The Feast of Tabernacles

The Feast of Tabernacles is the final feast in the Fall Festival of Ingathering.  It's the most joyous of God's holy feasts. It serves as a reminder to Israel of their time in temporary dwellings during the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your Feast--you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the Feast to Yahweh your God at the place Yahweh will choose. For Yahweh your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete (Deuteronomy 16:13-15).

Jesus will fulfill this final feast when He establishes His Kingdom on earth and reigns with His people for ever and ever.  Those who inherit the Kingdom of God and reign with Christ will be changed from their temporary dwellings (bodies of flesh) into their permanent bodies (resurrected bodies).

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ... For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:50, 53).

When the elect receive their immortal bodies, they will celebrate the most joyous Feast of Tabernacles ever.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth about this mystery. He wrote that the change from our mortal bodies to our immortal bodies will take place at the Last Trumpet..

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep [die], but we will all be changed-- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:50-53).

The eternal reign of Christ with His people has been a promise to God's people since Abraham.

The prophet Daniel received visions and interpretations describing the coming eternal earthly Kingdom of God.

Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron--for iron breaks and smashes everything--and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever (Daniel 2:40-44).

So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 'The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth. But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever--yes, for ever and ever' (Daniel 716-18).

John saw the same thing.

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever" (Revelation11:15)

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever (Revelation 22:3-5).

Do not be deceived.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:19-21).

"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15)

Richard H Perry