Praise God for His Grace!!!! So, i am not sure if we will ever really know if we are sealed or not until we receive our eternal reward. What are your thoughts?

In Christ
Ben

There are many shades of messianic Jews from those who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah but in a very Jewish setting (such as the old version of Adventism that our early missionaries in Europe gave to their Jewish neighbors) to those who would technically be conidered Christians but still having a lot of respect and holding on to their Jewish heriatge, to the Jews for Jesus movement which tends to make good Sundaykeeping pork-eaters looking for the rapture.

I do not believe that our tradition that the feasts were nailed to the cross would hold up under careful study of the Bible or Mrs. White. What was nailed to the cross was OUR SINS and the results of our sins. The Bible says nothing about the writings that are against us (and which was nailed to the cross) as being the law.

Also, I don't know how to explain this, but in college the professors use to take the chart as shown in say "Bible Readings for the Home" about the two laws, and show how there were other texts in the Bible that gave a very different message than what a superficial reading of the traditional proof texts for the two law theory pictures. What they said would be more fair to the Bible and Mrs. White is to see the law as going from general to specific. God's law is Self-Sacrificing Love. No more and no less. But we can ask "What does self-sacrificing love mean?" and we have the two great principles: Love God supreamly and your neighbor as your self. Again this leads to questions as to how to love God supreamly and your neighbor as your self, and we have the 10 commandaments. Our traditions have not noticed this but the exodus 20 version of the 10 commandaments can be broken into three equal parts. The first third consists of three commandaments telling us how to love God supreamly and is a reflection on the role of what we Christians were to latter call "God the Father." The last third consists of 6 commandments that tells us how to love our neighbors as ourselves, and is a discription of how the Holy Spirit makes us loving and lovable people. The middle third is the most important part of the poetic form, and it consists of one commandament, yet that one commandament takes up an entire third of the section, and it says that it is impossible to love God supreamly and your neighbor as yourself unless you rest in a personal relationship with God. The Sabbath commandament ties the other two thirds together, and is the key to being able to keep the other two thirds. The Sabbath commandment is the ministry of Jesus.

After the 10 commandaments, what our tradition has called "The ceremonial law" is simply everyday applications of God's law to specific situations and are flexable for different situations, giving us a principle that The law of God is absolute, but it's application is not absolute. Some of these applications were very limited in scope, others a bit more broader in scope. Some, such as the feasts, are more nationalistic. The fests are tied to that specific piece of geography and it's agricultural cycle. The Canaanites kept those very same feasts hundreds of years before Abraham.

For those who live in that land, these specific times of the year are very cruticial and would be naturally observed and it would be wise to observe these in a way that uses them as lessons to see how God cares for them. For people of Jewish heritage, who's culture is tied to that land, the feasts are of moderate importance. For us what the Bible would call "the church of the circumcised" there should be a definate interest and there is much that we miss in the life of Jesus because we do not see how it is tied to the feasts, but it is impossible for us to understand the full impact of the feasts due to our cultural and geographic heritage. A major issue in Acts and Galations is how Jewish do the gentile converts have to be, and we have been offered a non-nationalistic form of Judaism. Paul had a Jewish convert, Timothy, circumcised, but not the gentile Titus. It is NOT because Paul changed his mind, but because of the two different backgrounds of these two young men.

The first persecution of the church (such as the persecution of Saul) actually was NOT over Jesus, but that these followers of Jesus were offering to Greek-Speaking Jews a bilingual ministry. "The Synogogue of the Freemen" was not a mainline Jewish denomination, but they were a far right-wing hate group who were ultra patarotic and wanted to prove that they were more Jewish than the mainline Jews. They were the type of people who if they had bumper-stickers, their donkys would read "Welcome to Jerusalem: Now learn Hebrew, or at least Aramaic!"

Sauls persecution was not towards Peter and John or the other disciples who were good Hebrew and Aramaic speaking Jews. For about 14 years they were under the protection of Rabbi Gamaliel. Saul was pesecuting the followers of Jesus who were still Greek-speaking and probably were a bit more liberal than the typical conservative Jew, and the Synogogue of the Freemen wanted them to become ultra conservative. There is even some evidence that some of the members of the Synogogue of the Freemen began to follow Jesus, but believed that the other converts: Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles, needed to become ultra conservative nationalistic Jews.(Sadly, about 14 years latter when Rabbi Gamaliel had either died, or was too old to be of influence, then they were persecuted for following Jesus).

If someone lives in that piece of geography and is dealing with the agracultural schedule of that land, they will in one way or another be keeping those feasts, so let them keep those cycles of their life to the glory of God. If someone was born and raised in the heritage that has a close connection to that piece of geography, then encourage them to not give up that part of their heritage. For us of gentile background, let's look at the feasts and learn from them, but understand that not living there and having that heritage, we cannot fully understand those feasts, and realize that we are in a different situation and thus that specific nationalistic application does not quite fit our heritage and our situation.

Now the Sabbath on the other hand has a universal application. It is a sanctuary in time that is not limited to that geography. The feasts are kept when they are being expirenced in the land (thus here in the US they tend to cover two days) but as Jews went east and west, they adjusted the time of Sabbath for when the sunset at their location.

Hi Kevin,

Which college did you attend?

AUC, Andrews, Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies, and Loma Linda.

Why don't we do the Feast of Tabernacles anymore?

Anymore?

When is the last time it was done?

Well, we sort of do, and more adjusted to our agricultural cycle, it's Campmeeting.